New Yorker tackles Feminism and Gender

[Needmoresleep]

And gives a not entirely flattering nod to Mumsnet

"In the U.K., trans-exclusionary activists have worn buttons proclaiming that they were “Radicalised by Mumsnet,” Britain’s largest online platform for parents. On message boards, mothers, justifiably aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition, are encouraged to direct their ire at the “trans lobby.”"

They really don't get it, but at least there is reporting. I will see if I can post a link. If not it is long so I will give some quotes.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/who-lost-the-sex-wars?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker

Seems to have worked.

What ever happened to journalists at least reporting verifiable facts?

They just don't bother and it's not just with this issue either. I've seen incredibly poor quality reporting on Mexico, where I live, from supposedly top newspapers just to push a particular agenda.

The New Yorker is famous for the rigour of its fact-checking team. Perhaps they were all on holiday.

@Needmoresleep

And gives a not entirely flattering nod to Mumsnet

"In the U.K., trans-exclusionary activists have worn buttons proclaiming that they were “Radicalised by Mumsnet,” Britain’s largest online platform for parents. On message boards, mothers, justifiably aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition, are encouraged to direct their ire at the “trans lobby.”"

They really don't get it, but at least there is reporting. I will see if I can post a link. If not it is long so I will give some quotes.

Ooh look, it's a libel case.

Remember the old days when journalists could actually be buggered to do some research and then think about the material?

They really didn't get the sarcasm behind those "radicalised by mumsnet" badges did they?

Some previous threads about the author of that article and her book.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4318085-interesting-interview

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4333319-Review-of-The-Right-to-Sex

She hasn't got a clue about anything we discuss on here. I would expect an academic to go to original sources, but she bases her understanding of mumsnet on some articles she's read about it by some people with a very biased viewpoint.

Remember the old days when journalists could actually be buggered to do some research and then think about the material?

She's not a journalist. She's a professor at Oxford University.

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

This is an excerpt from her new book The Right To Sex.

I see a big problem in the kind of movement which argues that women's movements should cater for all causes worthy of attention in this world, even if they do not directly affect women (as in vulva people, to be progressive here). The problem with that is the lack of resources to fix everything and the obvious question why no other movement is expected to be equally inclusive.

It's about lack of boundaries, or the demand that women have none and that women should always place others ahead of their own needs.

On message boards, mothers, justifiably aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition, are encouraged to direct their ire at the “trans lobby.

I can't get over that sentence. It's so patronising it's beyond. Our concerns regarding our own rights are reduced to a response about not getting social recognition. That assertion is something I would expect to read in certain right wing publications. It completely misunderstands and misrepresents the issue. Unbelievable.

Thanks Old Crone. An Oxford professor, no less.

When posting I had taken the easy route of just posting the link because I was not sure what to make of the article.
When I don’t really understand “clever” article I am still too quick to assume that the problem lies with me not the writer. In this case I am pretty sure it’s the writer. The author seems to be trying to give an appearance of balance by mentioning a number of respected feminists but then quoting Shon Faye, at length, as a substitute for argument.

The quote posted above is indicative. Does she ever look at MN? If she did it would be pretty obvious that few can be defined by their role as others. And why so patronising. I personally am not aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition. I am doing just fine. Which does not stop me being concerned that those who are doing less well, especially the vulnerable, and who stand to lose most from the loss of women’s ability to define themselves and protect themselves, their children and their spaces.

On one of the other threads her writing was described as intellectual wanking. Sort of sums it up.

“Mother’s” not “others”

The quote posted above is indicative. Does she ever look at MN?

I don't think she does. She seems to have gained her understanding of MN from articles like this one:

lux-magazine.com/article/the-road-to-terfdom/

...some of these newly “gender critical” Mumsnetters were relatively privileged women who had never felt marginalized until they gave birth and came to feel isolated in their nuclear households and (rightfully!) outraged at the lack of support for mothers in the U.K. They turned to Mumsnet for solidarity, and somehow became fixated on trans women in the process.

Mumsnet’s women’s rights forum didn’t just offer women a safe space to organize. By providing a platform that tolerated TERFism, it had also handed users a convenient scapegoat for all of their problems — not austerity, not misogyny, but the relatively tiny and extremely marginalized and oppressed trans population.

She could have done some research of her own just by reading some threads, and could even have asked us some questions to help her understanding. Instead she just quotes someone else who clearly doesn't have a clue about what we discuss on here.

She could have done some research of her own just by reading some threads, and could even have asked us some questions to help her understanding. Instead she just quotes someone else who clearly doesn't have a clue about what we discuss on here.

She might have chosen to speak to Prof. Sarah Pedersen or read her books about MN. That would have been a reasonable thing for an academic to have done.

However, a polemical text such as Srinivasan's will not incite if it's evidence based and that's the rub of it.

On message boards, mothers, justifiably aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition, are encouraged to direct their ire at the “trans lobby.”"

This is very much the line that Laurie Penny came out with when she graced feminism chat with her presence all those years ago.

The view is that if you're a mother, you must be a bit stupid. You are gullible and easily influenced into misguidedly directing your ire at trans people instead of at the government.

There are a number of obvious ripostes to this. One is, obviously, that if she'd ever bothered to read this board, she'd know it's full of very highly educated women, including lawyers, doctors and academics - most of whom have a far greater understanding of the trans issue than she does.

Another is that, like Judith Butler, who calls us fascists, she resorts to ad hominem attacks because she hasn't got a decent argument. She can't respond intelligently to our arguments, so she patronises us instead.

Perhaps most importantly, she clearly thinks that women's brains fall out when they become mothers. One of the things we often point out here is that motherhood has radicalised us: once we become mothers we understand the role that biology plays in our oppression. We accumulate disadvantages: we lose our jobs, we are paid less money, we become slaves to our children, and we are patronised by people who don't value what we do. And by her condescending dismissal of mothers as gullible fools, Srinivasan precisely proves our point for us - without apparently even realising that she has done so.

The chair Srinivasan occupies is apparently highly prestigious. If this is the best that Oxford has to offer, then I'd worry for its future.

The attacks on mother’s Abd motherhood are so enraging & patronising

Also she’s quite clearly never gone to the original source ie mumsnet boards to check her facts/interpretation (which is so poor for an academic) because if she had, she’d know that there’s a large number of GC women on this board who are not mothers

In the last 12 months or so I've been increasingly disappointed in the New Yorker and it's bias/ ignorance on this issue. Previously I would have taken its word on anything and it's staff writers are largely excellent. They've shown a real fallibility here that I really would have thought beneath it.

Think I've previously linked to a podcast episode that out and out called Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and JKR t*s.

Motherhood was what radicalised me. I read on here once the perfect description of my experience - I never experienced sexism and basically felt 100% equality to my male colleagues and friends, but when I had kids it was like I was a bird flying head-first into the glass door of the patriarchy.

Even GC women who don't have children can make this assumption - I love the blocked and reported podcast but the most recent episode had Megan Murphy and Katherine Herzog discussing how they don't think the patriarchy really exists in the west any longer - I was like, yeah I thought so too...until I had a baby!

That being said, having children is not a necessary precursor to being a feminist. I was just a privileged blinkered fool before having a baby made me wake up (does this make me "woke" ) I didn't know anyone with kids and probably wouldn't have listened anyway, even if someone had tried to get it through my thick privileged skull.

owing to her involvement with Woman’s Place U.K., an organization that advocates the exclusion of trans women from women’s spaces.

No, an organisation that, among other things, advocates for the exclusion of men from women’s spaces. How is that difficult to understand?

There is no reason to segregate by gender, (because what does gender mean?). There is sometimes a need to segregate by sex.

But my women students quickly discover, as an earlier generation did, that there is no monolithic “women’s experience”: that their experiences are inflected by distinctions in class, race, and nationality, by whether they are trans or cis, gay or straight, and also by the less classifiable distinctions of political instinct—their feelings about authority, hierarchy, technology, community, freedom, risk, love.

Except there is something that women share - biology and it’s impact.

Everything else is related to cultural and societal expectations which vary from place to place and time to time like gender.

@LittoralViolets

The quote posted above is indicative. Does she ever look at MN?

I don't think she does. She seems to have gained her understanding of MN from articles like this one:

lux-magazine.com/article/the-road-to-terfdom/

...some of these newly “gender critical” Mumsnetters were relatively privileged women who had never felt marginalized until they gave birth and came to feel isolated in their nuclear households and (rightfully!) outraged at the lack of support for mothers in the U.K. They turned to Mumsnet for solidarity, and somehow became fixated on trans women in the process.

Mumsnet’s women’s rights forum didn’t just offer women a safe space to organize. By providing a platform that tolerated TERFism, it had also handed users a convenient scapegoat for all of their problems — not austerity, not misogyny, but the relatively tiny and extremely marginalized and oppressed trans population.

She could have done some research of her own just by reading some threads, and could even have asked us some questions to help her understanding. Instead she just quotes someone else who clearly doesn't have a clue about what we discuss on here.

I think there are a number of people who avoid Mumsnet itself and base their views on articles like this, in the same way that they might choose to avoid reading an actual JKR blog piece and instead base their opinions on what Twitter says.

Mumsnet is not a "safe space" so you can't just go clicking on it willy-nilly in case the literal violence of different opinions is too triggering.

A bit off-topic but what is happening with UK Universities? About time to suggest that GC women also have safe spaces, perhaps?

You may be sorry you missed it yesterday, but LSE decided yesterday celebrated Pride month by inviting Pips Bunce and Antonia Belcher, a BBC news journalist, and some diversity and inclusion experts to "celebrate and reflect on the success of the Pride movement through a behavioural science lens".

www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2021/09/202109091700/pride

I have no problem with middle class middle aged white men exploring the boundaries of societal expectations, and choosing not to conform. But that does not make them spokespeople for lesbians. Their lived experience is different.

This conference, and our New Yorker writer's Oxford professorship, illustrates the extent of the capture. I was genuinely interested in the New Yorker article. I subscribe because the New Yorker provides in depth, usually well-researched, articles, sometimes with a different US perspective, on a wide range of topics. But, genuinely, I struggled to understand what this one was about. Feminist names were slung around but no rigour, no argument and counter-argument. Based on the speaker list, the LSE conference will be the same. The bubble patting each other on the back, at a time when women, both in the UK (eg post pandemic work issues, or self image in the age of social media) and internationally (Afghanistan for starters) are facing new and difficult hurdles.

Bloody Pips Bunce. My recollection is that they were once invited to attend a discussion about the future of the girl guides held at the then speakers house. I am sure they are a perfectly OK bank computer guy - indeed I know someone who works with them, but being trans seems to bestow magic powers. Ditto our Oxford professor. Writing the right stuff for the right audience, is clearly a good career move. Stay with in the bubble and you get lots or conference invitations, research grants, and academic citations. (Prof Sally Hines at Sheffield is another example.)

Surely a proper academic debate needs to include some alternate voices. Not sham mentions as in the New Yorker article, or non existent as in the case of the LSE conference. The MN coven would be able to suggest plenty.

I assume some gender studies academics hate MN is that it gives women, of all shapes, sizes, colours, and life experiences, a voice. And that this voice does not tie in neatly with the theories they are peddling. So they have to either give specious excuses, "justifiably aggrieved by a lack of material support and social recognition", or simply attack and invalidate.

Surely a proper academic debate needs to include some alternate voices. Not sham mentions as in the New Yorker article, or non existent as in the case of the LSE conference. The MN coven would be able to suggest plenty.

This is in line with what Haidt has been agitating for with Heterodox Academy - some diversity of perspectives.

heterodoxacademy.org/

I attended an interview (non-public) the other day with the authors of The Power of Us - One of the topics was the value of having people who disagree within groups or committees. It was not so much that the disagreement was well founded but the intervention of someone who disagreed seemed to embolden others to disagree - and that might be where the valued basis for disagreement could be aired and scrutinised.

Thanks EmbarrassingAdmissions. I present you with an alternative advocate, covering the resignation of a Professor in Oregon:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9973427/PIERS-MORGAN-woke-destruction-great-educator-terrify-one-us.html

"I was a member of a school debating society when I was just ten years old and can still remember how invigorating it was to argue with my peer group about issues in the news.

But the teacher who conducted these sessions always insisted we respect other opinions to our own.

‘Just because you feel strongly about something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right,’ she would regularly caution. ‘But you should always be entitled to have your own opinion, just as everyone else is entitled to theirs.’

For me, that principle is the very cornerstone of freedom of speech and expression which in turn are the very cornerstones of democracy."

There is obviously a debate to be had about whether Piers Morgan has a legitimate voice, but that debate might be illuminating in itself. And not dissimilar to our professor dismissing views expressed on MN.

It will sound dramatic, but we are seeing a clampdown on freedom of expression just about everywhere: in China with recent arrests of influencers, films stars and entrepreneurs; in the Islamic world; and importantly in the West. The internet makes it so much easier to doxx and cancel people. Our ability to have real debate and freedom of speech is so important and eventually allows for our society to be ruled by informed consensus.

(I am a tight skate, and so used to read the Mail and Guardian on-line delighting in instances of "they would say that wouldn't they" and enjoying the requirement to use my own critical faculties to form/reconfirm my opinion. Then the Guardian became so irritating it was unreadable. I love the way that MN gives me a window into other people's views and experiences. I may agree or disagree but am usually informed. It is sad that our academic does not venture out of her ivory bubble and test the waters once in a while, dismissing a very large group of diverse women out of hand is not a sign of intellectual curiosity. )

So who was she radicalised by?
How did she become so radicalised that she's willing to throw away the rights of British women and put her name to this ideology, that she is willing to put her reputation on the line in an article that she must know is is so scarce on facts and detail.
I doubt she believed that transwomen were actually women 10 years ago.