document updated 13 years ago, on Sep 15, 2010
I have been reluctant to identify as a radical feminist. Despite having many friends who gladly self-apply the term "radical", I usually shy away from anything that could be described as such unless it's really necessary.
Maybe, in this case, it's really necessary.
Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking: our identities are not recognised until/unless our documentation and our bodies match – and even when they do, the authorities are apparently still at liberty to ignore the physical evidence on which they insisted before they would change our documents. And then, they will proceed to ignore the documentation itself. We are damned if we do and we are damned if we don’t. We don’t even have the choice not to play their sick and twisted mind games.
It is not our world, it is theirs.