Deliberate and orchestrated silencing of trans rights supporters on GN

So how did calling it 'intersectional' make a difference?

Doodledog - think on ?. I’ve been informed that I’m an out of date 70’s feminist. Remember those days, when we white women didn’t care about men, gay men, trans people, people who weren’t white and of course the ultimate put down, middle class.
Terf

It's a fair cop, Iam.

Why are you guys insulting intersectional feminism?

Also why are you insulting yourselves?

Calling it intersectional doesn't make a difference. If a woman only looks at discrimination in terms of how it affects her and those she identifies with, then she isn't a true feminist.

Identifying as an intersection feminist at times comes across to me as if someone who doesn't is somehow a 'second class' feminist.

It's a bit like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs isn't it Iam.

Yes, giving something a rebrand, and calling it 'New, Improved Feminism' makes 0.000% difference to the impact it has when all that rebranding has done is change the name.

I've never really got to grips with the rules-based approach to things like feminism (or politics, or sociology etc). I prefer to think for myself, and not wait for someone else to tell me which group I belong to and therefore what I should be thinking or doing.

To me, 'feminism' is about foregrounding females. Not necessarily at the expense of others, as that would clash with other beliefs I have, such as socialism. I wouldn't defend the right of a woman to exploit a male worker, just because she was a woman, for example.

That may, or may not, be intersectional - I don't care, really. To me is it just common sense, as a desire for fairness underpins most of what I think and try to practise. If someone wants to categorise the thinking so that they can teach it to the youth of tomorrow they can crack on, but I won't be driven by other people's categorisation.

It's not 'rules'. It's a sociological categorisation tracking ideological changes.

I don't think anyone suggested we shouldn't think for ourselves and make our own decisions and judgements. The whole idea of debating an idea encourages independent, surely? The whole point of an open forum.

But listening to other groups of women, acknowledging our own privilege and our own role in a system which may not equally represent others, is essential as the world, societies and cultures change and evolve.

I agree with your last post GagaJo; that's what being a feminist is. It isn't only intersectional feminists who do so.

I don't think it's really very feminist to look at another another's feminist movement and insult it.

It's just different, not less

Exactly Doodledog and it's nothing more than a name change.

Smileless2012

I agree with your last post GagaJo; that's what being a feminist is. It isn't only intersectional feminists who do so.

??? Great!

Also trans women right?

But women have done that for decades - centuries even. It is possible for a woman whose prime focus is on the equality of women at the ballot bax to also see the parallel or wider issues facing society and work to improve them too.

They campaigned for equality in voting, not just for themselves but for women everywhere, and for the abolition of poverty, racial discrimination, all the kinds of things which the current generation of intersectional feminists seem to think they are the first to notice and want to change. Rather like our children thinking they invented sex and that their parents only did it two or three times through their (married) lives, purely so as to conceive them.

However, the current ethos is revisionist - to debunk previous workers in all fields and balance their human frailties in the scales against their aims and their achievements. Partial success doesn't count, if they didn't succeed in completely reversing the evils of their age like Superman zooming down out of the sky, they are judged as useless and deluded.

VioletSky

I don't think it's really very feminist to look at another another's feminist movement and insult it.

It's just different, not less

"It's just different, not less" True.

It is also true the other way round - when intercessional feminists regard as inferior has-beens those who make no lordly claim to intercessionism but continue to weed their own small patch.

But women have done that for decades of course they have Elegran which for me, is why some identifying as intersectional feminists is a nonsense, and I dislike the implication that their idea of what it is to be a feminist is more inclusive than mine.

I really don't think it's as exclusionary as it's being painted on here.

The US Civil Rights Movement fed into Black Lives Matter. No one has ever suggested that the CRL was useless. Just that the world has changed and therefore the focus is different.

GagaJo

It's not 'rules'. It's a sociological categorisation tracking ideological changes.

I don't think anyone suggested we shouldn't think for ourselves and make our own decisions and judgements. The whole idea of debating an idea encourages independent, surely? The whole point of an open forum.

But there are so many posts on here about 'as an intersectional feminist. . . .', and 'intersectionalism means . . . ' - even 'intersectional feminism includes men', as though that is all that's to be said on the matter. Intersectional feminism 'says it', so anyone who doesn't agree is somehow lacking. That isn't debating an idea - it is judging others by how they measure up to it (in your view).

What I am saying is that the terminology is just that - a sociological shorthand (like Functionalism, Pluralism and so on) that describes the thinking - it shouldn't drive it.

Of course life moves on, and of course feminism (as well as other schools of thought) moves on. If it didn't we'd still be fighting for equal pay (although we still have some way to go there). Nobody is saying otherwise. But to assume that because someone does not believe that feminism should put the 'rights' of transwomen ahead of those of women means that they are behind the times, or lacking in some way is simply arrogant. It is a valid point of view, and not one that ever gets gets debated on here. I've tried. As soon as anyone says that they think like this (as I do) we are shouted down, called names or sneered at.

FWIW I do recognise that I have certain privileges, as does everyone posting on here. I have had an education, I am able bodied, I belong to the dominant race in the UK. I earned more than average, particularly for a woman, and can afford more than essentials. I was born into a democracy and so on. I know that, and I am grateful for it. My politics reflects the fact that I am aware that others have not shared in my good fortune, and I do not see myself as superior because I have been lucky.

None of that means that I should believe that transwomen are women though, or makes me see it as ok to put their rights ahead of those of women, and I don't see any logical reason why it should.

This

I can only speak personally. What drives me, thoughts and actions, are seeing everyone as equal. That isn't virtue signalling. It's me knowing I have no place or reason to feel superior to anyone.

I can, and do, label that as intersectional feminism. But I didn't set out to be one. I learned thru my multi racial, multi national family, that different women face different challenges.

And FWIW, I don't put Trans rights before cis women's, I put them on a par. Equality.

If you need to understand how being trans inclusive supports all women

www.hrc.org/resources/5-things-to-know-to-make-your-feminism-trans-inclusive

I dont have a gender identity so the whole of the article makes no sense to me.

Ok, so we are saying the same thing but labelling it differently?

Where I remain confused is with the idea that thinking that TWAW can possibly put rights on a par.

How do you answer GG13's post above? How is it ok for Lia Thomas to win the race, and/or to parade his maleness in the changing rooms?

If a TW coming into a women's space means that women from separatist religions is unable to attend, whose rights come first?

If a man says he is a woman and gets to headline a poetry event that is intended to celebrate women (and got funding on that basis), even though there are plenty of female poets who could have done it equally well or better, is this ok by you?

Is changing the language so that women are unable to discuss their concerns with one another (assuming that they are able to find a space in which to do it) acceptable to you?

There are numerous possible examples, but all of these things deny women equality, IMO, and anyone who is looking out for the rights of women (which is my definition of a feminist) would see that at first glance.

Sorry, my post is to GagaJo

"We will not have equality until the most marginalised among us have equality"