I'm not going to link to it, it's disgusting as hell, but JKR has *again* gone after Imane Khelif, hours apart from her lauding the HBO reboot trailer.
Support of her show *necessarily* validates not only her transphobia, but also her using transphobic hate to justify racism.
Because c'mon, that's what this is. Transphobia is a wedge, and always has been. Once you have established that there's a group of people that's OK to hurt, you can use that to justify whatever other kinds of hate you want.
Transphobia gives white women like JKR the narrative tools they need to police bodies of color.
It's embarrassing that it took this for me to realize how some of those dynamics work, but I think to reading Tal Lavin's Culture Warlords, and he had a point about how transphobia sometimes has roots in antisemitism, thanks to right-wing extremist forums believing that transphobia is a Jewish conspiracy.
Reading that as a white ex-Christian person who has never been at threat from antisemitism was kind of a shock, seeing how I could be used as a proxy for antisemetic conspiracy theories.
Like, if I, as someone who is not in any slight, remote, or indirect way Jewish, see antisemetic conspiracy theories about any part of my identity, I'm being used as a wedge or someone else is being used as a wedge against me.
If Imane Khelif, someone who is unambiguously cisgender, gets transphobic hate, then my identity is being used as a proxy to justify hate against her.
Understanding my own privilege and how it can be used to hurt others is praxis.
@xgranade I feel like your thesis is off here. transphobia, specifically transmisogyny, is used as an excuse to police othered cis bodies - and transmisogyny is also transmisogyny. we, as trans women and transfeminine people, are still the ones in the crosshairs, and most of the damage is being done to us.
we, not cis people, deserve to be centered in discussions about our own oppression.
@YKantRachelRead I think you're missing my point. I, as a white person, do not get to hold my oppression over people of color of any gender modality, but must take an intersectional approach.
Rowling isn't using transphobia to hurt cis people, she's using transphobia to hurt cis people *of color* along with both trans people of all racial identities.
(con'd)
I, as a white person, do not get to hold my oppression over people of color of any gender modality, but must take an intersectional approach.
I don't understand what you're saying. the act of centering trans women and transfems in discussions about transmisogyny isn't "holding our oppression over" anyone.
what do you think "an intersectional approach" means in this case?
@YKantRachelRead An intersectional approach requires, as a specific example, white trans people like me to look at how JKR is using the rhetoric that she and others have normalized about people like me to go after people of color like Imane Khelif.
Being intersectional means not flattening that to "transphobia hurts cis people," but recognizing that Imane Khelif is subject to racism that I will never experience, and that transphobia directed at me can transmute into racism against her.
@YKantRachelRead Let me try another example.
Trump, up until about two or three years ago, never gave a *fuck* about trans people. He has, though, and for *decades* gotten out of bed so that he can start his day and go to sleep hurting Black people. Being transphobic makes it easier for him to hurt Black people.
At some point, he just interrupted his own speech to make that explicit! He directly told the audience he was transphobic because they ate it up! And now he has the power to be racist.
@xgranade it seems to me like you don't know what intersectionality theory is or means in practice. I recommend reading Kimberle Crenshaw's original essay on intersectionality if you haven't already. in short, intersectionality theory doesn't posit that transphobia also hurts cis people - it states that multiply marginalized trans people's needs and concerns deserve to be elevated in discussions about transphobia.
to be clear, I don't disagree with you that our struggles are shared with other marginalized groups. and also, while you keep repeating the claim that you don't mean to de-center us from our own oppression, you're also pairing that claim with the idea that institutional transphobia and transmisogyny are proxies to hurt marginalized cis people. which is, in effect, doing the thing that you're claiming you're trying not to do.
@YKantRachelRead Yes, I have read it. And I'm done with this, I've tried to explain my point several times, and you keep repeating back to me a completely different strawman point that I am very much so *not* making.
I said what I said, and I stand by it.
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