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

Some people understand things that affect them personally, but not so much otherwise, and some work harder at a broader view. Solnit's written some brilliant stuff about mansplaining, which affected her.

Then she was a, to me surprising, disappointment after the Charlie Hebdo terrorism.

Now she turns out to be off in the bozone layer on women's rights.

But it all starts to fit a pattern. If it's not something that slapped her, personally, in the face like a dead wet fish, her analysis just tracks the cool kids and peters out.

Glosswitch / Victoria Smith is always brilliant.

Brilliant brilliant essay. She's nailed it. How many "isolated incidents" do there have to be before we're allowed to add them up and identify a pattern? Isn't there a rule of misogyny along the lines of "basic pattern recognition skills are cruel and evil when they hurt mens feelings"?

That was marvellous.

O M G. This is blistering.

🔥🔥🔥🔥

Fuck YES! Brilliant.

It was easy to find several examples of toilet/bathroom incidents. Solnit writes that she never heard of a single one. I spent less than half an hour on Google and found several. Solnit also appears rather terminally confused about what sex is and what gender is.

that's wonderful writing.

I could not believe how bad the Solnit piece was, it read like she was being held hostage by the Guardian editors, desperate for the next piece on genderology in return for the £250k pieces of silver. Glosswitch's reposte is just brilliant - full of righteous anger, articulate and to the point. It's the kind of feminist writing the Guardian used to publish, back when it was worth the paper it's printed on.

@AmericanSlang are you sayong Rebecca Solnit got paid £250k for that article????

Glosswitch writes so brilliantly. I so hope that Solnit reads this letter. I really enjoyed Solnit's Men Explain Things To Me essays so it's really disappointing to come out with this unthinking drivel.

SisterCellophane I certainly hope not! I was referring to the £250k funding The Guardian received in exchange for promoting genderology, which it has been doing assiduously for some time now

Oh Ok hahaha thought that was a bit insane!

Glosswitch's letter is brilliant. I am also finding the Glinner website really helpful, especially the video conversation pieces.

Excellent. Thanks for posting.

Interesting re funding. Considering how the "why don't women like us" twitter thread, it's been wasted. They've driven women away but they've also offended the tra lobby by providing space to people like Suzanne Moore. Lose lose.

Then she was a, to me surprising, disappointment after the Charlie Hebdo terrorism.

What did she say about Charlie Hebdo? (I tried googling, but perhaps I'm doing it badly).

So this independence spouting is all a load of tosh. Who'd a thought

A great riposte. I was heartened by the fact the comments on Facebook and Twitter mostly thought it was bullshit too.

What did she say about Charlie Hebdo?

I had to look it up to. In 2015, after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, PEN gave them an award for their courage in freedom of expression. A number of writers who were members of PEN wrote to the organisation to protest against the award:

www.vulture.com/2015/04/how-and-why-6-writers-denounced-pen.html

Brilliant piece, 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 to Victoria.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the passing reference in the Solnit piece (of shite) to the fact the last lesbian bar in SF closed in 2015?

So the world's “queerest” city no longer has a single bar just for lesbians.

And I think we can all guess how that came about. Much as we know how Michfest died at around the same time.

Funny how Solnit isn’t a whit dismayed by that, doesn’t even stop to look at that as an event, despite her outward embracing of all things “queer”.

Seems to me like internalised misogyny so intense you could fry eggs on it.

Well, what a load of sanctimonious crap (withdrawing from the PEN awards, I mean).
They must have such terrible headaches, with their haloes being so tight.

Great tweet from Glosswitch here about the silence of "self-styled skeptical men" on unnecessary surgery being performed on teenage girls for pseudoscientific reasons:

twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1295690499991515136

Wth Solnit and many like her, the basic problem is that in these discussions, they beg the question - their assumption is that TWAW, so everything is seen through that lens. If you try and say something like transwomen retain male patterns of violence, it's as if you said that women with third nipples are more violent and therefor should be treated as men. The idea that the point is that transwomen are male, and we have separate sexed venues for people for a reason, doesn't even get a look.

Sloppy thinking, but it is extremely difficult to argue with sloppy thinkers because they don't see it.

That is exactly right, Goosefoot. If you accept the basic premise that trans women are women, then saying that trans women are more violent or more sexually aggressive is like picking on any other group of women, like lesbians or Asian women. If you don't accept that premise, but believe that trans women are men (hint: they are), then all you need to point out is that men as a group are known to be violent and sexually aggressive.

The problem is in being compelled to use the word "trans women", which makes them sound analagous to other groups of women such as black women or lesbian women, for example.

@Goosefoot and @RoyalCorgi I agree. To me though when you say "x are women" you have to define "woman". So all comes down to that definition. The question "what is a woman?" If it is posed to a TRA it is avoided amidst accusations of hate speech etc. But the fact remains if you say "x are women" you have to define women. You cannot as I have heard argued say "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman", it is a tautology, making no logical sense.