Max Dashu isn’t even the only one in the past week or so. There’s also for instance Nina Paley:
As a small business in Urbana, Arcadia has made the decision to cancel the Art Salon with Nina Paley event. We do this not to silence Nina’s art or her artistic voice but because this event is no longer about Nina’s art. There are many divided opinions regarding the topics that have arisen from Nina’s personal stances on certain issues. Our small business is not in a position to hold the forum for such a debate over these issues. Arcadia was formed to provide a unique and thoughtful space for families, creative exploration, and events in our Urbana community. It is regrettable that we must make this decision in this manner and we thank those of you who have come in and bought a coffee or drink and enjoyed the space with us and will continue to do so despite the issue at hand.
They don’t do it to silence Nina’s art or her artistic voice but they do it anyway. That is not, they imply, their goal, which is nice to know but it doesn’t change the fact that canceling her event does silence her art and her artistic voice in that particular place at that particular time.
And Ms Magazine joined the fad by deplatforming Meghan Murphy from an article for which they’d already interviewed her.
I've just learned that after I spent my time & energy responding to questions from a male journalist for a piece he published in @MsMagazine,an anti-feminist woman he interviewed demanded MsMagazine remove my quotes from the article b/c she doesn't like me https://t.co/p0uMUNy366
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
Why did they? Because Marina Watanabe told them of her putative “history of transphobia” and they squawked in fear and did what they were told.
An update to the @MsMagazine article situation: they contacted me and are removing Meghan Murphy's quotes from the article. They took her history of transphobia seriously and I appreciate their response.
— Marina Watanabe (@marinashutup) July 9, 2018
Here's the article. @msmagazine is it common journalistic practice to allow interviewees to vet other interviewees for articles? Is it ethical to remove quotes after the fact because one interviewee has political disagreements with another? https://t.co/ucdKskPX3O
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
Curious to know what co-founders @GloriaSteinem & @TheRobinMorgan think about this? Is it ethical, either from a journalistic perspective or feminist/political, to allow interviewees to dictate who is interviewed for a piece & have women whose opinions they don't like censored?
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
…Ironic that the person who is subjected to constant threats, hate speech, & abuse online on account of my feminist opinions is the person whose quotes have been removed from the article, for the very reason she is harassed and threatened in the first place…
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
Essentially @MsMagazine has legitimized the violent threats, abuse, and misogyny hurled at me on the regular, by going along with the slanderous, anti-feminist attacks lobbed against me by @marinashutup. What a sad state for a previously radical magazine.
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
Real women are really being attacked IN REAL LIFE because they have been labelled 'TERFs' and 'transphobic.' This is an article about how 'trolling' impacts women IN REAL LIFE and how men can support women targeted. Is the author 'supporting' me by agreeing to remove my quotes?
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
I was never informed by @GregMatos that he was removing my quotes on @marinashutup's request. Not sure if he had a choice in the matter or not? Either way, this whole situation is pathetic, unethical, and disgusting. @MsMagazine should be ashamed. As should its founders.
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) July 14, 2018
Makes you wonder if Putin’s behind it.
Comments
12 responses to “More shunning”
TERF is basically an online ‘kick me’ sign stapled to someone, a designation that a woman may now be attack from both sides.
When one clicks through to @GregMatos, one receives the following message:
“This account’s Tweets are protected.
Only confirmed followers have access to @GregMatos’s Tweets and complete profile. Click the “Follow” button to send a follow request.”
‘Nother words, Greg Matos welcomes no communication from those who might challenge his censorious decisions.
That’s interesting. I wonder if they were always protected or if he got heat for the no-platforming. Meghan said in one tweet that she doesn’t know he’s the one who dropped her part; it could have been an editor.
I may well have jumped to my conclusion, though Dr. Matos does say on his website, “I frequently post content on Twitter about psychology-related issues that are important to me, especially mental health and veterans issues.”
He really seems to be a good ‘un. The article is, in my opinion, pretty spot on, though not at all revelatory. But, dang, his quashing of Ms. Murphy’s quotes needs a lot of mea culpas from him.
This is all why I’m so against intersectionality. I mean it amounts to “Because I disagree with you on this, I can’t agree with you on that.”
Which means that every social justice movement kicks out all of the interesting people who are all worth listening to, in favour of a dull monotone of agreement. They want a diversity of the letterhead, where sure you have every minority represented but it is at their most photogenic and least real.
We want more women – except not that woman she says stuff that might irritate the trans community. We want more gay people, except not that one, he’s racist. We want more racial minorities – except her, she gave a speech at CPAC.
Intersectionality has become a recipe for groupthink and exclusion, because while we are enjoined to shut up and listen, the only people we are allowed to listen to are the intersectionalists, a narrow band of humourless holier than thou upper middle class twits who think themselves more aware than the rest of us, and have thus appointed themselves our school teachers despite having demonstrated precisely zero in terms of being fit for the role except for their ability to get offended at trivial crap in a world where the largest nuclear stockpile is in the tiny hands of a man who doesn’t get the difference between the words “would” and “wouldn’t”.
That’s what it feels like to read Pharyngula these days.
I used to read Pharyngula all the time!
I went there just the other day. It was… unnerving.
And We Hunted the Mammoth – this was in the comment section.
Apparently political clout to the trans activists means they can open their mouths and say two words before they get beaten up or shunned. The feminists they like to refer to as “TERFs” have no political power. What little we had, we lost in the rush to be the most “woke” and most “intersectional”. Meanwhile those with the real power (white straight men) are mostly left alone. Why? Because they have power. Because they can hit back in a way “TERFs” can not.
I’m beginning to wonder if this (B&W, not WHTM) is going to be the only site on the Internet a rad fem can read without cringing or being afraid of being doxxed, deplatformed, or targeted. Next thing you know, they’ll be working on disenfranchising any “TERF” – and they get to decide who is a TERF.
There’s also Feminist Current…which just got deplatformed by its advertising thingummy, but Meghan says that won’t stop them because subscribers subscribe.
(So a big THANK YOU to the people who subscribe to the B&W Patreon.)
And as soon as I get home, I plan to double my contribution. The work you do is too important not to support.
So a big THANK YOU to you then!
I listen to the podcast of the BBC Radio 4 program “Moral Maze” on a frequent basis. Not long ago, they had a discussion regarding trans* youth, and related issues. One person who appeared before the panel, Heather Brunskell-Evans, was the National Spokesperson for the Women’s Equality Party Policy on Ending Sexual Violence, “was” being the operative word. She was ousted from that position in what she has called a “McCarthyist” manner. Meghan Murphy interviewed her for the Feminist Current podcast, available here. One point Brunskell-Evans made during the interview that sums up very neatly some of the current, um, let’s call it a debate to be nice, is that feminists who question what she calls “transgender theory” maintain that biology is innate, while gender is a social construct. Those on the, as it were, other side, maintain the opposite, that gender is innate while biology is a social construct. Sure, that’s a fairly simple summing up of views, but it is one with a lot of impact and truth.