The latest fallouts in GC world

[Pluvia]

My terfing energy has been focussed elsewhere in recent months and I haven't been here or on TwiX or social media much. Now I've taken responsibility for tweeting/ comms on behalf of a small but potentially significant LGB group and I discover that there seems to be something going on — another schism — in GC world. Jane Clare Jones's name seems to be coming up a lot. Something seems to have gone on but I can't work out what.

If it was my own account I'd just ignore, but the followers of this account are bringing it up and seem to expect an opinion to be expressed or a side to be taken. Also I'm seeing a lot about 'ultras' and 'lites', which is new to me. Can anyone enlighten me? I need to tread carefully.

I, too, like women on both sides of this argument. I also believe that women are allowed to set their own boundaries, and that includes women on the left who don't want to align themselves with conservatives and who recognised early on that KJK and her supporters were moving further and further to the right and didn't want to be part of it.

I wouldn't call myself a JCJ supporter particularly but she is being bullied on Twitter, her work is being misinterpreted and she has every right to call it out.

@LoobiJee

It’s gone quiet on here since the general election. The repeat-thread starter with three or four favourite topics, the main one being throwing mud at KJK, and a recognisable posting style acros name changes, appears to have disappeared.

It's gone quiet now a primary poster has been chased off? Personally, I think it's a good thing to be challenged on a regular basis.

@AlisonDonut

Thank you for such a detailed and clear explanation

I post a lot of GC stuff on Twitter and I've got around 9k mutuals, but I'm anonymous, never been to any events etc, and although I've seen bits of the infighting but never understood all that had gone on.

(Not really posted on MN feminist board before but decided to join in after recent name change

Going back to KJK, I sort of see where she's coming from and the aspects of culture she rightly opposes. It's just those aspects she should be targeting.

... To take an obvious and brilliant example, Nazir Afzal, a Pakistani Muslim, is a former Chief Crown Prosecutor and a champion of women's rights, who actively used the power of his office against honour killing, forced marriage, FGM etc.
A hero IMO.

(Apologies for the slight derail)

Except Nazir Afzal champions women's rights whilst not being racist. It is possible to do both.

Well, yes. Kind of the point I was trying to make.

Excellent potted history 👏

Since that Janice Turner tweet, and the whole Genspect AGP-gate, Stella O'Malley likes to tweet in a disparaging fashion about "Ultras" a lot too - she's really fond of the term as a way to describe women she disagrees with and who she believes are not as clever and knowledgeable as wot she is on the issue of gender identity.

I stopped following quite a lot of people in the GC sphere on TwiX because I can't be doing with drama or some of the more recent jockeying for position/status.

Look,ay culture you want to point to will have people within it with viewpoints that are different, or even revolutionary in terms of that culture. That's why cultural change occurs.

That doesn't mean it's inaccurate to make generalizations about cultural beliefs that are widely held and normative in certain places. I mean, for goodness sake, there are plenty of feminist who are happy to say the UK is a rape culture, or a culture of racism, but all of a sudden it's beyond the pale for someone to say something similar about a place that does actually have much different approaches to women and sex?

One of the main arguments in certain fundamentalist Muslim places for covering women is to stop them tempting men, and to protect the women from the results of men's temptation. A reasonable take away from that could be that this isa culture which says women going about their normal activities in public are inviting rape. That is what "rape culture" is, if it is anything - the idea that women cause rape by being women. That is a culturally normative belief in some places and the basis of cultural practices.

Now - I personally would argue that is not the only or maybe even main reason that covering, which used to be restricted more to post puberty, has moved down to younger girls still in childhood, I think there are some other forces at play. And there are some other explanations even for adult women.

But it is simply true to say that attitudes to women's sexuality are a very significant part of the reason these societies enforce women being covered, and in some cases even restrict them from public life. It's not racist to say true things and it's very dangerous to make claims that it is.

It's really insensitive to make generalised comments about a minority culture where the majority culture already discriminates against it. Too right there are fundamentalist practices rooted in misogyny. They need to be challenged. But it's very wrong to generalise: Pakistanis think this, Muslims do this. Because it isn't monolithic, there's a huge range of practice and belief. Nazir Afzal isn't alone, he just made it his business to tackle some of the worst bigotry where he encountered it.

Plenty of homegrown AngloSaxon bigotry here in the UK if you bother to look for it.

I wonder if Barra Kerr would be bothered to respond. Given her insight and extraordinary talent with words, taking her on could be construed as foolhardy.

It's a wonderful skill to be able to express complex ideas in a few words without talking down to your audience. BK has it in spades, as of course does JKR (and you, Datun!). As far as I can judge from many years working in a university (not as an academic) academic life doesn't encourage that sort of writing at all. The more impenetrable the better, appears to be the goal in some cases. Not helpful.

I expect Barra Kerr finds JCJ as tedious, melodramatic and irrelevant as most people do.

Going after the pronouns are rohypnol thing is telling. I remember reading that. Plain English, set out the problem, hands you a clear reason for not complying.

Plain English - not JCJ's skill set

Setting out reasons - see example of her terribly clumsy handling of Dworkin which Scap explains (thread below) and Lorelei expands (below). I say clumsy, it's actually offensive.

Clear reasons for not complying. This is the heart of it. Non-compliance with "preferred pronouns" is a no-brainer for those that know hiding your sex is a red flag. If you refuse to understand this, then you attack people who do understand it by calling them "ultra", "far right" and so on, you're resorting to name-calling and you've shown you don't have a clear set of reasons for pushing compliance.

You're telling us you want to keep the GRA and PC of GR. OK, so do the TRAs.

That's where we part ways.

Tweets:

x.com/lascapigliata8/status/1865398983121592781?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

The Dworkin element: x.com/lascapigliata8/status/1865398987903389754?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

x.com/hatpinwoman/status/1865410809343451509?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Plain English - not JCJ's skill set

You have the gift of beautiful understatement!

Great post.

This bit in particular I think is important:
They were unhappy that she didn't vet the women coming to her events to speak and that the women were basically, any woman at all. They sidelined themselves as the academics who were the ones with the ologies and as such, felt that they were the ones that should be having the last say on the matter.

KJK actually does grass roots activism, and is much closer to knowing the breadth of issues normal women care about. I've been to lws events. Sometimes very religious women speak. It's powerful because I don't agree at all on the religion but we do have common ground on wanting gender ideology out of schools.

For a lot of women it's not just women's rights it's also child safeguarding. The academics and professional feminists are generally really, really bad at understanding child safeguarding and seem to have a total lack of curiosity about it too and the existing safeguarding framework, underpinned by law, which has been routinely breached for years in schools. Child safeguarding was missing from the FWR court debate, I hope very much it's in the legal briefs

And yes, Hayton promoted guidelines that abandoned child safeguarding both in terms of sex based safeguarding but also in terms of the emotional abuse of denying a child's reality and compelled speech. Using children to validate adults. Essentially allowing males with an AGP fetish to use children as unconsenting participants. Which naturally most parents are opposed to.

A lot of people with large egos dislike normies saying that what they're doing affects child safeguarding. But it does. When prominent journalists call a man with AGP 'she' they're propping up the idea that it's ok to compel children to do this, which breaches safeguarding. It's part of how children have been harmed.

Parents were pissed off that they put their personal choice to indulge a man's fantasy over safety for children in school. It's fine if the want to do that, free speech etc, but it's also reasonable for others to say they don't like it and point out that children in school don't have the power and agency of prominent adult journalists so are being compelled to lie and gaslit into doubting their instincts and denying / ignoring facts important for safeguarding (i.e. sex).

Hi @YouveGotNoBloodyIdea , thanks for that and I agree entirely. We're not huge players either, but we have 8+k followers and for historical reasons there seems to be quite a high proportion of academics and also quite a high proportion of men: in the past most of the GC groups I've been associated with have been 90% female. So instead of just merrily tweeting away to women like me, as I have done in the past on my own account, I need to read the room carefully and steer a thoughtful course. So far I've just retweeted or responded to no-brainers, and now I know what this latest schism is about I'll ignore it. I don't know this group well enough yet so I'll just go gently until I get the feel. Did you attend the Sex Matters social media training sessions the other week? My heart sank a bit: if you're really going to do this properly, it's a full-time job!

There is, I think, disingenuous framing of abuse of women in terms of "drawing political boundaries." I actually agree with JCJ about much politically but you cannot do things like publish an entire magazine and lengthy threads character assassinating people without pushback. The issue is not of "jealousy" or of "elites" but of finding some behaviour utterly despicable and not tolerating abuse.

I have the unfortunate experience of having had friends phoned by JCJ to trash me and ask me to stop posting and of first hand accounts of unethical behaviour. Of course I agree that one should not post unsubstantiated claims and that, to onlookers, it can look like heresay, but I've yet to see anything posted that is a straightforward lie based on first hand accounts from those involved.

I have always known La Scapigliata, Lorelei, and Alessandra Asteriti to be patient, principled, and act with integrity. That they have interpreted Jane's work as y does not warrant the three days of posts from Jane, in one case, using her Feminist Institute account to circumvent Lorelei's block.

At this point, I think an agreement needs to be made for no-one to post about each other (and I'd hold myself to this) because threats of legals, if followed through, are going to be a massive escalation and Jane will, based on what I've seen so far, lose.

Its important that we can both express concerns and take that criticism. Women should be able to say ' what you want risks safeguarding ' and rather than a name calling, they should at least address the issue.

Has turner, doyle or JCJ actual expressed why its isnt a safeguarding concern to call male teachers 'she/her'?

If the flip side of allowing us to call out safeguarding risks is people accusing others of being right wing or racist, then so be it.

We cant all just keep quite while we suspect the movement is heading towards really dangerous territory.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread carefully, but I'd like to respond to those who've implied that you can't be an ultra in the Labour Party. You can: I am, and I and other Labour terfs have gained traction in our CLP without capitulating to the lite/ be kind brigade. A great many grassroots Labour members are as pissed off with GI as any of us.

My current project within the party is working to separate the LGB from the T when it comes to LGBT officers. We already have a couple of lesbians and gay men who have succeeded in arguing that they can't possibly represent the homophobic T and have argued successfully for the creation of a separate T officer. In the cases I'm aware of, no T person has stepped up to represent T interests.

I'd also draw your attention to the successes that Labour Women's Declaration has achieved. In past years they've been banned from having a stall at various Labour conferences and even prevented from protesting outside the venues. This year they were actually permitted inside the building at the national and Welsh Labour conferences and held an event at which Tonia Antoniazzi and Dr Az Hakeem said a lot of previously unsayable things. There was really positive feedback from those who attended.

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From my perspective, I see the unions as the biggest problem. The conferences are dominated by the unions and dozens of terfy and women's rights-focussed motions don't ever see the light of day because of union pressure. There are a few terfs in positions of some influence in some unions, but they are just rolled over by the juggernaut of the unions. I'm not in a union. It would be good to hear from women here who are, and whether they can see things shifting. I don't hear it raised as an issue very often, but the capture of the unions — who, how — is one that's on my mind quite a lot these days.

The recent X thread by LaScap went a bit further than pronouns and, if JCJ is angry about it, I can't say I'm surprised. Like I've said, I'm not forming an opinion unless I can see what JCJ actually said in the essays that LaScap references - I don't think screenshots are enough. (Well OK I'm not going to read JCJ's 398 page thesis but, despite my dislike of her writing style, I could probably get through a 10-page paper.) But I can't download either doc from LaScap's links so, unless someone can point me towards a more accessible version, I think I'm out.

As for personal conversations and who said what - I'm as nosey as the next person but I really don't see the point of talking about it on public forums where most of us don't know any of the people concerned and so again, can't form a view.

Yes, I’ve noticed comments from a few ‘professional’ GC activists that show they dislike safeguarding issues in their work being pointed out. I saw a screenshot of Stella O’Malley on TwiX stating that “Ultras” use safeguarding in the same way that TRAs use ‘transphobia” i.e. to shut down discussion.

I disagree with her interpretation very strongly - pointing out failure to bear safeguarding in mind is not an attempt to shut down discussion, it’s an attempt to widen discussion to take safeguarding into account. It’s not extremists trying to stop ‘big name’ people from lobbying/carrying out activism, it’s a wide range of people trying to get the big names to carry out their work in a way that bears safeguarding in mind and so won’t create problems in the future.

Best to rise above it all. It all feels a bit 'History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes'. Just read any history of the first or second wave and there have always been disagreements about the best approach to take. The truth is the kind of people who 'get things done' are often difficult to get on with on a personal level. They are very focussed and driven in all aspects of their lives and will have no compunction about stating very clearly when they disagree with someone. But that is how they get things done and the breadth of approaches across the GC world is what will eventually result in pushing back the boundaries. Just think of the suffragists vs the suffragettes and how the Pankhurst family fell out over the best way to campaign for the vote. When what actually worked was a combination of all the different approaches acting on different people to eventually shift the Overton window.

I think the issue for me is, I've watched JCJ take down whoever she wants and when someone does the same to her, all hell breaks loose. Year after year after year.

Did she ever once say 'thank God KJK didnt get killed' last year? It seems every time the attention is on someone else, along comes another 756 tweet thread having a pop at someone who must remain nameless.

So if someone has a go back, it's pretty much 'if you can't take the heat' for me I am afraid. Maybe rethink those mile long tweet threads that make no sense other than 'she's a big meany poo poo head'.