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!

@Bosky , I've been trying for ages to find a women's group near me but Twitter messages etc go unanswered. Any tips for making contact?

Thanks for detailed post @Bosky

I’m annoyed that it’s been necessary for WDI to have to issue any statement on this.

I think multiple individual orgs that can unite for some projects (eg parents of ROGD kids would likely find good reasons to team up with orgs for Lesbians and Gay men) and work separately for others is the way forward,
if one isn’t a good fit, find another or start your own, no need to carp on about others doing things that don‘t suit you.

Maybe when this iteration of the British left has finished consuming itself something new and useful will crawl out of the entrails.

(see! I did say I’m a Pollyanna!)

Thanks @Bosky , 16 weeks is a bit too long a committment for me just now. I'll bear it in mind for the future.

😂

Sorry to disappoint:

On paper, I wouldn’t put money on this being of much interest. Indeed, before I went the first time I wasn’t intending to. “But Molly dancers are the evil Morris dancers,” a Straw Bear-going friend said, by way of encouragement.

But surely Morris dancers are already the evil Morris dancers? I couldn’t really see a way you could possibly up the malevolence quotient of Morris dancers any further. Unless they had clown make-up, perhaps. And danced to one of Tom Waits’s more demented New Orleans funeral marches.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/87d500b5-096d-459d-99cd-e7bc0e8cae20?shareToken=a769064ccb338e1397b9a9bf520a4e16

This yours, Eresh?

Totally

That's her.

I came, I saw, I fucked off again!

Hi teawamutu,

What Twitter account have you been messaging?

Please feel free to PM me if to reply publicly would be "outing".

I didn't want to quote this entire post but the app isn't letting me cut anything.

I missed the post where Shahrar Ali was named as an antisemite. For those who don't know who he is, Shahrah is a former deputy leader of the Green Party who has suffered a lot of personal abuse from TRAs because he opposes gender ideology and defends women's rights.

He is a really decent man. @beastlyslumber Do you have evidence of his antisemitism?

Deborah Fink is someone else who has been treated badly by the Green Party for her GC views. As she's Jewish, I'd be surprised if she's anti-semitic. Or are you referring to her opposition to the actions of Israel?

Apologies @beastlyslumber for tagging you in my previous post.

I'm on the app on my phone which makes checking previous posts tricky.
Now I realise that you were quoting a different poster who had made accusations of antisemitism against Shahrar Ali and Deborah Fink.

No worries @cariadlet I think it's @WinterDeWinter you want to ask. But I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for an answer!

I think it was a different poster who made those accusations, not Winter. @ClearMoth

Long time fan of JCJ and supporter of WP but am more than a little disappointed in the direction this has taken.

I can't help but think the issue is two fold: firstly, about communication skills. JCJ is great on twitter in conversation with people but when she (and the people RN commission) write long form it is fairly impenetrable and a bit dull. This is then dressed up as 'we are so clever I can't help having been so clever since school and you mere mortals can't understand it' when actually not being able to make your points clearly isn't a sign of cleverness, whatever that actually means. So I think there is a slug of envy going on here of the other listed women who have better communication skills and therefore are getting more traction - eg Kathleen Stock, Maya, Helen Joyce and KJK.

The second is around socialism. Their feminism is tied up with being a socialist, and fair enough that is their world view. But I am not a socialist. To say that the two have to be interlinked is ludicrous and therefore will mean little progress is made on the feminism front because the majority of people aren't and will never be socialists. It is utterly self defeating. To then push it further and say anyone who has a view on gender ideology that isn't a socialist is a far right sympathiser is just daft.

The UK is a centrist sometimes soft right sometimes soft left country. It isn't not a socialist country. Women of all political stripes need feminism and are keen to see progress on women's issues. The majority of the population is against self ID. This attempt to use feminism and concerns about self ID as a Trojan horse for socialism is going to backfire or simply alienate people. And to exclude or other women who aren't socialists is as futile as having Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party, if what you want to achieve is actual change.

Snap snap snap!

I greatly enjoyed JCJ's Twitter output (until the last set of spats) so I was surprised by how boring TRN was.

And purity in opposition Vs power through compromise had always been one of my massive frustrations with Labour, even before I became aware of this mess, and I can't be doing with it on women's rights.

I hadn't thought of feminism being used as a Trojan horse for socialism but it rings so true.

Apologies to all! I wouldn't hold my breath for an answer from Moth either... Dinner's ready!

Lorelei/HatpinWoman has posted this on Substack:

loreleihatpin.substack.com/p/disputes-and-kumbaya?sd=pf

I don’t know if anyone really needs my two penneth on this, but I’m going to offer it. Recently, the Radical Notion magazine put out a pamphlet called “Gender Critical Disputes” which outlined the position of some feminists in ongoing disagreements.

I’m a member of the editorial team at the Radical Notion, and a feminist, but before publication I read the pamphlet and asked for my name to be removed from it.

I found this piece thoughtful. My only real quibble is with one piece of this sentence:

And I think, maybe, most of all, women might be tired of being treated like they’re stupid, wrongheaded, or malicious, for taking whatever position they do in these disputes.

I think there is some malice involved sometimes. No human group is totally free of malicious actors. However, it's not linked to "taking whatever position they do." I've seen it in a handful of women on each "side" of the tactics debate.

Excellent piece, I follow her on Twitter and always appreciate her takes.

It is a good piece.

Although I do take some issue with the two sides trope because as far as I am aware, we’ve only ever used ‘Head Girls’ which is a snark with a backhanded compliment inside it (head girls are clever and successful, as well as annoying)!

Plus I personally use ‘The Real Feminists of B Right On’ as a trashy TV reference joke referring to the boycott of Posie’s Brighton event by a handful of feminists who live in the area (but I have no idea how much overlap there is between those women and the Head Girls of Feminism - perhaps only one woman).

Whereas we’ve been called:

(And I expect there are more that I’ve forgotten)

Domesticated Zombies
Shire Wives
Farage Feminists
Bigots
Racists
Far right

and Posie has been called a ‘PoundShop LePen’

and I’m struggling to find any complimentary double meaning in those.

It reminds me of that Paul Embery book on how the intellectual left have come to despise the working class. Oh, and Lisa Muggeridge’s insightful analysis and future predictions.

I’m happy to accept that I could be wrong and there IS a secret group of Mumsnetters coining nasty names for socialist feminists but I’ve never seen it and as, IMO, the socialist feminists, are (as Rosie Duffield described herself recently) ‘In an abusive relationship with Labour’ I don’t see any reason to be nasty to them, except as a defence mechanism/protective reaction to the clever-words grenades they lob at Posie and Helen and Maya and Doc Stock et al.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4738266-keir-starmer-confirms-labour-will-push-ahead-with-self-id-7th-feb-2023

Relevant thread. Keir Starmer ploughs I’m with self ID and doesn’t give a fuck what we think about it.

What a shitshow.

This is WHY we call ourselves politically homeless (and Magic Grandpa was just as bad).

I don't know what I was expecting from Lorelei's piece, but it seems almost exactly what many of us have been saying on here for at least the last six months, which is that most of us know we've got to fight for all women, whether we like their views or not, and that pragmatically that will involve standing somewhere in the vicinity of someone who once bought a copy of the Daily Express — but we can deal with it.

I don't know whether I can put my wriggling feelings into words, but it's as if we aren't considered intelligent enough to be trusted to pick our own way through this battlefield.

As for the RN writing, I agree with a previous poster that the overall effect was long and unenticing. I did read quite a lot of the articles and some of them were actually good. But I longed for some wit and laughter. I started each poem hoping for light relief that never came.

Sister shire wives: our feminist icon/husband/leader is on triggernometry this evening. I might have to watch it so I know who I'm married to.

I can’t.

It’s the froggy-beaker-muppet thing.

Maybe I can manage a listen to the podcast version…

He has a face for radio, as people used to say.

He's Toad of Toad Hall.

Although I do take some issue with the two sides trope because as far as I am aware, we’ve only ever used ‘Head Girls’ which is a snark with a backhanded compliment inside it (head girls are clever and successful, as well as annoying)!

"Both sides" gets my back up, it's the tactic used by people who have splinters in their arse. The truth is that the majority of women I've had any interaction with on this issue have always seen the value in different approaches and didn't perceive the differences as a schism.

The Real Feminists™ just couldn't leave other women, particularly KJK, alone. She has only ever spoken about their attacks on her to correct some of the misinformation they are happy to promulgate about her. And when that didn't work they decided to use the TRA tactic of shaming with accusations of bigotry and stupidity against anyone who thought KJK was doing a great job of raising awareness. Then they moved on to guilt by association.

We get it the hate KJK, we heard you, now fuck off with your playground power struggle.

And now here we are again after a fantastic event in Glasgow talking about the bruised egos of the Real Feminists™. Maybe they could consider taking a deep breath and getting on with the job in hand. I'm fed up of their 'me me me', I don't give a fuck. If they lack the maturity to work with people they don't agree with on everything then maybe political activism isn't for them.

After a month on the slimfast diet.