Gender Critical Disputes - Radical Notion special edition free to read online

[IwantToRetire]

Cant say I have heard of Radical Notion. They say:

THE RADICAL NOTION was founded in 2020 to create a space for the resurgent wave of feminist thinking and activism. This not-for-profit magazine is run by an all-women collective of radical and socialist feminists. We are committed to the materialist analysis of sex-based oppression, and to challenging the material and symbolic structures of male dominance. This moment is a historic opportunity to deepen and widen the analysis of all aspects of women’s political condition, and its foundational role in all systems of extraction and domination.

We welcome words and images from women of all nationalities, classes, ethnicities and backgrounds to illuminate the meaning of feminist politics in their lives, and to create a global picture of this political moment. Our current battle, and the social, political and environmental unravellings we see all around us are, at their root, crises of patriarchy. We want to seize this moment to speak that truth.

theradicalnotion.org/gender-critical-disputes/

It seems quite expensive to subscribe but they have made this issue free to read online. A lot of it seems to be the ongoing antagonism (meaning the issues are real but seem to be motivated as much by personal fallouts) between radical feminist and socialist feminist gender critical women.

Some may remember this thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4662757-womens-place-uk-filia-event-the-elephant-ignored-yet-again and the revelation that WPUK seems to now be linked to the group Actual Gender Critical Left, who endlessly snipe about Karin Dansky and KJK.

Anyhow posting in case anyone wants to have a read.

Still not sure why some women think in the day of virtual opportunites to talk directly to other women, they need to go down the routed of "publishing" as though their ideas are somehow special and shouldn't be submitted to the rough and tumble on online forums like this one!

Oh those people are just so ridiculous. Someone needs to write a sitcom about them.

I honestly don't give a toss at this point what someone's politics are, because far right, far left, in the middle, the men in our spaces don't care we are just women.

And at this point I just wish that that fact would be enough to unite actual woman against actual men.

I'm sick of the purity spirals about the right sort of women.

Any woman who is xx not xy is the right sort of woman!

Couldn't agree more @Boiledbeetle, very well said.

I went from being a cheery innocent thinking that all women would at least try and pull together in a crisis like this to feeling pretty heartbroken at the realisation of what had been going on. Reading what the Actual Gender Critical Left were writing about other feminists and women involved in the struggle has really, really hardened my attitude to the Labour hard left and the authoritarianism at its heart. Along the way I've got a slightly clearer version of who's who and I am a bit better at piecing things together. But fuck it, it shouldn't have to be like this. Enough of the denouncing and dissing. Fight for women, not with women.

I can't remember what it was about (education?), but I once was accused of being involved with the Sorbonne on an AIBU thread.

I'd never even left the UK at that point in my life.

I see the AGCL is monitoring us closely. And Katherine Acosta is at the heart of so much of it. Not on FB so no idea if those hand-maiding her are in the UK or US. This attempt to enforce purity on the back of a manufactured threat of the far right here in the UK is really objectionable. Does she not realise that in her puritanism she's one of them?

I volunteer for WDI USA and am a member of WoLF, so obviously I come down broadly on their side of the argument about how to defend our sex-based rights in the US context.

This is not to say that I agree with those organizations' every utterance or decision. To do so would be more like joining a church than a political organization.

I'm sorry this will be a long post, but this keeps coming up over and over on the board, so I want to lay it all out as I see it from my US perspective.

I think everyone can agree that the following are facts:

Facts

WDI is a global organization founded by UK women. UK women drafted the Declaration and continue to be very active in the global organization.

The US affiliate, WDI USA, has become very active under the presidency of Kara Dansky. Dansky is on good terms with the WDI UK women.

Dansky served on the board of WoLF for several years. She left WoLF in 2020 and joined WDI shortly thereafter. Dansky remains on good terms with the women now leading WoLF.

In 2016, during Dansky's time at WoLF, WoLF accepted a one-time grant of $15,000 from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing legal group that opposes many of WoLF's other positions, in order to cover legal fees for WoLF's lawsuit against the Obama administration for its policies interpreting "sex" in Title IX to include "gender identity."

www.feministcurrent.com/2016/08/01/womens-liberation-front-v-united-states-wolf-sues-restore-title-ix-rights-women-girls/

(This suit was later dismissed because Trump reversed Obama's Title IX policies, rendering the issue moot).

In January 2019, Kellie-Jay Keen and Julia Long traveled to Washington, D.C., for a series of public events and protests organized mainly by WoLF. The exception was one event organized by leftist parents who were concerned about their children's claims to an opposite-sex identity. This took place at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, because no left or center organization would host the parents.

Three women affiliated with WoLF were asked to speak on the panel (Dansky, Jennifer Chavez, and Julia Beck). None was paid to attend. Kellie-Jay Keen sat in the audience.

For some time in 2021 and 2022, WDI USA including Dansky participated in meetings of an informal "Title IX Coalition" which included members of conservative groups. WDI USA ended its participation in this coalition in June 2022.

I will try to steelman Egerton's article (and Acosta's video, which is linked in pattihews thread) and if Winter or anyone else wants to point out anyplace I've misunderstood their position, I'm happy to listen.

Steelman

We believe that meeting with right-wing groups even to discuss a single issue (Title IX or child transition in these cases) is not just morally wrong but counterproductive. It lends legitimacy to the right wing groups' other positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, etc., and makes left-wing leaders less likely to listen to feminists.

We believe that when WoLF's crowdfunder did not raise enough money to cover the legal fees in their Title IX suit, they should have dropped the suit rather than accept a grant from the ADF.

WDI USA strenuously denies taking any money from right-wing organizations and even working with right-wing organizations outside of the Title IX coalition in which they stopped participating in June 2022, but we do not take their word for it.

We note that Dansky spoke at several events alongside Kellie-Jay Keen in 2022. This implies that she endorses all or most of Kellie-Jay Keen's comments and positions, and we've already explained how dangerous and wrong KJK is.

We believe that Dansky's unwillingness to denounce KJK, coupled with her history at WoLF, makes WDI USA suspect. WDI USA's affiliation with the global WDI organization in turn taints WDI UK.

If WDI UK is unwilling to denounce WDI USA, we consider that they are complicit in WDI USA's-via-WoLF's dangerous legitimation of right-wing groups.

Have I got anything wrong here?

I disagree, obviously, but this seems to be the RN argument.

It's loaded finally. That journal is very tedious to read and is just talking to itself. It can't accept that for a lot of women this is a single issue subject. And for all of its critiques of "liberal individualism", can't see that the simple message/reality that woman = adult human female unites all women (necessarily). Why can't that be enough? Kjk is just trying to communicate that message and it mobilises women from all backgrounds and experiences. It is a more collective message than the niche and insular socialist/radical feminist message (if you can even understand it). I say this as someone who used to identify as a Marxist feminist.

Oooh, I went to the Sorbonne for a year 1979. What terrible thing does this say about me?

Thank you @GrinitchSpinach that's really helped me link various things up.

This tainting by association thing has got to stop.

Happily, it seems that if you keep throwing women under the bus, eventually there will be enough women underneath that together they can lift the whole damn bus up over their heads and chuck it back in the direction from whence it came!

I LOVE THIS.

So if we're supposed to be willing to give away the word "woman" because it's the material reality of being female that matters, rather than the word we use to describe it, presumably trans widows should give "mother" away too, and let our exes appropriate that word? Because that will happen over my dead body.

Thanks for that Grinitch how funny that exports from terf island aren’t sufficiently terfy for The Real Feminists (US edition).

See current thread on Filia if anyone is interested in more dots to join but I think a lot of this is a pointless distraction and that the Very Pure Women are irrelevant to my life and increasingly irrelevant to when it comes to battling the GenderMonster.

I’ve only got two years before my stepdaughter can have her breasts amputated so I’ve got no time for fannying about while so called Feminists use the exact same EDI tactics against us as our opponents do.

They can keep the theory, we’ll get on with the praxis!

@GrinitchSpinach Thanks for the context & clarity on this ridiculous situation.

The RN position is effectively playing the libfem/leftist 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game to smear via guilt by extremely tenuous association at best.

I'm utterly bored with grown women continuing to behave like this.

The thing that perplexes me is that they don’t seem to be able to see that they are replicating the exact same behaviours and tactics that the TRAs use?

The trans activists have ever dwindling levels of public support, even their once faithful allies have failed to keep up with the repeated purity tests (NICOLA!)

The Actual Feminists of B Right On and their American rEaL GC Sisters are going to experience the same phenomenon, ever dwindling numbers as women increasingly have FUCK THIS SHIT moments and tip toe away.

I wouldn’t be surprised if their funding streams are already drying up.

Super helpful Grinitch

Tap on Saturday, talc on the floor for some
classic northern soul moves on Monday!

We could definitely beat the Cabaret Against Hate in a West Side Story style dance off.

Menno can choreograph.

Is that aimed at me?

I'm a middle aged londoner who has been active on this board and on twitter for years. I'm sure lots of posters here recognise my username.

I have spent years fighting for the rights of women and girls, and against Corbyn and his horrendous antisemitic followers (at great personal cost).

I'm not 'involved' with any factions of any sort. I am really dismayed at the level of hostility aimed at me on the back of a genuine and imo pretty measured and moderate post.

It's not necessary to attack people like this for expressing any views that differ from yours.and it's not constructive.

This is fascinating, too.

Again, if this is in response to my post, it couldn't be further from the mark really. But if you'd rather convince yourself of that than have a conversation, there's not much I can do, other than invite you to advance search me if you want to.

It is depressing that it has come to this.

Here is a random interjection:

And please bear with me i am trying to explain something i am still learning...

Recently listening to some lectures in personality theory: psychological theory that we all have a 5 dimensional personality:

The 5 categories are:

Introvert/extrovert,
neurotic tendancies (or not)
Agreeable or disagreeable

Conscientious/chaos

Openess (or closedness)

We are all born with these traits, and you can't really change them, and they can be observed in young children.

Open personalities are generaly creatives, dislike to many boundaries as they view the world in more of a connected continuum and are generally left aligned/liberal.

Closed personalities generally like order, boundaries, structure, and things to remaain the same. They might npt like lots of food touching on a plate ( for example). these people are more likely to be right aligned / conservative.

evidence below.**

so while we all think we have come to our political standing due to logicak thinking and because our side is 'morally right', actually our decision is probably based on our personality - as this governs how we see and intepret the world, and what our values are.

Based on this, you are not automatically a better person for being on one side or the other. It also meeans there will always be people on the other side.

And maybe this push and pull keeps society in a good balanced place.

So, to reject non-left feminists is just plain stupid.

Corroborating prior findings in political psychology, it is found that “openness to experience” significantly predicts a higher self-reported score on liberal ideology and that “conscientiousness” significantly predicts a more conservative ideology.

^www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6867614/^

Imagine what we could achieve.

That made me proper wet-eyed twice.

Gloria and Marc A onstage
and
Gloria & Marc B’s son singing together

Apologies for a badly written post there... It felt so long i just pressed send rather than check for typos....

Yes, I had no idea the history behind it.