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Ignoring colonialism allows British (or other Western) feminists to disregard how the imposition of the strict gender binary of man and woman, with t… - Shon Faye
" "Ignoring colonialism allows British (or other Western) feminists to disregard how the imposition of the strict gender binary of man and woman, with the accompanying hierarchy of male over female, was itself a mechanism of colonialism. Many pre-colonial societies and indigenous peoples did not view gender as binary. Some, as we have seen, had more than two genders, while the social roles around family and childrearing varied widely. To take one among a multitude of examples: in the seventeenth century, , a Jesuit missionary to the Montagnais () people residing in (eastern Quebec and Labrador in Canada), described how the women held ‘great power’ and had ‘in nearly every instance … the choice of plans, of undertakings, of journeys, of winterings’. Often, Montagnais women would hunt, while men looked after children. Conversion to Christianity, encouraged by men by like Le Jeune, required the establishment of a new hierarchy and more rigid gender roles. Within ten years of colonial missionary activity and trading relations beginning, the Montagnais had started to insist on male authority and to inflict violence on wives and children. Such accounts of colonial domination show how rapidly a society’s understanding of gender can be changed as society itself changes. They demonstrate clearly that what it means to be a woman or a man (or neither) is not a fixed and stable entity, but a complex constellation of biological, political, economic and cultural factors, which may shift over time.
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About Shon Faye
(born 27 March 1988) is an English writer, editor, journalist, and presenter, known for her commentary on LGBTQ+, women's, and mental health issues. She hosts the podcast Call Me Mother and is the author of the 2021 book .
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In all this, it cannot be emphasized enough that the political demands of trans people align with those of disabled people, migrants, people with mental illnesses, LGB people and ethnic minorities (and, needless to say, trans people can be found within all of these groups). This overlap between the needs of different marginalized people must be stressed because the illusion that trans people’s concerns are niche and highly complex is often a way to disempower them. The emphasis on the ‘minority’ status of minorities keeps them focused on explaining their difference in public discourse, so that they can be continuously batted away as an aberration or minor concern. In the specific case of trans people, this disempowerment begins at the most fundamental level: with our bodies and our right to exercise autonomy over them without interference by society. If we are to liberate all trans people socially, we must begin with the liberation of the physical trans body.
Transfeminism is a term used to describe a collection of perspectives on feminism that centre the experiences of trans people. This perspective recognizes trans people as a group who, like cis women, suffer greatly at the hands of patriarchy, which punishes us for transgressing the roles laid out for us from birth. It is not a rival movement to other forms of feminism, nor is it a subdivision. It is a specific approach to feminist thought and organizing that begins with trans experience, rather than seeking to slot trans people into a cis feminist theory that is often articulated without us in mind.
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The effect of both division and consumerism is to encourage individual identity over and above commonality. A person’s sense of their own identity is certainly important for psychological wellbeing – but as a political end point it leads to solipsism and detachment from others. From this perspective, identity is understood as a set of immutable and finite categories with particular criteria for membership. Yet the political justification for the LGBT coalition must begin with something different: the overlapping and occasionally muddled history that all four letters share.
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