=== we should claim aretha for ourselves

edit: yep, it was a fake story! whats more, it was a fake story from january? i wonder how my youtube search got it to crop up more than once again-- its not easy to guess.

what follows is my unedited response:

obviously im not talking about a monopoly here.

i get why some people would feel dysphoric about "natural woman", so of course if you dont like the song you shouldnt play or promote it. i dont want it to become a terf anthem though, we should claim it for us.

aretha is too wonderful to let her get spoiled by bigots.

my own feeling about this sort of language is it already belongs to us-- blame natalie (shes used to it) but "biological", "natural", "real woman" are all words that describe us.

trans women are real women. and most of the world agrees. nazis really never have science (or history) on their side.

i was born natural, i didnt give that up for my identity. im 100% real trans woman, im still biological, terfs dont seem to know more about language than they do about science-- why should we let them win?

i honestly hope its a right-wing prank im falling for here. im trying to watch youtube and i keep seeing the right is having a field day about people trying to ban aretha. honestly i havent read or watched a thing about it yet.

but regardless, about a week ago (after buying another item of womens clothing) i was almost humming "natural woman" on the way home. im not sure its something i want to sing, after watching candace bergen hilariously butcher the song-- with good intentions, and with aretha herself.

it should be ours, dont let the terfs have this. we should have the nice things, and we should be the ones laughing at how the terfs tried to use a nice womans music against us and the jokes on them.

and if this whole story never actually happened, the point stands.

im a natural woman. it took a few years to figure that out, but if youre a trans female youre a natural woman too.

if aretha had written it as a terf or deliberately intended it to be essentialist it would be another story entirely. ive never felt excluded by her. i hope you wont either.

this work can be freely reused: (cc by 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

<3 zara