A feminism of privilege
Trans woman Grace Lavery interviews trans advocate Jolyon Maugham:
Maugham: I was making the point in the summer of 2020, repeatedly, that the lawyer that Keira Bell had retained was using was someone with links to the religious right. He himself has said so. And you can look at the cases he has brought. They’re attacks on abortion rights. They’re attacks on gay rights. And he has associations with organizations that have attacked assisted dying. And he appears on the sort of tv channels of organizations who are religious conservatives, let me put it that way. So I didn’t think he would deny that he comes from that background. His name is Paul Conrathe. It’s certainly abundantly clear that he does. The barristers, I don’t have any reason to suggest that they come from that standpoint. And the judge who is believed to have written that judgement—a judge called Natalie Lieven—doesn’t come from that background. She is simultaneously a hero amongst the Good Law Project’s overwhelmingly female staff team for the work that she’s done as a judge protecting the right to an abortion. And now, a sort of fallen hero for what we all regard as the work that she’s done to roll back trans rights, to empower transphobia and transphobes in domestic public discourse. She comes from a very particular place, and I don’t know whether this is mirrored around the world, but in England there is a very, very dominant…strand of feminism. Not dominant numerically but dominant because it’s a feminism of privilege that is deeply opposed to trans rights. And that demographic is the demographic that she fits perfectly in. I’m not saying she’s a transphobe. I’m just saying that she is in that demographic.
A feminism of privilege is it. What kind of privilege? And what of Jolyon Maugham? What about his privilege?
More basically, of course, there’s the usual obligatory lie that it’s “transphobia” to continue to understand that people can’t change sex.
Anyone reading your newsletter will know that J.K. Rowling complained bitterly of the abuse that she received on social media––and I think she’s entitled––right indeed––to complain about that. But much of it wasn’t genuine abuse. It came not from member of the trans community but from accounts that were set up, I believe, to discredit the trans community. And what I was particularly angry with J.K. Rowling about, somebody who I’ve spoken to privately in the past and previously had a good relationship with was that I thought that she weaponized in a rather mischievous way the abuse that she received.
So typical of women, isn’t it. We weaponize rape, we weaponize sexism in the workplace, we weaponize misogynist abuse – there’s just no end to it. We’re so mischievous.
So he states without proof.
So…. Maugham spend months ranting about how Bell’s position was coming from a religious right perspective, the implication being that no “normal” person with “good” views could find it a plausible case. Then a judge who he admits is not part of the religious right, and has “good’ views generally, rules against his client, and Maugham concludes…
that she’s a bad person, too.
So close, and yet so far. At least he held back from calling her a transphobe, so small mercies I guess.
I like the bit where he carries the narrative of ‘UK feminists are weirdly transphobic’ but also hastens to add that those transphobic ones are the minority.
Holms, another thing about that is their claim about minority. The only reasons they get by with that claim is that the TAs are louder than everyone else, and that the vast majority of people outside the rarefied few really know much about this issue. Thanks to trans-bullies, people are learning.
And they seem to want to be the majority and oppressed at the same time. Everyone agrees with them, except this tiny cadre of horrible people, yet somehow they are the most oppressed ever. Of course, they would claim it is because this tiny minority of radfems has all the power. Yeah, radfems are so totally powerful. Sure.
These “powerful Radfems” are a curious bunch, in that they’ve apparently convinced otherwise upstanding men to do great harms to trans people, even to murder, and yet, these “powerful Radfems” apparently can’t secure a female only DV or homeless shelter (much less actually stop DV or homelessness), or stop street harassment, or reform the Family Court, or reduce the wage gap, or even stop FGM. You know, the basics.
You’d think that if we were wielding so much power we would deploy even a little for our own benefit. And yet we can’t even secure one toilet.
“…but in England there is a very, very dominant…strand of feminism. Not dominant numerically but dominant because it’s a feminism of privilege that is deeply opposed to trans rights.”
So says one man, to another man, who are busy redefining “woman” and “feminism” for their own ends because feminists only created a movement for female people, not male people.
Surely this is satire? The sheer absurdity of men decrying how awful women are because the women won’t let men do whatever they want, AND the response is generally “yes, you’re right, women excluding men from women’s bathrooms/change rooms/hospital wards/DV shelters/prisons are mean and should be stopped, why have they no compassion for men?”. The whole thing is absurd. Ridiculous. Parody.
#4
My surmise is, claiming to be the most numerous feeds their belief that they are on the right side of history, while claiming to be outnumbered (in general, or in positions of power) feeds the belief that they are horribly oppressed. I have seen parallels of this in US politics, with a vast but uncounted ‘heartland’ who need to ‘rise up’ and finally assert themselves.
Maybe part of the same mindset that could deny that Trump was part of the “elite?” That could believe that America is the strongest country in the world, yet still at risk of being “overrun” or “taken over” by a caravan of poor immigrants allegedly coming to its southern border?
(Yes, there’s the argument that Trump was rejected by the social “elite” he so desperately wished to join. But if you claim you’re worth billions, own golf courses all over the world, snobbishly look down on people worse off, calling them losers, and you live in a penthouse with golden toilets, it might disqualify you from being “a man of the people.” He’s just lucky that millions of his followers are stupid enough to believe that he is.)
Arcadia #6, sometimes it cheers me up to imagine these conversations being interrupted by Graham Chapman in his Colonel’s uniform going “stop it! It’s silly”.
Well, yeah. But of course, as a QC himself, he’d’ve known from day 1 of his training what we may presume a good number of Lavery’s readers wont, which is that there’s the Cab Rank rule, which says that a barrister has to take a case if it comes their way, is within their area of competence, and can fit in their schedule. One of the many upsides of this system is precisely that it keeps the advocates partial (for their clients), but disinterested.
FoxSmasher has done a lovely job here of using a true statement to distort reality.