"Because a crushing majority of people will never acquiesce to the notion that the person in purple latex with a hard-on is a lesbian." Exactly. A brilliant, nuanced article, that lays bare the realities of this situation. Thank you for your writing, it takes bravery to be at the coal-face of this.
Thanks Iris. A catchy headline, I agree-- and if I may say so myself. In truth, gays and lesbians need to get out of the acronym altogether. It's not working for them.
Agreed. I’ve argued for a long time that gay men and lesbians need to pull out of the ridiculous alphabet people acronym. It does not serve our purposes, if it ever did, just like Stonewall and the Victorian Pride centre no longer has our best interests at heart. These organisations have been hijacked by queer identiterians and trans people. According to my younger queer identifying friends (many of whom are disgruntled heterosexuals with purple hair and tats) we are dinosaurs clinging to outdated notions of gender and sexuality.
"Physics is transphobic" Lololol. Now that would make a good slogan. Hey, well apparently biology is transphobic so why not physics? Doubt physics can be changed the way biology has been in accommodation. You either can stand up or you can't.
Well written Julie. We are really living in a ‘war is peace’ world as you point out. The alphabet soup people harass, villify and exclude those who hold biological truths whilst yelling from the rooftops how they are being vilified, harassed etc by deranged hateful TERFS.
Gillard approaches the question rationally and says we should try to take heat out of the debate, as if everyone’s in good faith. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that for some people heat and hate and old-fashioned misogyny _is_ the point. And you do see older women and lesbians on the receiving end of that. Label someone and you don’t have to listen them but you can say anything at all about them. Click on the link to the ‘Price acquitted’ story on the BBC. Pretty gobsmacking.
I love they you have a great timeline for how things went "tits up" for the Lesbian Communities in Australia. This should happen with all the Anglohone Countries.
The majority of the Universities/Colleges indoctrinated students with Gender Studies ( which might as well be Transgender Studies) and Queer Theory.
The probability for deep seeded Allyship, was set in for the last 40 years. You can understand the allure of being part of a Civil Rights Movement from the ground up. And "Being on the right side of history."
Gay men, as with ALL MEN aren't effected by the Trans Liberation Movement. This is nothing more than a Feminized Men's Rights Movement. They are THE subset of MEN who were able, like the Trojan Horses they are, to destroy the Sex Segregated institutions and spaces. The Harbingers of the destruction of the Feminist Project.
The inability of women to come together. Work in coalitions across race, religion and class for Female Liberation; whose ultimate goal is full Gender Equality.
Lesbians, Female homosexuals - innate Same-Sex orientations- with Same-Sex romantic and sexual attractions, have been at on the front lines and in the trenches, of this "War Against Women."
These TIMs, with a cornucopia of potential dating options [ Bisexual women, Pansexual women, Omnisexuals women ( willing to date people who identify as entities from mythology, folklore or horror ((vampires/werewolves)), Ace spectrum AFABs and Trans spectrum AFABs. Plus other TIMs and Trans spectrum AMABs.
But they chose to sexualize, objectify and fetishize Lesbianism, Lesbians and Lesbians couples. Our innate sexual orientations exclude ALL MEN/MALES no matter how they identify.
To punish us for OUR disinterest, both sexually and socially, and Ad Hoc committee of TIMs and the Queer women who supported them, forced in and outside Lesbian Communities, changing the very definition of Lesbian, and using it as an umbrella term. I saw this happened around 2016 on Reddit and in other LBTQ media.
I remember in 2014, when the then current Senior Ed with the Advocate claimed through Queer Theory clap trap, that Queer would be used to describe all Minority Sexualities and Gender Identities.
In closing, we must fight again to separate the True Lesbians from TQs and start creating Communities again. We must begin to meet again; whether it starts underground and later publicly. Even if we have to have lawsuits.
Valerie, I want to say I agree with all you say. This is a war again women by by a feminised men’s group. It’s certainly the impression I get when I listen to many contemporary trans activists. But I don’t agree with one thing: the trans movement does affect gay men in so far as if we don’t date or have sex with trans men (biological women who live as men), we are deemed transphobic or sex determinists. As Julie point out in her article, our spaces are invaded by self identifying trans men who still have a female body and they don’t take it well when many gay men refuses to play along. This is affecting saunas,sex on premises venues, as well as self improvement workshops that target gay men who are biological males. I’ve even encountered a woman who claims to be a gay man without even attempting to at least look like a man. That’s why I see this as an issue that affects both lesbians and gay men.
The language Gay men and all Men hasn't changed. No one is colonizing your institutions. You can talk about the bars; but it was only recently that Lesbians bars/events started to appear. They are forced to include TIMs or else be protested and sued. Nor do you have women scheming to force TIFs in your space.
In 2016 Dana Rivers, with malice and forethought slaughtered a Lesbian couple and their son. He was obsessed with one of them. Until you have a pattern of TIFs suing Gay men who want Gay men only events, it isn't even comparable. Until you have a network gof TIFs that are doxxing Gay men and trying to get them fired from their jobs, it isn't comparable. I haven't ever heard of Gay men getting raped by TIFs. Nor have heard TIFs who have been convicted of different sex crimes demanding to be admitted to Men's prison, the way Self-ID TIMs with sex crimes convictions are demanding to be placed in Women's prisons. I haven't heard of TIFs suing major Men's Sports Leagues to be admitted to play; the way they have done with Women's Sports leagues.
I begged Gay men in 2013 on Reddit to help the Lesbian Communities. They claimed it was a personal problem. And quite a few of your community members can be just as sexist and misogynistic as your Straight counterparts.
TIFs are an annoyance, thirsty and bothersome, but they aren't as physically dangerous or as sexually predatory as % of TIMs.
You're still men within a Patriarchy. You should be easily able to shut them down.
Valerie, I agree TIFs are not as troublesome to gay men as TIMs. But I think you will find that gay men’s place within the patriarchy is conditional and illusory. Gay men may well benefit from patriarchy (check out the dick who ran Qantas for the last years), but it can be taken away very quickly when the worm turns. In fact, it was Radical feminist lesbians who pointed this out to me in the late 1970s.
Trans men might not be killing gay men (yet) but Heterosexual men haven been killing gay men for centuries and continue to do so to this day in highly imaginative ways: Edward II red hot poker up the arse, Matthew Shepard crucified on a fence, ISIS throwing gay men off minarets, Iran coercing gay men into sex changes because they think gay men must really be women, Russia sending gay men to gulags, NAZIS to concentration camps, teenagers throwing gay men off cliffs in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s, the Orlando gay nightclub massacre, young gay man anally raped with a bottle and left to bleed to death in a lane way in Turkey, and so on and so forth.
The membership to the men’s club is on even shakier ground if you’re migrant. I know from first hand experience.
This is not a tit for tat. I know women have it harder than men in just about any given society. I saw that in action when I was growing up in Turkey and then later here in Australia.
I’m trying to highlight a simple fact. Gay men and lesbians have more in common than they think. A long overdue alliance would benefit both parties. I also believe, in part, that many gay men’s complacency and misogyny stops them from seeing that. For instance, I think gay men owe lesbians a debt of gratitude from the 1980s plague years, a debt that’s not been properly acknowledged or paid back. When doctors and nurses refused to care for gay male AIDS patients, lesbians stepped in and did the hard yards. When was the last time gay men did anything comparable for lesbians? And I think the way the Victorian Pride Centre treated lesbians recently is appalling. I’m trying to get contact addresses for the chair and deputy chair to voice an objection. But it’s harder than breaking into a bank. I’m also writing to some of their funding bodies,some of them government.
The nuttiness of the contemporary transgender movement (which is very different from real transsexual lives) and the craps espoused by gender identitarians is a good place to begin for lesbians and gay men to come together. But I doubt it will happen. Too much animosity and suspicion on both sides.
I understand the history about the anti homophobic hate and draconian laws that have affected Gay men through millenia.
But what we are currently discussing is how the Trans Liberation Movement directly conflicts with the Feminist gains of the last 75 years. The harassment Lesbiphobia of the Female homosexuals communities by a myriad of people both inside and outside the LGBTQ communities. Men's Rights Activists, Liberals| Progressives both men and women, Bisexual and Pansexuals missionaries, Antifa and of course TRAs and those thar supporter them.
There have been attempts to start LGBAlliances across Western Europe and the Anglohone Countries. TRAs have very vocal how these are Anti Trans hate groups as part of the effort to place a wedge between LGBs vs TQs, by the Alt Right.
Yes there was a memo passed around in Alt Right and ultra Conservative circles. But this has been a self fulfilling prophecy due to how corrosive and unhinged the TQs have been with the Rhetoric and actually signal boosting violence against women who are dissenters of Trans/Gender Ideology.
Yes I would very much recommend that the LGBs stand shoulder to shoulder to fight against a Movement that has devolved into metaphysical mysticism and a Cult.
I don't know how many people are familiar with this article yet but Ewan Morrison wrote a very interesting article about his time as a Trotskyite (Splitter!) attempting to infiltrate a meeting organizing against Clause 28 in the UK.
He points out that the utopian revolutionaries did not care about LGB people or issues but had a strategy of knitting together a wide range of niche issues to form a broad political coalition to be used for revolutionary ends.
"After decades of unsuccessfully trying to convert people to the cause, we had learned that it is more strategically effective to infiltrate single-issue groups and take them over from within — just as the revolutionary communist group known as Militant infiltrated Liverpool City Council in 1983–87 and brought the city to a standstill. According to UK security service MI5, the Communist Party also infiltrated schools and attempted to take over the National Union of Teachers. The Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was also infiltrated by communist activists, who were inspired by the anarchic free schools of the 1970s and taught children to be anti-capitalist warriors — while neglecting basic literacy. (The Times Educational Supplement reported on this in its January 1986 print-only edition, in an article entitled “The Ultra-Left Tightens Grip on Schools.”)"
His effort to infiltrate and co-opt the early LGB movement in 1988 failed because the people recognized them as infiltrators.
"Radical postmodern identity infiltrators, like the SWP of old, don’t want to fix single issues, but to tie all issues together, since, for an activist, as Lenin put it, “the worse, the better.” They spread discontent and conflict in every situation from the workplace to the home, especially by attempting to mandate which words and images people can use."
"They also despise everything about the current moment. The idea that you can solve your own problems and experience your own pleasures without their help is abhorrent to them. They aren’t fighting to safeguard or regain individual rights to privacy, freedom of choice, free speech, and dignity. They hate everything about the present because it does not match their radically egalitarian vision. They want vengeful payback; the oppressors must be destroyed. They see the gay men who want politics kept out of the bedroom as homo-normative slaves to bourgeois capitalism."
The term 'transsexual' should not be out of date as it is a term with a direct literal meaning that is far better at communicating the concept than the vague and misleading 'transgender'. A person who genuinely believes their mind is of the other sex to their body, and that they were born into the wrong body, and who pursues a long complex goal of using surgery and hormones to make their body look and feel more like the sex they believe they are, is a transsexual. Conversely, given that gender identity is an intangible idea that is made tangible by gendered bodily performance through clothing, movement, etc it can be changed as easily as changing your outfit. Being 'transgender' is merely engaging in a superficial performative behaviour with the body but not actually changing the body (the sexed entity). Given that not much more than a century ago it was illegal in some western countries for women to wear trousers, you could say that all cis women are trans these days if this was not so ridiculous. In reality trousers have been degendered so completely they are completely gender neutral, whereas women's clothing in western society remains highly gendered.
I refuse to allow the terminology of ‘cis’; to me using this term means I am being forced to confirm that , yes indeed,I am who I say I am, a biological woman.
Thank you. Was just about to say something similar. I reject the redundant and meaningless term, "cis" and the idea of gender "assignment." Orwellian doublespeak, is what they are.
Yes this is all nonsense. Sex is not 'assigned' at birth. Sex is determined at conception. Gender is not 'revealed' after a fetal scan, sex is. A developing fetus has not had sufficient time to reflect on their gender identity. What is assigned at birth is gender - children are socialised from birth to perform certain gendered behaviours.
I look forward to the time that it is clearly established in the Courts that sex =/= "gender". That's going to make a lot of this insanity go away, though it's unlikely I suppose to happen quickly and cleanly.
Really the whole concept of gender should be rejected by the Courts. Anything that is entirely defined by each individual cannot be defined under law. It would be like trying to execute contracts about, boats or something, when everyone is allowed to define for themselves what a boat is.
Doris Lessing/ Marguerite Yourcenar are no longer with us. Marguerite ( Lesbian) said something along the lines of "there is more to this business, than peoples genitals". It is a particular, often noble sensibilty, which is entirely lost in the current mania. This is "infantile" thinking and behaviour in the sense which the "old schule" psychotherapists would use it. You are justified in characterising it as misogyny.
'In no way am I suggesting trans women are inherently violent ..."
This is a superb essay, but I will beg to differ regarding the above statement. I think these mentally ill men are inherently violent and they've found plenty of easy targets: lesbians, heterosexual women, bisexual women, prepubescent girls, and female prisoners. And calling them trans women does play, to an extent, into their psychopathology. Trans-identified males is somewhat okay, but sex mimics is even better.
Yes. They're as violent as other mentally-ill men, the famous 30-year followup study on trans folk in Sweden showed that clearly with rates of convictions for violent crime:
Interesting. Haven't read the study yet, but we still can't say "inherently violent" any more than we say that for people with other mental illnesses. And I'm not sure whether the study controls for co-morbidities, which I'm guessing many trans people with criminal convictions will have.
Yes, it does control so. But I agree we can't say "inherently violent", since that implies that they all are. I think we CAN say that they are "inherently as violent as other men", since their conviction rates for violent crime were on par with the male control group.
Also of note is the stat that women become more criminal after transitioning to manhood. I'm guessing it's the T.
I've read too many women who partnered with lesbians who went trans say their former partners became violent and abusive after taking testosterone. It's been known for a long time that men become even more violent and aggressive when they take steroids.
And that said, I will say males are inherently violent in civilization. They cannot create life so what they do is destroy. They destroy the environment, they destroy relationships, they destroy other living beings. All one needs do is look around to see the truth of this if you're willing to face reality (which I know can be difficult).
Thanks so much for writing about this. The pincer movement against lesbians - the promotion of transition to our butch women especially, and the male sexual harassment of the lesbians who remain -goes back several decades. But the issue has been turbocharged since the late 2010s with social media and smartphones. It's very painful to reflect that a number of prominent lesbians (who made positive contributions elsewhere) were active in promoting this ideology, however poorly they understood it at the time (see some cultural figures like Alyson Bechdel in the 2000s). But I'm encouraged that it's being talked about publicly now in a way that seemed impossible even two years back.
I wonder whether one of the factors is a psychological inability to accept that some biological women are not attracted to biological men ? Could the reality that lesbians exist be experienced as a rejection of biological men and unbearable by some people. Other factors may relate to feeling anger with parents particularly the mother. Could these factors whether conscious or subconscious result in denial of biological male free space for a lesbian function ?
This is very good Julie, nuanced,and from where I sit in the Southern Vales Wine Region of South Australia, just the right tone. I don't know whether you are familiar with Norman Cohn Julie, but he wrote about similar sorts of societal manias in late Mediaeval Europe in the "Pursuit of the Millennium". I'm from Melbourne over 50 years ago, but when I read this sort of material I'm rather glad I left.
You could also try Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror" about France during the Black Death. Norman Cohn and Barbara Tuchman both say variously, that "these things are with us still". Peasants would have visions," Frederick Hohenzollern is not dead,he lives in a cave in Southern Bavaria, he told me to kill all the undesirables ". Greta Thunberg can actually "see" carbon diioxide according to her mother. " The past is always with us, it is not even past".
"Because a crushing majority of people will never acquiesce to the notion that the person in purple latex with a hard-on is a lesbian." Exactly. A brilliant, nuanced article, that lays bare the realities of this situation. Thank you for your writing, it takes bravery to be at the coal-face of this.
YES!
Using "QTBGL" more often will help deprogramme the cult members.
"Undo" the spell...
Also: one easy way to determine someone's sex is with this simple chair test.
No genital inspections or "intimate details" required.
https://youtu.be/T7OQaSm6AgY?si=SVaeGyeLG_VIcHMS
GREAT ARTICLE, JULIE!
Thanks Iris. A catchy headline, I agree-- and if I may say so myself. In truth, gays and lesbians need to get out of the acronym altogether. It's not working for them.
I Love this tag:
#LGB✂T
Also Love to see LGBs cutting the "progress" triangle off the rainbow flag. 😂
Agreed. I’ve argued for a long time that gay men and lesbians need to pull out of the ridiculous alphabet people acronym. It does not serve our purposes, if it ever did, just like Stonewall and the Victorian Pride centre no longer has our best interests at heart. These organisations have been hijacked by queer identiterians and trans people. According to my younger queer identifying friends (many of whom are disgruntled heterosexuals with purple hair and tats) we are dinosaurs clinging to outdated notions of gender and sexuality.
Because it's BACKWARDS!
Excellent. 😂
Ha! Didn't know about the chair test.
Isn't it awesome?!
Share widely!
Kill their arguments dead.
(Physics is transphobic 😂)
"Physics is transphobic" Lololol. Now that would make a good slogan. Hey, well apparently biology is transphobic so why not physics? Doubt physics can be changed the way biology has been in accommodation. You either can stand up or you can't.
I love that test! Glad to see it's made a comeback! Unfortunately, my husband CAN do it. Does that mean I married a woman??!?
I've heard the odd male can - but if he looks heaps like a guy, then it shouldn't be a problem.
It would definitely help weed out most of the males!
The eyes will do the rest!
Well written Julie. We are really living in a ‘war is peace’ world as you point out. The alphabet soup people harass, villify and exclude those who hold biological truths whilst yelling from the rooftops how they are being vilified, harassed etc by deranged hateful TERFS.
Gillard approaches the question rationally and says we should try to take heat out of the debate, as if everyone’s in good faith. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that for some people heat and hate and old-fashioned misogyny _is_ the point. And you do see older women and lesbians on the receiving end of that. Label someone and you don’t have to listen them but you can say anything at all about them. Click on the link to the ‘Price acquitted’ story on the BBC. Pretty gobsmacking.
I love they you have a great timeline for how things went "tits up" for the Lesbian Communities in Australia. This should happen with all the Anglohone Countries.
The majority of the Universities/Colleges indoctrinated students with Gender Studies ( which might as well be Transgender Studies) and Queer Theory.
The probability for deep seeded Allyship, was set in for the last 40 years. You can understand the allure of being part of a Civil Rights Movement from the ground up. And "Being on the right side of history."
Gay men, as with ALL MEN aren't effected by the Trans Liberation Movement. This is nothing more than a Feminized Men's Rights Movement. They are THE subset of MEN who were able, like the Trojan Horses they are, to destroy the Sex Segregated institutions and spaces. The Harbingers of the destruction of the Feminist Project.
The inability of women to come together. Work in coalitions across race, religion and class for Female Liberation; whose ultimate goal is full Gender Equality.
Lesbians, Female homosexuals - innate Same-Sex orientations- with Same-Sex romantic and sexual attractions, have been at on the front lines and in the trenches, of this "War Against Women."
These TIMs, with a cornucopia of potential dating options [ Bisexual women, Pansexual women, Omnisexuals women ( willing to date people who identify as entities from mythology, folklore or horror ((vampires/werewolves)), Ace spectrum AFABs and Trans spectrum AFABs. Plus other TIMs and Trans spectrum AMABs.
But they chose to sexualize, objectify and fetishize Lesbianism, Lesbians and Lesbians couples. Our innate sexual orientations exclude ALL MEN/MALES no matter how they identify.
To punish us for OUR disinterest, both sexually and socially, and Ad Hoc committee of TIMs and the Queer women who supported them, forced in and outside Lesbian Communities, changing the very definition of Lesbian, and using it as an umbrella term. I saw this happened around 2016 on Reddit and in other LBTQ media.
I remember in 2014, when the then current Senior Ed with the Advocate claimed through Queer Theory clap trap, that Queer would be used to describe all Minority Sexualities and Gender Identities.
In closing, we must fight again to separate the True Lesbians from TQs and start creating Communities again. We must begin to meet again; whether it starts underground and later publicly. Even if we have to have lawsuits.
Valerie, I want to say I agree with all you say. This is a war again women by by a feminised men’s group. It’s certainly the impression I get when I listen to many contemporary trans activists. But I don’t agree with one thing: the trans movement does affect gay men in so far as if we don’t date or have sex with trans men (biological women who live as men), we are deemed transphobic or sex determinists. As Julie point out in her article, our spaces are invaded by self identifying trans men who still have a female body and they don’t take it well when many gay men refuses to play along. This is affecting saunas,sex on premises venues, as well as self improvement workshops that target gay men who are biological males. I’ve even encountered a woman who claims to be a gay man without even attempting to at least look like a man. That’s why I see this as an issue that affects both lesbians and gay men.
The language Gay men and all Men hasn't changed. No one is colonizing your institutions. You can talk about the bars; but it was only recently that Lesbians bars/events started to appear. They are forced to include TIMs or else be protested and sued. Nor do you have women scheming to force TIFs in your space.
In 2016 Dana Rivers, with malice and forethought slaughtered a Lesbian couple and their son. He was obsessed with one of them. Until you have a pattern of TIFs suing Gay men who want Gay men only events, it isn't even comparable. Until you have a network gof TIFs that are doxxing Gay men and trying to get them fired from their jobs, it isn't comparable. I haven't ever heard of Gay men getting raped by TIFs. Nor have heard TIFs who have been convicted of different sex crimes demanding to be admitted to Men's prison, the way Self-ID TIMs with sex crimes convictions are demanding to be placed in Women's prisons. I haven't heard of TIFs suing major Men's Sports Leagues to be admitted to play; the way they have done with Women's Sports leagues.
I begged Gay men in 2013 on Reddit to help the Lesbian Communities. They claimed it was a personal problem. And quite a few of your community members can be just as sexist and misogynistic as your Straight counterparts.
TIFs are an annoyance, thirsty and bothersome, but they aren't as physically dangerous or as sexually predatory as % of TIMs.
You're still men within a Patriarchy. You should be easily able to shut them down.
Valerie, I agree TIFs are not as troublesome to gay men as TIMs. But I think you will find that gay men’s place within the patriarchy is conditional and illusory. Gay men may well benefit from patriarchy (check out the dick who ran Qantas for the last years), but it can be taken away very quickly when the worm turns. In fact, it was Radical feminist lesbians who pointed this out to me in the late 1970s.
Trans men might not be killing gay men (yet) but Heterosexual men haven been killing gay men for centuries and continue to do so to this day in highly imaginative ways: Edward II red hot poker up the arse, Matthew Shepard crucified on a fence, ISIS throwing gay men off minarets, Iran coercing gay men into sex changes because they think gay men must really be women, Russia sending gay men to gulags, NAZIS to concentration camps, teenagers throwing gay men off cliffs in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s, the Orlando gay nightclub massacre, young gay man anally raped with a bottle and left to bleed to death in a lane way in Turkey, and so on and so forth.
The membership to the men’s club is on even shakier ground if you’re migrant. I know from first hand experience.
This is not a tit for tat. I know women have it harder than men in just about any given society. I saw that in action when I was growing up in Turkey and then later here in Australia.
I’m trying to highlight a simple fact. Gay men and lesbians have more in common than they think. A long overdue alliance would benefit both parties. I also believe, in part, that many gay men’s complacency and misogyny stops them from seeing that. For instance, I think gay men owe lesbians a debt of gratitude from the 1980s plague years, a debt that’s not been properly acknowledged or paid back. When doctors and nurses refused to care for gay male AIDS patients, lesbians stepped in and did the hard yards. When was the last time gay men did anything comparable for lesbians? And I think the way the Victorian Pride Centre treated lesbians recently is appalling. I’m trying to get contact addresses for the chair and deputy chair to voice an objection. But it’s harder than breaking into a bank. I’m also writing to some of their funding bodies,some of them government.
The nuttiness of the contemporary transgender movement (which is very different from real transsexual lives) and the craps espoused by gender identitarians is a good place to begin for lesbians and gay men to come together. But I doubt it will happen. Too much animosity and suspicion on both sides.
Great comments.
I understand the history about the anti homophobic hate and draconian laws that have affected Gay men through millenia.
But what we are currently discussing is how the Trans Liberation Movement directly conflicts with the Feminist gains of the last 75 years. The harassment Lesbiphobia of the Female homosexuals communities by a myriad of people both inside and outside the LGBTQ communities. Men's Rights Activists, Liberals| Progressives both men and women, Bisexual and Pansexuals missionaries, Antifa and of course TRAs and those thar supporter them.
There have been attempts to start LGBAlliances across Western Europe and the Anglohone Countries. TRAs have very vocal how these are Anti Trans hate groups as part of the effort to place a wedge between LGBs vs TQs, by the Alt Right.
Yes there was a memo passed around in Alt Right and ultra Conservative circles. But this has been a self fulfilling prophecy due to how corrosive and unhinged the TQs have been with the Rhetoric and actually signal boosting violence against women who are dissenters of Trans/Gender Ideology.
Yes I would very much recommend that the LGBs stand shoulder to shoulder to fight against a Movement that has devolved into metaphysical mysticism and a Cult.
gay men and surrogacy?
THIS!!!!👆👆👆👆👆
I don't know how many people are familiar with this article yet but Ewan Morrison wrote a very interesting article about his time as a Trotskyite (Splitter!) attempting to infiltrate a meeting organizing against Clause 28 in the UK.
https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/confessions-of-a-sexual-politics-infiltrator
He points out that the utopian revolutionaries did not care about LGB people or issues but had a strategy of knitting together a wide range of niche issues to form a broad political coalition to be used for revolutionary ends.
"After decades of unsuccessfully trying to convert people to the cause, we had learned that it is more strategically effective to infiltrate single-issue groups and take them over from within — just as the revolutionary communist group known as Militant infiltrated Liverpool City Council in 1983–87 and brought the city to a standstill. According to UK security service MI5, the Communist Party also infiltrated schools and attempted to take over the National Union of Teachers. The Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was also infiltrated by communist activists, who were inspired by the anarchic free schools of the 1970s and taught children to be anti-capitalist warriors — while neglecting basic literacy. (The Times Educational Supplement reported on this in its January 1986 print-only edition, in an article entitled “The Ultra-Left Tightens Grip on Schools.”)"
His effort to infiltrate and co-opt the early LGB movement in 1988 failed because the people recognized them as infiltrators.
"Radical postmodern identity infiltrators, like the SWP of old, don’t want to fix single issues, but to tie all issues together, since, for an activist, as Lenin put it, “the worse, the better.” They spread discontent and conflict in every situation from the workplace to the home, especially by attempting to mandate which words and images people can use."
"They also despise everything about the current moment. The idea that you can solve your own problems and experience your own pleasures without their help is abhorrent to them. They aren’t fighting to safeguard or regain individual rights to privacy, freedom of choice, free speech, and dignity. They hate everything about the present because it does not match their radically egalitarian vision. They want vengeful payback; the oppressors must be destroyed. They see the gay men who want politics kept out of the bedroom as homo-normative slaves to bourgeois capitalism."
My God: the things I learn on my own site! Fascinating, thank you.
The term 'transsexual' should not be out of date as it is a term with a direct literal meaning that is far better at communicating the concept than the vague and misleading 'transgender'. A person who genuinely believes their mind is of the other sex to their body, and that they were born into the wrong body, and who pursues a long complex goal of using surgery and hormones to make their body look and feel more like the sex they believe they are, is a transsexual. Conversely, given that gender identity is an intangible idea that is made tangible by gendered bodily performance through clothing, movement, etc it can be changed as easily as changing your outfit. Being 'transgender' is merely engaging in a superficial performative behaviour with the body but not actually changing the body (the sexed entity). Given that not much more than a century ago it was illegal in some western countries for women to wear trousers, you could say that all cis women are trans these days if this was not so ridiculous. In reality trousers have been degendered so completely they are completely gender neutral, whereas women's clothing in western society remains highly gendered.
You're completely right Brian. I've changed the reference from "outdated" to "unfashionable." Thanks.
I refuse to allow the terminology of ‘cis’; to me using this term means I am being forced to confirm that , yes indeed,I am who I say I am, a biological woman.
That's right!
No such thing as 'cis'.
The other side of woman is man.
Thank you. Was just about to say something similar. I reject the redundant and meaningless term, "cis" and the idea of gender "assignment." Orwellian doublespeak, is what they are.
Yes this is all nonsense. Sex is not 'assigned' at birth. Sex is determined at conception. Gender is not 'revealed' after a fetal scan, sex is. A developing fetus has not had sufficient time to reflect on their gender identity. What is assigned at birth is gender - children are socialised from birth to perform certain gendered behaviours.
I look forward to the time that it is clearly established in the Courts that sex =/= "gender". That's going to make a lot of this insanity go away, though it's unlikely I suppose to happen quickly and cleanly.
Really the whole concept of gender should be rejected by the Courts. Anything that is entirely defined by each individual cannot be defined under law. It would be like trying to execute contracts about, boats or something, when everyone is allowed to define for themselves what a boat is.
Doris Lessing/ Marguerite Yourcenar are no longer with us. Marguerite ( Lesbian) said something along the lines of "there is more to this business, than peoples genitals". It is a particular, often noble sensibilty, which is entirely lost in the current mania. This is "infantile" thinking and behaviour in the sense which the "old schule" psychotherapists would use it. You are justified in characterising it as misogyny.
'In no way am I suggesting trans women are inherently violent ..."
This is a superb essay, but I will beg to differ regarding the above statement. I think these mentally ill men are inherently violent and they've found plenty of easy targets: lesbians, heterosexual women, bisexual women, prepubescent girls, and female prisoners. And calling them trans women does play, to an extent, into their psychopathology. Trans-identified males is somewhat okay, but sex mimics is even better.
Yes. They're as violent as other mentally-ill men, the famous 30-year followup study on trans folk in Sweden showed that clearly with rates of convictions for violent crime:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.t002
Interesting. Haven't read the study yet, but we still can't say "inherently violent" any more than we say that for people with other mental illnesses. And I'm not sure whether the study controls for co-morbidities, which I'm guessing many trans people with criminal convictions will have.
Yes, it does control so. But I agree we can't say "inherently violent", since that implies that they all are. I think we CAN say that they are "inherently as violent as other men", since their conviction rates for violent crime were on par with the male control group.
Also of note is the stat that women become more criminal after transitioning to manhood. I'm guessing it's the T.
I've read too many women who partnered with lesbians who went trans say their former partners became violent and abusive after taking testosterone. It's been known for a long time that men become even more violent and aggressive when they take steroids.
And that said, I will say males are inherently violent in civilization. They cannot create life so what they do is destroy. They destroy the environment, they destroy relationships, they destroy other living beings. All one needs do is look around to see the truth of this if you're willing to face reality (which I know can be difficult).
An important piece Julie, thank you! x
Thanks Anna. I hope readers follow the link to your powerful interview on TERF talks.
Sorry Anna! Just occured to me I was talking about Helen Daintree! You're all doing such great work!
Thanks so much for writing about this. The pincer movement against lesbians - the promotion of transition to our butch women especially, and the male sexual harassment of the lesbians who remain -goes back several decades. But the issue has been turbocharged since the late 2010s with social media and smartphones. It's very painful to reflect that a number of prominent lesbians (who made positive contributions elsewhere) were active in promoting this ideology, however poorly they understood it at the time (see some cultural figures like Alyson Bechdel in the 2000s). But I'm encouraged that it's being talked about publicly now in a way that seemed impossible even two years back.
This is beyond the pale misogyny. Women cannot be allowed ANY boundaries.
"Black people are allowed, but not encouraged" ..
The Everything Is About Race Forum is that way ---------------------------->>>
I wonder whether one of the factors is a psychological inability to accept that some biological women are not attracted to biological men ? Could the reality that lesbians exist be experienced as a rejection of biological men and unbearable by some people. Other factors may relate to feeling anger with parents particularly the mother. Could these factors whether conscious or subconscious result in denial of biological male free space for a lesbian function ?
Fascinating Shirley!
This is very good Julie, nuanced,and from where I sit in the Southern Vales Wine Region of South Australia, just the right tone. I don't know whether you are familiar with Norman Cohn Julie, but he wrote about similar sorts of societal manias in late Mediaeval Europe in the "Pursuit of the Millennium". I'm from Melbourne over 50 years ago, but when I read this sort of material I'm rather glad I left.
Cheers Paul. I have a vague idea about the medieval social manias but not that specific author. I'll check it out!
You could also try Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror" about France during the Black Death. Norman Cohn and Barbara Tuchman both say variously, that "these things are with us still". Peasants would have visions," Frederick Hohenzollern is not dead,he lives in a cave in Southern Bavaria, he told me to kill all the undesirables ". Greta Thunberg can actually "see" carbon diioxide according to her mother. " The past is always with us, it is not even past".