bc that one post about attachment to womanhood is still hurting people’s feelings, let’s keep talking about it.
radical feminist notions of gender socialization correctly frame it as a traumatizing process. a contradiction arises, in that case, when they assign positive moral traits to female socialization (and femininity by extension) because, much like society in general, they believe that an ideally traumatized woman is able to access moral high grounds that other people cannot. “i was socialized female” becomes an admission of guaranteed prosociality, a set of traits that are only ever harmful because they are at risk of exploitation via external forces.
this is why many radical feminists view trans men as safer & more politically enlightened than trans women – because of their proximity (imagined or otherwise) to femaleness, to daintiness, to softness and benevolence. “male socialization” is synonymous with antisociality, and becomes lobbied at trans women as a whole when individual trans women do things that radical feminists deem “unwomanly,” from having controversial political opinions to committing violent crime. the gender socialization model becomes a way to moralize sex assignment by prescriptively linking particular experiences of trauma to particular personality outcomes. it is no longer a theoretical framework meant to honestly and meticulously analyze how children become gendered subjects. it is now used to reproduce the very gender roles that proponents of the framework claim to be against.
“because, much like society in general, they believe that an ideally traumatized woman is able to access moral high grounds that other people cannot” absolutely kicked me in the face you are so correct
“A musician goes one step further. Developing to the utmost a Bayreuth usage, he arranges a concert in a totally darkened hall, and thus delights those of the audience who find opportunity, by happily chosen juxtapositions, to augment their musical sensations by hidden enjoyment of another sort.”
so what you’re telling me is that people were doing the equivalent of fucking in the back of a dark movie theatre in 1892
“Even the nose, hitherto basely ignored by the fine arts, attracts the pioneers, and is by them invited to take part in aesthetic delights. A hose is set up in the theatre, by which the spectators are sprayed with perfumes.”
this is what might happen if “moral insanity” and the “degeneration” of the “civilised nations” continue, according to Nordau:
“Sexual psychopathy of every nature has become so general and so imperious that manners and laws have adapted themselves accordingly. They appear already in the fashions. Masochists or passivists, who form the majority of men, clothe themselves in a costume which recalls, by colour and cut, feminine apparel. Women who wish to please men of this kind wear men’s dress, an eyeglass, boots with spurs and riding-whip, and only show themselves m the street with a large cigar in their mouths. The demand of persons with the ‘contrary’ sexual sentiment that persons of the same sex can conclude a legal marriage has obtained satisfaction, seeing they have been numerous enough to elect a majority of deputies having the same tendency. Sadists, ‘bestials,’ nosophiles, and necrophiles, etc., find legal opportunities to gratify their inclinations. Modesty and restraint are dead superstitions of the past, and appear only as atavism and among the inhabitants of remote villages. The lust of murder is confronted as a disease, and treated by surgical intervention, etc.”
ladies……….. who’s up for assembling on the streets carrying riding-whips
“Will it come to this ? Well, no ; I think not.“
who’s gonna break the news to Nordau about how The Homosexuals are living to-day
like the complete dissociation from the body and constant societal and interpersonal gaslighting from men and the inherent abuse of living under patriarchy like it literally all just makes it so that women are permanently placed within a position where were all convinced that we are half a step away from full blown insanity and are barely concealing it but thats not an individual experience its collective like im just WOW women are crazy bc theres no way to function wo men viewing u as such and theres no way to cope w the warped and fucked up realities of patriarchy wo going insane
In the 1850s, a white woman wrote an article on Sojourner Truth and referred to her “muscular,” “manly” body – how energy seemed to “flow” through her and how her body and labor could support and rally (white) women’s rights movements.
White men and women in colonial times considered brown women – e.g. in India – as inhumanly strong and created entire aesthetics of frailty, purity, and paleness to oppose the image of the laboring Black and brown woman. The concept of the British Woman was formulated directly through the acts of colonization and slavery. And the strengths assigned to especially Black women were done so in order to justify the labor placed on Black women slaves in the Americas and Caribbean and resist empathy.
The colonial – political, legal, medical, social – view of Black and brown/indigenous bodies as having strong physicality is centuries old and continues to be used in opposition to / as a goal for whiteness in modern (post-1900) medicine:
“The most significant proponent of that view was Georges Hébert, who, from the early years of the twentieth century, had asserted the superior physique of dark-skinned colonial subjects whose lives had allegedly remained closer to a natural state. The problem with modern man was that he had lost the physical edge that a simpler, ‘primitive’ life, without the comforts of modernity, would have preserved. His advocacy of exercises such as walking, running, and jumping was founded on the conviction that the uncivilized specimen demonstrated ‘perfect and complete muscular development acquired without method.’”
White wlw have a history of taking specifically Black lesbian + other wlwoc terminology, dance, and style while rejecting credit and their presence in lbpq spaces. White wlw prey on and sexualize us in specific ways, fetishizing the violence that we experience as woc and mapping that on our bodies – making us out to be violent and destructive while using old colonial tactics of dehumanization in a way they think will flatter us into submission. Our expression of gender and sexuality is always violent and frightening and alien, and in ways that have historically been tied to transmisogyny in the above examples.
tldr: boring
since this is going around again, some more writings on this:
By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength, white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the scope of their understanding of women’s overall social status in the United States.
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
The black woman was ideologically constructed as essentially ‘non-feminine’ in so far as primacy was placed upon her alleged muscular capabilities, physical strength, aggressive carriage, and sturdiness. Pro-slavery writers presented her as devoid of the feminine tenderness and graciousness in which the white woman was tightly wrapped.
Hilary Beckles, Centering ‘Woman’: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society
It’s in how mainstream feminism often gets constructed as women being allowed to freely perform “masculinity” through icons like Rosie the Riveter, because while white women have historically been forced into the role of delicate and infantile femininity, Black women have been combating narratives which see us as being nearly always-already too masculine and indecorous. We are constantly left out of the narratives of mainstream feminism, just as we are too often left out of the narratives of mainstream action films.
and regarding the sexual fantasy of being harmed by women of color, I think there’s a necessary connection to the ascription of r*pe to colonized peoples:
Depictions of the vulnerable White woman in need of protection were juxtaposed with portrayals of Indigenous degenerate wantonness during periods of threat to imperial rule, whether real or imagined, so as to legitimize the coercive measures needed for control. Because White women were symbolically aligned with the social/moral purity of imperial rule in the British colonies, images of the “ravaged white female body” became a signifier of colonial upset, suggesting that “the stereotype of the dark rapist” aligns directly with pending failure of the “civilizing mission”, which is why rape stories emerge during periods of political instability, providing a convenient rationale for oppression of Indigenous men as well as Indigenous women, discursively represented as potential rapists and unchaste ‘squ*ws’, respectively. As Stoler concludes, a common theme emerges in recent histories of European women and colonialism: in colonial situations, varying in historical period and location, protecting the honour and virtue of White women became a pretext for controlling and suppressing the Indigenous population; “any attempted or perceived infringement of [W]hite female honor came to be seen as an assault on white supremacy and European rule”…
The Oriental Woman is therefore available to satisfy desires that would normally otherwise be socially and morally unacceptable if acted upon the bodies of white women
The Oriental Woman, for example, normatively permits acting out such desires such as p*d*philia and sexual aggression and sexual violence upon the bodies of Asian women.
Although the majority of lynchings did not even involve the accusation of sexual assault, the racist cry of rape became a popular explanation which was far more effective than either of the two previous attempts to justify mob attack on Black people. In a society where male supremacy was all-pervasive, men who were motivated by their duty; to defend their women could be excused of any excesses they might commit. That their motive was sublime was ample justification for the resulting barbarities.
Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist.”
And so there is something deeper here, and very curious, the ways that violence – including sexual violence that mimics the sexual violence ascribed to colonized people in order to control and murder them – is mapped onto women of color, especially Black women, rendering these fictional women into symbols for colonial anxiety and white sociopathy (a process which critically intersects with transmisogyny). This is why media matters.
And @ everyone in my notes and the tags, yeah, you are aware of it.
The Green Masque (1922). Sir Oswald Birley (British, 1880-1952). Oil on canvas.
A frequent subject of Birley’s paintings was his wife, Rhoda. Widely regarded as a beauty, she married Birley at the age of 20 when he was 41. This particularly beautiful portrait was made by Birley soon after their marriage in 1921. It depicts Rhoda in Venetian carnival attire, her alabaster face glowing against a dark background, her eyelashes demurely lowered.
