Guest post: Some sort of “All Access” pass
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Just like.
What a vast amount of time and attention and energy people are squandering on this absurd caricature of social justice, when they could be doing something useful.
The fact that women are forced to respond to this bullshit when they could be directing their efforts towards other necessary projects instead of having to fight rearguard actions to protect rights they thought they’d won already. Just like firefighters, whose job is already difficult and dangerous enough without the added distraction of false alarms and arson.
Or, to put it in a cruder way, TRAs are pissed off at campaigns against genital mutilation because that’s how you get trans people.
I think there’s more to it than that. I think that TAs cannot allow women to have anything for themselves. Third space bathroom provisions are not good enough. It’s access to female toilets or nothing. Rape and abuse shelters launched and run by and for women are expected to include TIMs. Again, no third space option is deemed acceptable. Why do the hard work of actually building up resources and institutions when you can force your way into those created by people whose identity you are now appropriating? Agreeing to a space for trans needs means admitting that TIMs are not actually women, and even though they are not, “forcing” them to admit this reality is apparently a non-starter. TIMs are to be “centered” in anything intended for women, or the righteous wrath of the woke is unleashed. Even LGB is not allowed to organize without the “T,” as such exclusion is “transphobic.” TIMs act as if they posess some sort of “All Access” pass that entitles them to glom onto whatever organization or entity that suits their fancy, demanding not only admittance, but redirection of the group’s mission to prioritize their needs above anyone elses’s, even at the expense ot that organization’s original base and target demographic (Hello Stonewall!). Resistance is Transphobic Violence.TIMs are not to be excluded by anyone from anything.
Ironically, it’s gender critical feminists in the UK, fighting the changes to the definition of “sex” being introduced to the Census, who are pointing out that the way this is being done will result in a loss of vitally important information that would be useful to the trans community. By making it impossible to tell how many trans people there are, it is impossible to track how they are faring when it comes to discrimination, employment, medical care, housing, etc. The pressure group that has succesfully orchestrated this back-room change in how the sex question is being asked, either did not think this through, or thought that being able to tick a box on the census offers is just too big a hit of “validation” and “affirmation” for AGPs to resist. Again, “inclusion” above all. This scorched earth policy of insisting on the primacy of validation, confirmation, and forcing others to share in their fantasy results in the rejection of genuine solutions that would actually benefit the health, safety, and well-being of trans people.
Thank you. Well written, and the modus operandi of MRA infiltration of groups of people with a genuine grievance in order to subvert them. They are parasites. Cuckoos in the nest, pretending to be something they are not just long enough to be able to take over; then kicking the original and intended members of the group out.
Thank you tigger.
With the “Trans Umbrella” ( https://greenfield.blogs.brynmawr.edu/files/2014/08/transgender-umbrella.jpg ) supposedly covering so many disparate groups, each with its own concerns and interests, one wonders about how the most vocal and pushy advocates are making it hard for those who have no desire to be aggressive and demanding. How much of trans activism is driven by beardy woke-bros who are not themselves trans? They have no personal stake in the matter. It’s not their own lives and safety on the line. There seem to be a large number of them making up the ranks of “footsoldiers.” At least some of these men must be piling on simply because they see an opportunity to abuse women with impunity. That’s before we get to the divisions that will exist between actually disphoric/dismorphic people, for whom medical transition may be the best solution, AGPs and “non-binary” people. There is also the degree to which other psychological issues and co-morbidities may be involved in trans-identified people. To imagine that there is one political solution that is going to benefit all of these groups of people (some of whom are in more need of health care than anything else) is far fetched. The loud, bullying AGP types who seem to be pushing the hardest against women’s rights, are doing no favours for all those who are quietly suffering with psychological difficulties that are best addressed by something other than a needless, macho, political showdown, or coup. Beardy wokebros are just along for the shits and giggles, gleefully stirring the pot and fanning the flames while they have the opportunity.
Unfortunately a lot of the “footsoldiers” seem to be real women, as judged from the ones who get quoted here. That is something I find very mysterious.
Athel, a lot of the anti-suffrage campaigners were women, too. And some of the noisiest anti-feminists I’ve know (including my mother who really knew how to be noisy). I guess…some women find the patriarchy comforting, or maybe just think they’ve found a good place in it they don’t want to lose?
And women have been feed a lot of codswallop that insists we are caring and nurturing (if that’s required, I’m not a woman), and we have become accustomed to scooting over for men. That might be part of it, but I suspect a lot of it is the nonsense being fed to children these days by groups such as Stonewall. They imbibe it in a progressive melange of ideas about rights, the trans lobby couches it as rights, and they just haven’t been given the critical thinking skills to sort through it.
When I first heard about “trans rights” I didn’t really think too much about it, beyond vague thoughts about Rene Richards. Being a man, I thought I had the luxury of not having to think about it. It was just another part of the “standard reflexive progressive package.” I think it was Ophelia’s departure from FTB that got me looking into this issue more closely. The more I saw, the less I liked. I’m not sure what my peak trans moment was, but I think such moments are needed to snap people out of their complacency, to get them off the sidelines.