Academia having another backwards day :/

[NitroNine]

(I couldn’t see another thread on this, but I’m having some issues with things not updating properly - & this took a VERY long time to write, so apologies in advance…)

Astonishingly, LSE characterised Ilaria Michelis frankly racist Re-centring white victimhood in the age of Black Lives Matter: a ‘gender critical’ project? as “an incisive & politically urgent analysis of the connections between trans-exclusionary and racist feminist ideologies” when they tweeted the article out from the “Engenderings” account (for blog articles on gender-related things).

The staggering arrogance of a white woman to write this absolute nonsense. It’s a lazy opinion piece with less academic rigour than the average class bear’s diary; yet LSE were happy to laud it. It might “only” be a blog, but given the intended readership, it’s not enough to produce something like this.

The racist version of feminism comes out of the mouths of people who suggest that black women & men (of any colour) are somehow the same. Who try to tie together segregation in the US (funny that apartheid doesn’t seem to be on their radar ) with keeping men out of women’s bathrooms, sports & hospital wards. The “feminists” who think intersectionality means putting male people front & centre; not considering & addressing issues that specific groups of women have - like the fact black women are 4 times more likely to die in pregnancy & childbirth. The weird idea that feminism wasn’t for everyone until the 3rd wave started handing out invitations is… infuriating, to put it politely.

Pity for Ilaria that her piece was published AFTER the playbook - about hitching trans issues to race - was made public. Oops.

Pity for Ilaria that her piece was published AFTER the playbook - about hitching trans issues to race - was made public. Oops.

Indeed. She's pissed off an awful lot of GC women who unlike her, are not white, and don't appreciate being told they must be incapable of standing up for their own rights, and that if they're women then men must be women too

TRAs co-op the civil rights language of Black American movements as a way to deceptively persuade their audience of the righteousness of men using women's spaces and overriding women's rights.

It is tone-deaf and racist for this woman to connect two very different groups. One, Black people in the US who have documented, generational, historic racism due to being stolen from their homelands and then subjected into hundreds of years of slavery. Group two, men, majority white, who don't fit rigid sex stereotypes.

FWIW, I'm a GC feminist who supports local BLM activities and believes much anti-racism in my country is good work. I must be a unicorn!

It all starts from a false premise too - TERF as a term came before BLM began organising. Why BLM, too? How utterly shameful if it were to be because she only noticed Racism Is Still A Thing And Black People Are Still Fighting It when massive protests got huge amounts of news coverage. The utter shock & outrage at feminists daring to be consistent in their aims & views - or rather, the utter ignorance of How Feminism In Fact Works from someone publishing in a blog focused on gender-related issues…

Not got the courage of her convictions, either: here is my work, but I don’t want your comments on it. The GC side absolutely will rip it to pieces - & indeed have done - including the fact she speaking over the women she’s pulling her white saviour act for. But nobody’s threatening her/demanding she be fired/generally being abusive.

Well her idea that TERFS use feminism to re-center white women is kind of stupid. I don't think there is evidence of that. Which is not to say that people don't have various views about how race and sex interact and various views on each, but that is hardly the same thing.

But TBH I think there is a connection between rejection of gender ideology and skepticism about BLM as a movement - they both use identity in a problematic way, and they tend to elevate it over things like, you know, actual statistical analysis. Which is why you get people like Adolph Reed and Glen Loury, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both pointing out that the analysis of BLM misses some fundamental truths about police violence that will impede doing anything about it, and damage a lot of poor, black communities.

Gender identity ideology and racial id pol , and queer id pol, even some types of feminism, are cut from the same cloth. There are people who don't see it and support one or more but not others. But there are plenty of people who do and so will take a less all-in approach.

So they are saying a black woman is the a woman like a man is a woman? is that not racist?