Translation: Camille’s #LetWomenSpeak speech in Geneva

Standing for Women, led by Kelly-Jay Keen, is on a Let Women Speak European tour. Despite the solid police presence backed up by water cannons on standby, women’s safety could not be guaranteed. The event was cut short by gender fascists as is now common in so-called liberal democracies. You could hear the angry male voices booming in the background as brave women spoke in front of the UN.

I found one speech to be particularly powerful so I’ve translated/summarized Camille’s speech below:

When I was a teenager I wasn’t into femininity. I didn’t have a lot of friends because I didn’t want to wear make-up and high heels, and talk about boys all the time. Now I’m seeing all over again that girls and women are being told we’re women because we identify as women, that we accept all the things society says we should be and do. This causes me a lot of pain. When I hear the stories of girls who think they’re trans or non-binary because they don’t conform to gender, our stories are exactly the same. This ideology is dangerous for women, and gays and lesbians in particular.

My family couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be like my female cousins. When I was a bit older, about 25 or 26 years old, I started watching make-up tutorials and wearing dresses and heels because I thought there was something wrong with me. I wanted to be accepted. Only then was I told, ‘Oh my god, Camille, you’re finally a real woman!’

In a way this made me happy because I felt like my efforts were successful and I was finally ‘normal’. At the same time, it killed me inside because I now had proof of what I suspected growing up: that people really did believe all the things I’d been told at home and at school, and by the women around me, which is that women are considered defective – not good enough and not ‘real’ women – if they’re not feminine. From that moment on, I stopped wearing make-up and all that stuff. I want to tell girls and boys that gender – the roles society imposes on you – is a prison. To be free is to let go of it. And don’t be afraid to say so to those around you.

How gender critical are you?

The phrase ‘gender critical’ has become commonplace in discussions around gender identity. In many ways, however, it mimics gender ideology’s propensity for confusing language and contradiction.

A quick primer if you haven’t read my blog or radical feminist work: humans are a sexually dimorphic species consisting of females and males, the two sex classes. ‘Intersex’ is a misnomer as people referred to as such are technically female or male but have sex organs that haven’t developed properly; they’re not a third sex. Sex is about reproduction, which requires a female and a male. Like other species, we’re wired to instantly recognize sex because our continued survival as a species depends on it. There are physiological differences between the sexes which are designed to facilitate reproduction, but they don’t extend to cognition, personality, aptitudes, hobbies, etc. There’s no female or male brain. There are many boys who take after their mothers and girls who take after their fathers. It’s not as though those genetic traits that females inherit from their male ancestors are rendered inactive. The truth is personality is highly individualized, shaped by genetics, environment, and one’s choices.

Gender, on the other hand, is the social hierarchy that shunts females and males into two separate, opposing, and unequal social classes. Females are trained into femininity and males are trained into masculinity. It starts before birth with ridiculous “gender reveal” parties and continues from there nonstop. The first thing people ask when they see an infant is, “Is it a boy or girl? Adults speak differently to babies once they know their sex. Masculinity encourages males to engage in the sort of behaviour that affords them power and dominance, while femininity encourages females to be self-sacrificing, self-limiting, and obsessed with being attractive and available to males.

Yet how many women who refer to themselves as feminists still perform femininity? Feminists used to recognize that beauty practices rob women of our hard-earned money, time, and focus, and are physically damaging. How many years of the average woman’s life are aggregately spent on hair removal, makeup application, hair styling, fashion and clothing, and other rituals? How many self-described feminists or supposedly gender-critical women take their husband’s last name as though they’re still a man’s property? Germaine Greer is correct that “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them,” but perhaps even less of an idea of how much women have learned to hate themselves.

There’s a glaring contradiction in being a woman who says girls should be able to be and do whatever they want while performing femininity.

I argue that women have a responsibility to live this message. To show girls that not being feminine isn’t just an option, but a necessary step to liberating themselves from patriarchy. This isn’t a choice men will support, including men who claim to be gender critical. It’s not even a choice many women will encourage other women to make. Because women who perform femininity do so knowing they’ll be judged, mocked, and far less able to attract or keep men as romantic partners if they don’t. This is where liberal feminism creeps in: women feel they’re being attacked personally and claim they just happen to like femininity, that these considerations are superficial and simply a matter of individual choice. But if you’re straight or bi and have hairy legs, don’t wear makeup, and dress solely for comfort as most men do, your dating options pretty shrink drastically.

Radical feminists don’t play these games. They’re not merely critical of gender. They want to abolish it. This means that as much as masculinity is inherently toxic, so is femininity. One can’t exist without the other. There’s no reforming gender roles. Femininity isn’t just harmful when men dress up in lingerie, become submissive or masochistic “sissies,” or perform their fetish in public and in female spaces. Sure, it’s atrocious that gender identity is enabling more and more men to deny their privilege and openly eroticize women’s oppression. But they’ll continue to do this as long as there’s a gender role attached to women to perform, because it’s the act of occupying this inferior sex role that excites them.

Canadian pop music artist Shania Twain has spoken about how sexual abuse by her stepfather made her hide and hate her female body. Every girl experiences female objectification and misogynist discrimination and abuse, and now with the gender identity cult offering them a way to dissociate from girlhood and womanhood and/or alter their body to make it unrecognizable as female, they’re doing exactly what you’d expect girls to do in a world that hates them.

Female celebrities are the most obvious example. Their brand follows the liberal feminist you-go-girl template of self-objectification and overt sexualization. They’re steered in that direction by everyone around them and thought we’re told they’re happy and powerful, they, like all women, know exactly what’s expected of them from years of being groomed by society at large. The path of least resistance is to create a narrative “owning” one’s oppression. The resulting contradictions are exemplified by Twain’s rationalization of how following a personal tragedy at the age of 22 she “began to embrace her identity as a woman”:

“All of a sudden it was like, ‘Well, what’s your problem? You know, you’re a woman and you have this beautiful body.’ What was so natural for other people was so scary for me. I felt exploited, but I didn’t have a choice now. I had to play the glamorous singer, had to wear my femininity more openly or more freely. And work out how I’m not gonna get groped, or raped by someone’s eyes, you know, and feel so degraded.”

Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Twain understands womanhood as an identity because defining womanhood as embodiment means that women are nothing more or less than an adult human female, and that’s just not good enough. It’s not just liberal feminists who perpetuate this message. Though not so overtly, many women who consider themselves gender critical may criticize gender rhetorically, but they don’t quite follow through on that conviction. It’s no coincidence that the women who are most visible in this space are quite feminine-presenting. As the brilliant radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys clearly and concisely explains in the video below, we can’t effectively challenge gender identity or transgenderism while holding onto femininity.

Children don’t need to change – gender stereotypes need to go

Folks who see equality as a good thing readily agree that gender roles are discriminatory and oppressive. Despite this, it appears that many people have difficulty applying this knowledge to everyday situations. Perhaps this is because it’s far easier to agree with concepts when they’re presented as straightforward and conciliatory rather than as confrontational or requiring critical analysis. Acknowledging the harm caused by gender roles often incites derision and dismissal, which speaks to the reality that these tropes are status quo. They’re so ingrained in our culture that overcoming them is a constant struggle.

Gender roles stretch across the globe and dictate not only how females should behave but also how males should behave. The key difference, however, is that whereas males are punished for non-conforming, females are both punished for non-conforming and made to be subordinate when we conform through a host of expectations designed to make us passive and submissive. No matter what we do we’re set up to fail because not only are we never dominant like males are, but we’re never even equal in the gender hierarchy.

Patriarchy is the most oppressive system in the world. Save for whatever minute percentage of people who might live in matriarchal or equal circumstances, patriarchy controls everyone, impacts everyone negatively, and subordinates half of the world’s population. When we throw in the additional trauma of discrimination based on race, age, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and every other form of oppression, it’s a miracle that people who are marginalized and oppressed multiple times over are so resilient.

Children have a tough time trying to make sense of this when they realize that the things they’re supposed to like and do don’t always match up to their own interests and personalities. They don’t yet have the experience or analytical tools to understand that there isn’t anything wrong with them and that the source of this cognitive dissonance is a system that was deliberately concocted well before they were born. This is mass psychological torture. It’s not up to kids to figure this out. It’s up to parents, teachers, relatives, and other adults. This is not a personal problem, a family dispute, or an identity crisis first and foremost. It’s a social issue. A moral issue.

Yesterday, it was reported in the news that a seven-year-old child was banned from using the girls’ washroom at a Catholic school in Edmonton, Alberta. The child identifies as a transgender girl.

The parents say they knew from the beginning that something was different about their child…

“As soon as she could speak, she would articulate that she is a female and would gravitate towards feminine objects,” the mother said.

“I just told my mom I felt like a girl,” the seven-year-old recalled.

That’s when her parents say they knew their child wasn’t “a boy who liked girl toys — she was a girl who had a penis.”

This is where I have to call a time out. What exactly is meant by feminine objects? Females have specific sex characteristics, so it makes sense to describe females and their unique physiology as feminine; but how are inanimate objects feminine? What about them is in any way female – or male, for that matter? For example, in an episode of Food Network’s Southern at Heart, Damaris Phillips describes her coconut lavender macaroons as feminine. On its face this statement doesn’t make any sense but the viewer understands what’s implied; something about these cookies reminds her of abstract qualities she associates with the female sex. This is the essence of gender and it’s where the problem starts.

It seems highly tenuous that an individual at the age of seven is at a stage in their life where they can elucidate the difference between being a boy who likes “girl toys” and actually being a girl. Children as young as four years old are now being asked to declare their gender identity. So what does it mean to think or feel like a boy or a girl, exactly? How does a boy who is learning to speak know enough about language – about anything – to know that they’re in fact a girl? Surely we should approach cases of potential gender dysphoria in children with extreme caution given their lack of maturity. I don’t know that anyone should be comfortable trusting the judgement of a child on a subject so complex it makes the heads of educated adults spin.

I’ve thought about what I would do if this were my child. Here’s what I’m thinking. A boy who likes stereotypically “feminine” things or has stereotypical “feminine” qualities is simply a boy who doesn’t conform to how society has decided boys are supposed to be. That doesn’t make him female. Associating traits like sensitivity or vivaciousness and an interest in dresses, pretty things, dance, soft colours, dolls, etc. with being female does nothing except reinforce gender stereotypes. There is absolutely no logical basis for associating the things our society identifies as feminine to the condition of being female.

Being female means being a member of the female sex and no doctor will deny that being a member of the female sex means having a female anatomy, which necessarily involves primary and secondary female sex characteristics, and absolutely includes a vagina. Whether any given female can become pregnant is irrelevant; a properly functioning reproductive system is required for pregnancy and gestation and any human being who’s ever been born was given birth to by a female. Being female cannot mean having a penis.

Of course, no one is disputing that the child is of the male sex, so what we’re left with is the question of what their gender is. While sex and gender are often conflated, they are separate concepts.

This is where what is considered controversial to some people is simple for others. If you believe that there is in fact no basis for thinking that being male must involve expressing a prescribed masculinity and being female must involve expressing a prescribed femininity, then you are gender critical. While gender criticism is often described as a central element of radical feminism (radical feminists are gender abolitionists, to be more precise), it’s also key to feminism at large because it’s impossible to challenge sexism without challenging gender stereotypes.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that discrimination against females exists but in order to challenge this discrimination we need to understand how and why it manages to organize different cultures, geographies, classes, and generations. In order for an ideology to endure so many barriers of time and space it must consist of a subliminal and self-perpetuating set of beliefs. Every oppressive system assigns unequal value to different groups of people. This requires that we develop a set of attitudes and assumptions about them that serve to make them unworthy relative to another group. At the same time, these people, should they use their voice or exercise any degree of autonomy or power, are seen as a threat and are summarily ignored, silenced, threatened, harmed, and murdered. How else can we explain white American police officers killing black women and men in cold blood and in plain view time and time again? How else can we explain the alarming number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada, which Stephen Harper shrugged off as not “really high on our radar”, the blame for which indigenous men are expected to shoulder all on their own with no consideration of the effects of colonial patriarchy?

How else can we explain why discrimination persists despite the fact that many people who discriminate do so unintentionally and unknowingly? Patriarchy, like white supremacy, only requires that people with privilege go about their daily lives. That’s why even those who are aware of these systems and try to avoid contributing to them end up making mistakes. This is what it means for oppression to be systemic. To be systemic is to be effective.

Growing up, I was very close to my older brother and was surrounded by boys more so than girls. This influenced my taste in music, my language, my sense of physicality, etc. I did all sorts of “masculine” things as well as “feminine” things and it never once crossed mine or my parents’ mind that this called into question my identity as a girl or a female. I have no doubt that the males who surrounded me rubbed off on me but they weren’t the way they were because of something innate. It was because they were raised to be that way from infancy as a result of the school curriculum, teachers, spiritual leaders, parents, friends’ parents, advertizing, books, movies, etc. It’s telling that this process actually hedged the female socialization that I was simultaneously subjected to. I also have a mother who exhibited femininity in many ways, but not consistently – and this didn’t escape my notice. My mom could be fairly tough with me and I saw that she was brave, outspoken, and did the same hard labour as her male co-workers. She told me about some of the misogynistic things they would say and do. It’s no wonder we’ve always shared a love of Bette Davis movies. Overall, the message was clear: never let people push you around and never let a man tell you that you’re inferior. I wouldn’t be the strong, independent woman I am today if I hadn’t had her example to follow.

Not long ago, I was taking a walk with my aunt, her 10 year old daughter, and two male cousins of around the same age. As she watched them my aunt said to me, “Boys and girls are so different.” I responded, “That’s because we tell them they are.” Silence followed. Later that evening I was teasing her husband and my brother for comparing their scars, which they seemed to think were badges of honour. To me, they just looked like reminders of stupidity. I remarked that they were lucky they didn’t have to go through the shit women do, neither through stupidity nor by choice, simply for being born with a reproductive system destined to hemorrhage every month unless it was transformed (usually accidentally) into an incubator that would eject a baby way too big for the hole it’s supposed to come out of. Whatever the method of delivery, I added, a woman gets ripped open, leaving a scar that will rival anything they can dream of bragging about. At this point my younger cousin – bless her heart – added that girls have to suffer the job of doing their hair and make-up too. “That’s your choice!” my brother countered. And therein lies the difference between sex and gender.

Femininity and masculinity are arbitrary social constructs. Each of us should be free to express whatever traits come naturally to us without having to worry about how they supposedly relate to our anatomy. If we’re really concerned about equality and the well-being of children who will become adults who make important decisions, this is what we need to teach them.

Going back to the article about the transgender child:

The family has found an ally in Catholic school trustee Patricia Grell, who has publicly criticized the administration’s decision.

“I’m really worried about the impact of this stance we’ve taken on that child,” Grell said. “I’m very worried about that child’s mental health and wellbeing.”

I’m worried too. I’m worried that adults can’t seem to let children like what they like and act how they act regardless of their sex and leave it at that. There’s nothing wrong with these kids. They don’t need to change. Our society does.

Objectification is not liberation

Note: Title and content have been edited. Please see bottom of post for details.

Beyoncé has just released an album that is blowing up the charts and shattering digital sales records. Some people are calling it brilliant and groundbreaking. In an article for the New Statesman, Laurie Penny gives the singer a big bravo for projecting an image that she believes means good things for girls and women everywhere. But there’s something very problematic going on in the contemporary feminist movement, a variety of pseudo-feminism that casts the likes of Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé Knowles as champions of female empowerment in a way that prevents any discussion of the ethics surrounding the equating of objectification with liberation.

Penny incisively explains here that while not all men hate women, they all benefit from sexism by virtue of enjoying the privileges of being a man. Unfortunately, she stops short. Penny adopts choice feminism as a platform to defend Miley Cyrus’s antics without addressing the racist fetishism with which she oppresses women of colour. Nor does she feel that Cyrus is transmitting a damaging message to millions of young women. On the contrary, she insists that female celebrities flaunting their sexuality empowers girls to feel that they can do whatever they want without being judged for it, and that anything that might challenge this entitlement amounts to slut shaming. Does a super famous, hyper-sexualized pop starlet give girls the wrong idea about what it means to be a responsible, conscious and self-fulfilled woman in this society? We’re not allowed to talk about that, apparently.

Whereas Western women tend to believe that the burqa and even the hijab are tools of oppression, choice feminism sends the pendulum swinging to the other extreme. When Lorde criticized Selena Gomez’s song ‘Come and Get It’ as bearing an inappropriate and unhealthy message for young girls, Gomez retorted that Lorde’s comment was anti-feminist because she was “not supporting other women”. The individualistic posturing of choice feminism turns the concept of solidarity on its head by taking for granted that everything that women do is okay, especially if we’re (presumably) doing it of our own volition, and we should never hold each other to account – even if that means trying to protect young women whose most direct experience of patriarchy is the objectification of their bodies. Writer Meghan Murphy nails it when she asks, “Since when is nonjudgmental the descriptor of a movement based on achieving collective freedom from oppression and exploitation? What if the choices being made perpetuate patriarchal ideas?”

It’s totally counterintuitive that having Miley’s T&A constantly thrust in their faces should make young women feel better about themselves. This actually has the effect of encouraging youth to idolize celebrities and thus strive to be like them – thin, famous, rich, brash – rather than to be happy just being themselves.

Miley isn’t the only celebrity whose behaviour stirs controversy. What’s really interesting, though, is how some female celebrities manage to shamelessly flaunt their extravagant wealth, supersized egos, and pornstar bodies, all while escaping scrutiny. Public opinion suggests that while Rihanna is trashy, Beyoncé is sexy but classy. That image is undermined by her newest set of videos. Partition, for example, has her writhing around, spreading her legs and bucking her hips in what can only be described as an exotic (I hate this term) dance performance. I anticipate some people countering that she’s older (and therefore more self-possessed than Miley) and may have a slightly older fan base but here’s the dead giveaway: if there’s any doubt about who holds the power as far as this song is concerned, consider the lyrics.

“I just wanna be the girl you like, the kinda girl you like.”

– Beyoncé in ‘Partition’

In this video, Beyoncé isn’t asking us to respect her or even to recognize her talent and intelligence. All she’s saying, in words and images, is: Desire me. Fuck me.

Since when did turning our oppressors’ tools against ourselves become a strategy for liberation? I don’t see this as being the same as say, homosexuals reclaiming the word ‘queer’. This has the effect of draining the term of its power to degrade and ostrasize by acknowledging that while homosexuals may be different in the sense that they haven’t been considered traditionally mainstream, there’s nothing wrong with that. This directly counters the notion that there’s something deviant or immoral about them by applying a truly positive interpretation. But when women like Beyoncé become sexual objects, which in this context are essentially commodities or products to be consumed, they’re not in any way challenging the idea that they’re sexual objects. Nor do they explain how pimping themselves out negates the pimping.

Slut shaming isn’t cool. I should be able to walk around wearing what makes me feel comfortable and happy without worrying that I’ll be judged and devalued. I should be able to sleep with who I want to, and with as many people as I want to, without being subjected to double standards that would see men admired for the same behaviour. All I’m suggesting is that we approach this with balanced thinking. We’re not just talking about a woman who simply happens to be beautiful and is wearing clothing and dancing in a way that accentuates her beauty. Sexiness is not the issue. What is the issue is that imagery and behaviour approaching pornography is ubiquitous in our culture and never seems to be expressed via male bodies. So the question comes back to this: is this really appropriate? Nicki Minaj, Ke$ha, Britney Spears – when they air their crotches out in public, they’re not doing it for our liberation. And when boys and men see this, they couldn’t care less what philosophies might be underpinning it. They’re getting exactly what their male privilege tells them they are entitled to, and they further rationalize that entitlement based on the fact that women are more than happy to oblige that fantasy.

In another new video for the song ‘Superpower’, Beyoncé struts in a pair of spiky heels wearing a headscarf and a khaki-coloured miniskirt while her breasts peek out from underneath her halter top. The video depicts her catwalking with her posse through riot scenes, which include cop cars ablaze. Perfect hair. Perfect makeup. Perfect nails. So Beyoncé fancies herself a human rights activist now, huh? Did she conjure this vision up from her gated mansion while bathing in a vat of liquid gold? Give me a fucking break. Are we really going to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with one of the most powerful (as perception would have it) women in the world perpetuating this culture of narcissism and money worship, by exploiting, no less, the struggles that she has never cared to voice support for despite her influence as an international celebrity? In case anyone needs reminding about what this luxury-loving diva was doing in NYC during the Occupy Wall Street protests (which her hubby slammed but used anyway to make a buck), she was out shopping. I can’t bring myself to look up to a member of the privileged, wealthy 1% who capitalizes off the 99%’s fight for a fair economy. I don’t care what her gender, religion or skin colour is.

My formative years coincided with the Riot Grrrl movement. I listened to L7, Lunachicks, The Cranberries, 7 Year Bitch, Sleater-Kinney, Tori Amos, even Hole. I didn’t admire the divas, the models or the pretty pop stars. I liked the gritty, unapologetic realness of women whose defiance was neither manufactured nor forced. It was the smeared lipstick, the pride in embracing one’s imperfections, and the unmitigated gall of staking out territory in a predominantly male genre that encouraged and empowered me. That was about 20 years ago. These days, I wonder if we’ve been beaten into submission by the corporate patriarchy such that we’ve so deeply internalized its methods that we don’t even realize we’re doing it to ourselves.

Self-determination and individualism are not the same thing. Feminism should be, and will only succeed, as a collective struggle for the eradication of male privilege and gender bondage. Anything less is just another obstacle.

***

Post edited: This post was originally entitled, ‘Beyoncé is no Ani DiFranco’. I’ve removed anything that makes mention of Ani DiFranco in order to stop the issue I’ve chosen to discuss here from being co-opted by an entirely unrelated, albeit important, issue. If you’re unfamiliar with Ani DiFranco, she’s an American indie folk artist whose career has spanned decades and who has gained a huge cult following for her prolific music and strong support for the rights of immigrants, people of colour, women, the LGBT community, etc., both in her music and in the work that she does in the community. Shortly after publishing this post, I learned that Ani had become the subject of criticism due to a recent announcement that she would be hosting a music and writing retreat on Nottoway Plantation along with several other artists. It’s perfectly understandable that many people have taken issue with the fact that a white artist who has until now been celebrated as a feminist and anti-racist failed to appreciate that holding an event on a former slave plantation could be considered not only as incredibly insensitive, but also as further validation of the claim that mainstream feminism excludes women of colour. While I recognize that this is a complex issue that will elicit a variety of opinions, it is unfortunate that for whatever reason, neither Ani nor her record label, Righteous Babe Records, have addressed these concerns (as of December 28th). The ethical and appropriate thing to do at this time – at the very least – would be to issue a formal apology and explanation. I’ve expressed this view to both parties. Now, with regard to this post, it did not focus on Ani; I had quoted her twice and gave a brief synopsis of her career. The purpose of bringing her up was to contrast the school of feminist thought that is critical of objectification as a tool of patriarchy (as expressed by Ani) with the premise of choice feminism that supporters of female pop stars use to defend them. Although the content involving Ani, notwithstanding the controversy, would still support my argument above, it has become clear that the mere mention of her is being interpreted as an invitation to go off on a tangent. The comments were beginning to devolve into insinuations that Ani DiFranco is a racist, which at any rate is irrelevant to the topic of choice feminism. Strangely, the controversy over the retreat was also somehow being leveraged to discredit my analysis of choice feminism generally and Beyoncé specifically. Again, totally off the mark, and not fair. Therefore, I decided to remove mention of Ani and did not approve some comments that discussed the retreat. As always, reasonable and relevant discussions are welcome. I may address the issue regarding the retreat in a future post. [Update: I’ve delved into the issue here]