Caitlyn Jenner’s publicly acclaimed “coming out” confused the shit out of me. As someone who unapologetically posts about the lies and inconsistencies of “liberals” as adamantly as “conservatives,” I was disoriented and disappointed but I couldn’t explain why.

On the surface, I think that celebrity feminism is an oxymoron, from vanilla Emma Watson to the likes of Miley Cirus, Ruby Rose, or *ducks for cover* Beyonce. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that media which makes it to the mainstream of a global culture of objectification, victim blaming, historical erasure, male violence, dominance, and authorship, is, by definition, sexist.

What do you think challenging the status quo means?

I stayed away from gender/sex analysis regarding Jenner because I got the feeling that I would catch heat for going against my own politics. I kept hearing that trans-exclusionary feminism isn’t feminism.

Where I started to have a problem with this analysis is that it’s constructed by trans activists and by the mainstream, not by feminists. Actually, second-wave feminists were finding their analysis’ leading them to trans-exclusionary positions. Their view was a logical extension of the analysis that gender is a societal construct, used as a tool against female-born bodies to socialize them into subordinate positions.

As a radical feminist, I find myself searching for the line between demonizing things considered feminine and rejecting female subordination. As a micro-example, I really hate high heels. When I see women teetering in the air (they just never seem stable to me!) I want to yell, “Hey! Get down from there, you might fall!”

To be called misogynist for this view is confusing, and I used to align with this kind of thinking. The essence of the argument sounds something like: to criticize women for their choices is inherently anti-feminist. It’s an interesting and complex intersection of feminist theory and social reality, but I believe it is a conflation of issues.

This takes us right back to the root of what second-wave feminists were saying. It’s so obvious it’s almost silly, wearing high heels (or any other socially imposed gender norm) is not an inherent trait of women. So how can advocating against dangerous clothing, enforced by socially-constructed gender norms which reinforce vulnerability, be woman-hating?

Gender-conforming attire is an extension of the pathological control of female bodies and leads to trauma bonding. Female bodies are forced into submissive and objectifying positions through lifelong messaging patterns and social reinforcement, which are intermittent cycles of abusive punishment (body modulation, manipulation, messages of infantalization, objectification, victim blaming and rape) and reward (social status, economic success, and sexual idealization).

I try to think about things literally, because identity politics dirty the water. The situation seems to me thus: where women already have a scary enough time navigating through a world of rape culture, normalization of public sexual harassment, and male violence, they now do it while also standing atop 3" by 1/2" pegs.

…“Because they want to.”

This theory can be extended to so many other gender-norm binary presentation requirements, it’s a bit scary. Women spend breathtaking amounts of money to apply chemicals to their faces, wear pants that can lead to permanent nerve damage, bleach their skin, and spend a cumulative two months of their lives shaving their body hair which is there as a means of regulating body temperature and protection.

Furthermore, to say women choose these dangerous and objectifying practices is to negate the historically obvious, oppressive conditioning that has taken place through gender-assigned-according-to-sex reality of social construction.

Trans activists accuse radical feminists of reducing women to their parts. I humbly suggest that this is a projection of their own guilt. Lately, feminists have been asking what transwomen activists mean when they say they feel like a woman. I think this is a legitimate question, and accusing radical feminists of sexism without analytical deconstruction is irresponsible.

So what are we all talking about if not female bodies? Patriarchy doesn’t oppress male bodies. Patriarchy forces female bodies into gendered positions that require self harm and subjugation to sustain. Patriarchy claims gender roles and costumes to be an extension of what is female, rather than a cultural, socially constructed gender which requires props, body modification and psychological manipulation to solidify. Patriarchy lashes out at everything it has so brazenly deemed to be womanhood, which includes men who defy their patriarchal bond. Where patriarchy demonstrates it’s unbelievably flexible “woman-hating” is an indication to feminist thinkers that men can, at any point and in accordance with male domination, choose what womanhood itself is.

The idea of a woman-gender separate from the female body, which is what trans activists refer to, is social marginalization that has been historically, vehemently, and oppressively forced upon female-bodied people.

So, the weird story of Rachel Dolezal broke around the same time that the Vanity Fair issue with Caitlyn Jenner did. The difference in public response was astounding. It caused me cognitive dissonance. I thought it was completely unacceptable for Dolezal to lie about who she was, and that she was negligent as a social justice advocate by co-opting a movement that was not her own. Meaning, she adopted an idea or policy for her own use.

Trans-activists telling feminists to stop reducing women to their body parts is akin to telling black people they are the ones reducing themselves to the color of their skin. Black people didn’t reduce themselves to the color of their skin, white people did that. White people subjugated Black people because of the bodies they are born in through force, violence, and brainwashing. Black activists use Black Power messages as a means of reclaiming their own narratives.

Now, what if you told black people to stop defining themselves by color of their skin while you use cultural indicators such as hair style and tanning procedures so you can identify with them? On face value, this seems ridiculous.

The choice to transition from MTF implies a status of privilege. The individual was socialized according to male dominance. Social conditioning doesn’t change overnight if you, say, cut your hair, or even get surgery. Dolezal might have started to experience bigotry directed at a transblack woman, but that bigotry is only enunciated through her position of social privilege which she received from society her whole life up until her transition. She also received privileges well through her transition, where her white education and privileged upbringing afforded her academic success.

Before her transition, I knew Caitlyn Jenner as many other people did, as a dismissive, controlling, emotionally withholding patriarch in Keeping up with the Kardashians. Now she’s arguing with Ellen Degeneres about her own marriage (politics are personal) and I just hope liberal feminism is collectively cringing for having hopped on the mainstream bandwagon of Jenner as the new face of the trans movement. Until serious analysis of these deeply complex realities are brought into mainstream discussions of feminist theory, liberal feminism will keep collapsing in on itself this way.