A Letter To Wendy Brown
I am reading States Of Injury by Wendy Brown. Wendy paints a world of Identity Politics and Feminism seeped in Nietzschian Resentment. Instead of trying to explain her to you, I write her a video letter and let you listen in.
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Nietzsche wrote A Genealogy Of Morality (GOM) in 1880, a very interesting time. The stranglehold that Calvinist identity politics had on German public morality was beginning to slip. Bismarck had unified Germany under Prussian rule only ten years earlier. The “imaginary community” of the German Nation was being created. Nationalist and Populist politics were destabilizing all of the regimes of Europe that could not harness the New Nationalism to their cause.
Nietzsche witnessed an earlier era of identity politics when the newly minted secular identities of class and nation were gaining ground on the Calvinist and Lutheran identities. He despises the protestant morality which he grew up with. He calls it a slave morality which he traces back to the persecution of the early Christians within the Roman Empire. A slave morality is a sort of intense passive aggressive identity. As marginalized people the early christian theology identified with a victim status. It tried to make powerlessness into a virtue and dreamed of vengeance on the Sinful Roman empire. Nietzsche sees the Calvinist Identity as identifying with being victimized by the sinful, the powerful and the secular and dreaming of the ultimate vengeance fire and brimstone. In Contemporary California we might say that they “gave their power away” and embraced the role of the victim. Nietzsche finds this Victim Theology in most (all?) of the identity politics of his contemporaries, including christian moralism, anti-semitism, working-class populism, nationalism, socialism, anarchism and feminism. He felt that each of these movements had internalized the original Judeo-Christian victim cult.
At the time Nationalism was considered a progressive movement of liberation and modernism. Identifying with one’s nation was a new and modern identity which has started spreading across Europe with Napoleon earlier that century. Those new identities of German, Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian were very fresh and all based on cults of imagined victimization by another group. Hatred towards another group which is perceived to have power over your own “imagined community”, that was and is the basis of Identity Politics.
The Right Wing Transwomen have been disputing the authenticity of my womanness. See this vitriolic post by Suzan
There is a misogynistic dick trying to make a name for hmself by running around claiming to be a lesbian
Jasper has a collection of photos that show him to be a sort of creapy pervert exercising the male gaze in a manner that constitutes a virtual visual rape of the women he objectifies.
Put up or STFU, Jasper. Real people with transsexualism or transgenderism commit their lives and bodies to it.
Notice the right wing trope of calling art photography perverted. I exhibited at the National Queer Arts Festival, thank you very much. Judge my work for yourselves.
As I wrote in my last post: If you recognize my authenticity I will recognize yours!
If you deny my authenticity I will deny yours!
You see Suzan, I do not believe that political correctness serves transgender people. I am more of a Bash Back kind of woman. You degender me, I degender you.
Suzan you say I am man, misogynist and pervert. I say that you are a man, and I find your attempt to speak for all women bigotted and chauvinistic.
Either we are inclusive, in which case we are both women, or we can have a narrow definition of woman as somatically-female, in which case you are a man trying to embody a sterotypical idea of womanness. You choose!
I would also like to point out that the Wingnut Transwomen are constantly degendering Monica Helms as “Mr. Helms”. See this nasty post by Just Jennifer.
So Jennifer I would like to formally add you to my honor role of biggoted somatic males trying to appropriate and reserve womanness for your narrow minded selves
This video helped me clarify my views.
I realized:
the right-wing transfeminism of Women Born Transsexual (WBT) is affirming the authenticity of WBT womanness, while denying the authenticity of Transgender Transsexual womannes and Tranny (Transvestite) womanness. The symbolic marker for authenticity is Sex-Reassignment Surgery.
Binary-Centric Transsexual Women Activists working within under the sign of “Transgender”. Julia Serano’s transfeminist manifesto “The Whipping Girl” provides the intellectual underpinnings for this movement. Questioning Transphobia has a lot of commenters in this camp, and this worldview has become the “Politically Correct” view on many feminist websites like Feministe. These activists are very aggressive in defending their authenticity as women. Unfortunately their claims of Authenticity entails a reductionist belief in the Gender Binary. An attack on biological reductionism is an attack on their authenticity. Authentic Women take Estrogen and adopt a Female-Typical social persona. They label Somatically-Male Trannies like me as Cissexual because we do not transition. Calling us Cissexual is a challenge to our inclusion within the sign “Trans”. This is also marked by attempts to Crossdressers from the sign “Transwoman”. This marks us for exclusion from any privileges which may be won for Transwomen.
My brand of Progressive Gender Activism legitimizes “Authentic” Woman and the related term “Transwoman” for anyone who feels an innate womanness. This recognition of authenticity is open to Trannies, Genderqueers, Queens, Femmeboys, Twinkies and Sissyboys. Any model which marks us as inauthentic but grants authenticity to other Transwomen, is inherantly bigotted and reactionary.
So, this is my message to every Transwoman who I have offended
If you recognize my authenticity I will recognize yours!
