You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Shitty Transactivism’ tag.
“After losing $34,312 CAD in annual municipal funding, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter (VRR) say they have no plans to change or scale back their services or public education. The organization will rely on donations to make up for their budget shortfall.
On February 26, Vancouver City Council unanimously voted to strip grant funding from VRR. The annual grant from the city only represented a small portion of VRR’s budget and was allocated to public education and outreach.
A year ago, the council agreed to maintain funding for 2019, but threatened to rescind the grant should the organization refuse to change its policy (protected by law) and allow males who self-identify as women to access their rape crisis services and shelter. VRR refused to buckle, instead maintaining a commitment to women’s safety and liberation via their sex-segregated services. The council claimed that VRR’s female-only policy violates their grant eligibility criteria, which protects “gender identities,” but not “sex,” as characteristics requiring accommodation.
In an email, Karla Gjini, a VRR collective member, said the organization will “work hard” to make up for their new shortfall. “While we’re feeling disappointed by the decision, we’re also so, so encouraged and comforted by those who spoke out and wrote letters in support of our work, and in support of women,” she told me.”
The VRR will not bend the knee to gender delusional men and will keep the female only safe space open.
“In the meantime, VRR plans to host their annual fundraiser walk-a-thon on June 7. “It’s a great community event with live music and a free picnic, and anyone can make a team and ask for pledges. We’re hoping for a great, big turnout to help make up some of the money,” said Gjini.
Many prominent feminists and allies have publicly offered support for VRR. Julie Bindel, UK journalist and feminist, announced plans for a pop-up restaurant in London to raise funds. Donations to VRR can also be made online.
Vancouver Rape Relief and Shelter will surely (and maddeningly) face continued backlash from trans activists determined to infiltrate or destroy women-only spaces. The women of VRR, however, are clearly up to the task.”
Help women out, donate now.
The argument proceeding from clownfish. The argument proceeding from strawberries. The argument proceeding from seahorses. “Intersex people are as common as redheads, so sex does not exist.” “Sex is a spectrum, so males are female.” “Bio-essentialism!” (Is that like thinking horses and carrots exist?) “It’s SO COMPLICATED.” “Thinking women exist is like thinking women […]
It is sad to see people who are so far out to lunch they would rather ban Meghan Murphy from the Toronto Public Library than make an argument against her. This bullshit is happening in Canada and it fucking sucks.
The woke twitter outrage is real. 
Next, the baseless accusation of Transphobia. Expect this particular scarlet epithet to be hurled when it is clear that people won’t sit down, shut-up and blithely accept the unreality that is gender-self id and transactivist ideology. The name calling, not engaging with arguments is par for the course, and unsurprisingly happens here as well.
When insults don’t work, threatening violence is the next step as always. Because when your arguments are shit, your playbook is limited. Name calling, harassment and violence are the standards at work here.
Oh, I forgot about deplatforming, suggested so kindly here by Mr Male Adam Pottle. Because we certainly cannot have those uppity women speaking about topics that directly affect them and their sex based rights and protections. That sort of speech is dangerous (it threatens the patriarchal status quo) and should not be allowed.
It is really a shit show, but there are few people on the thread that are invested in the basic principles of a free and democratic society that are speaking out against the bullshit that is identity politics. Thank heavens not all of us have lost our way.
Sweet jebus cooking crab-cakes: This is the “LITERAL VIOLENCE AND HATRED” being discussed – males are not females, pretending males are females adversely impacts the sex based rights of females, and sexist stereotypes are bad. All apparently hatespeech. This is lunacy and needs to stop. Women speaking out defending their rights, boundaries, and safety is NOT hatespeech, but rather should be encouraged and discussed.
All of the accusations screenshotted above are typical of what happens when discussing things with the Woke. You have to wade through fields of straw and thought terminating cliches before you can even start to have a reasonable discussion. The calls for ‘cancelling’ and ‘deplatforming’ are bullshit of the highest order, I won’t stand for it.
This incident explicitly shows how transactivism is not only anti-feminist, but anti-woman, and patriarchal to the core. Women don’t move to remove funding for rape crisis centres. Entitled males do.
So, no there will be no catering to your ideology, not after this. Not ever.
Full statement from the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter:
1. On March 14, 2019, at the end of a flawed and unfair process, Vancouver City Council voted to terminate the yearly grant given to us in support of our public education work.
2. Vancouver City Council’s decision is intended to coerce us to change our position and practice of offering some of our core services only to women who are born female. Our organization’s status as an equality-seeking group and our entitlement to serve women who are born female was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2003, by the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 2005 and by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007.
3. Vancouver City Council’s attempt to undermine our autonomy as a women’s group — to decide who we serve, who our membership is and who we organize with — also undermines the protections the law has granted us. Such conduct has no place in a democratic society.
4. Vancouver City Council’s decision to cut funding from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is discriminatory. Many Vancouver City grants are given to organizations that deliver programs and support to specific groups of people such as Aboriginal youth, Chinese seniors, deaf persons and migrant workers. Rightfully, none of these groups have been challenged with the demand that they demonstrate “accommodation, welcomeness and openness to people of all ages, abilities… and ethnicities.” Such a demand of these organizations would be incomprehensible, as it would contradict the essence and purpose of their work. Yet, this is what is being asked of us under the guise of inclusivity.
5. Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is the longest standing rape crisis centre in Canada. Since 1973, our group has responded to close to 46,000 women seeking our support in their escape from male violence. Since we opened our transition house in 1981, we have housed over 3,000 women and over 2,600 children.
The operation of our rape crisis centre and transition house are forms of direct action, developed for women by women in the 1970s as a part of the second wave of the North American women’s movement. More than just providing immediate safety, we offer a place to group, analyze, strategize and fight back against male violence.
6. In addition to our frontline work, we put a substantial effort into public education, as it’s an essential tool for social change. We are intentional in organizing public education events that are free, open and accessible to all.
7. We are also active in national women’s equality reforms. In the past year, we appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada case of the murder of Cindy Gladue; we conducted cross examinations and made oral and written submissions as a party with standing at the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls; and spoke to the House of Commons of Canada and to the Senate of Canada on legislative reforms related violence against women.
8. We have no doubt that people whose behaviour is not consistent with the patriarchal socially imposed definition of manhood or womanhood, including transgender people, suffer discrimination and violence. Transgender people deserve and must live in safety and have the equal rights and opportunities that are promised to us all. When it comes to our services, we have a collective commitment to see to the safety anyone who calls our crisis line, including transgender people.
9. As part of ongoing efforts to discredit us, we were accused that we “do not support sex workers” (including by a Vancouver City Council member on social media).
Our services are available to all women who have experienced male violence. We provide assistance to women and girls in prostitution who have been assaulted by johns, pimps or men pressuring them into prostitution. We provide assistance to women who are currently being prostituted, women who are trying to escape prostitution, and women who have been trafficked into prostitution.
We understand prostitution as sexual exploitation and male violence against women. Prostitution normalizes the subordination of women. It exploits and compounds systemic inequality on the basis of sex, race, poverty, age and disability. Our analysis of prostitution as a harmful patriarchal institution and our commitment to abolition is derived from, and is reinforced by, the prostituted women who call us and the members of our own collective who have exited prostitution.
10. Being born female still means being trained, socialized and forced to submit to male domination. The fact that we are born female and raised as girls to adulthood as women shapes our lives in profound ways.
Male violence against us is a harsh but common experience, and in no way the only one. Our sexuality is controlled and manipulated — whether by punishing women for not being virgins, or by the promotion of pornography and BDSM as liberating expressions of women’s sexuality. Our reproductive ability is controlled and manipulated — whether through forced abortion and sterilization, pressuring women to get pregnant, or forcing women’s pregnancy through rape.
Being girls and women in this world often impacts both how we look and how we act in private and in public; what we are allowed to do, encouraged to do and rewarded for; and also what we are discouraged from doing, prohibited to do or punished for.
And from that place, in a woman-only space, with other women, who have the shared experience of being born without a choice to the oppressed class of women we come together to organize and strategize our resistance and our fight for women’s liberation
Donate to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Woman’s Centre – They stand in the vanguard against the unhinged patriarchal assault on women and deserve our moral and monetary support.
Beth Stelzer speaks out against the reality denying ideology of transactivists and the clear and present danger it presents to female sporting events.
“Trans activists demand we accept their feelings as science and attack basic biology at its core. Ironically, their activism invokes the fear they seek refuge from, in the very group they demand inclusion in. They claim to be victims of bullying, yet they bully women incessantly.
Online harassment of those who speak up for female athletes is pervasive. After starting a website advocating for the preservation of biology-based eligibility standards for participation in women’s sport, I received an email telling me to drown in my own blood. But thanks to women like Navratilova, who is continuing to defend women’s sport, despite continued push back and online attacks, I and other athletes around the world feel emboldened to speak up.
My perspective isn’t religious or political — it is based on my experience and on scientific facts. Women should not be forced to compete with men. We have worked for generations to carve out the space we have in sport today, and we owe it to those women who fought for what we have today, as well as future generations of women and girls, to preserve female athletics. “Inclusion” might sound nice, but it could mean the demise of women’s sports altogether. If we allow men who identify as female to compete in women’s sports, there will be men’s sports and there will be co-ed sports, but women’s sports will cease to exist.
This is why I am fighting to save women’s sports.”
This is what happens when we allow men to redefine reality to match their own subjective whims.
Wow. Patriarchal reversals brought to you by the WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre.
“As a trans-inclusive anti-violence organization, we feel a sense of responsibility to provide a counter-narrative to this trans-exclusionary radical feminism. It’s no secret that there is a long, difficult history between feminism and trans people.”
Local Transactivists lobbied Vancouver city council to defund the Vancouver Rape Crisis and Woman’s Shelter because they had a female only policy. Sex is a protected characteristic under the Canadian Charter. Dr. Jones clearly illustrates the problem:
Let’s go through and do a rough line by line response to the highly inclusive blog post put put by the WAVAW.
“This history is rooted in the right wing ideology that queer and trans people and their issues are somehow oppositional to the issues of cisgender women and feminism as a whole.”
There would be less strife and problematic history between transactivism and radical feminism if we could all agree on material, biological reality. Human beings cannot change sex. A woman is correctly defined as an adult human female.
Bullshit. – What Radical Feminist Analysis of Gender looks like…
“[…] Disagreeing with someone, however, is not a form of violence. And we have a big disagreement.
Radical feminists are critical of gender itself. We are not gender reformists–we are gender abolitionists. Without the socially constructed gender roles that form the basis of patriarchy, all people would be free to dress, behave, and love others in whatever way they wished, no matter what kind of body they had.
Patriarchy is a caste system which takes humans who are born biologically male or female and turns them into the social classes called men and women. Male people are made into men by socialization into masculinity, which is defined by a psychology based on emotional numbness and a dichotomy of self and other. This is also the psychology required by soldiers, which is why we don’t think you can be a peace activist without being a feminist.
Female socialization in patriarchy is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission.
We see nothing in the creation of gender to celebrate or embrace. Patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled so that the category of gender no longer exists. This is also our position on race and class. The categories are not natural: they only exist because hierarchical systems of power create them (see, for instance, Audrey Smedley’s book Race in North America). We want a world of justice and equality, where the material conditions that currently create race, class, and gender have been forever overcome.
Patriarchy facilitates the mining of female bodies for the benefit of men – for male sexual gratification, for cheap labor, and for reproduction. To take but one example, there are entire villages in India where all the women only have one kidney. Why? Because their husbands have sold the other one. Gender is not a feeling—it’s a human rights abuse against an entire class of people, “people called women.”
We are not “transphobic.” We do, however, have a disagreement about what gender is. Genderists think that gender is natural, a product of biology. Radical feminists think gender is social, a product of male supremacy. Genderists think gender is an identity, an internal set of feelings people might have. Radical feminists think gender is a caste system, a set of material conditions into which one is born. Genderists think gender is a binary. Radical feminists think gender is a hierarchy, with men on top. Some genderists claim that gender is “fluid.” Radical feminists point out that there is nothing fluid about having your husband sell your kidney. So, yes, we have some big disagreements.
Radical feminists also believe that women have the right to define their boundaries and decide who is allowed in their space. We believe all oppressed groups have that right.”
So try a little harder to argue honestly and charitably against your opponents.
“This conflict often shows up in the realm of gender-specific spaces, in shelters and anti-violence organizations. Feminism has been used as a means of spreading hatred against trans people, particularly trans women, and has co-opted the anti-violence movement to implicitly and explicitly exclude trans women.“
No kidding. Male violence is endemic in society. Keeping men away from women and protecting hard fought for female only spaces is a priority in effective feminism. You should try it some time.
“It’s difficult for WAVAW to grapple with this history, especially as feminists doing anti-violence work.“
What part of male violence don’t you get? That is the root of the problem and thus what much of radical feminism works to change in society. That is the material reality of the situation, class based male violence against female people. Idealistic, individual solutions – see pretty much all of gender identity – do not address these systemic issues. They may be important, but do they are not inherently feminist, and thus do not merit centring in female spaces and effective feminist activism.
“This is especially true as trans-exclusionary radical feminism is alive and well in Vancouver; it’s no secret that we’re working amongst a hotbed of transmisogyny that has a global reach.“
Feminists are rightly calling you on your male-centric, misogynistic approach. Get used to it.
“One of the things we hear most often is that by making space for trans women in our feminism we will dilute our politics. We hear rumours of trans women taking over and forcing an anti-feminist agenda on us. “
No, this is about Transactivists successfuly lobbying Vancouver City council to remove funding for the ONLY rape crisis centre that is Female only. Because a refuge from male violence is somehow unacceptable to your ‘woke-ness’ on high. Every other shelter allows men in, but apparently having a female only option is unacceptable, and your particular brand of handmaiden feminism is the only one that should be funded.
“This is factually incorrect. We know this is incorrect because trans women have never accessed WAVAW in large numbers, despite the fact that we have been expressly open to trans women since 2000.”
Fine and dandy. How about respecting woman’s boundaries when they prefer not to be around those members of the class of people that rape them? You prioritize male feelings over female safety and it is a travesty.
“As a rape crisis center committed to supporting survivors, we want them to access our services […]”
No one is stopping you. This is about your support of taking away female only safe spaces for rape survivors. This is you promoting ideology that actively hurts vulnerable women in the name of inclusion.
“Perhaps the most dangerous thing trans-exclusionary rhetoric does is to erase difference by insisting on some shared experience of womanhood.Kimberlé Crenshaw’s hugely influential theory on intersectionality informs our understanding that people embody different intersecting identities that get compounded under systems of oppression. For example, a queer, working class, woman of colour experiences the world in a much different way than an upper middle class, straight, white woman would. Intersectionality shows us that women across race, class, gender, ability, etc., are more different than alike. To say that all women have a shared lived experience based on biological sex erases these differences and upholds white supremacy, patriarchy, and the status quo.”
What is it with redefinition of feminist terminology? Can we get back to what Kimberlé Crenshaw theory addresses in context? Please, and not the queer bastardization that supports your post modern neo-liberal hogwash?
“The term intersectionality theory was first coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.[3] In her work, Crenshaw discussed Black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black and of being a woman considered independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other.[19] Crenshaw mentioned that the intersectionality experience within black women is more powerful than the sum of their race and sex, and that any observations that do not take intersectionality into consideration cannot accurately address the manner in which black women are subordinated.”
On to what Carly Thomsen says:
“I recently asked my students in an upper division Gender and Women’s Studies Feminist Engaged Research course—in which all students are Gender and Women’s Studies majors or minors—a question about that day’s reading we were discussing in class. A student responded with: “It’s all about intersectionality.” My initial question is not particularly relevant, as I have found that students will attempt to answer nearly any question by referencing (the need for and value of) “intersectionality.” I followed up to ask: “What is intersectionality?” My students looked at me blankly. All of my students had been exposed to what they would describe as “intersectionality.” Yet, not one had read the original theory of intersectionality. Not one could accurately describe the theory. Not one had a sense of the genealogy of the term. Not one could think of limits to intersectionality. Some thought that the term refers to moments in which activism and scholarship “intersect,” while others insisted that it refers to the moment when any two or more marginalized identities meet within one person’s life. Not one knew its roots in black feminist theory or critical race theory. I raise this point not because these moments gesture toward some type of feminist pedagogical failure—if only the students learned the material properly!—but because these moments point to the hegemony of discourses of “intersectionality” within Gender and Women’s Studies. In these moments, we can see that, as Ahmed (2012a) suggests, “intersectionality can be used as a method of deflection,” as a way of re-directing attention away from race and racism (195)—and, by extension, from whichever form of marginalization one is working to address—by bringing up other forms of social exclusion. The failure here lies with neither an individual instructor nor student but with a field that has produced so little critical reflection on the limits of “intersectionality” that it figures as that which is largely beyond contest.”
“Becoming Radically Undone: Discourses of Identity and Diversity in the Introductory Gender and Women’s Studies Classroom” – -Carly Thomsen
The too tl;dr is this. The primary axis on which females are oppressed is SEX. Intersectionality describes the interlocking challenges facing women and particularly women of colour, but in no possible reality-based world does it append the category of sex.
“Therefore, as feminists, we cannot speak to a universal experience of womanhood, and we will not exclude trans women by claiming that there is one.“
That is problematic because sex based oppression – female human trafficking, female sex selected abortions, prositution, domestic violence, FGM, objectification, et cetera – all revolve around the sex based axis of female subjugation in the world. Plugging your ears and not seeing this fact especially in service male gender feels is particular abhorrent.
“For those of us who aren’t trans women, we have work to do. Our responsibility as a feminist organization is to push back against transmisogyny in meeting rooms, and in the movement, and right now, we’re re-committing to doing just that.”
Your responsibility as an ostensibly feminist organization is to centre the needs of females in your organization.
Period.
Shame on you for throwing women (adult human females) under the bus in your nebulous quest for ‘inclusivity’.
“The days of complicity with transmisogyny and trans-exclusionary feminism need to come to an end, as more trans women are speaking up and more organizations are willing to listen.”
Transmisogyny doesn’t exist. Queer theoretical terms often don’t apply in reality, go figure. The actual problem, male violence and the misogyny that goes along with it needs to be addressed. Try starting there.
“We need to be vocal and to encourage our friends, family, and colleagues to examine their transmisogyny. We need to stop excusing it under the guise of feminism.”
Falling over yourself to meet male needs is nothing new in society. It isn’t part of meaningful feminist action. When you’ve worked through your reality problems, please come back and give effective feminism a go.
“Right now, we need to push back against trans exclusionary rhetoric, stop calling it feminism, and remember what revolution we’re working towards.“
Do you even realize the level of newspeak going on here? You issued this response in terms of the only rape crisis centre in Vancouver that explicitly catered to females and a female only space – losing their funding – and the furor it justifiably caused. From your high-horse of ‘inclusion’ you are speaking against the choice of women, who chose not to associate with men in a RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.
Read that again.
Take your proclamations drenched in bullcookery elsewhere. There is feminist work to be done and until you can realign your priorities with material reality, please sod off at your earliest convenience.
Support women in Vancouver go and donate to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Woman’s Shelter here.
Dr.Jane Clare Jones clearly describes the problem. Here is the link to the twitter thread as the screen captures won’t have active links. And also the quote of the day from Dr. Jane Clare Jones:
“That Morgane Oger, and the movement she represents[transactivism], gives not one flying fuck about the fact that the presence of male-bodied people can cause extreme trauma to already very vulnerable women, is completely evident. Let’s be clear, this is absolute contempt for female people.”
Send an email to the BC NDP and ask them why they are engaged in this brand virulent misogyny.
Donate, or at the very least share, the webpage of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter Page. Show your solidarity and support of women.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…