As though everything is about them
Julie Bindel on the conference and its misogynist enemies:
On arrival at the venue I saw the usual array of blue fringed students and other hangers on, some draped in trans flags, others with slogan T-shirts declaring themselves non-binary, genderqueer, he/him, they/them, zi/zir, idi/ot. They were protesting, yes, protesting, a conference with a key aim to campaign to end male violence towards women and girls, and to offer support and solidarity to the victims and survivors of that violence. Of course, the reason put forward by the blue fringes, including those that had waged a war against the conference venue from the moment it was announced, was that the organisers and attendees were anti-trans, as though everything is about them.
Specifically as though everything about women is about them – even more specifically as though everything about feminist women is about them. It’s feminist women who don’t “center” men who say they are women who really get their protest energies going. Men who don’t “center” women who say they are men? Pff, they don’t matter, because they’re men. Men’s hearts are always in the right place. It’s feminist women who are the real demons in the word – conniving, sly, cruel, witchy.
I met some women I had only ever seen on Zoom, such as the amazingly talented Vaishnavi Sundar, a filmmaker from South India and the founder of Women Making Films. Vaishnavi has worked with marginalised women all her life and campaigns against male violence. Her achievements are impressive – Vaishnavi successfully fought for women to be able to access morning-after contraception in the state of Tamil Nadu. In 2018 she began making a film about sexual harassment of Indian women, including the voices of lower-caste women in the workplace as a way to hold the Indian criminal justice system to account for the lack of implementation of its laws. The film, But What Was She Wearing?, was finished in 2020 and Vaishnavi secured screenings in North America before showing it in India. Her reputation is such that her work is always warmly welcomed in both the Global North and South. But shortly before a screening of the film in New York, Vaishnavi was emailed by the organisers and told that she was no longer welcome and the event was cancelled along with Sundar and her film, due to her ‘transphobia’. Their evidence? Tweets such as “A safe space for trans women is not inside a woman’s bathroom”, posted by Vaishnavi.
So the screening of a film about a film about sexual harassment of Indian women, including lower-caste women, was canceled because everything is about men who call themselves women. Men’s need to play-act being women is more significant and support-worthy than women’s need to be free of harassment and violence. What gruesome priorites.
Clearly Vaishnavi Sundar is another of these white feminists you hear so much about.
Bloody disgusting.
There’s never a protest, as far as I know, of the NAACP for not talking enough about black trans people. Or of the Teamsters for not talking enough about trans truck drivers. Or of the Mathematics Association of America for not talking enough about trans people. Only women are subjected to this kind of vitriol.
A conference against violent males was being protested by violent males. Not terribly mysterious. Bullies hate it when their targets stand up to them, even indirectly.
MAA is probably too busy adopting “ethnomathematics” and decrying vaguely “racist” mathematicians with theorems named after them.
If it were just the violent males protesting, that would be one thing, but the “hangers on”, the “allies”, the “woke” men and women who think earnestly that they are doing the right thing by rejecting women’s rights, they are largely a different thing. I’m sure many of the men who comment here have found themselves in the strange position of wanting to defend women’s rights and feminism against the comments from “trans ally” “woke” women.
Sackbut, exactly that. It feels odd at times to be a man standing for women’s rights when those against me are sometimes women.
Every time women gain a right, I lose nothing. Every time the men in women face gain a “right”, women lose. It is beyond my ken how all women cannot see that.
I’ve been there… Actually raised my threatening “angry voice” to a lady I otherwise respect on Discord for something to do with Rowling. Had to apologize for that; she’d have reason to feel threatened if we were in person.
The analogy of rights with pie and whether they are or aren’t it isn’t quite right.
The issue is that a right is a set of obligations on everyone. If women have the right to be served in a pub, then the pub and its staff are obliged to serve her (or at least, not to refuse service on the grounds of her sex) and other customers are obliged to accept it, whether they want to or not.
The question about whether a particular right should be afforded, then, is not so much whether doing so will take rights away from others (although it might) but whether the cost to society in terms of obligations is too high.
So to allow men the right to self-ID into women’s spaces places enormous obligations on women to accept that and all the consequences. This includes their giving up rights to safety and privacy and so on, but I think it also involves giving up things that are not, strictly speaking, rights.
I’m not saying anything new here, I just find the pie analogy unhelpful. It’s especially unhelpful in arguments because the subject always gets changed to “what is a right anyway?”
Rights aren’t free. They cost obligations. And the issue is always what will a right will cost, how much will it cost and, of course, who will pay. We can see the answers very clearly in the case of self-ID.
Sackbut #6
Again, I think cognitive dissonance is a major part of the explanation. TWAW is actually a very big concession to make, but in the moment it may not seem like that big of a deal, especially since most people are not careful thinkers and don’t pay much attention to the wider implications of their ideas. There and then it may seem like a minor courtesy, a white lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, a diplomatic gesture to keep peace among the ranks etc. Or, perhaps more likely, it’s all about siding with your ingroup, rooting for your “team” etc., and the specifics don’t enter into your considerations at all.
Whatever the case may be, once the concession is made, you’re caught in its logic:
“Well, I’m already on record as agreeing that TWAW (as well as the most oppressed and persecuted group in the multiverse). Only a spineless hypocrite would have conceded to something like that without meaning it, but I’m not a spineless hypocrite, so I must have meant it. Only an idiot would have meant it if it weren’t true, but I’m not an idiot, so it must be true. Only an asshole would have demonized others – as I have – for disagreeing with gender ideology unless they truly deserved it, but I’m not an asshole, so they must have deserved it etc.. etc..”
So TWAW it is.
Well, if TWAW, then obviously being a ‘woman’ can’t have anything to do with biological sex. In fact, ‘biological females’ can’t even exist as an identifiable group, let alone have any separate issues worth addressing in their own right. After all, that would allow us to talk specifically of biological females, which is exclusionary to TIMs and hence Thoughtcrime. On the other hand, we don’t want to get rid of categories like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ altogether. After all, how can TIMs be women if there are no women?
Hence, something has to make both TIMs and the people formerly included in the discredited ‘biological female’ category* part of the same group, something entirely subjective and ‘internal’ like, say, a certain way of thinking or feeling, seems the most promising way to go. On the other hand many of the apocryphal biological females may not appreciate having all sorts of inner states attributed to them, especially if said states seem entirely derived from sexist stereotypes and male jerk-off phantasies. To keep the ‘females’ from protesting that this doesn’t apply to them at all and walking out in droves. Better leave the definition of ‘woman’ perpetually in the air, and avoid specifics at all costs.”
* An exception can be made for a minority of ‘trans men’ or ‘non-binaries’ as long as most biological females are implicitly understood to be whatever they have to be to make TIMs part of the same group, and the former don’t get a say in the matter.
@BF #10
Well put explanation. I do wish to clarify that I was responding to the suggestion that protesters are trans-identified males, and to note that some of us are in the awkward position of wanting to promote feminism and women’s rights to “woke” women. I’m sure many of us have been on the receiving end of “Well, I’m a woman, and it doesn’t bother me, therefore it doesn’t bother any proper-thinking woman, how dare you mansplain women’s rights to me!”
Sometimes people are wrong about the experiences of groups they belong to, and sometimes people think their experiences matter more than facts. “Standpoint” matters, but not nearly as much as some people claim.
latsot:
I like this phrasing, along with “rights aren’t free, they cost obligations”, and I plan to steal both shamelessly.
On this basis, I disagreed often with people in the run-up to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US. People were saying that same-sex marriage affected only the couple involved (adding, perhaps, people who provide services for weddings). No, it affects all people and businesses who do anything at all in regard to married couples, who now have to allow for same-sex couples. Of course they should do these things, but it is silly to pretend they are unaffected.
Roj:
Same here. Perhaps it’s a massive example of “it’s not a problem until it affects me directly”.