Leaving the Greens
The Green Party is losing women:
Dozens of activists have quit the Green Party in protest at the election of a transgender campaigner as head of its women’s group.
That is, at the election of a trans woman as head of its women’s group. Quite a few women think that positions of that kind should be for women rather than trans women. We think that because women are still far from being equally represented in top jobs, let alone over-represented, so to make a man who identifies as a woman (which is not the same as just plain being one) the head of a party’s women’s group is insulting to women.
The exodus, involving at least 40 women, follows the appointment in December of Kathryn Bristow, who was born a man but now identifies as a transwoman.
If you’re born male you’re a man, however you identify. Identifying as something doesn’t change physical reality.
[H]er critics claim Ms Bristow’s new role means women are losing representation within the party.
Because it does. Obviously.
Some even fear that its focus on trans issues could overshadow its traditional campaigning against environmental catastrophe.
“Even”? It’s not a huge leap.
A source suggested Ms Bristow’s appointment has added to internal strife that erupted five years ago when the party referred to women as ‘non-males’, adding: ‘Many women in the Green Party have had enough of being told what to think.
‘We’ve fought hard for over a century to have a seat at the political table. Trans people face their own challenges and need spokespeople, but so do women.’
In emails from departing supporters seen by The Mail on Sunday, furious female activists among the 52,000-strong membership criticise the party’s stance on women’s rights.
…
The party’s grassroots have been further outraged by an email sent to LGBTQ+ members urging them not to include motions for discussion on items such as ‘women’s sex-based rights’ which were labelled as ‘non-inclusive’.
Yes, and discussion on black people’s rights is non-inclusive, discussion on lesbian and gay rights is non-inclusive, discussion on workers’ rights is non-inclusive, discussion on immigrants’ rights is non-inclusive. Any kind of specificity is non-inclusive. The fact remains that there are particular sets of people who are deprived of rights because they are in one (or more) of those sets, not because of generic human-ness. Workers don’t have to be inclusive of bosses and women don’t have to be inclusive of men.
Ms Bristow rejects the claims. She tweeted: ‘My rights as a trans person don’t conflict with anyone else’s, as that’s not how human rights work. Fighting for trans liberation is part of everyone’s liberation, because we all must be free for any of us to be.’
Of course that’s how human rights work. If it were otherwise we wouldn’t need human rights at all. If nobody ever exploited or dominated or oppressed anyone else, human rights wouldn’t even be a concept. We need the concept because the more powerful do all that to the less powerful. All our human rights conflict with people’s rights to exploit and harm us. That is how human rights work.
Last night, a Green Party spokesman said: ‘We are unequivocal in our support for trans rights.
‘We recognise that transwomen are women, transmen are men and non-binary identities exist and are valid.’
They “recognise” a falsehood, and their doing so conflicts with women’s rights.
“Excuse me officer, but I identify as a diplomat. Please take back this speeding ticket, I have diplomatic immunity.”
The word “recognize” in the sentence “we recognize that transwomen are women, transmen are men, etc” strongly reminds me of the similar tactic used in violations of Church and State, in which We The People merely “recognize” God whenever it crops up in governmental areas.
It’s so unifying to settle major controversies that way. On the one side are all the normal, ordinary people who look up and notice that transwomen are women, God exists, and the sun is up in the sky — and on the other side are the willfully perverse, blinking their eyes and setting their jaws and insisting that nope, there’s no big, bright, blistering ball up there, nosiree, sure ain’t, don’t see a thing. They can safely be ignored.
When I was at school, every day began with us all sat in the assembly hall robotically reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and in the US it’s the daily Pledge of Allegiance:
I cannot see that in any other way than as another communal chant, designed to instil belief by repetition, drip-by-drip-by-drip. Every time it appears, whether as the finale to a forced apology or when stated as part of an organisation’s official policy, the wording is exactly the same. Looking at how it’s structured, it seems designed to be recited exactly as one would recite a prayer or a pledge – flat and atonal with a metronomic rhythm.
You’d think it might occur to these people how vital the global empowerment and emancipation of women in particular is likely to be in coping with the worsening environmental crisis. So…. you know… maybe don’t piss them off, OK?
Unless we include melanin-deficient black people, heterosexual lesbians and gay people, workers that don’t work, and immigrants that were born here, dammit.
Somehow, I think this goes against the Green brand:
“Now listen as I explain to you the science behind anthropogenic global warming.”
I know that it’s likely the result of earnest, wokesters, but what better way to undermine Green politics than by compromising the scientific foundations upon which it claims to stand? I could see this as an excellent strategy for fossil fuel companies to have used, except that chances are they are all already Stonewall Diversity Champions.
On the one hand, at least they used the formulation “born a man” instead of “identified male at birth”.
On the other hand…discussion of trans rights are not inclusive. They do not include anyone who is not trans. And since we cannot discuss any rights but trans rights anymore…well, I’ll leave you to figure out exactly how many people we exclude.
As for their environmental goal, I haven’t seen that as a driving force in the Greens for a long time. During the 2012 election, I looked them up, and they didn’t mention anything environmental until the tenth out of their top ten issues. Anti-war? Mostly. And anti a lot of other things that I oppose. But…not particularly environmental, either. That may be different in the UK Green Party, though. I don’t know.
Well, you know, the statistics keep going up … first it was, what, 0.05% of the population was trans, then 3.5% of the population, then 10% of the population, in the young generation 25%, and soon (if you include non-binaries and neutroises!) maybe it will be 99% of the population, in which case trans rights won’t be a particularly exclusive thing.
I have an idea. When the rate of trans reaches 100%, we can simply take all the laws on the books, replace the word “man” with “woman” and “woman” with “man”, and poof, we’ve solved our problem! The rights of XX people will be protected (though the laws will use the word “men”), and we won’t have to worry about any of those annoying horrible shitty cis people any more!
See? That’s why I left it to you. ;-)
” replace the word “man” with “woman” and “woman” with “man”, and poof, we’ve solved our problem”
I don’t know how that reads in American, but in British English that sounds very weird, “poof” being a slightly pejorative term for “gay bloke”.
I don’t know what it is with the Greens. I do wish they’d stick to their environmental issues, just as I wish Amnesty International would stick to prisoners of conscience and the ACLU to civil liberties. The trans thing is a destroyer. Maybe you get a few young wokies on board, but you also alienate long-term supporters. Greens in the UK at least are turning into a catch-all party of all “progressive” strands, rather than sticking to environmentalism – which even some Tories sympathise with.
And, if the trans figure is 25% of the population, then the murder rate for trans becomes…almost negligible. So tiny a percent you can’t even see the slice on the pie chart. (It’s already small). So they lose one of their complaints about most oppressed ever, in every way, throughout history and to infinity and beyond.
In the US, I’ve always seen it spelled ‘pouf’ when it’s used that way, but I’m not expert. Just my two cents worth.
And the supporters they alienate are less fickle, and more likely to donate actual money…and do work that goes beyond sending out hateful tweets and creating memes.
I have a young friend who is constantly on me about my use of language. The woke don’t like this word or that word, because they’ve decided it means Y instead of X, while X is how I use it and intend to continue using it. We need to accommodate all their wishes so they will be allies. I finally got sick of it and told him how I saw it…these are not your allies. They will not be your allies. The moment you get the entire woketionary memorized, they will issue a new version, and every word you are now using will be verboten. They will move the goalposts every time. Why? Because they are not about being allies, not about changing things. They are about being special, and different, and contrarian, and having reasons to hate people and yell at them on the internet, while getting points for how wonderfully progressive and woke they are. They aren’t about ends, only about means. And their means are, quite frankly, just to be mean.
iknklast, #7
They didn’t, the Daily Mail’s journalist did. [insert joke here about iknklast being closely aligned with the Mail]
@ikhnlast There’s a guy called Darren McGarvey in Scotland who’s from the worst kind of lumpenproletariat, drug-addled background who now writes books and makes programmes and campaigns on class and drugs issues. Scotland has the worst record in Europe for drug deaths. He says he has moved class so that he can speak the lingo, but many people from a similar background who might want to get politically engaged find they are scolded for inappropriate language once they get into left activist circles. They might have the rights skills, insight and knowledge but they don’t use the exact right terms. It is a way of creating an elite. It’s like the code of speech the upper-classes of Britain used to have, for exclusion. and tribal solidarity.
It’s possible that everyone, or almost everyone, has a code of speech of that kind, or more than one of them.
This from the Australian Greens website.
Not sure how the “G” fits with “all women”. Same with the “First Nations”, unless they now all identify as women, which I know they do not. And the “T”. Even if you accept TWAW, how can that be reconciled with TMAM?
Women = Everyone
@ Roj, and that statement, while nonsensical, is also difficult to disagree with. I mean, I don’t disagree with it, despite the issues you raise that make it bizarre.
What it doesn’t do, however, is explain how all these diverse needs should be met, and without that, culture and typical behaviour takes over, women get talked over, squeezed out, and silenced.
I’d forgotten about this cartoon:
https://twitter.com/WillCCunningham/status/1272571527788142592/photo/1
“Introduce them to identity politics…”