Radfems Do Interact - Tumblr Posts
This is a remarkable essay about The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer. It talks about the life & legacy of the Wife of Bath in great detail.
“Alison is a character whom readers across the centuries have usually seen as accessible, familiar, and, in a strange way, real. For many people she is by far the most memorable of the Canterbury pilgrims.”
This, too, is an essay on the Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer. & this one contains the answer to the question: Why is the Wife of Bath considered a feminist text?
I really like the phrase "those perceived to carry and birth children" because that sort of sums up how misogyny affects all women regardless of their genotype and reproductive abilities. I have a friend with Turner's syndrome (single X genotype) who will never be able to have kids, but people view her exactly the same way that they view me, as a twenty-something woman worthy of all the same misogynistic bullshit.
I think…at times we get too bogged down in the nitty-gritty of what makes someone female or male. Like talking about which sex produces large gametes and which produces small gametes, or variations on chromosomes, etc. Is that a valuable conversation to be had? Yes, absolutely. But I think we get trapped in that argument and it distracts from the main issue—that patriarchy is designed to oppress those with female phenotypes and the perceived ability to carry and birth children.
Because an intersex child who looks female is going to be raised with female socialization, regardless of their chromosomal makeup. Women who do not have uteruses, from birth or via surgical procedure, are still subject to misogyny and structural sexism due to their perceived biological abilities.
I think most radical feminists know this, but I don’t know how many of us realize that picking these definitions apart are ways to distract us from identifying our material oppression and coming together as women—because the more we argue about the details, the less focused we are on developing bonds between women and ultimately female class consciousness.
I’m putting these thoughts into a coherent statement for the first time, and I’d like to know other women’s opinions.
OPEN LETTER TO UN WOMEN
UN Women has abandoned their mission to advocate for girls’ and women’s rights and equality. Join our United Women for Women’s Rights campaign: sign on to our open letter and let UN Women know that vilifying women who know that men are not women is incompatible with protecting girls’ and women’s rights.
In a classic DARVO move (“deny, attack and reverse victim and offender”), the recently published statement by UN Women, “LGBTIQ+ Communities and the Anti-Rights Resistance”, accuses those who do not believe in gender identity ideology of hate speech. But the accusations made by UN Women throughout the text are false and detrimental to children and teenagers, women, lesbians and gays, by labeling as hateful the healthy and entirely reasonable questioning of a new ideology that subverts women’s rights
Women! We must sign this letter to UN Women and let them know unequivocally that women will not stand for UN Women advocating for trans-identified males over WOMEN and GIRLS' sex-based rights will not be tolerated!
Sign the open letter HERE