The wrong kind of union
The Mancunion reports on the censorious Student Union, quoting from a public Facebook post that is no longer available on Facebook:
In a blog post on her official Facebook page, Women’s Officer Jess Lishak said: “The proposed society event requested to invite two highly controversial and offensive speakers; radical feminist and famous transphobe Julie Bindel, and journalist and ‘men’s rights activist’ Milo Yiannopoulos.”
What a foul way to talk – “famous transphobe.”
“We unanimously decided to not allow Julie Bindel to be invited to speak at an official SU event. We also approved the request for Milo Yiannopoulos on the provisos that, should the event go ahead, there will be extra security put in place for everyone’s safety.
“Julie Bindel is a journalist and activist who’s been on a crusade against the trans community, and trans women in particular, for many years. She abhorrently argues that trans women should be excluded from women-only spaces, whether that be through feminist organising or women’s sexual and domestic violence services.”
She says she “refuse[s] to allow our campus to be poisoned by this woman’s tireless campaign to deny trans people their basic human rights and… to subject our students to a campus that puts Bindel’s wish to spread and incite hatred above the safety and inclusion of our trans members.
“This is not about shutting down conversations or denying free speech; this is about keeping our students safe,” she says. “If this were about silencing people we happen to disagree with or avoiding uncomfortable conversations, we would be denying the application for Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.
“The difference in these two cases is inciting harm to a group of our students. Yiannopoulos is very careful to criticise feminist thoughts, theories and methods of research or statistics rather than calling for active discrimination against women like Bindel does to trans women.”
You have got to be kidding. Yiannopoulos incites actual harassment of actual women on Twitter every day. Julie Bindel doesn’t do anything resembling that.
In 2013, Bindel dropped out of an event organised by the Manchester Debating Union on pornography after receiving a number of death threats.
She came under continual fire after writing an article in 2004 expressing doubt about the experiences of trans individuals titled ‘Gender benders, beware‘.
She is included on the NUS’s no platform list, alongside George Galloway, Julian Assange, and any member of the BNP.
So the national Student Union has an official list? And Bindel is on it?
That’s appalling.
A trans woman commented on the Manchester SU post in support of Bindel.
I’m going to go out on a limb as a transwoman. I’ve met Julie at an event and engaged with her at length and I’m totally comfortable and happy doing so. I actually don’t find her views transphobic at all – women centred, and gender critical of course, but not transphobic. I’ve learnt a lot from Julie and women like her, and this no-platforming, i.e. censorship is totally Orwellian.
So is that comment also “abhorrent”?
Notice the concern with purity? She doesn’t want her campus poisoned. Interesting choice of words.
Anyway, this is such bullshit. Bindel has never “campaigned to deny trans people their basic human rights.” An opinion that trans women should not be included in every “women only” space is not a campaign to deny anybody’s basic human rights. Words, how work they do?
This, too, is bullshit. Yiannopoulos is a hateful clown, but he doesn’t threaten anyone’s physical safety.
What a bunch of childish, self-important wankers.
HELP HELP I FEEL UNSAFE
Lady Mondegreen
An opinion that trans women should not be included in every “women only” space is not a campaign to deny anybody’s basic human rights
Thats splitting hairs. The view is problematic even if it is not a campaign.
I beg your pardon? Saying Julie Bindel is not in fact campaigning to deny anybody’s basic human rights is “splitting hairs”? The hell it is.
An opinion expressed in writing with the aim to convincing others that it is the right one and should be implemented is not that far off from a campaign – the degree of organization is the only differentiation.
I find the view expressed on the same level as someone like Huckabee saying gay men should be excluded from locker rooms.
Julie Bindel absolutely is transphobic.
“In a world where equality between men and women was reality, transsexualism would not exist. The diagnosis of GD needs to be questioned and challenged. We live in a society that, on the whole, respects the human rights of others. Accepting a situation where the surgeon’s knife and lifelong hormonal treatment are replacing the acceptance of difference is a scandal. Sex-change surgery is unnecessary mutilation. Using human rights laws to normalise trans-sexualism has resulted in a backward step in the feminist campaign for gender equality. Perhaps we should give up and become men.” (“The Operation That Can Ruin Your Life”, 2009)
Her claims about the rampant “trans cabal” differs strikingly little from the frothing about “the gay agenda” of the far-right wing. She is particularly notorious for a 2004 Guardian article called “Gender Benders Beware.” It’s true that she apologised “unreservedly for the tone and content” of that article in 2011 (despite the content of it being identical to just about everything else she ever writes about transgender people), but more recently than that, her response to accusations of transphobia was to double down on it in a manner much like that Mancheeze person commenting here earlier about “six foot tall dudes in dresses”:
“I’m transphobic, of course, because I suggest that men with beards and penises shouting “shut up, you transphobe” at women, “you’ve misgendered me”, might be a bit Nineteen Eighty-Four.” (Spiked Online, 2015)
Still…I have to scoff at Milo Yiannopolous being allowed a platform, if the stated reason for disinviting Bindel is true. That’s actually ridiculous. He is every bit as bad as she is if not even worse, going so far as to out and “dead name” trans people against their wishes in his Breitbart hit pieces, not to mention crap like this:
“Have they cut it off yet? The penis attached to traitorous transsexual Chelsea Manning, I mean.”
“Transgenderism ought to be stigmatised in the way cancer is; patients must want to get better.”
The 2004 Guardian piece (which is all the background I’ve read) is certainly worthy of sharp rebuke. Bindel herself has issued public, and clear, apology for the tone and content.
So, transfolk have perfectly legitimate reasons to groan, or load up their rhetorical slingshots. BUT STILL, compared to Yiannopoulous? Internal purity policing eats progressive movements alive. Ideological purity becomes an ideal so all-consuming that the Pure will become servants of their REAL enemies in pursuit of the last trace of Impure Thinking in their own tribe.
Richard Vinen’s book: ‘The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation’ details the way that, faced with an existential threat, the citizens and leaders of a major culture and nation descended into an orgy of back-stabbing and betrayal. Communists, royalists, republicans, catholics. All lined up to serve their German masters. Just so they could get the knife between the ribs of their ‘impure’ neighbors.
^ She still doubled down on the offensive nonsense after the apology (like Dawkins apologising for “Dear Muslima” but then going ahead and calling western feminists petty for complaining about “inappropriate touching” by the water cooler just a short time later). The 2004 piece is also not the only horrid article she’s written – just the one she’s been criticised the most for.
I’ve also got serious reservations with bigotry being described with words like “impurity.” It feels like it trivialises it, to me. Am I the purity police if I also criticise Warren Farrell and Paul Elam for their misogynistic views? What about if a fellow feminist started spouting highly racist sentiments – am I the purity police then for calling that person out for it?
Argue that no-platforming anyone at all for their views (no matter how vile) is potentially contrary to the intended purpose of a university as an open learning environment? Okay.
Argue that the student group is being highly and irrationally hypocritical (and possibly sexist) for allowing Yiannopoulos but banning Bindel? Absolutely.
Argue that people are being backstabbing impurity sniffers for standing up against a feminist, one of “their tribe”, for calling trans people “mutilated” and saying sex reassignment surgery should not be available to them? I can’t really agree.
@Falcon, Bindel does think SRS is mutilation, and my understanding is she has argued that in an ideal world (one without gender stereotypes), nobody would find it necessary.
Trans people may very well hate those opinions.
But those opinions do not amount to “campaigning against human rights.”
If you have a link to JB saying trans people should not be allowed SRS, please share. From reading Wikipedia I know she thinks the psychiatric gatekeeping should be better, and once championed a de-transitioning young person who felt that their psychiatrist should never have approved them for surgery.