The Feminist Gender Wars Begin

[Chris]

This, from England, is interesting in that feminists there, unlike their counterparts in the US like Polly, are reaching out to conservatives on the transgender issue.

UK Feminist: Help Us Fight Trans Tyranny

A reader named Bec comments:

British feminist here, I’m neither a conservative (with a large or small C) or a Christian. I just wanted to extend a ‘hello’ from across the pond, and say that we have ABSOLUTELY NO allies on the Left. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I wanted to thank you for your solidarity with us on this issue and for supporting Kellie’s bravery.

This whole mess (we’ll be breaking rocks on the gulag before long for gender thought crimes) has made me really, really open my ears to conservatives, and start listening. It’s all well and good accusing others of bigotry whilst being totally intolerant to others views myself. What I’m hearing, on this issue, from ‘your’ side is far more coherent and indeed truly liberal, than anything going on on the Left. This is a deeply regressive, woman hating, homophobic, anti free speech ideology and we’ve got to stop it.

I believe this issue is not only the greatest roll back of women’s rights in 200 years, but it has massive implications for freedom in general, given that it’s aim is to obfuscate the meaning of language itself. I’m paraphrasing, but once you can get people to believe a lie is true, you can get them to believe and support almost anything. The divisiveness and sheer vitriol involved is like something out of am East German Stasi basement. Things now, such as ‘women give birth’ mare truly unsayable.

I appreciate that feminists and conservatives aren’t natural allies on this issue, but I’d urge anyone with concerns to reach out and support each other, in the States there is a wonderful coalition of conservatives and feminists called Hands Across the Aisle, please have a look at them, they have a great youtube video called ‘Biology is not Bigotry’.

...

[Kalkin]

The UK Labour Party is becoming sharply divided over the impact of the government's proposed Gender Recognition Act, as some 500 feminists and allies recently met in secret to discuss the policy effects while prominent men associated with the party organized harassment campaigns against them.

Why did they meet in secret? Afraid or embarrassed? Are they hiding something?

[Cthulhu]

I am actually a rabbit. Claiming I must be human is only a specie centric view of life. I demand to be allowed all the rights and privileges of rabbithood.

Sorry I ate a bunch of your distant kin bro. But since I identify with clan Wolf...you understand.

Rabbits gotta breed and wolves gotta feed.

Sent from my evil cell phone.

[Chloe]

I truly want to be more involved in women's issues and these types of concerns but I just admittedly don't have that much passion around it. I understand the importance and I understand the struggle, but it's just not a priority to me right now. I love how there are so many great people out there fighting for these causes and I fully support their efforts.

[Mister D]

I truly want to be more involved in women's issues and these types of concerns but I just admittedly don't have that much passion around it. I understand the importance and I understand the struggle, but it's just not a priority to me right now. I love how there are so many great people out there fighting for these causes and I fully support their efforts.

That's probably because on some level you realize that "women" aren't a class, have diverging values and want different things out of life.

[IMPress Polly]

I understand what Chloe is actually saying and appreciate it.

Additionally, I have a bit of an update on the particular struggle going on in the UK that I highlighted in the OP: the Labour Party has delayed its decision on allowing self-identification alone to determine eligibility for all-women shortlists after hundreds of women threatened to resign over the opening of said lists to biologically male applicants. (The linked BBC video also provides further background on the conflict surrounding the Gender Recognition Act, which is a type of measure one can easily envision being proposed by a future Democratic government in this country as well.)

[Mister D]

I understand what Chloe is actually saying and appreciate it.

Additionally, I have a bit of an update on the particular struggle going on in the UK that I highlighted in the OP: the Labour Party has delayed its decision on allowing self-identification alone to determine eligibility for all-women shortlists after hundreds of women threatened to resign over the opening of said lists to biologically male applicants. (The linked BBC video also provides further background on the conflict surrounding the Gender Recognition Act, which is a type of measure one can easily envision being proposed by a future Democratic government in this country as well.)

No, you have accused women who disagree with you of being "traitors". Chloe gets it. You don't.

[IMPress Polly]

[Mister D]

Are you trying to say you haven't done exactly that? Polly, to you all women should feel the same way about particular issues. Chloe doesn't for the reason stated above.

[Standing Wolf]

I suppose one might conversely argue that such a war against "cis" (i.e. real) women has been going on for a number of years already, complete with extensive censorship of all who question the notion of innate gender, but I'm generously characterizing this as the formal beginning of the culture war in this area in the sense that this development marks the first campaign of organized pushback to exist offline that I'm aware of, and thus it is now starting to become a slightly less one-sided conflict than it has been up to now. It will probably spread to many other countries. This could be an important, even defining, development in the history of the women's movement. I've already explained which side of this dispute I'm on, personally.

Polly, in the OP of that earlier thread you linked to, you wrote this:

There's been a rapidly escalating amount of pressure, particularly on the political left and among social liberals, to be supportive of the movement and its goals, to the point that I now can honestly say that I would probably lose my job if I were to voice my honest opinions on this subject or use what I feel are the correct gender pronouns to describe trans people in a visible way (to which end I am only disclosing my actual opinions on this issue in places like this where I'm confident that my colleagues and students will not see them and will remain, in my professional life, officially PC for public consumption).

Emphasis mine.

Without in any way wanting or attempting to derail this thread, I simply wanted to point out to you (and others) that this describes with a fair degree of accuracy the situation that many folks, me among them, now find themselves in vis-à-vis the student gun control movement.

Yesterday, I heard an acquaintance - a man of moderate political leanings, who boasts frequently of how little he cares about being "PC" - dismissing those critical of the students and their movement as being "the same people who didn't want women to vote, and who wanted Blacks to keep sitting in the back of the bus"...and it actually didn't stop there, but just got nastier and more insulting.

Just as you have expressed an understandable reluctance to let your true feelings about certain matters relating to gender in the public sphere be known to your colleagues and students, I have - mostly for the sake of peace in the home - been less than vocal about my opinions on the student-led gun control protests, as well as other matters, while in the company of certain friends and family members.

The "pressure" you note is a real thing, and I think we can both acknowledge that not all of our liberal friends and acquaintances are as accepting of divergent views as we would perhaps like. From what I have seen, conservatives have their own issues - their own shibboleths and expectations, and views they expect others to hold if they're going to keep calling themselves conservatives - but we would be foolish to claim that our camp doesn't have the same problem.