“The female body is a battlefield”.
That phrase was once a phrase you might look back on with ironic distance or a nostalgic thought for the red socks. We women have achieved the freedom that the women’s cause fought for in the 1970s.
I think this is how many have perceived the position of women in society over the last half century. But then something happened which made the slogan “The female body is a battlefield” terrifyingly relevant once more.
The identity politics activism for transgender rights forced its way into Danish universities through activist students and underground environments in the 2010s.
We now had to learn concepts such as cis woman and cis man. Concepts based on the Latin word cis, which denotes something that is on this side, while trans means the same on the other side.
We had to learn that gender is a spectrum, an emotion, an identity, and science had to give way in the holy name of inclusion.
Few women spoke up
In the beginning, most people wanted to include transgender people in the categories of woman and man. We are a tolerant people. If you were a bit critical, or if you didn’t master transactivism’s academicized lingo and the new game of privilege, you were called a transphobe, transhater or, transactivism’s favorite insult, TERF, which means trans-exclusive radical feminist.
No one wants to be seen as a reactionary relic, demonstrating a glaring lack of ability to keep up with the times, or being hateful without knowing or wanting to.
Many declared sympathy for and with the transgenders. Especially the trans women, who were staged as the most vulnerable minority of them all. Others wisely chose to remain silent, and a few women chose to speak out.
I belonged to the latter group.
I delved into the subject with increasing discomfort. Because how can you equate women and trans women when we have completely different bodily starting points? And can one even talk regarding being juxtaposed when the most dedicated fringes of trans activism tour with a crusade that will include trans women in women’s sports, women’s shelters, locker rooms and other safe spaces that women have won?
In addition, the language must be inclusive of transgender people and other gender minorities. The American bid for an inclusive term for women’s genitals was “front hole”, and some activists believe that we should call trans women women and women cis women.
I am not a cis woman, which now means someone who was assigned the gender female at birth and who identifies as female.
Gender is not assigned at birth. The midwife does not have a drum with plumb bob next to the scissors to cut the umbilical cord, which she randomly reaches into as if in a gender raffle that must be settled before the placenta is pushed out.
I don’t identify as a woman either. I am a woman. It is a biological reality.
As a high school teacher, I occasionally ask my students when they feel like a real man or a real woman. Their answer is often that it is when they are lifting heavy weights or dressing up for a party. Those are fine answers, but it’s all regarding gender roles – not gender.
You neither become more or less a woman by wearing a dress, nor more or less a man by training with heavy weights.
Taboo female body
That’s why I was also happy when the writing collective behind the book “Kvinde kend din krop” announced that the 2025 edition must be inclusive and written by and for women, nonbinary, AFAB people and transfeminine.
Admittedly, at first I was white-hot as only a radical feminist can be.
However, the reactions of the last several days have warmed my heart. Because women say no to having our gender diluted and taken over. Women refuse to incorporate the limb as something that can sit on a woman. Enough is enough.
When the first “Woman Know Your Body” was published in 1975, it was a revolution. Here was a book that talked regarding the taboo female body. Gone were the nursing room stories that were talked regarding in secret. Gone was the shaming of women’s sexuality and gone was the alienation of the body that women had only just begun to decide for themselves.
The book “Kvinde kend din krop” gave women a language for their own bodies. A language to use freely and equally.
I think most women instinctively know that it is precisely the female body that has been the most important instrument of oppression for millennia.
We have heard the horrifying accounts of women who had illegal abortions on kitchen tables, and of women who had to find themselves abused by men in power. We see how women around the world still suffer from that oppression, and we see how abortion rights are being rolled back in countries where we didn’t think it was possible.
We know that if they take our language for our own bodies, then we cannot maintain our freedom.
This matter is far too serious for us to give in for fear of embarrassment and predicates such as transphobia.
Trans ideology has turned the female body into a battlefield once more. As women, we must win that battle.
2024-04-25 14:50:35
#Feminist #penis #sit #womans #body
