Please clarify
Good.
From Speak Up for Women New Zealand:
This morning the Green Party has been presented with a letter calling for them to clarify the party’s position on women’s rights. It has been signed by hundreds of people, including some of New Zealand’s most prominent feminists: Sandra Coney, Prue Hyman and Dr Alison Laurie.
The letter was triggered by the Party’s decision to remove an article written for their newsletter by Jill Abigail – a feminist activist and long standing Party member.
Dr Alison Laurie, says “Jill Abigail’s well reasoned, moderate letter raised points that need further discussion. Bullying and silencing her is indicative of an authoritarian culture within the Green Party.”
Marama Davidson, the Greens co-leader, dramatically claimed that the article contained “hateful views” and “puts trans rights to exist up for debate”.
Ani O’Brien, spokeswomen for Speak Up for Women, the feminist group that penned the letter, says: “Women, particularly lesbians, need the Green Party to confirm if they believe people born female deserve their own spaces, services and opportunities, and if they accept that some people are exclusively same-sex attracted.”
The letter also asks if the Green Party understands that in the New Zealand Human Rights Act ‘sex’ is a protected characteristic and that there are specific exceptions to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of women.
Dr Alison Laurie, says “The campaign for trans rights was initiated in New Zealand by MP Georgina Beyer. This was to add a separate category of “gender” to the Human Rights Act. The proposal was defeated, the view being that transgender people could be covered under the existing category of “sex”. This subsuming of gender under sex can lead to negative outcomes for both females and for trans people. Any changes to legislation need to be discussed and debated accordingly.”
Jill Abigail says: “The censorship was a strategically unwise move by a faction of the Greens. But it has opened up a conversation that needs to be held, and it’s clear that my article spoke for many women and men both inside and outside the party.”
We await developments.
The interesting thing is that the Greens have co-leaders, one male and one female. Their rules recognise that men and women are different and have different needs and an imbalance in power and voice. While a faction of the party would surely hail the women’s co-leadership position being held by a MTF trans person, I doubt the bulk of the membership would be so sanguine. Then again, maybe not. Even eco warriors are allowed to be misogynists and the party already has a strong divide between those who want to focus just on traditional green issues and those who want to focus on primarily social justice issues.
Rob, the green movement in general has a history of sexism. Women who joined Earth First! on their various activities would complain that the men felt they were there only for sex and cooking. Other groups have been similar. Although women are a strong, visible presence in environmentalism, they seem to end up being treated as children a lot of the time.
That isn’t reserved for environmental activism, either. As an environmental scientist, I find myself frequently treated like a child, and not a very bright one. The assumption is that this is not a “real” degree, and that it is “easy”. No one who actually has studied even on the fringes of the field thinks that, but everyone I know thinks they know all they need to know from a quick Google search, and that anything I say is ignorant and uninformed by actual knowledge of anything.
So, yeah, not surprised to find Green Party struggling with misogyny (or unfortunately, not struggling with it, but giving it a platform).
We can almost simplify it to “There is a history of sexism everywhere.” Bloody depressing really.
As for your experience with how environmental science is treated, yes, I’ve seen that. A lot of the what I’ll call the interpretive sciences are treated that way. Ecology, climatology, geology and many other disciplines. Because some aspects can be ‘seen’ and others appear chaotic or hidden, many people treat such disciplines dismissively or even with contempt. Thing is, nothing is ever without reason, it’s just that the reason can be sooooo hard to identify, let alone prove. It’s almost always multi-factorial and almost always affected by multiple things that are themselves multi-factorial and therefore change over time. It’s usually easier to predict trends than rates or quanta and once you’ve explained such a trend well, it seems immediately obvious and therefore trivial. I feel your pain.
“the party already has a strong divide between those who want to focus just on traditional green issues and those who want to focus on primarily social justice issues.”
Same thing exasperatingly with the green party here in Scotland. There used to be a clear line between socialists and greens and now they are bleeding into each other.
There’s a further twist in Scotland in that the Greens ally with the SNP in Holyrood, and support independence. This is infuriating for the green-leaning unionists like me. Also the Greens are compromising themselves in supporting a nationalist party that is green in occasional rhetoric only. Its transport policy is anti-green if anything.
Well, not ‘trans people’ actually. The problem seems exclusive to trans women. And its downright odd that objecting to trans-imperialism would be couched in such terms.