Helen Steel's statement about being assaulted on Saturday

[christinarossetti]

Wanted to start a new thread about this because it's so important.

Helen's statement is on her Facebook page. Search Helen Steel.

What happened on Saturday was horrific. Sharing her statement and messages of support much appreciated.

Yes have had that image too Sophocles

How is not fascist to lay down an orthodoxy from which you may not deviate, and rape and death threats may be casually involved if you talk about it wrong?

Most of them aren't really bright enough to grasp this IME. They don't question, they just parrot ideology.

This is one of the (many) problems with identity politics, in general. The individuals spouting this stuff don't even have a basic understanding of what left/right wing mean, the power relationships within capitalism, what patriarchy is, what facism, liberalism, Marxism, feminist etc etc actually mean.

Moreover, they don't seem to have grasped that The Equality Act didn't appear from nowhere in 2010; it's part of a progressive wave of legislation, building on/replacing the DDA, Equal Pay Act etc etc.

Hence, that discussions about moving from 'sex' and 'gender assignment' being protected characteristics to 'gender identify' necessitate a discussion about who will be affected, in what ways, by whom.

It's demonstrative of the absolute narcissism of their position that they don't grasp that women are trying to talk about how this legislation will affect them. It's not that feminists particularly want to talk about trans issues when discussing the legislation, it's just that there is no choice when considering the possible impact on women.

They have no sense of the perspective of women at all, or even that there could possibly be other points of view. Any attempt to suggest that feels like an attack on a fragile, unstable, nonsensical ideological position, which is why they get so angry.

Other points of view, or even saying 'let's think about this a bit', threaten to annihilate their narcissistic ideologies, and they internally experience it as some sort of 'fascism'.

Hiya, I just wanna say that Helen has my love and respect and support, but I am critically examining both trans activist philosophy and gender critical theory. I don't want to be put in one camp or the other, and I would like to be part of something that heals this rift between the two branches of feminism so we can get on with fighting the patriarchy.

CartoonistaKate

That’s fantastic. Have you come up with anything?

Because the rights of the two groups seem to clash unequivocally.

also, I wasn't at the Anarchist Bookfair 'incident' but my friend who was said that the crowd going after Helen appeared to be predominantly young cis women, not transwomen and not men.

I think it would be useful to get a series of position statements together and see how much people on either 'side' agree or disagree with them. There isn't much general understanding of what the gender critical arguments are - trying to break people out of all gender conditioning rather than jumping across from the pink box to the blue box, or whatever. But at the same time, the gender critical argument is mixed up with other threads of rejection of trans people, in a wider way, so I'm not surprised that transphiles are hostile to their ideas. How realistic is it for gender critical feminists to expect transwomen to challenge the patriarchy by appropriating masculine spaces for themselves, given how violent and abusive cis men can be? And as a basic starting point, it would be good for all feminists to agree to refer to people by their chosen pronouns. That's common courtesy.

And I'm only commenting here because the second poster said I was one of their heroes and I'm gender critical, so I just wanted to say, I'm actually gender critical critical and trans theory critical, and am probably going to piss off both sides in the process but at least I will have tried. It's Kate Evans. Good luck with the breastfeeding the wriggly baby.

kate

The main sticking point is the denial of biology. And why that is detrimental to women, since they are oppressed on the basis of it.

I don't think changing the language is common curtesy. I think staying out of women's changing rooms when you have a penis is common curtesy.

The disagreements about language are part of the problem which is why it's so difficult to talk about these issues.

I agree about using preferred pronouns. Yep, fine, no problem with 'common courtesy'. I would like to retain the word that I have had to talk about my sexed body experiences throughout my life - and indeed throughout history and the rest of the world - which is, of course, woman. With no prefixes.

And already that's not okay for the TAs. More than not okay, that's hate speech/fascism/genocide and whatever other garbage they come up with to avoid actually talking sensible about things.

This is going well, Kate!

The problem I have with the 'common courtesy' argument is that the most demanding TRA do not possess any courtesy and further have ZERO concern for women's safety and concerns and they no-platform, silence, abuse and threaten us when we try to speak of these.

The terms inch, and mile come to mind, so I'm not going to extend courtesy just to be steamrollered over. When they start coming up with solutions other than STFU then I might reconsider. Sorry.

The terms inch, and mile come to mind, so I'm not going to extend courtesy just to be steamrollered over. When they start coming up with solutions other than STFU then I might reconsider. Sorry.

Yes, let’s get rid of all the rape threats, doxxing and punching of women first. I mean it’s only courteous, if you want to negotiate, to stop punching the person you’re trying to talk to.

CartoonistaKate, since you mentioned you were interested in exploring gender critical thought, here is an article that summarises the main problems feminists have with gender identity ideology:

thefifthcolumnnews.com/2017/08/are-there-good-reasons-to-oppose-transgenderism/

IMO trans ideology is fundamentally incompatible with feminism, although there are compromises that could be worked out in law and policy regarding protections for trans-identified people and women's rights.

Miranda Yardley (gender-critical transsexual) has written a very interesting blog piece on this:

mirandayardley.com/en/finding-the-middle-ground-between-womens-rights-and-transgender-rights/

Yardley concludes that there can be no reconciliation between trans ideology and women's rights until transgender activists abandon their anti-materialist and anti-reality approach to sex and sex-based oppression:

I’m going to be bold here and present this as a solution, mainly as I’ve written, talked and argued about how to fix transgender ideology incessantly for years. We need to recognise that:

human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals;
‘transwomen’ are biologically male (if we aren’t, then what do we transition from/to?);
human beings are subjected to sex-based socialisation which begins at birth (what does this say about transwomen who cannot accept this?);
the lives of transwomen are different to the lives of women (by this I mean women born women, again what does this say about transwomen who cannot accept this?); and
rape and death threats directed at lesbians and other feminists are wholly unacceptable.

The thugs that perpetrated the violence and intimidation against Helen and other women just for having an opinion that they don't agree with, are no better than the misogynists that were involved with Fathers4Justice. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they are now jumping on the trans bandwagon just to have an excuse to abuse women. It doesn't bode well for either women, or genuine members of the trans community. I despair.

How realistic is it for gender critical feminists to expect transwomen to challenge the patriarchy by appropriating masculine spaces for themselves, given how violent and abusive cis men can be?

And how realistic is it for transactivists to expect females to open up their doors to male people in well fought for female only areas, given how violent and abusive males can be?

See, this is the problem. There is no middle ground. The rights conflict with each other directly.

The sad thing is, that before all of this, transwomen have been using female areas for years with no issues that I know of. Its this 'new breed' of 'transgender' thats causing the problems..obvious males, males without sex dysphoria, those who cry 'my penis is female, worship it lesbian' and so on, these are the ones that we are pushing back against on the main. Laws to allow basically any male into female areas are just, as my UN would suggest, batshit. Both transsexual people AND females (and even males, if they can be arsed) should be pushing back against this. Given the reason transsexual women use female areas to start with is male violence..what good does it do anyone to open up the doors for all males? Which is what activists are fighting for?

Another account from one of the other women who was attacked:

perspicats.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/the-anarchist-bookfair/