Verso Books and "the problem with TERFs"

[ArcheryAnnie]

Verso Books, who describe themselves as a "radical" publisher, have been doing the very boring, conservative and unradical thing of dissing second-wave feminists on their twitter account.

Their social media manager has been tweeting selective quotes from Judith Butler, insulting the second-wave feminists WHO THEY PUBLISH AND THUS MAKE MONEY FROM as "transphobic" and casually referring to "the problem with TERFs".

Dissing feminists. But it's totes OK, as they are older feminists! How very radical. Not.

@VersoBooks, if you can be bothered scrolling through all the other rubbish they are currently tweeting.

Archery I completely agree. We've gone well past the five shouty people stage and to keep on about that is either missing the point or deliberately gas-lighting. One of the reasons this has been able to occur is that transactivists have continually minimised the issue when women talk about it. Last year, it would have been unthinkable for mainstream media or (as discussed in another thread) HCPs to publicly talk about female penis. That was supposedly the domain of the internet weirdos. What the fuck is going to happen next year if we keep saying nothing?

I too would rather never talk about this again.

I am failing to see how giving other people the same rights as you have (to hold down a job without being bullied, to live peacefully and quietly, to go about their business without harassment or insult) counts as oppressing you.

Men already have those rights. In spades.

So do women. As far as I can see, the legal and social changes are just a matter of treating trans people as people rather than as a separate category of creature who it's ok to harass or exclude (from public places).

I don't know what sex you are, SolidGold, but even if you are a woman that's ok with sharing a shelter, a hospital room, a prison cell with a be-penised person, you can't make that decision for other women. Other things I am also not ok with: having every damn space, position, circumstance, scholarship, etc etc - all of which have been created and fought for by women, for women, in recognition that women are oppressed, dammit - taken up by trans women who carry with them the legacies of their privileged male socialisation and their massive fucking sense of entitlement.

Who said it was ok to harass MTTs? Toilets are not public spaces. All men should be excluded from spaces segregated for the female sex.

TBH I think all toilets should be accessible to all human beings. The lack of women's toilets is an ongoing nuisance anyway. And (once again) most people who visit a public toilet intend to excrete and depart, not harass others.

I really do find that a percentage of feminists are every bit as blindly obsessed with THE PENIS as MRAs are. Whether or not a person has a penis is far less relevant to whether or not that person is fit to be in the company of others than that person's behaviour is.

That's bullshit.

I read this comment below on another board discussing transgender. It's disturbing that such major biological events that form part of womanhood (even if a woman is infertile because the trauma around this is major too) can be dismissed so easily as irrelevant nonsense. Of course everyone wants to be comfortable in themselves but female is much more than an outer shell.

'I'm sure just being comfortable with their body and being accepted as the gender they are is more important than irrelevant nonsense like periods and childbirth.'

Ah, yes. This is where it comes out. Being legit concerned about male violence is exactly the same as MRAs. It's not as if - what is it, one in four? women are raped.

Am now waiting for the inevitable comparison to the religious right. Because feminists have sooooooo much in common with them.