Guest post: Gender is the oppressed king
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Trans identitarianism benefits principally upper-class white men.
A current example might be the critique of “colorblindness”. While colorblindness is the desired state of affairs, adopting radical colorblindness prematurely renders one insatiable of recognizing racism. An intermediate state is required in which we “see color”.
Funny how this phase of “blindness” was reached so quickly with regards to women’s rights and equality. We never really “fixed” sexism. There was a little bit of a start, but it was interrupted by a combination of “choosie-choice feminism” and gender identitarianism. We skipped right over equal pay, equal political participation, freedom from male violence, etc. to “Sex Work is Work” and “Trans Women Are Women.” In exchange, we have the “cotton ceiling” and feminism=fascism. Women are painted as oppressors through the “Karen” meme and the “cis” slur. As for “blindness?” We’re now not supposed to see sex; not because we’ve acheived equality between women and men (as if), but because sex no longer exists. Women can no longer be named. If women had even half the power attributed to them by trans activists, they’d be better off than they are. They would have been able to resist the unprecedentedly rapid advances of trans-activism’s institutional capture, because they would have had a seat at the table. Women had no such seat at the table; they weren’t even in the goddamn room.
Here’s some convenient “blindness.” How many oppressed minorities have instant, backroom access outside of (and despite) the law, to shape policy in accord with its own peculiar, self-interested redefinitions, and against existing statutes? Gender is the oppressed king, calling the shots from its position of entrenched “marginalization.” If trans identifying men were really as powerless as they claim, they would be fucking nowhere.
There’s the (neo)Marxian/queer theory critical consciousness thing again. At its end is problematizing/destabilizing the very terms by which the class struggle is understood.
Having established their position, however illegitimately and undemocratically, trans activists are going to claim this as a “rollback” of their “rights,” rather than the re-establishment of women’s rights that had been given away against their will and consent. I think that defence of trans “rights” which they have been unwilling to specify or define (despite countless requests to do so) is going to be much harder in the UK now that the “NO DEBATE” stance seems to have failed. Stonewall’s misrepresentation of the law as it is, along with the Tavistock scandal have been major blows to their position. Fewer bodies will be willing to offer, or honour, shady backroom deals if such arrangements are at risk of being exposed, and result in legal or financial blowback. TA retribution is not as threatening now that methods and motivations are visible to all. Thanks to the brave women who have risked so much to say “No”, to refuse to back down, the wider public has a better idea of what’s been happening and more are saying “No” along side them.
Trans activists’ consistent refusal to admit that TiM demand for access to women’s single-sex spaces on the basis of “self ID” is an open invitation to opportunistic male predators (even if TiMs were completely harmless, which is not the case) is a clear demonstration of their lack of good faith when it comes to women’s needs. They can’t fathom that “We’ve been in women’s spaces for years” isn’t quite the winning argument they think it is. They won’t leave women’s spaces (or facilities, positions, teams, etc.) without resistance, but it will be a rearguard action fought in public. It might be a while (if ever) before captured or misguidedly sympathetic (and therefore untrustworthy) media outlets report on these issues honestly, but at least there are more channels that can bypass these willful misinformers. We can only hope that the successes we’ve seen in the UK and other jurisdictions can be repeated in North America, where the wave of scandal has yet to rise and break. But break it will. I’m cautiously optimistic. Reality can’t be bargained with or bought off. The tone-deafness of those tweets coming out of Boston, so obvious to those of us who’ve been following the events unfolding in the UK, will become more obvious to more people here, too. Unfortunately things will get worse before they get better, and there will be a price to pay, extracted from the flesh and blood bodies of women and children, whose health, safety, dignity and bodily integrity will have been sacrificed to the thoughtless propitiation of gender ideology. Especially once lawsuits launched by the angry, damaged victims of this ghastly movement start costing some of the perpetrators real money, or real jail time that they won’t be able to identify out of.