And so we GCs ask: look, how is it that 'woman' got to have the gendered meaning that it has, according to you? Is it just an accident that all over the fucking world from time immemorial women have been and still are overwhelmingly the objects of male violence and exploitation, not the other way round, and that this isn't anyone's fantasy—except for some other males?
Absolutely. This unmooring of women’s sexed bodies as the root cause of our disadvantage/vulnerability, and indeed of men's sexed bodies as the root cause of their advantage/ability to dominate and pose a threat, can only work against those of us who are already vulnerable/disadvantaged/oppressed as a direct result of being biologically female.
As has been said on here so many times, remove the ability to name women as a sex class and you remove the ability to accurately recognise and name sexism and misogyny. And thus the ability to challenge and organise against them. You directly harm the oppressed sex class to the benefit of the oppressor sex class.
The issue still remains for me as to how we advance our cause, for want of a better word.
We have ALL the evidence on our side. We have ALL the moral justification. All the rationality, the being based in actual material reality - both the physical reality of the two sexes and the sociological/historical reality of males’ oppression of females.
Just look at the quality of the “debate” coming from the “other side”. All the tired old lies about how we want to reduce women to their genitals/reproductive capacity, how we want to enforce gender roles, how we want to literally deny trans people their right to exist, how sex is a spectrum, and nobody really knows where they lie on that “spectrum”, clownfish, mushrooms, a certain type of algae that has three sexes, which, according to a recent feature in Pink News, proves that sex in human beings is not binary or immutable.
Look at the offerings on this very thread.
There's a well documented history of GC people making outright genocidal statements about trans people.
The tweet attached proves it to be neither well documented, nor a history, nor genocidal, unless the meaning of genocidal has been fundamentally changed as much as the meaning of the word woman.
And yet that person truly believes what they’re saying. They actually believe they scored a gotcha there. They believe their own propaganda, and no amount of reason will dissuade them.
If this was about who has the most convincing arguments, about what was truly just and equitable, the “trans rights” movement would never have even got off the ground, let alone made the extraordinary gains it has. Nothing about it is tethered to reality. Nothing about it is about protecting the truly most vulnerable. Nothing about is is about creating a better world for us all to live in.
It is all based on one fundamental premise, the premise that a man who says he’s a woman actually is a woman. Despite the fact it flies in the face of both reason and genuine social justice, given the enormous power imbalance between men and women in the world we live in; despite the fact this premise is based entirely on the quasi-religious ideology of gender identity, and that as democratic, secular societies we supposedly claim we don’t impose any one ideology on our populations as a whole; despite that, this premise has been given the status of an absolute truth in the minds of millions of people, and crucially, their governments. A “truth” that it is hateful even to question.
Indeed, questioning this “truth” is met with a reaction reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition or the leaders of North Korea when their “truths” were/are questioned. Obviously without the torture or killings (although there are many that are actively trying to see us criminalised even for questioning, as Marion Millar well knows); but in terms of the vehement, visceral outrage that we should even think of challenging this premise, the sense that it is utterly verboten even to question - the only parallels can be with the most nightmarish authoritarian regimes.
So. On the one side, well argued, well reasoned observations of material reality and appeals to the collective social conscience. On the other side, an authoritarian, oppressive house of cards built on one premise that is dubious to the point of absurdity and yet about which (because of which) #nodebate will be brooked.
And yet… here we are with not just angst ridden teenagers but responsible, elected politicians in their droves supporting and pushing this ideology, here and across the western world. National broadcasting companies issuing blatant propaganda. The leaders of healthcare institutions putting female patients at risk with their indefensible policies and neglecting, even endangering the physical/mental health of minors. Prominent figures in the creative world positively rushing to lend their support to the insanity and refusing to publicly condemn the ongoing avalanche of vile abuse and threats made against one woman writer who dared to stand up against it all.
And on and on and on and on.
Before Maya’s latter judgment, we even had a judge saying that believing there are two sexes and that sometimes sex matters was a belief not worthy of respect in a democratic society.
I mean, if we recover from this - and I say if because who knows how much further this can go, given how far it’s got already - if we recover from this, people really will one day be looking back in bewilderment, in disbelief that it could all ever have happened. If they’re sensible, people will take it as an object lesson in how totalitarian thought can take over a liberal democracy, a whole series of liberal democracies; how easily people can be persuaded to base their laws and moral codes on outright lies and denial of reality; how easily people can be conned into thinking that helping those who already have more power to have even more power is actually a socially just and virtuous thing to do.
If they’re sensible, these people of the future, including any of us who are still around by then, will learn from it all and use it to build better safeguards in society, to try and protect themselves from something similar happening again.
But in the meantime, we’re still stuck in this thankless struggle to wake people up to the fact that reality exists, and will continue to exist regardless of how many people turn themselves over to the fantastical domains of Queer Theory.
I suppose that’s the reality we have to grasp. That people really are willing to believe, and even base their whole lives and worldview on, something which to us is an obvious, outright lie; base their worldview on something which is at best an strongly contested ideological position that is sorely lacking in any kind of evidentiary basis, this idea that a man who says he’s a woman actually is a woman.
We know people will also act as if this strongly contested ideological position that is sorely lacking in any evidentiary basis is an actual, indisputable fact. There’s that doctor from the IOC who recently said “Everyone agrees that trans women are women.” So not just putting forward a false, unsubstantiated claim as a truth, but also falsely claiming that everyone subscribes to this belief! Is that what you could call a meta lie?
We know that people will believe that something which furthers the oppression of the most consistently oppressed group in the history of humanity is actually a civil rights movement.
Which leads me to the conclusion that people will believe almost anything if they have a strong enough motivation for doing so.
That’s what we’re dealing with. That’s the scale of the delusion we’re taking on, the scale of the forces ranged against us.
It still makes my head explode. I still struggle to reconcile this reality with the world I thought I knew, the world I thought I lived in, before I was aware of all this. But this is how it is.
And if it hadn’t been for us pesky women of FWR, it would have been a whole lot worse by now, in the UK at least! It was a real high point for me in the webinar with Helen Joyce when she credited us with having been instrumental in creating a viable resistance to the relentless march of genderist ideology. (My paraphrasing.)
I take heart from that. We have pushed back. We have shown that in the face of overwhelming odds, in the face of horrifying levels of institutional capture, in the face of endemic levels of misogynistic bullying, demonisation and vilification, we have stood firm and held the line against what we perceive to be - what we know to be - a most grave and monstrous injustice and source of harm to women and children.
We have spoken, despite being told, rather forcefully at times, that our words are literal violence. We have written to our MPs, the BBC, our children’s schools and anyone else pushing this ideology. We have crowdfunded en masse for the host of legal actions that some exceptionally brave women (and a few brave men) have brought/are bringing to challenge it all and try to restore some rule of law and reason. We have attended meetings, connected with each other, found solace and support with like minded women and a few supportive men. Not just the women of FWR of course, but we do need to acknowledge the importance of the role we’ve played. A whole new grassroots feminist movement has sprung up, and we’ve been a big part of that.
No wonder those who oppose us are so keen to shut us down.
I still don’t know how or when this will ultimately resolve. But I know we’re not backing down, not giving up, not changing course now. We’ll just have to keep on doing what we’re doing, sticking to the facts and to our feminist/woman-centred principles, and refusing to be intimidated or silenced by misogynistic bullies.
And hopefully there will eventually come a time when the onus is on those who deny reality to come up with a way of dealing with the real world they live in, not on us to try to find a way to make people acknowledge that reality.