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This is what happens when you let gender magic guide your policy decisions. The results are almost always bad for women.
Sara Ditum writes for Unherd on the strange route mainstream feminist politics has taken in the UK. The ‘strange turn’ is also prevalent in Canada as many feminists whose goals include female liberation have found themselves without a political home as the parties that traditionally fought for their rights are now advocating for female erasure in society under the guise of being ‘trans-inclusive’.
Any political party that takes the material conditions of women in society for granted will not get my vote.
“Progressive movements, he argues, are no longer beholden to conventional liberal principles. Instead, they “contain within themselves both reformist and revolutionary tendencies, and progressives regularly move back and forth between the two”. This is, he points out, what Wesley Yang calls the “successor ideology” – successor, because it is primed to succeed liberalism, although it so far lacks an internal coherence of its own.
So a feminist might ask how self-identification would work in the prison system where vulnerable women need to be protected from predatory male offenders, and the successor ideology response would be that we should abolish the prison-industrial complex, at which point segregation would cease to be an issue. Or, if the issue is how to include trans women in refuges, the successor ideology could answer that the real aim should be ending all male violence rather than just ameliorating its effects — a laudable goal, but a remote one.
It’s a shift to utopianism that evades all responsibility for material conditions in the present, while justifying the removal of rights now as a trade-off against the glorious kingdom to come. Why do you need free speech to talk about sex when you have the post-gender future to look forward to? (Means of reaching the post-gender future remaining very much TBC.) For feminism, which has to be about directly improving women’s lives and prospects if it’s to be about anything at all, this is all deeply unsatisfying. If the Right is able to offer at least a common ground of norms, why not work there?
In any case, the idea that feminism inherently belongs to the Left is — if not false, at least a bit flaky. The suffragists and suffragettes covered a whole range of political opinion with outliers on Left and Right, united by their belief that they should be able to express those opinions at the ballot box. The second wave was galvanised by a split between the women’s movement and the anti-war Left.”
Kinda scary how far and deep male entitlement goes. You can be label a terf for expressing an opinion, talking about the female reproductive system, just about anything really. The fun awesome part is, only what is shown here are the outlying women who defy their socialization. How many more women don’t dare raise their head (because dealing with angry, entitled men is awesome) to deal with this assault on reality?
This is what happens when we start denuding language of its meaning. Let’s not follow the UK example of merrily trying to erase women from the public sphere.
https://criticalbrigitte.tumblr.com/post/171754921260/gender-critical-appspot-female-erasure-begins
Books should never be banned; they are the life blood of an educated population. Yet banning books, specifically feminist books in The Vancouver Woman’s library is a priority for the group called Gays Against Gentrification. This sort of violent repression is a heinous crime against the notions of the promotion of rational discourse, civilized protest, and of course women and their liberty.
So… friends, let’s understand that if you decide to start banning books that are integral to the movement you want to be a part of, it is a really big hint that you need to be in your own fucking movement. Colonizing Feminism for your particular set needs is going to fail; therefore it is time to take wing and make a movement that really can be all about you, because, Dear Transactivists/queer ideologues/men etc. :
Feminism. Is. Not. All. About. You.
Erasing ‘heretical’ female texts and thus female experience isn’t what is expected of feminists or their allies – is this your #notmytrans movement moment? (Too fucking late for that now, the jackboots are already in motion in Vancouver.) – yet this is the shit move (banning feminist books in a library for Women) undertaken by the queer group GAG. (see the entire petition on Facebook here). Are you feeling the inclusive love from this group that is dictating what females are allowed to read? I know I certainly am.
Let’s follow Charles Rae in his article on The Fifth Column as she describes the situation –
” This has got to be the first time a library was accused of violence. In an interesting display of the blooming neoliberal tendency to turn the world into their self-defined “safe space,” an organization ironically called GAG (Gays Against Gentrification) has demanded the new Vancouver Women’s Library (VWL) ban books written by women. Feminist Mary Lunetta already created a petition in favor of freedom of thought, urging VWL not to ban any books.
The trend of the neoliberal left controlling and condemning thoughts and words is widespread, and damages the movements they are attempting to protect. In this particular example as a case study, GAG came out of the gate demanding an outright ban of women’s books instead of asking for a respectful dialog. But then, what would this dialog consist of? What books (and therefore thoughts) are allowed? Anyone who champions freedom of thought wouldn’t entertain such a debate, and women shouldn’t be demanded to comply to such restrictions.”
Follow the link to the petition and sign it. Better yet, go to the Vancouver Women’s Library website and donate to them.
“These demands presume feminism, and women, are or should be completely monolithic. That everyone should already implicitly and entirely understand their ideal of accepted language and thought. If you don’t know or accept their concepts, there is no conversation to be had. You are a bigot, and you should get out (like the books).”
How about NO. The sifting sands of your ideology serve only to reinforce the patriarchal conception of gender. No one should take a knee to such a corrosive ideology which, essentially, is the antithesis of radical feminist theory and praxis.
“The reasoning presented in their introductory paragraph is because “the ongoing violence against trans women, sex workers, and IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour),” and as was quoted, “settler-colonial violence”. But what connection a Women’s Library has to the violence anyone anywhere faces remains to be seen, and is not detailed in their demands. As seasoned feminists know and center in their messaging, violence is perpetrated (in a large majority) by men. Furthermore, violent males aren’t taking their cues from women’s books and libraries.“
Harassing libraries is easy, fixing male-violence isn’t. Looks like its coming up harassing libraries all across the board, because actually being an ally and working with women is too fucking hard.
“GAG goes on to say that “TERF”s and “SWERF”s are complicit in violence and liken them to Nazis. How long have feminist been called Feminazis? Where was the Holocaust perpetrated by “cis white women”? One of the SWERFy books they want banned is called Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade by Janice Raymond. Doesn’t that sound more like a book which exposes violence rather than perpetrates it? I’m going to have to give it a read.”
Men do need access to prostituted women after all. Definitely should be a priority for Feminists amirite?
“GAG’s attempt to give proof of violence was to call out women who stand in opposition to the sex industry, and the particular exclusion of a male who identifies as a woman into a woman-only space. Their demands to silence women are ill-founded at best, harmful to the women’s movement at worst, and ironic on all accounts. GAG says they will not sit down with the women of the VWL for discussion because they claim they are being gaslit– as they call women nazis and violent without a shred of hard evidence of physical violence. “
Typical male supremacist behaviour. Sorry folks, you can’t identify out of being part of the oppressor class, and shit like the GAG list of demands to silence women only proves that point.
“Furthermore, the books and ideas they are looking to ban are ones that are still under debate within the feminist community, such as the example of the sex industry, and whether it should be abolished or embraced. These demands are an attempt to control this ongoing dialog, as well as the outcome of it. Any kind of a book ban would, without a doubt, hinder feminist movements. Feminists, all movements with all ideologies, would be strengthened by robust debate and spaces of free thought, something libraries stand for, and something women have been denied time and again since men took the mantle as head of the home and state.”
Yep. What Charles said. My conclusion would have had more swears in it, but Charles sums up the situation nicely.
Stay Tuned, I’ll have the feminist books to be banned list up in a jiff.
**UPDATE** – Queer Transactivst Group Vandalizes Library
**UPDATE** – Video of dudes and handmaidens at the Library.
Yep, still waiting for the chorus of enraged ‘egalitarian’ voices to protest this (continuing) oversight.
http://tehbewilderness.tumblr.com/post/155051414744/the-future-now-vera-rubin-the-woman-who
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