National Remind People Where They Came From Day
Welcome back! I’m sorry to say that binarism is still alive and well. This dropped into my email today, and I had to resist the urge to beat my head against my keyboard as I hastily clicked “remove”. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204470562928853 For those who cannot view the page, here is the event description: “Today is National Remind People Where They Came From Day—A Woman. You all came from a woman, and knowing this, I can’t understand how it could be possible to degrade women as we do in this society. Yes, a woman went through nine months of slave labor to bring you into this world, and how do you repay her? By engaging in sexist behavior and condoning language that degrades her. Over and over again, our society finds every excuse in the book possible to degrade women and insult them, by calling them bitches, sluts, and so on and so forth. And the worst part is that so many women go along with being degraded and insulted—it’s really shocking. Please spread this event far and wide, to remind people that women are not garbage and shouldn’t be treated as such.”
Oh dear. Yes, nice job fighting one oppression with another. /sarcasm.
NOT ALL PEOPLE WITH WOMBS, NOT ALL PEOPLE WHO CAN AND DO BEAR CHILDREN, ARE WOMEN. It’s really not that difficult a concept, and at least remembering that means that you refrain from attempting to fight fire (misogyny) with fire (cissexism/binarism). (Also, some people capable of childbearing - see, it’s not that hard!- don’t actually think of pregnancy as ‘slave labour’- everyone’s experiences are different, who’d’ve known?- and anyway I’m really iffy about that metaphor because yeah, slavery does exist and has existed for millenia…)
While women’s oppression (and that of those perceived/coded as women/feminine) is real and should be fought, cissexism and binarism are ALSO real and should be fought - and fighting one with the other is counterproductive. EYDS, organisers. And till you’ve learned how to organise without erasing people, STFU.
Submitted by andythenerd. Thank you! And thank you for including the description too, because I don’t have facebook and couldn’t have viewed it otherwise.
