Statement on the gender critical movement and the far right

[hellotowel]

https://x.com/GCAntiFarRight/status/1823790909462602205

"We, the undersigned, are deeply disturbed that populist messages particularly targeting Muslims have gained traction among significant numbers of social media accounts associated with the gender critical movement."
Read and sign our statement below.
https://gcantifarright.wordpress.com/2024/08/13/statement-on-gc-movement-and-the-far-right/

Lots and lots of other women (and men and children) are put at direct physical risk by Tommy Robinson and his ilk.

Really? A load of violent Auckland men took notice of comments from women in the UK?

If the current violence towards women speaking is a result of the letter, what was the cause before?

Well that's an interesting take.

Would you also then question whether a load of violent men in Hull took notice of comments from Tommy Robinson or Nigel Farage?

Yes, she's not frightened to take risks, and to push the boundaries of her thinking - even if it doesn't always work out perfectly.

Ah reasoned debate, rather than childish name calling, it's not alive and well on this thread, I see.

It srtikes me that women and girls are the targets of a lot of planned and actual attacks at present ( Southport attacker knew the event would be full of girls; the young Australian girl who was stabbed in London the other day; the planned attacks against the Austrian Taylor Swift concert which, again, would be full of girls and young women).

Women's rights are under attack from both Left and rRght, and by extremists and mentally unwell men of all persuasions.

You're right, I apologise. It's a standard Reddit quip.

Your question is ridiculous. Can you reframe it in a way that would actually merit a serious response?

When I see this type of drama going on it makes me wonder if this is the reason women's rights haven't gone further.

There's always sniping at other women rather than keeping your eyes on the goal.

What a waste of time and energy that could be used for something else.

If someone had added my signature to anything without my knowledge, I'd be raising merry hell.

<waits>

Your lack of comprehension is not my problem to solve. I appreciate your apology, barbed as it is, but I don't think you are engaging in good faith.

Lol.

My apology was not barbed. It was a genuine apology.

You asked a stupid question and now you want to divert attention from it by making accusations.

If the current violence towards women speaking is a result of the letter, what was the cause before?

What current violence are women speaking experiencing? Can you at least qualify what that means?

The violence in Australia at a women's rally, where TRA's threw eggs etc at women. I'm pretty sure that their violence was not caused by a letter signed largely in the UK. If people are suggesting, as they have on this thread, that the letter will cause violence to specific women, what was the cause of the violence pre the letter?

'Twas ever thus in the women's liberation movement - at least, I've observed this since I was a teenage feminist attending those big Women's Liberation conferences in the late 1970s.

Back in those days the main battle lines were between the lesbian separatists & the straights ("How can you sleep with the enemy?" kind of battles) and between the feminists, and the socialists who thought that women's liberation could only come after the workers' revolution. But we still got equal pay, maternity leave, the recognition of rape in marriage and rape crisis centres set up by collectives of women ...

And think of the divisions between the suffragists & the suffragettes in the late 19th and earlyt 20th Centuries. But we still got the vote ...

I don't know anything about that rally.

The letter currently being discussed contains thinly veiled unsubstantiated claims of racism, far rightism and incitement to violence to an unnamed person, which someone with a reasonable knowledge and understanding of Terfology will understand to be KJK.

This is not the first time this has happened. There was another similar statement before which could be argued did indeed lead to direct violence against women, amongst other collateral damage ie. Moira Deeming.

This is an internet forum, not a court of law. We are all entitled to draw inferences and understandings based on actual things that have happened.

Unfortunately at this time I am unable to tell you what causes men to be violent against women.

Oh for goodness sake.

It’s plain as a pikestaff that this letter is aimed at Let Women Speak. It’s intended to paint LWS as racist and extreme.

It’s attempting to distance those women from all the ‘correct thinking’ women, and leaves them more vulnerable as a result.

Do it to Julia.

How much clearer could it be? Pussyfooting around saying that of course you don’t want it to happen to anyone, but if it does it won’t be your fault, and it’s just what they’ve said that’s the issue, is just pure bollocks.

The violence in Australia at a women's rally, where TRA's threw eggs etc at women

They did a little more than that, didn't they?

@YellowAsteroid absolutely, some of us were campaigning in1970's and can see the benefits we gained by our action then. It was, indeed, despite the differences of opinions on the "correct" way of campaigning.

And how much could you have achieved, and how much quicker, if all the silly infighting had stopped and you’d all pulled together?

I think I would ask where that "feminist critique" has really got us?

I don't think that's the feminism that has actually had systemic impact, in fact before the current shit-show, it's the feminism that the vast majority of women found alienating and didn't really see themselves reflected in.

It's the feminism that said that conservative women didn't have anything to add because they were handmaidens - a stance which I think has made the "feminist critique" weak and vulnerable and just a kind of echo chamber, unable to deal with serious challenges.

It's also the feminist critique which is frankly largely about identity politics and has led many who identify as feminists right into gender ideology. The few who have balked at going through that door are the exception, not the rule, most academic feminism is captured.

A lot of it has proven to be a dead end, anti-mother, (and by extension anti-woman,) authoritarian, dogmatic. The fact that the women committed to it are now trying to regain control of the narrative does not surprise me at all, they never really wanted engagement from most women.

Yes @Dumbo12 . I suppose those of us who've been involved in the movement for the last 50 years or so (I was 17 when I went to my first Women's Lib conference in 1977) have seen steady, but slow, - agonisingly slow, - progress.

I think that the differences & disagreements have always been there, and it's to be expected when you think about it - it's logical : a grass roots political movement involving up to 51% of the population, which doesn't have a single "party" structure or a leadership structure, but works through committed activists - individuals & organisations - each doing what they can do. Diversity is our strength in the end, I think.

That's where Kellie-Jay is so brilliant - she offers "little" things for women to do - wearing a T-shirt or putting stickers in public bathrooms. Everyday activism that doesn't cost (most) women too much risk of losing jobs etc. Gloria Steinem set up a magazine, Julie Bindel does investigative journalism with women at the centre, Germaine Greer wrote extraordinary books which theorised patriarchy and its ills ... countless teachers keep plugging awauy at raising girls' expectations & achievements, and millions of mothers try to raise their girls and boys to be non-sexist & questioning of the status quo.

Would women who disagree with the feminists of the second half of the twentieth century want to return to the situation in 1950's and 60' Britain? To dismiss the achievements and tell us how much more we could have achieved if we'd only done it all properly and that we are the cause of the rise of the TRA's and identity politics is a bitter pill.

Don’t you think it would be better to learn from the past and apply the learning now?

Women’s movements have achieved a lot and I take my hat off to those who have worked so hard to get us to where we are. It is undoubtedly the case, however, that infighting only hurts the movement and helps its foes. We need to learn from that, not carry it on in the form of witch-hunting those with a common aim.

Let’s not do our enemy’s job for them, they’re laughing at us while they reap the benefits of the division.

Some medicine is bitter.

I don't think academic feminism has added much to the material gains around women's issues. A lot of that is down to concrete issues where all or most women, and in the end most men, got on board. Yes - often with some significant public debate, but that isn't a bad thing, it's what protects us from bad policy and unexpected consequences.

A lot of the TRA playbook, the kind of id pol bs we see, are learned from the kinds of arguments we see in academic feminism, right down to logical fallacies and emotive arguments, and reliance on dogmatic beliefs to support complicated structural arguments.

The ejection of conservative women as personal non grata, along with the identification is the women's movement as being a leftist program, is, IMO, probably the most damaging thing that happened to it. That and the adoption of a hierarchical marxist structure that doesn't map well onto a species that exists through binary sexual reproduction and can only imagine solutions that are completely at odds with our actual material being.

Sometimes you need a reformation when your ideology or political movement crawls too far up its own arse, or becomes dominated by leaders who have their own agenda.