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Title: Beyond Another Gender Binary
Author: Lena Kafka
Date: March 10, 2017
Language: en
Topics: gender abolition, gender nihilism
Source: Retrieved on 2020-08-14 from https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/beyond-another-gender-binary/

Lena Kafka

Beyond Another Gender Binary

My use of the terms patriarchy and gender are interchangeable, as I

understand gender to be an apparatus of oppression and domination that

overlaps with, and is inseparable from, the apparatus of patriarchy. For

more on this, I suggest the Gender Nihilist Anti-Manifesto, and Destroy

Gender.

Against Femme, Against Gender, Against All Binaries

There has been a trend among the radical milieux over the last couple

years to start using the term femme in place of woman. The reasons for

this shift in language have varied depending on who you ask in the

milieux, but the general reason behind the shift is to make ‘our’

understanding of patriarchy more inclusive to anyone who doesn’t

strictly identify as a woman. Taken from the Wikipedia page for Femme,

“Femme is an identity used by women (including trans women) and

nonbinary people in relation to their femininity. As a gender identity,

it usually denotes an individual who is “non-binary or queer femme

gender specifically and inherently addresses femmephobia and the

systematic devaluation of femininity as part of their politics”. The

term is used exclusively for queer people regardless of whether they

identify as female.”

This replacement isn’t just semantics, it has been a change from seeing

woman as the oppressed subject of patriarchy to seeing anyone femme, or

feminine, as an oppressed subject of patriarchy. It’s also a shift from

seeing oppression as one’s relationship to gendered violence to one’s

relationship to aesthetic, femininity, behaviour, and social norms.

Before, ‘our’ understanding of patriarchy was that only women could be

oppressed by patriarchy and gender(ed violence). That is, if our

understanding of patriarchy never dug deep enough to understand that

there are a multitude of experiences and subjectivities that cannot be

fit neatly into one of two categories (oppressed and oppressor, male or

female, etc). For anyone who held such ideas, moving from that crass

analysis of patriarchy and the apparatus of gender toward an

interpretation that includes more experiences than before is a positive

shift. But, like all interpretations and theory, it falls short in its

goals and in its analysis. The shift to the term femme does little, if

nothing, to challenge patriarchal

categorization/identification/normalization, binaries, the reproduction

of patriarchy, or its economic basis, and it does not truly create a

theory of oppression that is inclusive of all

subjectivities/experiences.

What Does It Mean to be Femme?

Who gets to be femme? Who is actually oppressed? Who is femme enough to

be considered oppressed? Are all women femme?

As with all theories of oppression, if there is an oppressed

subject/class then there is a corresponding oppressor subject/class

(such as whites oppressing non-whites and the rich/bourgeoisie

oppressing the poor/proletariat). Under the previous understanding of

patriarchy where women are the only class oppressed by gender, men were

considered the oppressor class. With the contemporary understanding of

patriarchy, femmes are the oppressed class and mascs are the oppressors.

All identities are defined by who is deemed an other.

According to everydayfeminism.com, femme “is an explicitly queer title,

it is a gender expression that encompasses a wide rage of identities.

Gay and queer cis-men, trans-men, and gender-queer folx often identify

as Femme. Saying that femmes are always only women perpetuates a

gendered binary that excludes lots of people.” Besides the questionable

use of queer as an umbrella term, this definition of femme attempts to

include the experiences of many who don’t identify as women. While it

does include some femme gay/trans men and non-binary people, it does so

by abandoning women who aren’t femme. Women who aren’t femme, such as

butch women and closeted trans women, are cast aside, either to be

ignored completely or to be labeled as ‘masculine’ and oppressors. As if

butch women are to blame for the strife of femmes, as if being a femme

gay man means you cannot be a proponent of patriarchal control, as if

our real experiences with gender and violence are secondary to our

personal style.

Neither Masc, Nor Femme, But Unique

This line of thought doesn’t stop perpetuating a “gendered binary” but

reinforces it by dividing people along the lines of oppressed/femme vs.

oppressor/masc, except this division isn’t based so strictly on gender

and biology like the previous (and still dominant) gender binary. It

divides people based upon aesthetics and behaviour instead of by biology

or by self-identification. Almost anything is an improvement from

biological determinism, but this shift doesn’t go far enough to stop

binary thinking. Before someone in the milieux asks me what my name and

pronouns are, I am assumed to be “masc” because of my facial hair and

the way I dress. My personal experiences with gendered violence are only

taken seriously in light of revealing myself as a trans woman. Our

theories should start from the ways we have experienced gender violence

in our daily lives, not identity. Our relationships to each other should

be based upon our affinities and similarities with each other, rather

than based upon the categories of lowest-common-denominator politics.

Daily life is far too complicated to be reduced into two categories.

Meet the New Binary, Same as the Old Binary

A few years ago among the radical milieux, before femme was the go-to

inclusive term for people oppressed by patriarchy, the term not-men was

used. The theoretical failings of not-men are similar to that of the

term femme. Baedan, an anti-civilization, nihilist, and anarchist

journal which explores questions of gender, queerness, and

domestication, elaborate on those theoretical failings. They critique

the term not-men for failing to be the inclusive term it aimed to be,

not going beyond binary categories, and for continuing the policing of

categorization.

(tw rape)

“One recent answer to these critiques has been the introduction of the

concept not-men. Most attempts at defining this category are extremely

clumsy. At times it is used to mean not-cismen, or to explicitly say

that faggots are not welcome at certain meetings. At others it simply

means women plus trans people. Some feminists have even said that the

category at times includes ‘emasculated men of color.’ Usually it is

just postmodern shorthand for women. As with any other categories, it

only functions if it has a firm border, and this border will always be

policed. At every step of the way, it is ceaselessly problematic. The

least problematic definitions of it […] are so vague as to not have any

practical application. And it is always in the practical applications

that these theories enact their violences. The prospect of a political

body of largely cisgendered women determining which genderqueer or

transfeminine individuals are not-men enough to participate in their

groups is quite nauseating. This categorical policing mirrors all the

others. Meet the new binary, same as the old binary. A way out of this

dilemma may be to start from experience rather than identity. To seek

out conspirators based on a shared experience of a range of gender

violence. Some proponents of not-men have defined it similarly (‘those

who are raped,’ ‘those who do caring labor’) but none of these

experiences are limited by identity, and to accept a phenomenological or

experiential framework would dispense with the utility of the category

at all. If the concept is either problematic or useless then why has

there been so much fancy footwork put into an attempt to save the

concept? What we’re really seeing is a desperate attempt to save binary

categories, in a world where they’ve long been decomposing.”

— Against the Gendered Nightmare, Baedan 2: A Queer Journal of Heresy

Whether it’s man/woman, male/female, afab/amab, not-men/men, or

femme/masc, all binaries require policing and exclusion to be maintained

and defined. Binary categorization is just one method the apparatus of

gender uses to govern. Binary categories require policing, exclusion,

regulation, normalization, and hierarchy.

Not A Third Way

“Insurrection calls upon us to no longer let ourselves be arranged, but

to arrange ourselves, and set no glittering hopes on institutions.”

— The Ego and Its Own, Max Stirner

The problems behind the femme/masc binary did not start with its

introduction to the milieux, nor will they stop after some other terms

are adopted in its place. I do not suggest alternatives or expansions

for these categories, only their total abandonment. This can only be

achieved through an insurrectional break against gender. Insurrection

would be the total undermining of governance: to abandon and destroy the

apparatuses of governance, to take our affairs into our own hands.

“In more real terms, it means that we have communities and spaces that

aren’t just safe, but dangerous to those who oppose our desires and our

spaces. Not just a reading group safe space, but reclaimed territories

capable of providing for the needs of the working class/women/the

excluded (free from gender/gendered violence). These spaces can’t simply

be given to us by a higher power. Through occupations of the borderlands

and sites of production, or less formal territories of resistance, such

as friends who have each other’s backs, we will make or take the commons

back.”

— Destroy Gender

Lena Kafka