Another stonking column from Hadley Freeman

Perhaps 'oppression' has been redefined to mean the same as 'genocide' in the UK: someone who hasn't done what I told them to.

Which really is the ultimate in privileged, self centred ignorance, to have so little knowledge or concept of what these words really mean that 'no' is the worst they can imagine.

It’s almost like that’s not exactly what you’d expect the effect of the male human in a patriarchal society would add to the ‘intersectional’ mix. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Intersectionality’s don’t seem to be viewed with any thought that they should really be applied on a case-by-case basis. That’s surely the whole fucking point.

Somehow they are instead used to take a middle-aged, professional white man with kids from being incredibly privileged down to the most oppressed person in the universe, the minute they put in a dress. I’m pretty certain that they wouldn’t bother putting on a dress if that were really true.

It completely clouds the issue where we are trying to actually protect children who are actually vulnerable from being dragged into a life of medicalisation, just because it suits the agenda of a few.

Intersectionality, like ablism and inclusion, only ever matters or is mentioned when it happens to be a means of TQ+ political power.

When it permits scolding, bullying, control and power.

If there was a genuine care for such things then the terms would be actually understood and there would be concern - oh say, for example, women of faiths, cultures and disabilities that mean they cannot share a space for some activities with males regardless of how the male person chooses to identify. And there would be a recognition that female only spaces must be preserved and respected for the sake of access and inclusion alongside mixed sex spaces for TQ+ people.

I have no respect for those who use those terms to get their own way without a clue as to their meaning or any true commitment to their value.

Where are the TQ+ people who have been arrested by the police for speaking the truth, because of malicious allegations?
Where are the TQ+ people who have been kettled, screamed at, voices drowned out, punched, had liquids thrown over them, had bones broken because they tried to discuss their experience in a public place?
Where are the TQ+ people who have been harassed and assaulted while police stood by and watched, or shrugged, and who have made reports with evidence of crimes others would be arrested for and seen the police shrug?
Where are the TQ+ forums relentlessly bullied and controlled in an attempt to doxx and threaten TQ+ voices into silence?
Where are the TQ+ people who have lost their jobs for being found out to be TQ+ ?
Where are the TQ+ people who have had to grass roots fund raise to defend their existing rights in law in court against wealthy, tax payer funded lobbies?
Where are the tides of death and rape threats towards TQ+ people for daring to state gender ideology?
What labour is being demanded of TQ+ people?

These are the features of actual oppression. It has taken years of women relentlessly talking here, writing, raising awareness, shouting into the void, to get to the point where the truth is in the public press - against the control of the TQ+ lobby who had the power to set a policy for the press that disguised and silenced women's truth in TQ+ political favour. This journalist had to leave her job to be allowed to speak the truth.

Perhaps 'oppression' has been redefined to mean the same as 'genocide' in the UK: someone who hasn't done what I told them to.

Which really is the ultimate in privileged, self centred ignorance, to have so little knowledge or concept of what these words really mean that 'no' is the worst they can imagine.

‘Intersectionality’ should have sat in the toolkit of theories looking to disrupt essentialist concepts of identity. But it seems to have been grabbed on to by people desperate to reify and essentialise gender identity.

Such that they simply will not accept that intersectionality describes key differences between TW (as male humans) and women (female humans). Somehow we aren’t allowed to talk about that intersection. We’re supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist because it would be bigoted to offer an intersectional account of sex in relations to gender identity activism.

I’m not sure you understand intersectionality. It’s not pick and mix oppression, even if that’s what passes for it on SM these days.

The concept was and should actually be about the ways that different aspects of identity intersect to produce a wide range of very particular outcomes. So the same situation can inflect in complex ways because power relations are complex.

Nothing all to do with pick and mix oppression or even the oppression olympics. The term is supposed to be a way of avoiding the reductive, binary thinking of oppressed/oppressor but any nuanced discussion of power relations seems to have been swept away to produce some sort of choose your own characteristics avatar generator on a video game.

My grandad managed a cotton plantation in India in the 1930s.

👋

I said this, Gooner, to which you said I was dogpiling, bullying and leveling personal attacks:

"Sometimes they can't even attempt to do that. I've asked many a person to tell me what they assume I think, so I can agree or correct where they are wrong, and they always go silent."

Do you think this is incorrect? I can assure you it's true.
I will call out dishonesty where I see it - if you want to call that 'leveling personal attacks' then that's your call. If you think it is bad, then try to avoid doing it. If you think it's OK, then it's not really an attack.

Spot on.

Must be the way you explain it that comes across as ridiculous, then.

I'm not the one acting as if it's some novel, ridiculous concept.

I love her, thanks Hadley ❤️

I think Gooner doesn't understand that one doesn't need to be a minority to be oppressed. Majorities can be oppressed too which is what happens to women.

Must we? is that an imperative or an excuse?

No, you didn't. Kimberle Crenshaw did in 1989.

No, you just redefined it to include men in feminism. Like many other words.

You must all realise that I didn't just invent intersectionality.

'Today I'm oppressed, tomorrow I'm the oppressor, the day after that it's a bit of both.'

t's a core tenet of intersectionality. It's pretty obvious that you can both be part of an oppressed class and an oppressor class, e.g. a white woman married to a plantation owner.
I think I understand, thank you. So
just like Philip/Pippa Bunce, part of the patriarchy Monday to Wednesday and oppressed Thursday and Friday. Got it.

No wonder everyone's so bad tempered, having to remember whether today's the day whether they are the oppressor or the oppressed.

Are there many plantation owners around these days, then?

If you can’t see how Trans-rights activism aims to remove the whole basis for women’s rights, I.e. the sex class on the basis of which we are oppressed, then I guess you won’t be able to see that women’s rights are being attacked from both ends of the political spectrum, and to gain any influence to stop this destruction, we are stuck with our writers and influencers having to pick traditionally “right-wing” media outlets to express their concerns on a topic on which they are otherwise silenced.

Of course we don’t want reproductive rights removed. We also don’t want all of our other rights removed.

It's a core tenet of intersectionality. It's pretty obvious that you can both be part of an oppressed class and an oppressor class, e.g. a white woman married to a plantation owner.

Contrapoints said as much on the JKR Witch Trials podcast iirc

that means you’ll find it super easy to explain the gender identity that trans women and cis women share, which is one of the central tenets of your beliefs

Have you STILL not had a response to this yet Bernard? Shocking.

When I look at politics at the moment, and I look at those attacking women's rights, I see people that are simultaneously attacking LGBT rights. The US republican party is attacking all three simultaneously, to some extent using fear of trans people to turn the clock back when it comes to the rights of other oppressed groups. And then I see our minister for women and equalities palling around with Ron DeSantis.

I do not believe that women's rights and trans rights are as contradictory as many of you do.

Back to the main point, you cannot win in any battle with TRAs because they will express your real thoughts for you (witness this thread) and convict you on that basis, whatever you actually say or think

Didn't someone do that with JKR when told she wasn't transphobic and here's her writing proving it? the TRA apparently went through it to explain that JKR has SAID one thing but what she actually MEANT was transphobic.

You can be oppressed in some respects, not in others, and oppressor in others

So oppression is some sort of pick and mix?