Margaret Atwood - BBC

[Blackandwhitehorse]

disappointing from her again

I think she thinks she’s above it all.

She has always lacked compassion for me. There is a hardness. Similar to Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It makes me wary.

I sort of know what you mean. I don't think its a lack of compassion as such. Its a sort of cynicism/detachment. But that's not necessarily a bad thing - I think it makes her a good writer for example. Same with Lionel Shriver for example who is obviously very much on the GC side.
But also, as she says, she knew a lot of "early transgender people". I suspect they weren't the Isla Bryson/Barbie Kardashian/TRA type. And women weren't being asked to give space to anyone who wants to declare themselves transgender, gender dysphoria or not.

I like her kind of hardness, agree about the detachment. Margaret Atwood is hard on women who collaborate in our own (and other women's) oppression. And she's clear-eyed about many of the motives for it, especially the need for power.

But the one motive she doesn't explore (as far as I know) is the kindly wellmeaning generous motive, the temptation to give away what you have to needy people. The motive that Faye Weldon was so good at (although not as great a writer in other ways) - "She throws her happiness away in handfuls, this girl". Other women writers like Hilary Mantel and A.S. Byatt are more clear eyed than Atwood about the ways charitable motives can make people betray themselves.

the one motive she doesn't explore (as far as I know) is the kindly wellmeaning generous motive, the temptation to give away what you have to needy people.

We were discussing on another thread the issue of toxic empathy, where people (women) empathise with someone's purported needs to the extent that they neglect their own needs and even common sense. This seems often to be a response to social pressure (be kind), to a lifetime of conditioning (nice girls are kind) and to trauma (anticipating my abuser's needs will avert further abuse).

But also, as she says, she knew a lot of "early transgender people". I suspect they weren't the Isla Bryson/Barbie Kardashian/TRA type. And women weren't being asked to give space to anyone who wants to declare themselves transgender, gender dysphoria or not.

I wonder if "knew" is the operative word in that sentence. Of course, everyone's different and entitled to their own opinions, but I find that trans people who were "out" and vaguely political/activist before the '00s are generally at least a bit wary of pure self-ID, DIY hormones, agressive silencing of women, and Dylan Mulvaney dressed up as a 6 year old girl from the 1950s as the face of a civil rights movement.

Interviewer: so you have these three 60s radicals who are older now

MA : ‘Yeah they're kind of first wave sorry second wave feminism that would be end of 60s and into the 70s

Interviewer: They're talking about another friend who's not there because she's on a panel and one says well what sort of panel and then Chrissy drops her voice and says gender and and the other character says expletive snake pit. Why is gender such a snake pit?

MA: Well it's a snake pit right now but I think it's snake pit-y phase is sort of these things come in cycles and waves so I think it has been very snake pit-y and I'm told particularly in the United Kingdom, but I think now it's modifying somewhat and that the extreme yelling and screaming that has gone on - people have popped awake and realized maybe this isn't doing them any good. Maybe this is not the best way to handle this yelling and screaming and yes social media has something to do with it - short sentences, not a lot of nuance but I think people are just gonna level out work it out

Interviewer: could you have foreseen that it would generate such vitriol?

MA: No, because I knew early transgender people and there was no fuss no nobody was making this kind of fuss so I think it's been politicized particularly in the United States right now they're being they're using it as a political tool so people politicizing something in order to whack other people over the head with it and and to make their own Core Group energized and angry

Interviewer: This has become such an interesting issue here because there are there there has been a polarized position because we have a situation where some XX whatever you want to say biological women are saying you know we want our own spaces and and I just wonder if you as an empathetic person can understand that?

MA: I can understand everything I see everything because I'm very old I've seen it a lot of it before so it will work itself out

Interviewer: but who are the kind of people who can mediate

MA: you think I know that so Interviewer: it'd be a new career

MA: yes but I'm too old to take up a new career um but there are people who can do this and they will

I've not watched this yet. I'm really annoyed with her, she has made lots of money from her dystopian stories based on collating women's real life suffering, her stories then made into films that some men have watched and thought 'oh that's a good idea' and now we are living them.

If people choose to give away their own resources that's one thing. But some of the "be kind" women are also giving away resources (privacy, access to sports opportunities, intelligible medical advice for female-bodied people) that rightly belong to OTHER women and girls.

This can be a problem, in the way that opening your doors to someone needing a bed overnight can turn into that person not leaving and then ruling your house for months (have seen this happen to a young relative).

Sometimes being treated with kindness is assumed to mean that you can now take over everything, that the person truly won't mind if you get included in their organisation and then rewrite its basic principles.

Also, there are virtue signalers.

At the same time, I don't enjoy having to quell my internal struggles on this issue. I have no desire not to support trans rights. But when they come from my rights and the rights of women more vulnerable than I am, I must speak up. I'd have much preferred for the trans activists not to have demanded that the whole world must be turned into a validation factory and that they be given the keys to everything, our words and language, our spaces, our awards.

The "toxic empathy" and "giving away other people's resources" strike a chord with me, and with those writers too. There's a religious/charitable/social work dimension to it as well. I don't remember which novel had the family who divided their whole ethical world into "Good Souls" and "Sad Cases". Not so specific to the trans/women debate but often the "other people" whose resources are being given away are the Good Souls' children, who are seen as less needy than the Sad Cases. Not the same situation but a way of making it very obvious what's going wrong.

It strikes me that Atwood and also Solnit base their arguments not on studying this question in general, but only on their own personal experiences, that it is, for some reason, not worth proper research.

There are many motivations for why males transition, for instance, and that some of those are problematic from the point of view of women's safety matters a lot, even if most transwomen are wonderful people who suffer from gender dysphoria.

That there are tremendous problems if we no longer can define the female sex class for political purposes or address sexism and misogyny as the widespread force it is, or collect data on its prevalence, all that is a huge loss we are expected to swallow without complaints.

Most of that understanding comes from studying the issue, yet I don't see very many feminists studying it at all.

When I first spotted the difference on how the female sex is erased (and, it seems, largely by woke women) while the male sex is respectfully left to be 'men and boys', I felt that I had a seat in the audience watching how female subjugation might have been achieved, millennia ago, at least in part:

Some women cooperate with the patriarchy by giving away their rights as gifts to others (and thereby demonstrating their own generosity and kindness) and by prioritising those others, while men tend not to do that. So women are now often menstruators but men are not ejaculators.

That is obviously only a minor part behind how male supremacy came to be the law, but it is part of it.