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!

I’ve found it quite interesting, the thread. Seeing how certain arguments work here.

I don’t think you , Winter, argue well. I am sceptical about why you are here. At best, I think it is because of insufferable moral smugness based on attending diversity training at some point, probably around 2010- 2014-ish, and your having a false confidence that what you learned was as infallible as mathematics, so you stopped thinking critically at that point.

With you, Moth/Blood I think seeing how your emotive arguments works are interesting. No one can argue with the awfulness of genocide can they? Especially if it comes with a personal testimony. It’s the nuclear option in an argument. Most people will stop interrogating the validity of what you are saying if you use it. I still cannot fathom your threshold at which you’d refuse to ‘break bread’ with someone, what you consider racist/antisemitic to the point it indicates a person’s potential to participate in genocide. Until you do, it seems a sweeping catch-all and paranoid.

The ultimate example of performative goodness

anyhoo, I’m just browsing the excellent selection of crocheted underwear on Etsy, I’ll get back to you later

all I can think of now is this

I don’t think you , Winter, argue well.

If I have an insufferable tone, @EndlessTea , then yours must come a close second.

Luckily I don't give a fuck what you think of my debating skills. In any case, my last four or five posts came from a place of shock rather than of cool analysis. I don't think any of you have any idea how absolutely awful you sound from the outside with your bullish 'no-one tells me what's racist!'

This thread is a good reminder to not apologise or explain myself to posters who barge in with insults, even if "they didn't mean it like that." If people want to engage, genuinely, they will use more neutral language and respond to posters in good faith. Insulting people, claiming you didn't mean it, and then demanding apologies when they push back, is not the behaviour of someone who genuinely wants to engage. Quickly running out of arguments and calling everyone a racist because it's all you've got left is frankly pathetic.

Anyway. I await the return of bloodmoth who has promised to answer a lot of questions. Unless there was a third name change and The Winter is also the BloodMoth???

LOL. You're shocked that people don't like being called racist? When they've done nothing to warrant being called racist? You do realise that no one has said anything racist, don't you? You are making it up and now you're taking a fit of the vapours over it.

Chill out. Join our crocheting circle. We're making Nigel some Union Jack Y-fronts this week.

And again, I point to your very first post on this thread.

Did you expect positive engagement after that post?

Why?

Quickly running out of arguments and calling everyone a racist because it's all you've got left is frankly pathetic.

It is, yes. You'd expect better from one of Mumsnet's Founding Feminist Posters.

Yes, Endless. Mentioning the holocaust is a very efficient way of shutting down discussion. Still waiting for information on which feminists are anti-semitic. Won't hold my breath.

Chill out. Join our crocheting circle. We're making Nigel some Union Jack Y-fronts this week.

Gosh, I hope you don’t mind when I’m busy on bespoke fitting day!

Pfft. What kind of Farage Feminist are you? That's the best bit!

Gosh, I hope you don’t mind when I’m busy on bespoke fitting day!

It’s not your tone that’s bothersome imo. It’s your moral smugness, which is what I imagine in born of thinking your days of moral reasoning were done and dusted at some point. You knew the ‘right’ about everything, so you stopped thinking.

my last four or five posts came from a place of shock

I believe you. Here, watch this clip of someone else who thought right and wrong are absolute and is shocked and stumped to meet someone who disagrees.

https://twitter.com/OkBiology/status/1306635799765676032?s=20&t=Edl7zAzM72LpQJJTIjC2_A

*is born

Can anyone point me to where we had 'debating skills' displayed?

Thanks in advance.

I did a search for Winter's old username and apart from a couple of posts objecting about creeping pornification, I can't find a single thing on feminist topics. I would have expected some, given her core argument seems to be 'this place has gone to the dogs'.

Curious.

I did too Clymene. I assumed though that perhaps this is a poster who got the hump a few years ago and came back to join in with the latest shuffle of 'you are not feminists really' posts because, well, I think we all know the accusations by now. I can reel them off so I doubt it serves any purpose me repeating them.

She's remarkably similar in tone to another poster who claimed to be an old timer here and scolded us for posting trans stuff in the moribund "Feminist Chat" folder.

Does anyone remember when FWR was over run with MRAs who, along with handmaidens, managed to to split FWR into - I think ‘radical feminism’, ‘feminism chat’ and possibly ‘feminist theory’, as a way to corral informed feminists with challenging opinions into a naughty corner?

I imagine this one would have been among those calling for a split.

I remember not posting on FWR because sex work is work was the orthodoxy, and anyone who disagreed got called a heteronormative buckethead.

Mind you, I was 21 then and easily intimidated by univeraity educated mumsnetters who used long words. I didn't feel equipped to argue with them.

I'm a little more bold now.

I just hope they are careful where they stick that crochet hook, whilst they are doing the alterations

I'm not trying to tell you how to 'do feminism'. I'm certainly not saying that a left-liberal position is the only feminist position. I am saying you sound like unreflective, un-self aware, chippy conservatives who bully out anyone who doesn't think like you.

So my point isn't really to do with feminism at all - it's to do with not being pricks, whatever it is you're doing at the time.

There is alternative response possible to criticism from outside the group, you know. You don't have to shoot the messenger or mock their language or double down or refuse to countenance the fact that they might be in good faith or even be interested in an outsider's view and how it might have come about. You can, you know, hear it, consider it, respond. These crowing attacks just look as though you suspect there is truth to it, but can't bring yourself to actually look at the criticism.

I remember not posting on FWR because sex work is work was the orthodoxy, and anyone who disagreed got called a heteronormative buckethead.

I definitely don't remember a time when this was the orthodoxy.

So my point isn't really to do with feminism at all - it's to do with not being pricks, whatever it is you're doing at the time

So your just tone policing?
Seems a bit rich from someone who has called us ‘racists’, ‘grim bigots’ and ‘shire wives’ but you do you, boo!

it's to do with not being pricks

Please tell us, is the term 'shire wives' a positive term?