Mhairi Black and the ageism of 'gender' ideology, by Victoria Smith

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://thecritic.co.uk/one-day-mhairi-black-will-be-a-karen-too/

'Ageist sexism is central to trans activism. The idea of “womanhood” that it promotes is bound up in the social construction of femininity, whilst utterly dismissive of the material reality of ageing female bodies. Through history, patriarchy has not just sought to define and exploit women as a sex class; it has done so in different ways depending on where women are in the female lifecycle. Trans activism, as an expression of patriarchy, does this, too.'

...

'Black’s own work with the WASPI campaign should, but obviously didn’t, make her conscious of the cumulative nature of sex-based inequality, and how it relates to economic structures that still treat male bodies as the default. It’s all very comforting, when you haven’t yet experienced the drip-drip, interconnected nature of sexism from one life stage to another, to delude yourself that as long as you don’t name the female body, no one can target you for having one. It’s easy to blame the “Karens” for their own marginalisation — biological essentialists, begging to be biologically essentialised. You justify their low status by telling yourself they are “conservative” — that is, they chose it.
You have missed how for many of us, our politics started out like yours and changed because of what we learned about how patriarchy operates in relation to the female bodies and female life cycles.'

Sorry not wanting to take away from the main point of this thread, but I always feel "gammon" is the equivalent put-down for men, in the same age and socio-economic bracket as "Karen" is for women.

I think the difference is there’s no actually blokes called gammon, I imagine introducing yourself as Karen these days can be a bit 😬 in certain company.

My real name is a name that gets used for a “type” but it’s not in common use around here, at least.

I think "gammon" is at least one social class lower down than "Karen", in the way that both terms are most commonly used.

I can't believe MB is only 28, she seems to have been around forever.

Had a big moment last year when at 54 it finally came home to me that I was 25-30 years older than all my colleagues, and yes it made a difference. Not because I'm better than them but purely through having knocked around for longer, seen more stuff, and through being less energetic these days, ie more aware of my physical limitations.

Tbh 'Karen' seems to be used as a polite version of 'MILF' which is roughly 30plus, ie 'extraordinarily, this person is still alive, breathing and talking and despite every effort on my part, I still find myself recognising them as human - quick, find a category that separates them from me'

In other news I note that MB will be 29 soon.

30 is the age at which you truly need to grow up - and realise that life is limited and that you have to make choices and commitments. You cannot have it all.

This may be Victoria Smith's best analysis of ageism in a short format. In the two-and-a-half decades I was involved in various feminist circles (mostly online, but not only), I found that the only kind of -ism which wasn't immediately critiqued by more than one feminist in the group was the type of ageism which is aimed at older women. It went unremarked, most of the time, and if one person did point it out the reaction from the others was silence.

I always found that interesting, given that intersectional feminism surely should attend to the intersections of age and sex!

And this bit is simply beautiful:

Ageing female bodies interrupt the pornified fantasies of the likes of Andrea Long Chu, Julia Serano and Grace Lavery. They spoil the self-pitying narrative that depicts “cis women” as eternally youthful mean girls who’ve been handed “femininity” on a plate and, to quote Serano, “sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted”. When Long Chu writes of transitioning “for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops and, my god, for the breasts”, it’s pretty obvious that the bodies being pictured here haven’t yet seen thirty.

I often read about older men transitioning into 'girls', about choosing clothing which women of their age seldom would wear (mini skirts and transparent tops at ages over fifty), and, in general, behaving as if they believe transitioning into a much younger generation is also feasible.

OMFG. THAT’S Andrea Long Chu??? That is not the image I had from the name. Holy shit. I’m actually gobsmacked.

Mhairi, we're all Karens now.

😃

Ah! Arabella that is an awesome clip. It was wonderful to think they wrote this in defence of Karen(s) every where.

I despise the Karen rhetoric and, as others have said, it intersects with CRT. There is a dreadful TRA academic Alison Phipps, who has written about 'White Women's Tears' and how they 'dehumanise' sex-workers and trans people. ironically Phipps herself is a middle-aged white woman. She is the sort of academic who makes me desperate for retirement.

Yes. We are all Karens. Actually ...

.

Arabella that is excellent. All of that song!

<Holds up large sign saying I am Spartacus Karen>

I particularly liked 'I don't want to hear your pish, but I still do'. 😁

I started reading that story, by Cady Lang in Time magazine. It was so spine-chilling that I couldn’t read to the end. Pure distilled woman-hating.

I am Kartacus!

Yes, there have been previous discussions on here about the use of the term, and those energetically in favour of the term justify their misogynist ageism by claiming that the term Karen relates to a particular kind of woman who deserves to be vilified because white males in the US kill black males in the US. And by vilifying older women - rather than the white males who do the killing - they regard themselves as morally superior. Note that they aren’t attacking white women in support of black women, they are attacking white women as a cover for their support of men.

It’s the same attitude which enabled David Lammy MP - an elected representative whose responsibility it is to represent all his constituents not just those who are the same sex and race as him - to use slavery in the US as a justification for not listening to women in the UK. I don’t have a link to the exact quote but it was around the time of his rights-hoarding dinosaurs comment. For someone who seeks to use the history of slavery as some kind of ‘gotcha’, he appears not to have done any research into modern day slavery or reflected on which sex, predominantly, is being trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation purposes by modern day slavery gangs.

The linking of any of these things to racism, slavery, and if they don't work, antisemitism, is just completely illigitimate and always was. It's not done in good faith, except by very malleable people, it's cynically being used by the person making the argument as a kind of rank pulling. Weirdly, as they often aren't themselves Jewish or black or whatever, but in any case, there is no substantive argument.

You always see it where people have nothing real to say about the content of the discussion.

It's plain old misogyny.

You can see the glee in being able to deride 'old white middle class women' as the scum of the universe not only with impunity but with actual righteousness.

Because OBVIOUSLY the speaker is socially woke and righteous and would NEVER spit upon BAME people/minority cultures (unless they've got inconvenient bits such as not being able to get naked in front of random males who want it), or women OF COLOUR (unless those women are saying inconvenient things about not wanting to get naked in front of said random males), or LGBT+ (unless they actually want to be homosexual, again presenting barriers of use to said males), or working class people (unless of course their needs/issues get in the way again of said males or it involves actually understanding and accepting said people as equals) -

it's all so shallow you can see through it. All this critical theory is absolute classic Labour/left politicians for the last fifty years. 'Oh we love our special pets, but only if they stay in their box for head pats, say what we tell them do, and are useful to use as tools in achieving our agenda. If they get out of their box by having voices, needs, issues that don't fit our current agenda we take the mask off and demonstrate we are superior, paternalist, middle class misogynist snobs who never saw them as real people or equals, just as useful.'

My theory is that in our society people don't start to notice the real differences between men and women until they or their close friends start having babies. I suspect Black might not have passed that milestone yet. Being in a lesbian relationship will have also spared her from the frustrations of having a male partner.

I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Except that some poor girl clung to it as a reason for massive self-harm, so on balance it makes me feel like crying.