How British feminism became anti-trans - according to the New York Times

[NotTerfNorCis]

www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/terf-trans-women-britain.html

A surprisingly mainstream movement of feminists known as TERFs oppose transgender rights as a symptom of “female erasure.”

Beginning to suspect the writer has a bias...

There, the most vocal trans-exclusionary voices are, ostensibly, “feminist” ones, and anti-trans lobbying is a mainstream activity. Case in point: Ms. Parker told the podcast “Feminist Current” that she’d changed her thinking on trans women after spending time on Mumsnet, a site where parents exchange tips on toilet training and how to get their children to eat vegetables. If such a place sounds benign, consider the words of British writer Edie Miller: “Mumsnet is to British transphobia,” she wrote “what 4Chan is to American fascism.”

The term coined to identify women like Ms. Parker and Ms. Long is TERF, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In Britain, TERFs are a powerful force. If, in the United States, the mainstream media has been alarmingly ready to hear “both sides” on the question of trans people’s right to exist, in Britain, TERFs have effectively succeeded in framing the question of trans rights entirely around their own concerns: that is, how these rights for others could contribute to “female erasure.”

Don't worry, if she gets stuck she can rely on the hardy perennial of the SJW movement, and denounce her targets for the crime of being white women. It doesn't even need to be true.

Men don't become 'vulnerable' as soon as they put on lipstick and they certainly don't cease being chauvinists or a threat to women simply because they have adopted feminine appearance norms. Yet a curiously large number of people seem to think that they do.

Why is that? What is the transubstantiation that is supposed to occur via the adoption of markers of femininity, whereby any man can shed not only his masculinity but his very maleness simply by adopting she/her pronouns and wearing his hair long?

I think ultimately it is because people think there is something very abject about a man who voluntarily takes on the markers of the subordinate sex class.* They think it is so degrading for a man to present like this, that they can't possibly square this image with the concept of masculinity (male dominance). Whereas masculinity and femininity are not really about appearance norms; they are a set of behaviours related to dominance and submission.

This is why I will never call such men 'gender non-conforming' or 'feminine'. Gender is not about lipstick and pronouns, it is about male entitlement to women's bodies, energies and lives. Once you realise that, it's easy to see that regardless of how they present, 'trans women' often behave in classically masculine and male-dominant ways.**

*For many, this 'degradation' is the goal, because it provides a sexual thrill. Google 'sissy porn' or ask any pro-domme how many of her clients want to be dressed like women or little girls, precisely because they see it as the ultimate degradation.

**Check out the trans widows thread for an insight into this.

@DonkeySkin - perfectly put. It amazes me how willing self-proclaimed feminists like Sophie Lewis buy into the idea of transwomen as vulnerable victims of TERF bullying while biological women have ‘cis-het privilege’, totally buying into the MRA narrative that it is men who are the truly oppressed sex.

once more and white chauvinistic men are ruling the world again.

Babe they always have been. Now some of them wear dresses.

the utter irrationality of simultaneously saying

1. that man is a woman now, I can tell because he's got long hair, is wearing eye shadow and has adopted a head tilt / has a feminine soul which I can see

2. transwomen are in a position to bring down the patriarchy (sexist oppression of women) and make a more equal society

how does rigid compliance with gendered stereotypes, either of those associated with your own sex OR those associated with the opposite sex help to oppose gendered stereotypes?

I have asked this question to various trans advocates both online and in person. they're never able to answer

if any of the lurkers would care to answer i'd be very grateful

Your woman here in this article has obviously realised that the women speaking out about this in the UK can't be tarred with the 'trump-toting bible-swinging redneck' brush and so is desperately flinging around terms related to anything, anything at all, that she identifies as reactionary and therefore doubleplusungood in the hope that some of it sticks, regardless of the fact that a lot of these - indigenous peoples of Britain, anyone? - are irrelevant to us and that the rest have to be sollipsistically shoe horned in just to make an appearance at all.

Yes, this.

She's now claiming that what she actually meant was indigenous peoples of places other than the country we're talking about, ie the countries Britain colonised. If that were the case she would have said it, because the two are quite different things. The mentality that the colonies were part of Britain, lumping them all in together, is literally one of the things that underpinned the Empire. As she flails to cover up her stupid, she's actually using a very imperialist idea here.

No, what actually happened is that she just parroted US woke terminology. The fact that US culture has been imported and often imposed globally for decades, leading to legitimate charges of cultural imperialism, clearly hasn't occurred to her. The irony.

Also speaking of massive contradictions, she claims to be in support of various societal changes and practices she thinks would improve child rearing: greater collective responsibility towards all children, end of certain family structures etc. Most of them sound like she's on glue of course, but the point is that she considers herself to be taking a pro-children agenda. Well, like it or not, teaching small children to eat vegetables and use the toilet is quite a bit part of parenting them. It isn't pro-child to patronise and dismiss the people doing this work. Who let's be honest, even in this brave new world she's after, will overwhelmingly still have vaginas.

how does rigid compliance with gendered stereotypes, either of those associated with your own sex OR those associated with the opposite sex help to oppose gendered stereotypes?

Because they say it does.

All you are doing is playing into the hands of the alt-right who would be quite happy seeing women's rights stripped.

Or we are worried about a proposed change to U.K. law and it’s impact on women because of the loss of a clear definition of the protected characteristic of sex.

I think that disregarding the impact of biological sex and enforcing the concept of gender makes it impossible to even talk about women’s rights.

99.9% of transwomen are no threat to women.

Which is completely irrelevant if ‘trans’ means anyone who says they are trans. It’s very difficult to enforce protections and rights for any group if you can’t explain who they are, and that includes trans people.

I see a lot of thrashing about on Twitter by various suspects trying to claim 'indigenous people ' meant those in the former colonies. That would only make sense if the empire still existed. It doesn't, so indigenous in the way Lewis used it clearly implied indigenous to Britain.

middle- and upper-class white feminists have not received the pummeling from black and indigenous feminists that their American counterparts have.

If you meant the Empire, Lewis, why say 'black AND indigenous'?

Your American imperialist perspective is showing.

I think the people who say it's a brilliant article are scared of looking stupid and admitting they couldn't get through that impenetrable wall of academic mumbo jumbo.

Good writing is clear. This is bad writing covering up a weak concept with obfuscation.

Indeed it is! You wrote that much more succinctly than I. There's a massive disconnect between presenting yourself as an anti imperialist and insisting on the application of American cultural constructs to quite different societies.

I descend from one of the peoples most thoroughly colonised by British, in case any tumblr types are reading.

I don't think those in the US have grasped the fact that the political and cultural landscape in the UK are different and trying to rally "Black Feminists" against the white middle class isn't going to work, because it isn't the white middle class that are the problem here.

The 'colonies' were Canada, Australia, South Africa etc. Most of the British Empire was something else.

The notion that the empire was part of the mother country was the French model. The British one was an imperial family, the implication always that the children would grow up.

"An empire on which the sun never sets" is often misquoted, sometimes deliberately, as a boast that the empire would last forever. It was never more that a statement of geographical fact: It goes all round the world.

Morris (op cit) writes about the feminine principle of empire. Once they sorted out the G&T's to stop the malaria, the Memsahibs moved out and put a stop to all the local mixed marriages. British soldiers were very popular with Indian women because they did not beat their women or set them to work in the fields.

I think ultimately it is because people think there is something very abject about a man who voluntarily takes on the markers of the subordinate sex class.

Yep. Which is why sanctimonious men such as Jolyon Maugham go on about nuance and delicate compromises and all the other guff. The thought that he is connected to such failures of manhood is something to be squashed away to avoid the horror.

BTW - so lovely to see you, Donkeyskin.

Madeleine Kerns National Review article:
''A Baseless Hit Piece on British Feminists in the New York Times''
(extract)
"Sophie Lewis, a writer who “theorizes gestation, reprotech, [and] family abolition” (according to her Twitter bio) wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about “How British Feminists Became Anti-Trans.” It features a number of confusing and misleading claims, some of which I have decided to translate.

Last week, two British women stormed onto Capitol Hill in Washington for the purposes of ambushing Sarah McBride, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.

Translation: Last week, two British women who were already on Capitol Hill in order to meet with politicians to discuss sex-based rights and protections for women stumbled across Sarah McBride, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.

Ms. McBride, a trans woman, had just been part of a meeting between the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council and members of Congress when the Britons — Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who goes by the name Posie Parker, and Julia Long — barged in.

Translation: McBride, a male who identifies as a woman, had just been part of a meeting between the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council and members of Congress – individuals who support contentious transition treatments and sex-change surgeries for gender-confused youth – when the Britons – Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who goes by the name Posie Parker, and Julia Long – entered by the door.

Heckling and misgendering Ms. McBride, the two inveighed against her supposed “hatred of lesbians” and accused her of championing “the rights of men to access women in women’s prison.”

Translation: Demanding answers and addressing McBride by sex-based pronouns (he/him), and appalled by McBride’s disengagement, the two inveighed against what they presumed to be “hatred of lesbians” and accused McBride of championing “the rights of men to access women in women’s prisons.” McBride said nothing (much like Jeff Flake when he was confronted in an elevator by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s new chum)." (continues)

www.nationalreview.com/corner/baseless-hit-piece-on-british-feminists-in-the-new-york-times/

see also Madeleine Kerns interviewing Dr Julia Long, Venice Allen and Posie Parker (includes discussion about the circumstances when JL and PP asked questions of McBride)

www.nationalreview.com/corner/liberal-women-oppose-gender-ideology-listen-to-why/
thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3502834-Madeleine-Kearns-interviews-Posie-Venice-and-Julia

Venice Allen interviewed journalist Madeleine Kerns about her background and how she came to be writing articles about transgenderism and its impact on womens rights and Safeguarding children. Its really worth listening to. Link in thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3496764-Venice-Allen-interviews-journalist-Madeleine-Kearns-in-Washington

It's even more bizarre when you superimpose the US narratives onto an Irish context. In the last year I've seen:

The "Terfs Out" letter from Irish liberal feminists telling UK feminists they weren't allowed speak in Ireland and that they were "colonists". The letter was written at the behest of an American TRA "transwoman" so there were two ironies there.

A proposed women's march protesting Donald Trump's visit to Ireland (he didn't visit in the end) where suggested "pussy hats" were angrily rejected as "white imperialist".

White middle class Irish women trying to shut down other white middle class Irish women by calling them white middle class Irish women as though it's some kind of devastating zinger.

I think this is partly due to the decline in the teaching of history in schools as well as American cultural dominance facilitated by tech

I think this is partly due to the decline in the teaching of history in schools as well as American cultural dominance facilitated by tech

This, 100% this!

British soldiers were very popular with Indian women because they did not beat their women or set them to work in the fields.

I think that is a bit of a stretch. There is a long history of toleration of spousal abuse in the UK, and the issue only really began to be addressed in the 1970’s long after Britain had left India.

Better to acknowledge that both ‘indigenous people’ and ‘the age of empire’ are romanticised.

Either way, Britain did not teach the rest of the world about sex, either as a recreation or as a biological fact.

*You are actually contributing to the male narrative by re-enforcing the gender binary and stereotypes.

I don't think you even realise that you are helping maintain the patriarchy*

This is quality DARVO, mate.

I think this is partly due to the decline in the teaching of history in schools as well as American cultural dominance facilitated by tech

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ( George Santayana, 'The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense.' Scribner’s, 1905: 284)

www.iep.utm.edu/santayan/

Yes to all the points in merrymouse post.

merrymouse

Point taken.

Would not wish to minimise the violence ingrained in the working-class home well into the 20th century.

But would also caution against the current endemic plague of presentism in History. The Victorians were progressive in their day. Could we ask anything more of them?

But would also caution against the current endemic plague of presentism in History. The Victorians were progressive in their day. Could we ask anything more of them?

Certainly wouldn't want to be in the statue trade anyway

The letter was written at the behest of an American TRA "transwoman" so there were two ironies there.

Who, pachyderm?

At the time I thought Aoife Martin was involved, but it seems Martin wasn't the main driver.

No, nothing to do with that person.

I'd rather not discuss individuals on a forum like this as the flying monkeys will descend but it's all in the public domain. The narcissists behind the letter weren't exactly discreet about the backstory.