Patrick Strudwick on why feminism should include TW

[Macareaux]

Feminist academics championing trans rights.

www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/meet-the-feminist-academics-championing-trans-rights

*It seems for too many of these supposed academics, feminism is purely an intellectual thing, and not a real lived experience. It is as if the history of the women's movement is a new thing to them.

It is depressing how quickly the knowledge and the memory of the gains and struggles have been submerged under complacency.*

^ This ^ X 1000. It seems to be that word salad, tick box jargon is taken as truth with zero academic rigour. I am shocked at how fast a particular theory of gender has taken root, having the effrontery to comment on womenhood without centering women. I start to twitch at the words 'inclusive' and' intersectionality' now, because they have become so twisted.

“Trans people have the right to define their own identities and live as the person that they are.”

This is fine until you then usurp other people's rights e.g. the right to feel safe , the right to be a biological woman etc. But then we still have millions of people who are creationists, or who think the world is flat. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised. What's so wrong, is that autorities take them seriously and give them money to spread their 'message'. Or worse, to damage innocent children.

The trans cult makes as much sense as The Monster Raving Loony Party. The only differences being the rest of us aren’t forced to comply with OMRLP demands and their manifesto isn’t taught in schools as gospel.

The article has been applauded by Brian Paddick (LibDems) & Sue Pascoe (Conservatives / Channel 4 Diversity adviser)

threads:
Paddick
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3391455-Brian-Paddock-on-Twitter

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3393957-Brian-Paddicks-new-pinned-tweet

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3205343-brian-paddick-asking-for-feminist-views-on-self-id

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3226849-Lord-Paddick-resigns-the-LGBT-LD-executive

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3277182-Brian-Paddick-isbeing-investigated-for-wrongthink

Pascoe
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3383926-Sue-Pascoe

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3331095-Channel-4-appoints-a-new-advisor-on-inclusion

I await the day when the media publishes articles on why the Black Lives Matter movement and other causes that focus on the discrimination against people of colour should include and centre white people. I suspect that, rightfully, I'll have a very long wait.

I wonder how this group of virtue-signalling moral authoritarians feel about their comments in Buzzfeed being lauded by aspiring Conservative MPs like Sue Pascoe at Channel 4?

Particularly- given the academics’ ‘concern’ cited in this Buzzfeed article that gender critical women are politically ‘right-wing’ or that gender critical concerns have been adopted recently by ‘right wingers’

On here, lots of us have talked about how many of us have been Labour voters or activists all our lives.. but now ALL the political parties we’d ever be able to vote for have mindlessly adopted TWAW and have compounded that by busily and actively closing their ears to women’s concerns..

Femenist is a very useful term Talkinginthedark!
Thanks!

Very kind of you GCSocScientist but the credit is all ChewyLouie’s

I fear I may actually combust with rage at Brian Paddick’s unreconstructed misogyny, after reading those links/his tweets.

And I was feeling quite chipper about it all earlier, what with that tweet from Oliver Burkeman re Mermaids. Like maybe sanity might just start to prevail.

The Lord giveth. And the Lord taketh away.

Love how they comment in shock at how uncivil the trans / feminist debate has become. Just awful.

How did the debate get so unpleasant? Anyone know? Does it have anything to do with trans-activists hunting down and harassing gender critical feminists on Twitter, no platforming them, vilifying them and accusing anyone who does not stick to the trans woke gospel of hate speech?

I'm dumfounded by these assertions, by the likes of Peter Tatchell, that feminism has always been about just middle class white women.

It's bollocks of course, but it's quite intentional dog whistling.

It has been not only permissible but down right virtuous to sneer at and talk in ways about the 'middle class' in ways it isn't ok to talk about anyone else, and 'white' has become a similarly safe group to behave badly to. When you call a group 'white middle class' you are dog whistling that you can take off the safety catch of all normal standards and go for them as hard as you like.

Those of us who have been trying to point out since Blair's New Labour brought all this in that if you believe in discrimination, dehumanising and removing the rights of the group of people you've currently justified as deserving of it then frankly you've learned nothing from any of the world wars or any other atrocities. You are no more virtuous than they are, you believe in exactly what those people believed, you've just picked a different target group to focus on and successfully lied to yourself that this is ok.

Mr Tatchell is not big on things like other people's needs, rights and feelings being allowed to get in the way of them being used by those whom he would like to privilege with great freedom and power. See his comments on the age of consent. He and many others would like to separate society into the givers and the takers.

It has been not only permissible but down right virtuous to sneer at and talk in ways about the 'middle class' in ways it isn't ok to talk about anyone else, and 'white' has become a similarly safe group to behave badly to. When you call a group 'white middle class' you are dog whistling that you can take off the safety catch of all normal standards and go for them as hard as you like.

I agree with this point, but another relevant point is that many of the people doing the sneering are also white and hmiddle class. And many people being sneered at in the gender critical cohort as a whole are not middle class.

YY:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3203804-The-Deptford-People-Project-and-the-impact-of-self-ID-and-transactivism-on-working-class-women

another relevant point is that many of the people doing the sneering are also white and hmiddle class. And many people being sneered at in the gender critical cohort as a whole are not middle class.

Very true. The labels being applied aren't accurate - its an attempt to pull a veil of acceptability over what is happening by linguistic gymnastics.

Yy Ereshkigal. Absolutely.

The sneering at ‘middle class’ feminists seems to come mainly from elite universities and university towns. The ‘right’ of women with penises to urinate wherever they want isn’t a priority for your average warehouse or callcentre worker who is lucky to get a toilet break at all.

'white' has become a similarly safe group to behave badly to. When you call a group 'white middle class' you are dog whistling that you can take off the safety catch of all normal standards and go for them as hard as you like

That is true. For everyone who sneers about "white men", let me ask you: which countries have the best records for women's rights? Would it be countries like Sweden, which is overwhelmingly white? Which countries have the worst outcomes for women? Would they be: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, which are overwhelmingly not white? Which countries were the first to grant women the vote? Would they be New Zealand and Australia, which were / are largely white?

I see that Syria, which is a country with a tiny / virtually non-existent white population was nominated as this year's Worst Country to be a Woman.

The others:

Niger.
Sudan.
Mali.
Iraq.
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Central African Republic.
Pakistan.
Yemen.
Afghanistan.

Source: www.thisisinsider.com/worst-countries-for-women-2018-3#1-syrian-arab-republic-10

By contrast, Best Countries to be a Woman:

Denmark.
Poland.
Portugal.
Italy.
Spain.
Japan.
United States.
Ireland.
France.
United Kingdom.
Austria.
Luxembourg.
Germany.
New Zealand.
Australia.
Switzerland.
Canada.
Finland.
Netherlands.
Norway.
Sweden.

Source: [[https://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-countries-for-women-us-news-world-report-2018-3?r=UK&IR=T#2-sweden-falling-

Here is the link www.businessinsider.com/the-best-countries-for-women-us-news-world-report-2018-3?r=UK&IR=T#2-sweden-falling-one-position-from-its-top-spot-in-2017-swedes-have-the-most-progressive-attitudes-towards-gender-equality-according-to-a-report-from-yougov-20

EJennings that forum is great, thank you for linking. Not black so only had a quick browse. The arguments there are not much different from here.

Disrespectful thanks for links - very clear why MRAs want to erode women’s rights and silence their voices in countries with a strong history of feminism (which is not only white middle class, of course). Making women’s rights feminism synonymous with middle class white women is historically inaccurate - not least because you can find black women and Asian women’s voices from mid-nineteenth century onwards and indeed also working-class women.

Middle class white women have however historically had greater opportunities to act for change, so what were/are they supposed to do? Nothing because they are white or use their position to help all women. Of course there is lots of work to be done and of course black, Asian and working class women can organise too, but you know, if you are a single working parent, as I am, then you know, it is actually helpful that those with more time and money travel to meetings and leaflet and protest, because they are able to and I cannot very easily.

Should be a question mark after the end of my second sentence in my last paragraph of course

The people who accuse feminists of being white and middle class are invariably white and middle class themselves. They’re not just misogynists, they’re terminally stupid misogynists.

Seems some academics forget about the white abolishionist women, often from very privileged backgrounds, who at personal cost and risk, fought against slavery and for women's rights. To name a few:
Lucretia Mott;
Elizabeth Margaret Chandler!
Sarah and Angelica Grimke;
Lydia Maria Child and
Abby Kelley.

They're virtue-signalling SJWs. Or, as you put it, hackmum, terminally stupid. Both definitions work.

I'm dumfounded by these assertions, by the likes of Peter Tatchell, that feminism has always been about just middle class white women.

That's not an original idea.

The assumption that all women who have time to be feminist are bored white, suburban housewives has been around for a bum's age. In the US, male journalists labelled the entire 2nd wave era the Me Generation -- and the only reason I can figure is that mommy wasn't home to bake pies all the time.

After all, if a woman has a husband who brings home a decent salary, why would she want to work? And if she does work, why would she need equal pay for equal work? And aren't child care centers just a vanity project for middle class women?

Those are the only issues feminists are concerned with. If those aren't the only issues, then people would have to confront their own misogyny, the rates of violence, the absence of rights and respect for 1/2 of the human race, the homophobia in their assumptions, etc etc etc and that would just be too uncomfortable.