Interesting interview

[Heidi1982]

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/amia-srinivasan-the-right-to-sex-interview

I've not heard of Amira Srinivasan, I thought this was an interesting read, which made me understand, although not agree with "anti carceral feminism" a little better.

Theres a brief comment, near the end, about her being "impatient" with women who are against transwomen in women's prisons. I'd love to ask her why on earth someone who is against prisons in principle thinks vulnerable women prisoners should put up with male people in their prisons.

So shes Impatient with women who are against men in women’s prisons? Right….

I thought the most interesting thing about the interview was the writers comments about Judith Butler at the end, specifically because it was published in the Guardian. I'm sure there will be consequences for her.

@FOJN

I thought the most interesting thing about the interview was the writers comments about Judith Butler at the end, specifically because it was published in the Guardian. I'm sure there will be consequences for her.

I was quite surprised at those comments, but it's in the Observer, which often takes a different view from the Guardian.

Srinivasan doesn't seem to understand the trans issue at all.

The last quote from Srinivasan:

"Trans-exclusionary women are very often cis lesbians who, for very good reasons, have issues with their bodies precisely because they are going to be read in a particular way in a deeply lesbian-phobic, heteronormative culture. They’ve learned to deal with their frustrations with this in a particular way, and they dislike the idea of anyone dealing with it in a different way.”

And the interviewer's response:

Crikey. It seems extraordinary to me that someone so interested in equality and freedom would generalise about an entire group of people (lesbians) in this way – and this, I’m afraid, is where I conclusively part ways with Srinivasan and her ideas. Thirty years ago, academics were all high on Jacques Derrida. Now a lot of them appear to be drinking the Kool-Aid that is Judith Butler, high priestess of gender theory.

Same writer who interviewed David Bell

Another disconcerting quote: "When feminists call ...for “action” on male violence, they need, or so she believes, better to understand what that might involve in practice; what groups they will end up working against, as well as for."

It seems extraordinary to me that someone so interested in equality and freedom would generalise about an entire group of people (lesbians) in this way – and this, I’m afraid, is where I conclusively part ways with Srinivasan and her ideas

Yep. How patronisingly dismissive and presumptive of Srinvasan. I mean, how fucking lesbophobic and offensive. I mean, what a lot of shite.

I knew which interview you were referring to just by this thread title. She might be smart, but she doesn't have a bloody clue.

'To prohibit marginal sex, she asserts, is to reinforce the “hegemony of mainstream sexuality”'

WTF is 'marginal sex'? What does that cover? What's wrong with 'mainstream' sexuality'?

' Srinivasan believes that women’s hard-won rights are “intensely precarious… the right is in the ascendant, and though its rhetoric is an expression of its weakness, the left simply doesn’t know how to take power”.'

She's right on that, though.

@ArabellaScott

'To prohibit marginal sex, she asserts, is to reinforce the “hegemony of mainstream sexuality”'

WTF is 'marginal sex'? What does that cover? What's wrong with 'mainstream' sexuality'?

' Srinivasan believes that women’s hard-won rights are “intensely precarious… the right is in the ascendant, and though its rhetoric is an expression of its weakness, the left simply doesn’t know how to take power”.'

She's right on that, though.

I know right, she's apparently a genius but doesn't seem to join the dots.

@BaronMunchausen

Another disconcerting quote: "When feminists call ...for “action” on male violence, they need, or so she believes, better to understand what that might involve in practice; what groups they will end up working against, as well as for."

I think this, which is a more articulate version of "white women's tears", really needs to be pulled apart.

Why should women put up with male violence because some men who commit it experience other forms of oppression? Is this the ultimate "be kind" which makes women put other people's interests before their own? Why should we "work with" abusive men? Why don't we focus on white women getting better at working with black women so that we can, together, fight male violence, instead of pitting women against eachother?

This was an interesting read. Agreed with her on some things, but very much not on others. I very much hope what she said about current students being able to talk about different viewpoints was true. The men in women's prisons was whataboutery though... If women are that concerned they would be demonstrating at immigration detention centres (I think that's how it went), but that's bu as we can be concerned about both.
I'm not anti-porn either, but not sure sure she really grasped the reality of extreme hardcore becoming mainstream, the effects it has on young men and their resultant expectations of women.

I liked the interviewer, can't remember her name now, but felt her relief at actually having a debate.

Why should women put up with male violence because some men who commit it experience other forms of oppression? Is this the ultimate "be kind" which makes women put other people's interests before their own? Why should we "work with" abusive men? Why don't we focus on white women getting better at working with black women so that we can, together, fight male violence, instead of pitting women against eachother?

Agree.

And yes, Susanna, to think that gc feminists are not also capable of being concerned about women in Yarl's Wood is a rather oddly dumb presumption. Reminds me of Ash Sarkar asking Julie Bindel what she'd ever done for women in prison.

Seemed a bit disappointing given the build up at the start. Good on The Observer for publishing, though.

Who is she?

Rachel Cooke is very good. I was cheered by this:

"But my students find these texts – by people like Robin Morgan and Shulamith Firestone – riveting and thrilling"

Hurrah! Good for the students.

As for the rest, well, I'm not convinced. Take this bit:

'If you were really worried about prisons, you would be demonstrating outside Yarl’s Wood [the immigration removal centre],” she says, with some irritation.'

A classic piece of whataboutery - unimpressive from someone who is the first woman, first person of colour and also the youngest person to become the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls.

Obviously a lot of left-wing feminists have protested about Yarl's Wood. But even if they haven't, that has no bearing on whether it's right or wrong to house men in women's prisons.

She then moves on to an ad hominem attack ("Trans-exclusionary women are very often cis lesbians..."). This would get her marked down in a first-year undergraduate philosophy essay.

I'm not as impressed with her as other people are, or as she seems to be with herself.

Why should women put up with male violence because some men who commit it experience other forms of oppression? Is this the ultimate "be kind" which makes women put other people's interests before their own?

This is reminiscent of Gaby Hinsliff's infamous dismissive article about the NYE sex attacks in Cologne a few years ago, pointing out the victims were privileged and "had smartphones".

It's also largely what is behind "anti-carceral feminism".

The thread about Brydie Lee Kennedy has been deleted, but in further tweets she responded to criticism from feminists that she didn't care about women in prison by saying that actually she didn't believe prisons should exist at all, as a gotcha.

As someone pointed out

twitter.com/mtbtws/status/1424340912415649798?s=20

Blimey, she really doesn't like lesbians. She's just reduced the whole of lesbian experience to one sour dismissive statement.

I'm not as impressed with her as other people are, or as she seems to be with herself.

Me neither. Emperor's New Clothes feted by the same people that genuflect to pomo word salad merchants like Butler. #NoThankYou.

Robin Morgan and Shulamith Firestone - straight back to my radical youth
I find the lack of real lived knowledge very disheartening and always have.

This is the essay Srinivasan wrote for the London Review of Books in 2018 which has been fawned over, and she's now expanded into her book "A Right to Sex" mentioned in the article. She devotes a large chunk of it to MTF trans people:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n06/amia-srinivasan/does-anyone-have-the-right-to-sex

The difficulties I have been discussing are currently posed in the most vexed form within feminism by the experience of trans women. Trans women often face sexual exclusion from lesbian cis women who at the same time claim to take them seriously as women. This phenomenon was named the ‘cotton ceiling’ – ‘cotton’ as in underwear – by the trans porn actress and activist Drew DeVeaux. The phenomenon is real, but, as many trans women have noted, the phrase itself is unfortunate. While the ‘glass ceiling’ implies the violation of a woman’s right to advance on the basis of her work, the ‘cotton ceiling’ describes a lack of access to what no one is obligated to give (though DeVeaux has since claimed that the ‘cotton’ refers to the trans woman’s underwear, not the underwear of the cis lesbian who doesn’t want to have sex with her). Yet simply to say to a trans woman, or a disabled woman, or an Asian man, ‘No one is required to have sex with you,’ is to skate over something crucial. There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – no dicks, no fems, no fats, no blacks, no arabs, no rice no spice, masc-for-masc – are never just personal.

She then lovingly quotes Andrea Long Chu, who has been the subject of threads on FWR before, as a "feminist and trans theorist" and notes that Chu is more honest than most about their motivations.

Chu’s response is not to insist, as many trans women do, that being trans is about identity rather than desire: about already being a woman, rather than wanting to become a woman. (Once one recognises that trans women are women, complaints about their ‘excessive femininity’ – one doesn’t hear so many complaints about the ‘excessive femininity’ of cis women – begin to look invidious.)

The Koolaid has certainly been drunk, as Rachel Cooke observed in the Guardian interview.

There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – no dicks, no fems, no fats, no blacks, no arabs, no rice no spice, masc-for-masc – are never just personal.

A full stop after "want" and the sentence would have been perfect.

Other than that, she does the TRA thing of equating sexuality (sexual attraction to one or the other sex) with sexual preference. But saying "I won't have sex with Arabs" is not at all the same thing as saying "I won't have sex with men." She is making a deeply homophobic statement. Why isn't she being called out on it?

Oh, and here is a piece by Suzanne Moore about Julie Bindel. Here she's talking about Bindel's partner, the lawyer and activist Harriet Wistrich:

'Harriet quietly gets on with changing the law. She worked on the Worboys case, for the women who were duped into affairs with undercover police officers, for women abused at Yarls Wood, she helped free Sally Challen. These are just a few of the things she has done. All while living with someone who is called a “hate preacher”. Astonishing really.'

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/the-post-cancellation-of-julie-bindel

Remind me what Amira Srinivasan has done for women?

@ArabellaScott

It seems extraordinary to me that someone so interested in equality and freedom would generalise about an entire group of people (lesbians) in this way – and this, I’m afraid, is where I conclusively part ways with Srinivasan and her ideas

Yep. How patronisingly dismissive and presumptive of Srinvasan. I mean, how fucking lesbophobic and offensive. I mean, what a lot of shite.

Thank you! YY this.

I was in the middle of a diatribe about how wonderful traditional women's and lesbian festivals were for they way they celebrated the diversity of women's bodies in their hairiness, bloodiness, their different sizes and shapes etc.

What the TRAs have done is shut down a lot of opportunities for lesbians and women to celebrate their culture and body confidence — mostly notably Michfest in the US but also smaller but powerful festivals such as Women in Tune in west Wales. I've been to both and seen women of all shapes and sizes and colours and variations celebrating their bodies. This is what younger women, under the thumb of commercialism and Pride and Diva magazine, need a dose of.

I'm just not generally particularly impressed with people just because I'm supposed to be or because they are academics. Call me uncultured. She strikes me as very full of herself, but with ultimately quite an empty, shallow take on sexuality. None of the stuff she said was particularly original.