Daily Archive

   Miranda Yardley seems to understand the concept of material reality and the sex based oppression of females.  In this snippet, they address some of the problems that arise when men pretend to be women.

 

“So far, so good. Yet at number 21, is our old friend Phillip ‘Pippa/Pips’ Bunce, who is “Head of Global Markets Technology Core Engineering Integrations Components” at Credit Suisse. You may remember ‘Pips’ from my piece ‘Drop The T and the Great LGBT Sell-Out’ where I commented:

I wish he would connect his own ‘gender fluidity’ to sexism, or even meaningfully address the structural sexism his own activism literally skirts around but again, this is just another missed opportunity which turns the potentially revolutionary into the properly reactionary.

In case you need reminding,

Pips identifies as gender fluid spending half her time as Phil and the other half as Pippa both at work and at home with her wife and children

What this actually means is described in ‘Mx matters as much as Lord, Prof, Ms and Mr‘ published by the Financial Times, where Bunce writes:

I like to be Phil one day and Pippa another, using different forms of dress and make-up to do so… I am straight… married for more than 20 years and have two children.

The citation given to Bunce is quite staggering, itself meriting its own dissectiom.

Pips took the conscious decision to be ‘out’ at work as gender fluid to embrace and advocate the importance of authenticity as well as to shine a light on the power and diversity of women in the workplace.

How does a man wearing hosiery, a dress, stripper wig and high heels ‘shine a light on the power and diversity of women in the workplace’? Rhetorical question: it does absolutely fuck all. It reduces being a woman in the workplace to the artificial construction of sex-based clothing, which itself is oppressive. I mean, seriously: if he is going to be a champion for women, he actually has to be a champion for women. Instead, he is rigidly reinforcing the very stereotypes women have fought against for centuries and reducing what it means to be a woman to a pantomime costume.

Multiple aspects of our identity, including gender identity/expression, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability and religion influence our experiences at work.

What is always interesting in transgender activism is the way that the nebulous and subjective thoughts and feelings of ‘gender identity’ (read: identification with sexist stereotypes) is leveraged and turbo-charged by equalising it to race, sexual orientation and disability. The material reality is rather different: racism still exists, homophobic attacks still happen and disabled people still struggle to find suitable places to go for a pee. And nobody anywhere has a non-circular definition of the subjective thoughts and feelings of ‘gender identity’.

But of course Bunce doesn’t give a fuck, because ethnic minorities, homosexuals and those of us with disabilities are the human shield that allows an economically advantaged, physically healthy straight white man to come into work wearing a dress and claim to be an oppressed minority, to be ‘a woman’ on those days and be the cuckoo in the nest which is supposed to be incubating, nurturing and inspiring a generation of female business leaders. What chance do these women have against the cross-dressing chameleon, the truculent transvestite, who appears happy to not only appropriate ‘woman’ but usurp ‘female’? What kind of intellectual idiocy allowed Financial Times and HERoes to fall for this transgender Trojan horse? Why is he one of forty nine women and not one of thirty men?

Our sex or gender may be the same, but our identities, our successes and our struggles are different and it is for this reason why Pips is proud to be a female champion in business.

I mean, seriously, I can’t even.  This is a man, a straight man, who spends much of his life living as a man, claiming to be a ‘proud female in business’. To quote a phrase (thanks, Magdalen Berns), the minds of this lot are so open their brains have fallen out.

She is a member of the European Women’s Network/IT Women’s Council and had many external publications relating to gender equality published.

As we can see, to Bunce ‘gender equality’ means to raze to the ground the rights that women have, as women, so that men like Bunce can have rights, ‘as a woman’. This is not about equality, this is all about power, and it is oh so clear who is wielding the power. How dare this MAN have the audacity to sit on a women’s council in an environment dominated by males.”

Well said, indeed.