We do except when we don’t
Mslexia has issued a statement – a bad, stupid, smarmy, chickenshit statement.
All that plus difficult to read – but hey, tiny white print on a lavender background is so Feminine, amirite?
Mslexia exists to support all writers who identify as women, regardless of their prior background or current circumstances, including issues relating to their age, race, class, income, disability, sexual preference, location, health status, fertility, caring responsibilities and gender assignment. We stand against all forms of abuse and harassment.
Mslexia aims to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages women to express themselves across a wide range of literary genres in the knowledge that they, and their writing, will always be treated with respect.
Therefore, we absolutely respect any woman’s right to freedom of speech, within the law. However, if a Mslexia judge expresses views that threaten to undermine Mslexia’s climate of welcome and inclusivity, we will always ask her to step down from that role.
So “Mslexia exists to support all writers who identify as women” – as opposed to supporting all writers who are women. I’m ancient enough to remember a time when it was enough to just be a woman, and it wasn’t enough to just “identify as” a woman [while not actually being one]. I think we shouldn’t have swapped the one for the other. I think we should go on thinking of women as women, and leave it at that. Men who wish they were women are a separate issue, and frankly not our problem. That’s not to say we can’t be supportive or sympathetic, it’s just to say that it is literally not our problem and that women still have a lot of inequities and injustices to deal with; we don’t need to take on men’s issues along with ours, let alone instead of ours.
Notice that in that list of 11 items in under “including” that sex is not included. Mslexia exists to support all writers who identify as women, including men but not including all women. Uh…thanks? Mslexia exists to support all writers who identify as women but it will drop a woman like a stone if she supports a woman who supports a woman who fails to agree that men are literally women if they say they are.
(I still, after all these years, find it hard to believe – this new “feminism” that includes some men and excludes women who don’t agree that those men are literally women.)
Mslexia aims to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages women to express themselves across a wide range of literary genres in the knowledge that they, and their writing, will always be treated with respect.
No it doesn’t. Obviously not.
Therefore, we absolutely respect any woman’s right to freedom of speech, within the law. However, if a Mslexia judge expresses views that threaten to undermine Mslexia’s climate of welcome and inclusivity, we will always ask her to step down from that role.
That is, they don’t aim to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages women to express themselves across a wide range of literary genres in the knowledge that they, and their writing, will always be treated with respect. Despite the fact that they just typed words saying they do, they don’t, because immediately after typing words that say they do, they typed more words that say they don’t. You can’t have both, chums. You can’t say you support women and then say you dump women who fail to agree that men can be women.
On my monitor, it doesn’t even come over as lavender – it looks more like taupe*, that weird cross between brown and grey with a pretentious name so beloved of a certain class of interior decorators. The sort who would love an organisation called ‘Mslexia’.
There can be no organisations purely for women, because the men who hate women don’t want them to exist. And they have hit upon the perfect method; change laws so that men can say they are women, make it illegal for anyone to exclude men-who-say-they-are-women from women’s spaces, and watch as the women flee.
And yet there are women who think that this male invasion and take-over is just dandy.
(*Yes, I know it is French for ‘mole’, but no self-respecting mole would appear in the shades which now bear its name; see Pantone Desert Taupe 17-1311 TPX for the shade above)
“Desert Mole” sounds like some kind of hardcore military fighting vehicle. “Desert Taupe” sounds decidedly more tame. Interesting.
They support all writers who “identify as” women, eh? There are lots and lots of women writers who don’t “identify as” anything. For myself, I don’t have a “gender identity.” At all. Of any kind. And I am far from alone. Mslexia doesn’t support women writers who are like me.
Also notice, for example, that there may be women writers who “identify as” men. Mslexia doesn’t support or make any kind of “welcoming environment” for those women writers. How trans-exclusionary of them (Mslexia). How transphobic!
And yet that’s what every woman is now required to do, since even the idea that there’s such a thing as “our (i.e. women’s) issues” (as distinct from those of men who prefer to be called “woman”/she”) is thoughtcrime.
And also they’re men’s issues too because trans men are men.
They very clearly do not stand against all forms of abuse and harassment.