crunchysteve

Not only is love a revolutionary act but, I believe that revolution should also be a loving and inclusive act.

I know, I know... I was born in a safe space, I'm male. I was born to degree of privilege, it is easy for me to side with inclusive ideas, because I am not threatened by certain, contentious inclusions. All the same, it frustrates the shite out of me when an oppressed group, come down on a side that opposes another, equally or more oppressed group.

I get that safety begins with ensuring your own safety. Locks on doors are a good thing. Locking people out of public safety is not. You can't support queer people having formal relationship status, yet lock certain types of queer people out of their identification or their choice of safety. You especially should not deny them their identification when you insist on your own identification frameworks being recognised. Your safety does not include a right to deny the safety of others.

Take the Shoa (holocaust), for example. The Shoa was not perpetrated by Palestinians, it was perpetrated by Germans of a certain political orientation, not unlike some extreme US Republicans. Most modern Germans work hard to live down and reparate for what their forebears did. Yet some (and it is only some!) Israelis hide behind a justification of "prevention of another Shoa" while supporting what is effectively a violent pogrom against all Palestinians.

We do not make the world safer by making it less safe for others.

Similarly, women have worked hard for morsels of equity, men have historically been patriachal to hegemonistic degrees, and women have had fight and claw for every freedom the current generation now take for granted, and there is much more for women to gain, too. I support this equity. I have enjoyed more diverse work and community environments as a man, because women are now seen as equals in law in every way. Feminism is triumphant and included. It's still a fragile state, it still needs guarding against revisionism. Many men and most women together make a stand in defense of the better world that is equal and accessible.

However, some schools of feminist thought seek to pull the ladder up behind them, when it comes to queer safety. Trans is not perversion. There is science for this. Gender dysphoria is real, and the anguish experienced by trans people at being excluded or unsafe in public is real. Trans is not a choice, anymore than gay is a choice. I can't choose to become "gay" any more than I can choose become "of african descent." Nobody can choose their orientation or race. Somebody born with specific genitalia is NOT always born with the identification assigned by convention to that gender. Sex is not gender. This is science.

So, like Israel to Palestine, some feminists (and, like Israel, it is only some) have tried to shore up their own safety, by withdrawing safety from trans women. The consequences, especially in places the Republican US South or the Russian Republic, can be as deadly, at the individual by individual level, at least. Let me make my point CRYSTAL FUCKING CLEAR! Your own safety is NOT strengthened by undermining the safety of those you perceive as a threat!!! Quite the opposite, frankly.

Inclusion is not the same as being forced to associate, but exclusion is the same is denying another's humanity. Those exclusive "gentlemen's clubs," that require being known by somebody already in the club to recommend you as a member, exist to exclude and, in so existing, dehumanise those too unknown and "too poor" to be a member. They exist to centralise ideas, power and access to capital to a select few. Any group of humans that excludes another group of humans, does so to place themselves above the other group, in power and morality. This is the very essence of colonialism! And trans-exclusionary feminism is just as absolutely colonial as any "secret wealthy men's society."

As the old saying goes, "one does not make their own light brighter by turning another's off."

If one seeks revolution, change for the better, call it what you will, they cannot achieve change for the better, nor revolution, if they seek to replace one form of colonialism for another. You cannot throw off the shackles of male domination by, in turn, domineering trans women. History is littered with revolutions that slid back into the mud of oppressive regimes because the revolutionaries dehumanised not only the "old guard", but innocent bystanders, mal-identified as a threat, simply because the leaders of the revolution had the smell of blood and fear of failure in their nostrils. These revolutions failed to free people because they chose only to free chosen classes of people. Exclusion is not revolution. Change requires inclusion, otherwise it's just "the same ol' same ol'."

So, true feminists cannot have safety if they colonise a transphobic space, they will always be looking over their shoulders for a "trans threat." Just as hyper-capitalists, like Elon Musk, need private security to make their way through public places in safety. True change seeks to establish rules of interpersonal engagement without actually excluding individuals or groups in oppressive, colonial ways. The only barrier a true revolutionary erects is the gate of personal consent. If an individual tramples another individual's consent, recompense may be sought through, or punishment dealt by, an appropriate institution. To trample all trans people is as fascistic as to trample all jews or to trample all palestinians... or black people... or women.

Inclusion, like love, is a revolutionary act. Viva la revolucion!