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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Julie Bindel - article on allies

259 replies

Goosefoot · 12/10/2020 12:36

Thought people might be interested in discussing this:

[https://unherd.com/2020/10/feminisms-dangerous-new-allies/]]

We've talked about this a lot here - I'm not sure Bindel has really said anything as worthwhile or interesting as lot of the regular posters here have, it seems a little one dimensional to me.

Maybe because she's really stuck on the left-good right-bad thinking and doesn't really consider whether there has been a change within those categories at all, or why the left has struggled with certain problems. It seems to me she sees it as almost random, and if we just take out the TRA stuff things can go back to normal.

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OldCrone · 14/10/2020 23:14

@NRatched

The talk of TRAs 'capturing' major institutions behind the scenes

Hmm. Regulatory capture is a very real thing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

And is indeed what Stonewall have been doing IMO. Infact, a few TRAs (stephen whittle, was one I remember, there are others) actively admit that they wanted everything done behind closed doors, which..seems to have happened with how many places have adopted 'gender' instead of sex.

This is an interesting thread from last year for anyone who hasn't seen it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3541908-Regulatory-capture

Also this one

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3613391-The-Equalities-and-Human-Rights-Commission-one-of-the-roots-of-regulatory-capture

DidoLamenting · 14/10/2020 23:18

@jj1968

Yes, I've heard of the PLO and the ANC too, and whilst those groups were left they were also part of colonial struggles with histories far more complex than just right/left.
I could have predicted you'd make this sort of excuse for the IRA. How about Shining Path? What's your apologia for them?
NRatched · 15/10/2020 00:36

I did not say gender was not used aswell as sex sometimes. But the mass taking over of businesses..randomly switching to gender instead of sex fairly recently, even going as far as to quote the equality act, yet purposely miss out sex in some cases, whilst its quite well known these days that many (on both sides of this) see gender as distinctly different from sex. But still, gender. I fail to see really, where recording anyones 'gender' would be useful, given those who have a gender identity also agree its something in your head. Your inner sense of self, or something. If thats what gender is (and I agree it is, not arguing against that) then there is never a reason to collect data on it, with possibly the rare excpetion of..say a transpersons medical file. Sex: Female. Gender: Transman or something, to prevent misgendering.

Yhe conitnual fudging of gender and sex would amuse me if it did not disadvantage women so much tbh. Admit sex and gender are different..possibly the one thing feminists and TRAs have in common. However, TRAs will then go and use gender where they actually mean sex (because of course, sex is a social construct..). The single sex spaces is a good example of this. They are segregated by sex. Sex is different to gender. Yet TRAs argument is 'because gender', when gender has no bearing on sex as they admit themelves. Its odd, to say the least.

there haven't been secretive trans conspiracists sneaking around changing the words in policy documents.

For that though, activists specifically tried changing laws and such under the table without the public knowing anything about it, these activists admit this Grin If you disagree, might be worth taking it up with transactivists about it. Tell them to stop saying thats what happened, if its not what happened, despite those saying it was what happened being a part of the reason it happened to start with so quite well placed to know what happened. Tongue twister and a half that one..

But this is kind of besides the point now, given there is a court case that will settle the matter soon enough. While the sneaking around did work to start with, think that game is up now. Look how pissed off that Crispin Blunt dude is about how he was backroom promised his own way.

Goosefoot · 15/10/2020 03:25

@xxyzz

Goosefoot, I don't know or care which poster you are referring to - but if you are objecting to a particular poster it would be quite helpful if you could quote them and refer to their particular posts, rather than making dark assertions that an unnamed someone is secretly trying to paint all GC feminists as Nazis.

The reality is - and unlike you, I don't see GC feninists as being in any way implicated, as Poulton aside, I see little evidence of GC feminists espousing conspiracy theories themselves, as opposed to talking to those who do - that conspiracy cults and anti-Semitism are deeply similar and intertwined movements.

It's hardly an accident or coincidence, after all anti-Semitism is the conspiracy theory par excellence (powerful group secretly conspiring to take over the world? Tick. Kill children to increase their strength? Tick. Less than human themselves? Tick.). Anti-Semitism is in many ways the model for this kind of conspiracy theory, its archetypes go back hundreds of years, it appeals to stupid, gullible and vicious people in exactly the same way any other conspiracy theory does. And that is visible on both the far left (eg Piers Corbyn is a Holocaust denier as well as an anti-masker and climate change denier) and the far right ( eg the terrorist who murdered Jews in the synagogue in Pittsburgh claiming Jews were behind 'white genocide').

While this thread goes well beyond Julie's article, I would therefore disagre with her that the danger lies only or at least primarily on the far right. Unlike her, I am aware that Jews, like women, are threatened by both far left and far right positions. One of the reasons I spent relatively little time on this board until recently was because in the last 4 or 5 years, as things have really kicked off in attacks on women's rights, Corbyn's Labour's attacks on Jews meant that I was busy fighting on 2 fronts, and in my case, judged that the threat to my safety from anti-Semites on the left was more immediate to me than the threat to my safety from TRAs. Now Starmer is in place, I feel able to relax a bit and take up the fight for women's rights again, against both the far left and far right.

To me, the distinction between far left and far right seems pretty spurious anyway, as both are pretty similar, in their methods and priorities. I distrust both equally. I don't feel your attempts, Goosefoot, to blur the boundaries between far right (Neo-Nazis) and mainstream right (Posie Parker) is helpful, as in reality, the real commonality is between moderates on both the left and right, which includes 99% of GC feminists, and the nutters and conspiracy theorists on both the extremist right and left.

In short, the right/left divide is not the real issue. The real split is between extremists (who CTs naturally belong to) and moderates.

So I get where Julie is coming from, but unlike her I wouldn't trust the far left as far as I could throw them either.

I'm not sure why you think I believe GC feminists are implicated in conspiracy theories. I don't. I do think there is an attempt to suggest it, it's been said right in the thread. Nor do I see why you think I want to blur the distinction between the mainstream and far right as I haven't really said anything along those lines - in fact I've suggested that I don't think accusing someone of believing in a covid conspiracy theory is at all the same as being a Nazi and we shouldn't be allowing anyone to colaps those ideas together.

I also think Bindel is quite wrong to think that there is a threat only from the right, I am not confident she really understands the political spectrum well at the moment, right and left seem to be very simple designations in her mind.

Given that you seem to think I believe and am saying a whole lot of things I don't think at all, and so wouldn't say, I'm really not sure where this discussion is going. From my perspective it seems like you are just saying what you want to think I mean.

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Goosefoot · 15/10/2020 03:35

@raddledoldmisanthropist

For me the abolition of capitalism is "far left" and a very extreme position. I'm surprised that anyone would or could think otherwise.

I presume that some of the people who say this as if it's a mainstream view don't really mean the seizure of all private capital and the establishment of a command economy by a totalitarian state.

Communism (the political system, not the vague theoretical utopia that Marx never really defined) has killed more people than any other ideology in history. Saying you are a communist is little different from saying you are a Nazi.

Thinking collective goods like schools hospitals and police do not function well in a market is just good economics. There are lots of ways you can deal with that issue but capitalist socialism has worked well in many countries and is a perfectly reasonable political position.

This is a definition problem. Capitalism does not mean markets, it means capitalists. Markets existed long before capitalism which only emerged in the modern period.

Abolition of capitalism could mean replacing it with any number of other systems that have already existed, or something new, but it's not all that extreme to suggest that a system that's only been in place for a short time in human history could itself be replaced by something else.

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xxyzz · 15/10/2020 20:37

jj1968, disappointing to see you make an excuse for Corbyn's wreath.

A bit flabbergasted that you can't see the far left's support for terrorism, not only did Jeremy Corbyn not back military action in Kosovo, he supported outright Serbian war crimes revisionism and voted in parliament to deny the existence of mass graves found in the Balkan country. He was a keen supporter of both the IRA and Islamist terror groups.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the far right are any better. But at least the far right aren't pretending to offer a kinder, gentler alternative.

xxyzz · 15/10/2020 20:56

Goosefoot, happy not to continue the discussion, as the bits I did understand of what you said were minimising anti-Semitism.

I fully admit to not understanding what "I've suggested that I don't think accusing someone of believing in a covid conspiracy theory is at all the same as being a Nazi" means or who you think has been saying that.

Maybe you should write more clearly if you don't want to be misunderstood?

Ereshkigalangcleg · 16/10/2020 02:18

was quite common, I worked in admin for a while in the 90s writing up funding bids and equal opps policies and stuff and gender was routinely used synonymously with sex. It wasn't an ideological thing and there haven't been secretive trans conspiracists sneaking around changing the words in policy documents.

"Gender" as used in policy documents 25 years ago has a subtly different meaning to "sex". But it's not surprising that people mixed them up because they were both referring to sex. However I'd argue that now we need clear blue water between the two because the meanings are frequently contradictory which wasn't the case in the past.

Moonbasealpha · 16/10/2020 19:38

Call it what you like. The GRA changes legal sex. We all know what it means.

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