SF Weekly
Close

What Defines a "Real" Woman? Who Decides? Why Does It Matter? Welcome to Girl Talk

Mar 28, 2012 10:30 AM

A lineup of awesome.
The physical world loves binaries. Day and night. Life and death. Action and reaction. The social world also loves binaries. If you're not white, then you're black. If you're not straight, that means you're gay. You're born either male or female, and you can't change that. These flavors of intolerance come not only from extreme, "red state" schools of thought, but sometimes from the deepest reaches of our great liberal mecca.

An example? Gender politics. Some queer women who were born female-bodied, for example, overtly reject the idea they share anything with transgender women, tossing around ugly terms such as "bio men" and accusing them of co-opting "real" women's space. Others, however, see gender as a variable and shifting thing, and they embrace the common ground that all queer women share regarding romance, family, friendship, employment, and activism.

It's people from this latter group who organized Girl Talk, Thursday at the the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

The title alone shows us this camp holds the superior sense of humor.