Writer Naomi Klein says she doesn’t understand gender critical feminism

[PotteringPondering]

Canadian writer Naomi Klein was interviewed at the Royal Festival Hall this evening by the BBC’s Samira Ahmed, about her new book, Doppelgänger.

Most of the evening was about the book, in which Klein (a left-wing activist) reflects on being confused with writer Naomi Wolf (who now sides with the right and conspiracy theorists). This was fascinating.

At the end, a questioner in the audience asked her how ‘so-called feminists’ can be anti-trans. Klein speculated that it’s white women being seduced by the far right.

Samira Ahmed pointed out that the UK narrative is different, and one of the main legal cases here involved a black lesbian. Klein said she didn’t understand that kind of feminism.

I was shocked that such an articulate thinker, who’s spent years at the cutting edge of cultural issues, could say she simply doesn’t understand why any feminist would question gender ideology. Seriously?

As a sidenote, I wish Samira Ahmed had got the University Challenge gig when Paxman retired.

This.

There is absolutely nothing about the basic premise of gender critical feminism that is difficult to understand if you have taken even five minutes to inform yourself about it.

On the flip side of the coin, I genuinely don't understand the kind of feminism that prioritises the wants of biological males over the rights of biological females.

Perhaps Naomi could explain that one to us all.

I noticed that overly gender critical woman have often a history of being abused by men and find them threatening.

Like JK Rowling who is survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
That can change your perception of how safe you are.

I also wonder whether having teenage children opens your eyes to this stuff. On Wikipedia, her only child is just 11, so a bit too young for teenage angst.

What do you mean by "overly gender critical women"?

Understanding that men are not women and that people can't change sex is about more than safety.

It's not, it's consistent with the political ideology that believes everything is about power, the right thing to do is establish who is oppressed and fight against oppression and power to impose 'justice'.

That does make me think of the Israel issue, where the left will side with Islamist terrorists because they are supposedly the "oppressed", even though their agenda is in destroying another lawfully existing country.

Thanks for such helpful responses. They tally closely with my own reflections since the event on why Klein 'doesn't understand' GC feminism. Three points, closely related to each other:

1) Income and reputation. If your income and reputation depend on you taking a certain line, you have a vested interest in not looking into alternative views too closely. You have too much to lose. She chooses not to understand.

2) Pickling. Canadian institutions have undergone rapid pickling in recent years: they are soaked in gender ideology. If you live, move and have your being inside the pickle jar, it's hard to picture a world outside it.

3) Culture wars. In North America so much is framed by the culture wars. Opposition to gender ideology is bracketed in with far right politics (Klein went on about Steve Bannon at great length), antivax, climate scepticism, pro-gun etc. This is not the case in the UK and Europe, as Samira Ahmed pointed out, although some like to pretend it is.

That's fair enough. But I am not sure the UK is immune to that kind of influence either.

Well, this really is an issue, because gender/identarian politics is all downstream of US politics. So a broken analysis of politics from the US is being forced upon non-US societies, including us.

No way would DEI have ever arisen in the UK, it's a pure American contraption. And now it's over here.

Why I can never even countenance voting Labour, LD or Green.

@RealityFan the book isn’t really about Naomi K v Naomi W — that aspect is just the hook publicists have used (very effectively) to get lots of reviews. It is no more about conspiracy culture and how baseless arguments gain footholds in society. A focus which made her reply to the “feminism” question odd.

What Klein said was along the lines of “I don’t believe trans people having rights takes rights away from me” — a fair and very “kind” point but one which really misunderstands what I think most GC believe (ie trans people have all the rights of other citizens and can, perhaps, have “protected characteristic” rights as trans people — even celebrated on trans visibility day or similar — but should not erode the rights of women (or men)).

@Beowulfa I agree re Samira Ahmed. She would have been a great host of UC!

Agree that a lot of the time, that's what 'I don't understand' really means.

I was part of a group chat at work the other day where a woman described her guilty pleasure as Robert Galbraith novels, despite JKR being anti-trans. The resounding NO SHE ISN'T from the rest of us was emphatic (and very heartening), and my colleague said she didn't understand enough about the subject, and changed it.

I happen to know that a family member of hers has a trans-identifying teen. I suspect she doesn't believe, but doesn't want to hurt someone she loves by espousing heresy, either.

She’s Canadian, and @PotteringPondering is bang on about pickling.

My childhood friend is a senior academic at a very good Canadian university, and she’s a biologist. She’s very vocal “supporting trans kids” and from recent photos I infer her teen is trans-identifying.

A biologist, ffs.

Sure, can only go on what I've read. So, the book is just more No Logo stuff, or a revised approach for our new scarred "post liberal", technocapitalist landscape?

I read a fabulous blog a while back from an anarchist (a knitter and cake baker to boot, not a brick or Molotov Cocktail throwing type) who had been around the Left activist block a few times.

In the Seattle roots WTO 1999 era, the Left was united around distrust of the big corporations, free trade deals (check Leftist demos against TTIPP negotiations in London in early 00s), and had a non intersectional/purely class based analysis take on politics. People would have laughed in your face if you tried to divide poor people in basis of ethnicity, sexuality etc. And they would have been as mad as Hell if you tried to pretend a middle class male could be a lesbian, or justified big pharma stunting teens.

Naomi Klein would have taken these views herself, surely. Just when and why did she diverge, to pretend a black lawyer is more disadvantaged than an unemployed white who fell out of school, and that feminism has always accepted trans demands to be deemed women?

I'll tell you. When her clan realised that there was gonna be no revolution to overturn capitalism, and Indeed capitalism had to be embraced to get a new revolution, the revolution of intersectional grievance politics and advantage. Klein should realise she's now the very capitalist caste/class she once despised.

However the "cleverer" you are, the dumber you are. She'll never realise what a patsy she's become.

I've just been reading an interesting Twitter/X thread by Jane Clare Jones about Klein's book and the way in which she swerves the trans issue.

First post here if you are able to read it:

Dr. Jane Clare Jones on X: "Am listening to Naomi Klein's Doppelganger. It's a truly excellent analysis of the growth of the populist conspiratorial right and the rocket fuel given to it by the pandemic and covid conspiracy theories." / X (twitter.com)

Alternatively, someone has put the whole thing here (edit: so sorry, this link looks like garbage no matter how I try to paste it in. Hopefully it can work if you c&p):

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230925104742/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1706221465484267786.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thread by @janeclarejones on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App (archive.org)

Helen Joyce's sunk costs of the believers. Its very deep, and near impossible to reconcile for the believer.

Neil de Grasse Tyson is an astrophysicist.

This is all worse than a belief in horoscopes.

So interesting, and rings true.

"Do it to Julia".

Overly gender critical? 😂

Bloody hell those women overly wanting equality of access, safeguarding, rights under law.

If they just wanted a little bit and did it nicely then men wouldn't get cross and have to scream and stamp and threaten to rape and kill everybody.

Yeah this.

See, when someone asks me an opinion on a topic I have not really looked into and don't know much about, I reply, ' I don't really have an opinion on that as I don't know enough about it'. But Klein, despite admitting not understanding the argument, feels free to have a slurring opinion like,
it’s white women being seduced by the far right

Which, incidentally, I find a monumentally racist and sexist opinion to have. Talk about writing black women out of history. Talk about portraying women as a bit ditzy and unable to think for themselves.

Yep.

I'm wondering whether that poster meant to type "overtly" rather than "overly". I hope so, cos it'd makes far more sense!

I don't really understand your last statement, tbh. I know that the groups you name tend to be more vocally supportive of TRAs, but this shitshow has come about under a conservative government (if you can call it government) so I'm not sure that trusting Tories to fix it because a few of them are now saying "hang on a mo" is very logical.

As a feminist, I believe in drawing all groups marginalised by the patriarchy into my circle of care.