I see it was the same writer who did the recent interview with Amia Srinivasan:
That, she argues, is why some women are what she regards as transphobic. “There can be a certain amount of anger on the part of cis women who live with a real discomfort in relationship to their embodiment: an anger at trans people taking the easy way out – though, of course, it’s not easy at all. Trans-exclusionary women are very often cis lesbians who, for very good reasons, have issues with their bodies precisely because they are going to be read in a particular way in a deeply lesbian-phobic, heteronormative culture. They’ve learned to deal with their frustrations with this in a particular way, and they dislike the idea of anyone dealing with it in a different way.”
Crikey. It seems extraordinary to me that someone so interested in equality and freedom would generalise about an entire group of people (lesbians) in this way – and this, I’m afraid, is where I conclusively part ways with Srinivasan and her ideas. Thirty years ago, academics were all high on Jacques Derrida. Now a lot of them appear to be drinking the Kool-Aid that is Judith Butlerr^, high priestess of gender theory. But still, our conversation has been interesting: spiky, in a good way. Disagreement, and the freedom to express it, increasingly feels like oxygen to me. Once Srinivasan has smilingly guided me out of the college, unlocking a gate so I can leave by a side entrance and fleetingly feel a bit special, I experience something I haven’t felt for a long time: a pedagogic brain ache that may only be relieved by a very large bar of chocolate.
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/amia-srinivasan-the-right-to-sex-interview