Bindel on how TRAs have captured a lot of the media.

[Fallingirl]

This is a really good piece by Julie Bindel to kick off the new decade. She outlines early capture, going back to 2008, before mainstream media took any interest. But, already then, pieces about trans issues were run by trans organisations for approval.

thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-2020/triumph-of-the-trans-lobbyists/

So easily at all.

Maybe so hipster. As of 2018, the height of the "no debate" craziness, perhaps so.... I think things were different in 2014 and hopefully they will change again for the better during 2020.

Great piece. And I don't find it all about her in any bad way; her treatment reinforces her point about the power of these lobby groups and TRAs in the press. Given Julie Bindel was on her own on this one for so long, I find it heroic that she is so encouraging and supportive of those who are new to activism or gender critical feminism. She'd have every right to ask where we all were all those years ago, but she never does.

Yes - lets get the facts straight. For instance you have linked to the wrong article!

And no Julie Bindel was not ahead of other women. Many women were struggling to get this issue addressed in the context of women service providers. She was using that work to create a flashy article which she may have thought would look good on her journalist CV but did not help the women who are actually working at the coal face.

And as I say her wanting to be publised left her open to being set up. It was the Guardian in going ahead with the article as written, which was in such contrast to other articles, that created the uproar. She was a cheap trick. Had they respected her as a jounalist they would have worked with her.

It has nothing to do with "being nice". It is about making sure, assuming you are actually committed to the issue, not self aggrandising, that you reflect on what maybe the consequences of your actions.

Lets face it someone like Meghan Murphy is a very effective and brave campaigner, actually engaging at a grass roots level. I dont understand why anyone thinks someone showing off in print if of any value.

One on level the article this thread is about could in some sense have come straight out of a mumsnet thread. But somehow has to be presented as though it is about some sole campaigner. It derails the issue, again.

And why she was attacked for being nearly given an award was because of the extremely gross article published by the Guardian which used such derogatory remarks about trans women that it was eventually totally withdrawn from their web site. Something that has never happened before or since.

Well it has, because there was an article by Julie Burchill that this happened to, the one referred to here:

www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jan/14/theobserver-transgender

What was the Julie Bindel article? You say people have linked to the wrong one - can you link to the right one, even if you get the same message as this:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-burchill-suzanne-moore-transsexuals

Jeez @stumbledin read the whole thread, just admit you got it wrong and apologise to Julie BINDEL for erroneously stating she had an article removed.

Maybe there's a reason @stumbledin has the handle "stumbledin"?

Bindel has been a campaigner for women's rights as well as a journalist for a very long time, and it's a bit embarrassing for anyone to be mixing her up with a different woman just because they have the same first name. Julie Burchill, who is not the same person, is also a pretty firm supporter of women's rights and is entitled to her opinion even if some people don't like her choice of words. The attack on her and suggestion that she's arrogant and makes things all about her and should pipe down is noted, and I would like to point out that there's a fascinating psychological theory known as "projection" that may be relevant here.

Back once more to the article! The question is, why are editors allowing lobby groups approval over what they publish? Especially the tabloids, which normally don't care at all about hurting anyone's feelings.

Did that Ash Plonker ever apologise to Julie Bindel for her “What’s Julie Bindel ever done for women in prison?” tweet? Something about this thread reminded me of it

I wonder how Ash spun that to her followers? It really did make her look like a fool.

Great article by Julie Bindel - the IPSO Standards have a lot to answer for.

IPSO Blog: Examining editorial standards in coverage of transgender issues
16 May 2019

www.ipso.co.uk/news-press-releases/blog/ipso-blog-examining-editorial-standards-in-coverage-of-transgender-issues/

"IPSO has commissioned Mediatique, who undertook well received research to support the Cairncross Review, to carry out research into editorial standards in the reporting of transgender matters. The research will involve quantitative mapping of coverage of transgender matters in the last ten years, as well as qualitative interviews with industry figures, groups representing the transgender community and other relevant stakeholders including groups campaigning on women's issues."

Anyone know which "groups campaigning on women's issues" Mediatique has interviewed??

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Helpfully, in the same issue of "The Critic" as Julie Bindel's article . . .

Sissy porn and trans dirty laundry
Louise Perry reviews "Females" by Andrea Long Chu

Extracts

"Describing a pornographic video featuring lines from SCUM Manifesto, Chu is instantly enthralled: “This made instant, perfect sense.” Throughout the book Solanas is presented, not as a traumatised woman driven to violence, but as a bit-player in a masochistic fantasy. Chu is quite open about the fact that her interest in Solanas is, to put it bluntly, a sex thing."

"Females — a witty, provocative and highly readable book — is about the nature of desire, identity and love. It is also, to a rather startling degree, about Chu’s masturbation habits. Most of the second half of the text is devoted to discussions of her porn preferences, particularly genres concerned with feminisation. “Sissy porn did make me trans,” writes Chu, in a passage that has provoked outrage among a section of trans activists, some of whom object to the candour with which Chu discusses the sexual aspects of her desire to transition . . ."

"The thesis is bonkers, of course. “Everyone is female” we are informed in the first line. “Femaleness is not an anatomical or genetic characteristic of an organism but rather a universal existential condition, the one and only structure of human consciousness.” "

"But if you replace every use of “female” with “feminine”, the claim begins to make sense."

"Gender transition begins, after all, from the understanding that how you identify yourself subjectively — as precious and important as this identification may be — is nevertheless on its own basically worthless. If identity were all there were to gender, transition would be as easy as thinking it — a light bulb, suddenly switched on. Your gender identity would simply exist, in mute abstraction, and no one, least of all yourself, would care. On the contrary, if there is any lesson of gender transition — from the simplest request regarding pronouns to the most invasive surgeries — it’s that gender is something other people have to give you. Gender exists, if it is to exist at all, only in the structural generosity of strangers."

"Females , and the praise for Females, is the product of a school of feminism now dominant in academia that has abandoned interest in the material aspects of women’s lives and has instead embraced confection and self-obsession. This form of feminism is far more interested in the supposedly liberating power of lipgloss and orgasms than in the difficult business of incrementally improving the lot of women and girls. When a porn-obsessed writer can be lauded as a feminist prophet for describing the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes” we should wonder how on earth we got to this point. Chu’s writing may be funny, engaging and thought-provoking, but this is not a feminist book in any meaningful sense of the term. This troubled and talented writer is in need of a hard-nosed editor and a cold shower."

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The Editorial in the previous issue of The Critic (Dec 2019):

Lost in transition
The proposition is that men can become women and women can become men. How and when are pertinent words.

"Common sense says that if a thing can’t say when and how it happens, it hasn’t happened. It’s time politicians let this be said by everyone."

thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/lost-in-transition/