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Patrick Strudwick on why feminism should include TW

107 replies

Macareaux · 22/12/2018 10:21

Feminist academics championing trans rights.

www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/meet-the-feminist-academics-championing-trans-rights

OP posts:
TalkingintheDark · 23/12/2018 14:53

Femenist is a very useful term Talkinginthedark!
Thanks!

Very kind of you GCSocScientist but the credit is all ChewyLouie’s Grin

ChattyLion · 23/12/2018 14:37

I wonder how this group of virtue-signalling moral authoritarians feel about their comments in Buzzfeed being lauded by aspiring Conservative MPs like Sue Pascoe at Channel 4?

Particularly- given the academics’ ‘concern’ Hmm cited in this Buzzfeed article that gender critical women are politically ‘right-wing’ or that gender critical concerns have been adopted recently by ‘right wingers’ Hmm

On here, lots of us have talked about how many of us have been Labour voters or activists all our lives.. but now ALL the political parties we’d ever be able to vote for have mindlessly adopted TWAW and have compounded that by busily and actively closing their ears to women’s concerns..Sad

SugarmouseHouse · 23/12/2018 13:10

I await the day when the media publishes articles on why the Black Lives Matter movement and other causes that focus on the discrimination against people of colour should include and centre white people. I suspect that, rightfully, I'll have a very long wait.

ChewyLouie · 23/12/2018 12:36

The trans cult makes as much sense as The Monster Raving Loony Party. The only differences being the rest of us aren’t forced to comply with OMRLP demands and their manifesto isn’t taught in schools as gospel.

Jaxhog · 23/12/2018 12:26

“Trans people have the right to define their own identities and live as the person that they are.”

This is fine until you then usurp other people's rights e.g. the right to feel safe , the right to be a biological woman etc. But then we still have millions of people who are creationists, or who think the world is flat. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised. What's so wrong, is that autorities take them seriously and give them money to spread their 'message'. Or worse, to damage innocent children.

PlatypusPie · 23/12/2018 12:21

*It seems for too many of these supposed academics, feminism is purely an intellectual thing, and not a real lived experience. It is as if the history of the women's movement is a new thing to them.

It is depressing how quickly the knowledge and the memory of the gains and struggles have been submerged under complacency.*

^ This ^ X 1000. It seems to be that word salad, tick box jargon is taken as truth with zero academic rigour. I am shocked at how fast a particular theory of gender has taken root, having the effrontery to comment on womenhood without centering women. I start to twitch at the words 'inclusive' and' intersectionality' now, because they have become so twisted.

Justhadathought · 23/12/2018 12:09

I'm dumfounded by these assertions, by the likes of Peter Tatchell, that feminism has always been about just middle class white women. It most certainly has not. What unites women is not their skin colour or their social class, but their biological sex and the conditions of their life on account of that.

I, for one was always deeply aware of the double binds on women on account of their ethnicity and culture. When at college, aged 16, my Sikh friend ran away from home because of the threat of an arranged marriage. Her father would come into college to hunt her down, and threatening to kill her other family members if she did not return home.

It seems for too many of these supposed academics, feminism is purely an intellectual thing, and not a real lived experience. It is as if the history of the women's movement is a new thing to them.

It is depressing how quickly the knowledge and the memory of the gains and struggles have been submerged under complacency.

Mariotta · 23/12/2018 12:07

She and her fellow ivory - towered academics' witterings are almost entirely irelevant to woking class/ non elite socio-economic groups.

If we're doing "check your privilege" (which I normally deplore) she might try taking a look at herself

This!

Justhadathought · 23/12/2018 12:01

It is truly shocking who gets to call themselves a professor these days. Standards are most definitely slipping right throughout the education system. Too many people going to university who would not have got in in previous times; and too many of those gaining top class degrees and then going on to do PHDs.

Juells · 23/12/2018 11:54

Oooh, great new word: Femenist.

Juells · 23/12/2018 11:52

Mariotta
I can't even be arsed to read it, honestly. I already know just to say do fuck off, Patrick.

^^ this. And the bandwagon horse you rode in on.

Ereshkigal · 23/12/2018 11:31

She and her fellow ivory - towered academics' witterings are almost entirely irelevant to woking class/ non elite socio-economic groups.

Indeed, Marguerita.

Trinity333 · 23/12/2018 10:39

If I had presented what amounts to a variety of subjective opinions and no actual solid evidence to back up arguments it would not have been accepted when I was an undergraduate. We were expected to show a rigorous analysis of different viewpoint and argue convincingly with evidence for our conclusions. I despair that people are actually paying to be taught by these individuals who are pushing ideology rather than facilitating learning.

userschmoozer · 23/12/2018 09:59

As a sociologist, does Emejulu have any comment to make about strict patriarchal cultures and how they affect women?

MargueritaPink · 23/12/2018 09:56

Except Emejulu is not baffled at all. For her, many feminists who oppose trans rights also ignore the rights of black, Asian, and other ethnic minority women. These exclusions are related, she said. “This has always been the dark heart of white, feminist politics: a jealous guarding of the boundaries of who gets to be a woman.”

That is complete rubbish obviously but I note she omits any reference to one very significant characteristic- class.

She and her fellow ivory - towered academics' witterings are almost entirely irelevant to woking class/ non elite socio-economic groups.

If we're doing "check your privilege" (which I normally deplore) she might try taking a look at herself.

GCSocScientist · 22/12/2018 23:15

Femenist is a very useful term Talkinginthedark!
Thanks!

ChewyLouie · 22/12/2018 23:01

Thank you TalkingintheDark 😀 As far as I’m concerned femenists do not speak for feminists, they can stuff their marginalising of common sense and decency where the sun doesn’t shine.

TalkingintheDark · 22/12/2018 22:53

“Femenist”, I like it, ChewyLouie! Exactly what they are.

TalkingintheDark · 22/12/2018 22:51

we know that trans women are more vulnerable to violence, harassment, and everyday abuse than other groups of women

As you said, Ereshkigal, we don’t know anything of the sort. Absolute bullshit. Look at the fucking stats, FFS. Look at our own lives.

Presumably this is another one of those “trans sex workers in Brazil are killed at alarming rates so ALL males who identify as trans are at similarly high risk” bollock-brained “arguments”.

ChewyLouie · 22/12/2018 22:44

Emejulu is championing her own personal experience of racism, this is not exclusive to feminism. Where is her evidence to support her statement that white feminists ignore the rights of BAME? Cheap, easy shots.
She is talking femenist bollocks.
A femenist is someone who purports to be a feminist but centres men. Since everyone else seems to making up terms ( cis, deadnaming) so am I !

TalkingintheDark · 22/12/2018 22:42

Fucking load of old shite.

What is the fucking point of all these departments of Sociology and Gender Studies peopled by academics who are incapable of even a smidgeon of truth or reason?

Fucking unpardonable dishonesty and industrial scale internalised misogyny. Feminists, my arse. I am appalled.

GCSocScientist · 22/12/2018 22:22

Emejulu, like her other third wave feminist colleagues, have surveyed nothing at all. They don’t do surveys, or data or any external validation. They are busy self-IDing themselves on the right side of history.

Bubonicpanic · 22/12/2018 21:45

I wonder which white feminists she has surveyed about their attitudes to bame women to establish that they ignore them? Or in fact if they are jealously guarding against them? Is that the same as ignoring. I don't really know how this manifests itself in reality. I hear this theory but the real life examples never materialise.

Is this like setting up a new maternity policy but insisting only white women are eligible?

merrymouse · 22/12/2018 21:35

"“The goal,” she said, referring to feminism throughout history, “was always to say that biology was not destiny because that was precisely the argument that people used to keep women in private spaces: that women with their ‘smaller brains’ were ‘prone to fainting’ and are not fit to be in public spaces, such as politics and the workplace.”"

She is talking about gender here, not biology. For good or bad, biology is actually destiny for women. Women are excluded from politics and workplaces because they have babies, (without access to contraception many, many babies) and they are excluded from some manual jobs because they are comparatively smaller and weaker than men.

Luckily in a country like the UK in 2018 we do have access to contraception and fewer and fewer jobs rely on physical strength, but there is no reason to assume we can take this for granted. Even with a high degree of control over fertility, women still bear children and many jobs don't accommodate that.

Except Emejulu is not baffled at all. For her, many feminists who oppose trans rights also ignore the rights of black, Asian, and other ethnic minority women. These exclusions are related, she said. “This has always been the dark heart of white, feminist politics: a jealous guarding of the boundaries of who gets to be a woman.”

Can never understand the supposedly 'woke' argument that excluding a black women is exactly the same as excluding a white man from the concept of being a woman.