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“Intersectionality shows us that everyone could do better; that every attempt at rolling back discrimination could work harder and be more inclusive. But it should also remind us that people themselves are more than a simple label: “white feminist”; “middle-class man”; “posh boy”; “Twitter bully”. Here are some of the things I know that the kind of feminists regularly decried for their privilege have had to deal with, in private: eating disorder relapses; rape; the stalking of their children; redundancy; clinical depression; the sectioning of a family member; an anxiety disorder that made every train ride and theatre trip an agony. (Yes, one of those descriptions is me.)
None of this is to say that feminism shouldn’t be open to criticism. When Caroline Crampton and I got together our bloggers last year for a New Statesman debate about feminism, the response was . . . well, there were two responses. There was criticism that was constructive: for example, the deviously persuasive Karen Ingala Smith managed to parlay her disappointment that we didn’t talk enough about rape into making me join the board of her VAWG charity. And there was criticism that was destructive, aimed at wounding us for not representing every possible permutation of womanhood. (I laughed when one particularly enthusiastic deconstructor, when asked: “Well, how can you possibly make a six-person panel totally representative of half of humanity?”, came back with, “Oh, that’s why I don’t believe in panel discussions.”)”
Wow, Ms.Burchill just doesn’t have time for the bullshite that woke-intersectionalists have turned into a squalid art from here in 2019. Five years ago she was calling bullshite on the current empire of cud (‘intersectional’ queer theory) that is currently bolllocking up effective feminist action.
From a 2014 article titled Don’t You Dare Tell me to Check my Privilege –
“Suzanne’s crime, it transpired, was to be ‘cis-gendered’ as opposed to transgendered (that is, she was born female) and not to have ‘checked her privilege’ — what passes for a battle cry in certain ever-decreasing circles these dog days. It’s hardly ‘No pasarán!’ — rather, it declares an intention that it is better to be nagged to death on one’s knees rather than stand by one’s principles on one’s feet. Consider how lucky you are, born women, before you raise your voice above that of a trans-sister! — that veritable cornucopian horn of plenty which we lucky breed fortunate enough to be born to a sensory smorgasbord of periods, PMT, the menopause, HRT and being bothered ceaselessly for sex by random male strangers since puberty take such flagrant delight in revelling in, shameless hussies that we are. Add to this that Suzanne was, like myself, born into the English working class, and therefore marginally less likely to have beaten the odds than a dancing dog or busker’s cat to have become a public figure, and I was buggered (not being homophobic, there) if I was going to put up with a bunch of middle-class seat-sniffers, educated beyond all instinct and honesty, laying into my girl.
But it wasn’t just that. It was an instinctive desire to defend the socialism of my dead father. Because intersectionality is actually the opposite of socialism! Intersectionality believes that there is ‘no such thing as society’ — just various special interests.
In my opinion, we only become truly brave, truly above self-interest, when fighting for people different from ourselves. My hero as a kid was Jack Ashley — a deaf MP who became the champion of rape victims. These days, the likes of those who went after Suzanne would probably dismiss him as a self-loathing cis-ableist. Intersectionality, like identity politics before it, is pure narcissism.
Though it reminds us ceaselessly to ‘check our privilege’, intersectionality is the silliest privilege of them all, a gang of tools and twats tiptoeing around others’ finer feelings rather than getting stuck in, mucking in, like proper mates — the ultimate privilege, which is to serve each other with collective love and action. The most recently inter-species ruckus happened when the Deirdre Spart impersonator Laurie Penny wrote a passionate defence of the pixie cut in the New Statesman, only to get it in the sleekly shaved neck from women who accused her of not taking the different behaviour of African hair into consideration. When I asked a supporter of this lunacy whether she thought that every subject of interest to women should have every type of woman weighing in with her written opinion, she answered that yes, she did. Seriously? I don’t think my heart can stand the excitement of a weekly Staggers the size of a telephone directory.
I personally can understand black women occasionally getting teed off with their apparently carefree Wash’n’Go white stepsisters. But the most recent and reactionary development within this hissy-fitting hothouse — the insistence of intersectional feminists on the right of transsexuals not to be offended — tells you all you need to know about the essential stupidity of the movement.
The idea that a person can chose their gender — in a world where millions of people, especially ‘cis-gendered’ women, are not free to choose who they marry, what they eat or whether or not their genitals are cut off and sewn up with barbed wire when they are still babies — and have their major beautification operations paid for by the National Health Service seems the ultimate privilege, so don’t tell me to check mine. Here’s hoping that the in-fighting in-crowd of intersectionality disappear up their own intersection really soon, so the rest of us can resume creating a tolerant and united socialism.”
We as a society should prioritize the safety and security of women (adult human females) over the gender feels of men. This snippet from the Cambridge Radical Feminist Network expands upon this simple truth.
“Sex segregation in spaces where women are in positions of vulnerability is a legitimate and important precaution for women. Women exist in society where the risk of sexual assault is a simple reality of their lives — even young girls within UK schools are experiencing what has been described as an ‘epidemic’ of sexual violence from young boys. I could go into these statistics in more detail if it had not already been done countless times before. But the fact it has been done countless times before is the disturbing thing about the entire gender neutral toilets issue. Supposedly progressive commentators and politicians have seemingly decided that publicly supporting a postmodernist view of gender is more important even than these facts. Perhaps it is cowardice in the face of a vitriolic social-media ‘take down’ culture.
But perhaps it is something more simple, and depressing, than that: feminism — and other equality movements — have to deal with the difficult problem of ‘latent prejudice’. It can be tricky to tell when there is a true change of popular attitudes, or when instead there is a understanding that some attitudes cannot be expressed explicitly. Sometimes we only find out once people feel they have been given permission to express those attitudes. We saw that to some degree with the Bernie-Bro phenomenon — certain US leftists felt that their support for a ‘progressive’ Bernie Sanders meant they were able to criticise ‘not-as-progressive’ Hillary Clinton in sometimes violently sexist terms. The gender neutral and gender identity debates seem to represent something similar in the UK. Blatantly misogynistic tropes and a lazy disregard for women’s safety and concerns are being overlooked because it is in the service of a supposedly progressive cause.”
A good article overall, I recommend you follow the link back to Medium and read the entire piece.
I’m following the Meghan Murphy Twitter-ban debacle and one of the places where I landed was the Quillette. As it turns out, Megan Murphy has written a piece describing what happened to her and her struggle with the totalitarian ideology of transactivism. I liked what MM wrote, but I found the comment section more interesting as the user base seems to self describe itself as the ‘rational middle’. I worry when I see phrases like that because often they end up in the barren hellscape known as American Libertarianism. *shudder*
Now there was some back and forth in the comment section, but generally the tone was, “well this is what feminism has wrought and it’s bastard child has come home to roost”. I’m not sure how the fight for female liberation begat the current state of trans-insanity, but for many commentors the two movements are intrinsically linked.
A couple of radical feminists made an appearance, one I suspect is a dude sponsored sock, as the claiming to be a rad-fem and then conforming almost exactly to the male approved stereotype of what a rad-fem is, just cannot be real.
A second rad-fem entered the debate and this is her comment:
“I enjoy how afraid you are of losing your job for telling jokes. I also enjoy how thoroughly you & other men take on this specific tone—have you noticed yet? It’s the “rational” tone. Literally every male commenter has used it thus far. Men can be rational about women’s issues as they experience almost no part of them. What you’re really saying when you cry about the change in feminism is that women don’t worship the ground you walk on anymore, & this has had repercussions for your ego & your sense of place (ie perceived significance) in the world.
I, for one, don’t really enjoy self-application of the title “man-hating”… feels very corny to me. What I do enjoy is speaking with women who are enlightened to the fact that they, unlike their mothers, do not have to settle for second best, settle for a man who disrespects her, hurts her, abuses her.
I think it’s telling that you’re so afraid of a world where men are not the main axis of women’s orbit. What exactly are you scared of? That women will make men walk on all fours with studded leashes around their necks? Get a grip dude. There is nothing women could do to men that is worse than men have done to women. With 90% of all violent crimes committed by men, your son has a greater chance of getting murdered by a man than getting falsely accused of sexual assault at the workplace.
Ultimately, the weird, fantastical fears you harbor are just excuses. Justifications for choosing to sit back & whine about what feminism has apparently “done” to men, when despite feminism’s very best efforts, men continue to harass, assault, abuse, rape, mutilate, & kill women. What you’re afraid of is change. Not feminists. At least own up it.”
Of course, none of the centrist rationalists have responded. Funny that, when confronted with someone knowledgeable who is quite willing to charitably engage the response is crickets.
Tanya correctly observes the near thematic use of the “rational tone” and how problematic it is trying to deal with people who, calibre of intellect notwithstanding, don’t get the fact that the societal experience for men and women is quite drastically different.
I’ll finish with the thread now, but I thought it would be good to share some perspectives from the ‘rational middle’.
Good to see that Twitter has its shit in order… (aka the War on Women Continues)
Watch as a member of the NDP patiently mansplains female genital mutilation to a woman who, like her mother, was subjected to said trauma. This is a bad look NDP, as one would hope we would leave the material science denial (climate-change) to the Conservatives. Entitled males know jack-shit about what it is like growing up and being socialized in today’s patriarchal world. Because they self identify as one does not change an iota. (Well actually it does as the current misogynistic trans-poltic has gathered a fair amount of steam fighting for the rights of males to further define female reality.)
We can all appreciate a good highly personal subjective personal identity. However, there should be no obligation or pressure to validate said identity, especially when doing so has deleterious results for an entire class of people in society. Look what happens when words don’t have meanings
“Toward the end of the lengthy and tense meeting convened to discuss her role on the Commission, Julia Beck stated with clarity what had become patently obvious in the foregoing discussion:
I think everyone’s heart is set. I think what we’re doing here is postulating. I’m trying my best, people, but we all understand words to mean different things, and that’s not really conducive to the purpose of our committee, which is to advise the Mayor and other city agencies on laws and policies. If we don’t agree on the meanings of words, we cannot do the work…. I could bring out a dictionary and prove to you that a lesbian is a female homosexual, or a woman is a female human, but if your beliefs disallow you from seeing the dictionary definition as a legitimate definition… then why would we have a diversity of thought… if there’s only one thought acceptable?
I could talk about this all day, and I would love to, because it affects my life. When we cannot define woman, women’s liberation is moot. When women cannot define themselves as female adult humans, there is no way for us to organize as female adult humans. If lesbians cannot define themselves as female homosexuals, if male people can call themselves lesbians, then the women’s movement and lesbian liberation is destroyed, it’s obliterated.
As the Commission was established it seeks to include a diversity of people and experiences and ideas, and that’s why I’m here. I’m here to represent lesbians. [But] when lesbians are forced to include male people with penises, it destroys lesbianism, and we might as well call it a “GTBQ Commission.”
The more you look at this, the more it is clearly the same old patriarchy telling women how to behave in society and to shut up when their lives are on the line.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Tanya’s Comment on Twitter’s Trans-Activist Decree on the Quillette