I left the Labour Party when the leadership candidates in early 2020 endorsed a pledge to expel people like my partner and friends from the party as "transphobic" supporters of a "hate group" (WPUK). This FB post sums up my thoughts.
"WHY DO YOU KEEP POSTING ABOUT THE ERASURE OF THE SEX BASED RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS?" A friend asked so I will answer. I do post a lot about this. Almost always I simply repost the hard work of an awesome network of feminists that I would encourage people to fund and support. I post in part because of my partner. When Debbie and I met in 1980 she was working in a Rape Crisis Centre. As students, our courting days - giving my age away there - included evenings of direct action, shall we say, on certain male-centred venues in the city. Our shared books were not just Trotsky, Serge and Luxemburg but Dworkin, Brownmiller and Rowbotham. I post in part because we have a daughter and we think the world will be less safe and less free for her if this "gender identity" revolution is nodded through. But I keep posting about this mostly because I am 58 and, hand to heart, I really can't think of anything comparable to this happening in my lifetime. In fact I am struggling to think of anything comparable in history. What i mean is I can't think of another example of such a huge REVERSAL of the hard-won rights and protections of any group of oppressed people (half the population, in this case) once those rights have been established, in many cases for some decades. (I could add: outside of a counter-revolution, which this is of course.) And I certainly can't think of a comparable reversal happening in 5 minutes flat, sweeping over the entire liberal democratic world, with almost no serious discussion, against the will of huge majorities of the populations, and *with the active support of the left*. Ideas and policies which one could not imagine being proposed at all a mere five minutes ago are becoming law, enforced by the courts and police. In the blink of an eye it has become dangerous to hold views that were near-universally held just five minutes ago. - dangerous to believe in the material reality of biological sex. - dangerous to believe in the centrality of the material reality of sex to women's oppression. - dangerous to call women 'women' - an entire lexicon is taking its place: 'uterus havers', 'chest feeders', 'vulva havers', 'pregnant people' and so on (but we never hear of 'testicle havers', do we?). - dangerous to believe in the right of same-sex attracted lesbians and gay men to BE same-sex attracted, without being pressured to have sex with people they do not desire, or being attacked as "transphobic" and "genital fetishists" and compared to the KKK when they politely make their desires known, or when they object to their boundaries being disregarded, from their dating apps to their summer camps. - (and excuse me, but if you do not understand that there is a group of men waiting in the dark web to slipstream behind the notions of 'the cotton ceiling' (i.e the claim that men-who-have-identifed-as-lesbian-women are being oppressed by lesbians who wont have sex with them) and the 'boxer ceiling' (i.e. the claim that women-who-have-identified-as-gay-men are being oppressed by gay men who wont have sex with them) then, forgive me, but you are an idiot. Go ahead and define people who demand sex from other people, but are refused it, as the *oppressed* to be supported, and the refusers as *oppressors* to be assailed and, well, just you see how you get on with *that* slippery slope, and who you meet there). - dangerous to believe (in a world still entirely saturated by predatory male violence and male sexual violence) in the need and the right of girls and women to sex-specific toilets, locker rooms, refuges, crisis centres, sports, and resources; - dangerous to say it is not fair that a 6ft 8inch 52 year old man who identifies as a women is taking a place on a women's college basketball team. - dangerous to point out that it is unsafe when a man who identifies as a women participates in women's MMA and literally *breaks the skulls* of the women they fight. - dangerous to challenge the idea that we should not return to the prison cell of a Janet and John world in which boys who like pretty dolls and spangly bracelets are 'really girls', while girls who like guns and mud are 'really boys'. - dangerous to point out that a girl who isn't old enough to decide her own bedtime should not really be allowed to make the decision to have her own breasts cut off (yes, it's age 15 in Oregon) - dangerous to pursue gender critical research in our universities, or even to express gender critical views there, as a student or a lecturer, lest you be sent to Coventry, denied advancement, excluded from committees, and smeared as "transphobic". Also unprecedented is the violence, real, threatened and verbal, that has accompanied this change at every step. The rape threats. The 'kill a terf' incitement that saturates social media, with its elaborate descriptions, sometimes with photos attached, of the violence to which the 'terfs' are going to be subjected to by 'my girl dick'. The physical assaults on feminists holding public meetings. The cancellations, from JKR to Julie Bindel to Selina Todd to all the rest. The sackings. The doxing. The hanging from trees of effigies of feminists who have dared to oppose gender identity ideology. I do not post because it is unprecedented that this kind of madness has the active support of almost the entire far left Hell, the history of the far left could be told as a series of ideological manias accompanied by violence against this season's designated 'enemy'. I post because of what IS unprecedented: bar a number of brave, slandered, barely tolerated, and threatened-with-expulsoon feminists aside, the entire left has acted as nodding dog and cheer leader for all this. No, it's more than that: the left are this counter-revolution's organisers and militants. Anyone on the left opposing gender identity ideology is being driven out of "the community of the good', as David Hirsh called it, smeared as "transphobic haters", from brave women Labour MPs to brave rank and file activists. What is also unprecedented is the spineless, craven silence of men on the left who know it's all madness. They will tell you in private that they too think women's and girls rights and needs are being thrown under a bus, and they accept it is a disaster. But they will not say one word in public. They act as if they are being asked to storm Omaha Beach on D Day, for Christ's sake. After years of waiting I now say this: they are useless cowards and I have contempt for every one of them. Comrades, no more. All that. All that is why I post about it so much. Comments are closed.
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