Unable to specify which rights they are being denied
Joan Smith on the both-sidesing of trans “activists” who threaten women with violence:
On Saturday, a convicted criminal got up in front of a cheering crowd in central London and publicly incited violence against women. “If you see a terf, punch them in the fucking face,” he declared to whoops of approval from his audience at Hyde Park Corner.
…
After Baker called for assaults on women at Saturday’s London Trans Pride event, the organisers defended him. They insisted they did not condone violence, but added that “Sarah and many others in our community hold a lot of rage and anger and they have the right to express that anger through their words.”
In other words many trans people are rageoholics. We know. That’s one reason we think trans ideology is so poisonous.
This goes to the heart of the matter. Time and time again, we are told that transgender people are the most oppressed and marginalised in society, and that their rage is justified. Politicians, including the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who published a grovelling message of support before the march, claim that trans people don’t have full human rights — but are unable to specify which rights they are being denied. (I asked Khan three years ago; I never got a reply.)
The claim is untrue. Trans people have the same legal rights as the rest of us. What militant activists are demanding is a wholesale takeover of women-only spaces by men who claim to be women.
Women-only spaces, scholarships, prizes, sports – women-only everything of value. They don’t so much want to take over scrubbing toilets and being vulnerable to male violence.
The response, when we politely and reasonably refuse, is a form of aggression instantly recognisable to any woman who has witnessed male violence.
Male violence and male rage. Males don’t always have to resort to physical violence to terrorize women, because their rage does such a good job of signaling what comes next.
The dishonesty doesn’t stop there, however. The notion that “the debate is toxic on both sides” only aids trans activism. There is not a grain of truth in it, but the movement has so successfully indoctrinated supporters that it’s repeated even by Parliamentarians who should know better.
Thus the Labour MP Clive Lewis condemned Baker’s advocacy of violence, but went on to claim that “violent language and actions are not unique to one side on this issue”. Really? When did feminists bang on windows and let off smoke bombs to disrupt peaceful meetings? When did we threaten to rape people with whom we disagree?
When did we stand up at protests and shout at each other to punch men in the fucking face?
Of course, it’s “understandable”. No one rages more than those whose realise their unearned (or undeserved) privileges are under threat. Oh, you’re actually demanding empathy. Well that’s not surprising. Demanding, and getting, empathy and sympathy from deluded bystanders is something psychopaths are very good at. The best weapon is usually, the one you yourself are not vulnerable to and superficial emotion is a very powerful weapon.
Fortunately, some of us understand that empathising with psychopaths is an exercise in futility.
Not only do feminists not threaten them, but the LGB Alliance, UK, are not living up to their “Hate Group” reputation. They were notably absent from the separate #transpride do. They didn’t show up in masks, call them homophobic or lesbophobic for having a separate parade on their own. For a hate group, they are a bunch of slackers. All they do is say that they are not trans, and leave transclaimers alone for that, and say they want to be an organization apart.
The only way to get to “both sides” is to brand “you’re a man, dude” as hate speech. This isn’t even hate speech when directed at a woman, though it might be mockery and disdain. Or not. It requires an acceptance that mere disagreement constitutes literal violence.
@iknklast #2
A problem with the “both sides” framing is that there are more than two sides. We have the pro-trans side, the traditionalist anti-trans side, and the gender-critical side.
This is Joan Smith’s concluding paragraph:
Colin Day @4: Yeah, that’s been my point for a lot of this–a big part of the problem is that the media–even the normally ‘good at nuance’ media like NPR–cannot count higher than two. So talking about a three-sided debate is nigh-impossible.
The socio-religious conservative side is absolutely using dehumanizing and violent language when talking about trans issues. That’s because that’s what they do; they do it to women, too, when talking about abortion (there’s an infuriating piece in The Guardian today about how they went after the Indiana doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim). So it’s no surprise when one of them goes off about “stomping a mud-puddle in the chest” of a TiM.
And honestly, as awful as much of the trans-rights regime would be for women, the traditionalist regime is and would be so much worse. That forces the gender-critical to play a difficult game, one made exceptionally difficult when dealing with the two-sided approach in media coverage.
Eh, I don’t know that the “traditionalist” regime would be worse than the Genderist. That seems an unjustified claim. Not an unjustifiable one, just one for which I’d need to see the work shown. Because sure, if we lump all theocratic positions into that, then the traditionalist regime is for FGM and death by public stoning for women who don’t wear the prescribed costume. But most American conservatives don’t support those things, so …
iknklast #3
“to brand “you’re a man, dude” as hate speech”
I think it was in one of the comments on a Jesus & Mo cartoon that someone wrote
“Hate speech is speech that someone hates. It is the only speech that needs protection”
I agree with Nullius (#7) here. We women survived and some women even were happy during the heyday of the old-timey male chauvinist pigs. Falls into the “devil you know” category for me. I have a pretty good idea of where the conservatives would stop as far as violence and evil goes. I literally have no idea where this trans cult will go when it comes to destroying women and children – we all need to spend an hour or so at terfisaslur.com and remember what we are dealing with.
I have noticed an uptick in fawning articles in the mainstream media about Gavin Rape Camp Newsom and we better give some deep thought about the fate of women and kids under the Presidency of a man who enjoys his lovely, styled hair and his pricey meals at the French Laundry while women’s prisons in the California have turned into rape camps.
If I am not mistaken, most American conservatives still support the battering of children (euphemistically termed corporal punishment). We might note that this is mandated by the Bible: see the Book of Proverbs, passim.
I am a lesbian. I grew up at a time when women loving women was not to be spoken of, except with disgust and censure. I do not believe that there would be room for a woman like me in a society controlled by conservative males.
Freemage @ #6 has it right:
Nightcrow #10
What life will you as a lesbian be allowed when the trans cult is right now trying to force lesbians to the take the penis or be labeled a bigot and targeted for violence if you refuse? If you refuse the penis, you will be branded a terf and this guy at the pride march wants to punch your face in and he wants every man you disobey to be able to punch your face in and get away with it. You faced disgust and censure growing up, yes, but the trans cult will be happy to add heaping helpings of punches in the face and possible “corrective” rapes and punishing mutilations to your life and the lives of all uppity women.
The trans cult is planning to go where no men have gone before in terms of destroying women and kids. Who do you want to get trapped in a small room with — Ben Shapiro or Mister Punch Terfs In The Face here?
If you seriously think that a movement that:
Would force 10-year-old rape victims to carry the baby to term;
Actively works to undermine any attempt at battling rape culture;
Would cheerfully go back to imprisoning homosexuals, let alone allowing them to marry;
Advocates for the legality of child marriage;
Forces statutory rape victims to apologize for being raped because they ‘led the man into sin’; and
Sees nothing wrong with women being discriminated against in pay and employment…
would be better for women and girls than the worst TRA nightmare vision, then seriously, I don’t think I can continue the conversation, because you’ve twisted the language into complete nonsense.
This isn’t about ‘male chauvinist pigs’. On an individual level, I can see an argument that a TRA is at least as bad as that. But when talking about the changes to the law that the two groups would instill… I’m at a complete loss.
Freemage #12
Since we are giving our opinions on “who WOULD be worse” there is no right answer here. If the trans cult takes over, I sincerely hope that I am wrong and that these men who have already threatened to rape and murder disobedient women en masse will suddenly feel a wellspring of love and respect for women and kids once they are in complete power. I doubt it. One of the biggest follies in the lead-up to atrocities has been the idea that things couldn’t possibly be worse than what has happened in the past.
If you seriously think that a movement that:
* would chemically sterilize children who show signs of autism or homosexuality,
* would subject children to a lifetime of mental anguish, medicalization, and surgical alteration in order to validate the fetishes of narcissistic or delusional adults,
* actively works to hide instances of rape,
* actively works to house rapists with women,
* actively works to destroy rape and sexual abuse shelters,
* would cheerfully force homosexuals to have sex with members of the opposite sex,
* would cheerfully force heterosexuals to have sex with members of the same sex,
* advocates for the acceptance of MAPs/YAPs; i.e., pedophiles and ephebophiles,
* advocates for the destruction of child safeguarding,
* advocates for the silencing of any who point out or object to child grooming,
* forces lesbians to apologize for not enthusiastically sucking ladydick,
* forces everyone to apologize for stating basic facts about reality,
* forces the retraction of science that goes against the party,
* sees nothing wrong with the destruction of hard-won provisions for women and girls,
* sees nothing wrong with subjecting women and girls to heightened danger from male violence if it makes a man feel validated
would be better for women and girls than what conservatives represent, then you’re clearly off in Crazy Town and we can’t hang.
See? I can play that game, too. It’s a massively stupid game, though, not just because it’s an exercise in inaccuracy and imprecision, but also because your immediate response might be that I mentioned conservatives rather than traditionalists. And there’s where the vagueness of “traditionalist” does some seriously heavy lifting, exactly as I predicted in my first comment: lumping the most extreme part together with the more moderate whole. Maybe don’t do that?
kthxbai