Julie Bindel - article on allies

[Goosefoot]

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.

jj thankyou for explaining away the rape and death threats silly women are scared of. Just jobs lost and public doing left to explain away.

*doxing

@NRatched

I suspect one reason why organised conspiracy theorists are all over the GC movement is they recognise conspiratorial thinking when they see it, and so are actively attempting to recruit.

Umm yeah. This line is interesting. And, dare I say it, a little conspiracy like!

Not really. No conspiracy, no secret plot, sites like Brandnewtube are actively promoting GC ideas and reaching out to GC circles as are evangelicals, see hands across the aisle for details, and other groups like Breitbart and The Federalist as well as more mainstream right orgs like The Spectator and it's plain to see. Everyone is chasing hearts and minds, thats the nature of politics. I would never for example suggest that this is all being co-ordinated by shadowy groups behind the scenes working to a secret trans exterminist agenda. That's not how things work, things are messy.

@TheAugury

jj thankyou for explaining away the rape and death threats silly women are scared of. Just jobs lost and public doing left to explain away.

I'm not explaining it away in an attempt to minimise it, I'm sorry if I gave that impression. But this is happening to all women online from all sides of the political spectrum from Ash Sarkar to Priti Patel to Katie Hopkins to Shon Faye to JK Rowling. It's a big problem, and not just a problem for GC women.

However, I find this conversation is like saying that no one should use Speaker's Corner to speak about their topic because there are other's who have ill intent there

and

I am also not trying to minimise the disgusting content, however, I am pointing out that I have found disgusting content on twitter, reddit and other platforms too. And chosen not to view/read it. And chosen not to discount someone's opinion because they also use the site

Yup. My opinion on this. Also find it really odd that it seems people are being blamed for ads placed on interviews they have given. But, not odd at the same time, given circumstances

Also 100% agree with this

Ordinary trans people as well as LGB and intersex people are suffering as a result of the inevitable backlash

And this has always been very clear. Ordinary people are unfortunately being caught in the backlash against the most extreme transactivists, who pretend they 'speak for the community' yet will silence any who disagree with them with cries of 'truscum' and such. 'Ordinary transpeople' I know seem to disagree with transactivists wants/demands as much as anyone else does! But of course, this is transphobic and bigoted, to note, or to agree with. A fantastic example of this is many transpeople are over the moon the GRC process is simplified and cheaper, but more happy about additional trans healthcare being made available. Yet TRAs are very upset about this and think anyone who thinks that was acceptable or is a better result for transepople than selfID is a bigot and hates transpeople As their aim was and is, nothing to do with whats good for transepople, it was about removing womens rights wholesale, which does not help transpeople at all. I actually don't know any transpeople at all who agree with self-ID, all see the glaring issues and can see its bad for women.

I'm mostly lurking these days, but delurked to comment that I find this thread's focus on Transgender Trend, Sonia Poulton, Brand New Tube, etc. completely perplexing.

The thread title is "Julie Bindel -- article on allies" and the OP links to Bindel's UnHerd article, "Feminism's dangerous new allies."

In this article, the only women Bindel criticizes by name are: Arielle Scarcella; Memoree Joelle; Kaeley Triller Haver (the piece misspells her surname as 'Harver'); Emily Zinos; and Meg Kilgannon. I believe all are Americans, though I am not well acquainted with each woman's public profile.

The only organizations Julie Bindel criticizes in the article are Hands Across the Aisle and Women's Liberation Front, both American groups.

Bindel writes, "I understand only too well the effects of being silenced and de-platformed, but joining forces with those who wish to repeal the majority of women's hard-won rights is a betrayal of the highest order. That's why I think these alliances are strategically disastrous...I believe feminists must look to the movement's success in the UK and understand that we can win this battle using strong feminist arguments rooted in experience, struggle, and female solidarity."

While I admire Julie Bindel's work on behalf of women in the UK tremendously, my question about this piece is: what is her experience in American politics? From what successful history winning political victories for American women and girls without ever speaking to any conservative women does she address American women?

bad for women *and transpeople (especially transwomen) alike. That should have been

Most of us know who Bindel is attacking, I would admire her more if she had just said so.

As to the rest of what is being talked about on in this thread, well, I have no idea what that has to do with Bindel's article. So I respectfully suggest the people who want to talk about these derails go and start another thread.

Agreed GrinitchSpinach
Unfortunately we have someone who likes to introduce random GC woman or women's group into threads in order to criticise them. The subject of the thread is irrelevant - it's just used an an opportunity to smear women. Can't imagine why?

Fortunately if lurkers do go and take at Transgender Trend's site they are met with thoughtful and intelligent content that centres the safeguarding and needs of children. It's very impressive.

Yes indeed, good job I'm not a conspiracy theorist as otherwise I might be wondering how and why this thread should take such a bizarre turn.

Grinitch good to see you posting again! I'd be very interested in a US perspective on Bindel's article?

Yes, the conspiracy theory business was a derail that was attempting to discredit people by pretty random accusations of anti-semitism. It's unfortunate that people feel free to do this, just as it has with racism, people will soon begin to assume such accusations are most often baseless rhetorical devices.

I sometimes thinkBindel's real thought is that if she can prevent people from being exposed to dangerous ideas, she can prevent them thinking about them and maybe seeing they are not bad or wrong.

@hoodathunkit

I'd say that is verging on conspiracy theory, and is an example of how conspiratorial thinking has been weaponised against trans people, although I note it often comes with a suggestion that this is just the start, or people are being softened up, or there is some kind of elite with a broader more insiduous agenda using trans people as their first play.

I believe that conspiracy theories have been weaponised to support the extreme ends of the TRA movement via the misuse of human rights movements and legislation.

Ordinary trans people as well as LGB and intersex people are suffering as a result of the inevitable backlash

@jj1968 Intersex ppl like my cousin are suffering because of being added to the LGBT rainbow, because they have a medical condition, not a gender identity. They're suffering because since the 'I' got added many of the charities internationally have lost their funding. Stop using them - they are NOTHING to do with trans.

Most of us know who Bindel is attacking, I would admire her more if she had just said so.

I really can't be doing with people not saying what they mean.

I am more than happy to work with conservatives in the UK on this. I want to get back to everyone, and the law, knowing what a woman is, then we can go back to arguing about other political views.

@midclegs101

I didn't mention intersex people.

Sorry, the first mention of Sonia Poulton was by me, although it wasn't intended to be a derail, I only mentioned her in passing! I followed her on Twitter and used to think she was really good. She then started posting coronavirus conspiracy theory theories which I frankly think are really dangerous and risk lives. So while I'm not going to hate on someone who thinks she's great, I will judge you, yes. No reason to assume she is anti-Semitic - don't recall seeing anything like that.

I have to say that GC women are usually pretty good on anti-Semitism, in that there's a big crossover between the people who hate women and the people who hate Jews, and the tactics used to attack both groups are similar, so GC feminists are usually pretty good at picking up anti-Semitism and coming down hard against it. Don't think I've ever come across anti-Semitism on FWR.

Surprised, though, to see eg Goosefoot saying that conspiracy theories are basically OK, or others on here saying that there could be crossover between GC feminists and conspiracy theorists. I definitely don't think that's the case. To be a GC feminist, you have to be quite questioning, someone who doesn't just accept what they're told and also (she says modestly) reasonably intelligent. Whereas conspiracy cultists tend to be distinguishable by being gullible and frankly quite stupid. And yes, there is a strong strand of anti-Semitism running through a lot of current conspiracy theory.

So no, I reject the idea that GC feminism and conspiracy theorists are similar. I noted Poulton because frankly she stands out as unusually batshit in what is usually a pleasant sea of rationality among GC feminists.

And that's enough about her.

jj is actually making an interesting point, or something verging on one.

Male teenagers, especially of the gamer shut-in variety, make idle vicious threats to each other all the time. So maybe male teenagers are very confused that female people, the majority of whom have actually experienced assault from men in our lives, don't take their rape threats and death threats as lightly as they and their pals do.

But that's not any kind of excuse for them at all; it just lays bare their utter lack of empathy (as well as their utter lack of femaleness.)

Surprised, though, to see eg Goosefoot saying that conspiracy theories are basically OK,

I don't think I remember saying that.

I don't think they are either ok or not ok. Some are pretty crazy. Others are more plausible. A few have turned out to be true, or partly true. It really depends on the content.

I do think it's funny that many ant-conspiracy theory people seem to see conspiracy theories as evidence of something that sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory.

I do think you can get a tendency in many groups with some sort of sysemic thinking, and an ideology, to turn to conspiracy theory. I don't mean that everyone buys into it, but when you start to see larger patterns, and that they seem to benefit certain people or groups, it's very easy to posit a conspiracy. If what you see doesn't quite fit your ideology, it's easy to try and make things fit and that can also contribute.

Sometimes there may actually be some sort of organised effort going on though usually it's not as complicated as people like to think, not really worthy of the terms conspiracy.

Russian bots flooding comments sections in order to foment unrest is a good example, it sounds pretty bonkers but seems to be something that really happens. The Russians are plotting against us, like we're in an old James Bond film.

I agree that a lot of the most extreme abusive stuff on twitter, on both sides of the debate, often comes from malign actors. We can only speculate about Russian bots and the like

The issue of the Russian bots is not pure speculation, it has been documented throughly by Peter Pomerantsev in his books, based on his extensive experience of working in Russian media

an example of his writing about a Russian troll farm:

The office was in a four-storey new build with square pillars propping up the second floor, its narrow black-framed windows like long arrow slits. There were no signs on the door. The friend met Lyudmilla at the entrance and took her to see the manager. To Lyudmilla’s surprise, it was someone she’d heard of before: a newspaper columnist. The farm didn’t appear to be run by secret service guys or PR gurus, but former journalists. A couple of motivations quickly became obvious: she was being offered several times more than a regular media salary and steady work. The manager was uncertain about Lyudmilla, however: he knew of her investigative background. Lyudmilla’s friend waved it off: “Oh, come on, who here hasn’t done that sort of work back in the past?!”

Inside the farm every floor was full of computers, crammed into thin lines and manned round the clock by changing shifts of employees with passes that clocked all arrival and departure times. Even smoking breaks were regulated.

The farm had its own hierarchy. The most looked down upon were the “commenters”, of which the lowest of the low were those who posted in the online comments sections of newspapers; a level up were those who left comments on social media. The more senior editors would instruct the commenters on which Russian opposition figures to attack, and they would spend their days accusing them of being CIA stooges, traitors, shills. Some of the commenters were not well educated and their written Russian could be imperfect, so a Russian-language teacher would come in to give them grammar lessons.

Lyudmilla was in another, more exclusive section. Her “special project” involved the creation of a mystic healer, “Cantadora”, an expert in astrology, parapsychology and crystals. Cantadora was meant to be read by middle-class housewives who were not normally interested in politics. Lyudmilla’s job was to drop in the odd bit of current affairs in between blog entries on star signs and romance. There were four, sometimes five people working on the profile. Lyudmilla liked Stas the most. He seemed utterly depressed by the work. Every day Lyudmilla, Stas and the other writers would be sent Word documents containing political articles and the “conclusions” they were meant to draw from them: that the EU is just a vassal of the US, or that Ukraine, which Russia had invaded, was run by fascists. It was up to them to integrate these conclusions into Cantadora’s blog. So Lyudmilla wrote, for example, how Cantadora had a sister who lived in Germany, and then related a nightmare in which she dreamt her sister was in a desert surrounded by deadly snakes, interpreting those snakes as US foreign policy endangering the EU. Some of the farm’s work reached a level of granularity that stunned Lyudmilla. Two trolls would go on the comments sections of small, provincial newspapers and start chatting about the street they lived in, the weather, then casually recommend a piece about the nefarious West attacking Russia.

No one who worked at the farm described themselves as trolls. Instead, they talked about their work in the passive voice (“a piece was written”, “a comment was made”). Most treated the farm as if it was just another job, doing the minimum required and then clocking off. Many of them seemed pleasant enough young people, with open, pretty faces, and yet they didn’t blink when asked to smear, degrade, insult and humiliate their victims. The ease with which victims were attacked, the scale at which the farm operated, it all stunned Lyudmilla. She kept herself going with the thought that her research would help stop all this. But it was proving hard to gather the necessary evidence. There were CCTV cameras in every corner, and she would have to flick her long, curly hair over her shoulder so that it covered her hand when she reached down to put a flash drive into her computer to download documents.

Who gave the farm instructions as to what to do? Was it the Kremlin? Or were they churned out inside the IRA? No one discussed this. The farm, other journalists had told her, was owned by one Evgeny Prigozhin. He relied on the regime for his official business: he provided catering services to the Kremlin. He had known President Putin personally since the 1990s and had served nine years in prison for robbery. Later, it would transpire he also runs mercenaries who fight in the Kremlin’s wars, from Ukraine to Syria.

There were moments when Lyudmilla could see that the farm was part of a much larger network. When the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was murdered in February 2015, for instance, assassinated with a Makarov pistol on a bridge right underneath the towers and onion domes of Red Square, the farm’s middle management suddenly started running into every office, giving the trolls direct instructions on what to post under which articles printed in mainstream Russian publications. The farm was working in rhythm with the whole government disinformation complex. No one had time to read the articles, but they knew exactly what to post. The trolls were told to spread confusion about who was behind the murder: was it the Ukrainians, the Chechens, the Americans? The IRA, an agency whose connection to the Kremlin was purposefully blurred, was in turn purposefully blurring the Kremlin’s connection to a murder.

During the day Lyudmilla would see a fake reality being pumped out by the trolls. In the evening she would come home hoping to put the place behind her, only to hear relatives and acquaintances quote lines churned out by the farm repeated back at her. People who considered themselves hardened enough to withstand the barrage of television still seemed susceptible to social media messages which slithered into and enveloped your most personal online spaces, spun themselves into the texture of your life.

Lyudmilla spent two and a half months at the farm. Then, as planned, she gave the material to the newspapers. They published it as authored by “Anonymous”. The next day she went back to work to find the commenters were busy undermining the credibility of the material she had provided to the media. “No troll factories exist,” the trolls wrote, “they are all fabrications by paid-for journalists.” The management at the troll farm were already checking video cameras to find out who had been behind the leak. It was, she knew, only a matter of time before they worked out what she’d done.

Lyudmilla left the farm. She also decided to admit publicly that she was the one who had infiltrated it. She wanted to give interviews about what she had seen there, to campaign to have the place shut down; she couldn’t do that as “Anonymous”. She gave dozens of interviews. She gave talks across the world.

The farm now turned on her. There were comments and posts claiming she was a sexual deviant, a spy, a traitor. There were phone calls to her relatives saying that people were often killed for what she had done.

Lyudmilla tried to reach out to Stas, the co-author of the Cantadora blog whom she had liked, but he just sent her bitter messages full of swear words. This saddened her: she knew he hated the farm and hoped he’d understand her mission.

Lyudmilla had hoped that by unmasking the workings of the IRA she would cause so much outrage it would help stop its work, that she would shock people into seeing how they were being manipulated by it, shame those who worked there into resigning. Most of the people she had met at the farm were no monsters. They carried on working there because there was little social stigma linked to it.

But instead of an outcry she found that many people, including fellow activists, just shrugged at the revelations. This horrified her even more. Not only did the lies churned out by the farm become reality, but the very existence of it was seen as normal in itself.

sample from This is Not Propaganda

books.google.co.uk/books?id=YbGSDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT21&lpg=PT21&dq=%22The+office+was+in+a+four-storey+new+build+with+square+pillars+propping+up+the+second+floor%22+pomerantsev&source=bl&ots=fchpItezzV&sig=ACfU3U2qApN5GLPIh2xOKSqSAxkIO21T6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr06bx9bHsAhXPEcAKHSveCBgQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22The%20office%20was%20in%20a%20four-storey%20new%20build%20with%20square%20pillars%20propping%20up%20the%20second%20floor%22%20pomerantsev&f=false

Nice to see you back Grinitch

I agree with pp that due diligence is sometimes lacking, but that's not what Julie Bindel's article is about.
I've read Wolf's previous response to this rather one-sided transatlantic slanging match. They say that there is no consultation process or "Left" in the US for them to work with and that's what JB and some other UK feminists fail to understand. I can't see any alternative suggestions in JB's article.
I understand JB's horror at the idea of a feminist (Memoree Joelle - I don't know anything about her) voting for Trump, but are we really going to start policing how individual women vote in their election on the other side of the pond? What is the point?

@Kantastic

jj is actually making an interesting point, or something verging on one.

Male teenagers, especially of the gamer shut-in variety, make idle vicious threats to each other all the time. So maybe male teenagers are very confused that female people, the majority of whom have actually experienced assault from men in our lives, don't take their rape threats and death threats as lightly as they and their pals do.

But that's not any kind of excuse for them at all; it just lays bare their utter lack of empathy (as well as their utter lack of femaleness.)

I'm not sure a lot of them would be concerned about their lack of femaleness, they are boys and proudly so. From what I could tell a lot of the abuse that came JK Rowling's way did not come from trans people. And yes they are completely lacking in empathy, but worse than that in a lot of cases they are actively seeking to provoke. I think it should be noted that a lot of it came from (non trans) girls and young women as well. This notion that girls are all sugar and spice and could never be abusive, or aggresive, or bawdy, or lairy or even sometimes violent is utterly alien to me and I expect anyone who grew up around working class women. It's also a bit regressive surely.

I also think a lot of people were genuinely hurt and angry by what Rowling said. That doesn't justify abuse, at all, full stop. But I think it's another feature of online life we have to learn to address and deal with and recognise that a lot of the people doing this are very young. An angry teenager, who can let rip at their target anonymously with no consequences and who is perhaps not yet mature enough to manage their emotional responses is quite likely to behave like this. I think how we manage social media, and young people's participation in social media, is really one of the challenges of our age.

Anyway apologies, don't want to get told off for derailing again, I just wanted to answer that post.

Goosefoot, to be precise what you said was:

It's so interesting that conspiracy theories in general are now being pushed as moral wrongthink. If that link is made successfully in the minds of the public it will be a very powerful tool to silence disparate views. It's akin IMO to the recent overt attempt to link TRA positions with CRT and anti-racism.

and

Here is something funny - the theory that all conspiracy theories are anti-Jewish is itself a conspiracy theory!

Well, to those of us who are Jewish, there is nothing remotely "funny" about the reality that, yes, a lot of (no-one said "all") conspiracy theories are anti-Semitic.

If you are unaware of that, I wouldn't regard you as guilty of moral wrongthink, but I would regard you as a bit ignorant, as it's pretty widely known. I'd also regard the attempts at humour at the expense of my safety as pretty poor taste and a little bit racist, certainly.

I think you were trying, badly, to say that conspiracy theories aren't always wrong and we shouldn't rule out everything labelled as a conspiracy, as some of them might turn out to be right, which few people could disagree with. But you conveniently ignore that some conspiracy theories (not all) are viewed as moral wrongthink because they are er...immoral. So a belief that Princess Di was murdered is probably not going to harm anyone. But believing that the families of those who died in Sandy Hook are really actors and harrassing them, or believing in Pizzagate, or believing that Jews are secretly conspiring white genocide etc - all these do indeed deserve "moral" condemnation, because they are all incredibly harmful, hurtful and dangerous to those deemed to be plotting these conspiracies.

There is a far greater danger to those threatened by the nutty conspiracy theorists than there some vague danger to the majority who you claim are threatened of being labelled for spurious "moral wrongthink".

Fleegle, yes, it seems clear, but the accused "thick feck" in question has handled the repeated attacks on her and her motivation (often coinciding temporally with her efforts to support women fighting gender ideology in the US) with such dignity that I didn't even want to address that unspoken theme.

persistentwoman, I agree that Transgender Trend's site is impressively thoughtful and child-centered. I wish them many new clicks!

Aw, Flo, thanks! I miss this community of women. Have just been somewhat overwhelmed since spring with managing remote learning for the micro-Spinaches on top of all the usual obligations.

Since you asked, here are my two (US) cents on the piece:

---The first paragraph contains an important internal contradiction. "Feminism..belongs on the Left...It is a movement for the liberation of all women... And yet, a growing number of female activists have been rallying with the Right..." If you believe that feminism is for all women, why would you shun women on the Right and avoid working with them on points of agreement?

---Bindel conflates UK and US politics throughout the piece, using her UK experience to prescribe political solutions for the US (and to proscribe US women standing up for women and girls): "Historically, feminists have done best within the Labour movement...Arguing that this is no time for 'purity politics', though, there is an increasing number of women activists who are prepared to hold their noses and join sides with whoever it takes in the fight to defeat the demands of extreme transgender ideologues." The only 'women activists' she names guilty of this sin are Americans. Would be quite difficult for us Stateside to base our political activism within UK Labour, no?

-Most of the women she names, as far as I can tell, do not call themselves feminists. Her evidence even for their alleged perfidy is fairly scarce, too: the 2017 AfterEllen article she cites as Joelle "com[ing] out firmly in favor of Trump" is titled "In L.A., Working with Trump to Build a Better City at a Price" and begins You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find you get...Measure M. Perhaps Joelle has actually endorsed Trump; I'm really not familiar with her or her writing, but this piece is not persuasive evidence of such an endorsement, let alone "firm" evidence.

---Yet Bindel slides smoothly from her mention of Joelle to a fairly staggering claim that "many so-called feminists are rallying for Trump."

---Instead of showing evidence that any so-called feminists are rallying for Trump, she moves on to discuss Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, naming some of the conservative women who founded it but curiously leaving out the names of leftist founders Miriam Ben-Shalom, a lesbian activist, and MaryLou Singleton, a nurse-midwife and advocate for women and girls. HATAC's 'About Us' statement:

For the first time, women from across the political spectrum have come together to challenge the notion that gender is the same as sex. We are radical feminists, lesbians, Christians and conservatives that are tabling our ideological differences to stand in solidarity against gender identity legislation, which we have come to recognize as the erasure of our own hard-won civil rights. As the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, we are committed to working together, rising above our differences, and leveraging our collective resources to oppose gender identity ideology.

In a nation in which conservative Republicans hold the presidency, the Senate, and much of the judiciary, I would like to know just how women on the left are meant to achieve feminist goals without ever finding common cause, on limited issues, with women on the right?

--Bindel singles out Women's Liberation Front, the only US feminist organization to have fought gender identity policy in the courts, as having "extensive ties to the religious Right." Her evidence for this claim is that both WoLF and the Alliance Defending Freedom have filed amicus briefs in support of retaining the usual definition of women and girls as adult and juvenile female humans, respectively, in the law.

---Bindel further claims that by writing an amicus brief WoLF "attempt[ed] to curb trans rights, which would also lead to the dismantling of lesbian and gay anti-discrimination laws." I would like to understand this very serious accusation better: which trans right did WoLF attempt to curb? Which anti-discrimination law did the lesbians and bisexual women who volunteer for and donate to WoLF work to overturn? I can only guess Bindel refers to the Harris case here, because she does not cite which of WoLF's several briefs she criticizes here. For WoLF board members' own discussion of their brief in the Stephens/Harris case (eventually subsumed into Bostock ruling) see here: FWIW lower courts are already bearing out the WoLF board's misgivings about Bostock, for e.g. citing it in ruling that male athletes can't be banned from competing with females in Idaho (see screenshot and Politico link).

To her credit, Bindel publishes WoLF's reply in her piece. But rather than listen to these American women on the front lines of the fight here, she draws the conclusion that she knows better than they how to wage the defense of American women and girls. She calls WoLF's work presenting a radical feminist analysis to Republican legislators and conservative think tanks "a betrayal of the highest order" and "strategically disastrous."

On the contrary, WoLF's methodical, steadfast, nonpartisan advocacy has raised the profile of female rights in the age of gender identity ideology more than any other American organization of which I know. They are the only feminists I have seen advocate for women and girls in the federal courts, the state legislatures, and on national media platforms. They took the Obama administration to court over its Title IX policy prioritizing gender feelings over sex-based rights before I was even aware that Houston (and Honolulu, and Hartford...) we had a problem. Their work raising public awareness and speaking to legislators has been a huge factor in the introduction of the first state and federal bills to protect female rights in sports, with more to come, I hope.

For all the constant handwringing about "allying with the Right," the guilt-by-association, the worries that feminists will be tainted by Bad Ideas, do none of those hand wringers ever think of the reverse possibility? That by speaking calmly and consistently on behalf of women and girls--ALL women and girls, applying no ideological, partisan, racial, national, class, religious, ability, sexual orientation or other test-WoLF and other women who share its goals may actually persuade those scary, bad "highly skilled female operatives of the theocratic Right" that just maybe feminists make sense sometimes? Maybe they'd like to learn more about what feminists have to say, and maybe work together on other issues that affect all women and girls?

Case in point, if you can bear the unspeakable right-wing cooties you might get from clicking on a Federalist link:

Kaeley Triller, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle, in 2016: I Didn't Believe Feminists Until the Trans Lobby Attacked Me

I didn’t believe in rape culture until a 6’3”, 250-pound grown man stared angrily into my eyes and proclaimed to me how hurtful it was that I did not want to see his penis. And people agreed with him....I didn’t believe in systemic misogyny until I was told that my hard-earned boundaries were actually just bigotry and that my red flags were irrelevant.

thefederalist.com/2016/04/27/i-didnt-believe-feminists-until-the-trans-lobby-attacked-me/#.VyDP2U-JcgI.twitter

But sure, it would have been better for Kaeley as an individual and women and girls as a group if leftist feminists had shunned her and only "fought from a progressive base" as Bindel instructs us.

If you really believe that women are people, you should believe that even women you don't like may also be smart and have good instincts about politics in their own country. You should believe they just might have the capacity to persuade conservatives rather than be manipulated by them.

Sorry for weird formatting issues and super long post. This has just been bubbling away for years now and while the US press will very very rarely cover any part of women's efforts here, there is a certain media sector that leaps to cover "Very important UK feminists say American so-called feminists suck! HAHAHA Aren't they the worst? Stop whining, bitches!"

And then that's the only perspective presented in that venue for the whole year (apart from "wonderfully brave male athlete smashes female athlete's eye socket! Yay progress! Shut up, bigots!"

Kaeley Triller, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle, in 2016: I Didn't Believe Feminists Until the Trans Lobby Attacked Me

That's Kaeley Triller who admitted to having sex with a minor she had previously had pastoral care for?