Dear young trans men and non-binary 'AFAB'

Psssst, the patriarchy sucks and you are actually closeted, beautiful, staunch feminists

Dear young trans men,

Dear non-binary people ‘assigned female at a birth’,

Dear girls who think you might be boys,

Dear young women questioning your gender,

Dear young women with dysphoria,

Psst, the patriarchy sucks, you are caught up in a millenium of woman-hating, violence and body shaming and you are actually closeted beautiful, staunch feminists.

The patriarchs saw women getting too powerful, too proud and too unwilling to take shit. It invented a new way to distract you. You pour energy into changing your pronouns and your body, imagining persecution and you have no time to change the world.

The world needs you, your sisters need you, your biological class is oppressed, you have a job to do. It's not cutting your breasts off. It's not turning yourself into a life long medical patient, it's not inventing an imagined persecution if someone misgenders you. It's not saying a kid's authentic self is only achievable if you give them drugs that deny them puberty, affect their brains, their bone strength, their ability to orgasm, their ability to have kids; that makes them fragile and damaged, that denies them their birthright.

That's not your job. Your job is to defend other girls and women and to fight for them with every part of your whole untampered brains and body. Whatever you were born with, we need it. Your job is to fight for those oppressed because of our shared biology.

Like the girls and women of Afghanistan because of their biology who can not attend school or university, cannot leave the house without a man, cannot speak in public, must cover themselves. They need your female voice to be risen in solidarity with them.

Like the 66% of women in regions of Lagos State in Nigeria who because of their biology are subject to domestic abuse. Like 75 out of 100,000 women in Syria who are killed in organised violence because of their biology. Or Sierra Leone where female genital mutilation is common in 90% of the population.

It's everywhere. What's happening in your country? Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, households with single Mums are way more likely to be living in poverty, women are paid less; Māori and Pasifika women paid less than other women. One third of women have experienced violence from an intimate partner, 98% of intimate partner killings were men who killed women.

Your job is not to yell fascist and nazi and hold signs promising to hurt women who are standing up for women’s rights. Who believe in retaining protections for our sex. Fighters for women's human rights have always been subject to threats. Your job is not to go along.

You simply do not have time to cry in your room if your Nana won't call you Zer and Zey. You are too important in this fight. We need your brilliance and your energy and I am sorry to tell you but you're just the last in a long line of women who have been duped into wasting your time on men's feelings.

Your dysphoria is not because you are in the wrong body, it's because you're in the wrong society. It’s a society that is hardest on females. That’s hardest on lesbians. That’s hard on girls and women who can’t or don’t want to conform to stereotypes of femininity and certain conventions of beauty. You are in a society that doesn't want, has never wanted, the almighty force of young women comfortable in their skin to be unleashed. You are a force to be reckoned with.

It is a conservative, regressive but understandable act to transition yourself, to reject your femaleness, to go along with the patriarchs who would have you deny your own kind, to be contemptuous of those fighting for your sex. It's the compliant thing for a young women to do. But how about the real work of transitioning society?

Conservatives, patriarchs and the anti-women gender activists say society and stereotypes are correct and right, and people who don't fit are flawed and broken and must change, must transition. They say butch girls are wrong and must be boys. They say effeminate boys are wrong and must be girls. Feminists and progressives say fuck that, the kids are alright, transition society and burn those stereotypes to the ground.

The feminists say don’t transition kids to fit a flawed society. Instead transition society to one free of corrupt ideas about what is an acceptable way to be a female or male. Transition to a society without violence against women and girls (and males!), without forced marriages and genital mutilation, without homophobia. Transition to a society without thuggish groups of men all over the world, from Afghanistan to New Zealand, telling women they need to shut up and stay at home.

Listen. You need to stop complying with the latest way the patriarchy is telling you you are not enough, telling you you must change or deny your body or your self. Telling you you must diet, or take puberty blockers, or take hormones or exercise obsessively, or cut off your breasts, or wear make up or clothes you don’t want to. It is all of it, the same distraction from the urgent, important work of fighting for girls’ and women’s rights.

You need to stop pretending your abject obedience to any institution or individual that would have us not speak up in public is resistance—no matter what flag it is wrapped in. It is not resistance to align yourself with institutions and individuals that would say we are not allowed to speak, we are not allowed private spaces away from males, we are not allowed control over own sexuality and reproduction, we are not allowed safe childhoods, we are not allowed to protect our children’s bodies from interference that will deny them healthy, sexual adult bodies when they grow up, that we are not allowed to retain meaningful words that describe our experience and our movement. Institutions and individuals who would take even the word feminism and tell us it must center on men.

You need to take what's yours. Throw off the shackles of self hatred and compliance. Step into your birthright. For you and for your sisters. In each generation of women there have been those who fight for our freedom, for our daughters’ freedoms, for our granddaughters’ freedoms.

It’s time, you see. You’re up. Take your place.

This song was written by Shervin Hajipour in the wake of the killing of Iranian woman Masha Amini while in custody. She was arrested for not wearing her hijab by the Morality Police. Shervin was then arrested for the song and required to remove it from social media platforms by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In struggle,

Garwhoungle x