Gender Identity Talk With Gender Critics

[IMPress Polly]

If you hadn't heard, four gender critical feminists recently hosted a sold-out talk on the issue of gender identity at the Vancouver Public Library entitled Gender Identity and Women's Rights. The event generated controversy from its announcement due to its theme of questioning the concept of gender and gender identity and especially due to the fact that Meghan Murphy, owner of the Feminist Current web site that I most often go to and frequently link to, and who was recently permabanned from Twitter for rudely "misgendering" a male pedophile who goes by Jonathan, was announced as the main and headline speaker. Activists for the transgender movement demanded that the event be cancelled. The library tried to at first, petitioning the speakers about worries that they would violate Canada's law against hate speech (which of course they did not), but were rebuffed. Following on that failed attempt, transgender movement activists demanded that the library also host a "counter-event" organized by people supportive of the transgender movement. The library agreed to and furthermore rescheduled the originally-planned gender identity talk to 9:30 PM (after hours) on Thursday, January 10th and demanded that the speakers pay an addition $2,000 in security fees, and furthermore issued a public statement taking sides in the debate, explicitly condemning Meghan Murphy and stating that the Vancouver Public Library officially disagrees with the speakers associated with the talk.

The controversy generated by the gender identity talk backfired on its opponents in that it seemed to serve as free publicity. Despite the unreasonable hour, the event sold out and proceeded without incident despite a line of protesters attempting to block entry yelling about, of all things, border politics and waving signs with insane slogans comparing the speakers (branded "TERFs") to Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan. The audience was politically diverse and broadly supportive, and often enthusiastically so. For perspective, if you haven't been to library-hosted talks before, they typically generate an audience in the low double-digits, while this one was attended by at least 300 people. More watched the livestream online, the YouTube recording of which currently has 725 up-votes and just 38 down-votes, which amounts to a 95% positive response from those who watched it. By contrast, the aforementioned "counter event" scheduled for the next day was cancelled after proponents found their own panelists to be...wait for it...too "problematic". :laugh: Yes. Purity test politics at their finest!

Here is the talk that has generated all this controversy. It begins at 20:46, so skip ahead to that point. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2L4w837agg

The talk was a tremendous success. It features four speakers (Meghan is up first). (I know only two are mentioned in the title. However, two other surprise speakers were included as well.) My fave of them were Lee Lakeman (a second wave activist who works at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, among other things) and Fay Blaney's "auntie", as she referred to her, who is one of the now-famous "two-spirit" Native women that transgender activists incorrectly claim are trans people. The older women are very different (e.g. Lakeman is vocal and energetic, while the "auntie" is soft-spoken), but they both lay down the IMO much-needed hard line and are just awesome and the indigenous women clarify that, contrary to claims of white transgender movement activists, no their cultures do NOT actually recognize "five genders".


There are also lots of fun moments (e.g. Meghan dares question whether cats make good pets :angry:) and lots of interesting questions from the audience when they get to the Q&A part after the speeches. Additionally, if you click on the link instead of watching the embedded video, on the right-hand side of the page, next to the video, there's also a recording of the online text chat of those who watched it live online exactly as it unfolded, which is awesome and really gives you a window into our (radical feminist) culture and how we think (and also how we interact with trolls :grin:). For all these reasons and others, I HIGHLY recommend visiting the link and checking it out!

[Peter1469]

The embeded video's sound didn't work for me, but if you hit the link to YouTube it works fine.

Listening now.

[IMPress Polly]

The embeded video's sound didn't work for me, but if you hit the link to YouTube it works fine.

Listening now.

Weird. I think it's something with your computer, Peter, as I just tried the embedded version now (starting at 20:46, the start of the talk) and the sound worked fine for me.

[Peter1469]

Weird. I think it's something with your computer, Peter, as I just tried the embedded version now (starting at 20:46, the start of the talk) and the sound worked fine for me.

Maybe. It is old.

[Common]

I agree with her on one point she makes and the reason she was banned from Twitter which I dont think she should have been for what she said.

She said Men are Not women and you cant change your biological sex.

Everyone with a half a brain and any "HONESTY" in them knows she is right

[Peter1469]

I agree with her on one point she makes and the reason she was banned from Twitter which I dont think she should have been for what she said.

She said Men are Not women and you cant change your biological sex.

Everyone with a half a brain and any "HONESTY" in them knows she is right
It is a shame she got banned from Twitter when some other tool Tweeted that the Catholic high school MAGA kids should be put into wood chippers and was not banned.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Megan Murphy's arguments are so brimming full of logic, reason, truthfulness, and common sense that it's no wonder a mob of angry barbarians tried to crash the gate. And the fact that the library so disingenuously tried to silence the discussion is utterly shameful - embarrassingly shameful. You never ever ever give in to a mob that seeks to silence open discussion.

I'm only 47 minutes into the video and looking forward to the rest. Thanks for posting it.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Lee Lakeman also makes excellent points, and she's obviously a brave soldier for abused women, but I have to part ways with her when she denigrates free speech and wants to suppress "hate" speech. That's a slippery slope to censorship and fascism. That attitude does not help her cause.

Also, when she speaks of the oppression of immigrant women, is she referring in part to the misogyny of Islam? Because one of the problems I have with Feminism (whatever wave) is that it generally turns a blind eye to the mistreatment of Muslim women by Muslim men. Which feminists actually speak out against FGM, the burka, the endemic domestic violence in Islamic culture, the atrocities of sharia - such as the stoning of women for committing the crime of being raped? Which feminists actually condemn the passages in the Quran and Hadith that encourage rape and other forms of violence toward women?

[IMPress Polly]

Lee Lakeman also makes excellent points, and she's obviously a brave soldier for abused women, but I have to part ways with her when she denigrates free speech and wants to suppress "hate" speech. That's a slippery slope to censorship and fascism. That attitude does not help her cause.

Also, when she speaks of the oppression of immigrant women, is she referring in part to the misogyny of Islam? Because one of the problems I have with Feminism (whatever wave) is that it generally turns a blind eye to the mistreatment of Muslim women by Muslim men. Which feminists actually speak out against FGM, the burka, the endemic domestic violence in Islamic culture, the atrocities of sharia - such as the stoning of women for committing the crime of being raped? Which feminists actually condemn the passages in the Quran and Hadith that encourage rape and other forms of violence toward women?
I definitely believe that pornography constitutes hate speech.

As to political Islam, radical feminists (a.k.a. "second wave" feminists, women's liberationists) are pretty strong opponents of it to the point that we are often labeled "Islamophobic" by liberals. Many of us oppose religion itself to some extent or other (myself included), while others practice varying forms of goddess worship, while others try to reform mainstream, male-centric faiths like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I didn't bother to attend this year's Women's March in part because of the connection between the central organization's leaders and Louis Farrakhan.

I think you might find a recent podcast interview that Meghan Murphy did with second wave activist and author Phyllis Chesler (https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/12/14/podcast-phyllis-chesler-remains-steadfast-politically-incorrect/) to be of interest in this connection.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I definitely believe that pornography constitutes hate speech.

As to political Islam, radical feminists (a.k.a. "second wave" feminists, women's liberationists) are pretty strong opponents of it to the point that we are often labeled "Islamophobic" by liberals. Many of us oppose religion itself to some extent or other (myself included), while others practice varying forms of goddess worship, while others try to reform mainstream, male-centric faiths like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I didn't bother to attend this year's Women's March in part because of the connection between the central organization's leaders and Louis Farrakhan.

I think you might find a recent podcast interview that Meghan Murphy did with second wave activist and author Phyllis Chesler (https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/12/14/podcast-phyllis-chesler-remains-steadfast-politically-incorrect/) to be of interest in this connection.

Thank you, I'll check that out. I'm very very impressed with Megan Murphy - I've heard of her, but never heard her speak. I have to confess that I've generally lumped all Feminists in with the Heinz-57-Varieties-Of-Gender Nazis. I wasn't aware that some of you were outspokenly opposed to their ideologies (and insistence on legislating them). I stand corrected.

Actually, I was very impressed with Lee Lakewood as well, but I've never heard of pornography classified as hate speech. I'm not saying porn is good, but calling it hate speech doesn't ring true. Speech is speech and having sex on film is something in a completely different category. That's the problem with the idea of hate speech. Who gets to decide what it is and isn't? And then who gets to legislate hate speech laws? It's a damn slippery slope. The protestors outside vehemently accuse Lee and Megan of hate speech, and wish to silence them. Does Lee not see her hypocrisy when she likewise accuses others of hate speech and proclaims that she is not a proponent of free speech? We should not stoop to the tactics of the barbarians.

[slackercruster]

OP, great report! Seldom do you see such a detailed rundown.

In 2019 here is the legacy Obama has left us...If 2 hairy men can be husband and wife...a man with a penis can be a woman. That is our world, get with the program or be labeled some type of '...phobe.

[The Xl]

The transgender movement has been the most damaging thing to happen to women in a long time. Basically, when a man wins beauty pageants, dominates female sports, takes female roles in movies, shows, advertising, etc, it's basically sending the message that men are better women than women are. I think it's disgusting and a slap in the face to women. When I see a man win a female beauty show, it pisses me off. When I see a man dominate a female sport because of leverages, bone density, and retained muscle mass from going through puberty as a man, it makes me sick

[Ethereal]

If you hadn't heard, four gender critical feminists recently hosted a sold-out talk on the issue of gender identity at the Vancouver Public Library entitled Gender Identity and Women's Rights. The event generated controversy from its announcement due to its theme of questioning the concept of gender and gender identity and especially due to the fact that Meghan Murphy, owner of the Feminist Current web site that I most often go to and frequently link to, and who was recently permabanned from Twitter for rudely "misgendering" a male pedophile who goes by Jonathan, was announced as the main and headline speaker. Activists for the transgender movement demanded that the event be cancelled. The library tried to at first, petitioning the speakers about worries that they would violate Canada's law against hate speech (which of course they did not), but were rebuffed. Following on that failed attempt, transgender movement activists demanded that the library also host a "counter-event" organized by people supportive of the transgender movement. The library agreed to and furthermore rescheduled the originally-planned gender identity talk to 9:30 PM (after hours) on Thursday, January 10th and demanded that the speakers pay an addition $2,000 in security fees, and furthermore issued a public statement taking sides in the debate, explicitly condemning Meghan Murphy and stating that the Vancouver Public Library officially disagrees with the speakers associated with the talk.

The controversy generated by the gender identity talk backfired on its opponents in that it seemed to serve as free publicity. Despite the unreasonable hour, the event sold out and proceeded without incident despite a line of protesters attempting to block entry yelling about, of all things, border politics and waving signs with insane slogans comparing the speakers (branded "TERFs") to Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan. The audience was politically diverse and broadly supportive, and often enthusiastically so. For perspective, if you haven't been to library-hosted talks before, they typically generate an audience in the low double-digits, while this one was attended by at least 300 people. More watched the livestream online, the YouTube recording of which currently has 725 up-votes and just 38 down-votes, which amounts to a 95% positive response from those who watched it. By contrast, the aforementioned "counter event" scheduled for the next day was cancelled after proponents found their own panelists to be...wait for it...too "problematic". :laugh: Yes. Purity test politics at their finest!

Here is the talk that has generated all this controversy. It begins at 20:46, so skip ahead to that point. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2L4w837agg

The talk was a tremendous success. It features four speakers (Meghan is up first). (I know only two are mentioned in the title. However, two other surprise speakers were included as well.) My fave of them were Lee Lakeman (a second wave activist who works at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, among other things) and Fay Blaney's "auntie", as she referred to her, who is one of the now-famous "two-spirit" Native women that transgender activists incorrectly claim are trans people. The older women are very different (e.g. Lakeman is vocal and energetic, while the "auntie" is soft-spoken), but they both lay down the IMO much-needed hard line and are just awesome and the indigenous women clarify that, contrary to claims of white transgender movement activists, no their cultures do NOT actually recognize "five genders".


There are also lots of fun moments (e.g. Meghan dares question whether cats make good pets :angry:) and lots of interesting questions from the audience when they get to the Q&A part after the speeches. Additionally, if you click on the link instead of watching the embedded video, on the right-hand side of the page, next to the video, there's also a recording of the online text chat of those who watched it live online exactly as it unfolded, which is awesome and really gives you a window into our (radical feminist) culture and how we think (and also how we interact with trolls :grin:). For all these reasons and others, I HIGHLY recommend visiting the link and checking it out!



Real women versus fake ones.

I side with the real women.

[Ethereal]

We should not stoop to the tactics of the barbarians.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a6/33/2f/a6332fa657324f69334da170cee45db8--like-a-sir-quick-meme.jpg

[IMPress Polly]

Thank you, I'll check that out. I'm very very impressed with Megan Murphy - I've heard of her, but never heard her speak. I have to confess that I've generally lumped all Feminists in with the Heinz-57-Varieties-Of-Gender Nazis. I wasn't aware that some of you were outspokenly opposed to their ideologies (and insistence on legislating them). I stand corrected.
One can be forgiven such illusions, being as those of us who dissent from this new normal that's just being imposed on us all have been rendered virtually invisible in the corporate media and discounted by the official leaders of today's so-called women's movement.


Actually, I was very impressed with Lee Lakewood as well, but I've never heard of pornography classified as hate speech. I'm not saying porn is good, but calling it hate speech doesn't ring true. Speech is speech and having sex on film is something in a completely different category. That's the problem with the idea of hate speech. Who gets to decide what it is and isn't? And then who gets to legislate hate speech laws? It's a damn slippery slope. The protestors outside vehemently accuse Lee and Megan of hate speech, and wish to silence them. Does Lee not see her hypocrisy when she likewise accuses others of hate speech and proclaims that she is not a proponent of free speech? We should not stoop to the tactics of the barbarians.

(Quick aside: Her name is Lee Lakeman, not Lee Lakewood. :wink:)

I would agree that there are legitimate concerns about the growing abuse of laws and standards against hate speech. Frankly, radical feminists are among the principal social forces that are being targeted by this emerging global trend and we are concerned by that. For example, a Russian female separatist blogger was recently criminally investigated for supposedly "inciting" hatred of men online (https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-feminist-blogger-kalugina-investigated-for-potential-hate-speech-against-men/29451743.html) and could be sentenced to five years in prison as part of a larger governmental crackdown on free speech that's been going on in Russia of late. The same law was famously used to jail the feminist punk band Pussy Riot earlier this decade, among other applications. Many of us fear that that sort of Orwellian thought policing is where things are ultimately headed worldwide. On the other hand, Moscow authorities are not so concerned about domestic violence against women, which they decriminalized two years ago (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/27/russian-parliament-decrimiinalizes-domestic-violence/97129912/), predictably resulting in a major increase in wife beatings and child abuse.

That said, however, we (radical feminists) have always opposed pornography on the grounds that it constitutes sex discrimination against women and I feel that the hate speech formulation is legitimately applicable thereto. I don't feel that calling porn hate speech is an abuse of the concept.

I was watching 20/20 last night and they were running an episode entitled Evil in Eden, which was a documentary about how a man became a sexually violent serial killer of women. Shortly before his interrogation by the authorities, he requested, as a condition for his confession, to be provided with mountains of child pornography. Somehow the authorities were surprised. I wasn't. The reality of male violence against women is that men who hate women typically are porn addicts. I don't feel that that's a coincidence. Porn is basically just men abusing girls and women for the amusement of other men. It's often asked why women choose to participate. While I have not worked in pornography before, I can testify to the experience of working in other sectors of the sex industry and to their overlap. Women who work in the sex trade most often do so because they were sexually abused as children. Rape teaches you something about what you're worth to the world. It certainly taught me. That's why I find myself returning again and again to this quote by Andrea Dworkin in summing up the situation:

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women."

In other words, that pornography is institutionalized misogyny is proven by the fact that it cannot exist without fathers and uncles and boyfriends raping their daughters, their nieces, and their girlfriends, nor without the trafficking of girls and women by pimps. Without these phenomena, pornographers would have no "workers" to exploit because nobody would be psychologically damaged enough to accede.

Absent this kind of radical critique of the sex industry, I wouldn't be a feminist. The discovery of Andrea Dworkin's body of work was seminal to my own exit from stripping and prostitution and realization of some semblance of self-worth. Without revolutionary sex trade abolitionists, I would not have the personal motivation to identify myself as a feminist at all because I would have no sense of self-esteem deluding myself into believing that these decisions were/are (I'd likely still be trapped in "the life" or else dead) free choices that occur in a vacuum and without a patriarchal social context.


Slackercruster wrote:
OP, great report! Seldom do you see such a detailed rundown.

In 2019 here is the legacy Obama has left us...If 2 hairy men can be husband and wife...a man with a penis can be a woman. That is our world, get with the program or be labeled some type of '...phobe.

Thank you for the compliment! However, being essentially lesbian myself, I think it may be added that I'm not exactly an opponent of same-sex relationships. In point of fact, that is another area where I have issues with the whole gender identity thing. For example, have you heard that it's "cissexist" and "transphobic" to have genital preferences...particularly if you're female?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5GYlZKfBmI

...Yeah, apparently it is. :rollseyes:

That's right, the transgender movement is trying to redefine lesbianism (which you'll notice they single out specifically, as in above video) as heterosexuality because "some women have penises". This is a phenomenon that gender critical feminists refer to as lesbian erasure, as it is pointless to call one's self a lesbian if the term implies equal sexual interest in biological males.

The argument that lesbians must embrace heterosexuality because "some women have penises" isn't just insulting, it's dangerous. What you have above is, in reality, simply a man asserting his supposed right to a yes answer. As much is no different from the mentality of men's rights activists who argue that men have a "right to sex" and hence that women have no right to refuse them. Such is the logic behind so much rape and so much of the "incel" terrorism that we have seen over the last year in particular. But because he claims to be a woman, it gets a pass from, and in fact endorsed by, the left.

[The Xl]

I'm off today so I'm gonna try and watch all of this. Thanks for the link

[IMPress Polly]

I'm off today so I'm gonna try and watch all of this. Thanks for the link

The talk starts at 20:46, so skip ahead to that point. It's also more fun to watch the video at the link rather than the embedded version because if you visit the YouTube page, you can see the recorded text chat of those who watched the livestream on the right and thus get a snapshot of what the larger radfem culture is like.

[donttread]

If you hadn't heard, four gender critical feminists recently hosted a sold-out talk on the issue of gender identity at the Vancouver Public Library entitled Gender Identity and Women's Rights. The event generated controversy from its announcement due to its theme of questioning the concept of gender and gender identity and especially due to the fact that Meghan Murphy, owner of the Feminist Current web site that I most often go to and frequently link to, and who was recently permabanned from Twitter for rudely "misgendering" a male pedophile who goes by Jonathan, was announced as the main and headline speaker. Activists for the transgender movement demanded that the event be cancelled. The library tried to at first, petitioning the speakers about worries that they would violate Canada's law against hate speech (which of course they did not), but were rebuffed. Following on that failed attempt, transgender movement activists demanded that the library also host a "counter-event" organized by people supportive of the transgender movement. The library agreed to and furthermore rescheduled the originally-planned gender identity talk to 9:30 PM (after hours) on Thursday, January 10th and demanded that the speakers pay an addition $2,000 in security fees, and furthermore issued a public statement taking sides in the debate, explicitly condemning Meghan Murphy and stating that the Vancouver Public Library officially disagrees with the speakers associated with the talk.

The controversy generated by the gender identity talk backfired on its opponents in that it seemed to serve as free publicity. Despite the unreasonable hour, the event sold out and proceeded without incident despite a line of protesters attempting to block entry yelling about, of all things, border politics and waving signs with insane slogans comparing the speakers (branded "TERFs") to Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan. The audience was politically diverse and broadly supportive, and often enthusiastically so. For perspective, if you haven't been to library-hosted talks before, they typically generate an audience in the low double-digits, while this one was attended by at least 300 people. More watched the livestream online, the YouTube recording of which currently has 725 up-votes and just 38 down-votes, which amounts to a 95% positive response from those who watched it. By contrast, the aforementioned "counter event" scheduled for the next day was cancelled after proponents found their own panelists to be...wait for it...too "problematic". :laugh: Yes. Purity test politics at their finest!

Here is the talk that has generated all this controversy. It begins at 20:46, so skip ahead to that point. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2L4w837agg

The talk was a tremendous success. It features four speakers (Meghan is up first). (I know only two are mentioned in the title. However, two other surprise speakers were included as well.) My fave of them were Lee Lakeman (a second wave activist who works at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, among other things) and Fay Blaney's "auntie", as she referred to her, who is one of the now-famous "two-spirit" Native women that transgender activists incorrectly claim are trans people. The older women are very different (e.g. Lakeman is vocal and energetic, while the "auntie" is soft-spoken), but they both lay down the IMO much-needed hard line and are just awesome and the indigenous women clarify that, contrary to claims of white transgender movement activists, no their cultures do NOT actually recognize "five genders".


There are also lots of fun moments (e.g. Meghan dares question whether cats make good pets :angry:) and lots of interesting questions from the audience when they get to the Q&A part after the speeches. Additionally, if you click on the link instead of watching the embedded video, on the right-hand side of the page, next to the video, there's also a recording of the online text chat of those who watched it live online exactly as it unfolded, which is awesome and really gives you a window into our (radical feminist) culture and how we think (and also how we interact with trolls :grin:). For all these reasons and others, I HIGHLY recommend visiting the link and checking it out!




Women's rights for real women? And just being female means you've been discriminated against. I tried, but that's all I could take from a group "western women" which probably enjoys more safety and more society accepted choices" than any group in history

[CCitizen]

Thank you, I'll check that out. I'm very very impressed with Megan Murphy - I've heard of her, but never heard her speak. I have to confess that I've generally lumped all Feminists in with the Heinz-57-Varieties-Of-Gender Nazis. I wasn't aware that some of you were outspokenly opposed to their ideologies (and insistence on legislating them). I stand corrected.


Of course Feminism stands for Gender Equality. One way to achieve Gender Equality and fairness to all is summarized in the article We Need a Mandemic (http://archive.is/5KWAv) on Feminist Current.


When the human race begins to go extinct due to climate change, men will not yet have left the planet… Ithink. But here’s the thing: Men are experiencing karma. Women, on the other hand, are experiencing toxic masculinity


What can be done? Well, I’ve decided the Earth needs a Mandemic. The human herd must be culled, and it’s time for buck season.

And interesting comments are below the article:

I don't really understand how man hating can be seen as unreasonable and offensive, given all the man-made problems in the world throughout history. Not to mention that men have been hating women for centuries.

From Murphy herself:

We're always trying to get the message across the feminism is not about 'equality'... Soooo frustrating!

Dear Marcus Aurelius, are you sure you support that?

[CCitizen]

Women's rights for real women? And just being female means you've been discriminated against. I tried, but that's all I could take from a group "western women" which probably enjoys more safety and more society accepted choices" than any group in history
According to some great minds of our time, which seem to be liked by many Conservatives in this very thread, here (http://archive.is/5KWAv#selection-8377.0-8377.135)


So men are just choosing to continue to rape women and girls for fun? Yet you think we SHOULDN'T kill 'em off with some kind of virus?

If someone made such an argument about an ethnic group, they would be rightly jailed for Hate Speech.

[donttread]

According to some great minds of our time, which seem to be liked by many Conservatives in this very thread, here (http://archive.is/5KWAv#selection-8377.0-8377.135)



If someone made such an argument about an ethnic group, they would be rightly jailed for Hate Speech.

Who's going to do the physical labor to build the building where they would develop this virus? LOL