An apple, a pear, a plum, and a toaster

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Victoria A Brownworth has thoughts on Julie Bindel and no-platforming.

The University of Manchester Student Union thinks lesbian feminist writer and activist Julie Bindel is worse than ISIS.

If that sounds extreme, it is. Manchester SU could not come to a conclusion on whether or not ISIS, unarguably the world’s worst terror group, should be sanctioned by MSU, but they were unanimous that Bindel should be.

Take that in for a moment.

I have. I’ve been taking it in since Monday.

As co-founder of the feminist anti-violence group Justice for Women, Bindel has been no-platformed previously for speaking out on a range of gender issues. She is actually best known for her writing and speaking on sex trafficking of women and girls, for which she has also been no-platformed.

Invited to be on the panel with Bindel is Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at the right-wing news magazine Breitbart. Yiannopoulos is also a men’s rights activist who has written extensively about the “fantasy” of rape culture and as recently as Oct.4 was a counter-demonstrator at a celebrity Slut Walk, carrying a sign comparing rape to the Harry Potter fantasy world of J.K. Rowling.

Yiannopoulos has also written that lesbian domestic violence is far more prevalent than male-female domestic violence and has written many blatantly misogynist, lesbophobic and transphobic columns.

As recently as Sept. 22, Yiannopoulos asserted on Twitter that “Maybe trans has nothing to do with any psychiatric disorder–it’s just second-class citizens (men) who want female privilege.”

Bindel is one of only a handful of speakers under a country-wide ban by the National Union of Students (NUS), a confederation of more than 600 student unions throughout the U.K. Also on the banned list: the terrorist group Al-Muhajiroun, the racist English Defence League, the British National Party, the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is dedicated to creating a global caliphate under global Sharia law and…Julie Bindel.

Not comparable. I keep saying that, but it can’t be helped. Not comparable.

 

Comments

4 responses to “An apple, a pear, a plum, and a toaster”

  1. quixote Avatar
    quixote

    “Manchester SU could not come to a conclusion on whether or not ISIS … should be sanctioned by MSU, but they were unanimous that Bindel should be.”

    WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

  2. Ariel Avatar
    Ariel

    An excellent find! Very interesting – not so much the point about incomparability of Bindel and ISIS (too obvious to be interesting, isn’t it? Well … isn’t it?), as all of the rest. In fact, I don’t remember reading *any* text authored by a feminist writer, containing so strong and categorical indictment of no-platforming. No evasions, no prevarication, no attempts to escape awkward questions:

    What about the world in which one in four women is raped, but men and some women continue to argue that rape is a he said/she said social construct? What about the world in which women are unarguably second-class citizens from birth and male privilege does exist and men’s rights advocates believe they are the victims? What about a world in which lesbians and gay men have been fighting for equal rights as citizens for generations and some still believe they don’t deserve those same rights?

    These are topics for discourse.

    She writes about students and universities – that’s the context. She says that students shouldn’t be allowed to no-platform just like they are not allowed to go drunk to a class. One step further and she would be more radical than me (I consider myself quite radical on the issue).

    In the light of recent developments (the banning of Milo) I find also the following remarks of Brownworth very remarkable. Here is the first one:

    I disagree with everything that Yiannopoulos says. But do I think he should be banned from speaking because he’s a right-wing ideologue? No, because the entirety of the concept of free speech […] is that views we don’t agree with are protected. His, yours, mine and Julie Bindel’s.

    But hey, that’s nothing – this is just about righ-wing views in general. However, further we read:

    Of more concern, really, is Yiannopoulos’s perspective that rape is a fantasy, rather than a crime when we know–factually know, statistically know–that rape is not only a crime, but it is a crime of pandemic proportions.

    And yet I still think Yiannopoulos needs to be heard, if only to refute his arguments and for an audience to make clear to him how wrong he is in his assertions.

    As I said, no evasions, even though:

    As a rape victim myself who was nearly killed by the man who raped me and left with lasting physical wounds and scars, I could easily say that he should not speak because it would be triggering to me to hear his dismissal of rape after the near-fatal attack on me.

    But she doesn’t say it. In fact, she says exactly the opposite.

    Let me add only that after reading this, I’ve got a lot of respect and sympathy for Ms Brownworth.

  3. Ariel Avatar
    Ariel

    Oh, my.

    I’ve just discovered on the net that Victoria A Brownworth is a “known TERF”. I swear that I didn’t know it earlier – scout’s honour! For this reason, I recant everything.

    It really doesn’t matter that I still consider her post excellent and that it wasn’t about trans issues at all what she wrote. She is a TERF. Therefore, I recant.

  4. John the Drunkard Avatar
    John the Drunkard

    Al-Muhajiroun, and Hizb ut-Tahri(r). but not ISIS?

    What does it take to get their attention, or in this case, switch it off?

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