Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance

[Imnobody4]

Do we know about this?

Saw Judith Butler being interviewed recently as she mentioned evidence of anti- trans movements. So I did a search and found this.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/news/2022/AHRC-launch

They've got a project website if you follow the link.

Apparently Jacob Breslaw of Mermaids fame was on the board.
Through four transnational workshops, the network will bring together scholars, activists and policy-makers from different parts of the globe to contend seriously with ‘anti-gender ideology’ and its counter-narratives. The network is supported by a dynamic Advisory Board comprising UK-based and international representatives within academia and progressive civil society actors and organisations.In foregrounding a focus on concepts and narrative, the network aims to develop a transnational methodology which can help us draw out how these ‘anti-gender’ mobilisations work, with the aim of generating more robust tools for resistance to the take up of anti-feminism for right-wing agendas.

I know TERFs. They are emphatically not in favour of regressive gender norms. I know trans people. They are firmly of the opinion that TERFs are being funded by Russia and the US Religious Right, but can offer no evidence in support of this view.

Exactly. Come on, this isn't new information.

You only have to read the batshit threads on Reddit, which is dominated by trans and pro transactivist moderation.

What the hell is a research council doing funding this shit? They are part of UKRI - UK Research and Innovation - funded by the government. What massive failure led to someone saying “Yeah, we’ll pony up some cash for this”?

They are firmly of the opinion that TERFs are being funded by Russia and the US Religious Right, but can offer no evidence in support of this view.

Vlad, if you’re reading, I don’t seem to have received this funding yet. Everyone says we in the Terven are receiving back-handers but <checks bank account> nowt.

Paypay, cheques and Waitrose vouchers accepted.

Reading the thread with interest. Slightly nervous of heading off on all the links. Let's see what the algorithm sends me afterwards.

It does seem a long time since the terven were supposed to be 5 crones and their sock puppets. Apparently now we are Putin's shock troops.

You should read the Gilead Watch site.
There are clear links (financial and social) between the US right, European right and some GC campaigners and politicians. Some of the European right have links to Russia/Putin.

If you are genuinely interested (as opposed to just wanting to discount "liberals/lefties") then looking into CPAC/NatCon/Orban is a good start - who funds them and who they fund. What their stated aims are. Which of our politicians are linked to them.

The "Londongrad" podcast by Tortoise.

Carole Cadwalladr investigative journalism into Russia/Trump/Brexit.

Or you can ignore the potential for "ideologically capture" from the far right and continue to focus on "the threat" from civil servants and teachers. Those well known reds under the bed

If you believe feminists could be "ideologically captured" by TRAs, why not by the far right?

"you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

SidewaysOtter · Today 14:25

Vlad, if you’re reading, I don’t seem to have received this funding yet. Everyone says we in the Terven are receiving back-handers but <checks bank account> nowt.

Da! Путин, где мои деньги?

Ooo, a "links and ties" expose! They're always fun.

Like I said, don't bother if you aren't interested!

I've just noticed Sally Hines is on the external board.

Also Ukranian feminists are in trouble for not conforming .

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2023/04/24/non-obvious-connections-how-feminism-becomes-transphobic/?_gl=1qpma1j_gaMTc0MTc3NTc2Ny4xNzEzNTQ4NjU3_ga_LWTEVFESYX*MTcxMzYyNjQzMi4zLjEuMTcxMzYyNzcxMy42MC4wLjA.

Why are some feminists transphobic? How did it happen that a considerable part of feminist communities aligns with the conservative anti-gender movements in producing anti-transgender public discourse? Sadly, we cannot share Judith Butler’s opinion that transphobic feminists are a minority. When researching feminisms in Ukraine, we see that overt or covert (methodological) transphobia is pertinent to a significant part of academic and activist feminist discourse. Academics often rely on the epistemology of stable dichotomous biological sex, producing obscure but no less harmful transphobia. In activism, though, the biggest and steadily growing Ukrainian online community, Feminism UA, openly indicates in their ground rules that it is forbidden to support trans* activism and use corresponding vocabulary (like cis- or TERF) because ‘this is a misogynist practice’. We are not providing more examples to avoid further proliferation of transphobic hate speech, but they are available online for anyone curious. In this blog, we use the acronym TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminism) or terfism (as Alyosxa Tudor named it) to designate feminist transphobia.

Here's the statement on Jacob Breslaw.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/assets/documents/research/AHRC-documents/AHRC-AB-Statement-Final-Version-31-October-2022.pdf

Released 1 November 2022
AHRC Network Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions(AH/W01047X/)
Statement from the Advisory Board
The Advisory Board of the AHRC Network met on 25th October and has accepted the resignation of Dr Jacob Breslow from the membership of the Board.
We reviewed the allegations against Dr Jacob Breslow reported and circulated in the media and their impact on the Network. We underscore our opposition to all forms of sexual violence and harm and distance ourselves from any attempts to normalise child sexual abuse.
We also expressed grave concern at the orchestrated attacks on Gender Studies scholars and on Gender Studies as a field of academic research, teaching and enquiry.
We are appalled that allegations made against one person are being used to attack trans people, trans advocacy groups and Gender Studies as a discipline. We strongly oppose slander and rumouring, but believe in accountability and repair if and when any harm has occurred.
The Network, with the support of the Advisory Board, looks forward to continuing its work on mapping the formation and circulation of anti-gender ideology movements across the globe – including anti-feminist, racist and anti-migrant, homophobic, and anti-trans and anti gender-non-conformist violence – and the political struggles and solidarities resisting misrepresentation, harassment, and violence. We endeavour to build a coalition large enough to produce solidarity from and with our differences.
Our shared commitment to the long feminist tradition of gender analysis prioritises the scholarship and wellbeing of the main targets of anti-gender attacks.
Please check our website for details of our full academic programme that will be
published soon.

I am sympathetic to the general argument that authoritarian and/or right wing forces are using gender as a toy to wave in front of us going 'look at this ridiculous thing The Left do, everything the left do is therefore ridiculous and dangerous' because you can see it happening in the Daily Mail, and transphobia has also added a new colour to Putin and Orban's violent state-sponsored homophobia.

What I would like is some acknowledgement from left wing and liberal parties and academics that they have handed an easy gift to these nightmarish people, because it is not possible to make everyone believe or even to act as if male people are women and as if putting children on lifelong medication is normal and desirable. These things are never going to be acceptable to more than a very small minority, and they have minimal connections to gay liberation. It is not pro-lesbian to say that men are women. It isn't.

I turn the 'be careful who you line up with' argument around. Just because Orban can argue that puberty blockers are a bad idea, doesn't make them a good idea. Sorry.

Good on those Ukrainian feminists.

Exactly.

I don't believe in gender identity and I can't fucking help it if most of the rest of the world, including a whole bunch of baddies, don't believe in it either.

What @terryleather and @PermanentTemporary said.

I don't entirely agree with PPs that the right's insistence on gender norms leads them to reject trans identity. It depends who you are talking about. You're forgetting about homophobia. Kai Shappley's conservative Christian parents could not accept an effeminate son and transed their child. The Taliban force gay men to choose between death and transition.

Right wingers tend not to be critical of gender so people with GC beliefs only overlap with the right (and everyone else on the planet) when it comes to sex realism. Belief in sex is only framed as a belief for the purposes of the Equality Act. But that sex is binary, is immutable and fixed at conception is not an opinion, it's an obvious empirical fact about our universe.

Genderists should be worried because their beliefs - in the vital importance of Gender, that Gender is innate and that homosexuality is A Bad Thing - align so neatly with the far right.
Billionaires fund the genderist movement (eg Jon Stryker's Arcus Foundation fund Victor Madrigal-Borloz) just like mega-churches fund the US far right. It makes you wonder what the genderists' problem is with the far right, when they have so much in common.

Edited for grammar.

Exactly I agree. Gender ideology is actually a capitalist, libertarian, transhuman project rather than a traditional left wing project.

'Our shared commitment to the long feminist tradition of gender analysis prioritises the scholarship and wellbeing of the main targets of anti-gender attacks.' - LSE's statement on Jacob Breslaw.
Appropriating the feminist tradition of gender analysis, when that's what Gender Critical actually means. Eejits, but sly sneaky eejits because they're saying 'hey we're the real feminists'

Well that could explain why so many soi-disants rationalists and sceptics are taken in then. It's just another technology-based consumer choice. And since women have got equality now, what can possibly be the harm in it?

Anti gender? Do they mean the people who objected to Breslow's paedophile supportive work?

Handy venn diagram

https://deadwildroses.com/2019/10/07/handy-venn-diagrams-the-radical-feminist-position-on-gender/

All the different groups overlap in different places.

I don't think many "genderists" at all believe that Homosexuality is a Bad Thing. I think there are some people drawn to transition because of internalised homophobia but that is not the same thing at all.

Mega churches fund the US far right and the US far right funds UK GC activists. It's all a murky mess. Trying to make it fit neatly into a left/right division is a hiding to nothing. It's just worth thinking about the motivational of people who are activist on both sides because the motivations are sometimes genuine, sometimes more sinister.

I'll take Morrisons Christmas Savers stamps.*

*only two hundred and forty nine days to go.

A little bird just told me that the US far right are sending cash also. 🎉

the US far right funds UK GC activists.

@AdamRyan can you be more specific?