Julia Beck on purity politics

[MrsSnippyPants]

Love this woman
"This accusation is misogynist and anti-lesbian. Male politicians and activists on the Left are never accused of being “in bed” with the right. Why is women’s bipartisanship frowned upon? "

www.feministcurrent.com/2019/09/24/interview-julia-beck-on-the-equality-act-sex-self-identification-and-why-she-perseveres-in-the-face-of-controversy/?

Thanks. Great article.

Nutshell: 'Sex self-identification denies women, regardless of sexuality, our right to protection on the basis of sex. When we lose the ability to name sex, the boundaries of sexuality cease to exist. From a legal perspective, we have to be able to define these basic sexual boundaries if we are going to afford them civil protection.'

Bravo Julia. Up the pirates. This isn't about 'anti' anything, it's about refusing to let women be obliterated.

It's a very revealing condemnation of the left that no one would listen to her or really even host a discussion.

It raises the question, as it has many times before, why does this kind of silencing seem to crop up on the left with such regularity. It seems like it must be a baked in problem or vulnerability. Is it just because people on the the left are more likely to recognise that language can have significant effects, and they over-compensate? Is it about paternalism? I've seen both those things at play but I don't feel like they are an explanation.

I am not sure that I believe its true that men don't get called out by the left for actions that seem bi-partisan. There have been quite a few men who were considered to have been on the left at one time who now are regularly referred to as alt-right, or as if they've somehow been captured by the right. It happens to academics, I've even seen it with people speaking from a Marxist perspective, weirdly.

Goosefoot
why does this kind of silencing seem to crop up on the left with such regularity.
It might be that right wing people tend to believe that left wing people (& others who disagree with them) are foolish, whereas left wing people tend to believe that right wing people (& others who disagree with them) are wicked. That's a generalisation, obviously, but I suppose you're more likely to want to shut down wicked speech than foolish speech.

Then again, Helen Lewis has talked about the lack of respect for free debate on the right, too. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/05/so-nigel-farage-hates-bbc-s-tough-questions-what-snowflake

That's an interesting article, Mermoose. You are right, (ha ha) it does happen across the political spectrum to some extent. I think it's been emphasised all round by the echo chamber effect, and also by fake news claims.
I also think that at other times, even in the last 20 years, the right has been more insular about debate than it is right at the moment. I'm not really politically active in those spheres, so I've never had much occasion to complain from within.

But I do think its correct that at this moment the left sees all disagreement, even about technicalities in many cases, as wickedness. In the identity politics thread Adoph Reed was mentioned as someone to read - I've had the experience of using an explanation of his for a particular phenomena (I agreed with him obviously) and being declared wicked because it differed from the one mainly accepted by the left. Even though it was just as much directed toward dismantling inequality and racism, that wasn't the measure of wickedness, apparently.

Yes, the Left is riddled with dogmatism at the moment. I've always thought of free debate as an immune system - it occasionally causes nasty symptoms, but if you do away with it and something seriously harmful comes along, you're defenceless.

Goosefoot

In the US there has long been an organisation called Log Cabin Republicans, who are gay men who support Republican positions on everything except gay rights.

They are never vilified, silenced, marched against, and are certainly never threatened with physical violence or accused of being Nazis.

The difference is: they’re MEN.

Environmentalists in the USA have always worked very closely with people like hunting rights / guns rights advocates, because these groups share a common interest in preserving lands and resources in their natural state. Hunters get to hunt more, birders enjoy the environment, environmentalists get their goal of preserving nature met.

It is rare, in my experience, that anyone criticizes green groups about talking to hunting and land use rights groups. It’s obviously considered important to meet in common cause.

I am not sure why talking to a pro life woman about a single shared goal - protecting women’s sports and privacy - should mean I somehow agree with her about revoking a woman’s right to access legal medical procedures. I would expect to be in the opposite side of a protest rope on those issues. Just a as the environmental advocate is likely on the other side of the rope when it comes to the guns rights protests.

Thank you for posting this. Lots of interesting thoughts here, like:

Some women say working with Republicans makes feminism look bad. Can we please dump beauty myths already? Optics are small potatoes when an entire sex class is threatened with legal erasure. Feminism will never “look good” anyway. Feminism is hated because women are hated. Period.

And I agree with Julia that we need to go offline and build networks with all kinds of other women, xoing all kinds kf different things to tackle this issue. That's why I love the emerging landscape of the new women's movement in Scotland - I've seen it in action and it is now so diverse, it speaks to many more women.

^doing all kinds of

It's divide and conquer shite. Feminism is for women - all women and only women. Some women have right-wing views. That is irrelevant as far as feminism goes because it's still a movement for them. We can disagree on other issues but it doesn't change that.

Funniest thing is, the men policing women's politics are generally (invariably) hypocritical bigots. Maybe we should let them know where they're going wrong.