Damsels in peril
Joan Smith on Yet Another Backlash:
For too long, a motley collection of trans activists and green zealots have only needed to threaten to withdraw from literary events, and the organisers have taken fright. Now the Oxford Literary Festival has discovered a backbone, inviting the gender-critical author Helen Joyce and the feminist campaigner Julie Bindel to take part in this year’s programme. Cue the predictable outrage.
There have been calls for authors to withdraw, on the dubious (some would say bonkers) premise that the invitation puts other writers at risk. Harry R. McCarthy, a lecturer in early modern literature, grandly announced that he had withdrawn from his scheduled session on “Shakespeare for the modern age” because Joyce and Bindel are part of the programme.
Then there was the American author, Hesse Phillips, who apparently uses “she/they” pronouns. “This decision was not taken lightly,” she/they declared in a lengthy statement this week. “I’ve conferred with other queer and trans authors, cis and straight authors, friends and family, and in the end I feel that stepping down from my panel is the only way forward, both for my personal safety and my conscience.”
It’s an odd way to fight a political battle, when you think about it. What’s their “safety” got to do with anything? It’s not as if gender critical feminists run around waving machetes, now is it.
Partly, of course, it’s just more of the same old shit: accuse non-duped feminists of every crime and flaw in the book and see what sticks. “Yer wrong, yer ugly, yer scary, you eat worms.” But it’s also some new shit. It’s deploying rhetoric about “mental health” as a tool in a dispute over truth versus lies. It’s reverse bullying – “We’re not bullying, you’re bullying, by fighting back when we bully you!” And, most infuriatingly, it’s turning the tragic fact that women are not as strong as men, and all that flows from that, into a nameless but debilitating disadvantage for men. “You’re not physically at our mercy, we are physically at your mercy! Ow ow ow Mom she’s hitting me, she has an axe, she’s going to kill me!!”
Men put on skirts and lipstick and take everything women have, and then scream about being unsafe. You couldn’t make it up.
A little OT, but I just read Backlash a couple weeks ago (speaking of backlash). Published in 1991, it’s still relevant today, despite Susan Faludi’s apologetic attitude toward trans issues today (her father underwent “sex reassignment” surgery). After reading the book, I would have thought she would be critical of males thinking they could become actual females, but apparently not. Not sure if I want to read In The Darkroom, a story about her father’s “transition” but maybe there’s some insight to be had. It’s probably better than Will Ferrell’s self indulgent film about his friend’s “transition.” I’m definitely not watching that.
Actually, Phillips does have some reason to fear for her safety; because the invitation to Joyce could provoke a terroristic attack. After all, trans activists (unlike skeptics) really do indulge in hyperbolic threats and violence.
they have mistaken comfort for safety. And by “comfort” I mean “never having their ideas challenged”
Thank Dog for Louise Adler, book publisher (Melbourne University Publishing and Hachette Australia), Director of the Adelaide Writers’ Week, and all round good person.
Last year there were demands for writers to be excluded for their views on the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Gaza wars. A major sponsor withdrew funding, another publisher, Jewish* Morry Schwarz, claimed “Adler had invited authors of hate speech”.
Adler’s response was “I won’t dignify that with a response.
“You have to think what is behind the outrage? Why do we not have space for people who have dissenting views to actually articulate them?”
Some women really do have balls. :-)
*Only mentioned in light of the fact that Adler is also Jewish and the child of holocaust survivors.
https://2024.adelaidefestival.com.au/writers-week/
They are terrified of facing challenge, because they know there is no coherent, rational support for the claim that ‘Trans women are women’. But if they don’t profess to believe it, their ‘friends’ will turn on them and call them ‘bigots’, and worse.