Earlier this year, I was dropped as a contributor to a book project because of my feminist writing. The book is an animal rights anthology that seeks to dispel the myths that surround types of animal farming that are perceived as humane alternatives to factory farming, with various authors reflecting on the “humane meat” phenomenon from the angles of their respective work. My chapter would have shared a unique and, I think, useful analysis of the psychology and social dynamics that lead to the celebration of animal agriculture as ethical and even enlightened in progressive circles.
More than a year after the project started, the editor (Hope Bohanec) suddenly informed me that the publisher she had found would not take on the book if my chapter was included, due to the gender critical opinions that I share on this blog. My chapter had nothing to do with gender, sex-based oppression, or feminism. Nonetheless, any association with me is verboten. I will mention that this publisher has already profited off of labor and ideas that I contributed to a book she published two years ago and for which I was never credited. I have been wanting to write the story of that book because it is a perfect illustration of the problems that arise with so-called “intersectional veganism”. In particular, how a superficial, performative and ID-politic approach to caring about “all oppression” ironically leads to an erasure of radical voices and support for neoliberal politics that harm society’s most disenfranchised. I never got around to writing about that, but now here we are again.
After her conversation with the publisher, Hope called me to ask that I “explain”. ‘What’s this “gender critical” stuff?’ She is a white woman who has internalized that she needs to be an “ally” to the oppressed, and moves in a woke culture that believes that to do so, one must take their marching orders from social justice thought leaders rather than engage in critical thinking. She’d been fed that transwomen are society’s most oppressed and transphobia is a rampant social ill and… that’s the extent of it.
I was caught off-guard by the call and didn’t have the mindspace for an in-depth overview of the feminist critique of transactivism, but I tried to summarize it nonetheless. Despite her initial demand that I explain gender critical feminism to her, Hope immediately interrupted me and jumped to explaining to me instead. This was a familiar dynamic with this person. As I then tried to engage with her points, she cut me off saying that she felt attacked. While I was put on the spot to explain my ideas, my attempts at doing so were repeatedly shut down. She laughed dismissively and in disbelief at what I said, as if I were making things up or was just very confused. For example, she didn’t believe that lesbians are pressured into sex with transwomen or that they’re vilified if they assert that they only have sex with people with vaginas. She didn’t believe that self-ID is a thing. She said she was “sure” that there are “protocols” to determine who is trans and can be let into women’s shelters, prisons and other spaces. I answered that she would be considered transphobic for not supporting self-ID; that stumped her for a second. People will go along with the hounding of women as TERFs but they themselves don’t support the movement they think they support.
Hope had the main libfem points down. A “woman is anyone who feels like a woman”–a circular non-definition. Instead of getting bogged down in the semantics of woman, I attempted to move the conversation along by speaking of “people with uteruses”, but here the interjection was “not all women have a uterus”. This is where the postmodern dismantlement of language gets us: you can not speak of the oppression faced by a group of people, much less organize against it, if you can not name or define said group. I tried to explain that regardless of how you label them, the class of people formerly known as women are oppressed and are entitled to have a movement focused on themselves, as well as single-sex spaces and resources. She didn’t agree, but thought that if women are entitled to separate spaces, all the more reason that transwomen should have access to them. Because, as she exclaimed several times, “transwomen are the MOST oppressed!”. Under this now commonly-espoused truth, there is no recognition of the realities that women and girls (i.e. human females) face for being female. Women and girls can’t identify out of being subjected to FGM, child marriage, being denied an education, being denied the right to own land, imprisoned for singing in public, sexual harassment, being killed by a spouse, rape, being forced to marry their rapist, or any of the other ways females are treated under patriarchy. Males can identify as women all they want, it won’t change that they’re born in a world that heaps privilege on them from the moment it becomes apparent that they have a penis. When you say that transwomen (i.e. males) are the most oppressed of women (i.e. females) you’re saying that sex-based oppression doesn’t exist. When I asked “Do you think that it’s ok for people of color to have spaces separate from white people?”, the answer was “Yes, because in that case, there’s a power dynamic”. The woke are spectacularly un-woke when it comes to sexism.
The usual perception of the trans movement is something like this: It is a progressive movement that organizes for the rights of a particularly vulnerable and oppressed population, and also leads to a generally more accepting and free society in which gender norms are less strict and policed. People’s attitudes towards the movement place them in two camps. On one side, it is supported by people who are progressive, accepting of difference, and whose reaction to the marginalized is solidarity and compassion rather than vilification. On the other side, it is opposed by those who recoil at the sight of people transgressing gender norms and/or who are too comfortable in their privilege to understand or care about the struggles of the oppressed.
A gender critical stance is something else, and coming from me (I have the reputation of being quite woke myself), it threw a wrench into this binary. Grappling with a new take was too much effort, and Hope just wanted to cut to the chase. Was I a bigot or not? Should she remove me from her book or not? To find out, she interrupted me with a “Let me ask you this: do you believe transwomen are women?”. In this cult-like mentality, allegiance to this belief is the simple baseline of virtue. However, nobody who repeats this mantra even defines what a woman is, so how are we to know if we believe that anyone is one? And if I answer no to the question, it’s proof that I’m a heretic and a bigot, no further discussion required.
Of course, I don’t agree that not acquiescing to repeating “transwomen are women” makes one a bigot. And as it currently stands, I do not think that the trans movement is progressive. And if we are to be schematic about it, I would say that there are not two, but three groups of people. There are progressives, conservatives, and then there are conservatives dressed as progressives. Feminists fall in the first category. We believe that people should be free to express themselves however they wish, that there is no right or wrong way to be a woman or a man, that gender should be done away with, that women are oppressed on the basis of sex and that women’s rights matter, and that it is perfectly fine to be homosexual. The second category are the “traditional” conservatives: they believe that there are innate psychological and behavioral differences between men and women, they do not accept boys who want to wear dresses or men who have sex with other men, and they are in favor of some level of inequality between men and women. Then there’s the third category. They are ok with a boy liking dresses, as long as they block his puberty and castrate him. They are ok with men having sex with men, as long as one of them identifies as a woman. They’re still not ok with women exclusively having sex with women, and they’ll attack lesbians just as viciously as the traditional traditionalists. Like conservatives, these people believe that gender is innate; that there is some female essence that makes women like makeup and the color pink, be more emotional, submissive and well-suited to housework and raising babies. Unlike conservatives, they don’t think that sex and gender always “match”, which is one of the reasons they appear progressive to those who aren’t looking closely.
Outside of queer/trans echo-chambers, most people find what feminists say to be very reasonable. In fact, they are often confused as to what the problem is. And so feminists are silenced and censored and no-platformed and vilified so that nobody reads what we are actually saying. Those who do, and who find themselves agreeing, are often too scared to ask questions lest they become a target. In June, JK Rowling wrote a compassionate and thoughtful letter explaining why she thinks that biological sex is real and relevant to women’s experiences, and why it should be taken into account in policy. In response, she received a deluge of sexist insults, rape threats and death threats, complete with disowning her of her books (yep – some people decided that she hadn’t actually written Harry Potter). Back in the world most people live in, it was a real head-scratcher to understand what was so offensive about what JK Rowling had written. Her letter and subsequent experiences shed some much-needed light on the irrationality and misogyny of the trans movement. She has enough money that they can’t cancel her, and she has enough courage to not back down in front of bullies.
Not all women are able or willing to do the same. Many who are gender critical or who have concerns about gender identity ideology keep their views private. And if we don’t self-censor, others do it for us. In June, Reddit shut down r/gendercritical, the largest feminist forum on the internet. It was supposedly part of a wider shut-down of subreddits promoting hate, however r/gendercritical did no such thing. Contrary to other banned subreddits like r/The_Donald, r/gendercritical had never received any warnings. At the same time, subreddits promoting the hatred of women – such as rape fetish subreddits – were kept up. Even r/gendercriticalguys stayed up for a couple weeks longer, until the hypocrisy became too damning. Shutting down r/gendercritical was entirely about removing a female-dominated space in which women could share experiences and analysis. The timing was interesting, as this was shortly after JK Rowling published her initial letter, and many new women were flocking to the subreddit after realizing that there was something not quite progressive about the trans movement. And it wasn’t just r/gendercritical. Women’s health-based subreddits were then targeted for not being “inclusive” enough, many of their moderators were removed and replaced with trans-identifying men or trans allies. Meanwhile, nobody was policing and derailing the discussion on men’s health subreddits.
While the removal of r/gendercritical made some waves, the censorship of women often flies under the radar. Right before r/gendercritical was shut down, the story of Allison Bailey was being shared. Allison Bailey is a Black lesbian barrister in the UK who helped found the LGB Alliance. In reaction, Stonewall coordinated with the barristers’ chambers of which she is a member to put her under investigation. She set up a crowdfund campaign on CrowdJustice to raise funds to bring a case to the Employment Tribunal. In short sequence, her crowdfund was shared on reddit, where I first saw it. Then CrowdJustice removed it, without her consent. Then they reinstated it, but with her original statement edited and no longer accepting donations. Jo Bartosch writes “Identity top trumps can be pretty odious, but it seems relevant to note that Allison Bailey is a black lesbian from a working-class background who is simply fighting for the right not to be discriminated against for her beliefs. To have the weight of the woke, and overwhelmingly white, middle-class establishment come crashing down on her for stepping out of line reveals the power and influence of the transgender lobby.”
An ad hominem that transactivists throw at gender-critical feminists is that they are all privileged middle-aged white women. From there an association is often drawn with racism, and before you know it, believing that biological sex is real is equated to being a racist. (Many transactivists seriously argue that biological sex is a colonial construct. Apparently, before colonization, people of color didn’t know how babies are made.) JK Rowling is a wealthy white woman and so they feel they can publicly rip her apart (because they can’t rip apart her arguments). Women of color who are gender critical are attacked no less viciously, but usually more privately. While anger against JK Rowling was raging on the interwebs, the crowdfund of Allison Bailey was being quietly removed, edited and capped behind the public eye. In the world of ID politics, what matters is not the strength of an argument but the identity of the person who makes it. Gender critical women of color threaten the narrative that transactivists have woven–in more ways than one. Indeed, Allison Bailey recently tweeted “When the usual suspects spout their usual nonsense about the gender critical movement in the UK being an extension of white feminism, remind them that every key case before the courts is being brought by women of color.”
The “privilege” finger-pointing is a projection of course, but it appears convincing to those in woke circles because of the homogeneity of their social sphere and lack of awareness of the world outside of Western middle classes. This highlights one of the reasons the animal rights movement is such a fertile terrain for woke culture. The American animal rights movement is by and large a middle to upper-middle class movement that has very little connection to other progressive or liberatory movements. Its homogeneity is increasingly egregious in a social context that prizes diversity and representation for marginalized groups. In addition to this, animal rights activists have often been accused of caring more about animals than humans. Established animal rights non-profits and funders are keen to redress this image and don’t shy away from blatant tokenization. Platform a couple POC talking about anything social-justice-y at an animal rights event and your opportunities for funding and sponsorships shoot way up. In this context, it’s easy (and lucrative) for people whose politics amount to not much other than identity politics to market themselves as experts and thought leaders. As a result, we just get liberals educating other liberals on how to do social justice. While often from minority groups (and pseudo-minority, e.g. heterosexuals claiming to be “queer”), social justice thought leaders are usually from the same social circles–educated in the same institutions that produce the white woke people, typically American, etc. The illusion of diversity legitimizes and entrenches the homogeneity of the milieu and further marginalizes the radicals, who are deemed to already be represented. Similarly, there is a lot of pressure on animal rights advocates (I would even say emotional blackmail) to be “intersectional”, which is basically taken to mean that they have to focus on humans in some way. On the flipside, any gesture of caring about humans can serve the purpose of showing that one isn’t the default bad vegan who only cares about animals… once that box is ticked, there is no need for activism that is genuinely transformational.
I was reminded of the disconnect between the animal rights movement and the left when I spoke to Hope of the harm of gender identity ideology to children. She thought that my assertion that children are transed for simply not conforming to gender norms was ludicrous, that there was much more to it. Her claim to expertise? “I’ve watched three documentaries!” Those who have some sort of leftist background, or even who have just grown up as a member of a marginalized community, usually recognize that media can be a vehicle of propaganda and that it should be subject to scrutiny. I am not implying that all leftists today are wise to the propaganda of the gender identity movement. Robert Jensen points out that while leftists are usually critical of liberals, when it comes to issues of sex and gender they suddenly become liberals, including by abandoning the media criticism that is a key component of contemporary left analysis. With that said, a habit of skepticism is at least a starting point, while opinions are easy to manipulate among those who aren’t used to questioning what they’re told. It doesn’t matter how many documentaries you watch; if you’re uncritically consuming more and more of the same messaging from the same sources, chances are you’re not being educated, you’re being indoctrinated.
With men more vulnerable to Covid than women, this pandemic has made it clear that biology does indeed exist and that sex differences should be more researched (see: COVID-19’s deadliness for men is revealing why researchers should have been studying immune system sex differences years ago). Yet the left is supporting an anti-science movement that tells us that sex is merely a social construct. During Covid there has also been a steady stream of articles highlighting the reality of sex-based oppression–because when shit hits the fan, women are doubly impacted. A few examples: The Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism, Minister: 3,600 Rape Cases Recorded Nationwide during Covid-19 Lockdown, Hundreds of Girls and Women Have Disappeared in Peru During COVID-19 Pandemic, Coronavirus: Significant rise in pregnant Kenyan women dying amid curfew, experts say, Menstrual health and mentoring in Nepal lockdown, What India’s lockdown did to domestic abuse victims, During the Pandemic, More Women Must Miscarry at Home, Trafficked ‘brides’ stuck in China due to Coronavirus after fleeing abuse, Fears the coronavirus pandemic will hit women hardest, Fears of another spike of domestic violence. All the while, supposed progressives demonize women who defend sex-based rights. Causes they find more worthy? Gender-neutral language and defending the pronouns of wealthy westerners.
“Intersectionality” was originally about understanding how multiple axes of oppression “intersect” such that the resulting oppression is greater than the sum of its parts. The use of the term then shifted to convey (amongst other things) the centering of those who are the most disadvantaged in certain groups, i.e. who experience an intersection of oppressive systems. With this definition for example, intersectionality in the labor movement would be to center women, gay people, people of color, and others whose class-based oppression is compounded by other axes of oppression, here sexism, homophobia and racism respectively. Even going with this second definition, those who now claim that they are “intersectional” – intersectional feminists, intersectional vegans, intersectional social justice advocates – could not be more hypocritical. They support an elitist movement that benefits men while completely ignoring the realities of women around the world. The more a woman is vulnerable, marginalized and oppressed, the less visible and important her struggles are to them. Sure, they might fall over themselves to cater to a young middle class English-speaking Western woman who wants to be called “they” (though less so than for a man who wants to be called “she”), but an elderly woman doesn’t want a trans-identifying male nurse cleaning her genital area? A homeless woman doesn’t want to shower with a trans-identified male who looks and acts just like any regular man? A Muslim esthetician doesn’t want to wax the scrotum of a trans-identified male in the privacy of her home? A lesbian doesn’t want to be told that she should try girl-dick? Women want to speak about endometriosis, PCOS or focus their activism on abortion access? Psh. Bigots and white feminists, the lot of them. As for women who aren’t in the West, their existence rarely even registers.
Women have been writing and speaking and organizing against gender ideology, while we get censored and our analysis and our words are erased (Literally erased–everything I wrote on Reddit is gone. My intellectual labor served to make men rich and now even I can no longer access it). So below I’ve compiled a reading and viewing list for the feminist take on gender identity. I’ve only scratched the surface, but this is an assortment to get you started.
It should go without saying that sharing these links does not mean that I agree with all of the views expressed in them.
The transgender movement and society
The New Backlash. This is a long but excellent read that thoroughly describes and analyses the situation we are in. Written some years ago, still on point. I recommend you take the time to read it.
Sex and Gender. A Beginner’s Guide. Also very long but clear and thorough. If you don’t want to read the whole thing I recommend you at least jump to How Did We Get Here?
Gender Identity: What Does It Mean for Society, the Law, and Women – A talk by Meghan Murphy A talk that was given at an event that was heavily protested and for which the speakers needed to hire bodyguards. Transcript here.
To Advance Civil Rights, Oppose Transgender Extremism
Astroturfing: a brilliant article on the corporate funders of the trans trend
Why now? Historical specificity and the perfect storm that has created trans identity politics
The oldest hate crime: How misogyny is being used to strangle women’s debate on sex and gender
Transwomen are women or else
“Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately harmed by the laws, policies, and practices that accept gender identity as truth and biological sex as a lie due to our over-representation in transition houses for battered women and their children, rape crisis centres, and prisons in Canada. Indigenous women and girls have long and violent histories of colonization that are ongoing in our contemporary woman-hating, racist, capitalist culture. Research shows that many women and girls in prison in Canada have survived male violence, are poor, and are often imprisoned for non-violent poverty-related offenses. Men who identify as women believe that they should be placed in women’s prisons and leaders and others think so too. One of the reasons I think policy makers are allowing men who feel they are women to serve their sentences in women’s prisons and to be allowed access into women’s transition houses and rape crisis centres is because these places are disproportionately populated by Indigenous and other marginalized women.”
There is no problem with trans people in bathrooms
Gender and gender identity
Gender is not an identity, it is a tool of patriarchy: A feminist view of gender identity politics
If ‘white feminism’ is a thing, gender identity ideology epitomizes it
What’s healthy about gender dysphoria?
Short video by Carey Callahan, a detransitioned woman who is now a therapist.
Gender, Patriarchy and All That Jazz
I am überpoor (satire)
“There’s a word for people like me: überpoor (don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it; your ignorance just means you’re a privileged bigot). Basically, it describes the state of being poor while enduring the added oppression that comes with having money and a middle-class background. The queer poverty theorist J’amie Olivier came up with it in his brilliant work Whipping Chav. If you’ve not read it, please do. It explains so much about how poor people are not oppressed due to having no money but due to “poorphobia”: a widespread antipathy towards dog racing, Lambrini and the Waitrose Essentials range. Hardest hit by this are the überpoor: people who have been wrongly assigned middle- or upper-class status but are in fact poor. For centuries, such people have simply been invisible. No one has wanted to talk about us and our needs.“
Fay Blaney on gender identity and Indigenous cultures at the Vancouver Public Library
The gay people pushed to change their gender
On law and policy
Scottish Government Faces Judicial Review for Redefining “Women” to Include Men
California SB 132 Would Allow Trans-Identified Male Inmates to be Housed with Females
Should Men Be Allowed in Women’s Prisons? (video)
Posted on August 28, 2020. “At the time of this recording, the California legislature is poised to vote on SB 132, a bill that would allow incarcerated individuals to self-identify as transgender or intersex. Those individual must then “Be housed at a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual’s preference.” This includes sex-specific residential programs such as the Community Prisoner Mother Program.”
Kara Dansky at WNTT – Washington DC (video)
Attorney Kara Dansky speaks of legal developments around gender identity and Title IX in the United States.
Interview with Female Erasure Contributor Cathy Brennan (audio)
How do transgender policies affect International laws on women’s rights? (video)
Can women legally be compelled to handle male genitals? (video)
That example I gave of the Muslim esthetician not wanting to wax a scrotum? It wasn’t a hypothetical. Look up Jessica/Jonathan Yaniv.
Anna Zobnina (International women’s rights law expert) Where did gender identity ideology come from? (video)
The abuse of civil rights laws needs to stop
On language
An Open Letter to the Guy on Twitter who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real
Reproductive Rights: Women vs. People with Uteruses
‘“Uterus-haver” obfuscates the fact that the group of people at risk of losing abortion access are the same group of people we talk about being underrepresented in government; the same people sent to prison for “suspicious” miscarriages; the same group of people who were denied the vote for several hundred years in our republic. “Uterus-haver” conveniently fractures a cohesive picture of the female situation.’
The Women’s March and the Erasure of Women
Why has “biological reality-speak” become a thought crime?
#CanWeHaveAWord? Why Talking About Women’s Issues Has Become a Minefield
Another college student group hosts a violent, transphobic cupcake party
Vagina Monologues playright: ‘It never said a woman is someone with a vagina’
On biology
Project Nettie: scientists supporting biological sex
Sex is binary: Scientists speak up for the empirical reality of biological sex
Gender Heretics Is Offering 1 MILLION For A Third Human Gamete
Think Cancel Culture Doesn’t Exist? My Own ‘Lived Experience’ Says Otherwise
In which the academic career of a biologist was ruined because he publicly insisted that male and female are not social constructs.
The fight for women’s rights
Female Erasure with Maya Dillard Smith and Mary Lou Singleton | On Contact with Chris Hedges (video)
Maya Dillard Smith is a legal scholar who was pushed out of her job as the Executive Director of the Georgia ACLU because of her reservations over Obama’s directive to public schools to replace sex with gender identity.
‘How the Gender Identity Movement is Hijacking the Fight for Reproductive Sovereignty’ (video)
A letter to the woman who called me a TERF
“In this brave new world that you helped to create, look around for your transactivist friends, your lefty male allies, the ones you stood beside and yelled ‘terf, transphobe, bigot’ with, with you shouting the loudest, because you wanted to show what a good ally you were, how inclusive, how progressive. Where are they now? Why, they are where they always were. Benefitting from the patriarchy. Enjoying the new, improved version of it that you helped them to build by crushing the resistance from the women who spoke up for their rights. This has all cost them nothing; it has made the world a better, easier place for men. It has cost you and your sisters who campaigned with them for virtue cookies, everything.”
Why Can’t Women Be More Nice?
“The demand that women be ‘nice’ and ‘kind’ goes further than just being a matter of tone policing, it has an impact on what women are allowed to say, and how much we can expect to be listened to when we say it. Women are not just expected to be nice whilst fighting for our rights, we’re expected to be nice instead of fighting for our rights.”
What happens when women try to meet to discuss their rights in 2019
Sex Based Segregation & Fairness in Sports | The Big Picture RT (video)
Women Interrogated by Police, One Thrown in Jail, for Disbelief in Gender Identity Theory
How does transgenderism undermine our right to organize as women, in Brazil?
WHRC [Women’s Human Rights Campaign] Launches USA chapter
Opposing Women’s Rights: 100 Years of Violence
Counting men as women
Why Disabled Women Requesting Female-Only Care is Not ‘Disgusting’
Man Elected to Female Leadership Seat That was Created to Ensure Female Participation in Politics, also: NY Democrats Quietly Dismantle ‘1 Male, 1 Female’ Rule
‘Self ID will stop women playing on an equal playing field’
These Are Not Our Crimes (video)
‘Gender Fluid’ Credit Suisse director named on FT list of Top 100 Women in Business
Sigh…
Have some “intersectionality” with your Honey Bumbles: On Gavin Hubbard’s theft of a Samoan victory
No. You may not take our sport.
“We all know the truth here and the truth is that the truth is not what matters to the people making these decisions. What matters is what has always mattered — male feelings. Male desire to conquer and conquest has been the single most deadly force throughout history so why shouldn’t they take from women our fledgling sporting competitions?”
Cancelling feminists and their allies
The Annals of the TERF-Wars
Humorous chronology of the trans v. feminist conflict, with a focus on the UK.
Why British Feminists Are Such a Bunch of Evil Witches
Censored by transpolitics: A masterpost
A long list of people who have been attacked, unpublished, censored, threatened and more for questioning in some way trans people or ideology.
Women in the United States are Being Fired for Talking About Feminism
“A man can not be fired for believing he is a woman, but a woman can be fired for believing he’s not.”
Rose Freedman: Professor’s door ‘covered in urine’ after gender law debate
In which a Jewish professor, human rights lawyer and survivor of sexual violence finds her door covered in urine and is called a “Nazi who should be raped”.
Bullying and Harassment Permitted by Bristol University (crowdfund)
In which a feminist from the Dominican Republic loses her PhD scholarship to study in the UK following bullying for her gender critical views.
Fired For Feminism
This was written by an acquaintance who was fired for writing an article about the misogyny of identifying as “non-binary”. This was the second time she was #cancelled. The first time, she was kicked out of an animal rights group she founded.
How I became the most hated lesbian in Baltimore
In which the only woman and lesbian on the Baltimore LGBTQ Commission’s Law and Policy Committee was pushed out of it.
Trans people are real – but so is biology
The latest casualty: Sasha White was fired for her job at a literary agency in New York for saying “Gender non-conformity is wonderful, denying biological sex not so.”
Thistle Petterson: How I Became the Most Hated Folk Singer in Madison
Cancel culture cannot erase a strong argument
Transactivism at its Finest – the Blood Root Restaurant Debacle
In which the elderly lesbian owners of a vegetarian restaurant that was a decades-long community pillar and catered to all people, including trans, came under attack by transactivists.
Trans-identified male verbally attacks Rose McGowan at Barnes & Noble talk
Dehumanizing women as TERFs
‘TERF’ isn’t just a slur, it’s hate speech
TERF: a term used to stop critical thinking while demonizing homosexuals and transexuals (video)
“People who use the term TERF are part of the queer and trans community. Do you know who started the queer and trans community a long time ago? Homosexual people. In LGBT, the first two letters are referring to homosexual people. It’s insane that being a homosexual now is a prosecutable offense in social [justice] circles.”
It’s Time for Progressives to Protect Women Instead of Pronouns
Terf is a Slur (TRA Diss track) – Grace Adetoro (video)
Something different–let’s support radfem artists!
The Invisible Women – why are so many women scared to speak out about gender politics?
What’s wrong with gender ideology
“TERF graves are gender neutral bathrooms” – truly the language of the new civil rights frontier.
Why I Became An Evil TERF (video)
Social media platforms censoring feminists
The Disturbing Trend of Feminist Censorship on Medium
Reddit is Censoring Women’s Health Support Groups
WordPress shuts down several feminist blogs without warning and WordPress censors GenderTrender; Gallus Mag responds.
Reddit Purges Wrongthink From Women’s Health Support Groups
F-Droid Bans Feminist Social Media Site Spinster, Then Bans Female Dev For Asking Questions
I’m with the Banned: Twitter in the Time of Gender Fascism
YouTube Censors Interview of Mother Who Lost Daughter to Trans Cult
“Whilst Keen might have blasphemed in the eyes of the Silicon Valley gods, the video she posted did not break a single British law. Despite the content being legal, the 37.1 million British adult users of YouTube will not have the opportunity to hear this important perspective on what is a live political issue within the UK.”
Female-only spaces
Male-bodied Rapists Are Being Imprisoned With Women. Why Do So Few People Care?
Man Wins Lawsuit Demanding to Change in Locker Room Alongside High School Girls, Assisted by ACLU
Girls don’t matter in the United States.
Discontinuation of grant to Vancouver Rape Relief shows trans activism is an attack on women
In which a woman’s shelter is defunded for maintaining a female-only space for rape victims.
Why it’s Impossible for Women to Compromise with the Transgender Movement
“Just as women and girls share sex-specific facilities while some of us wear skirts and others wear pants, and have managed on a daily basis over decades of sharing facilities to not rape or beat up one another over differences in fashion, men in pants must get comfortable urinating and changing alongside their brothers in skirts. There is no logical reason that a male person in a skirt should trigger violence in a more traditionally masculine-appearing male observer. This issue is men’s problem, and men must resolve it amongst themselves. Women are not human shields that should be placed between two warring factions of males. If the two male groups choose not to get along and share spaces civilly, then the male individuals who identify as women must fight for their own facilities – just as women once fought and won sex-specific facilities.”
Buuuut what about the transvestites? (video)
In which a women is banned from a female-only dating app because she opposed the presence of a cross-dressing male, and this youtuber asks who actually counts as transgender.
Expelled from GirlGuiding because of my Gender Critical Beliefs (crowdfund)
“I felt that some aspects of Girlguiding policy needed rethinking in the light of their acceptance of self-identity as proof that someone is female, which clashes with my gender critical beliefs. The issues are particularly important around safeguarding, where parents cannot know that their daughter is sharing changing or sleeping facilities with with a person who has the physical attributes of a man or boy but says they identify as a woman or girl. Adult men who say they identify as women will be allowed to share sleeping facilities with and do intimate care for young girls. This meant that the Girlguiding policy required us as adults in charge of children to deliberately withhold information from the children’s parents and guardians.”
Get your story straight on the bathroom debate
Why Women’s Spaces are Critical to Feminist Autonomy
The Left and women
How progressive misogyny works
British Labor Party pledge purge of feminists
The new misogyny targets Cindy Sheehan and Helen Steel
Woman ‘attacked in racist incident at May Day march’
‘Those involved in progressive movements need to commit to ensuring women’s voices are heard’
Well-known Spycops and McLibel campaigner Helen Steel is now a cancelled woman. ‘Perhaps the most shocking incident was at Manchester Anarchist Book Fair in 2018, where Steel explains she was “physically carried out while trying to persuade them that it was incompatible with anarchist principles to exclude women from participating in discussions about what the word woman means and whether males should be allowed into women-only spaces.”’
When did liberal men start thinking it was acceptable to tell feminists how to be feminist?
What is really radical in sex/gender politics?
Women’s rights in the far left – are feminists actually neo-fascists?
If feminist Linda Bellos is seen as a risk, progressive politics has lost its way
The Women’s Alliance: Confronting Sexism on the Left
Is anything more tragically representative of the 2010s rise of woke culture than transactivists calling anti-war work irrelevant? The US is still slaughtering people in imperial wars, but anti-war activism has all but disappeared while bourgeois ID politics have largely supplanted solidarity and radical politics.
‘The Women’s Alliance says, “…given that Veterans for Peace made a position statement regarding transphobia and transmisogyny, we also requested copies of past position statements regarding sexism and misogyny. We have yet to receive any confirmation that they even exist.” Note that the VFP concern seems centered on men who have transitioned to become transwomen. There is no provision for the fight against trans-misandry—something that is undoubtedly important to those female members who have transitioned and live as transmen. We find this telling as to the nature of these demands. The Women’s Alliance activists were called transphobic bigots and received the usual threats of rape and violence for disagreeing with the theory of gender being promoted by trans activists and now the VFP. Perhaps the most over-the-top attack was directed at Cindy Sheehan, who became a leader in the peace movement after her 24-year-old son was killed while serving as an Army Specialist in Iraq. When she posted a comment in support of the Women’s Alliance Statement, she was told by the trans solidarity crowd on social media that all the antiwar work that she has done has become “irrelevant,” and all her work on behalf of Private Manning is now “negated.”’
An open letter to the left regarding silence
Women’s rights, trans ideology and Gramsci’s morbid symptoms
Class, Identity Politics and Transgender Rights
Women’s meeting besieged by raging crowd
“We are attacked as if being critical of gender is some aberration rather than the core principle of feminism that it is. But where women’s groups have led the way the left is lagging behind.”
On the harassment of lesbians
Stonewall has sold out lesbians and it’s time they be held to account
Meet the Gay Activists Who’ve Had Enough of Britain’s Ultra-Woke Homophobes
Shame Receipts (Content warning: graphic language)
Lezbehonest about Queer Politics Erasing Lesbian Women
Lesbianism is under attack, though not by the usual suspects
What is the Cotton Ceiling. Presentation by Angela Wild of #GetTheLOut. (video)
RE: “your dating preferences are discriminatory” (video)
Riley, You Are Not A Lesbian – Not A Feminist Either (video)
Lesbians are being excluded from the Vancouver Dyke March in the name of ‘inclusivity’
Interview: Angela C. Wild of #GetTheLOut on Pride in London and Lesbian Erasure
‘In the name of “inclusivity” and “progress,” we have reached a stage wherein same sex attraction is called “hate speech”. Reframing females who are attracted to other females as somehow “bigoted” or “hateful” functions as a vicious form of misogyny, because it denies women’s right to have sexual boundaries.’
Media Blackout on Dana Rivers “Mitchfest” Murder Trial
Dana Rivers is a well-known trans-identified male who participated in a campaign to shut down a female-only music festival, Mitchfest, and who harassed lesbians who attended the event. A few months after Mitchfest was shut down, he murdered a Black lesbian couple and their son in Oakland. We do not yet know why he committed these murders, so we can not say whether they were hate crimes. With that said, think of the media coverage that would ensue if the victims had been male. Imagine if a person was known to have harassed gay men, or Jewish men, or Black men, or Muslim men, and to have organized against their freedom of assembly. Imagine that the same person then proceeded to murder members of that community. There would likely be some hypothesis on it the murders being hate crimes as well as increased media coverage of the vulnerability of the targeted community. In this case? Total silence. This family deserves to have their story told. To add insult to injury, the headline of The East Bay Times states that a “woman” was charged with the killings. This was not a woman’s crime.
Medicalizing gender non-conforming and autistic children
The Transgender Child: The Creation of an Emblem for a Political Movement (video)
Presentation by Stephanie Davies-Arai for the panel Inventing the Transgender Child organized by the Women’s Human Rights Campaign.
Tavistock: Former Clinicians Call It Conversion Therapy. My Response. (video by GNC Centric, a detransitioned woman)
Bill to ban FGM passes in Wyoming despite pushback by radical trans activists
Transing a 5 year old tomboy (video)
The New Conversion Therapy: How Homophobic Quackery is Targeting Children
An important read, so to quote the author: “Do not turn off your system. Do not tune out. Sit your ass down, and pay attention, because as it turns out, homophobia is definitely alive and well in the American medical establishment.”
Interview with Female Erasure Contributor Dr. Kathleen Levinstein PhD. LCSW LMSW (audio)
No Longer Silent, UK Gender Clinic Whistleblower Launches Lawsuit
Protect Gender Dysphoric Children from the Affirmation Model
This is a currently active crowdfunding campaign by Keira Bell, a detransitioner. She explains: “I’m an ex patient of Gender Identity Clinics where I was prescribed dangerous, experimental drugs and received a double mastectomy procedure. I am fighting to stop this from happening to minors.”
Irreversable Damage: the trans threat to girls
Children’s Rights, Trans Realities | With Scott Newgent (video)
Scott Newgent is a transman / trans-identified female who opposes the transing of children and has launched the Trans Educational Speaking Tour
Listening to detransitioners
Does Sex Matter? Gender Identity vs Material Reality: Pt 2 Carey Callahan Detransitioned woman discusses the medical transition of children and the portrayal of detransitioners in the media.
Response to Julia Serano: Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation
“The truth is that a lot of women don’t feel like they have options. There aren’t a whole lot of places in society for women who look like this; for women who don’t fit, who don’t comply. When you go to a gender therapist and tell them you have these kinds of feelings they don’t tell you that it’s ok to be butch, to be gender non-conforming, to not like men, to not like the way men treat you. They don’t tell you that there are other women who feel like they don’t belong, who don’t feel like they know how to be women. They don’t tell you about any of that. They tell you about testosterone, that’s about it.”
Ariel Pereira on Queer Politics
The young founder of Detransition Chile speaks of her experiences with lesbophobia, male privilege and more.
Magdalen Berns
Magdalen Berns was a young Scottish lesbian youtuber who died of brain cancer last year. I have already shared some of her videos above, but she merits her own category. I encourage you to take some time exploring her channel.
Choice quote: “Your fucking minds are so open your brains have fallen out.”
After Magdalen passed away, I shared some of her videos on my facebook page to commemorate her. In response, a vegan activist told me to throw myself in a washing machine. This person was an organizer with an “intersectional vegan” non-profit that was built on pontificating to animal rights activists to end “all oppression!!” instead of working on single issues. The contention that you can not effectively fight any oppression without ending all oppression is nonsensical and unworkable. But, when voiced with an air of intellectualism, these pronouncements allow people in the animal rights movement to gain moral clout and followship. Some years ago this organization penned an article about the “transphobia” of the animal rights movement, for naming the exploitation of “female reproductive systems” as such, for example in dairy production. The article singled out well-known second wave feminist Carol Adams who, presumably to remain in good standing with the animal rights movement, became willing to be mealy-mouthed in naming sex as an axis of oppression.
JK Rowling
The woman deserves her own category too.
JK Rowling and the transactivists: a story in screenshots
Radical Girlsss Statement in Support of JK Rowling: Migrant Perspectives
An Apology to JK Rowling
“JK Rowling recently published an eminently reasonable, heartfelt treatise, outlining why it is important to preserve the category of woman. There’s only one thing wrong with it: it assumes a rational interlocutor.”
TRAs, Rape-Logic and the Economy of Entitlement
Sexism is alive and well in the transgender debate
Strategic Ignorance and JK Rowling
The genius of the “I ♥ JK Rowling” stunt
Statement from J.K. Rowling regarding the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award
“I believe the time is coming when those organisations and individuals who have uncritically embraced fashionable dogma, and demonised those urging caution, will have to answer for the harm they’ve enabled.”
JK Rowling’s stance against the thought police
“For some unfathomable reason, being ‘politically correct’ is often attributed exclusively to people who are ‘left-wing’. Marxism is of course normally considered to be the essential philosophy of the ‘left-wing’. But Marxist philosophy is dialectical and historical materialism, which has as one of its most fundamental tenets that ideas are true only if they are in accord with material reality, regardless of what any number of people, learned or otherwise, might believe.
At one time, practically the whole of humanity believed that the world was flat, and/or that the sun revolved round the earth. But their belief did not make it true. And it follows that, however many people are bullied into believing that there is no biological difference between male and female, it will never be true.”