No one more qualified to speak
Speaking of A oppressing B and B oppressing C – the UK Green Party says women must pretend men are women when told.
Green Party Women must remain trans-inclusive
Must. Orders are to be obeyed. Hop to it.
The intrinsically linked nature of social and climate justice isn’t news to anyone who has been involved with the Green Party for more than a few minutes. From tackling the disproportionate impact of deadly air pollution on people of colour, to opposing the running of privatised public transport for profit, the solutions to the climate crisis are so often those which promote societal equality and which tackle historic and contemporary injustice. Liberation politics is at the heart of all of this: ‘for people and planet’ means for all people, not merely those free from societal oppression.
Meh. I don’t buy it. I’m sure there’s plenty of overlap, but “intrinsically linked” is overstating it. Circumstantially often linked, yes, but intrinsically, no. It’s not the same kind of thing. The fixes are technical far more than they’re political or social. Poor people have more trouble getting broken plumbing fixed because it costs money, but the fixing itself is technical.
And that’s when we’re talking about real oppression. When we’re talking about the absurd made-up reverse victim and offender kind, it becomes even flimsier.
Next week, Green Party Women, a self organised liberation group within the party, will vote on a new constitution. This proposed constitution would remove the right of non-binary people and trans people who do not identify as women to vote in Green Party Women democracy, or to stand for election to its committee. It is vital that this constitution
isbe rejected.
Green Party Women want to keep men from voting in a women’s group, and we’re told they must not be allowed to keep a thing for women for women.
Time and time again, the Green Party membership has reiterated its support for trans-inclusive feminism, passing a policy for the self identification of gender, and for the recognition of non-binary identities. Liberation from patriarchy must be inclusive and universal. To exclude trans and non-binary voices from Green Party Women is to absorb the system of oppression against which feminism fights into our own ranks.
Bollocks, kid. Women get to organize as women, which entails not being “inclusive” of men no matter how the men choose to “identify.” What if oil company executives started “identifying as” Green and wanted to gobble up the Green Party? Would you be all gung ho about that?
Self organised liberation groups in the Green Party of England and Wales represent an important principle within the fight for social justice: ‘nothing about us without us’. Ensuring that the voices of those affected are centred in the struggle for liberation is crucial — after all, there is no one more qualified to speak on the extent of queerphobia than queer people, no more legitimate voice than that of disabled people in the fight against ableism in society.
One, ok, but what does that have to do with Green?
Two, ok, but then why don’t women get to say “after all, there is no one more qualified to speak on the extent of sexism and misogyny than women”?
Our liberation groups organise against these forms of structural oppression, envisaging and mobilising for a world free from discrimination and prejudice where everyone is free to be who they are, and where barriers to societal participation are broken down.
You say “free to be who they are” but what you mean is “free to be who they are not.” You’re talking about people being free to claim to be the sex they are not, thus displacing people who are that sex. When the sex in question is the subordinated one, that becomes a problem.
This extends, of course, to the fight against patriarchal oppression. From the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States earlier this autumn, to the Conservative government refusing to take a clear stance on abortion here in the UK, whilst continuing to fail to make misogyny a hate crime, it’s clear that patriarchy is alive and thriving. In the fourth richest economy in the world, tampons are still financially out of reach for millions, menstrual leave is but a pipe dream, and just 1% of reported rapes lead to a charge — let alone a conviction.
Well said. So why are you putting your efforts into forcing women to pretend men are women if they say they are?
Differing values aren’t the problem in this internal spat, so they should stop acting as if they were. It’s down again to the question they’re all too sophisticated or weary to answer: What is a Woman.
And the “what” question demands a “what” answer. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the entire problem revolves around the insistence that being a woman is a “who.” It’s “who you are” or even “who you are not,” putting the focus on individual identity and all the complex and complicated ways of expressing that instead of a simple reproductive classification in biology.
I recently came across a trans activist on Twitter who informed the TERFS that many, many cis women don’t identify with Adult Human Female because it’s not who they are. Excuse me? Are you an adult? A human? Are you female (don’t get cute and all postmoderny, just answer it)? Then that’s it.
It’s like people denying they’re human because they’re not JUST human, they’re an individual. Learn to think.
Learn to think and get over the whole idea of being Special.
Excellent point about what and who.
I’m confused.
That seems backwards or mixed up. They don’t allow women-who-claim-to-be-men to join, but they allow men-who-claim-to-be-women to join? Surely not.
I assume they disallow males, regardless of how they identify, from joining, and they allow women, regardless of how they identify, to join. How do these complainers get from there to what they stated?
Sackbut, I think it’s internally very consistent. They’re throwing away biological sex whenever it clashes with identity. So, if you identify as a woman you’re a woman. If you identify as a man you’re a man. If you’re ‘cis’, well you stay as you are. Only ‘women’ can be ‘women’, and no damned cis-woman had better argue with that point.
More broadly, this is just another example of the tension within green politics everywhere. The concern about climate attracted lots of social justice activists. There is a lot of cross-over in world view after all. Every Green Party I can think of has seen the SJ wing of the party begin to take over and marginalise the hard core environment only party members. In many cases those who care deeply about the environment, but who have more conservative or perhaps just realistic social views end up leaving the Greens or sitting there feeling very bitter.
The days of greens sitting around singing Kum Ba Yah and seeking consensus are long gone.
Rob, I’m confused as to what Green Party Women is requiring, and what UK Green Party *thinks* they are requiring. Are you saying that UKGP honestly thinks GPW wants to keep out all (and only) people who do not *identify as* women? UKGP thinks GPW actually wants trans-identified males, who identify as women, to join? Isn’t a major part of the whole point that trans-identified males should be kept out?
Rob #4
I’m an example of the former.
Not in the U.K. admittedly. I left the Norwegian Green Party after they sent out a member survey a while back. The very first question was about gender identity, and every available option pre-supposed agreement with gender ideology.
Bjarte, I left the Greens a long time ago – nearly two decades – because it became obvious they were not about the environment, but about a lot of social justice issues, quite a few of which I agreed with them, and quite a few where I didn’t. I don’t insist on agreeing with a party on all particulars, but I do think a party that bills itself as Green should manage to get a “green” plank in the platform somewhat earlier than the tenth, which is where the first mention of environment was when I left.
It’s also evident to me that much of the green party is no better able to listen to the actual scientific experts on the topic than anyone else. They are more prone to listening to environmental activists, who often get it wrong (though of course, not always).
The only way my environmental views could be called conservative are that I err on the side of conservation, but some of the ridiculous mother earth shit the left does is hard to take.