Glosswitch's response to Rebecca Solnit's stupid Guardian article

[RoyalCorgi]

She puts it very well, as always.

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-strategic-ignorance-award

Excellent response

“What I’m seeing here is not a challenge to patriarchal thought. On the contrary, you’re supporting its endless repackaging.”

Rebecca Solnit is one of those people I've always thought I ought to like, but felt there was something a bit off about her. Now I can put my finger on it: her feminism is a vanity project.

Blistering and brilliant letter. I hope Solnit reads it.

There's a special place in hell for women like Solnit - women who know perfectly well what the difference between men and women is, but who pretend not to know because they think it makes them more clever/sophisticated/right-on. "Strategic ignorance" is a very apt term.

Ooh, she has a right turn of phrase, that Glosswitch. Hope she writes a book, I bet it'd be about a thousand times more interesting, nuanced and compelling than Solnit's unsatisfying output.

Great response. She's a brilliant writer.

And I'm really liking @glinnner 's website. I think getting thrown off toxic twitter has done him good.

I enjoyed reading that!

”Women are less likely to be assaulted by a male person claiming to be a woman than a male person claiming to be a man”

Is this actually true? Are there any studies to back it up? My understanding was that criminal offending was similar, even after significant transition, so once you add in transvestism, which is a paraphilia, plus men who are simply chancers, it seems unlikely that the rate of attacks on women would decrease.

”Women are less likely to be assaulted by a male person claiming to be a woman than a male person claiming to be a man”

I assume that's just because there are more men who claim to be men than there are men who claim to be women.

Excellent!

@AnyOldPrion

”Women are less likely to be assaulted by a male person claiming to be a woman than a male person claiming to be a man”

Is this actually true? Are there any studies to back it up? My understanding was that criminal offending was similar, even after significant transition, so once you add in transvestism, which is a paraphilia, plus men who are simply chancers, it seems unlikely that the rate of attacks on women would decrease.

I assume this is because there are more men than transwomen, rather than because transwomen are less likely to offend.

Sorry cross posted with OldCrone. And she put it much better too.

If you are all correct, and that is what she actually means, then her statement is either deliberately misleading, dangerously stupid or (quite likely) both.

This really stood out for me

"Are you sure it’s your superior open-mindedness, and not your privilege, that’s talking here?"

Even so, after years spent on the coalface of intellectual masturbation, I can still see a difference between engaging in circumscribed wanking for the applause of your peers and doing so to shame victims of male violence, characterising their rational fear as something rooted in cisnormative rituals of abject othering of the transcendent blah blah blah.

👏👏👏

She's good. Such a shame about Solnits--she's written some good stuff in relation to US politics.

Glosswitch is outstanding.

I heard someone mention glosswitch but had never read her. Wow! She's brilliant!

That simmering rage is just glorious. She is such a good writer

@OldCrone

”Women are less likely to be assaulted by a male person claiming to be a woman than a male person claiming to be a man”

I assume that's just because there are more men who claim to be men than there are men who claim to be women.

While that is clearly true, if the ratios from the prison service are representative, a male person claiming to be a woman is more likely to be a sex offender than a male person claiming to be a man.

Self evidently, You would expect to come across more sex offenders in prison than in most people’s daily lives, but that is true of all kinds of criminal, so the ratios could be similar.

Yes, Fallingirl. What sort of man would be most likely to fraudulently claim to be transgender if it gave him access to women and girls in a vulnerable state?

Glosswitch is such a brilliant writer.

The cognitive dissonance from Solnit over male violence is wearying. Glosswitch nails it though 💪

Brilliant riposte to a vacuous piece of virtue-signaling from Rebecca Solnit.

It's so easy to go along with the grain on trans issues and write nice 'just be kind, ladies' stuff but it is so much harder to actually engage one's critical faculties and truly think for oneself as Victoria Smith does here. Harder too, because there is no social approval to go with it. In fact, hatred and name-calling is the only reward.

Victoria is speaking up for women who are being silenced and ignored. Rebecca Solnit is speaking up for the latest on-trend issue of the day. It's easy to tell who's braver.