Down with this sort of thing
That talk by Julie Bindel at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford (across the river from Manchester) went off without a hitch this afternoon. Friends who went say it was terrific.
There was a “protest” of sorts…but the sorts were pretty pathetic sorts.
They did get more than two people, eventually.
I’m told the library volunteers took them tea. It’s a chilly day.
PROTEST REVIEW
Bad signs. Most are too wordy and small. “Terf Off” is ok but surrounded by too much white space. Nobody outside those dozen people knows about whatever internecine conflict inspired that bizarre “actual Goths” sign.
No onlookers. Who is supposed to care about this?
Looks more like a handful of people, some in weird half-assed costumes, standing around shooting the shit than a proper demonstration.
I give this weak protest only 1 molotov cocktail (out of 5). Next time stay home.
Funny coincidence, because a handful of people, some in weird half-assed costumes, is what it was. After all that yelling and screaming on the Facebook page for the event…this. It’s hilarious.
I’m left wondering if any of those threatening to attend – and I mean *threatening* – actually attended this rally.
Nothing says “it’s all about me”, than a posturing goth though – whatever the protest is about. I think I caught wind of that discussion as a tuned out – shortly after criticizing the disingenuous appropriation of punk culture by some “protesters”/keyboard warriors. I’m not punk, but neither are any of these folks. Punk ended in the 80s and the rest is nostalgia*. The last whiff of post-punk died before Thatcher – folks may as well be calling themselves Victorian, or one of Che’s lieutenants, or the drummer from Bread.
There’s a thing of latter-day edgy folk identifying as a part of finite pop culture movements from back in the day, so I’m gathering that’s what’s going on with the goth thing. It’s not post-anything, it’s roleplay.
* Not that that’s an inherently bad thing.
Also, this lot look like more of a self-regarding “Not In My Name” crowd, than a porridgy “Down With This Sort of Thing”.
For fuck’s sake people, I’m trying not to get banned here and you’re not making it easy. ;-)
The Goth thing is a joke. It’s a reference to a totally unhinged TERF who is not Bindel but a hundred times worse. Brennan has become associated with TERFs in the same way Dawkins has become associated with atheists.
It’s weird that, on this blog, at first it was horrible that vicious people were trying to silence Bindel, and now it’s hilarious that the people who are disgusted by her transphobia are pathetic because they turn out to be a small number of fun-loving smiling people. What do you want? Some violent mob that would confirm your worst fantasies? Or the reality? Harmless people who just want to be treated with respect and not constantly fucking maligned and mocked? Because make no mistake, Bindel is cruel, and unapologetically cruel. In a Milo sort of way, if you know what I mean.
Ach, wordy signs are the thing now, have been forever. Reaction against SWP sloganeering .
There are very few of them. And this is a hop from Manchester which has a huge student population, real traditions of protest and a large and lively LGBTQetc community. Not that Salford is without these things. I bet this group weren’t the ones ringing up issuing threats, they look harmless and I could imagine having a conversation with them. I like that they were taken tea.
Silentbob: you’ve linked there to Bindel noting someone’s claim to be a woman based on a “feeling”. This is exactly the core of the argument. It doesn’t strike me as cruel per se to question that claim, in fact it seems important. This is not someone who has transitioned or anything like that. And there are unhelpful comments there, like the first one saying that someone who’s never had a period is no sister of theirs. If taken literally, that would be ridiculous, since there are reasons why a woman might not have periods. I say this as much because I feel caught myself between wanting to respect people’s sense of themselves, while acknowledging the truth and justice of a feminist position on gender. If sex is a matter of declaration only that analysis is undone, and if you’re going to undo it, it had better be for good reason. And it’s not cruel to say so, it’s part of intelligent discussion (of course, cruel things have been said, but not in this case).
Correction, there’s an indication that they are headed towards transition.
Silentbob: “The Goth thing is a joke.”
Cheers for the link. So group membership in a pop culture movement is being treated as analogous to being or not being a woman? That’s weird, and while there’s a bundle of other Internet stuff to give the meme a bit of history, at base… still weird.
I’ll retract my speculation on the goth thing, if only to avoid going further down that rabbit hole.
As for “fun-loving smiling people”, I saw the precursor to the protest unfold on Facebook, but I guess one can smile and love a certain kind of fun at the same time.
Imagine if we could have real conversations about this current iteration of the “trans” phenom, feminism, socially constructed versus innate/inborn “gender”, sexism in male-socialized activists, the competing needs of natal females versus “transwomen” versus post-op “transsexuals” versus “transmen”, etc. without death threats, invitations to drink bleach or die in a fire, hurled invective like TERF & DIE CIS SCUM, hysterical efforts at censorship & deplatforming, ridiculous claims that using pronouns “incorrectly” results in death, etc.
What a marvelous day that will be.
All internet bluster. All the dozens of facebook threats, all the silly tantrums. And it was just a handful of oddballs. They couldn’t shut down anything even if you gave them the door keys. This is why the regressive idiots will never win. They are a joke.
Dan @ 7 – I think we can respect people’s sense of themselves, while acknowledging the truth and justice of a feminist position on gender. I even think it’s not as difficult as it’s been made to look by people who keep pushing the concept of [people’s sense of themselves] to a non-alternative Fact about reality.
Looks to me like the protesters had a great turnout! I’ll bet this includes 95% of the activists protesting the event. Each person in this photo represents approximately 1,062 sock puppets.
Silentbob @ 5 – No, Julie is not cruel. I do know what you mean, and I know that it’s not true. Comparing her to Milo Yiannopoulos is disgusting.
Also, don’t use the epithet “TERF” here.
@ Silentbob
I had no doubt that the Goth thing was a joke. But decontextualized inside jokes don’t necessarily make for good protest signs, assuming that the protest’s intended audience is people outside of the protest.
That too. I have no idea why Silentbob thought I needed to be told it was a joke – I nowhere said it wasn’t a joke. I nowhere even implied it wasn’t. There was plenty of jokeyness.
Nope, not cruel. Hell, if that’s cruel, Christopher Hitchens was a million times crueler, going around telling people their god doesn’t exist.
Don’t play this game, Silentbob.
People attacked a small library dedicated to working class history, attacked it moreover because it invited a woman to speak on a topic that had nothing to do with their pet cause.
People attempted to silence Bindel and punish the organization that invited her, as transactivists have done to anyone who criticizes their ideology. I invite you to read the pertinent chapters of Alice Dreger’s Galileo’s Middle Finger, for starters.
The fact that the much ballyhooed protest turned out to be small and silly doesn’t erase what came before, and what came before was both ridiculous and chilling.
P.S. TAs are currently going after a women’s library in Vancouver, demanding they remove certain books from the shelves.
Regardless of whether you consider that tweet to be cruel – it isn’t but that’s not the point – comparing her to Milo? Piss off.
#18
I would guess that part of the humour comes from the fact that it is a relief that this time, the protest turned out to be merely pathetic instead of vicious.