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

Same.

Both these women are ace.

I would just let to say that, although Julie Bindel pisses me off sometimes, I can never stay mad at her for long.

Has anything like that ever happened in the UK?

The only thing I can think of is hiring Paul Conrathe for the Keira Bell case. He has a reputation for ADF type cases. He represented Heidi Crowter and Maire Lea-Wilson in the recent abortion case.

I make no moral judgment of who someone hires to represent them in court. If I've chipped in for a crowdfunder then I hope they hire whoever is most likely to win. (I also hope they won't be profligate with my money and do something like hire three top barristers (two of them KC) while still at the letters stage.)

That means that lesbians would have to not challenge/ignore/go along with beliefs and practices that dehumanise them in various ways. They'd be tolerated freaks when they were useful, then untolerated freaks when not.

Not really. It's possible to work on single issues with people you disagree with on almost everything else. The trick is for all parties to acknowledge their differences and mutually agree to set them aside to do this work together on this one thing. Then everyone can go back to being appalled by each other.

Not everyone will be willing or able to work like that and that's fine, people's personal boundaries are their own to make. But it's not a terrible or disgraceful way of working and it can be very effective. Women who are working this way should not be trashed for it.

JB's point about 'freaks' was that if issues like single sex spaces and the medical transitioning of children are fought as single issue campaigns they ignore broader feminist understandings and criticism of the extent of harms caused by male violence towards women including the hate directed towards lesbians.

The point is that surely that you agree with others to fight it as a single issue campaign to include the broader feminist voice in a discussion that will happen with or without it, and so you don't have to agree with them on other issues? It's single issue to avoid the need to "work with" them more generally.

That means that lesbians would have to not challenge/ignore/go along with beliefs and practices that dehumanise them in various ways. They'd be tolerated freaks when they were useful, then untolerated freaks when not.

Can't you see this is symmetrical? The people you're ranting about would have to not challenge/ignore/go along with your beliefs and practices that dehumanise them in various ways too!

I still have the sense that I don't really know what we're talking or disagreeing about anyway, because I don't really know what we mean by "work with". KJK gets a hell of a lot of stick despite being mind-bogglingly independent and never doing anything I'd define as "working with".

The only example I've ever seen where that seems like an applicable phrase for for me was the WoLF / Heritage Foundation / ADF crossover in the USA. Has anything like that ever happened in the UK?

Having finished the whole thing now, I feel that I am probably one of those kinds of feminists she would be disappointed in, in that I have the class analysis of sex and male violence, etc, but I am diverging from the lesbian separatist/political ideas which I, starry eyed, accepted in the past, but which underpin her view.

This ‘trans’ issue, like JB, I totally see as a movement of male sexual entitlement aided and abetted by handmaidens of the patriarchy, but I am coming to realise that a lot of the radical/separatist/political lesbian ideology around the nature of men and boys, and around motherhood and nuclear families, is pretty far off the mark, in my experiential reality.

I suppose Helen Joyce wasn’t really there to discuss her concept of market economics. I agree that JB seemed to take it for granted that you’d already been walked through the steps at some point.

JB's point about 'freaks' was that if issues like single sex spaces and the medical transitioning of children are fought as single issue campaigns they ignore broader feminist understandings and criticism of the extent of harms caused by male violence towards women including the hate directed towards lesbians.

If success is measured solely in terms of single sex spaces being reclaimed and it not being permissible to involve children in body and life changing medical procedures, that maintains every other structure and mechanism of patriarchial oppression. That was the status quo in the UK, what, 15 year ago and while undoubtedly better than the situation today, women and girls were still prostituted, raped oppressed and exploited in a million different ways.

These aims are shared by various homophobic groups, on the right, left and/or with religious convictions (obvs not all) who, at best, regard gay men and lesbians as freaks of nature. That means that lesbians would have to not challenge/ignore/go along with beliefs and practices that dehumanise them in various ways. They'd be tolerated freaks when they were useful, then untolerated freaks when not.

Yes, some lesbians are fine with this, in the same way that some immigrants are happy to work with or within anti-immigration groups.

JB can't stand most of the Labour party btw. She does jump about a bit in her arguments, I think because she's thought about and spoken about it all so much that she forgets that they're new to some people. I'd recommend reading some of her books, articles, or listening to her podcasts if you're interested in more context.

I felt the same about Helen Joyce. I've read and loved 'Trans' but her concept of market economics that don't rely on some social groups being oppressed was a novel one to me, and not one that she fully explained.

What on earth does Julie know about what the right want? She isolates herself from conservative women completely, otherwise she might tripped over many, many successful female politicians, business owners and corporate leaders. A lot more than on the effing left, that's for sure.

Conservative values are about taking responsibility for your own success, and yet she believes conservative women want men to take responsibility for women. She's so out of touch, she's the perfect illustration of the red wall Labour party defeat.

I am just watching this now, but I am finding it a bit frustrating that JB seems to be missing logical steps i her args - she’ll throw something in without spelling it out. She talked about being freaks - bit of a curveball ? What was that ? Soon after says that the right want women in the kitchen, brothels, etc, without explaining how the left are any different. She seems to be arguing that women shouldn’t work with men, not that the ‘terfs’ shouldn’t work with the right…

I can't see how lesbians can do that with out and out homophobes, not least because this is what would reduce them to the status of being 'freaks' as she explained in the discussion.

I'm not sure how lesbians collaborating with homophobes would make them "freaks"? But you also have to consider the other side in these collaborations - if homphobes are willing to collaborate with lesbians, maybe they're less homophobic than they seem? Or maybe they feel the goal is important enough to put beliefs to one side?

I think it's fine for any group or individual to say they won't work with certain other groups or individuals. But I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about it that can be applied to everyone. Some lesbians might choose to work with the religious right because it suits their needs to do so, and that's also fine.

I tend to think of it along the lines of the Northern Irish peace process - it was only by "negotiating with terrorists" that peace was finally brokered. If you want to make huge changes then you probably have to work with people with whom you have profound ideological differences. If you want to keep your side "pure" then you will probably have to accept that you won't be able to make the huge changes you want to make.

Pragmatism is practical ways forward that all parties can live with.

I can't see how lesbians can do that with out and out homophobes, not least because this is what would reduce them to the status of being 'freaks' as she explained in the discussion.

JB is very pragmatic about where she is published though, which has certainly amplified the voices of marginalised women. Fortunately, as the left won't.

No, I said it was fair enough for her to choose not to. But pragmatism is what moves political causes forward.

I think that saying that a lesbian should have worked with deeply homophobic groups set on entrenching sex-based gender divisions for pragmatic reasons because they had a similar position on pornography is pretty staggering to be honest.

Well, only if you believe that only left-wing people care about poverty! Isn't that the point HJ was making - that people think the right are morally bad? When in reality, most people on the right care just as much about these kinds of problems, but have a different set of ideas as to how they've arisen and what would solve them.

On the issue of knowing whether people are left-wing or right-wing, there are plenty of left-wing journalists writing for papers like the Mail and the Telegraph, so the fact that HJ was finance editor for the Economist wouldn't necessarily make her right-wing. As for Maya, she worked for a think tank tackling global poverty, which would certainly suggest she was of the left.

But how useful, really? JB described turning down offers of help in her fight against pornography as she didn't feel the organisations offering help had the right motivations. Fair enough, but maybe she would have made more headway had she been able to put those qualms aside. Would it have raised the profile of those organisations? Probably. But maybe it would also have made a difference to that campaign.

I think you have to be pragmatic in politics. You can't lead a political movement based on ideological purity unless you want to become some kind of a cult.

I think where the Real and Actual Feminists get it wrong is that they are fully woke on everything except gender ideology

From the LotR analogy above, it does feel like the hobbitists have a very firm grasp of the way the Shire have been oppressed over the years, and are able to well explain why Sauron has been able to take over the Shire so easily compared to other parts of Middle Earth. Sauron is far from the first bad person coming through the shire.

But yet they are determined to hold on to their own ring of power, as it has proven useful against other opponents.

What FB group? Is JB a member?

I think where the Real and Actual Feminists get it wrong is that they are fully woke on everything except gender ideology. So they are constantly tying themselves in knots and trying to find reasons why it's bad to be for free speech except for when you're talking about this one issue, and why it's fine for JB to go on a speaking tour with a far right loon but not okay for KJK to have a couple of dodgy blokes stand near to her in a park. They're in a muddle because their critique is entirely based around the idea of patriarchy and misogyny, and the fact is that gender ideology isn't just about that at all. Fundamentally it's as Helen described, an attack on reality itself. But Actual Real Feminists are also engaged in attacks on reality when it comes to, say, the idea that some special males can be accepted as women, or that extremist-Muslim hatred of women has nothing to do with the rape gangs in Rochdale etc.

I have noticed that both 'Real' and 'Actual' feminists seem to be a bit hazy on violence towards women when it is women that they don't like. Didn't the fb group victim blame the women being attacked at the Let Women Speak rallies?

And we have certainly seen more than one poster who uses the words 'I am a real/actual feminist' (two or three come to mind immediately) and then effectively dismiss the violence in some way.

I find this very disconcerting. There seems to be such hatred towards other women there.

I think so. JB is right that there are many issues that are very serious that she and others have been campaigning on for years. I respect that and I appreciate it must feel difficult to do all that thankless work and then have shiny new people riding in on a wave of Terven glory. But I think gender ideology is so huge and affects so many people directly, that it's meant more and more people getting involved in the fight who have no campaigning history. Some from a feminist angle, yes, but many from a personal one, a career one, in defence of free speech etc.

I think it would be good for the Real, Actual Feminists to accept that they are just one strand of this particular fight. Their critique is important, but it is not everything. And rather than spending all their time fighting to be leaders, accept that they will have a bigger voice if they fight alongside others.

Yes @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision . Had Helen remained in Ireland she could easily be a cabinet minister or Taoiseach even.

She'd be in one of the conservative parties here of course. Being ferociously articulate and an economist she could explain why nobody can afford a house and emigration is a really good idea.

She'd make it sound perfectly natural too. But ....this gives her a certain advantage wrt the gender issue : she can't be excluded from the 'left'.

As for the wider Idpol issue , I find myself agreeing more with an Irish socialist called Frankie Gaffney. It's a bit of a millstone. A shiny bauble to compensate for our failure to to defend the working class. After his article What Good is Identity Politics ( iirc) he was denounced from the pulpit by over 200 feminists in a sort of Papal letter of Excommunication entitled Cop on Comrades.

Most of the signatories are academics, writers , broadcasters , politicians etc. All rather depressing. So in short I'm glad HJ is out there but we sure as hell need a JB on what's left of the left.

crybully

Nounedit]
crybully (plural crybulliess*)
1 (derogatoryy^) A person who engages in intimidation, harassment, or other abusive behaviour while claiming to be a victim.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to both sides this. Jcj got hounded off twitter. There is a lot of hate directed at "soc fems"