Julie Bindel on women who self-ID as Gender Critical

[yeahbutnaw]

Does this match your experience?

You've demonstrated a fairly shallow understanding of what bigotry is.

Thank you. Feel free to demonstrate you have any understanding whenever you feel like it.

@nauticant

If you're posting in good faith yeahbutnaw, you really need to get away from those on the Right Side of History needing to support those on their side and to oppose those on the Wrong Side of History. Going through life using this approach will not serve you well.

What does this even mean? They're all words but they make no sense all strung together like that.

Right, I think I get it, thanks necessaryscene.

I couldn’t work out if you were shitting on JB, BB or these unknown feminist bigots, yeahbut. I guess with the lack of context, it could have played out in any number of directions you might find pleasing. Sorry to disappoint.

@NecessaryScene1

You've demonstrated a fairly shallow understanding of what bigotry is.

Thank you. Feel free to demonstrate you have any understanding whenever you feel like it.

I referred you to a paradox that is very easy to Google and would greatly improve your understanding.

Your argument goes something like this:

Straight Person: Gay people are awful and should be eradicated
Gay Person: That's homophobic.
Straight Person: You're being intolerant!!

In your understanding, the gay person is being a bigot in this situation because they're intolerant of the straight person's view.

Would you agree?

@nauticant

Int he spirit of a worthwhile discussion, rather than looking at Julie Bindel's tweet out of context, here's the context:

twitter.com/bindelj/status/1379844635535814656

At the heart of the discussion is people identifying Benjamin Boyce as GC or as an GC ally. It's clear from his channel that that is not how he sees himself at all. The tweet by Kathleen Stock above Julie Bindel's in informative in how people can have a nuanced position.

Ah, thank you for finding it.

The QTs are a roll-call of the best and the brightest. Not.

I see a fun-fem accusing Julie Bindel, of all people, of hating women in the sex industry.

Chances that the funfem has ever been in a financially precarious enough position to sell access to her body in order to pay the rent? Chances that she has ever stood in Holbeck, negotiating the price of condomless vaginal penetration?

I think you need a hobby.

And for the screening shotting SWIW SJWs out there:

I did my A-levels while housed in a homelessness hostel. I still haven't been to uni. And I have no **ing interest in middle-class academics, from middle-class homes where no-one ever cried over the gas bill, prosetylising on how empowering the sex trade is.

If I see hungry children, I give them food, I don't tell their mother to perform sex acts on me first. And being as committed to equality as I am, I expect the same amount of human decency of men. Now go do something useful, and campaign to reverse the benefit cuts that forced women to turn to the sex trade.

Would you agree?

In your dumb example, clearly the straight person is being bigotted. The gay person may or may not be. Insufficient information. It's perfectly possible for both parties in a confrontation to be bigotted about the other simultaneously.

Gay people eventually got their rights by not being bigotted while their opponents were.

GC people have to win the same way. Sufficient bigotry from them will turn away independents.

TRAs will only secure long-term wins if they realise this applies to them too. Independents are being turned away in droves by current TRA bigotry.

I can't see how being gender critical necessarily implies any position on abortion. I also don't see how being GC necessarily inoculates you from bigotry. It's not as if we're talking about team colours here. That's what I saw Stock's and Bindel's points as saying.

Clicking around the twitter thread is interesting because it shows different strains of thought under the GC umbrella, including some tweeters who are keen to police what are acceptable views, who are acceptable people, how and where people should be able express themselves, or should not. The intolerance is strong and reminds me of the TRA approach.

"The Right Side of History" is also unappealing when it comes from GC people.

I think this thread has been hijacked by people who want to comment about the poster.

As to the tweet, it is standard JB making clear she is a cut above all other women / feminists.

And or her social / twitter circles are filled with very strange women.

Quite honestly who cares.

It is part of self promotion.

And this thread has added to her cv.

Every gender critical woman I've interacted with has been delightful, angry, wise and has a long history of fighting for equality for women and girls. And they usually have great shoes.

Stirring up a little in-fighting are we? Within a movement that isn't actually a movement, more a collection of rational people concerned about the rapid progress of regressive and unscientific gender ideology. Never witnessed that before.

One of the things I have enjoyed is working with people who don't share my views on all sorts of things but we are coming together because we do share concerns about what is happening in the name of "gender identity". I am enjoying finding common cause with people across usual political divides.

paradox of tolerance

LOL. I think our visitor has seen a heavily-circulated internet cartoon on the subject and fancies themselves a philosophy expert now.

I'm not a philosophy expert either but the logic holes in the cartoon were so blaring that I actually did research a little bit. I suggest that poster wanging on about the paradox of tolerance try doing the same. You don't have to read a book or anything, don't worry! The wikipedia page will do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Check out this quote where Popper coined the phrase.

Less well known [than other paradoxes Popper discusses] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

The emphasis is mine. Do you see yet who "the intolerant" are in this scenario?

Or you could try thinking about the logic of it.

Group A claims Group B is intolerant.
Group B claims Group A is intolerant.
Both claim that they can use "the paradox of tolerance" to justify violence against the other group.

Without objective criteria for defining intolerance - which that incredibly stupid cartoon doesn't provide, but Popper did,- then "the paradox of tolerance" is simply a justification for any violence any group fancies committing against any other group. That's clearly not Popper's intention.

Here, again, are the objective criteria Popper provided for identifying "the intolerant."

they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols

Penny dropping yet?

No.

Doubt it.

Straight Person: Gay people are awful and should be eradicated
Gay Person: That's homophobic.
Straight Person: You're being intolerant!!

For this analogy to work you would have to consider Benjamin Boyce's apparent opposition to abortion as being morally on a par with someone wanting to murder all gay people.

they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols

Penny dropping yet?

Lol.

Apart from death and taxes, the one thing you can rely on, is certain individuals thinking that users of a site called mumsnet could never out argue them.

Given it's a daily occurrence, you'd think they'd notice.

BB then posted “more regard for her pronouns than the life she had extinguished”

My impression tends to be that he does seem to think abortion is wrong

I am content that we have safe, legal abortion in the UK, with one the latest cut off points the world. I will always support that and would oppose any attempt to restrict it. I even make occasional small donations to Abortion Support Network.

However I'm also very uncomfortable about abortion. I would agree with BB in the first comment.

I am not convinced by the "bodily autonomy/ forced birth" arguments or that ludicrous "gotcha" about saving the life of the world famous violinist.

Abortion for me is the lesser bad. I don't think it is possible just to dismiss or deny a life is being extinguished. I also think women should take control of their contraception to ensure so far as possible to avoid ever having an abortion. Obviously young women, rape cannot take responsibility but at the other extreme I've seen flippant posts about knowing a poster hadn't been taking her pill properly but just carried on away.

I doubt this view will get much support on here but it is possible to support legal, safe abortion on demand and at the same time think abortion is wrong.

MissBarbary I agree.

I've seen people saying they're 'gender critical' but not feminists. They mean they don't buy into the genderist ideology but aren't interested in fighting for women's rights. Personally I think they should get another name for it, because gender critical also means criticising gender roles, which IS a feminist thing. Maybe they could call themselves anti-genderists or gender realists.

twitter.com/BenjaminABoyce/status/1379104287041617922?s=20

This is what BB was responding to. The person who had the abortion claims to be a gender-non-conforming, non- binary person and got terribly upset she was taken to be a woman. Possibly people assumed she was a woman and she is extremely feminine.

She made one sort of valid point in that the form gave the option of stating "gender" when what it was really asking for is "sex"

Possibly people assumed she was a woman because she was pregnant and she is extremely feminine.

Tolerance of the intolerant leads to intolerance. I think we have VERY tolerant of you @yeahbutnaw.

You use the tolerance paradox as a gotcha, but fail to recognise that you are the incoming ideology.

The UK is a secular liberal society with full civil rights for all it's citizens, a welfare state and an NHS. achieved gradually over decades and centuries.

We tolerate all beliefs, we do not make windows into peoples souls, there are no such hings as thought crimes, but have protections in place to guard against illiberal religious or ideological practices such as radical Muslim clerics trying to implement Sharia law, FGM being performed on female children or post modern Queer theorists trying to force ideological gender beliefs on everyone and compel language and queer it's meaning.

The tolerance paradox is HOW gender ideology got a foothold.

A risk and weakness in the Liberal model, what you see now is the democratic liberal process and society reining in your ideological excesses.

Though in your black and white world of good and evil you see yourself as morally superior, and Mumsnet as a hive of intolerant bigots, you my dear are the chaotic incoming threat to enlightenment liberalism.