Interesting reading - what do you make of this?

[NiceGerbil]

Hello

The Pullman thread sent me down a Twitter rabbit hole that stalled when I got to this

mobile.twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1411387723034902531

Some extracts from their book are there- have a read (not sure how to put the text here!).

I found the extracts totally fascinating. If I knew nothing about this topic, I'd think well. IMO clear, succinct. Persuasive in the confidence of the points/ arguments.

Thing is it's... I suppose maybe true for an American USA context for the religious right who I would imagine fit what's written more or less.

Of course it's referring to all women who think sex is a thing that matters.

Would love to discuss if anyone wants?

I don't think we need to disect the actual things written- I mean we all know they're nonsense.

It's more about with the reactionary feminist definition as well. And knowing that so many govts individuals charities etc are on board. What the end game really is.

We are only trying to fight one part of what's going on.

I hadn't realised what else is on the shopping list until I read those 2 things together.

My experience is that when you gently point out some of the conceptual flaws in this kind of thinking, some young people are relieved to be able to see clearly what it’s doing; some still cling doggedly to it even if they kind of know it’s rubbish. Their peer group won’t let them dissent from it, but it’s not like they don’t suspect something is wrong.

It’s that that makes me feel more hopeful - the thought that the clear logical and conceptual inconsistency and incoherence of it all will mean it will fall apart. And that youth culture is so fashion-driven that in five or ten years’ time the next cohort will just think it really unfashionable and they’ll react against it accordingly.

Ten years ago all my students were “radical centrists” who voted Lib Dem and got a bit uneasy if you asked them to read some Edward Said because of his “extreme views”. Now they are all into this. In ten years’ time I imagine the radical centrists will be back and blue hair will be deeply uncool again 😂

Loads of brush grown ups swallow it though. Or pretend to for their own reasons.

Charities with global reach.
Governments.
Etc.

Ok so they may well not have got as far as this BUT we have seen the reaction to things that never happen.

They are stuck, locked into supporting in increasingly extreme ways.

Women FFS women who consider themselves feminists saying little girls need to get used to random cock around the place.

I assume 10 years ago they would have been aghast at the idea. It's all a bit boiling frog though.

Remember all the things that the govt changed without telling anyone. The lost risk assessments. The politicians looking terrified when asked about the topic....

I'll post the bits of the second link that I was

I've not seen the term reactionary feminism before today. Only about 3 hits on Google.

I think we'll be seeing it more...

Dunno where brush came from sorry!

'In Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, Christina Hoff Sommers, associate professor of philosophy at Clark University, describes the appropriation of the movement once known as feminism by a cadre of party-line bureaucrats promoting an agenda of victimism and victimology-based revolution, with serious implications for the wider world.'

Stars are mine for emphasis.

Ok wow. Like the other piece very bold statement.

The moment I saw 'victimism' etc I thought ok yikes.

NOTE that the Twitter extracts are the FIRST time I personally have heard the phrase reactionary feminism and this is what it means (as far as I could find)...

That review say published in the 1994 issue, so this kind of stuff has been floating around for a long time! That must have been right around the time that all those US “surrendered wives” movements were popular.

Will get some more blurb then carry on freaking out!

'Equal pay for equal work," and "gender feminism," the aggressive self-pitying whine of an army of professional victims that has come to dominate discussions of women's issues. Ideological correctness, the suppression of dissent, and salvation through thought control and governmental fiat are the new orders of the day.'

'Too many of the world's women remain oppressed—except in the places where feminists are doing the most complaining.'

'How did one of the most privileged sets of people in the history of the world, in terms of wealth, education, and political power, come to be represented by its self-appointed spokespersons and their media minions as a passel of cringing victims in need of special protection by an all-wise government?'

'Sommers's examples of feminist testimonies of personal outrage in the face of male "discourse" (catcalls, jokes, and even classical and abstract art) tend inevitably—and hilariously—toward a description of the attack of paralysis once known as "the vapors."'

1994! Wow.

The book the extracts are from are new though.

And it seems the term reactionary feminism never took off back then, but it's time has come...

The first extracts paint a picture of women who enjoy the privilege that comes from being in the group woman. They do not want to share the spoils. Active exclusion of those who do not meet their standards is important. They do not see women who sell sex as women. They actively want to harm them, get them out of sight and out of mind.
TLDR: Evil evil evil

The second paints a picture again of women who have power. In fact, more power than men. They sell a massive lie to get what they want.

Essentially... White tears. Faking vulnerability to get what we want. When actually we are not vulnerable. We are manipulative.

And then- REALLY interesting.

Women being irrationality upset by trivial normal things men do. Catcalling etc.

Trying to suppress things that are a non event. Irrational - pathetic.

This is the EXACT SAME argument used by many about WiSpa..

1994...
Straight out of MRA play book.
The term reactionary feminism...
I've not heard before.
Used in a book NOW to explain women's evil.
AND two of the points in the definition are being used against women NOW.

given that- and the range of what needs to change in both pieces.

Any view of women as vulnerable a lie. Any support we get, not needed. A host of things men do when we're out and about, get over it. Dick in xyz? Victorian.

And so on.

Only read the excerpts here but my issue with both this and her previous work is that she refuses to interview or engage the subjects of discussion (in this case GC or what she calls "reactionary" feminists) and instead straw womans them in a way that will suit her argument.

At one point while she was researching this book, she made a call out on twitter for sources that show GC feminism is right wing. She was bombarded by all her TRA followers with lots of conspiracy theory type blogs about shady US Conservative funding of GC feminists which all relied on conjecture and no actual evidence.

When some leftist GC feminists like Julie Bindel and Selina Todd offered to sit down and discuss GC feminism from the leftist perspective, she just ignored them. Kathleen Stock (who works at the same Uni) also offered to have a debate with her but Phipps refused.

In the later screenshots, her whole "they aren't really silenced schtick" is such bad faith. If someone is an academic and is getting bomb or death threats that prevent them from speaking at conferences or giving lectures, then they are being silenced and If someone is prevented from serving on an editorial board or is deplatformed from talks that they were invited to give due to threats of violence from students - then that is quite clearly silencing.

According to her logic, the national news reports on Salman Rushdie book burnings and death threats would show that he wasn't really being silenced by his detractors.

Also her argument seems to rely on notions of purity. If you appear on stage with "Toby Young" then you must be tarnished as a right winger. She can't comprehend that it is possible to share a platform with someone and totally disagree with them - which is probably why she can't possibly engage with GC feminists in any way for fear of her own brand being tarnished.

Also I wish she'd do some empirical research to back up her assertions. She makes all kinds of claims about what "white women" think etc. but she doesn't have any data to show that white women think differently about say the Karen White case than women from ethnic minorities. If she had some data saying that black women are very keen to shower with bepenised people at the local gym as opposed to the nasty middle class, bourgeois white ladies who want to gatekeeper the gym showers, then perhaps I'd be convinced - but I imagine she's not keen to confront the reality of opinions from women of all races, classes, as her arguments would fall apart.

Also I should say that I have heard the accusation (why would you write a book without interviewing any of the people you are writing about) lobbed at GC feminists like Helen Joyce. But in Helen's case I think she really did search out opinions from trans people and even had one random twitter trans woman to stay at her own house. She at least wants to understand the position even if she doesn't agree with it. Whereas Alison just puts her fingers in her ears.

If Alison conducted some actual quantitative and qualitative sociological research into GC women and their opinions I'd be interested to read it. She could easily survey and interview all the women at GC conferences like FPFW or Fila to establish that we are all right wing, tory voting, middle class, rich white women who hate immigrants, prostitutes and trans women. Then again she might be surprised......

The author won't discuss or support their statements.

They don't need to.

As you noted, on twitter there are stacks of people who gobble up this stuff.

My reason for posting wasn't to discuss/ refute their views.

It was more that those views which are to me very extreme- accusations. Wanting to harm women. Eugenics hinted at.

Mega off the scale claims. About ordinary women who say hold on cock in the prison etc. That they are essentially evil.

And for those who have got on board and are now locked into it. The arguments are getting more extreme and PEOPLE ARE BUYING THEM.

WiSpa. Omg Victorian. It's only a dick. Little girls and women should get over their hangups etc.

At this point all bets are off. They can take it anywhere. And remember all the orgs that are on board with this. They too can't/ won't back out now.

The old piece defined a term which didn't pass into common use. It's in this book- I think it will start being used a lot.

Two of the arguments in that second old piece have been used recently around trans things.

The term GC is maybe not serving it's purpose any more.

Moving to reactionary feminist means these evil women also...
Exploit the idea they are victimised (vulnerable) which are not true. Bye bye. DV, rape services. Those which help women from various cultures get away (different barriers). Pay gap. Attention on 'minor' sex offences. Etc etc.
Hate 'sex workers' and want to stop them being safe and making money.
Put on an act of distress to get their own way (I can see how this would translate to rape etc)

And so on.

I know it sounds paranoid BUT. Look where we are now and so fast.

I'm worried.

I think the end game is a total annihilation of everything we have fought for and gained in the last 50 years or so.

'She could easily survey and interview all the women at GC conferences like FPFW or Fila to establish that we are all right wing, tory voting, middle class, rich white women who hate immigrants, prostitutes and trans women. Then again she might be surprised......'

The author DOES NOT CARE.

If we fight this on stats etc and pointing out how bad for women. We will lose.

It's not about facts stats reality.

It's about fucking women over totally.

It's about getting certain messages into society. Mainstreaming them.

And never forget that a good proportion of the population do NOT like feminists of the not fun sort and do not in the end like women very much.

The things we say are challenging. Rape. CSA. Internet grooming. Pointing out that as a group men cause loads of big problems.

People in general do NOT like it. They don't want to hear it. It conflicts with comfy world view too much.

Sorry long posts.

Mega off the scale claims. About ordinary women who say hold on cock in the prison etc. That they are essentially evil.

And for those who have got on board and are now locked into it. The arguments are getting more extreme and PEOPLE ARE BUYING THEM.

Yeah I used to think that it wasn't a problem if these wild arguments were just contained in academia but lately I realised that gender studies students are going into the workforce in jobs like HR where they will have been conditioned (by the likes of Phipps) to think that women asserting boundaries is an evil thing.

I think the only way we can fight back is to collect data and survey people ourselves. We know the majority of people don't agree with bepenised people being in women's prisons for example. We need to get polls and research done that show this so we can inform public policy with evidenced assertions. I think organisations like FPFW and Sex Matters are so vital as they are the only ones who will stand up for womens' rights.

I don't think that will work

Because one side is happy to lie. All the time. Not just on Twitter. On TV interviews. In news pieces. Etc. And it goes unchallenged.

And this is how it is now, right? Trump changed the game. You can lie etc all the time and your supporters will still love you.

Boris has been proved to have lied more than once. Done all sorts of dodgy things.

Consequences?

None.

I read s book about right v left political messaging s while ago. It's USA but applies I think.

Example abortion.

Left say
If it's not allowed it causes X problems here and y problems there. Z group in A will be affected more. The impact of unsafe abortion is B.

And think. That's clear and factual. Good job.

The right say.

ITS MURDERING A BABY!

The second is oh that's bad. I don't want that.

Job done.

Yeah agree with you about how people can now lie with impunity and there are zero consequences. It's a major problem in all areas of society whether it's womens' issues or COVID.

Yes, you're right. I still think the ideas themselves are intrinsically uninteresting. But pathologically very interesting. Food for thought.

The second piece is quite interesting (though infuriating) in that some of the "bad modern feminism" it talks about and calls "gender feminism" is identifiably the TWAW feminism that calls itself "intersectional feminism". The stuff about logic and reason being phallocentric and embracing other ways of knowing is exactly the Po-Mo stuff beloved of gender studies. The ludicrous anorexia stats are Naomi Woolf. So that's a very different meaning of "reactionary feminism" than it is for Phipps.

The piece conflates wanting changes to maths and science because logic and reason are phallocentric with wanting more acknowledgement and study of women's experiences because they have been overlooked. It uses the frailty of Po-Mo feminist posturing to undermine feminism more generally. Like the jeering blokes who hear about Laurel Hubbard and say, "this is the equality feminists wanted."

That is interesting. It definitely demonstrates the mindset of trans activism. There are a lot of accusations that simply aren't accurate and no evidence to back them up, not in those screenshots anyway. The usual guff. I also found her use of quotation marks around terms in almost every sentence quite distracting.

She can talk about "political whiteness" but the reality is that there are a lot of black and brown women protesting this, it's pretty racist to ignore them. And since when did radical feminists want to criminalise prostitutes? The straw men are laughable, or would be if people weren't taking this nonsense so seriously.

Hi NiceGerbil, I gave this a try but couldn’t get past mainstream feminist narcissism, not only centring themselves (bad! bad women! mustn’t care about yourselves!) but also acting as gatekeepers who withhold the designation ‘woman’ from others. As if it’s ours or anyone else’s to give or withhold.

It’s always worth knowing what the opposition is doing and saying. Good to see the weakness and dishonesty of their ‘arguments’. But unfortunately that hasn’t held them back, so far. As you say, look at Trump and Johnson. People lap up the lies, even when the same people are suffering as a result.

I’m pinning my hopes on Laurel Hubbard waking people up.

I have noted on the previous thread that it goes much further than one issue. The privileged in society can no longer justify their position so material reality has to be binned. Alison Phipps (white) has accused Southall Black Sisters of political whiteness. It gives a white professor the opportunity to steal the language used by black people to name their oppression and use it against them.

They pretend to care about social justice while maintaining power structures (which is the goal of all of this all along). Women who have been raped who do anything other than shut up and protect their abuser are weaponising their abuse.

The aim is to reverse the gains of feminism whilst silencing critics by calling it real feminism.

Fucking hell, that was hard to read! What i take from it is that feminists who don't believe twaw:

• are racist
• colonialist
• want harm to come to sex workers prostituted women
• are religious
• are right wing
• are white

I don't see anything new or interesting here, it seems like the usual accusations. I find it quite disturbing to see people back-patting her in the replies but i suppose they're her followers, so [shrug]