Simone Biles attacks Riley Gaines

@AliasGrace47 You criticising Riley Gaines is not the purity spiral. You do you. You criticising me for calling her “marvellous” for her female sports activism because you personally don’t approve of her politics on other issues I wasn’t referring to is the purity spiral. See the difference?

I agree w all you said. Again, I want to stress that while I have reservations on some of Gaines' views & actions, I certainly don't see her as anti feminist as a whole, she has done a huge amount for women, clearly, as her podcast shows, and her wider advocacy. I have said over and over again from the start that I support Gaines' trans advocacy w all my heart & that I support dialogue w GC allies like her. As I said earlier, I read a lot of various kinds of conservative women's writing myself, and I think dialectic w different views is really important.

There definitely is a range of views. But I think it's fair to say you're unlikely to find pro-porn and surrogacy posts here, pro gender ideology ones, anti-lgb. Abortion there is a range but most here are pro choice to some extent, and there is a range of views on the place of careers and the pill, but mostly w some support. Other things that I didn't mention may be more controversial, but I think the ones I mentioned do have fairly wide support here.

The purity spiral was that you laid into posts here calling her “marvellous” (which as I explained was based on someone else’s sneery post) as if that’s something that should be criticised, as if I should have been ashamed of liking her at all. That is a purity spiral however you slice it. It’s tedious.

I also think it's not just about the multiplicity of views, but the discourse between them is in itself really important.

This is, imo, one of the reasons feminism has suffered with gender ideology, and also part of why it's failed to make the gains it perhaps could have with women themselves. Many feminists have simply removed women like RG, who you might call conservative feminists, from the equation - they are labelled as anti-feminist and their ideas are rejected without even being heard.

As a result, feminist discourse has fewer ideas to work with, and some factions have little opportunity to have to refine their ideas against serious opposition from other women. It's been too easy for them and then when they need to stand up against really existential threats, they can't. When everyone in your bubble just accepts that what you are saying must be true you don't become very practised at making a case.

I do think there is a actually a fairly wide set of views held by posters on FWR, on many topics.

What SB has said in those tweets is bad enough, but if you say she 'has always been a nasty piece of work' then you are going to have to bring more evidence than just your words to the table.

Biles has always been a nasty piece of work, out for her and her alone and she gives no shits for anyone else

Absolutely. And even within what we might call the GC camp, there are plenty of divisions. I could go into detail about the issues I have with socfems, but (a) it would be extremely boring for anyone outside that world, and (b) the first rule of WPUK is you don't talk about WPUK.

I like to have the rule of thumb that there are potentially as many types of feminism as there are women advocating for women and girls, and I don't believe that there is one single true and correct brand, nor any leadership to whom I owe allegiance.

Much more productive to take useful contributions from whoever makes them, disagree where necessary and relevant, and don't sweat it about who qualifies to be a member of the club. Too many people want it to be a club, and I don't believe it should be.

I think part of the problem for some is they can't get past seeing those kinds of views about abortion as "opposing women's rights." As in, they (often) actually think they are coming from a place where they area saying, oh, we don't care about the right to abortion or reproductive choices, we want to take rights from women."

Which is not at all how people with that view are looking at it.

It's a bit like TRAs charachterizing GC people as hating trans-rights, as if that is the goal for some transphobic reason, rather than it being an assertion about the nature of women's rights.

Pro-life campaigners typically believe that all living human organisms should be offered the legal protection of persons no matter what developmental stage, or something close to that. So they see abortion as a case of competing rights where there is a conflict between two persons and their fundamental rights which needs to be reconciled or worked through. It's not about a particular desire to take away rights from any party involved.

Anyone who thinks it's about a desire to simply remove rights from women will conclude that the people involved are just evil, which is part of the reason you get so much tribalism from some.

Well the brand of feminism that introduced gender studies and queered women's language and believes that we can somehow confuse the patriarchy into submission by allowing men to be women has 'destroyed society' - so maybe she has a fucking point

Full of Bile

I understand that. I don't have an issue w Gaines not calling herself a feminist. The point is not what she calls herself, but that she is claiming that feminism 'destroyed society', while supporting many arguably feminist causes..

This thread is not about Gaines's advocacy or otherwise of LGB rights, whether using the sane or insane definition of LGB. It is not about whether Gaines is, or even calls herself, a feminist. It is not about how a bunch of naive (your words) women need to educate ourselves about the full range of social and political opinions of every ally in the war. I think you need to start your own thread. I'm sure it will get lots of engagement.

Lots of women do advocacy for women and girls without calling themselves feminists. Sometimes it's because Feminism!!! as a label comes with an entire menu of associated ideological commitments that they don't necessarily agree with. Sometimes it's because of bruising experiences with elite feminists who think everyone else is there to take their instructions. And sometimes they just do advocacy for women and girls without feeling a need to give themselves a label.

Bc it's Riley interviewing her - I linked it to indicate Riley's complex relationship w feminism, since she supports many feminist causes but promotes this episode w the tagline, ' Feminism Ruined Society', as the picture shows.

Why do we have a podcast on Jennifer Strickland now?

I have posted in nearly every post that I support and applaud Riley's trans advocacy & support GC alliances w her. How many times do I have to do that before people understand that criticising someone's views on another feminist issue (based on a mistake which I have apologised for) is not by default the same as forbidding alliance w them or denouncing their trans advocacy?

I understand very well that many GC people have done harmful purity tests like that, eg. WPUK or Actual Gender Critical Left, that there are scars from that & people are conceivably wary. I have a lot of sympathy w that. But this is not what I have said. Several posts seem to be replying without reading what I've written.

As I posted before, forbidding criticism of ant GC figure or ally is simply a different kind of purity test, as if you can only be GC if you don't criticise any GC figure, even in a carefully qualified way.

I don't know if she does or not. She is a conservative Christian by her own description, she is definitely pro-life and has criticised modern feminism (see the Feminism Ruined Society episode). All this fits w the typical profile of a conservative Christian podcaster/opinionmaker (such as many of her podcast guests, as well as orgs like the ADF & the Leadership Institute, the latter of which she works for) and these people tend to oppose lgb rights too.

But we do not know if that is the case for Riley herself, hopefully not

. In my post I was simply pointing out that Martina being friendly w her isn't itself evidence that she supports them. I'm not saying if she does or not bc it's not clear from the info we have. In the Kara Dansky interview she came across as a sympathetic interviewer but didn't state her view on anything aside from trans.

Whatever her view is, she's not broadcasting it (as I had initially thought she was) so it's not really an issue as yet. She came across really well in the podcast and I hope she gets more chances to be a force for good on behalf of women. The swimming chances being snatched away must still be v painful, especially w the TRA shock troops on her back.

https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/how-jennifer-strickland-found-purpose-beyond-the-runway/id1696360492?i=1000659489089

As was often the case when WPUK used to circulate their open letters warning against collaborating with people they wouldn't name, I feel it would be useful to have a list of the people we are allowed to talk to.

Time for a wikipedia link?

O Lord, I thought we might have put that one to bed for 24 hours at least.

🤔 Are you suggesting that RG is against LGB Rights?

As Martina has every right to. However, just bc someone gets on w gay people doesn't mean they support lgb rights. An obvious example is Jennifer Lahl, who is friendly w Julie Bindel but opposes same sex parenting. Bindel is in contact & cooperates w a lot of other right wing & often Catholic authors who are anti-surrogacy, sex worker etc but also lgb rights. They behave nicely to her, but it doesn' mean they support lgb rights.

After all, in life we probs know some people, maybe older or religious ones (or ofc sometimes younger ones) who oppose lgb rights but don't act hatefully to gay individuals.

Ofc she's allowed her opinions, it's not even clear what they all are. And her trans advocacy is great

Not really. In her recent post she did not advocate for transwomen to play women. She suggested their own category. So it does not conflict with her 2017 post at all

I wish we could leave politics out of this. I am not a Trump supporter and did not vote for him, but his administration, unlike the Biden administration, has actually been helpful to the GC cause.