Glosswitch's response to Rebecca Solnit's stupid Guardian article

I have no problem listening to the arguments of someone whose ideas I don't agree with. I'm confident that either their arguments won't convince me, or that if they do, it's because they're right.

Yes, me too.

Oops. I see Royal Corgi has a better memory than mine and answered the question, with link.

If it was a sincere belief I think she'd want to understand why people who agree with her on other things don't believe it.

God yes. An unwillingness to listen and understand where someone is coming from, speaks of a fear that you will be persuaded by their argument and it is absolutely essential that you don't agree with them.

I have no problem listening to the arguments of someone whose ideas I don't agree with. I'm confident that either their arguments won't convince me, or that if they do, it's because they're right.

Ah San Francisco, which has such a huge homelessness problem that people are pooing in the streets. Such progressiveness. Wow. I can see why Solnit is so proud.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/san-francisco-poop-problem-inequality-homelessness

To add to Eresh's point - their actions demonstrating they know very well who's in which category is clear evidence that gendered socialisation is based on phenotype, not chromosomes.

I don't think it's that simple. Their actions bely that they see women and MTFs as the same. They may have performed mental gymnastics in their brain to redefine sex and gender, but they know the difference perfectly well when it matters, as I said.

I think there are people who believe it. Some of them have accepted the idea that being a man or woman is about gender rather than sex, and they are entirely separate things.

Another group, which Solnit seems to fall into, has bought into the claim that we now know more about biological sex and there are people who do not fall into clear categories the way we used to believe. That is, they believe in some biological basis that makes trans-men or trans-women fall into that category.

I think it's interesting that you say it's not sincerely held. Does Rebecca Solnit sincerely believe that trans women are women? My guess is she refuses to think about it. In that sense it's sincerely held because she is trying very hard not to think through the argument logically because then she might turn into one of those nasty TERFs. "Strategic ignorance" is a very good term for it

Yes that's exactly what I think. If it was a sincere belief I think she'd want to understand why people who agree with her on other things don't believe it. I think very very few people actually do believe it, in the sense that whatever pomo definition they go with they do know full well MTF trans people are different to women and who they can smear, silence, ignore and push around.

Meghan Murphy has also written a good piece about it for Feminist Current:

www.feministcurrent.com/2020/08/17/what-happens-when-women-give-up/

Although they are rarer than they used to be - you find them less often now among some groups that used to have quite a respectable intellectual tradition - though I think that's true of more secular people now as well. I tend to think it comes out of the same problems in education that lead people to these weird moral orthodoxies that are without much foundation that they can discuss.

I agree with that analysis Goosefoot.

I doubt deep down she believes it in every case because it is preposterous, but it's just such an American (and British ofc but there are more dissenters on the left here) leftist credo that she never questions it, and never gets past it. That's why you can't reason with these people. You can't convince them to change their mind with facts, because it's not a sincere belief that they could be persuaded by evidence to change, and they don't really care about any negative ramifications. What they are concerned about is being seen to maintain their position.

Occasionally you do get through to one of these people that all is not ok, and in my experience they often will blame you personally for that, if you put doubt in their mind or their sense of fairness or conscience bothers them. Because that way leads to being ostracised and possibly punished by your woke peers. And they are all scared of that, having seen what's happened to others.

@Goosefoot and @RoyalCorgi I agree. To me though when you say "x are women" you have to define "woman". So all comes down to that definition. The question "what is a woman?" If it is posed to a TRA it is avoided amidst accusations of hate speech etc. But the fact remains if you say "x are women" you have to define women. You cannot as I have heard argued say "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman", it is a tautology, making no logical sense.

Wth Solnit and many like her, the basic problem is that in these discussions, they beg the question - their assumption is that TWAW, so everything is seen through that lens. If you try and say something like transwomen retain male patterns of violence, it's as if you said that women with third nipples are more violent and therefor should be treated as men. The idea that the point is that transwomen are male, and we have separate sexed venues for people for a reason, doesn't even get a look.

Sloppy thinking, but it is extremely difficult to argue with sloppy thinkers because they don't see it.

Well, what a load of sanctimonious crap (withdrawing from the PEN awards, I mean).
They must have such terrible headaches, with their haloes being so tight.

Brilliant piece, 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 to Victoria.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the passing reference in the Solnit piece (of shite) to the fact the last lesbian bar in SF closed in 2015?

So the world's “queerest” city no longer has a single bar just for lesbians.

And I think we can all guess how that came about. Much as we know how Michfest died at around the same time.

Funny how Solnit isn’t a whit dismayed by that, doesn’t even stop to look at that as an event, despite her outward embracing of all things “queer”.

Seems to me like internalised misogyny so intense you could fry eggs on it.

A great riposte. I was heartened by the fact the comments on Facebook and Twitter mostly thought it was bullshit too.

So this independence spouting is all a load of tosh. Who'd a thought

Then she was a, to me surprising, disappointment after the Charlie Hebdo terrorism.

What did she say about Charlie Hebdo? (I tried googling, but perhaps I'm doing it badly).

Interesting re funding. Considering how the "why don't women like us" twitter thread, it's been wasted. They've driven women away but they've also offended the tra lobby by providing space to people like Suzanne Moore. Lose lose.

Excellent. Thanks for posting.