Another stonking column from Hadley Freeman

[SpringCalling]

‘Liberal’ thought police echo Salem witch trials

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/21eff8d0-fc8e-11ed-aa31-73394e195d29?shareToken=60d60e218a05fd3d5eac761e0767a2e5

I really can’t see what’s disgusting about the ‘disgusting’ comment. I’ve seen that person on Mastermind. That person was

a - wearing lipstick
b - not a woman.

So where’s the problem, apart from the problem I’ve had in wording this comment so it isn’t immediately deleted?

The "problem" arises when we don't bend the knee to the overlords and have the bold faced audacity to say no.

Same as it ever was.

Where I live, you can't move for 'plantation owners'. 🙄

@TraumatisedGooner
I do not believe that women's rights and trans rights are as contradictory as many of you do.

Hi Gooner,
If you are still here, I would be grateful if you could expand upon this belief a bit.
What made you come to this conclusion?

As far as I can see, it is patently obvious that there is a fundamental conflict, because at present (in theory) women have the right not to have male-bodied people in female only spaces (sports, positions, etc.). If transwomen have access to these spaces, then women are disadvantaged, to put it mildly, because they have then just lost the single-sex purpose of the spaces.

I was going to suggest that being both oppressed and oppressor seems to undermine intersectionality as a useful or helpful as an analytical construct. But you’ve said that much more succinctly.

I suspect many of the former have a fetish of (their idea of) being oppressed.

Part of the problem is that so many people seem to fold oppression into the identities they so focused on. such that it becomes the most important, and almost essential, characteristic.

But oppression is one of the effects of quite complex power relations. And identity - as a process where society categorises people rather than some essential description of the self - is folded into the operation of power. Intersectionality is just a concept to try to deal with the complex outcomes of multiple identity categories that operate in society.

Some of those categories are premised on genuine differences - biological sex does have meaningful effects in the world for example, as does age (or at least human development which correlates reasonably well with chronological age). But how these differences are used and positioned socially is where the power relations and the oppressive outcomes matters.

Of course, the problem with ‘gender’ as an identity category is that it’s just the cultural bullshit that we impose on biological sex. But apparently we’re supposed to view it as more real than sex. Or we’re dreadful bigots.

which is all to say, all the activists who are pretty much fetishing oppression are being ridiculous.

A re read of the Deptford Women's Project open letter may be interesting at this point. They were noting at the time that their service users - people struggling with addiction, with literacy, with access to education, poverty, homelessness - were having to deal with an invasion of privately educated, wealthy young students from the university who wished to take over the session and lecture these people, in detail, about how those students were more oppressed than anyone, (largely about stating a claim to be the focus of the group and activities, and to lead and determine the actions of the group) and about pronouns and the importance of social justice politics and language choices.

They were unable to notice that to those living on the edge, day to day, with real problems such as where the next meal came from or where to sleep tonight, or with filling out a form, pronouns were on a different planet.

Gentrification of working class was how the project put it - and explained it well - but it was largely fetishizing and role playing a perceived identity. With absolute, serene obliviousness to how unreal and insulting this was to people actually living in the world this privileged, wealthy, highly educated group were enjoying a dabble in. While wishing to be the commanding class of it. That part of it sailed over their heads too.

Hadley Freeman writing for The Sunday Times isn't an example of it.

How about her writing for the Times only because she was hounded out of her job at the Guardian, because of the screeching of a gang of pampered bullies?

Love Hadley, I’ve just read her book ‘Good Girls, a story and study of anorexia.’
It’s a brilliant book, quite harrowing in places but ultimately very positive with a happy ending in her case, there were chapters which made me cry, she’s very likeable, it’s written in a very sensitive way.
As someone still recovering from an eating disorder, nowhere near as acute as what Hadley recovered from, it helped to make sense of some things although I would not recommend the book to anyone not well into recovery and did wonder if I was reading it because I’m not as well as I thought I was if that makes sense; it would be a good resource for parents with daughters with eating disorders especially anorexia.

Yeh..But look at the cute dog!😀

I remember that Deptford women’s study, the words that first came to mind then and now are ‘cause everybody hates a tourist’

A couple of points to this yesterday radio 4 had a programme article on the very same issue of culture and arts and cancellation and the issue around thinking and cancellation the McCarthy era of American politics.
and how all of these seem to be happening and at the moment the crucible was struggling to gain new actors.as the origins of the play relate to the Salem which trials and pedophilia which the programme didn’t want to get into for obvious reasons.
Baroness Faulkner and the EHRC investigation hasn’t been stopped it’s merely paused and when it resumes the outcome may or may not be in baroness Faulkner’s favour & there’s no independent body if the body has been placed there with a single purpose aligned with a governments aims and purpose.

I’d just popped in to see if @TraumatisedGooner had explained the gender identity that trans women and cis women share. Something he’s happy to insult people on the internet for not believing in.

I see he hasn’t managed it.

great discussion on intersectionality though. And reassuringly terrible AI pictures of the cone of shame. I feel my job is safe for a while longer

there’s no independent body if the body has been placed there with a single purpose aligned with a governments aims and purpose.

Quite.

However there's also no independent body if the body has been politically captured by a group with a single purpose aligned with an extremist political lobby's aims and purposes: with one specifically being to control and prevent the government providing independent and impartial care for all equally.

In which case the government has a duty to have the aim and purpose of investigating and removing this influence and returning the body back to an independent state.

The TQ+ lobby and supporters would only ever approve of the EHRC if it was entirely controlled by them and saying entirely what they told it to, with a required denial and subordination of all needs other than T ones, and women particularly having no rights at all. We live in times where those extremists and their mouthpieces (BBC particularly included) would call that 'independent' and try to sell it to the general public in this way.

The general public are going to realise what many women here realised a long time ago: they've been had. They have been lied to. They have been manipulated. And those responsible are going to scream like hell when they are made to stop. We're all going to have to live with the screaming and hyperbole for a while, because in reality, no one is being hurt. This is returning the situation back to where it should have stayed in the first place.

Hasn't explained where all these plantation owners and their wives are, either.

Great column from Hadley, as usual.

Did anyone else spot in yesterday's Sunday Times the interview by Decca Aitkenhead with Richard Coles? It actually touched on the trans issue - he didn't say much, but he did say that he couldn't understand the idea that gender identity was more important than biology. After his brief Twitter comment recently, we might see some full-on Terfing from him soon. I hope so.

It’s remarkably offensive for GCs to claim they are experiencing something similar. It’s downright hilarious for them to be making such claims when the media is predominantly on side and the government is entirely on side.

Lol, pop into the trans subreddit and scold them about their frequent references to their non existent "genocide" why don't you.

This one?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e359a0e3-86ca-4b94-b628-2de4cdd7a196?shareToken=c469d1e61a4f7cbf297d0eada8b37f0f

It’s a single paragraph but he’s clearly bemused by males claiming to menstruate.

‘Intersectionality’ should have sat in the toolkit of theories looking to disrupt essentialist concepts of identity. But it seems to have been grabbed on to by people desperate to reify and essentialise gender identity.

Such that they simply will not accept that intersectionality describes key differences between TW (as male humans) and women (female humans). Somehow we aren’t allowed to talk about that intersection. We’re supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist because it would be bigoted to offer an intersectional account of sex in relations to gender identity activism.

This. There is no way that true intersectionality in the way Crenshaw originally intended it would not include sex as an axis of oppression. Not sure when it became a hierarchy either. The original example was black women falling through the gaps where inclusion initiatives targeted black men and white women.

To be honest, anyone writing a sentence s about something being ‘remarkably offensive’ and the using dehumanising language ‘GCs’ to refer to women discussing and standing up for female people’s rights is a lost cause.

Such that they simply will not accept that intersectionality describes key differences between TW (as male humans) and women (female humans). Somehow we aren’t allowed to talk about that intersection.

We’re supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist because it would be bigoted to offer an intersectional account of sex in relations to gender identity activism.

Which, when 'bigoted' is run through the bullshit translator, comes back as 'points out the truth of impossibility and blows apart the fantasy, which makes some male people sad'.

It's like the whole 'disgusting' thing for bluntly stating true facts without a single offensive word in the phrase.

Somehow, upsetting less than 1% of male humans by not enabling their personal reality is being framed not just as 'unkind' or 'tactless' (and that would be debatable) but abhorrent and wrong. And that really needs some questioning.

Does DH ‘s allotment count?

A re read of the Deptford Women's Project open letter may be interesting at this point

Just read it for the first time and realise how the LP became so mired in the confusion of 99.9% of women don’t have penises. Like sport, some critical thinking from the start could’ve prevented the subsequent mess. They could’ve opened a LGBTQ+ short list if they felt this group underrepresented in politics. They could have just said, wait, let’s consult a wide range of views and consider the wider implications before we take any decisions fgs. The arrogance of LP leadership thinking it knew better than those it purports to represent.

This is a thread derail question, but just who the hell do I vote for? I cannot bring myself to vote for the morally bankrupt and economically inept Tories but how can I vote for any party willing to ignore women’s rights and abandon SSS’s? Plus, everything I read about Starmer and the LP leadership on other issues (Brexit, health etc) makes my heart sink.

Love Hadley