Many thanks to RoughSeas for bringing this article to my attention, it is well written, chock full of facts, and enumerates many of the problematic aspects identity politics and how they are hurting women.
“Skimming over liberal media these past months, the assumption is that anyone who might have an issue with a transgender person in their washroom is necessarily a Bible-thumping bigot from the south. This perception is not only the result of vast oversimplifications, but is a conscious misrepresentation of the facts before us. As much as HB2 is a hateful, bigoted law which is serving as a smoke screen to erase other economic capabilities, the Department of Justice’s position is just as wrong. If we didn’t know that women were third-class citizens before, we should definitely know it now.
Until the end of his presidency, there was not a word from the Obama administration about the rolling back of abortion rights, state after state. Not a peep from Bruce Springsteen or PayPal about women’s rights. This is isn’t shocking… Not for women, at least. We are accustomed to our voices being virtually unheard, even on issues that affect us directly. It is more of the same brocialism as usual. That male violence is a reality and does not magically disappear through the kind of identity politics that ask us to suspend our disbelief and embrace that “gender identity” trumps sex is par for the course. The problem with Obama’s Department of Justice narrative is that it suggests “gender identity” is sex, and that, while gender is whatever a person feels it to be, the acknowledgement of biological sex is “transphobic.”
This narrative, wherein gender is medicalized in order to silence one half of the population and wherein biological differences (and the way those differences factor into the system of patriarchy) are now considered to be fictions, is an MRA’s dream. The result of efforts to “broaden the definition of woman” is that, now, anyone can be a woman, but actual women can no longer speak of their oppression or their bodies.
Identitarians (those who hinge their subjectivity to identity politics) have attempted to remedy their feeling “excluded” by subverting women’s political movements and the language through which women describe their realities. One of the recent attempts to redefine woman was the U.S. women’s strike platform, which prioritizes transgender women over women of colour in its statement of violence against women and promotes the reproductive rights “for all women, cis and trans.” Of course, transwomen are male so clearly have no concerns about reproductive rights. Prioritizing males over females in the name of women’s rights is anything but subversive. Rather, it’s age old misogyny.”



4 comments
March 15, 2017 at 6:44 am
tildeb
Between Roughseas and you, Arb, I’ve come around to understanding why the bathroom issue really is a women’s issue and why sex identity trumps gender identity.
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March 15, 2017 at 9:01 am
The Arbourist
@tildeb
Not really a popular club to be in Tildeb, but I’m pretty sure you know that already. :/
It is really an ‘interesting’ position to inhabit and argue against as the alt-left struggles just as hard to damage women as conservatives and the alt-right.
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March 15, 2017 at 11:44 am
roughseasinthemed
@tildeb
Bathrooms (toilets, changing rooms, overnight accommodation) are just an example. The bigger issue as Vigo expresses well, is the redefinition of woman and our loss of extremely hard- worked-for and hard-won rights. But it sounds like you’ve got that message.
There are a surprising number of people (women and men) who are starting to say this on the internet, and in public. Eg Jenni Murray in the UK, and Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. Needless to state they both received public censure :(
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March 15, 2017 at 12:34 pm
tildeb
Public censure? I’m beginning to think that’s a badge of honour.
Yes, it’s not a popular position because the issue is painted as a Left/Right one, so I don’t think people really grasp what the issue is. And it’s all about confusing gender with biological sex as if the two become one under some ‘enlightened’ politically correct view. So the company one finds one’s self in tends to be populated ironically by people from the far right… but for all the wrong reasons!.
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