Attention to the words
Fanboy for trans ideology calls someone a “leading feminist” and I ask him what makes someone a “leading feminist.” His reply is that someone else calls her that. Not an answer to the question I asked, bro. I didn’t ask whether other people call her that, I asked what makes someone it. Those are different questions. The difference is significant. It’s a difference that matters. Labels matter; words matter; reasons for saying things matter.
It’s the kind of hackish mushmouth empty verbiage that riddles so much lazy journalism. If you mean famous, say that. If you don’t mean famous, say what you do mean. Aim for specificity. It helps.
But does her passport say she’s a leading feminist? That’s what really makes the difference, right?
Hahahahaha good one.
He needs to add Shitty Writer to his bio.
Who elected her? Is there a feminist “community”? (There isn’t)
Sigh. I hadn’t realized (or hadn’t recalled) that Solnit was caught up in gender ideology. I used to follow her writing, but stopped some years back.
“… transgender people aren’t a threat.” That very much strikes me as an answer to the wrong question.
re Magdalen Berns background picture: great picture! I rarely look at people’s profiles. I’m going to guess that this guy has never watched any of her videos.
Solnit was such a disappointment, because she’s not another Joyce Carol Oates, she’s not stupid.
But he’s probably been told that, like JKR, she’s evil, and having abdicated the moral responsibility to think for himself, virtuously parrots the party line, sight unseen, that she is*. Being able to dismiss someone as “evil” allows trans activists like this plonker to avoid having to explain how and why their opponents’s ideas are wrong. Instead, it’s turned around so that simply questioning these ideas is somehow inherently wrong, and unworthy of any response other than reflexive, self-righteous indignation.
But it’s one thing to throw up an “automatic block” in the course of curating one’s social media experience, and quite another to adopt it as the official political strategy deployed when formulating, discussing, or defending public policy surrounding the introduction and enforcement of trans “rights” in nominally democratic countries, particularly their corrosive effect on women’s rights.
When those questioning your course of action can be portrayed as irredeemably evil, you can refuse to listen to them, and take away their voice altogether. If you can get others to accept this characterization without question, so much the better. The inertia of ignorance is your friend. The lazy, uncritical adoption of your view can save you a lot of effort explaining and arguing. You can coast on your credentials, reputation and authority, and people will nod and repeat what you tell them. This is sufficient justification for thoughtless dolts like Peter Rainford, though this support is essentially unearned; you haven’t had to work for it. But if you win it doesn’t matter
And if that lazy, uncritical acceptance of your say so is by the media, they’ll do your dirty work for you. Look at how Rowling’s unspeakable, unreasoning “transphobia” became taken as read, the unevidenced and undemonstrated, “controversial” nature of her unspecified “beliefs” becoming an editorial staple, touchstone and starting point for any story even mentioning her in passing. What is more astounding, this public process of villification succeeded without even bothering to quote things she’d actually written or said.** This was by design. We were supposed to take the activists’ word for it, because her own words wouldn’t have supported the charges they laid at her feet. “Unspeakable” indeed. One’s demonization (not to mention the threats of rape and murder) ring a little hollow and hyperbolic when your target’s statements are seen to be mild, reasonable, and completely unobjectionable, and maybe not evil at all, despite your extreme (mis)characterization. You can’t risk anyone realizing your putative scapegoat is actually human, and not some all-powerfull, mustache-twirling super-villain. The demonization and silencing of critics is the whole point and the cornerstone of “NO DEBATE!” (which, on the surface at least, sounds slightly more noble than the “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” it really is). If the great unwashed hear women’s arguments, comments, and criticisms, trans activism loses.
*You know they’re desperate when they’re so afraid of someone who is dead.
**That Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint joined in this chorus while remaining unwilling or unable to explain the errors in Rowling’s reasoning has more to do with their craven spinelessness than any problems with any of Rowling’s statements. When you have no moral grounding, and your thoughts are no more substantial than cobwebs, going where the wind takes might look like a good strategy, but that’s what you’d get from any self-interested publicist or agent looking out for their meal ticket rather than your personal integrity. And if there’s one thing that trans activism is good at, it’s generating a lot of wind.
I completely fail to see how Rainford could have an idea of what the opinion of “most feminists” is. Even if he could reasonably infer it, such an argumentum ad populum would not be much of a case for his position.
He can’t, but it’s the opinion he wants them to have. How many times have we seen the claim that “real” feminism is intersectional and accepts “all women”, especially men who claim to be women? This is the kind of “feminist” that Rainford likes because it doesn’t argue back. Trans friendly, “third wave” feminism prioritizes everyone else’s needs ahead of (and at the expense of) women’s needs. It’s the acceptable feminism that doesn’t know or care what a woman is, who are seemingly happy to keep women from having anything of their own. To borrow an American political terminological concept, they are FINOs: “Feminists In Name Only”. They claim to be and are touted as the standard-bearers and true exemplars of “feminism”, and as such, have ruined and corrupted countless women’s organizations and institutions, all to the benefit and applause of gender ideology. It’s turned into “Feminism is for Everyone”; “Bolsheviks” vs “Mensheviks” all over again.
The For Women Only kind of feminism must be marginalized and hounded out of the very movement they built and supported. This is the hope and point of Rainford’s appeal to “most feminists.” He’s officially recognizing the illegitimate regime that has taken power after the coup that gutted actual feminism, because this toothless, knee-capped, non-threatening successor junta fully welcomes men pretending to be women. Talk of “gender” has replaced concepts and examination centered on biological sex. The only true enemies are actually women; “Second Wave” feminists, who are all evil TERFs because they are hateful and bigoted towards the men whom they should embrace as their “trans sisters.”
I noticed a bit of confusion in my number 7 above. Here’s better wording for what I was trying to say: