Your views are not welcome in the Liberal Democrats
Lynne Featherstone celebrates LGBT history month with the Liberal Democrats:
We have a long way to go.
It is our duty and responsibility to fight for equal rights everywhere we can. For LGBT+ people to express who they are, without fear. For trans people to be seen as people and welcomed into all spaces. For people of any sexuality and gender to come and live here without persecution.
Wait a second.
First – who doesn’t see trans people as people? That’s a red herring. The issue isn’t whether they’re people or not, the issue is whether they can change material reality just by declaration.
And second – welcomed into all spaces? Like, for instance, into all our living rooms, even if we’re busy? That’s a ludicrous demand. Nobody is welcomed into all spaces, and that’s ok. We get to have some personal space, and we also get to have some social spaces where we can choose whom to welcome. Yes, that does include spaces for women, and that can mean literal / physical / natal women only if that’s what the women in question want.
But it turns out that Lynne Featherstone is downright hostile to women who decline to pretend that trans women are women exactly as women are.
I also have a message to those people who believe they can restrict trans women’s rights, deny their human rights, or exclude them from women-only spaces in the name of feminism: You are not feminists. Your views are not welcome in the Liberal Democrats.
I don’t know of any feminists who want to restrict trans women’s rights or deny their human rights; that’s another red herring. But the third item? Feminist women are not allowed to exclude men who say they “identify as” women from women-only spaces? That’s another matter, and I don’t think it’s one that Lynne Feathersone gets to adjudicate quite that abruptly. I also don’t think she gets to try to exclude feminist women from the Liberal Democrats quite that abruptly or to re-define feminism so that it excludes women who think that men are not women so abruptly.
Except that apparently L-people and their allies cannot express who they are without fear, if that expression involves taking a rational and political analysis of sexual discrimination, patriarchy and gender. Ooops.
There is a very simple lesson that all of the entitled, demanding shits need to learn. They can learn the club rules, speak the club language, know the club rituals, even wear the club colours, but none of that means the club is obliged to grant them membership, particularly if they fail to fulfil the single-most important criterion for membership. The club’s rights to restrict its membership trumps their sense of entitlement. If they don’t like it they can always start their own bloody club, it’s not that hard to do.
They could even borrow from the Little Rascals if stuck for a name. I think the She-man Women Haters Club has a certain ring of honesty to it.
God forbid anyone recognise the distinct differences between trans women and all other women.
I think what they want is not so much to “change material reality just by declaration” as to unilaterally redefine the word “woman”. Which is not something they should be allowed to do.
It seems to me that redefining ‘woman” is a form of changing material reality just by declaration.
Acolyte of Sagan – great analogy.
The problem with the club analogy is that club rules can be changed. I actually argued once with a “trans women are women” proponent who told me that “Womanhood does not need to be an exclusive club.”
My response would have been, “womanhood is not a club, period.” I didn’t get to make it, though; I was banned from the blog* for transphobia.
* We Hunted the Mammoth.
Lady M, I’ve been noticing on WHTM lately that Dave is frequently now referencing women with the prefix of cis- (also men, to some extent). Pretty soon B&W may be the only spot where sanity prevails, and the likes of us can hang out (us being, you know, “cis”-women who do not “identify as” cis, but are called cis- by everyone who insists that everyone has a right to determine their own identity. Everyone except “cis”-women).
Lady M., club rules can be changed, true, but changes usually come from within. Of course, there have been many instances of clubs’ rules having changes forced on them through legal means but I doubt there’s a law court in existence fhat would go beyond equal rights for transpeople and actually attempt to use the law to force a belief that transwomen are actual women (and transmen are men) on people.
Really, that’s what my analogy meant, that it doesn’t matter how insistent transwomen are, or how ‘female’ they might look and act; if women refuse to accept their claims to authentic womanhood there’s nothing the trans lobby can do to force acceptance*. I’ll admit that the ‘club’ analogy isn’t perfect, but analogies rarely are.
*would enforced belief in transwomens’ claims be called Sheria law?