Owen Jones talks to Judith Butler

[lionheart]

Well, I suppose there are feminists who say these things. As well as feminists who attack survivors of FGM for being trans exclusionary. Women weaponising their suffering again, I presume.

I do wish people would stop using race to bolster up their pro-trans arguments. Just about all the black people I know think it's nonsense. It hasn't even been worth a headline in my 99% black/brown country of origin. The trans movement is fueled almost entirely by white privilege.

Ten years down the line, we will be thankful for interviews like this.

When this whole scandal implodes, LOJ will be squirming around, trying to claim he never took sides, etc. Interviews like this will show that he was allowing, and encouraging, this madness to happen.

@zanahoria

OJ said that 'intersectional feminists' would say that trans-exclusionary British feminists exclude women of colour and 'repeat Islamophobic talking points as well

OJ, the expert on British feminism

did he name any of these people or are they just living in his imagination?

Meanwhile, most feminists don't exclude women of colour, aren't islamophobic and aren't 'trans exclusionary' - just that they know feminism is for females so includes TM but not TW, and won't be bullied and shamed into renouncing their sex based rights and language.

He's repeating myths.

Is it time to post this video again?

Great series of articles by Dr Em starting here: uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-queer-theory-and-paedophilia-part-i-%EF%BB%BF-dr-em/

They are really desperate to insist on the connection between GC feminism and racism.

Always worthwhile, Inspiral.

@lionheart

Ugh, certainly.

I got to the point where they suggest that trans-exclusionary ('transphobic') feminists in the uk are racist and Islamophobic.

Except they didn't say it directly. JB asked about the connections between anti-migration, anti-veiling and trans-exclusionary feminism in the UK.

OJ said that 'intersectional feminists' would say that trans-exclusionary British feminists exclude women of colour and 'repeat Islamophobic talking points as well.'

God I completely agree. I'm not white, I'm Brexit voting, a trans exclusionary feminist .... I wonder what Owen Jones would make of me..

I wont give him the clicks. Not good for my blood pressure either..

The 'racist' smear is rooted in the American context. When women's suffrage was ratified in 1920, most African American women were not allowed to vote because they lived under Jim Crow laws in the American South, which effectively banned black people from voting. So the argument is that black women have been excluded from womanhood historically, and that's why (somehow) excluding transwomen from womanhood is also a bad thing. (Neglecting the fact that universal male suffrage preceded women's suffrage.) It's obviously quite a stark appropriation of somebody else's oppression but there we are ...

The trans movement is fueled almost entirely by white privilege.

Yes, of course. But the tactic they use is always to accuse us of the things they themselves are guilty of: they want to eradicate us as a sex class, so they accuse us of denying their right to exist; they are obsessed with genitalia ("lady dick" etc) so they accuse us of being obsessed with genitalia; they are aggressive and threatening, so they accuse us of being the same; their whole ideology is based on a racist equivalence between trans women and black women, so they accuse us of being racist. etc etc etc ad nauseam.

Spot on RoyalCorgi

Except theres a large proportion of GC women like myself who are women of colour who are sick of seeing TRAs conflating mothers wishing for safeguarding around children, the breaking down of safety around women's spaces and the normalising of mens fetishes as anything do to with racism. Maybe if OJ or JB were people of colour they would understand the difference between literal violence and actual violence.

Maybe if OJ or JB were people of colour they would understand the difference between literal violence and actual violence.

Absolutely. Two white people appropriating other people's experience of racism for their own ends is sickening.

And there's a fundamental dishonesty too. OJ knows perfectly well (as, I imagine, does JB) that a large proportion, if not the majority, of gender-critical feminists have a long history of left-wing and trade union activism. I was going on anti-apartheid demonstrations before OJ was even born. So the accusation of racism is a deliberate, calculated attempt to smear. Why? Because he is aware that the profoundly anti-feminist trans ideology cannot be defended on its own merits. So he has to pretend that those who oppose it are racists, and therefore bad people.

I find the accusation of islamophobia interesting... I remember during the man Friday protests the gender critical feminists argued that if you got rid of female only swimming then Muslim women wouldn’t be able to take part. The trans rights activists never have explained how you can have males in female spaces while respecting religion. As for criticism of the veil - come on! Judith butler is supposed to be a subversive queer theorist. You are supposed to question culturally hegemonic power structures on her theory. A better question would be why postmodernists are so accepting of veiling , given its patriarchal background and regressive connotations. I don’t see what’s so special about veiling that makes it entirely immune from feminist criticism.

So the accusation of racism is a deliberate, calculated attempt to smear. Why? Because he is aware that the profoundly anti-feminist trans ideology cannot be defended on its own merits.

It's definitely a smear campaign. Repeating the same propaganda - "Don't listen to those women (making all sorts of sense about their rights and safeguarding) because they're racists." Repeat until it's lodged in everyone's minds and distract them, as you say, from the lack of substance in their own arguments.

The trans rights activists never have explained how you can have males in female spaces while respecting religion.

Exactly. They are the true Islamophobes because they don't recognise Muslim women's right to single-sex spaces. All over the country local authorities have been running women-only swim sessions or gym sessions at least in part as a way of enabling Muslim women to participate. As soon as you allow biological males into those sessions, you exclude Muslim women.

Hey, it's almost as if they are using the Islamophobia argument in bad faith and they really don't give a fuck about Muslims.

Actually as this situation becomes more visible they will start to find a huge amount of GC women from ethnic minorities simply because women like us are the ones most affected by the patriarchy and oppressed becaus of our sex. We cant identify out of our sex to avoid arranged marriages or fgm.
Fuck OJ and JB and their armchair idiotic spewing.

Little OJ is doing these to take on the MSM, whilst being employed by the Guardian? Also - fuck being lectured on feminism by Little OJ

he is aware that the profoundly anti-feminist trans ideology cannot be defended on its own merits. So he has to pretend that those who oppose it are racists, and therefore bad people.

This seems absolutely correct, to me.

Feminists wish to centre females in the movement, and maintain single-sex spaces - this is totally uncontroversial and everyone knows it.

Therefore, those who wish to include males within 'female' have to swerve into random smears and non sequiturs.

Like I said before, he used to pride himself on the fact that he interviewed people he didn't agree with. Peter Hitchens, Jacob Rees Mogg, Anna Soubry and Dan Hannan to name a few.

So why isn't he interviewing gender critical feminists? Is he scared to debate someone like Julie Bindel or Julia Hartley-Brewer? Is he scared of the backlash by the trans community or worried that his arguments wouldn't stand up to scrutiny?

Hey, it's almost as if they are using the Islamophobia argument in bad faith and they really don't give a fuck about Muslims

And certainly not about Muslim women.

For years I ran my own little campaign that focused on reporting to the guardian its own internalised sexism as it related to the by-lines that accompanied their photographs.

Typically, a photograph might show a gathering or crowd of men in Iran, Palestine, Egypt or so on...and the by -line would say " Iranians protest...", or " Egyptians demand......", or "Palestinians storm the walls"........But whenever a photograph included women, or the crows consisted mainly of women the by-line would say, " Iranian women..."; "Egyptian women"; or "Palestinian women".......as if being a citizen really meant maleness, and women were just add ons. Women could not be referred to simply as Iranians, Egyptians, or Palestinians.

This whole Islamaphobic accusation really translates as the unacceptability of people being critical of the treatment and positioning of women in Islamic states. Women's rights are not human rights. they are seen as being relative to culture. and this is on the British left - which hails equality above all.

crowds

A lot of talking to say nothing & that was just the first answer...#BoreOff (and leave women's rights alone)

I cant even see the name without thinking "Burble burble Judith Butler" from the annals of the terf wars