This FWD thing

[In unrelated news: I doubt anyone in this general area of the internet doesn't also have a feed to Feministe, but if you don't, they have a page up detailing how you can support the relief effort in Haiti. Which you should be interested in if you have, like, money. Read the comments, too, and related links, before making a decision - much concerning corruption and who to donate to, etc. PIH in particular seems to be well recommended]
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Okay. So FWD fucked up? This one is a bit of a tangle; I think I need to make a post about this to get my head around it in the first place. (The following bolded statements are paraphrased).

Is excluding cis men from something and not excluding trans men from that same thing erasure? How about men who are neither cis nor trans?

Speaking as none of these, addressing this could be putting words in the mouths of others by nature, but it is (or was) the crux of this issue. So...

Well, that depends on what it is, doesn't it? If that "something" is "women only" (which, I believe, was not the point in this case, but might have been construed that way) or "women and 'gender non-conforming' only" (as per one FWD rationalization) , this either erases/misgenders trans men or generalizes them by making the point that trans men (and all not-women not-cis men, as the open case) must all be gender "non-conforming".

At the same time, there is a very obvious solution which does not perpetuate any of these problems: simply acknowledging the cissexism that trans men face as the reason. And this is where the fail comes in - in this case, many rationalizations were offered up, but some were problematic in and of themselves, and all skirted around this issue.

And as for men who are neither cis nor trans (as was brought up in the thread)... that's an open case (not A, not B, but any of the rest of the possibilities). Which means it must be addressed on a case-by-case basis, as there may be many ways to identify as a man who is neither cis nor trans with no unifying feature between them (besides being men).

So, the rationalizations...

"We're including those who face gender oppression."

This doesn't seem to far off the mark, at face value. However, there is an issue with this: conflating the male oppression of women, the cis oppression of trans people, and (as was also included in this umbrella) binary oppression of non-binaries.

So, is it appropriate to put all of these under the same umbrella as "gender oppression"? Even when one acknowledges that they are all different things?

This is one I've still got to think about, personally. The message from gb is unequivocally "no" (as per the linked post), and her reasons make sense.

I can see some defense for this idea, however: that is, that misogyny, transphobia, and binarism, despite all being very different things, can all be literally termed oppression on the basis of gender. And there are intersections in these... But they are still very different things. I'm torn. But when one gets to the specifics of conflating sexism and cissexism (or sexism and binarism, etc.)? Yeah, not cool.

"Let's not talk about gender, this blog is centered on disability."

If this is so, you're closing the door on the rational explanation for including "gender oppression" as a viable axis for discriminating about content at all. There is no reasoning which explains why you should have your cake (decenter cis male voices) but eat it too (censor gender-based discussion away).

Honestly, this is simply sloppy - the site is called feminists with disabilities! If you were going to censor/ignore discussion of gender identity, why not simply leave it at "PWD" and not bother?

"When I see a bunch of bigoted disabled trans guys, I'll change my mind."

Appealing to "positive" discrimination (trans guys are nice, so that explains it!) is a pretty flippant rationalization for something which, as I noted, should be pretty easy to explain without resorting to stereotyping. Besides, the same argument could be made for any section of the [disabled] male population the speaker positively stereotypes (as not-bigots) - there's no clear reason to limit such a broad rationalization to trans men.

"Voz failed, so now I can claim the moral high ground for ignoring this."

Well, there are certainly more important things going on in the world to be talking about at the moment, so obviously you could be excused for blowing this whole thing off, fail or no fail.

But really? The fact that a single person, speaking on behalf of no one but herself, made bigoted remarks is no one's responsibility but herself, and certainly does not retroactively erase any responsibility of FWD to deal with their own problems. This is silly, childish behavior - X does something wrong, Y was unfair to X, X is... suddenly off the hook. Uh?

(Disclaimer: I don't know Voz, have never had contact with her, etc - I'm only trying to make sense of this situation. But there are things like "personal responsibility" which I'm pretty sure she is not exempt from.)

Abandon ship, FWD is over!

Well... not for this inconsequential new blogger, though I can see the rationale. I already had a problem with the language at FWD, anyway. But jumping ship? I hope they clarify some things, but I don't see this as get-the-hell-outta-there material, personally.