Hello dear,
That particular sentence is one that dogged me throughout editing and ultimately I decided to leave it as is, I’d like to explain why. It is intended to be very specific in two ways:
1) in response to the original authors piece — which is full to the brim with the fiery assuredness of youth but suffers from a lack of perspective about just how immensely the culture has changed in the last two decades. My interest was in contrasting the more generalized plight of women and the specific plight of trans women. I’ll get more into that in my next point:
2) Feminist movement has made massive gains over the last half a century, the vast majority of which are firmly rooted in the culture at this point, implementation varies wildly, many struggles remain, and we must be vigilant as the forces of darkness swirl around us trying to drag us back to the dark ages… but we feminists have a LOT to celebrate. The Dump administration brings the threat of backsliding on women’s issues much closer to a frightening reality, but the cretins haven’t yet made much progress on that front. They are however doing everything they can to undermine the rights of trans people, and using trans bodies as a wedge to drive apart the progressive movement. Sound familiar?
So I left the phrase “largely hypothetical” qualified in the hope it would read that I too remain vigilant on all women’s issues, and that none are truly safe, but if we are to assess which women are most immediately threatened and in need of our energy we should point to trans women of color first.
