How genre-gender saves us from TERFs
Genre-gender is an alternative model for gender free from biology and based on self-determination and free association, it posits that we should treat genders as genres, and allow each person to identify as whichever genre of gender they wish. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
But before we discuss how genre-gender solves the TERF problem, lets discuss what that problem is and how TERFs have invaded society.
TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminism, despite there being nothing radical or feminist about trans-exclusionism they are some of the loudest self-proclaimed feminists with a particularly biological definition of gender.
I don’t want to give them the honour of repeating their rhetoric or ideology so if you haven’t come across it yet thank the gods of probability or something similar for your good fortune and as soon as a “feminist” acts or speaks in a trans-antagonistic way run, stop whatever you’re doing and run. You don’t want to get any of their shit-tier anti-science patriarchy-enabling and often white-supremacist ideas on you.
That being said, I think one of the reasons TERFs have been able to rise to prominence and be taken seriously or at least tolerated by the general public is that the counter-argument (trans-inclusionary feminism, or regular feminism) has failed to present a cohesive alternative to the gender binary.
If all your trans discourse / philosophy / activism aims to achieve is the tolerance of trans people in a largely cisnormative society you’re essentially attempting to fix cisgenderism via reformation rather than revolution. That is to say that it is incremental instead of radical change.
In other words, if the goal of trans activism isn’t to abolish the binary it’s not tackling cissexism at its roots, the roots of correlating gender to biology. You can’t expect society to dissociate gender from biology without giving them an biology-free model of gender.
And for the most part trans activism has not done this, oh it’s fought for self-determination, fought for people’s gender to be respected regardless of their biology or appearance, and often even going further and demanding that all gender should be self-determined (eg. stop gendering kids), but this is still in the territory of incremental change. What about the fact that every single person who identifies as cis is by that fact endorsing the binary and implying it is ok for it to continue, at least as it relates to them?
This is the reason TERFs have some ground with which to launch their attacks on the population, they can argue for these incremental changes not to happen, they can fabricate problems that arise from allowing these changes, and they can decieve people by using the lack of a consistent alternative to appeal to something tangible — biology.
When instead of reformative change we talk about revolutionary change, we give them no ground, we completely dissociate biology from gender, completely, including the very notion of identifying as cis. We say that although we do want gender to be based on self-determination we do not extend that right to self-determination to the cis, we do not recognize the validity of any gender that has been constructed or fabricated upon biology. for a person to say they are a cisman or ciswoman is equivalent to them saying “people told me i was a man/woman and i believed them”, and we say to that they were misinformed, their gender remains undecided until they are prepared to self-determine it without biological reasoning. When they say cis we hear “of inditerminate gender”.
This is the radical position. We do not need cis++ where both cis and trans people are respected, because the mere tolerance of cisgenderism is unscientific and harmful to both trans people and society at large. We should treat a person who claims to be cis as ignorant regarding gender as we would treat a white person’s opinion on not being white.
Once again, the more radical position clashes with existing trans discourse / philosphy / activism when trans people use biology as the reason to deny people their gender self-determination. For example, if we completely removed the binary, and removed all association between biology and gender, what would someone who was previously a cis woman identify as? absent of the binary one would think it suitable for such a person to identify as trans. This is not the case.
People who cisgenderism would claim are men, yet who free from biological (and unscientific) definitions of gender have self-determined that they are woman. They have used the name “trans woman” to describe themselves. And the majority of the people who make up the “trans woman community” do not want people who cisgenderism calls women to join them under that label. The fact that people who cisgenderism calls men suffer near infinitely more oppression for identifying as woman do than those who cisgenderism calls woman would should they want to self-determine their gender free from the binary or biology as woman would. This is because cisgenderism as a majority ideology can tolerate people who appear to be to them what they identify as. And so this “trans woman community” being afraid of the “dilution” of their concerns by the inclusion of people who don’t suffer as much as them under the same label, do the very thing they oppose in TERFs.
While the typical TERF feels that trans-exclusion secures for cisgender woman much needed releif from oppression based on biology, they don’t want people that have the biology cisgenderism calls man to be included in their feminism. Tragically trans women who deny those who want to self-determine their gender as woman (and yet who aslo have the biology that cisgenderism calls woman), let’s call them AFAB-exclusionary trans women (AETW?), these AETW use biology as their motivation for denying people the ability to self-determine their gender if it would put them under the same label as them.
And while it’s true that TERFs are excluding a more oppressed group than ciswomen, and AETW are excluding a less oppressed group than trans women, and thus, technically “have the right” to do this (that’s debatle but let’s give them that). Nevertheless what this ends up doing is confusing the concept of non-cis gender. What is this new gender model they are trying to usher in that has the same kinds of exclusions that the one they’re trying to replace has? Sure it’s less oppressive, and would save many lives (physically and experientially), but that’s assuming we can actually achieve it.
By arguing for incremental change, and attempting to reform the current gender model instead of replacing it, many trans people are setting themselves up for failure. And as transphobic as they are, it gives TERFs the amunition of someone born with a penis “having the right” to deny someone born with a vagina’s gender identity from them. For what? Fear of the dilution of those who suffer much by those who (as percieved) suffer less?
No, it’s more than passed time that we stopped stumbling forward hoping for cis people’s sense of human decency to kick in. We need to declare their position invalid, declare their genders invalid (as they are built upon transphobic foundations), declare that gender and biology be separated. When you de-couple biology from gender you can still continue to fight for things like reproductive rights, you’re simply going to have to do it based on who has said organs instead of attempting to co-opt this struggle into a gender based struggle which is also needed in parallel but separate to biology-related advocacy.
Astronomical calculations which are based on the idea that the earth is flat cannot simply be “updated” to cater for general relativity, whole new equations are needed. Those attempting to debate astronomy using their flat earth calculations with modern astrophysicists shouldn’t have their presumption that the earth is flat respected any more than cis people’s claim that gender (including their own) can be determined based on biology.
Of course we will need new words when we stop advocating for cisgenderism+ and start advocating for non-biological and self-determined gender, I suggest we use the word genre-gender, I feel like it implies the kind of free association model that is completely seperated from biology that we need. But use whichever words you can, just communicate a consistend model of gender. One where the only thing that determines what your gender is, is you, not your biology, not some group of people who tell you that you don’t qualify, not some notion that we can all get along if we simply expand our understanding of gender to include trans people without abolishing the concept of cisgenderism altogether.
Your gender is either self-determined and free from biology or it is invalid and indeterminate, sure, you’re free to self-determine it as whatever you previously claimed it to be, but you will have to do so without any association to biology and this is how we beat the TERFs. TERFs can’t claim trans people are not their determined gender based on biology when the whole world has adopted a model of gender which has no correlation to biology… like genre-gender does, or any other free association style gender model people may conceptualize.
Thanks for reading!
I wrote about the uniqueness of gender if you’re looking to read more like this.
You can also chat to me about this stuff on facebook :)
