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!

Something I found quite stifling in the feminist movement has been, well, two things actually:

1. Optics. The issue being that it is so hard for feminists to get a foot in the door or a place at the table, that they do not need anyone blundering in and screwing it up. There’s a feeling that you need to work 10 times as hard as a man to be heard and taken seriously, your arguments and evidence must be near-impossibly water-tight and you must make absolutely no mistakes, otherwise the offer can be withdrawn, feminists can be dismissed, smeared, ridiculed, and all that hard work is for nothing. In that tense environment, you just breathe wrong and get flamed or ostracised.
2. Egos. Territorial bullshit. It is so hard though, if someone says “if you use this turn of phrase, it suggests that you belong to that school of thought, so we have to make sure we say/do this”, how do you know if it is because of point 1. or just because some massive control freak will throw a tantrum?

I feel though, that times have changed a bit now and there are more well-worn channels for feminists to get their foot in the door, etc, so people who are still really stressed about optics look a bit old-fashioned and paranoid now.

I feel though, that times have changed a bit now and there are more well-worn channels for feminists to get their foot in the door, etc, so people who are still really stressed about optics look a bit old-fashioned and paranoid now.

I've been in the business of optics, though, and know that to get a message out or have it heard by the right people or be able to have your pitch even glanced at, using the "approved language" and showing your messenger is "not problematic" is often the only way to get your foot in the door. You have to play the game to get heard. I don't like it, but I don't know if it's completely changed yet. In my world, it hasn't.

Maybe I am thinking in the UK. That this whole trans thing has meant that those people who used to reject and dismiss feminists offhand are starting to get it, so in the past, the people who would have thought “who do we need on this panel show?” would have put a feminist in there for purposes of baiting and ridicule, but now they see that feminists saw this coming from way back, we are being listened to more respectfully, being asked opinions in good faith and our sage word’s are not being rudely cut off.

Someone like Posie shows how you can speak off the cuff now and be absolutely fine, repeatedly reinvited, etc. It comes across as ‘tiktok generation’ modern, to be unguarded like that. I think it is the fact that she does act on instinct and seizes opportunities in the moment, rather than put feminist feelers out to check that she’s not cutting across someone else’s thing first, that pisses off those who do subscribe to a slower, never-put-a-foot-wrong method, which has been developed for very good reasons, but which is becoming less necessary imo.

This is what I see, too.

I do take the point about optics and why they started off being concerned, but it's become incredibly personal and one-sided.

Yes, I think they didn’t factor in the appalling optics of publicly denouncing and ousting a sister.

I also believe, especially after having had some more facts fleshed out (eg the podcast where Julian Vigo interviewed Posie recently), that the ‘feminist feelers/stronger acting as one’ justification was being used as a cover for egoism and control-freakery, so no matter how much explanation of how ‘tactical and necessary’ their approach is/was, it will never satisfy any of us, because it isn’t the truth.

I get a strong sense that the ‘actual real feminists’ (I believe there’s some overlap between them, WPUK and RN) are extremely ideological and want to ‘smash heteronormativity’, destroy the nuclear family, devalue the mother/baby dyad, etc, and have more in common with Queer Theory proponents tbh.

They seem to be very much into novel family creation - I imagine that they would even side with surrogacy at this point, because they seem hellbent on devaluing the importance of genetic family relationships. They hate Posie because is symbolic of the strength and simplicity of heterosexual, nuclear families comprised of genetic relations (when these families are working well). It’s irrational so you need to get why they hate that, in order to get why they hate her with such inexhaustible venom.

get a strong sense that the ‘actual real feminists’ (I believe there’s some overlap between them, WPUK and RN) are extremely ideological and want to ‘smash heteronormativity’, destroy the nuclear family, devalue the mother/baby dyad, etc, and have more in common with Queer Theory proponents tbh.

This would certainly explain the slippage into TRA style tactics.

Endless, have you got a link for the Julian Vigo podcast or tell me what channel it is on? I listen to podcasts all day long when out in the garden and hadn't seen this one. Thanks.

This would certainly explain the slippage into TRA style tactics.

And it also strengthens the "this is feminists' fault" view.

The non-facetious form of that argument comes from people like James Lindsay, who argues that a huge amount of the queer nonsense (smash heteronormativity etc, as listed above) currently being wielded by TRAs was funnelled through or laundered as academic feminism.

I wasn't terribly convinced that that was really that big a thing - maybe in some US niches? - but seeing this bunch retreat to it, maybe he has a point.

Here you go:

https://savageminds.substack.com/p/kellie-jay-keen-and-heather-brunskell

Thank you

Rather than it coming from feminism, I’d say it was coming from feminists within gay rights activism. If you see the Gay Liberation Front manifesto, you can see an almost Brave New World vision being cooked up, to liberate women/lesbians from compulsory heterosexuality. Their vision is terrifying to me, things have moved on a bit from then.

You also see, when looking back, that this ideology being promoted in schools and local councils, etc, which was what led to Section 28.

Imo It was the blank slate/nurture not nature stuff that let this in (although as far as I’m
aware that was always a fringe position because it’s so obviously not true or we’d be able to socialise male violence away completely within a couple of generation and women athletes could just ‘train harder’ and beat men).

I’ve heard that from Barry Wall (EDI jester).

I don’t think I’ve heard of him

Coming back with a link (he filled in for Dennis on The Queen’s Speech with Clive Simpson recently).

He’s very good on this stuff and often brings up trans widows and children of later life male transitioners. One of the gay chaps that really gets the Queer Theory threat to women & children as well as the threat to the gay community.

My belief is, that it is necessary to radically question everything we accept as ‘natural’, particularly women, because it has been used to justify the oppression of women- to stereotype the argument “it’s natural that men love to break things and make a mess and natural that women love to clean up and have a tidy environment”. Basically simplification of it being natural for men to have freedom, power and choice and for women to be confined and submissive.

Questioning the validity of these things - the traditions, habits, paraphernalia, structures which facilitate women’s subordination to men, as being ‘natural’ I think has been unfairly mischaracterised as ‘blank slate’, in a lot of cases.

I too subscribed to RN in the first year because I wanted to support the endeavour. I found it heavy going and didn't get enough out of it. I assumed that my brain had just gone soft over the years, so it was interesting to read that it wasn't just me who found it unengaging. Am saddened by the free issue - it's just poor. I do understand and have some sympathy for the basic points of disagreement, even though I don't come down on that side myself. But the tone! So patronising. Thank goodness for hatpinwoman. RN was always going to fighting a battle against obscurity but if that is the best they can do to set out their case then they probably deserve it.

I am willing to have a proper look at blank slate stuff, just not enough hours in the day!

I agree with questioning everything!
The road to hell is often paved with good intentions and whatever grows out of a thing shouldn’t necessarily invalidate the importance of the original thing.

here’s some Barry Wall stuff:

Barry puts out loads of free content re: EDI/Queer Theory and offers strategies for challenging it in the workplace.

He also does some paid training courses over Teams (I have heard that the one he does for teachers is terrific- both for info and for network building with other teachers who are concerned about this stuff)

www.battleofideas.org.uk/speaker/barry-wall/

edijester.co.uk

Glinner & Barry

IIRC Barry talks about section 28 in the video with Glinner, which is from when the paedo-academia-Mermaids-shoe-wanking stuff unfolded (for some unfathomable reason I can’t get that video to embed in this post, despite it being in identical format to the other two! Bah!)

Barry gave a talk in MCR a couple of months ago - I really wanted to go but didn’t have a baby sitter.
I was particularly interested because the event was neither terfy nor gay rights focused, but part of a ongoing series of talks called ‘Cancelling Cancel Culture’, held in a pub function room.

Thanks for all that!

The layout and artwork is beautiful though!

And I mean that sincerely.
TRN is a lovely looking thing - just wanted to take a minute to give props to the woman/women who did the design work as their skill and labour has gotten buried under the controversy.
(sorry, I don’t know who you are to name check you!)

The layout and artwork is beautiful though!

Yes, completely agree. Should have mentioned that as well, @ShireWifeofNigelFarage

Just listened to this ^

Yes, it is a great podcast, if anyone is still here it is worth a listen.

I’ve listened to the first hour. It’s quite fun from a gossip perspective, although muggles would be mystified

but if I may summarise my take away point: Jane Claire Jones is a fucking loon. Really, you can’t swerve that woman hard enough. Avoid avoid avoid

Another response to the Radical Notion pamphlet from Isidora Sanger, lascapigliata8 on twitter.

Pretty much my position.

savageminds.substack.com/p/about-gender-critical-disputes?r=2bvmh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email