Why are local politicians in Hastings putting their names to a Shon Faye event?
What is the “sex doesn’t exist” / “sex doesn’t matter” / “it’s complicated” ideology that Shon Faye promotes?
Just how convoluted is this? Let me attempt to put it a coherent sentence…
Starting with Judith Butler, it’s a build-up of out-of-context quotes and grandstanding of an aberration in feminism, used to present the latest variation on a deliberate misunderstanding of Simone de Beauvoir’s “I wasn’t born a woman, I became one.” Faye takes it all the way, and writes a book that manages to conclude second wave feminism didn’t believe in sex.
Together with a collection of now discredited stats from the likes of Mermaids, this makes up Faye’s argument.
Faye equates the on-going women’s abortion rights struggle with the self-ID / “transwomen are women campaign” in order to centre trans identified males and their supporters as “the real” modern day feminists. “Bodily autonomy“ is co-opted as the basis for a segue into transhumanism and the young anarchist’s dream of a world with no rules, no police, no boundaries. In Faye’s version of utopia, cosmetic surgery is free for all, so everyone can re-fashion themselves to match their online fantasy identities. This, we are told, is the “trans liberation” which “liberates us all”.
It feeds on the almost universal body-image anxiety that our young people, particularly girls, suffer as a result of growing up in a sexist society surrounded with porn and “gender ideology”.
Come and get it, cool kids! You can be whatever you say you are – only we can sell you the surgery and the drugs that make you your “authentic self”. What’s more, it comes with the exciting free gift of an opportunity to shout abuse at your mum’s generation without getting told off.
Why is Shon Faye headlining an event here in Hastings just now?
Why did the local SWP lot call a meeting this week to address the “war on trans people”?
Here, in the light the Cass Review has let in, we can see how this movement is going to collapse. Let’s take a hard look at the SWP, who have been a major force in the drive to equate women’s rights activism with right-wing anti-trans sentiments. Along with Momentum, they were instrumental in the widespread attempts to intimidate the women’s rights movement into silence (they failed). My most extraordinary encounter with SWP activists was outside a women’s meeting in London. The meeting was called A Woman’s Place is Not in Prison. A fascinating and heartbreaking series of talks about how and why women end up in prison was followed by thoughtful and practical “what do we do?” questions. It was a meeting every socialist would have been happy to be a part of, if not for the fact that it was a Woman’s Place UK meeting, and many socialist groups have them down as “anti-trans” because WPUK defends women’s legal rights and yes, it does investigate and report on the results of, eg, putting male sex-offenders in women’s prisons.
That was why there were SWP activists outside the meeting, standing up for righteousness by repeatedly yelling “cunt” through a loud hailer directly into (female) marshals’ faces, commenting on the women’s shapes when they turned their backs on the protestors, and trying to intimidate a Black woman with loud comments about her hair.
To me, the SWP clearly demonstrate the dangerous streak of misogyny on the margins of the left, a trait many transwomen (being male) very obviously share – hence the various commentaries called things like “trans activism has mummy problems”. Like all neurosis-led movements, the solutions trans activists put forward tend to be very authoritarian so, having won an army of kids for their cause by painting pictures of a rule-free teen heaven such as that Faye presents, they set about achieving their goals by dictating what women must say and not say, do and not do, and campaigning for absurdities like forbidding lesbians to organize in all-female groups.
It has worked to a certain extent, for as long as they could depend on genuine questioning being shouted down. We still have a lot of that stuff to fight back on – only yesterday, moderators in a large local political group chose to delete my posting of this article because comments were “getting quite heated”. Last time I looked, around six people had liked the post but diffidently refrained from commenting, whilst another six had yelled for the mods to take it down because it was “distressing” and “anti-LGBTQ+”.
A look back on the “no debate” years…
Through all those years, how many times did our local borough councillors shout trans rights slogans publicly, attend their rallies, then promise women privately there’d be a meeting for women’s rights activists to explain our situation and our campaign? To me personally, the answer is five. And what do they do instead? Go around enthusing about an event headlined by a male who takes selfies of himself ripping up women’s rights groups’ messages to women that he’s found in women’s loos.
When people like me post articles, or give talks, presenting the women’s rights movement’s concerns about self-ID and gender ideology, we are not acting against trans people (who existed and largely got along with women long before Stonewall’s self-ID campaign got started) we’re acting against policies which, when put into practice in prisons, in sport and in schools, have been seen to be dangerous to women and children. The authorities have largely learned that lesson, and are backtracking in many areas but, so far, trans ideology is still being taught in schools, along with all the shoed-in misogyny and generational antagonism it promotes.
This teaching has largely replaced the common-sense information and acceptance presentations we had succeeded in putting in place for education on lesbian and gay issues (most of that is gone because the trans lobby don’t like talk of same-sex attraction, or else it’s rendered nonsensical by being taught alongside “sex doesn’t exist/doesn’t matter” materials). So women still need to win the campaign in schools, libraries and universities – not to mention persuading the more SWP-style trade unions and lefty political groups that “adult human female” is not a swear word, and that it’s not reasonable to try and fight women whenever they “openly” describe themselves as, or act as, a sex class.
There’s a lot of work still to do, and a lot of money in the “trans rights” movement backing anything that’s against us. This really has been festival time for the neoliberal money-extractors. Private healthcare is making a killing amongst vulnerable young adults through their “gender clinics” and teens pay double for the endless accessories all kids buy because they want the special ones with “non-binary” on the label. You can see the results of big money in the way it took no time at all for this “ marginalized minority” to capture most big-money organizations, and get police forces to go knocking on women’s doors at midnight for the “crime” of “misgendering” someone on TwitX.
As an academic who’s popular amongst lefties said recently…
When GCHQ light up their offices with the colours of your flag, you know you’re not a marginalized minority.
(I’ll not name him here, as he’s just emerging from a battle for his right to criticize Zionism. He probably needs a break before the trans activists land on his head.)
But the daylight is flooding in, now. Women are winning this because, like Zionism, gender ideology is based on nonsense that cannot live in daylight. We should not be surprised that even as Stonewall et al back off and start mumbling that trans women maybe aren’t exactly women, a barrage of events like Shon Faye’s and the SWP’s turn up, and not-quite-with-it “progressive” artsy people, teachers and councillors yet again show their inability to keep up by signing up for a trend just as it’s going out of vogue. Here in Hastings this week, we see a former Labour Group Equalities Officer putting his name to Faye’s event, and members of the “progressive” (now) independent group enthusing about it. Somehow, there’s always still a lot of work for women to do.
Some information for those who weren’t following the story as it unfolded…
The result of 20 years of gender ideology lobbies confusing children from Eliza Mondegreen
A letter from this week’s Morning Star in response to a review of Judith Butler’s gender-ideology treatise…
And finally, a hearty cheer for long-suffering women’s rights activists…
The noise you’re hearing just now is a panic reaction as the “sex doesn’t matter” lobby hits the real world and finds most people know damn well that sex matters a lot – in sport, in politics, in education – everywhere. You can’t stand up for women if males like Shon Faye are dictating the words you’re allowed to use, and civic leaders are believing them.
In case you took that the wrong way, I don’t care what words Faye wants to use. My response to gender ideologists is always, don’t dictate to me, I don’t dictate to you. That really is what they object to. – As an example, here are the “transphobic” words of JK Rowling that threw her into the middle of this battle…
Resist, sisters, because this rash of trans ideology events is the last wheeze of a bunch of people who really should have listened to women a long time ago. The fact that councillors choose this time to sign up to the cult means the women’s rights campaigners will have to work that much harder to clear up the horrible consequences of the gender ideology-driven hate campaign, in order to get our kids back to a safer place, and prevent a backlash against either trans people or feminists; but we will do it because, at the end of the day, it’s still real women (you know, actual females) who do the hard slog of practical caring.
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Kay
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Kay Green 