I’ve noticed a trend among younger equality-minded folks who are trying to challenge our patriarchal and shallow culture. They take words that can feel like weapons (beautiful, ugly, masculine, feminine, fat, skinny, and so on) and attempt to challenge their definitions – everyone is beautiful, respect everyone’s pronouns, be body-positive, and such.
The trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t address the root of the problem. Descriptors like ugly or feminine or skinny don’t need to be redefined, they need to not be used as weapons to attack someone’s worthiness as a human being. We don’t need to call everyone beautiful, we need to invalidate the idea that beauty is tied to worthiness. We don’t need to develop a dozen new gender expressions, we need to recognize that gender is nothing but an arbitrary social construct that has no inherent meaning or value. We need to prioritize health over beauty, and stop glorifying unhealthy people.
This is becoming increasingly problematic in trans spaces, where some trans people are so desperate to lay claim to their new-found gender identities (especially, it seems, MtF types) that they’re flinging insults like “TERF” (trans-exclusionist radical feminist) at women who are trying to point out that trying to re-define womanhood is causing damage to our ongoing fight for equality.
When someone who was brought up male in a patriarchy suddenly steps into a female-only space and claims it as their own, they’re doing so without regard for all the women who have been fighting for women’s rights for centuries, and they’re disrupting the progress we’re making. I’m not saying they’re still male, but rather that the male privilege they were given by the patriarchy at birth and conditioned to think they deserved by our flawed culture is following them into female spaces whether they intend it to or not, and they’re not taking responsibility for that.
Trans folk are in a difficult position, and they certainly have battles to fight, but one of those battles should not be for ownership of “male” or “female” as a label. It should be to render those labels invalid for determining one’s worth. A trans woman is not the same as a cis woman, and that’s okay. She doesn’t need to be. It’s not a contest, nor should it be. The patriarchy encourages that kind of conflict to maintain the weaponization of gender constructs, and that is what we all need to be fighting against.
It’s an issue with body positivity, too. With weight-related conditions like diabetes and heart disease at epidemic levels, with 2/3 of the country overweight and 1/3 of it obese, why on earth are we going out of our way to call obese people beautiful? It doesn’t address the weaponization of the word “fat,” it just encourages people (especially children who see this in their entertainment) to think that being overweight or obese is okay as long as you know how to apply makeup and wear nice-looking clothes. Fitness instructor Jillian Michaels said something about this the other day and was raked over the coals for it, and while I think she could have phrased it more tactfully, her point is still valid: health matters more than superficial appearance, and obesity isn’t beautiful, it’s dangerous.
We’re still so hung up on this idea that being able to call ourselves beautiful is important that we’re missing the point: beauty has nothing to do with one’s worth. Obsessing over who can/should call themselves beautiful is an inherently patriarchal behavior, because it supports the idea that beauty equals worth.
Let’s stop fighting over things that don’t matter, because it’s keeping us from the real work. Your weight, bone structure, chromosomes, curves, genitalia, etc. don’t determine your worth as a human being. Your character does. Start there, and we can make the world a better place.
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