Natasha Walter's article in the Observer

[RoyalCorgi]

Natasha Walter, who's been a feminist campaigner for many years, and now supports refugee women, has written a piece about how women ought to come together to fight against Trump:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/01/there-are-cracks-in-the-feminist-movement-but-i-have-faith-in-women-to-stand-up-to-trump

She's very disappointed that a "majority of white women chose to put a sexual abuser in the White House and to undermine other women’s reproductive rights."

As an example of the rifts among women, she writes:

"In Britain, arguments quickly erupted in 2017 over whether the Women’s March was either too exclusive of trans women – since those pink hats might be 'excluding trans women' – or, on the contrary, too eager to centre them. Since then, winning arguments on gender identity seems to be more important to some feminists than finding common ground."

Wanting to be fair to Walter, I did reflect on whether she is right or not. Perhaps women face so many attacks now on things like reproductive rights, or even more basic rights in countries like Afghanistan, that we should put aside our differences and unite?

But I just can't. When I think about the kind of self-described "feminist" who is happy to see violent sex offenders placed in women's prisons, or see teenage girls forced to share changing rooms with adult men, or stand by while rape victims lose their right access to single-sex support from other women, I feel such rage that I cannot begin to contemplate working with someone like that. However much these women claim to be pro abortion rights or anti-sexual abuse, they are wholeheartedly supporting men as they trample on women's rights. They are not feminists. It's impossible to ally with them, because they do not care about any women other than themselves.

I agree

Its a poorly written article. Either that or it’s been edited in a way which has made her point unclear.

what is it you are asking?
Natasha Walter’s background, lineage, history, ancestry informs her writings, philosophy, thought processes, an educated, published author with plenty to say, radical feminist, now stretching the parameters of her remit.

• this was however the Observer, more divisive than inclusive

I guess I'm asking whether people agree we should all put our differences on gender identity aside so that we can work together to tackle things like abortion rights or the rights of refugee women to basic standards of care, or of women in Afghanistan to all the things they're now banned from doing.

I find I can't do that.

Of course not. Adults have (or used to have) the ability to hold several ideas in their heads at the same time. This blanket agreement or disagreement, that no one is allowed any nuance in their thinking, is another example of the totalitarian tendency in society.

TWANW. Votes for women. No enforced pregnancy. Child marriage should be abolished. No men in woman's sports. Equal pay for equal work.

See? it’s not that hard if you have more than three simultaneously functioning brain cells.

What does "putting differences aside" look like in practice? Will gender identity ideologues stop spouting TWAW until there's a constitutional right to abortion? Didn't think so.

The word woman meant one thing in law until about 5 minutes ago when the gender identity brigade decided it had to include a special sort of man.

You can't "fight for women's rights" until you can define women.

You can't "fight for women's rights" until you can define women.

That's the one. I can only speak for myself, but I see feminism as at least partly about mitigating the disadvantages that women suffer as a direct or indirect result of their physiology. The inclusion of other 'women' with a different physiology is a) pointless, and b) exposes women to the risks, mitigation of which, was being attempted in the first place.

Walter is fundamentally wrong about this. We can't just agree to disagree.

TLDR: People who say TWAW are not feminists.

One might say that the sudden insertion of the argument that trans women are women and sex isn't real was in fact a largely successful attempt to distract and derail feminism as a protest movement.

There is no common ground between men who say they are women and women. They are not women.