The G word
This is breathtaking. An institute for prevention of genocide equates non-belief in magic gender with actual genocide. Genocide.
I haven’t been able to find out how reputable or established or widely known the Lemkin Institute is, but I don’t think it’s just a couple of teenagers and their phones.
It issued a statement last month saying we (gender criticals) are on the way to committing genocide.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention voices its concern over the growing number of laws introduced in the United States that target transgender individuals and the transgender community. Anti-trans hostility in the US has become a staple of the Republican Party’s election strategy and is clearly being used to stoke voters’ fears of a changing world by raising the specter of a malevolent polluting force tied to liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and democracy. The Lemkin Institute believes that the so-called “gender critical movement” that is behind these laws is a fascist movement furthering a specifically genocidal ideology that seeks the complete eradication of trans identity from the world.
That’s so crazy it makes my head swim…and scares me a little. I think it’s threatening toward people like me. Are we going to end up screaming at each other “No you’re the genocider no you are”?
If trans ideology disappeared while the people who formerly called themselves trans simply went on with their lives being lesbian or gay, or gender-nonconforming, or both, would that be genocide? Or would it be people dropping a particular way of describing themselves in favor of a different one?
The Lemkin Institute seems to be saying we’re like China versus the Uyghurs: trying to force a set of people to abjure their beliefs and way of life to make themselves acceptable to a totalitarian government. That is, they seem to be saying that unless they’re saying that we’re actually hoping and plotting to kill all the trans people until there isn’t a single one left.
It’s slightly staggering that they don’t pause to remember that gender critical people don’t have quite the same kind of power and reach that the Chinese government has or that Hitler had. We don’t control armies or prisons or the medical establishment or the universities (all too obviously) or the banks or the media. We don’t “seek the complete eradication of trans identity from the world”; we point out what’s wrong with trans ideology and its consequences for women. Also, by the way, we’re not the ones cheering on surgeries that sterilize people.
I’ll stop there for now. I’m having a hard time believing what I’m reading.
Only one side here is actually sterilizing children.
This article is daft.
It’s like saying about UK politics that Remainers want the genocide of Brexiteers.
I wonder what effect this will have on the wider world? Lots of depressed people with gender dysphoria are being told by outfits like this crowd that J. K. Rowling, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Suzanne Moore hate them and want them to all die.
If this is the case, those people will think, why shouldn’t gender critical people be subject to ostracization, firing, and physical assault?
“Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group”
That’s WikiP but pretty much word for word match for every other decision.
So in order for them to be victims of genocide, they must be a religion? I suppose the definition of religion can be stretched to include cult? Or are they claiming to be a race (one that can only perpetuate by kidnapping children from other races)? Surely they don’t consider themselves and ethnicity . . . that generally requires some continuity and again I can think of no ethnicity incapable of sustaining itself through voluntary procreation. Perhaps they feel the are a nation unto themselves?
Don’t you hate trying to figure out people who can only think and speak in word salads?
. . . and speaking of word salads, apparently my brain can not differentiate between decision and definition.
Genocide… FFS. Humpty-dumpy much?
I don’t have strong enough language for this one, emojis or otherwise.
Woman? Whazzat?
Fuck but we’re done for.
Perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of Genderism is the way it’s managed not just to convince people that it’s true, but that it’s self-evidently true. We’re apparently all born with both a Gender Identity and the knowledge that we’re all born with a gender identity. Denying that we believe in it is therefore actively perverse, like pretending that we don’t see the sun when we’re squinting right up at it. Or it’s like atheists insisting they don’t believe in God.
This is the only way to make sense of their total inability to understand Helen Joyce’s statement that she’d like to see transgenderism “eradicated” as another way of saying she’d like gender dysphoria to be treated and cured instead of celebrated by embedding it into an invented category of True Identities trapped in bodies that don’t match. Even if Genderists disagree with the way Joyce views the situation they should at least be able to recognize that she’s seeing the situation in a different way. They shouldn’t import their own belief that being transgender is an innate, immutable aspect of identity into her statement and see her advocating death camps and genocide.
An institute for the prevention of genocide shouldn’t do it either. Are there no grownups in the room at all?
I suppose this genocidal epistemology could also be referring to the hundreds of thousands of children, teens, and adults who will kill themselves if they can’t use the bathroom they want to, but I still hold on to the hope that an organization that researches the number of people murdered in pogroms and purges would try to gather data on this.
Then they haven’t been paying attention. A detailed, nuanced and careful reading of the situation would not lump feminists questioning and resisting the all-too-obvious consequences of gender ideology’s impact on policies that already touch on women’s health, safety and dignity, together with religious bigots who oppose anything that upsets their Bible-scented “God created man and woman” worldview. If they can’t tease apart these two very different takes on trans “rights” then I wouldn’t put much stock in any other pronouncements. It would seem they’ve uncritically absorbed trans activists’ hyperbole and projection.
Disagreemnt over the claims made by genderists, and doubt about the psychological or physiological causality or justification for those claims is not genocidal ideation; it is simply one side’s understanding that the other side is mistaken. (Though for those keeping score [Hi there Lemkin Institute!], only one side seems to be using violence, threats, and intimidation.) It’s not that those mistaken trans identifying people don’t “exist,” it’s that we think they are wrong about what they claim about and for themselves, (i.e. the right to access women’s single-sex spaces). If everyone just stopped making this mistake, the people making that mistake wouldn’t suddenly poof out of existence, but there would be no transgenderism, or gender ideology. And the world would be a much better place for its absence. It would simply go away without anyone or anything being “eradicated.”
Last time I checked, not believing what people claim about themselves is very different from actively hunting them down and killing them. Lots of people don’t see Jews as “the chosen people.” Similarly, lots of people (including other denominations of Christianity) would dispute the claims of some Christians that they are “saved” to the exclusion of all others. Many people do not believe that the Quran is the word of any god. None of this disbelief harms those who happen to believe any of those things. In fact, depending on the political power and influence that believers often hold, it is non-belief itself that can get you into trouble. In some places you can be put to death for failure to believe and recite the preferred, prescibed formulae of that jurisdiction’s believers. This kind of persecution is closer to what is happening to feminists than to genderists.
Indeed.
I might not exactly call it “a malevolent polluting force,” but there aren’t a lot of nice descriptors that I’d be inclined to apply to a movement that advocates the mutilation, sterilization, and lifelong medicalization of minors, sometimes without the knowledge of their parents. And while it’s been a long time since the Republican Party was a friend of democracy, genderists, through their reliance on institutional capture (including media complicity), bullying and intimidation, along with “NO DEBATE!” have actively made themselves enemies of public accountability, fair dealing, and openness. Any influence they hold was not obtained “democratically.” A transparent, openly debated evaluation of genderists’ shaping of policy and regulation would strip them of this unearned, undemocratic power, which they would doubtless paint as “unfair.” Suck it up, buttercup; what goes around comes around. Still not genocide.
Much of the legislation being painted as “anti-trans” is aimed at keeping women and girls’ sports single sex. As has been pointed out here many times, truthful reporting would not be claiming these are “bans” on transgender youth from participating in sports, but measures intended to prevent boys from playing on girl’s teams, or being given access to girl’s bathrooms and change facilities. Boys, however they “identify,” are still free to try out for the boys teams. Nobody is stopping them. If they don’t make the cut, they can join all the other boys who didn’t. They have no right to demand placement on teams for which they do not meet any requirements for age, weight, height, etc. Sex is simply another of those requirement, or at least it should be. Failure to believe that boys are girls is not a crime, and is not in any way discriminatory. There is a near infinite list of things that boys are not and cannot be. Not believing that they are not any of those impossible things is not anybody else’s problem. Not agreeing that they are girls does not violate the boys’ rights in the slightest, any more than failing to believe claims that they are invisible, or made of titanium, which are as impossible as claiming to be the sex they are not.
There are far too many who think exactly this already. Thinking this and acting on it.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s gobsmacked.
It would be nice if the smackage were a bit more widely spaced so that my gob had a chance to recover. As it is, I think I’m developing calluses.
The conflation of all folks who oppose genderism–regardless of their motives or reasoning–is, once again, the root of this. It doesn’t help that mainstream media tend to completely ignore actual feminists, making it quite easy for an outside observer to come to the conclusion that this debate has two ‘sides’–and I’ll be blunt: Given a choice between Tucker Carlson and any of the blathering nincompoops Ophelia highlights here, I might pause to consider, but it wouldn’t take long. India Willoughby is an absurd, narcissistic twit, but Tucker would cheerfully fire up the gas chambers for those he doesn’t like–and I’m not being hyperbolic there.
Hell, we even fall into that trap here. In the space of two paragraphs, YNnB? detailed very clearly the distinction–then reverted to discussing the problem as a two-sided affair–albeit, one where the socio-religious conservatives were the ones who’d been eliminated from consideration. The problem is that when GCs use such language, once again, outside observers of the debate go, “Oh, two sides, right, so you’re on Tucker’s.”
It’s maddening and appalling that we’re the ones who have to make all the effort to keep the lines clear–but if we don’t, I guarantee no one else will. The TRAs will take every opportunity to meld us with the GOP and MAGAts at every opportunity, and meanwhile the SRCs will cheerfully use us as cover for legitimately hateful and violent speech and actions.
sastra @#6:
To ask that question is to answer it. Gotta be a blend of Playschool, Tellytubbies, and Sesame Street, though those are all in the intellectual stratosphere when compared with this garbage.
Women on Ovarit are discussing this, and doing a little investigating. I had a quick look at the group’s website; the rest of their content looks superficially legit, and they seem to primarily focus on countries where genocides might reasonably be considered to be happening–their principal projects are Somaliland, Ukraine, and Armenia. They’ve also posted ‘red flag’ alerts for such countries as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia and Brazil. All of their other statements seem to relate to ‘better known’ (ie real) genocides; two statements dealing with the USA are about immigrants/asylum seekers and Native Americans. The gender identity freakout seems to be a one-off, and very different from the rest of their output–I wonder if someone’s snuck it in while the leadership team wasn’t paying attention (or convinced the (all-female) leadership team that it would be ‘kind’ to post it, without them realising how big a hit it was going to be to any credibility they might have).
The issue I always harp on about is convicted rapists [who were “AMAB”] being housed in women’s prisons because they say that they’re women.
How does questioning the validity of that policy make one an advocate of genocide?
How does having concerns about the safety outcomes of male-bodied TIMs who have been convicted of rape being placed in close contact with women become hatred of all transgender people?
A philosophy that refuses to define the words “gender,” “sex”, “men”, “women”, “male”, “female”, consistently (if at all) is certainly having a lot of success getting its demands met.
Thanks guest. I wonder if it’s basically just a website – not that there’s anything wrong with that, she says, being just a website herself…but on the other hand I don’t call myself an institute.
One of the co-founders, Elizabeth von Jeoden-Forgy, PhD, is an expert in Genocide and Gender. “Expert in genocide, gender, prevention, and the history of colonialism. ” That may be the reason that there are no references nor footnotes in this statement, and I would imagine that she is the one who wrote this section from the top of her head without references to any research other than from the tweets of IW and Colin Montgomerie.
Why must it not be challenged? Because it just is. Beat it kid, you’re botherin me!
The following paragraphs are claims that science is on their side, and anyone who respects science knows that:
1. Science is never settled, it’s provisional.
2. Science is not supposed to lead the conclusion, it is supposed to follow it.
3. Any concept must be challenged, no matter how established it it.
4. We need a theory of mind that explains trans identity, none have been proposed, let alone tested.
5. Gender non-conformity is not the same thing as trans gender “identity.” There have always been people who don’t conform, trans identity is a recent claim, and is meant to conform the GNC with established gender.
This is the kind of essay that TRAs use to justifiy their hateful rhetoric and threats. They can write it off to self-defense.
Innnteresting. A picture begins to form.
It looks to me like Elisa von Jeoden-Forgy, currently cobbling together an academic career as a freeway flyer at multiple third-tier colleges in the Northeast, is trying everything she can to get some traction. Perhaps the all online certificate in genocide prevention (that and 3.50 will get you a cup of coffee) she designed wasn’t bringing in enough money without extending it to fake genocides.
The Lemkin Institute has a contact button. I just asked them a few questions.
She’s on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/vonJoedenForgey/with_replies
I’m…how shall I say…not enormously impressed.
@18 looking forward to reading your post when you get the answers….
I’m not hugely confident I’ll get any.
just random thoughts:
would one *really* not mention that eponymous Raphael Lemkin guy anywhere?
I don’t run institutes myself, so I dunno
no dice on the about page
(I get hits for “Raphael”/”Rafael” if I search the whole site but only in what appear to be guest articles)
I think I may have been overgenerous thinking that the gender ideology statement somehow slipped by the leadership team.
Because SHUT UP!
These are exactly the sorts of questions that required trans activism to insist on “NO DEBATE!” because the answers explode their position. Doubting any of it destroys all of it. Genderism is a collection of tatty yarn that identifies as a sweater, consisting of little but loose threads. Men in women’s prisons; men in women’s rape crisis centres; men and boys in women and girls’ sports; men in women’s washrooms; men on women’s short lists; “woman” erased while “man” goes about its business in medical communications.All of these are happening: none of them are theoretical or fear-mongering speculation. Pull on any of these hard enough (i.e. at all), and the whole thing comes apart.
(I tend to focus on TiMs because they seem to be much more active and entitled. They’re also much more of a threat, in that their demands harm women, whereas those of TiFs do not have the same impact on men, though their demands for “inclusive” language that erases women is certainly harmful to them. Heartbreakingly, young women wishing to escape the toxic lot this culture deals them, aren’t wrong in trying to do so, but instead of being encouraged to work with others to fix the culture, they’re offered the promise of individual liberation through “fixing” their flesh.
Keeping the lines clear is bloody difficult, seeing as how so many are trying to erase them, or have redrawn them as mad scribbles. I’ve always tended to be a left-leaning kinda guy, but Canada’s two major left-of-centre parties, the Liberals and NDP, are both captured. (The Conservatives are only ever going to be right about this issue only in a “stopped watch/the sky is blue” default sort of way.) I suspect some of the capture is the result of a combination of reflexive (but uninformed, or ill-advised) rank and file “kindness,” along with a gross overestimation of the importance and representativeness of twitter trans activism. But drafting legislation and party platforms should call for a lot more analysis and introspection than the aim of “being kind.” The fact that genderism has succeeded as far as it has is a frightening demonstration of what low regard women are held. It’s like women’s fifteen minutes of political attention is up (before it even started), to be handed over to trans activism, which is going to keep hold of it for-fucking-ever.
So we have nominally progressive parties embracing and promoting a movement that is a regressive reification of sexist, patriarchal stereotypes. A movement that frequently resorts to bullying and violence to silence and intimidate its critics. Government committees refuse to take testimony from women on the impact of self-ID on women. We have right wing parties who are no friends of women or feminism, discovering the political usefulness of the sudden inability or unwillingness of politicians on the left to say what a woman is. Media outlets which have been infuriatingly evenhanded in handling many issues have wholeheartedly adopted trans terminology and perspective, presenting resistance or questioning as bigotry and hatred. We have parents happy to “trans away the gay” (just like they do in Iran) and teachers happy to do it behind parents’ backs. “Watchful waiting” is branded as “conversion therapy” while mutilation, sterilization and chemically delayed/incomplete sexual development and maturity is called “health care,” with doctors, sworn to “do no harm,” lined up to yeet the teets. I defy anyone to draw a nice, neat Venn diagram of this all of this. It’s hard to not sound like a crank when writing the simple truth about these things: MEDIA COVER-UP! FETISHISTS! BIG PHARMA! THEY’RE AFTER YER KIDS! GET OFF MY LAWN!
‘scuse me will I readjust my tinfoil hat, I can feel them trans rays cookin’ my brain!
“The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has grown from the Iraq Project for Genocide Prevention and Accountability”
Sounds good, sounds important, until you find that just bout the only reference to the Iraq Project on the internet is in the biographical acknowledgements of contributers to the 2021 book ‘The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism’. It’s a project founded by Dr von Joeden-Forgey, but it doesn’t appear to have done anything.
https://tinyurl.com/yn5me9ac
Actually I think I’ve found why Dr von Joeden-Forgey might be against the feminists.
“As the parent of two trans and queer children, this was clearly not a comfortable space for me. I had to think hard about attending the meeting, since the inherent value of my children as trans and gay was denied by these co-sponsors”
https://ongenocide.blog/2020/10/15/the-unbearable-coldness-of-empire-isis-trials-kayla-mueller-the-tragedy-of-us-power/
The plot thickens and thickens!
@26–we should have guessed, this seems to be true of pretty much every high-profile genderist.