Maya’s response to Radical Notion’s GC divisions

From the same piece.

Dunno about my fellow domesticated zombies but I’m neither capable of doing everything for everyone nor willing to everything for everyone.

This feels like an old fashioned appeal towards female socialisation, yet another round of ‘Be Kind’ and for what? So we can go back to stuffing envelopes for Labour?

Fuck. That. Shit.

See my previous message.

Yes, we are supposed to fight for trans people according to RN. Well, they can FO with that. They have human rights already and that is enough. I'm not enabling transgressive men. WE WANT OUR STUFF BACK.

Thankfully the Hobbits are small.

Here’s the link to the whole issue. It’s just pages and pages of naming and shaming women they don’t like, basically.

theradicalnotion.org/gender-critical-disputes/

I agree with Maya. Budge up on the Shire wife bench, please.

We are talking counties and not carthorses, aren't we? Otherwise it'll have to be a very big bench.

It all reads like terrible, cringey, DARVO tossed around in word salad.

I only started using ‘Head Girls to describe this finger waggy, condescending clique when they called us ‘Domesticated Zombies’ and Posie a ‘PoundshopLePen’

They seem to love making lists of women who’ve committed wrongthink!

Will come in very handy for the gulag guards I’m sure.

Frankly, the wrong think lists are lists of women who are making the most sense!

I’m an academic and would describe myself as a radical feminist in many ways, but I also still don’t like purity coteries and who’s-in-who’s-out stuff — too playground for me.

We’re all in it for results on this gender shit — we don’t have to agree on the niceties of theory or party political stance, and that’s perfectly normal and healthy.

It used to be completely normal to have friends, and people you have common cause with on issues that cross political divides — what happened? It seems to me that purity spirals are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

This is where I was in the run up to the GRA being introduced. At the time there were women who argued that it wouldn't be enough and the word "female" would also be co-opted. They also argued that by ceding the word "women" we would lose the ability to frame discussions around "women's" rights and needs. Frankly, I thought they were batshit crazy.

I was very, very wrong.

Someone who considers themselves Mumsnet feminist royalty popped up in the Radical Notion thread to tell us all off in bizarre ways. It was a trip.

None of us took her particularly seriously, she was clearly just after attention.

I've seen this same "compromise" suggested in my neck of the woods. That female can be for the biological types but "women" should be a broader umbrella.

It's like no one talked to the editors or the linguists or the biologists. It's the inadequacy and lack of specificity of "female" that gets me. Why should bovines and horses have a distinct name for their reproductively mature females but we human females don't even rate so high? Not that mares and cows aren't supreme creatures but so am I!!!

A slightly exaggerated paraphrase on my behalf but yes!

If I could find my reading spectacles I would get you a screen shot (the online magazine is artsy and hard navigate on a phone!)

So true

Imagine these three scenarios that a child might say to their mom:

"Mom, I don't know who she is, but there's a woman outside my window"

"Mom, I don't know why, but there's a unicorn outside my window"

"Mom, I don't know how he is, but there's a man outside my window."

We all know the scenario that drives the most fear in our hearts. We deserve to know who the men are and to name them.

They also say we should share the word ‘woman’ and be grateful to retain ‘female’.

Seriously? Well, fuck that.

But encouraging people to repress the tools of pattern recognition and risk appraisal, and cast-out those who don’t is how the gender ideology movement works. It make things unsayable and lowers people’s barriers. Men in women’s spaces should raise alarm. This is the practical truth that the thought-control and language-control has been trying to obscure.

Women need to be able to raise the alarm. We need to be able to say 'this man is a creep, stay away'. This is primal, it's always been a thing. Women and children, most at risk from predatory men (and all the predators are men) have to be able to discuss, risk assess, and name creeps.

The most damaging thing that genderism has done (and queering of social norms) is removing the ability of women and children to say 'there's a man with his dick out' or 'there's a man staring at me' or 'there's a man in my space'.

Noice flag, darling. Black may well be the way to go.

We should have got Datun to smite her.

I just sped through a few pages of the thread, so im beginning to grasp the complexities of the arguments, specifically regarding the intellectual purity of the oeuvre and the intersection conundrum, culminating in the deeply malevolent and ambient forces within which we all claim our own divinity.

Naaah, jest kidding. My eyes glazed over at one poster's posts so I came back here to say....I gettit now.

I'll get me crochet hooks.

I don’t think we should send anyone over there to wade through pages and pages of us making Nigel Farage jokes!

also Endlesstea may have outed Caitlin Moran as a Morris Dancer.

Someone who considers themselves Mumsnet feminist royalty popped up in the Radical Notion thread to tell us all off in bizarre ways. It was a trip.

I liked this one (seen at Posie’s Glasgow event).

Something like that. Posie speaks as she finds stuff and occasionally says stuff in ways that can be disingenuously interpreted.
I think they originally took against her when she said she didn’t think little girls should wear the hijab (a view shared by lots of Muslim women) but they were probably just looking for a concrete reason to push her out.
Mostly I suspect it’s because this particular group of women are still attached to the idea that when this is over they will be able to get back in with their trade union & Labour mates and carry on like this never happened, but other women being less pure in their associations is ruining their left wing dream.

I would imagine there is at least a tinge of jealousy at Posie’s popularity and ever growing media reach.
Of course the real reason Posie is popular is because she doesn’t speak over us, she literally hands us the mic and steps back, whereas they are too scared to centre us gittersnipes in case we say something a bit too whitevan(wo)man.

They also say we should share the word ‘woman’ and be grateful to retain ‘female’.

And they can cock right off with that because there are female children and female dogs and female plants in this house and women & girls deserve their own words.

WE WANT OUR STUFF BACK

I sometimes think it is like the boy pointing out the Emperor is naked, then everyone falls about laughing. A large part of it is relief. Laughing because you don’t have to pretend that something utterly ridiculous is dignified and worthy of deference any more.

This.

They seem to have been triggered into...producing a 60 page quarterly all about [hating] her.

And made it free so that the plebs can all read it. #bekind

There's a thread all about it...the Radical Notion thread.

You get to take a turn crocheting Nigel's undergrundies. Get in line!