Young-adult novelist and Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse takes the bold and original step of calling JK Rowling a bigot.
Things are said that sound reasonable. You would only know they were unreasonable — they were, in fact, wrong — if you had the patience to fact-check, or if you had the personal experience of counterevidence.
Like believing, or saying you believe, that men can be women? That kind of personal experience?
Is it common for transgender rights activists to virulently protest “feminist” conferences, as the podcast asserts?
To answer that last question, you would have to already know — because the podcast won’t tell you — that the “feminist” conferences protested by transgender rights advocates are typically gatherings that specifically exclude transgender women from the umbrella of the feminist movement.
There is no such umbrella. It’s a contradiction in terms. White people are not “excluded from the umbrella of the Black Lives Matter movement” because there is no such umbrella. Feminism is for and about women: that’s what the “fem” part means. We don’t exclude men, they just aren’t in the frame. Definitions are not invidious exclusion. Tigers aren’t “excluded” from the umbrella of “rabbits”; tigers just are not rabbits.
You would have to know that there are many feminist organizations and individual feminists, such as myself, who find this exclusion unconscionable.
Then you and they don’t understand the word “feminism.”
That transgender women don’t want to take down feminism; they want to be a part of it.
They “want to be a part of it” whether we like it or not, whether we consent or not. What does that sound like?
The piece goes on for many many more paragraphs but there’s nothing worth quoting – it’s all hand-waving and repetition.
H/t Sackbut
Comments
24 responses to “They want to be a part of it”
From the end of this sorry excuse for criticism:
This isn’t a review of a podcast (in the Lifestyle section no less), it’s a personal attack on Rowling. Even when Roger Ebert hated a movie, he didn’t go out of his way to savage the director. And the precautions being spouted above aren’t asking people to exercise critical thinking, they’re outright conspiratorial.
And then the end, about “there is heat here, and it needs to be felt” shows quite clearly that there is a witch trial of Rowling being conducted, and it’s also being conducted in the pages of the Washington Post.
I love how Hesse says sure, Rowling has never said anything overtly twansfobic, but that’s just because she’s so devious.
I had a comment that was deleted. Someone said something along the lines of, you don’t get to define what other people are, and what rights they claim. So I said great, I define myself as king of the world, and I have a right to the crown. I guess someone defined my post as unacceptable.
What a maroon, you can’t define yourself as a king, because there already are kings, and they are more powerful than you are, so they get to tell you that you are not a king.
At root, it’s the same reason that TIMs get to define themselves as women, and to define real women as “cis-women” (if not “TERFs”), while actual women don’t get to define their own selves: the TIMs are more powerful.
You tried a reductio ad absurdum on something that was absurd from the start: “Shut up, TERF, you don’t get to define who I am.”
You don’t get to define what other people are, they do.
But aren’t those other kings cis-kings?
I was never very good with sophisticated logic.
You had a comment on the Hesse piece that got deleted, yes? Not here? I didn’t delete nuffink!
Yes! Deleted by WaPo. Sorry for not specifying!
Whew! (Stupid WaPo.)
‘there already are kings, and they are more powerful than you are, so they get to tell you that you are not a king.’
Which is why TIFs don’t get to ‘identify into’ actual men’s things like the priesthood, all-male schools and clubs, or inheritances. (They can sometimes ‘identify into’ things for gay men, because gay men are lower in the social hierarchy than ‘real’ men.) It’s all so incredibly obvious and transparent and easy to understand if you pay attention.
“…the “feminist” conferences protested by transgender rights advocates are typically gatherings that specifically exclude transgender women from the umbrella of the feminist movement.”
Rephrased to remove bullshit:
“…the feminist conferences protested by transgender rights advocates are gatherings that know feminism is about the female sex.”
J.A.,
But he came close!
And claim every hard earned right or protection wrestled from the hands of the hawkiarchy by doveists for themselves instead of the birds for whom they were originally intended (as well as the ones who did all the actual work fighting for them). And turn it into a completely different movement exclusively dedicated to the interests of
hawkstrans doves, including the part about eating cis doves…And once again it’s a bad pun: The “feminism” that TIMs “want to be part of” has nothing in common with the “feminism” that, say, earned biological females the right to vote, the right to abortion, some protection from domestic violence and abuse etc. apart from the name itself (The flying mammal vs. club for hitting baseballs distinction again). The fact that both movements claim to stand up for the rights and interests of people called “women” is irrelevant, since the people called “women” by the former are not the same as the people called “women” by the latter.
If you define “feminism” the way it was understood by the people who first coined the term*, then TIM’s are indeed determined to “take down feminism” and replace it with – not just something different, but its polar opposite. The fact that they still insist on calling this polar opposite “feminism”, is no more relevant than the fact that Stalin and Mao tried to pass off their oppressive policies as “power to the working class” etc. Words and labels are cheap. You can call the right of hawks to eat doves “doveism” if you want to. It doesn’t mean you have a point.
* Or if you define “woman” the way practically everyone – including the people who now go out of their way to destroy the lives of anyone who haven’t turned 180° – used to do until the the last decade or so.
The US media ecosystem is full of “Feminist journalists” like Monica Hesse, all with *exactly* uniform opinions on J. K. Rowling, the transgender issue, and other controversies. Think Jessica Valenti, Molly Jong-Fast, Rebecca Traister, etc.
They all come from a similar class background, went to the same universities, and have exactly the same opinions on every issue. They regularly police Slack and Journalist Twitter to make sure no woman there ever steps out of line and says the wrong thing about Rowling, Bernie Sanders, Dave Chappelle, or their other hate figures.
The worst thing, though, is that these hacks all act like they’re bravely defying a “Patriarchy” that in fact almost never affects these rich women.
“The Herd of Independent Minds”, indeed.
“Listening to “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” is exhausting. It’s exhausting because it requires constant vigilance.”
These journos are always “exhausted” or “so tired” by everything. Here’s another example:
https://jezebel.com/prince-harry-spare-memoir-interviews-1849970263
There’s a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome joke in there somewhere.
Feminism as a movement effectively ended when it began including everything else and stopped emphasizing the class interests of actual women. TRAs have successfully turned most feminists into their handmaidens, and this is a real problem for the left because it gives women only a choice between a side that denies sex as a fact and a side that sees women as wholly subordinate to men. The GOP is taking this to the bank now politically because the Democrats can’t or won’t stand up and end this trans nonsense as many young Democratic voters have also been taken in by trans ideology.
“Feminism as a movement effectively ended when it began including everything else and stopped emphasizing the class interests of actual women.”
There was a book published a few years ago called “The Verso Book of Feminism” that had a section praising Judith Butler. I think this section let the cat out of the bag:
“Philosopher Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” is now a landmark in gender theory , arguing that bodies , gender , sex , and desire are all effects of gender’s discursive power rather than its coherent and taken – for – granted objects. In performing our belief in gender , we come to believe in it as a natural category rather than a relationship of power . Her work marks a turn away from feminist theories centered around women and toward a politics of gender and power.”
No more about “the class interests of actual women” in feminism. Now it’s all about a nebulous “politics of gender and power”, that will appeal to hacks like Monica Hesse.
guest #9, yes, that’s it exactly. TIMs can “identify into” women’s rape shelters because they have more power than do abused women. TIFs cannot “identify into” a peerage because they have less power than lords.
JA #15, feminism as a movement ended as the current wave of feminism became a luxury belief. Old-style feminism persists, but its greatest opponent is new-style feminism – just like old-style gay rights persists, but its greatest opponent, etc.
I read a fascinating article today about “luxury beliefs.” It fits well with this new-style feminism.
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for
“Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”
People like Monica Hesse flock to luxury beliefs like the belief that feminism can’t be just for women but must also include TIMs in part because they are so very far away from the seamy side. They get status by expressing the belief, and they don’t know any of the people harmed by the belief.
I had another comment deleted from the WaPo comment section, this one (in response to “TWAW”) pointing out that trans women are, by definition, men (that’s what the “trans” means).
Apparently stating facts is against WaPo’s commenting policy.
I ventured into the WaPo comments and surprisingly many are spot-on about Rowling and her views, with only a few trolls responding. Hope the WaPo editors are taking notice, and dare to do what The NY Times has done and run another, actual review of the podcast instead of a blatant hit piece.
Papito @ 17
Interesting article, thanks for the link. I found the concept compelling, but it felt undermined by the emphasis on “self-efficacy” in a way that was exactly the opposite of my own experience. It seems to me that wealthy people are quite likely to say that they achieved success through hard work, and less-well-off people likely to attribute “breaks” or “connections”, rather than the other way around, as claimed. (This is regardless of the facts of the matter, which I think are more heavily weighted toward “luck”.)
Every time I read the title of this post, my brain can’t help but continue on with“…New York, New York.
If they can make it there….
That’s why I chose that particular snip.
The reason why “trans” women get excluded from some feminist gatherings is because, ta da, they are really men in drag. God you people are dense
And you’re responding to what exactly?