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Transgender ideology is being debated and discussed in legislatures. If you value material reality you need to get involved and show up and participate otherwise this bullshit will get even more of a foothold in public institutions.
So brutal. Let’s erase females from society in the name of ‘trans inclusivity’. Absolutely not. We will use terms that accurately describe the reality we all share.
Where we are…
One of the constant threads that runs through the discourse (as it were) around trans gender ideology/queer theory/self-id is the remarkable degree of ignorance surrounding the positions people who oppose gender ideology actually hold.
Most of the time rather than acknowledging that there is a cogent position to beheld regarding the rights, boundaries, and space of women (adult human females) in our society pro-female rights commentators are simply written off as ‘bigots’, ‘nazis’, or just ‘transphobic’. This labeling is done without ever getting to the actual arguments and positions pro-female rights commentators actually have.
To help remedy this situation, here is Ms.Keen presenting her views and what she hopes to accomplish.
The New York Times has a great opinion piece on the wrongful demonization of JK Rowling. Her crime? Standing up for the rights of women.
“This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think.The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people.
You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population.But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.Take it from one of her former critics. E.J. Rosetta, a journalist who once denounced Rowling for her supposed transphobia, was commissioned last year to write an article called “20 Transphobic J.K. Rowling Quotes We’re Done With.” After 12 weeks of reporting and reading, Rosetta wrote, “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message.” On Twitter she declared, “You’re burning the wrong witch.”
The forced birth brigade has won a major victory against women and their rights with the repeal of Roe vs Wade. Surprisingly much of the woke world has magically remembered what a woman is and how sex based oppression works in our society. Please also note identifying as a man and demanding your reproductive healthcare isn’t a viable strategy because, as based feminist women have been saying since the beginning, it is impossible to ‘identify’ into or out of your sex class.
Of course, when it comes to making the rules, progressive men think that it is completely okay to put male sex offenders in female prisons because of male gender feelings. It is heartbreaking, yet unsurprising, to see how little male politicians and their progressive allies value women and their safety.
It all comes down to the safety of women in society. Women will get abortions regardless of their legality – now the accessible safe options will be removed for many women in the US. Women will die because of lack of access to reproductive healthcare.
What will the progressive side do about this tragedy? Probably close to fuck all because they cannot even define what a woman is. The mainstream Left dropped the ball, embracing divisively specious gender ideology instead of defending the rights, boundaries, and spaces of females in society. So instead of fighting against the reactionary Right we had to fight viscous internecine battles over intrinsically stupid issues like gender self identification. Way to go our team!
Perhaps it is a clarifying moment though where women can plainly see the issues that face them and choose to fight for and defend their place in society. Those who want to embrace the post modern queer theory bullshite can go off to their woolly debates and whinge-circles of who is in the most oppressed. With the idiot chaff intersectionally faffing about, the adult women and men in the room can get down to the real work of restoring female autonomy and boundaries in our society.
Counterpunch is a alternative news site that I’ve followed for many years. I have often picked up on an essay that I found there and added my critique or opinion on the matter. Recently I critiqued a piece that was – ideologically speaking – over the top and I had to give it the Red Pen of Justice treatment. The lambasting was due as the claims made could only hold up in a proper collectivist utopia. When I saw that one of their hardcore left ideologues, Paul Street had mentioned the ‘woke politic’ I was expecting more fodder for the mill of insane leftist politics to criticize.
They’ve set the bar for what passes as journalism pretty low as of late so I was prepared for the worst. And… was pleasantly surprised. Apparently there are limits for some people as to how much cringe-woke insanity they can stomach. The title of the subsection jarred my consciousness :
“Erasing Women and Girls with “Woke” Idiocy”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Strap in folks, this is going to be a ride.
“And then there’s the hyper- and fake-“woke” identitarian idiocy that pervades and cripples US social movements on the ground. I will never forget the time (in the summer of 2014) I politely corrected a Black Lives speaker who said that the killing of a Black person by “could even happen here in Iowa City” by pointing out that Iowa City had been the site of an incident in which a white police officer had murdered a Black man – the killing of John Deng by a Johnson County Sheriff in July of 2009. A white female graduate student lectured me on how “white men have nothing to say at racial justice rallies.” Six years later on the South Side of Chicago, Black Lives activists would not listen to information I had on the potential to powerfully link up two separate racial justice marches (both protesting Kentucky’s decision not to prosecute the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor) because of my race and gender.”
Paul Street at least aware of what can happen when the what your group looks like is more important the the content of your character. It’s a really quite a shit way to view the world and it bites even most rabid proponents when they do not follow the rules.
“(Idiotic standpoint identititarianism is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Recently I participated with some other white folks in the stoppage of traffic on a major thoroughfare and on behalf of women’s abortions rights in Chicago. Two Black men got out of their cars and attacked us claiming that we would not be stopping traffic for Black people. I informed these gentlemen that we had all been in the streets for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Justin Blake and, before that, for Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Chicago’s own Laquan McDonald. After hearing this, one of the two assailants asked me, “so are you saying that you have experienced all the same micro-aggressions and prejudice that I have and go through every day of my life”? I said, “no I don’t think that. I’m not an idiot and I’d have to be an idiot to think that.” He went back to his car before I could tell him that the repeal of abortion rights will inflict special and disproportionate harm on the Black community and Black women.)”
If Paul Street can see the bullshit that is is standpoint epistemology/identitiarianism you know it has to be a problem. For the uninitiated: “standpoint epistemology (and related identity-based epistemologies) are a complicated and widely discredited way to create and justify a kind of gnosticism around critical conceptions of identity and the relevant power dynamics in society. In practice, this typically means it is yet another justification within Theory for only people who agree with Theory to be considered knowledgeable authorities […].”
It’s being used in the leftist activist all the time and it contributes to the inefficiency and infighting that mars all identitarian movements.
“I have recently been confronted by destructive uber-“woke” folly in the form of the loony yet cocksure charge that it is “trans-exclusive” and transphobic to specify females as the target of the war on abortion rights. As a friend writes me, some transgender activists “really believe it’s exclusionary and reactionary to dare to talk about ‘forced motherhood’ and ‘women’s oppression.’ Such madness actually happens.”
This is sheer village idiocy. The Christian fascist war on abortion rights is quintessentially about the patriarchal control and oppression of women and girls. The Republifascist enemy is not remotely thinking about transgender folks when it goes after abortion. Calling activists “trans-phobic” and anti-trans for defending “women’s abortion rights” is reactionary madness. The demand that activist language be changed to “people’s abortion rights” is to erase women in the name of “inclusion.” This is like calling for Black Lives Matter to be changed to “All Lives Matter.”
Wow, you know you’ve gone to far when Street calls you out (rightly) on your bullshit. Of course transgender queer activism has no limits and no sanity. Everything – absolutely everything – is about their oppression and their plight. Those damn females talking about their rights in society are oppressors using their privilege to further marginalize queer trans voices who are *obviously* way more oppressed than those women fighting for their rights to basis reproductive healthcare in society.
“Such hyper-identitarian irrationality has worked its way all the way up to Planned Parenthood (PP). Eager to mess with radical abortions rights activism in accord with its shameful advance surrender to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, PP is down with the preposterous claim that the call for women’s right to an abortion is repressively “gendered” language that oppresses trans people. See this shamelessly stupid PP post on how activists should replace “women” with “people” abortion rights discourse.
In a shameless and transparent hit-job on the radical anti-fascist feminist group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights’ (RU4AR) recent successful actions at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Dodgers’ Stadium in Los Angeles, and Joel Osteen’s right-wing megachurch in Houston, the liberal zine Jezebel displays extreme identitarian wokeness to rationalize its advance capitulation to the Supreme Court assault on Roe. Jezebel’s Emily Leibert childishly claims that RU4AR’s use of the phrase “female enslavement” is “inappropriate given that the leaders of this group are not Black” (has Emily Leibert ever heard of the great abolitionist leader John Brown?). Leibert says that RU4AR’s “repeated usage of gendered terms …excludes trans and nonbinary pregnant people who need abortion access and care.”
And what are those “gendered” terms, specifically? Answer: “women” and “girls,” half of humanity (!), and “patriarchy,” a supremely significant (to say the least) and longstanding oppression system defense and advance of which is at the very heart of the war on abortion rights.”
Street is quite done with the fuckery on display, but is it too late for him to preserve the brand of activism he supports? Because this sort of identity politics nonsense is what rules the roost in leftist circles. It cares not for the reality of any situation, but rather the power dynamic and the relationship to power to which best interpolate the amount of oppression a group experiences and thus how much ‘authenticity’ said group has when speaking on the issue.
Apparently women (adult human females) do not have enough ‘authenticity’ to speak on the issue of abortion and reproductive healthcare.
“Some anarchists fall for this women-erasing tripe. See this depressing It’s Going Down post, which glories in the replacement of the RU4AR slogan “Not the Church, Not the State, Women Must Decide Our Fate” with “Fuck the Church, Fuck the State, Only We Decide Our Fate.” Reflecting on this article, whose anarchist author digs how his/her/their allies chided a “Maoist” for using the bourgeois word “women,” Chris C of the Communist Workers Group (CWG) writes the following: “I don’t know how any ‘Leftist’ can write an article on abortion and reproductive rights and only mention ‘women’ once. Kind of difficult to organize and mobilize for women’s liberation if one cannot even use the term.”
Well Mr.Street, by saying these words you’ve joined the “far-right” TERF crew who believe that women are adult human females and inhabit a category of human beings that are distinct from men and have their own unique set of issues and concerns when it comes to society.
Welcome. Let’s hope now that you will apply some of your revolutionary zeal to combat the rise of woke identity politics and the cancer that it represents for society.
Your opinions…