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.

Bindel has done more feminism, and more for some of the most vulnerable women, than any of us posting scolds about how she 'shouldn't have an opinion on the US'.

Why not? She's been strategizing and campaigning a long time. I'd certainly give her words consideration, at the very least.

That FWR is now at the point of defending conspiracy theory? Frankly, it makes us look dumb. This kind of alignment with fringe right views is damaging to feminism; it's very different to working with the non-fringe with different views on taxation.

For the poster who said she's seen no anti-Semitism here. It's here. Posters using everything up to blood libel, especially in the run up to the last UK election.

[quote jj1968]@midclegs101

I didn't mention intersex people.[/quote]
No - it wasn't you - apologies.

I think Kaeley Triller is a good example of the dangers of working with the right. The reason she has been accepted in Evangelical circles is that she was born again and so her sin was washed away. I don't think a secular feminist group would have been quite so forgiving. She's obviously a complete liability, imagine if she had come over here and got involved with TT or someone and that story had come out. There are some very dubious people in that movement, and of course there are dubious people on the left as well, the difference is that the when they are exposed they can't just say Hallelujah sorry God and they are instantly rehabilitated and any safeguarding risk they may represent is brushed under the carpet. The religious right is far more concerned with doing the good lord's work than any trivial concerns about safeguarding children, just look at the horrors they have put lesbian, gay and trans kids through in conversion therapy camps.

My experience of the homophobic religious right is that they are more likely to embrace a trans kid than accept a gay one.

You're a bit disingenuous there with adding trans kids to the real horrors, historical and current, of gay conversion camps for kids.

just look at the horrors they have put lesbian, gay and trans kids through in conversion therapy camps.

But you can make a gay or lesbian child straight by transing them. There's no doubt that homophobia is why some parents take their children to gender clinics.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-feels-like-conversion-therapy-for-gay-children-say-clinicians-pvsckdvq2

I do not believe all the twitter accounts posting abusive messages like "Suck on my girl-dick bitch!" to JK Rowling were from real trans people. Many were produced by troll farms.

And have these troll farms been active for the last decade or more producing abusive messages aimed at women not so high profile as JK Rowling and in some cases anonymous, with fewer than 20,000 followers?

My haven't they been prolific. What a lot of trouble they've been going to for about 15 years.

And yeah, I'm not clicking on Pink News. Woman-hating propaganda,would not trust as far as I could throw.

[quote OldCrone]just look at the horrors they have put lesbian, gay and trans kids through in conversion therapy camps.

But you can make a gay or lesbian child straight by transing them. There's no doubt that homophobia is why some parents take their children to gender clinics.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-feels-like-conversion-therapy-for-gay-children-say-clinicians-pvsckdvq2[/quote]
There is doubt. I'm sorry but this is exactly the kind of conspiratorial type thinking that has been under discussion. This entire claim comes from a comment made by an anonymous clinician published in a right wing newspaper and a joke a parent is reported to have made. And it's turned into key plank of GC ideology, that homophobic parents are transing kids and that Evangelicals would prefer a trans child to a gay one despite there not being one single verified example of this happening anywhere and it being utterly counter-intuitive, it is religious people who have led the charge against trans people. It's exactly what conspiracy theorists do, build an entire narrative that (to them) feels right based on no real evidence at all.

I saw it with my own eyes, heard my kids psych ( secular, not GC, heads a GI clinic at a major pediatric clinic) with my own ears, have read multiple accounts of transitioned children where the fear a hold was gay was relieved by 'wrong body's narrative.

My own child, diagnosed with GD, say he finds it hard to work out how much of it is fear of being gay. And thats a kid raised in a non-homophobic family with gay siblings!

You can't whisper feminists with concerns about increasing homophobia over to Pink News level discourse, just because we won't stand for Poulton's nonsense.

@BlackWaveComing

I'd want more evidence than an anecdote I'm afraid that this is in any way commonplace in Evangelical circles or even Catholic ones given the Catholic Church's vocal opposition to trans people. Perhaps it's happened once or twice, I don't know, I've never seen any clear evidence for it, other than rumours but even if so isolated examples hardly reveals a trend. If you really think the Baptist Belt Republicans who've spent the last decades desperately fighting for bathroom bills and to curtail trans rights would really rather have a trans kid than a gay one I don't really know what to say.

@BlackWaveComing

I saw it with my own eyes, heard my kids psych ( secular, not GC, heads a GI clinic at a major pediatric clinic) with my own ears, have read multiple accounts of transitioned children where the fear a hold was gay was relieved by 'wrong body's narrative.

My own child, diagnosed with GD, say he finds it hard to work out how much of it is fear of being gay. And thats a kid raised in a non-homophobic family with gay siblings!

You can't whisper feminists with concerns about increasing homophobia over to Pink News level discourse, just because we won't stand for Poulton's nonsense.

Again rumours, speculation, no evidence. I'm sorry @BlackWaveComing, I've had a lot of respect for your other posts on this thread, but perhaps read up on Leelah Alcorn and you might see why this touches a nerve a bit for trans people: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Leelah_Alcorn

If I recall correctly the parents of the trans child in the Netflix show Babysitters Club(??) are what you might call religious right.

I'm sorry but this is exactly the kind of conspiratorial type thinking that has been under discussion. This entire claim comes from a comment made by an anonymous clinician published in a right wing newspaper and a joke a parent is reported to have made. And it's turned into key plank of GC ideology, that homophobic parents are transing kids and that Evangelicals would prefer a trans child to a gay one despite there not being one single verified example of this happening anywhere and it being utterly counter-intuitive, it is religious people who have led the charge against trans people. It's exactly what conspiracy theorists do, build an entire narrative that (to them) feels right based on no real evidence at all.

Isn't that a conspiracy theory though? You are building a narrative which feels right to you, that there is a 'GC ideology' which suggests that homophobic parents are transing their gay kids, and that this couldn't possibly be true because... what? Because there are no homophobic parents? Because those homophobic parents would never think it was better to trans their child than suffer the shame of having a gay child? Do you really think that? Or are you just concocting a conspiracy theory about what you like to call 'GC ideology'?

Who is really the conspiracy theorist here?

Trans as gay conversion could also come from children being confused about their sexuality and not fitting in with others of the same sex. Here's what a couple of gay men have said about this:

If someone had told me as a child that I could actually be a little girl, I would have jumped at the chance. Anything to escape the pressure cooker of an active boyhood crammed full of sports and rough play.

quillette.com/2019/01/31/homophobia-and-the-modern-trans-movement/

“I really wanted to be a girl. Thank God the world of now wasn’t then, because I’d be on hormones and I’d be a woman. After I was 15 I never wanted to be a woman again.”

www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/19/rupert-everett-dangers-of-child-sex-change-operations-gender

@ValancyRedfern

If I recall correctly the parents of the trans child in the Netflix show Babysitters Club(??) are what you might call religious right.

I've never seen it but theres a difference between religious parents accepting a trans child because they love them, as they might an LGB child and actively attempting to turn an LGB child trans. Social transition and limited trans healthcare for kids has been happening in the US since the 1990s. I've yet to hear of one LGB person claim their parents attempted to make them trans or one trans person who claims they were coerced into being trans because of homophobic parents. Until those people exist, in numbers, then in no way could it be argued there is evidence that this is normal or typical behaviour in Evangelical families.

That said, I am surprised that no-one on this thread has acknowledged that for people like Julie (lesbian) and me (Jewish), it's not about ideological purity, primarily, it's about safety.

Maybe if you're a straight white woman who is not a member of any minority group, you can hang out with the far right on sites that promote the Nazis and think 'the end justifies the means'. Or even 'Ooh, aren't I a rebel,' or 'This is a bit of a laugh'.

This. A quick watch of Brand New Tube's promotional video and a browse of who is on there is enough to see that their purpose is promoting anti-Semitism, Islamophobia (which is greedy, just pick one), Anti-vaxx and Lizard-people phobia.

It's plenty to make me run a mile from Sonia Poulton, be wary of Stephanie Davies-Arai (who is usually fab) and be irritated at transgender trend.

This is not a right-left thing. We should work with anyone in the spectrum of democratic politics. This lot are waaaaay past the line.

I've never seen it but theres a difference between religious parents accepting a trans child because they love them, as they might an LGB child and actively attempting to turn an LGB child trans.

What is a 'trans child'?

@OldCrone

As we now know, just 161 under 18s were given medical treatment following attending the Tavistock last year. That's less than one in 100,000 children. All these people going OMG I was gender non conforming, I'd have been transed if I was young today are clearly incorrect.

@OldCrone

I've never seen it but theres a difference between religious parents accepting a trans child because they love them, as they might an LGB child and actively attempting to turn an LGB child trans.

What is a 'trans child'?

A child that meets the diagnostic threshold for gender dysphoria and sees themselves as a different sex or gender to that recorded at birth. Will that do, And can we stop this derail because I'll get blamed. I'm happy to discuss trans kids on another thread at some point.

@xxyzz

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".

What is happening in this thread and elsewhere, is that people in interested in having reasons to dismiss or cancel certain viewpoints are creating a new set of associations to assist with that.

You can dismiss such people on a number of grounds already, transphobia, racism, bigotry, anti-semitism. All without requiring much or any attempt to really consider if what they are saying meets the charge, the whiff is often enough to place them outside of mainstream acceptability on the left. Some of them are becoming a little less effective, having been so overused.

The idea here though is to associate conspiracy theories - which exist about a myriad of topics - as a class, with Naziism, and anti-Jewish sentiment, to the point that when someone is accused of being a conspiracy theorist, or in bed with such people, or at least not hating them, that the feeling is "this person is likely a Nazi sympathiser."

That opens up a whole new avenue for making people untouchable or consigning them to the alt-right. You don't have to show they ever have thought il of a single person or group, only that at some point, they entertained what might pass for a conspiracy theory. Does POsie Parer think the moon landing was faked? Did she appear on a platform where a moon landing conspiracist has also appeared? Or where someone has talked about their weird speculations about Covid? Well, we know what that means, she's a Nazi and whatever she says is Beyond the Pale. We don't need to say it out loud though.

As for the irony of making a conspiracy theory while denigrating those who have conspiracy theories - I don't think the fact that they can be serious or have serious consequences is really relevant. It's ironic in the true sense of the term and many people find irony funny, albeit in a dark sort of way at times.

All these people going OMG I was gender non conforming, I'd have been transed if I was young today are clearly incorrect.

Some of them would. though. And the links were about gay men. I didn't mention gender non conforming. Can you at least try to read what people have actually written before replying.

I'd want more evidence than an anecdote I'm afraid

I agree. There should be studies into the effect that parental views of gender and sexuality on GD. Until then all we really have is anecdotal evidence (which is a far from uncommon situation in social sciences). I have no clue about the joke you think started this idea- my own view comes from personal experience.

I don't think a trans family member would have felt anything like the same pressure to transition if her parents had been anything like as accepting of her (then his) being gay as they were when she decided to transition.

I've been involved professionally with one case where parental homophobia seemed to be a very strong factor and in every other case I'm familiar with it has been present to some degree.