I expected better.

This post will make no sense to anyone who hasn't recently read the article I'm talking about. But I needed to rant.

'Incorporation . . . rapes women of the legitimacy to historicise women'
Purvis and Weatherhill, 'Playing the gender history game: A reply to Penelope Cornfield' in The Feminist History Reader (ed. Morgan), 2006

I understand that the argument that the shift from women's history to gender history has decentred women's experiences, and is a 'malestream incorporation strategy'. I may not agree with this view, but I do feel it is important to question the value of gender history, and the story of a neat, progressive transformation from women's history to gender history.

But what's not OK is using rape as a metaphor to describe that transition. An intellectual trend which marginalises women is not the same as sexual violence. It's fine to make the point that they are connected as part of the same system of oppression, but to conflate the two seems not just an exaggeration but deeply offensive. Also, I'm not sure it makes grammatical sense to say someone was 'raped of' something.

And another thing - what the HELL is the whole playing gender history as 'tootsie' versus as a 'woman' thing about? I don't understand it well enough to know if it's transphobic, but my instinct is yes.