Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

In what ways do WPUK, a group of volunteer women, have more power than either the BNP, Hearts of Oak or ADF international UK?

Well the BNP have 26 members and zero legitimacy. Hearts of Oak - not sure they even have members? No one ever heard of them until they turned up at Posie's event, so clearly Standing for Women have more power than they do. ADF likewise, no one hear ever heard of them until feminists started speaking about them.

In what way do you think these groups have more power than WPUK @Shinyredbicycle?

Setting aside differences isn't an equitable thing though, if one party has more power than the other. It's using the resources of the less powerful party to shore up the resources of the more powerful, who are the ultimate winners.

It doesn't need to be equitable it just needs to be beneficial for both parties.

Kara Dansky and KJK have both appeared on Tucker Carlson. In terms of who used whose resources I think they won.

I hope not (don't think she is).

What a nasty, unproductive little backwater they have made for themselves there.

Hearts of Oak is a tiny fringe group with little credibility, and most people have never heard of them. They have no real access to the government or party system.

I would say that WPUK is likely far more influential, has more access to people with political power, and far more social credibility.

This seems to be part of the larger pseudo-marxist thinking that can only envisage relations in terms of oppressive power structures.

Which is the background of gender ideology.

Which is possibly why JB and others like her find themselves in a conundrum - a movement that tackles GI in a holistic way challenges that paradigm, which they depend upon for their worldview.

That's how this part of the discussion started. A discussion about women working with groups with more power, including the power to oppress them. That's what social power is.

Should TERFS unite with the right?

In what ways do WPUK, a group of volunteer women, have more power than either the BNP, Hearts of Oak or ADF international UK?

That's a POV, but one that I think has very little to do with the realities of childbirth or childcare for many women.

One factor in this might be JB's attitude to motherhood.

unherd.com/2022/07/why-i-didnt-want-children/

I don't think she's selfish for not wanting children and I agree that all of us who have chosen to have children have done so for basically selfish reasons.

I don't think she hates children and I think deliberately deciding not to have children is a brilliant choice that opens up a lot of freedom in life, especially for women.

But she's only interested in mothers and children if they are victims in some way and she has some really mean attitudes towards middle class mothers:

As a campaigner against all forms of violence against women and girls, my work affects more children than you can cram into a four-bedroom Georgian terrace.

I think she just doesn't understand motherhood.

She doesn't understand the timescale of 'MY child has ONE childhood and ONE adolescence and they're happening NOW and there's no going back later to fix things.'

Mine are late 20's and I'm so glad they just missed this shit but for mothers with children now, yes the house is on fire and their children are inside.

She doesn't understand the lengths mothers will go to, to protect our children, or how fiercely we will fight for them.

She doesn't understand that left-wing feminist approval will not likely be a priority for most mothers in this fight.

According to unicef there are 14,357,470 children in the UK. The vast majority of them have mothers who will do whatever they can to keep them safe.

That's a lot of mothers.

which feminist groups have oppressive power over others?

????????

What?

Yes, exactly.

I can't see that feminists have power over any of those groups tbh.

I think this is a bit of a weird formulation, to say 'power over' - when the original discussion was about which group has more power in society.

WPUK has more power than the BNP. It has more power than Hearts of Oak, and the ADF in the UK.

You seem to be changing the terms of the discussion to something else. You can do that, but please acknowledge it, otherwise it's changing the goalposts.

I don’t think that is what the other poster was talking about - oppressive power.

Leaving aside which are the small, fringe groups and which are the main because that's surely a matter of perspective, which feminist groups have oppressive power over others?

Which groups would be compromising their politics and using their resources counter productively by working with another, more powerful group which fundamentally have completely different ends in mind?

Yes, both women touched on this 'working with' question, which is an important one.

As this and many other threads have shown, one woman's pragmatism is another woman's compromise too far.

I think the comparator was more that controversial fringe groups with small a membership base don’t have the mainstream clout of feminism.

I can't see that feminists have power over any of those groups tbh.

Gender ideology is an acute problem because of the chronic problem of male violence not rather than.

It would never have taken hold if there wasn't already entrenched oppression of women and violence towards women and girls.

If women/feminists have even equal power, one 'no' would have been enough.

The pay gap is driven by child rearing only if you take it as given that jobs should be packaged in that way. Why for example do law firms compete on availability rather than other dimensions of quality. Its the invisible women mechanism again

I think that was also from the Triggernomatry interview.

Personally I am not that concerned about the pay gap because I think it is largely down to childbearing, and I don't think the answer to women's issues is to make them give up having and caring for children.

What struck me most in that particular interview was almost the first thing she said - she got into feminism because she went looking for lesbians.

I don't think she has a very serious interest in building a society, as such. So the political process isn't actually that important.

I can't remember if she says it in this debate but I have heard her say she's not interested in the pay gap for rich women as they have comfy lives anyway.

I can appreciate that it's not her focus, and it is obviously less urgent that women suffering violence.

However, the fact that women are consistently underpaid is because women are just not seen as valuable as men are. So it's really the same problem.

Yes - excellent post.

My impression is that JB is only interested in feminism which is specifically about rescuing women from violent male perpetrators.

Any feminism that doesn’t have that potential is a bit “meh” for her.

I remember when Invisible Women came out, she said it was a tour de force, or some such thing. Then recently, when she was on triggernometry, she said that she wasn’t interested in feminism about whether women have safety gear that fits them - she even said - I think - “it’s not a matter of life and death” - when it literally is a matter of life and death if a female police officer gets stabbed under her stab-proof vest, because it doesn’t fit.

I also think she is pretty territorial and petty, which is really confusing when she seems to have such noble aspirations.That’s why the explanations don’t hold up. It’s because they aren’t really her actual motivations.

The "other group" I would say is the "far right". Feminism clearly has more credibility than whatever it is we are meant to think of when people use that phrase, that's the whole point of using it. To contrast the goodies with the obvious baddies.

The fact that usually it isn't any kind of far right that is being discussed notwithstanding.

I don't find the explanations in JBs articles any more clear-sighted than her explanations here, I don't think that's the issue.

It's petrifying, isn't it?

The sheer scale of the problem is horrifying.

In Norway, a woman was threatened with jail for three years for identifying a man as a man.

Talking normally, about reality, is risking incarceration for women.

Surely not? I know JB can be petty and mean but surely she wouldn't waste her time like that?