Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Near-total control.
In the press article, my experience of abuse by GCs and their far-right allies is not represented (and I did describe this; some of it was also read out to me). I assume this is also the case for other trans inclusive feminists who were interviewed, as the account is one-sided.
Pardon me if I fail to believe you. First, I have grave doubts about your ability to distinguish “abuse” from “criticism.” It’s a natural response to the transperbolic claim that “misgendering” is “actual violence,” and that your critics are hell-bent on trans genocide. Please. Second, the whole “far-right allies” thing is an immediate indication that yours is not a good faith appraisal of your critics, many of whom are left-leaning women.
You’re trying to hide the striking asymmetry between the actions of feminists and genderists. How many trans meetings have been harassed by threatening mobs of feminist activists? How many genderist professors have been hounded out of their teaching positions by feminist students and their allies? How many public gatherings of genderists have been greeted with bullying, intimidating feminists dressed in black, barring access to their chosen gathering place? None. How do I know this? Because I would have heard about it. We all would have. If even one of these counterfactual things had transpired, it would have been reported worldwide by captured media outlets. It would have been a front page, first item story if feminists had even once been half as threatening and intimidating to genderist gatherings and academics as trans activists have consistently been to women defending their rights and boundaries. Instead the actual threats, intimidation and violence have all been in the other direction. You’ll spin this as legitimate self-defence of a terrorized, embattled, marginalized community in the face of imminent genocide. Besides, those women are all evil, far-right bigots on the wrong side of history, so they get what they deserve. Right?
How did this situation become so entrenched so fast? There was certainly nothing like it in connection with feminism and its critics, was there? Opposition and emotion, yes, but surely not such systematic and intense vilification and ostracism? (Shall I call it V&O for short?) I don’t think feminism has ever had that kind of power or invoked that kind of loyalty.
This. This still blows my mind. Women have never been able to get the police to take rape seriously, but they’ll go all out against limericks.
Unlike feminism, its political subject is not female people but rather all those subjected to gender oppression – a concept that is redefined to emphasise lack of choice and affirmation relating to gender identity.
But how is this supposed concern for “all those subjected to gender oppression” working out in real life? Again there is a striking imbalance in how all this high-falutin’ theory is applied in society at large. Also a striking imbalance in who it is that bears the burden and pays the price of this application of gender ideology.
We’ve all seen examples posted here on B&W of the ongoing, concerted erasure of the word “woman” in a broad range of organizations and institutions. All in the interests of “inclusivity”. But is there an equivalent, concerted effort to erase the word men in all those same arenas? No. Only women are subjected to this treatment.
At the same time that “woman” is being banished from institutional vocabularies, women’s single sex spaces have effectively been turned into mixed sex spaces. Toilets. Prisons. Rape crisis centres. Hospital wards. Sports teams. Human sexually dimorphic physiology means that men, on average, represent a physical threat to most women in a way that does not happen in the reverse direction. The cover that gender self ID provides to potential sexual predators is one that endangers women disproportionately, if not exclusively. If we replace “sex” with “gender” as the exclusive locus of legitimate concern, than this lopsided cost and damage are rendered invisible. The underlying explanation of sex discrimination is no longer available or allowed under a regime of gender primacy. If the category of “woman” is redefined to include men, then the concept of women being a sex class with its own needs and interests becomes incoherent, and can no longer be used as the basis for defending anything exclusively “female.”
This is not an issue of equivalent importance to men, as, traditionally, under patriarchy, they had amassed most power to themselves to start with. Women have had to take power from them. Men were the norm, the standard, the model. Trans identifying females are not a threat to the male power base. The definition of “man” is not on the table. Never has been, never will be. We are not being erased, or colonized. Gay men are not being attacked for “genital fetishism” or “sexual apartheid” to anywhere near the same degree that lesbians are. You never hear anyone make the claim that “we’ve always entered your spaces,” or “women will always force their way to gain access to men.” Yet both “arguments” are made against attempts to retain women’s single sex spaces. Men’s boundaries are ultimately secure against women, and always will be, because of male advantages in physical strength.
In actual practice, women are the clear losers in the gender game. The invasion is unidirectional, and has nothing to do with”equality”, “fairness” and “inclusion.” No amount of gender studies degrees can erase or sugar-coat this truth, whatever statements, petitions, and apologies emanate from these useful idiots in academia. How they see this as “justice” is beyond me. The only way they will be on the “right side of history” is if they’re the ones writing it.
