Radical feminist book on 'gender'

[DrNickedMaCorpus]

Looks great, if pricey!

https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/shop/p/9781925950908

Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers

Laura Lecuona

'The concept of gender is central to a vaguely progressive-looking set of ideas based on the maxim that people possess a so-called ‘gender identity’. The real problem arises when this nebulous concept, bandied about with different and even incompatible meanings by different groups, is used as a prop to introduce policies that mark a huge setback for the rights of women and girls. The general public, watching the controversy from the sidelines, is confused by conflicting claims about whose rights are being infringed.

In this incisive book,' Laura Lecuona sets the record straight by reviewing the origin of the current uses of the key term gender and exploring the main theories of transgenderism. She discusses what lies behind the claims about pronoun usage and warns about the consequences of promoting the recognition of so-called transgender children. She points out the collateral damage arising from this activism, from the perpetuation of sexist roles to limitations on freedom of speech. She dares to confront the accusations of transphobia that often inhibit those who question the foundations of this financially-driven and increasingly dominant ideology and shows the devastating effects transactivism is having on women, both socially and politically.
Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers is essential reading for the urgently needed conversation we need to have about whose interests are being served with the advancement of transgender ideology and what this means for women’s sex-based rights.'

'Laura Lecuona’s book is remarkable in scope and a dose of political sanity that is badly needed.'

—Janice G. Raymond

There is a Kindle version.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gender-Identity-Dangers-Laura-Lecuona-ebook/dp/B0CWSBZTT1/r

'Thus “women’s studies” turned into “gender studies”; the “feminist perspective” was converted into a “gendered lens”; “sex roles” became “gender roles,” suddenly playful and performative rather than oppressive. “Male violence against women” was euphemized into “gender-based violence”—and now we just can’t tell anymore who’s raping and killing who!

'The immaterial, metaphysical essence today termed “gender identity” became synonymous with, then superseded, the material reality of sex in feminist analysis and then in law and public policy, such that the protections instated to correct for male dominion’s more brazen manifestations came to benefit any man claiming to be a member of the female “gender.”

'And because “female” had become but one gender option among many, free to be tried on by men in the construction of their sacrosanct selfhoods, women went “from being an objective material reality to something that occurs subjectively in people’s minds,” as Lecuona notes.

'Just like that, patriarchy as a political system – one that propels men to the upper echelons while holding women firmly pinned beneath the proverbial boot – is lost to pink- and blue-tinged mists, and females as political subjects are rendered legally invisible and unspeakable. Put bluntly, “gender” makes feminism impossible.'

This is a quote pulled from Twitter - about the book or from the book - I'm not quite sure, but it is very impactful!

https://x.com/MaxDashu/status/1802867165751812228

This looks interesting! There's a review of it here

Aha! That's where the quote in my second post came from.

Thank you, that is excellent, and echoes my own feelings perfectly ... and this is an anecdote I'd heard the first part of, but not the second. Fascinating:

'The chapters that follow exhaustively enumerate transgenderism’s harms: to women and girls; to the feminist movement; to children confused by the trickle-down teachings of delusional adults as well as children subject to “affirmation” via medical experimentation; to freedom of speech and democracy. None of these harms will be new to readers whose gaze has already been trained to the pastel candy-striped wrecking ball that has been crashing its way through patriarchal industrial civilization for over a decade now. But Lecuona’s inclusion of examples from her native Mexico livens up the grim inventory of offenses, offering less treaded inroads into the dark realm of transgenderism. To give but one example, she writes of a snafu in Oaxaca wherein 17 men claimed government seats reserved for women by posing as “trans.” The theft was denounced by representatives of an indigenous Zapotec “third gender” comprised of feminized men known as “muxes.” The muxe men argued that the other men disingenuously asserted “trans identity” for personal political gain, and because it is our bad luck to live in a Man’s World, the Mexican state took seriously their cries of injustice. The “fake trans” candidates were summarily suspended, and electoral law was amended to include the shiny new crime of “gender identity usurpation.” '

Woah:

'...when a similar fraud occurred in Tlaxcala in 2021, the president of Mexico’s National Institute for Women bemoaned that the imposters were stealing “spaces that belong to trans women” and “women in their broadest diversity.” Predictably, females per se were not mentioned. As Lecuona observes, “there can be real trans and fake trans,” but there cannot be “real women and fake women.” By transgenderist dictate, men are the rightful owners of womanhood, so only men can be defrauded. '

I could just quote that whole review.

'Where men are in power, men are the arbiters of social reality: what men say is taken for fact; men possess the capital, the connections, and the confidence to catapult their interests to the top of the political agenda; and people in general – women most of all – are socialized to sympathize with men, reflexively allying themselves with the male master class for love or money or simple survival.'
...
'Transgenderism is a men’s movement in a male-dominated society: it was destined to succeed.

The last bit, and I'll stop:

'Talking about gender as loudly and as often as we can bear to is no less necessary today than it has ever been, even if we’ve grown weary of it. Even if we feel like we’re repeating the same things over and over, those same things still need to be said. Because, as Lecuona writes, if those of us who recognize transgenderism for the rank patriarchal subterfuge that it is slouch away into passive silence, the “onslaught of gender identity militancy against the rights of women and girls” will continue. If we shut up about it, an already awful situation can only deteriorate.
And, indeed, Lecuona gives us reason to hope that talking back to the transgenderists may be an even more potent remedy than we realize. “For transgenderism, information and dissidence are dangerous in more than one sense. Its theoretical basis is fragile and better not subjected to [counterargument] … But there is a deeper and more serious implication, which explains its passionate commitment to the gagging of opponents,” she writes. The men leading this movement mandate that we concede to, participate in, and endorse their fantasies because the selfhoods they’ve manufactured for themselves parch and wither when not nursed by a steady drip of external validation. “[An] identity that is acquired with a performative speech act crumbles with speech acts that challenge it.” A man can only become a woman by saying he’s one if everyone else consents to echo his fraudulent claim back to him. In a sense, “trans women are women” not because they say they are, but because we agree with them. Here, then, is where we begin, as feminists, when talking about gender. We pluck men’s words out from our mouths, never making men’s lies our own. When pressed to affirm, we vehemently disagree. That spade in front of us, so glaringly, so unmistakably a spade? We name it for what it is. We call a spade a spade. '