Twitter, Transactivism and the New Religious Fundamentalism

Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current has been permanently banned from Twitter for such hateful utterings as “men aren’t women” and for using “he” to refer to a trans-identified male pedophile. Please read her excellent article Twitter’s Trans-Activist Decree.

There is no scientific backing of the existence of an innate gender identity. It is purely a belief – not a fact – about the nature of the human mind or soul. (And even if gender identity were a real thing, why would it follow that we should redefine the words man and woman on the basis of this newly discovered spiritual/psychological attribute?) It’s fine to hold non-scientific beliefs, but believers should not force others to adopt these beliefs or participate in the language or rituals associated with them. To use preferred pronouns is an ideological choice and we should be free to opt in or out of it. I don’t use preferred pronouns because I don’t believe in gender identity, and furthermore I think it is a harmful belief system that reinforces sexism.

(For the uninitiated: preferred pronouns are the pronouns you want others to use when speaking about you, which may be different than those that the English language ascribes based on your sex. For example, you might be female but you see yourself as a complex person, not to be confined by one-dimensional stereotypes about women. Because you are also a sexist, you believe that other women do conform to these stereotypes, and in fact, that’s what being a woman really is! So you ask people to refer to you as “they”, a gender-neutral term that indicates that you are neither an archetypical man nor woman, but a full human.) 

To mandate speech that upholds a mystical belief system, and to persecute those who reject or critique that belief system, is religious fundamentalism. While it could be argued that Twitter is a private company and can do what it wants, companies like Twitter and Facebook have effectively taken over the public arena and by censoring feminists, they are excluding feminists from public discourse. And this goes beyond tech companies. In New York  City for example, employers and landlords can be fined for “misgendering” someone. This flies in the face of the separation of church and state.

The heretics of this new religion are mostly female, and the men who vocally reject gender identity ideology are not subjected to the same vilification and abuse. While I rage at the misogyny of this movement, I am more alarmed by the sheer stupidity of gender ideologues and those who support them. This is what Idiocracy warned us about (from Meghan Murphy):

Everything is ID politics, emotional manipulation and histrionics. The capacity for a logical reasoning and rational debate is completely absent. In many ways the American “left” now embodies the worst stereotypes of the American right: anti-science, anti-woman, anti-intellectual…

Liberals guffaw at flat Earthers for prioritizing feelz over facts, but they condone harassing and beating up women who question that a man is really a woman because he claims to have a female soul. And now, while right-wingers aim to take away women’s ability to make decisions about our  female bodies, the self-proclaimed left is leading witch-hunts against women who believe that our oppression is linked to being born in said bodies. A mystical belief system is becoming the basis of law and policy, and women are the casualty–kinda reminds me of my country of origin, Iran. And throughout my lifetime, Westerners have also pointed to Iran as backwards. It’s time for liberals to take a hard look at what they are supporting.

Beware of Fraudulent Vegan Products in Colombia

Colombia offers a sizeable number of vegan and vegetarian restaurants, especially in larger cities, as well as natural food stores and delivery services that sell vegan products. Be vigilant however: there are a few products that are fraudulently labeled vegan.

Fake fake cheese.

I bought this “vegan” cheese at Ceres Market in Medellin. The fat-free claim and ingredient list struck me as odd but I bought it anyway, vaguely thinking that the list might be false or incomplete without considering that the product might not be vegan.

I’ve been a vegan for so long that when I first tasted the cheese, the flavor didn’t tip me off. I then threw some in a pan of zucchini I was sautéing, wondering if it would melt. It melted immediately. It had barely touched the zucchini and it was already a puddle. I’ve cooked with many vegan cheeses and never saw one melt so quickly. The cheese was also extremely stringy, something I have again never seen in a vegan cheese.

I texted a local animal rights activist a picture of the package and asked if she knew the brand and whether she thought it was vegan. This was her response:

“We don’t consume it because we don’t think it’s vegan. They used to use the Follow Your Heart label, later someone contacted Follow Your Heart and was told that they had taken legal action against this company. The packaging used to say “vegan cheese” and now it doesn’t say that anymore. Anyway, there were several inconsistencies and we prefer not to consume it, especially since we’ve tried many vegan cheeses around the world and none of them are like this one, whereas it is exactly like non-vegan cheese.”

So this seedy company is using the vegan trend to scam people into paying a premium on cow’s cheese. Needless to say, this is wholly unethical. Of course, selling cheese made from cow’s milk is always unethical due to the unavoidable cruelty to the cows and calves, but this is also cruel towards humans. People who eat fake vegan cheese might be intolerant or allergic to milk, and/or are being made to support an industry they find morally abhorrent.

This incident also recast a doubt on an earlier incident, when I got a vegan tamale to go from a vegetarian restaurant in Medellin. Eating it the next day, the vegan chicken struck me as very different from any other mock meat I’ve eaten. I threw away the tamale, emailed the restaurant to ask what brand of veggie chicken they used and never got an answer. In the meantime I found a Colombian online vegan store that sold tamales that seemed to be same ones I had eaten, so I decided that my concerns had been unwarranted. I think this is the chicken they use. However, after the cheese incident, I’m less inclined to automatically trust that something is vegan just because it’s labeled as such.

For the most part, I haven’t had concerns with vegetarian and vegan restaurants, with the exception of the tamale and a couple times when my soup had a suspiciously meaty flavor. If the food looks like it’s made from scratch – and it usually is – there’s probably nothing to worry about. I don’t think anyone is adding non-vegan ingredients on purpose, but in the case of the soup I think it’s possible that some meaty bouillon made its way there unnoticed. Another criteria is whether the owners or workers are veg*n themselves. It would be obnoxious to ask this at every restaurant you go to, but if you’re already making conversation you can take the opportunity to find out. If the people running the restaurant are vegan and/or if they are making food from scratch, I would not worry. I still wouldn’t worry if that’s not the case, but I think that while mistakes are unlikely, they can happen.

One final note is that, like elsewhere, replacements of common foods are not always vegan. I recently visited a natural foods store where there were two cheese alternatives: the fraudulent ones from the brand above, and an almond-based cheese that contained casein. There was no dishonest marketing with the latter but it said “almond cheese”, so it’s a reminder to always check the ingredients. Also, not all plant-based milks in Colombia are vegan, as they may use animal-based vitamins or additives. Before buying a new brand of milk, it can be useful to contact the company or check to see if the product is featured here. I’ve noticed however that many of the coffee shops that offer almond and soymilk use Silk, which is vegan, so this isn’t often a problem.

While Colombian food is typically meat-heavy, it’s also easy to travel here as a vegan. Just avoid “Badem”* cheese and remember that if something seems off, it just might be.

* Badem means almond in Persian.

Update (Nov. 6): I’ve come across some Colombian restaurant reviews that warn that recipes labeled vegan – with vegan cheese – were not vegan. In one case, posters with lactose intolerance experienced strong symptoms after eating a lasagna with “vegan” cheese. The restaurant in question has both a vegetarian and meat-based menu, so this is the problem that I touched upon. No doubt, the owner’s intention was to create vegan dishes, but not being vegan or vegetarian himself, he did not do the research to ensure that the cheese he buys is really vegan. In these cases it’s best to stick to simpler dishes that don’t contain meat or dairy substitutes.

Male Violence and Gender Self-Identification

A couple weeks ago, I was privy to bits of conversation of a driver who shouted his rage at a woman who was on speakerphone. He yelled at her to “go to the apartment” and that he would see her there. At the next traffic light I heard him shout “I’m going to fuck you over so bad” and then her cry “why” sounding confused and scared, like she wanted to calm him down and genuinely didn’t understand why he was so angry.

The man was in a truly frightening state and I feared for the woman–I still do. Maybe I should have done something but I didn’t know what to do. Can you call the cops in such a situation? It seemed that the woman lived with this man, but I still hope that she had a way of avoiding him that night and hopefully forever.

Too many women are incapable of leaving or avoiding the men who abuse them and the figures show it. Every day in the US more than three women are killed by a current or former romantic partner. In response to widespread male violence, second-wave feminists pooled their resources and created domestic shelters. These are usually all-female spaces, for women and staffed by women, where women can escape from abusive men and bring their children if need be.

This was an important win for women but, like our other sex-segregated spaces, we are losing them to the cult of gender. A women’s shelter would normally be a safe space from men who might be determined to exert their perceived right to violence against their partners, and from other men who might harass or abuse women. However, with the current move to replace sex with gender ID and gender ID being verified by a simple declaration, these spaces will no longer be safe.

A man who is outraged by some perceived slight from his partner will often go to great lengths to “discipline” or get back at her. With gender self-ID, all he has to do is say that he identifies as a woman, and poof! He is one. As such, he suddenly belongs in women’s spaces and any woman who objects is a horrible bigot who should die in a fire.

It’s not only the men we know that we need to worry about; it is indisputable that women face systematic harassment from strangers as well. We are entitled to protect ourselves from all men, especially when we are at our most vulnerable, for example homeless or in prison. A recent case in Fresno, California, shows how gender self-ID removes this right from women.

Nine homeless women filed a lawsuit against a homeless shelter in Fresno because they were forced to shower with a trans-identified male who sexually harassed them. According to the charity that runs the shelter, federal law requires them to treat anybody who identifies as a woman as a woman. The shelter also requires women to shower in groups. It wasn’t hard to predict that this would lead to problems.

In Canada, two women were kicked out of a homeless shelter after raising concerns over a male resident. According to one of the women, “He wants to become a woman, I mean that is his choice but when a man comes into a women’s shelter who still has a penis and genitals he has more rights than we do.”

In their eagerness to be progressive, policy-makers are hopping on a trend that is anything but, and throwing society’s most vulnerable women under the bus. Women’s concerns have been ignored not only in broader “progressive” circles, but also by the very organizations that are supposed to work for them. This is why in the UK, female survivors of male violence have written an open letter to all women’s organizations asking them to support female-only spaces and to reject current proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, which would see the legal replacement of sex with gender self-ID.

Until now, the words man and woman have been defined on the basis of biological reality and the study of male violence against women has used these definitions. Even if you believe that there exists some internal essence or other non-biological trait that should redefine “man” and “woman”, it does not follow that oppression and systemic violence now fall along these new lines.

People with penises are known to frequently perpetrate violence against people with vaginas. “Women’s shelters” were created as a response to this and were named as such at a time when it was assumed that a woman was a person with a vagina. Redefining the words man and woman in no way changes this reality and in no way negates the need for people with vaginas to have spaces that are separate from people with penises.

Like shelters, the creation of women’s bathrooms was also a feminist win, as the absence of separate bathrooms had previously impeded women from participating in the public sphere. Reports from areas that lack separate bathrooms show that our need today for private spaces is as great as always, but gender self-ID allows any man to identify his way into female spaces, effectively doing away with them.

This week, a trans-identified male was charged with several counts of sexual assault against inmates at a women’s prison. The point of sharing these stories is not to vilify men who identify as trans or to paint them as particularly predatory. It is to remind those who have embraced gender ideology that men as a whole are systematically predatory and abusive and that women have a right to exclude any and all men from our spaces so that we might be safe, heal, organize, participate in the public sphere and so on. While individual men can be lovely, they don’t get to opt out of the category of man by stating that they identify otherwise.

Describing the disappearance of lesbian (but not gay) spaces, Susan Cox writes: ‘It appears that even though the project of “queering” is, we’re told, about going beyond gender, the movement disproportionately affects females in negative ways. (…) We can make progressive-sounding pronouncements about certain spaces being inclusive, non-binary, and gender-neutral all we want, but these declarations do not magically disappear the material relations of power between the sexes foundational to our social world.’

People with penises belong to a class that oppresses people with vaginas as a class, regardless of their beliefs, self-perception or wishes that it were otherwise. By putting the demands of males, based on a subjective sense of self, over the rights of females to privacy and protection, we uphold male supremacy. Male violence against women has never stopped being a problem and any truly liberatory politics will condemn the erosion of the boundaries that women have painstakingly erected.

 

 

 

 

 

Support San Franciso Lesbians

Please support these women who were attacked at the Dyke March by the ever-woke gender ideologues.

Three weeks ago a small group of lesbians was attacked at the San Francisco Dyke March for asserting that they were, well, lesbians. This is where gender ideology has gotten us. Homophobia is cool again and self-professed progressives are too afraid of being chastised for wrongthink to activate their brain cells and think about what they’re condoning. Enough with the ID politics, time for critical analysis.

My analysis (and that of many others) is that gender ideology harms all women and girls and especially lesbians, and San Francisco has been proving me right. After the library exhibit celebrating violence against women, we get lesbians attacked at a march that was supposed to be for them, in a city that used to be known for being gay-friendly.

It’s truly scary to see how quickly a movement can be co-opted and colonized, and this is something that warrants reflection from anyone who is involved in a social movement. I admire the courage of San Francisco and London lesbians who are reclaiming their movement and their marches in the face of hostility, slander, and even “actual” violence.

After the women were attacked at the SF Dyke March, the march, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Bay Area Reporter posted defamatory statements about them. Please support them by signing their petition for a retraction of these statements and by  supporting their fundraiser for legal expenses.

 

Read the statement of the women who protested the London Pride:
Get The L Out

 

Why I Chose Mexico to Study Milk

It’s been two and a half years since I went to Mexico to start studying the globalization of milk consumption and this blog. My intention was to update it frequently but as soon as I returned to the US, I jumped into so much activity that writing this milk series took a back seat. Nonetheless, I did produce some posts here and on the Seed the Commons blog. I’ve also built awareness by speaking about the globalization of dairy at numerous venues, and I spearheaded the Seed the Commons campaign to #GetMilkOut of San Francisco school meals, which was launched on September 30, 2017. I am resuming the milk series with the hope of updating it more frequently, perhaps with shorter posts. For this one, I want to take a step back and speak about why I chose Mexico as my focal point.

I started this project to study a convergence of issues related to the globalization of dairy, including: the role of food aid in creating new markets for donors and integrating local food systems into a global capitalist market; the soft power of the West and the power of dominant groups to define what is normative; the social representations of non-European cultures, bodies, and ultimately of poverty, that justify a non-profit/development/humanitarian complex that furthers neocolonialism.

The first iteration of this project was a PhD I started in 2009, and I got the idea for it while I was working in the world of international human rights in 2007. I already knew that I wanted to explore the role played by the “non-profit industrial complex” and international institutions in maintaining a neocolonial world order, and I had an interest in food aid because I considered the usurpation of food systems central to this order. The idea to study milk distribution came about when I read an article about a joint program between Kraft and Save the Children: a school milk program in Mexico.

I read more about school milk programs, realizing how widespread they were becoming and how instrumental they were in changing food cultures around the world. The project crystallized and I decided to stick with Mexico for a number of reasons.

Poster Child for Neoliberalism and American Influence

The westernization of food cultures in the Global South, namely the increased consumption of animal products and processed foods, is largely the result of neoliberal policies and in this Mexico is a perfect case study. As the country that has ratified the largest number of free trade agreements, Mexico seemed like a poster child for the effects of free trade. The effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexican food systems are particularly well documented and are often spoken about in activist circles to illustrate the damage wrought by free trade agreements in the Global South.

That NAFTA involves the Unites States is also important, as Mexico’s close relationship with the United States is another area where it provides a magnified view of the direction the rest of the world is taking. “Westernization” often amounts to Americanization, and from food culture to economic policy, much of the world takes its lead from the US. NAFTA has been a boon for the American dairy industry, for which Mexico is the largest export market. Mexico not only has important economic and political ties with the US, but also a very close cultural proximity.

The history of milk distribution in Mexico is also linked to its relationships with other parts of the Global North. Dairy was introduced to Mexico by Spanish colonizers and its consumption started to rise significantly in first half of the 20th century. At this time, Nestlé opened the first dairy processing plant in Mexico and this Swiss company subsequently became involved in both the Mexican social sector and in the technical development of its livestock industry. Also during this time, the first milk distribution programs created new outlets for foreign dairy industries.

Layers of Cultural Imperialism

As Mexican diets and diseases become stereotypically American, the influence that the United States exerts onto its southern neighbor provides a great case study of the power of a dominant group to define dietary norms. However, dairy is not an altogether recent food in Mexico. The increase in dairy consumption over the course of centuries reveals other layers of cultural influence that are rooted in Mexico’s history of colonization. The story goes that the Spanish conquered Mexico and a culinary fusion of indigenous and Spanish foods gave rise to what we know today as Mexican food, but it would be more appropriate to view the adoption of Spanish foods as a gradual process. Some indigenous communities still eat predominantly indigenous foods and their adoption of Mexican (in the sense of modern-day Mestizo) food culture is a current, ongoing process.

Among my criteria for choosing a country were that milk would not be a traditional food and that a high percentage of the population would be lactose intolerant. Indigenous Mexicans fit the bill. And since the goal was to examine at the social dynamics by which a dominant group shapes the dietary norms of a subordinate group, the evolving and overlapping relationships of power between indigenous Mexicans and Europeans, Mexicans and Americans, and indigenous Mexicans with Mestizo culture make Mexico a very rich terrain.

The issue of lactose intolerance was important because it brings into salience the power dynamic between those receiving new foods and those promoting them (especially when these are authority figures such as doctors, nurses, aid workers, and teachers). While lactose intolerance is not as high in Mexico as in some other countries where milk consumption is being adopted as a new norm, it does play into the changes underway, as both indigenous and Mestizo populations produce strategies to deal with their impediment in consuming a food that they are told is necessary.

One-Eighty: from Plant-Based to Carnism Extraordinaire

Common representations of Mexican food are heavy with meat and cheese, but pre-Columbian Mexican food was almost entirely plant-based. Today, while consumption levels of meat and dairy remain lower in Mexico than in wealthy countries, they are quite elevated by Global South standards and are highly appreciated and culturally valued. As I set out to explore the social mechanisms of dietary change, I found Mexico fascinating because it presented the widest possible change.

There are many countries and populations where milk consumption has skyrocketed from next to nothing. However, in many of them animal domestication and/or the consumption of animal products had a longer history or were more culturally significant. The story of Mexico illustrates the true malleability of culture and even of social identity, and how these are shaped from above by those who dominate socially, politically and economically.

At the same time, the story of food in Mexico also shows us strategies of resistance. From Zapatistas replanting milpas on reclaimed lands to massive popular mobilizations against Monsanto and indigenous women selling donated milk in the market, Mexico is full of examples of people exerting the right to protect and determine their own food systems and culture. While milk is dumped onto communities around the world, the processes by which it is adopted or rejected can be quite complex. Mexico is the perfect place to unfold it all.