Sly Likes: Feminist Poetry from H. Hennenburg

Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

The statue depicts Dame Millicent Fawcett (11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929), an iconic British feminist.

Today I encountered a thought-provoking poem entitled The Shape of Water. It was written by H. Hennenburg in 1998.

"But do you know that a woman's voice will change the world slowly? Light will creep in where she unburdens her heart."

This poem inspired a train of thought for me.

It makes me think of a line from the song by Ten Years After.

"I'd love to change the world but  I don't know what to do. So I leave it up to you."

Then there's another song that comes to mind, this one by Ani DiFranco.

"I am not a pretty girl, that is not what I do."

Here I am, a woman who sees the ways in which we could be kinder to one another and make the world a better place. But since I am a strange old bird and not pretty at all, I have a hard time making myself heard. The world doesn't tend to listen to women who look like me.

Then again, they don't tend to listen to the women that men fall all over themselves to get next to either.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Royalty-free image copyright Julia Henze. Purchased from 123rf.com

Notes

Sly Fawkes is your ornery old Aunt Cie's snarky political alter-ego.

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese, if You Please (Or Don't Please)

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WTF Wednesday: There Are No Rewards for Being a Handmaiden

This is my response to a post by Brenda Brooks on Feminist Current.

I fell into the same trap. I said to myself "well, what could it hurt to refer to myself as cis? After all, trans people have a much harder battle than I do. They just want to be included, to be normalized." But more and more I saw that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted the entire narrative to revolve around them.

I would see signs proclaiming "trans women are women." I started to wonder why there were never any signs proclaiming "trans men are men."

The trans rights activists were saying that medical terms for female anatomy were "violence against trans women." Meanwhile, trans women were carrying baseball bats and wearing t-shirts with slogans such as "punch a TERF" and "die cis scum." In the UK, Posey Parker was detained by police for "hate speech." This "hate speech" was the phrase "woman = adult human female." I have never heard of any trans person being detained for expressing a desire to "punch a TERF."

None of this sat well with me. I believe the last straw was when I saw women being referred to as "menstruators" and "non-men."

Now I see trans women claiming that the hormones they take are making them "have periods." They are not having a period. A period involves the expulsion of the endometrial lining from the uterus. That is what a period is. I have been TERFed for saying this.

As a writer myself, I was once scolded for referring to trans people in a perfectly neutral fashion. I wanted to modernize a story I wrote in which a voodoo priestess does a spell to change the sexes of the attendees of a frat party who sexually abused her niece. Rather than simply saying "so and so woke up and screamed in horror to discover that he was now a girl," I had the local doctor wondering at the sudden rash of gender reassignment surgeries on the college campus. Since I had the audacity to mention trans women in a neutral fashion rather than the most glowing terms, I was jumped on by commenters. I said "fine, I'm changing the ending back to 'it's magic, I don't have to explain shit.'"

The trans cult has gotten way out of hand. A trans woman could claim that the key to immortality was to chop up your neighbors and bathe in their blood, and everyone would say "Oh, she's so BRAVE!" No-one even questions how screwed up many of the things the "queer" and trans communities are pushing are.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

TERF is a call to violence

TERF is an acronym meant to silence women with dissenting opinions.

I have a big problem with the use of the term "TERF." Specifically, the fact that this term directs violence at women. There is no equivalent term for men who are deemed transphobic. Could not one simply use the term "transphobic" for anyone who was thought to be behaving in such a fashion?

I refuse to use this term. This page contains multiple examples of why it's a problem.

https://terfisaslur.com/

A woman can be branded a "TERF" for any reason from feeling that using puberty blockers on children may be damaging to their future physical health to actually hating transgender people. Keep in mind, it is not men who are being called TERFs. It is not men that statements such as "punch a TERF" are being directed against.

Read the entire page and then tell me you can continue ignoring the multiple calls to violence, the misogyny (calling women "cunts,") and the sexually abusive statements (TERFS can suck my lady-dick.)

Tell me how this is any different than MRA's proclaiming that "feminazis" just "need a good fucking" to straighten them out, that the cure for feminism is beating a bitch until she learns her place, that a feminazi will shut up if she has a dick choking her.

Go on and actually read the page from top to bottom.

This is why I can no longer support the TRA agenda.

"Radfems" are not calling for the death of trans people.

Being misgendered is rude. It isn't going to kill you.

Stomping, kicking, beating or choking people will kill them.

Why is it fine with Twitter for TRAs and their supporters to call women "cunts" and to call for violence against women, including such lovely statements as "set TERFS on fire" but "misgendering" someone is a hate crime that will get you banned from Twitter for life?

Why is everyone falling all over themselves to support these violent extremists?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I've always been the kind of person who approaches people from the neck up. I'm not going to ask you what's going on below the belt. If you say your name is Salchicha and your pronouns are they/them, I will call you Salchicha and I will try to be respectful of your pronouns. That doesn't bother me.

What does bother me is the fact that now I'm not only supposed to be polite and respectful to transgender people and to join in the fight for their rights to be treated with common decency and to have access to equal opportunity, I am also supposed to drop trou for any one of them who may demand to have sex with me. Even though I really don't like sex very much and really don't want to have sex with anybody. The fact that if I did have sex I would only be attracted to a man in a male body renders me a "disgusting transphobic TERF" who should be set on fire, beaten to death, or forced to suck someone's "lady-dick." 

You might say that I have hang-ups about having sex with people with vaginas or people with feminine breasts, and maybe I do. I have hang-ups around sex in general. Having sexual hangups doesn't mean that I hate people with vaginas or people with feminine breasts. Even only being attracted to men with male bodies doesn't mean that I hate trans people. It's just how I'm wired. 

These sorts of strange and awful assertions led to my going "peak trans."

I am a large person. Large people tend to be reviled in modern society. Trust me, I don't have the men beating down my door, and I tend to be suspicious of any man who does approach me, not only because some men are rapists, but because some men are "chubby chasers." I am a human being. I have no desire to be someone's fetish.

There are men out there who may fully believe that fat people should not be treated like shit and who will speak out against hateful memes and stereotypes of fat people, but when it comes down to the thought of having sex with a fat person, the conditioning that fat people are sexually repellant is too strong. This is a hang-up. If I were interested in a guy and he confessed that he couldn't consider it because he has hang-ups about the idea of having sex with a fat woman, I would be hurt. Depending on how he handled the situation, I might even come to think of him as a douchebag. I would not, however, call for violence against him. 

TERF is a call to violence.

TRA's have gotten away with their violent rhetoric for too long.

They are also eager to silence other trans people who disagree with them in any way.

It is time for the left to stop falling all over themselves to kiss TRA ass.

Rejecting violence is not transphobic, it is civilized.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com