The post-Trotskyist version of a witch trial
A comrade responds to Grant Buttars:
God help any woman who works in Scottish higher education who says that sex is immutable and is relying on University and College Union (UCU) Scotland Executive member and Branch President (UCU Edinburgh) Grant Buttars to defend her if some students demand she should be sacked.
In the post-Trotskyist version of a witch trial Buttars produces some of the most appalling arguments ever adduced by a man to justify the sacking of a woman. After a long set up referencing a case of a racist advocate of paedophilia in “When is it right for a union to support dismissal?”, Buttars explains it is OK when the target is a racist, an advocate of paedophilia or a feminist who doesn’t agree with him on sex and gender.
He tries to justify the ousting of Kathleen Stock from her job at Sussex University following a sustained campaign of intimidation and harassment by students which was supported by the UCU branch there. His core argument is that women who openly question the effects of gender ideology on women’s lives are comparable to Nazis and should be treated as such.
And the two are comparable because………..?
Stock’s senior management were quite supportive of her when a group of masked protestors were on her campus and putting up stickers demanding she be sacked. What sort of union activist has a problem with a management protecting a worker facing unprecedented harassment? Grant Buttars is breaking new ground for trade unionism and 21st century revolutionary socialism. All the more so since RS21 only exist because they correctly identified the sexism in the Socialist Workers Party and left because of it. Now they are supporting the hounding of women for being feminists.
…
Solidarity with the oppressed also includes solidarity with women who know sex is real and say so in public. The RS21 piece is the latest and most extreme development in a prioritising of identity politics over material reality and class solidarity.
If we’re not allowed to recognize material reality when we see it, how can we deal with pandemics and global warming and heavily armed insurrectionists trying to cancel elections?
I just had a look at Buttars twitter profile. He/him is a pronoun person, no surprise there. Being a pronoun person without being trans appears to be its own indictment; what they think they are telling people about themselves is probably much different than what it lets me assume about them, most of it unfavorable.
Also, this RS21 group (@revsoc21) claims to be feminist in its twitter profile. In a pig’s eye.
A reminder that Kathleen Stock offered to have a discussion with those who disagreed with her views in August.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2021/now-cancelled/
Not only did most of them aggressively refuse this offer of a discussion, but when Peter Tatchell agreed to take part, he was harangued by the likes of Roz Kaveney until Tatchell backed down.
“If we’re not allowed to recognize material reality when we see it, how can we deal with pandemics and global warming and heavily armed insurrectionists trying to cancel elections?”
Judith Butler will say we can identify out of it. Humanity can just identify as “healthy people”, “normal climate people” and “physically unharmed by the far-right people” and humanity will be fine.
Well you see, Nazis paired a strongly authoritarian government with nativism, xenophobia, and ideas of racial superiority, and they were willing to murder millions to get their way. And Kathleen Stock disagrees with trans people, which is literally the same as murdering millions of people.
Really Ophelia, it is very Nazi of you to even ask the question.
While we’re on the subject of Marxist responses to gender ideology, here is a takedown of “The Transgender Issue” by narcissist Shon Faye:
https://irishmarxism.net/2021/11/03/three-books-on-transgender-politics-2-of-4-the-transgender-issue-an-argument-for-justice/
“Faye argues from the beginning that cis men and women are credited with more authority, insight and experience on both their own identity and those of trans people than trans people themselves, and welcomes the acceptance and confirmation by parents of the declaration by their 3-year-old male child that “I’m a girl”.
But *what* exactly is this 3-year-old identifying as? What is the character of the identity that those adults who are not biological women have, and how do they know it is the same or similar to the gender identity of biological women, if the latter admit to any such identity at all? Or would it not matter if it is not similar, introducing another irrelevant difference?”
It is quite a severe snake swallowing its own tail scenario isn’t it. “This little boy is a girl!” “What’s a girl?” “An evil child who wants to genocide trans children.” “This little boy is an evil child who wants to genocide trans children?”
Ultimately it only works if everyone “identifies as” the other sex, at which point it will start all over again but going in the other direction.
I’ve just been listening to Feedback on Radio 4, which deals with responses to its programmes.
The BBC is really a wondrous organisation. They had a piece about Nolan’s 10 part series on Stonewall and transgenderism.
First of all they read out the messages to Feedback. All of them were highly supportive. Usually they read out an anti for BBC balance, however brief, but there wasn’t one.
Then they interviewed Nolan, who said it was astonishing to get total support. Working in Northern Ireland, they’re used to contentiousness.
A big part of the piece was that the BBC itself had not allowed itself to be interviewed by Nolan about the influence of Stonewall.
Nolan said they had treated the BBC as they would do any other big UK institution which had become overly influenced by a lobby group. He also pointed out that their series was funded by the BBC.
Nolan, funded by the BBC, investigates the BBC, which won’t be interviewed, and then another part of the BBC, Feedback, hears these complaints. Another part of the BBC sent a statement that Stonewall was an advisor, and did not direct policy.
This reminds me of the Holy Roman Empire, a patchwork of sometimes competing, sometimes warring states.
Truly the BBC is wondrous.
Heh. Interesting.
I suppose it’s not all that surprising if you think about it – the BBC is a massive organization, so there must be bits of it that are X while other bits are Y (and others are some of each).
Yes – and the BBC does have to tread carefully with the government of the day, which is forever threatening its licence fee/leaning on it. I think it does pretty well for what is a state broadcaster in taking the state to task, as well as producing loads of great programmes (and loads of stinkers).