Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

[ILikeDungs]

By Unherd, a debate-style response to the purity spiral after Brighton. I do admire Helen Joyce and her ability to calmly and logically discuss the issues. Unherd have made it age restricted (because of all the fucks, I suppose!):

It's interesting that you found it more shocking though.

Found it more shocking than what?

Are you trying to put words into my mouth?

I assume she was going to describe a little girl being held down and mutilated while she was conscious. I choose not to watch or listen to upsetting stories like that all the time - for my sanity. I certainly could never watch a video of it. She has some stomach - I know she has watched a snuff movie too and I am still traumatised from reading her description of it. To know it happens is enough. It’s about as shocking as you can get.

Her point about FGM wasn't a shock tactic anymore than the photos and stories that get shared about double mastectomies of healthy breast tissue in teenage girls

I notice how you smoothly started talking about something which wasn’t the matter at hand. Did anyone mention post surgery pictures in the talk? I don’t think so. So why are you bringing it up here? Straw man?

Anyway, moving on from your weird manipulations, a shock tactic is a shock tactic. I don’t think a sliding scale of something being more or less of a shock tactic exists. It is a type of tactic, it is or it isn’t.

Nonetheless, the context and purpose is relevant for any tactic used. So using a shock tactic to forcefully wake people out of denial in order to bring a better outcome can be legitimate.

Using a shock tactic to protect your own ego and deflect from a weak argument is not a legitimate use, in my opinion. It is unnecessarily traumatising.

Your previous post said that the physical harms to girls and women are 'mushrooming' while FGM is declining.

Really? I thought to that one of the horrors of FGM was that no-one has a clear idea about its extent.

Your post contains more detail about the film she mentioned than she gave btw.

It was very obvious that she referenced the film in the context of her argument that the house has been on fire for women and girls forever. Gender ideology is one atrocity visited on them, and it's a manifestation of the ubiquitous MVAWG, FGM being another one.

Do you think JB's argument about male violence towards women and girls being a chronic one was weak? Care to explain why?

She talked about being freaks - bit of a curveball ?

I was listening whilst cooking and had to stop and rewind to work out what I had missed when she said that. But I hadn't missed anything and she didn't explain it.

I thought she said that the orban/proud boy right thought of people like her as freaks. Part of the reason why she has no common ground with them

Some up thread mentioned the Irish peace process and the need to find common ground. I agree but saying that this means we have to work with the orban right is like saying that sinn fein needed to embrace the real IRA.

I felt the same about Helen Joyce. I've read and loved 'Trans' but her concept of market economics that don't rely on some social groups being oppressed was a novel one to me, and not one that she fully explained.

If they had been discussing how societies can function best then I would definitely have expected Joyce to have expanded on this. The detail wasn't relevant here.

Your previous post said that the physical harms to girls and women are 'mushrooming' while FGM is declining.

Really? I thought to that one of the horrors of FGM was that no-one has a clear idea about its extent.

I know that there are efforts to educate people about FGM and, unless none of this is having an impact and the positive stories are BS, then it is being slowly tackled and is on the decline.

Finding out a problem is bigger than you predicted, is not the same as something being on the increase. Just your awareness of it is increasing.

Do you think JB's argument about male violence towards women and girls being a chronic one was weak? Care to explain why?

I’m very happy to. It’s that the logic doesn’t follow.

JBs argument is a refutation of the idea that the new and current fad/craze/trend of this barbaric practice is not an acute one.

She argues that it is just a same old part of a chronic problem, but she doesn’t explain why. Instead of that, she says words to the effect of ‘worse things have always happened’.

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that this situation is very different than the perennial issue of misogyny and MVAWG. The sudden increase of female patients to services (mushrooming) in proportion to male, the rapid adoption of these barbaric practices by surgeons in modern democracies, the support from western corporations, the unchecked spreading of the ideology because of new technologies, the ideological regulatory capture, the channels to fight it being strategically closed down (JB herself has been one of the first to be targeted to close her down from talking about MVAWG). The indoctrination in schools. The ideology has spread like wildfire. The sudden, widespread adoption of these barbaric practices in countries where women have successfully fought for rights and freedoms. Everything about it says it is sudden and severe.

So saying that a problem is chronic, doesn’t actually refute the fact that we are facing an acute flare up of that chronic problem.

Saying “look at this barbaric thing that happens, it’s worse than that barbaric thing” doesn’t refute the fact that it’s an acute flare up either.

That’s why it is weak. The refutations don’t hold.

No one said that, though. Everyone is saying work with who you want.

I do think that we have defined terms though. What is meant by "work with" and what is meant by "right"? It seems to me that leftists conflate the right with the far right and this muddles the issue. Apparently Hearts of Oak has a member of the House of Lords in its group - so not a far right group as keeps being said.

But also, who is "we"? The question assumes there's a coherent group of women who are working together. But in reality, it's a disparate and loose affiliation of individuals and groups from across the political spectrum who share the goal of protecting women and children from gender ideology.

I get the impression that JB resents anyone other than leftist woke feminists being part of this "we".

My feeling (and I think JBs point too) is that the problems we are seeing now are because things weren't really getting better. Part of the reason why even some of our nicest male friends and colleagues don't see the problem is that they can't even see that structural discrimination exists. Look at winter?? (the lawyer that helped with the yogataka principles) he did not see what they would do to women because he didn't look.

Although I have huge respect for what JB has achieved and strongly agree with what HJ was saying, words to the effect that it is personal integrity rather than personal affiliations count, and that JB has this consistent viewpoint, I find it pretty irritating that JB takes a strong position on some things and is crap at explaining why. It’s frustrating.

Yes, I can see that. But the way things feel to me, is that we are in a situation where all those seemingly small and insignificant I’ll-thought through ideas - a signature here, a word tweak there, are all coming together at this point in time and causing a huge collapse.

Thank you. You’ve saved me a lot of time trying to express my view ( which I probably would not have phrased so clearly).

I think things got a lot better for women in the west over my lifetime. I also agree with HJ that sexism and misogyny, while being an integral part of gender ideology, are not its main driving focus. Its main focus is to attack and dismantle reality. Its ultimate goal is transhumanism, not the erasure of women. (That's collateral damage.)

I do get that it must be frustrating to work on VAWG for years and years and get very little recognition, then to have the Jenny-come-latelies get a lot of attention. But while I can understand that, I think it's petty and partisan to hold on to that feeling at the expense of other women. JB always comes across as an ideologue (partly because she never explains herself clearly) and her frustration when others don't agree with her is obvious. I think she is stuck in her perspective as a left wing feminist and that makes it hard for her to see that this issue is not the same in degree or kind as the issues she's known for working on.

To be clear, I think JB has a very valuable contribution to make. But I don't think she owns feminism or women's campaigning and I'd love it if she stopped slagging off other women who are working to protect our rights.

This thread is making me think about that quote/truism about how the right think of or want women to be and then how the left do.
Can anyone remind me what it is please?

My feeling (and I think JBs point too) is that the problems we are seeing now are because things weren't really getting better.

I agree - this has very much revealed exactly how shaky the position of women is. As JCJ said "In a way, they've done us a favour - it's the biggest patriarchal unmasking you can imagine."

I think a lot of people have had their eyes opened, and are far more receptive to feminists like Bindel and Jones as a result. Hell, even Douglas Murray is talking about "male privilege" now...

But what's going on here really isn't restricted to women. Women are certainly getting the brunt of it (again), for a whole load of reasons feminists can point to, but it's a much wider societal problem. So feminists can't expect to have monopoly control over the wider fight.

(And if they keep telling other women they're doing it wrong, they're even going to struggle to keep control over even the women's part).

The right think women are private property, the left think they're public property?

I don't think that's completely true, though.

That's the one I think. Thanks Beastly.

I don't know either, it just get coming to mind and was frustrated I couldn't recall it or find it anywhere

Re the discussion, I am so glad HJ and JB had this debate.

The discussion around this on here is highlighting why being exposed to arguments between opposing perspectives is so important.

From the debate, and more so from this thread discussion, I've been able to resolve some confused responses I've had to JB in the past, as well as some with HJ too.

I'm thinking about Ian McGilchrist's work around the two hemispheres of the brain, and there seems to be something important here in the wisdom in being able to integrate the particular with the global, and the emotional with the rational.

I appreciate Redbicycles posts for having helped me understand more clearly where JB is coming from. They helped me feel empathy for JB's position and also have more cognitive empathy/theory of mind which helps me stay open and learn from what she is saying even if something jars . (This is something that I've found hard to hold onto in the heatedness of the wider debate). Especially interesting as I have probably spent much of my life in denial/minimisation of the impact my own experiences with MV.

And with HJ, and the arguments from posters here, I can appreciate thinking through the issues with rationality and a big picture focus. Although this is where my leaning already lies.

Feeling and thinking, personal and political, left and right, individual and communal, etc I think we are in the midst of trying to resolve a mass tension of opposites (for those who like Jung). I can't find the quote, but Jung said something about not being able to solve conflicts and polarities in the world, until we can hold this tension of the opposites (polarities) in ourselves.

That's why no debate is so dangerous, and why for me debates like this one, even on conflicts within one side of the debate are so important.

I think the wider issue won't come to any resolution until the tensions within one side, and ultimately, within our selves are addressed, and the tension is held by being able to hold the truth of both things.

Wrt pp and JCJ quote about 'eyes opened to the patriarchy' I wouldn't even have discovered (or at least read as much as I have) from JB if it wasn't for what's happening now. That has been both personal and political for me. This JCJ quote is spot on.

Sorry, you've lost me.

In a political context, who do feminists have more power over?

The obvious 'groups in this debate' are TAs, MRAs, gender ideologists, lobbying groups like Stonewall etc.

Which ones of those do feminists have power over?

Interesting DameMaud.

I had been thinking that JB is definitely coming from an instinctive, emotional place, so if you want to know her rationale, it’s like trying to grab a bar of soap under water.

I wonder if that is why PP pisses her off so much? A fellow instinctive, emotional, roll-yer-sleeves-up type ‘doer’.

You've contradicted yourself.

You said that gender ideology is an acute situation not a chronic one.

Now you're saying that it's part of a chronic problem (which is what JB said).

Sure, although there are lots of posts on this thread saying that JB didn't explain her reasoning fully (I agree btw for the reasons I've given above).

I don't understand Helen Joyce's political position as she didn't fully explain it either.

You've contradicted yourself.

There's no contradiction there. The oppression of women is a chronic problem that's been going on for the history of society.

This particular society-wide Woke mess is an new acute problem hitting everyone - particularly women due to their chronic problem.

Thanks necessaryscene

Or you could read some of the many books and articles that she's written which explain her rationale very clearly.

Obvs, not saying that you should, although they are very interesting.

By the same token, if someone wants to point me in the direction of an explanation of market based economics that doesn't rely on some social groups being oppressed or at the bottom of the pile, I'd be interested.