TheBird<p>[EDIT: Since some people are incapable of reading nuance, I'm going to be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR HERE: This post is deconstructing arguments that boil women down to just their body parts. It also calls out gatekeeping and how that harms the queer community. And finally it points out how people outside the community should not get to define our identities for us.]</p><p>This is a crosspost from my tumblr, where I continued a discussion about the fact that people are trying to alter the definition of lesbian to include attraction to men. I wanted to dig into that a bit to show how TERFs who claim to defend lesbianism use the same playbook as cis men who seek to enforce the status quo by altering the definition.</p><p>The attempt to shift the word lesbian(EDIT: by people outside the community, really shouldn't have had to clarify this since I've mentioned several times cis men are the ones trying to redefine a word that does not belong to them and they don't identity as it) to force it to include attraction to men is misogyny AND transphobia in action. Note here that trans women are women period, and they can be lesbians too and not be attracted to men at all. Anyone who tries to dispute this are perpetuating harmful ideas that get us hurt and/or killed, so bugger off TERFs.</p><p>The reason I am calling this out as both misogyny and transphobia is because of the way arguments are constructed when it comes to the definition of the word lesbian. These arguments utilize similar strategies, despite some coming from cis men and some from LGB people. These arguments also shift the blame in order to obfuscate the root of the problem and shift the conversation away from that root. It's a derail tactic.</p><p>Lesbian is outside the male gaze, and thus a threat to the status quo (of heteronormative a.k.a. men must be central to everything and gender binary, a.k.a. only two sexes allowed). </p><p>In order to stop the threat, cis (and sometimes trans) men will weaponize and co-opt social justice language in order to convince people, especially young people, to alter their definitions. It's a tactic to force people to align with the status quo again, and they do this by shifting the conversation away from the root cause of the problem itself (which is themselves and the status quo).</p><p>Now how does transphobia fall into this mess?</p><p>TERFs end up aligning themselves with the status quo in their fervent belief that trans people should not exist. </p><p>Except, wait, isn't that part of the status quo too? </p><p>Trans people are indeed a threat to the status quo because we dismantle - by our very existence - the gender binary. Our existence shows vividly the messy biology of humanity, and how our identities can't fit into a strict binary. Instead, trans people blow open the dichotomy and turn it into a glorious, multi-hued rainbow.</p><p>That is a threat to the status quo that insists that people can only be straight and must fit into either the male or female sexes.</p><p>Cis men (and sadly some trans men) will target the threat of trans people by trying to argue how we can't exist, and use very out-dated and simplified biology to "prove" it. They then will target us and attempt to literally kill us. Or push for laws that denigrate or take away our rights and access to the healthcare and communities we need for survival. </p><p>Now TERFs end up using similar rhetoric in their claim to "defend the word lesbian," but their defense is based in the status quo. They must use out-dated biological ideas that shove humanity into two categories: male or female. Then they must eradicate the existence of nonbinary people like myself because we fail to fit those two categories, thus we can't exist and have no right to any of the LGB terminology. </p><p>They then must twist the narrative to take the blame away from the cis men who are the cause for this shift in definition, and instead blame it on us trans people. They weaponize transphobia in order to uphold the status quo, but the more they uphold the status quo? The more they uphold very misogynistic ideas about women's bodies and sexualities.</p><p>Funny how they are using the exact same playbook as misogynists, huh? So let's dig deeper:</p><p>Most of the TERF arguments can be boiled down to: </p><p>1. women's bodies must have x, y, and z body part. Any other type of body part makes that person a not-woman. </p><p>2. not-women are infiltrating women's spaces to cause harm and dismantle women's spaces.</p><p>3. trans people do not exist and are delusional.</p><p>The first claim is rooted in outdated biology, an essentialism that only certain body parts can exist in the women category. This, in turn, takes women and boils them down to just their body parts. </p><p>Except, wait, that's what misogyny does. It boils women down to just their body parts. Huh, strange that TERFs are okay with using misogyny here in their claim that trans people do not exist and women can only exist with very specific body parts. Weird, right?</p><p>The claim that "not-women" are infiltrating women's spaces is an attempt to police these spaces and force people to conform to the status quo of the gender binary, but to do this policing, it requires them to fall back on their first claim of what body part constitutes as being part of a woman and what doesn't. Thus they end up boiling women down, again, to just body parts.</p><p>Except, wait, misogyny does that too. Do you see a pattern here?</p><p>The final claim that trans people do not exist and are delusional is rooted in the idea that the gender binary of man vs. women is all that there is of human sexes. Anyone who tries to defy whatever they were assigned at birth is delusional and/or ill and harmful to society. </p><p>Except wait, misogyny makes these same claims about women who are not attracted to men. It's the exact same playbook just shifted with different words.</p><p>This shift in blame that the TERFs are doing is thus upholding the very status quo they often claim they're fighting. </p><p>But you can't fight the status quo while at the same time upholding it. </p><p>The word lesbian has become a battleground because: </p><p>1. its definition that the person who is a lesbian is not attracted to men threatens the status quo.</p><p>2, Secondly, any definition of lesbian that acknowledges the complexity of gender identity threatens the status quo. By explicitly including the words "not attracted to men" or "not attracted to cis or trans men" threatens the status quo because it implies attraction to other genders outside of the typical male/female. Any implication to genders outside the gender binary is a threat to the status quo. </p><p>Some people include that moniker of 'cis or trans men' in an attempt to be more precise in their definition and allow for the existence of nonbinary people. The definition of lesbian still is the same: not attracted to men, but the addition of "cis or trans" makes it clearer the sexuality and allows that person to further refine their story.</p><p> Many nonbinary people, like myself, are not-men. Thus, some lesbians include us in their definition by framing their definition to stress the lack of attraction to cis or trans men.</p><p>However, this violates the status quo, so TERFs and misogynistic men ended up using the exact same playbook to destroy this not-new-but-merely-expanded definition. They then claim it is due to the "social justice warriors" and/or trans people who are ruining the word and thus seeking to destroy language women use to describe their sexuality. </p><p>It's a shift the blame fallacy. A derailment. It creates a fake problem in order to ignore the actual cause of the problem: the status quo does not allow for the existence of LGBTQIA people.</p><p>It also is an attempt to limit and take away words to make it harder for us to share our stories, to define ourselves, and better understand ourselves, because if we do that, we end up threatening the status quo's existence.</p><p>The status quo is a harmful system that perpetuates the idea that people are only allowed to be straight and must fit in the gender binary of male and female. This status quo is limiting us and harming all of us (even the cishet folks, tho they don't feel the consequences as much as us LGBTQIA folks do). </p><p>The problem will always be our society's obsession with heteronormative gender binary status quo/bullshit. The increase in suicide rates, various assault on our bodies, and attacks on our existence all stem from the status quo utilizing several strategies to destroy LGBTQIA people. Some of those strategies include: lack of acceptance in our society for identities that do not fit the status quo, the intense discrimination that grinds people down, limited vocabulary to share our stories and identities with one another, government systems that have limited and discriminatory definitions in order to enforce the status quo, laws that discriminate and make access to resources and medical care harder, and a lack of support and community for us people to flourish. </p><p>We need to stop the rhetoric that tries to shift the blame from the root cause: a harmful status quo that pits cis men at the center of everything. That needs dismantled if we wish to truly flourish without fear of harm, discrimination, and/or death.</p><p>Humanity is incredibly diverse. We actually are not a gender binary, and there is up to six chromosome pairs and a lot more interesting combinations of chromosomes, primary and secondary sex characteristics, and other biological factors that make up a person's unique gender identity. We can't truly know a person's gender identity by looking at them. </p><p>In turn, our sexualities are wonderfully diverse too. We need words to be able to describe the diversity of these sexualities, and how some people have a sexuality that is simply not attracted to men (cis or trans), and that's valid and okay. </p><p>We should be embracing diversity and doing or best to expand and create more words so people can find the best way to describe their sexuality and gender identity. </p><p>But that requires us to dismantle the status quo, and that is a threat that is at the root of these debates. It's why these men are trying so hard to co-opt and alter definitions of LGBTQIA words, and it's why TERFs inadvertently (or deliberately) assist in the co-opting. They both seek to uphold the status quo because to them diversity is bad.</p><p>They can't see the glorious wonder and beauty of our diversity because they're trapped in a colorless world of binaries. Our diversity is what makes us unique and stronger.</p><p>To sum up the above? The status quo is threatened by our existence, and hence will partner with anyone (including people in our own community) to attempt to take away our vocabulary to describe ourselves. By doing so, it makes it harder for our stories and messages to be heard, and thus it starves us of the community and support we need to thrive.</p><p><a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/QueerCommunity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>QueerCommunity</span></a> <a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/LGBTQIA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LGBTQIA</span></a> <a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/Lesbian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Lesbian</span></a> <a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/FightingTheStatusQuo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FightingTheStatusQuo</span></a> <a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/Trans" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trans</span></a> <a href="https://ni.hil.ist/tags/discrimination" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>discrimination</span></a></p>