Still extremely yikes
Laurie Penny had a brief moment of partial spine and said in a tweet that the bullying of Kathleen Stock was a little over the top. Then she deleted the tweet.
She left a reply up though.
Do tell feminist women they’re wrong wrong wrong but don’t use smoke flairs and giant signs.
No mention of women being harmed of course.
She doesn’t bother to remove Kathleen from these conversations, which would have been a touch more thoughtful than sending her yet more abuse via the furious replies.
The bit where she takes it back:
So she reflects, and reverts to joining the team in bullying Kathleen some more. At the behest of one of the bullies.
Then tweet after tweet after tweet, most of them also going to Kathleen, in which Laurie Penny apologizes and withdraws it all and apologizes some more. It’s contemptible.
Threats of violence — the real kind — are far more intimidating than men not being able to take over all women’s spaces, far more intimidating than belonging to or supporting an organization that actually promotes lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights, instead of remaining with organizations that LGB founded, but which have been eaten from the inside out by the parasitic T. WTF are they looking at, that they can’t see that burning in effigy is a violent threat?
But trans people aren’t fighting for their existence, they’re fighting for viewpoint dominance. Oh and creating an atmosphere in which a person fears for her safety is not mere ‘tone’ ffs.
The statistics don’t bear out the idea that trans people are routinely being murdered for being transgender. That leaves several possibilities:
1.) TRAs have joined conservative Christians in embracing a persecution narrative, one in which the Other Side is intent on committing genocide after forcing the persecuted to renounce Christ/follow gender stereotypes.
2.) Trans people understand themselves to be walking fantasy avatars, caught up hopelessly in what Kathleen Stock calls “immersive fiction” to the point where they no longer identify with reality.
3.) Bit of both.
4.) Neither.
“fighting for viewpoint dominance” is an excellent way of putting it.
I was thinking just now, after a long walk on a grey afternoon, that even if I somehow became persuaded that trans people really are “who they say they are,” I still wouldn’t care the way they want us to care. I just don’t think they matter particularly – they matter as much as everyone else does, but not more than that. Their cause is not important or interesting or significant. They’re like people obsessed with a tv show or fantasy novel or the like. Go ahead, knock yourselves out, but don’t expect anyone else to care. I think they’ve already sucked up way more attention than they have any right to, and should now just go away and be quiet and leave the rest of us alone.
“Men are not women,” is not an extreme position. As ever, it’s 100% projection. The TA dogma is the extreme position.
“Fighting for their existence” is a lie. “Fighting for their lives,” is a lie.
The GC position is:.
“Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.”
None of the TAs has ever substantiated the claim that saying men are not women — especially women saying that men are not women — has any connection whatsoever to any kind of “harm” to trans people. I asked 5 or 6 years ago, “what harm? What is the causal nexus?” Nobody has answered that question yet. The claim of extraordinary murder rates is a lie, and the murderers are men who murder over sex, drugs, or money. It’s absolutely nothing to do with women truthfully stating that men are not women. That’s not the genesis of any identifiable “harm” that trans people may encounter.
It’s lies all the way down.
That — and the narcissism — are fully sufficient to account for whatever misgivings people may have about trans people.
Laurie Penny has now been told that she is not sufficiently evil to TERFs, and that even a slight deviance from The Word is enough to be cast out:
https://twitter.com/anonacademic_uk/status/1447523161172492289