Read this appalling article on The Pool and weep (about Rose McGowan and Andi Dier)

[CapnHaddock]

I usually like The Pool but this article is a pile of tosh: www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2018/6/Yomi-Adegoke-on-Rose-McGowan-Andi-Dier-Brave

The author starts with the premise that Dier was quite right to heckle and abuse McGowan, given that McGown isn't centring transwomen and WOC: "who, many feel, embodies the worst parts of white fragility and white feminism". But then wait! Dier apparently isn't that nice a person which has confused people. And so we must conclude that bad people do good things, and vice versa. Or something.

But we are allowed to not centre other people in our own personal lives, surely. Regardless of who they are, what's in their pants and what they like to call themselves.

I mean if I ask my GP friend if the change in my menstrual cycle means the beginning of the end, I'm not being transphobic because TIMs don't have periods. That's just bonkers!

It doesn't matter how many men identify as trans, women will be raped by men and we are allowed to talk about it without needing to make it all about them.

The author uses a lot of terms without describing what they mean or demonstrating an understanding of what they mean. As if they are self evident. I thought that The Pool had managed to steer clear of this dogma so far.

I'm lost for words. And have to set off on the school run in three minutes. I think that article is one of the worst things I've ever read. I feel it is actually offensive. Shame on her.

It’s so awful to see women writing appalling misogyny like this. Why do they do it? Are they that desperate for male approval?

Shorter author - Admitting that you were wrong is hard, so let's pretend that the rape victim who's said things you don't like is just as bad as the statutory rapist who heckled her, ethically speaking. The moral of the story is that nobody is perfect!

Just read that on Facebook. All the comments below it are critical, and rightly so! What a pile of wank.

Angry that is a brilliant 2 sentence summary.

Facebook link please, Senor? Would be fun to watch the idiots who published this tripe getting their asses handed to them.

MRA appropriate the suffering of a small group of mentally ill people, and the language of feminism and intersectional feminism. MRA use their privilege to influence all the male dominated structures of power in this patriarchal society. Lefties and liberals flail about attempting to ignore the cognitive dissonance in their inclusivity. If this succeeds or not- if self id passes or destroys a meaningful labour opposition, can't see an outcome where right wing men don't come out on top. Please someone tell me (nicely) where I have misunderstood this?

"If the allegations against Andi Dier are true, the image of an apparent sexual predator shouting down a survivor of sexual assault is a particularly objectionable one"

No shit

“Talk about what you said on RuPaul,” a visibly emotional Dier said,

vs

McGowan launched into a now viral tirade

Interesting difference in the use of language there!

And the author is wrong, imo.
Even if Dier had a perfectly clean background, with none of those "awkward" paedophilic vibes, she would still have been in the wrong to barge into someone else's book signing screaming what-aboutery at them.

I'm completely failing to see the moral ambiguity here.

"But here's why that was actually OK!"

What has McGowan said that's reprehensible towards women of colour?
I see references to this but no actual examples!

Hecklers are arseholes. We know this. Removing them is one of the reasons venues have security guards.

But if the heckler is trans? Brave hero standing up for truth and justice. Gender identity is like being coated in teflon.

I like the pool and they generally have a good feminist lean, but they have a blind spot for trans issues. I think this article is pure cognitive dissonance. It’s incoherent.

What has McGowan said that's reprehensible towards women of colour?
I see references to this but no actual examples!

As far as I'm aware, she hasn't said anything. It's a case of MRA/TRAs hijacking other people's causes because they don't have any valid arguments for their own.

I don't know either. But then I don't know what 'white fragility' is so I'm clearly not on the same page as the author.

What a daft article. The author talks about Rose McGown's comments on WOC, anyone know what she means? Only other controversial remarks I can find attributed to Rose are about the IRA?

Cross post, sorry!

The only thing I could find when I googled is that she once said something along the lines of "replace the word women with the N word" (and I think she used the term "N word rather than actually say it, iyswim). Which is an analogy I've seen many people use when trying to make a point about those who tolerate/don't notice low level sexism, when they wouldn't tolerate racism.

It seems like those determined to miss the point sort of twisted this to suggest that she thought black women weren't also women or something?????

Oh, and then she deleted the tweet, backtracked and blamed her "weird analogy" on smoking marijuana.
Which was an even more racist thing to tweet, because of the context around the way the police etc treat black women vs white women who do drugs. Or something.

(And I do appreciate that this is a serious issue, but I don't think that admitting to smoking drugs makes Rose Mcgowan racist).

I think quite a lot of white women (and I include myself in that) have had to have it pointed out to us that the 'swapping women for BAME' analogy is pretty exclusionary to BAME women. Claire Heuchan has written eloquently on the topic and I really recommend her writing.

But McGowan's an actress whose spoken out about her own experience of the toxic Hollywood culture. She's not a politician and these repeated attempts to undermine and discredit her are steeped in misogyny.

I saw this on FB this morning and am itching to comment but I'm not ready to out TERFy self on FB yet.

The Pool has been very pro trans up until recently. But then there was nothing about Paris Lees being on Vogue (they had done a article on Munroe Bergdorf being a Loreal model) or the self id issue in the Labour Party, and I wondered if they were peak transing. The tone of this article seems to be that Andi Dier is a twat, and the author doesn't really believe he is a 'woman' but as a black woman she has to be 'inclusive' and also because TRAs have appropriated the struggle of black women so that its 'us versus white cis feminists' she can't really slag them off.

Really poor article for a number of reasons but the one part I found most worrying was the on-the-surface-of-it innocuous statement “women aged 12-14.” Since when have children aged 12-14 been women? I know we’re down the rabbit hole with what woman means and all that shit but I don’t think it now includes adolescent girls does it? To me, it seems like an attempt to minimise Dier’s (alleged) crimes by suggesting they were committed against adult women, not girls, and while most people would condemn a man attacking women, many hold a special place in hell for those who sexually assault children.