0+0=0
Billy Bragg says those evil women caused harassment of trans people to increase, doubters asked for evidence, he produced “people said.”
Several students said. Hearsay Your Honour. Also what was the baseline? Also, we know from long irritating experience that many trans activists call any kind of disagreement or skepticism “harassment,” so no, “several trans students have reported” doesn’t add up to evidence. At all.
Valid. Taking into account the incident recalibration that results in “misgendering = genocide,” then there was probably a higher likelihood of some very serious throat clearing or eyerolling happening somewhere within the general vicinity of a trans activist. Probably.
IF, and this is a big IF, tranz people are so good at passing, and IF TWAW and TMAM are correct, how does anyone know who the tranz are? Could it because they’re gobby shites, always attacking women?
Maybe, just maybe they deserve harassment since they seem to be assholes in a number disproportionate to their share of the population… Or is that somehow out of the question?
Nobody deserves actual harassment, but I also wonder what it consisted of. The term makes me think of people following you about, jeering and throwing peanut shells, but I suspect it’s more in line with “I’m thinking of going to the debate and hear what she has to say. Maybe she’s right.”
Not saying this is what BB is referring to (because I doubt he is), but there are more than two parties to the ‘debate’. I mean party A – hospital providing gender affirming care to young trans kids (aka cutting off teen girls breasts and sticking them on hormones). Party B – GC feminists saying, that is a terrible thing to be doing for a whole bunch of reasons. Party C – MAGA/QANON/Culture War Warriors/Sickos/fanatics, deluging said hospital with repeated bomb threats for months. There is no link between Party B & C, but supporters of Party A conflate that, often quite intentionally, even though the motivations, methods and desired outcomes of the two parties are utterly different.
#5 Rob
“party A – hospital providing gender affirming care to young trans kids (aka cutting off teen girls breasts and sticking them on hormones)”
TAs will rebut by saying hospitals don’t perform ‘gender affirming’ surgeries such as bilateral mastectomies. The rebuttal to their rebuttal is… yes, currently, but not for lack of trying on your part.
#5 Rob, unfortunately there are GC feminists who do ally with the far right wing anti-trans activists. It makes me crazy when people refer to anyone who is anti-trans as “gender critical”, like Matt Walsh. It doesn’t help that right wing media is the only place GC views can be expressed, because going on Tucker Carlson does make it seem like GC feminists are MAGA adjacent. WOLF working with Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and other right wing legal organizations doesn’t help. The new “gender critical” law firm they are working with is led by an attorney who worked for Betsey De Vos in the Trump administration.
When Proud Boys and other right wing extremists show up at Posie Parker’s events, it rubs off on gender critical feminists. I repeatedly see the media refer to religious, right wing, homophobic bigots as “gender critical” and misrepresent GC beliefs as regressive, biological essentialism that does not accept gender nonconformity, because that is what men like Matt Walsh and Billboard Chris promote. Billboard Chris has actually blamed feminism for gender ideology because feminists supposedly promoted the belief that there is no different between men and women. A lot of GC feminists have supported, and misrepresented, what laws like DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill really said and the impact they have. There are a lot of “Gender Critical feminists” who are perfectly willing to overlook or flat out deny the homophoba in many anti-trans laws being put forth by the right wing. The Gender Critical movement has to learn if you sleep with dogs you wake up with fleas.
Eava #7
I share your concerns. I touched on some of the same themes here. It’s a hell of a dilemma to be in, isn’t it. We can’t win this battle on our own, and the only “allies” available tend to be Right wing. I’m not saying GC feminists shouldn’t use the options that are available to them (within reason). We don’t have the luxury of having lots of attractive options to chose from, and sometimes you have to work with Stalin to defeat Hitler.
But there is a real danger involved, and it’s not just getting “associated with” the far Right, but actually becoming more like them. To repeat what I said earlier:
As I said back then, I don’t think that gender critical feminists are any more vulnerable to capture than any other group. I’m just not sure they’re less vulnerable either, and considering how easily even the self-appointed voices of Science™, Reason™, Skepticism™ and Critical Thinking™ could be taken in, that’s already plenty of cause for concern.
#7 Eava,
The trans allies will have to learn that calling anyone “right wing” just because they have something in common with some real right wing group, may end up making the right wing bigger.
If some problems that the left feels uncomfortable about are starting to get visible, but instead of trying to fix the problem, the left tries to shout those people down who try to make it visible, the general public will get the message that the only way to get this problem fixed, is by voting right wing.
I have lived through some sort of episode here in Belgium, where there is an extreme right wing party, VB, that was despised by almost all other parties. But the climate was so toxic that any problem the VB mentioned became intractable. Anyone that dared to agree that the VB had a point in bringing a particular problem under public attention, was labeled a fascist. Anytime someone came with a workpoint that had some common aspect with the VB, he was asked by the media if he wasn’t bringing the VB political program into reality. The result as that a lot of problems became neglected and the VB grew in popularity because they were handed a quasi monopoly for pointing out problems.
This growth only stopped when one party had the spine to answer that they didn’t let other parties decide their own program. That they wouldn’t drop a political point just because the VB, agreed with them on that.
(Of course, if Guilt by Association is all kosher now, then two can play that game. If gender critical feminists have to answer for the opinions of anyone who hasn’t forgotten what we all used to know less than ten years ago regarding the reality of biological sex, then the gender uncritical side has to answer for Trans Away the Gay.
Oh, and do you know who else believed that 2+2=4?
Hitler!!!)