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i know it does in fact suck for cis women with short hair! but they are not the target! maybe there's a category of people mentioned by name by the people making these bills! the worst part is this might actually be the best way to make cis people care about this because cis people mostly don't seem to give a shit about us. except sometimes they just put in the work to make sure the bills only hurt us and not them
Likewise with issues other oppressed group deal with, like how you have to say "patriarchy is bad for men" to get some men on board with feminism
Is this type of thing a worthwhile strategy?
Just look at the clock, it's Down With Cis time again
uncritical support for the down with cis bus in its heroic struggle to liberate our transgender comrades from the genocidal american empire
I think feminists who want to convincingly talk to men need to be able to explain how patriarchy is hurting men, how it will not make you happy and ruin your relationships to emulate Andrew Tate etc. etc., and that convincing at least a sizeable chunk of men that the patriarchy needs to be dismantled is indispensible from effective feminist struggle.
But there's a problem in this approach as well, because the ways in which patriarchy hurts men are routinely and effectively weaponized by antifeminists to deny the reality of misogynist oppression and to center cishet men and only the issues affecting them in debates about gender and patriarchy. Strategically, it's important to have counters to this strategy, and that includes both outlining how it's patriarchy that does this damage to men and that this is part of maintaining a structure aimed towards opressing women and other marginalized genders, in which even these damaged men are still the group that gets to enact systemic violence against others. Patriarchy breaks boys to turn them into opressors. That is damaging to them, but it is simultaneously a deal that allows them to in turn inflict damage on other men as tools of systemic violence and to benefit off a structure that objectifies women and devalues our labor for the sake of male privilege.