Greetings fellow heretics. As a once-upon-a-time Very Online Professional Feminist, what I’m about to say to you might be an even bigger apostasy than unbelief in gender ideology. I’m going to write about the ways in which women, and modern popular feminism, have promoted the sickness that has captured so many of our children. Feminists who insist that gender ideology is being pushed only by men and for the benefit of men are wrong. Women are primarily responsible for promulgating gender ideology in our schools and universities, in our workplaces, and online, and for enforcing its linguistic etiquette on others.
What "modern popular feminists" have been saying isn't feminism in any true sense. I think that it's gotten to this point as part of a backlash against the very idea of women's rights, and waves of backlashes against women's rights movements started very long ago indeed. Can I suggest, if you have time, delving more into women's history and the history of feminist ideas? Feminism is a discipline like any other and can't really be understood on any meaningful level without some study (unfortunately). It's something for good men to study too, as a way to understand the state of male-female relations and how things came to be the way they are for so many. Also recommend studying the history of children/child welfare.
I totally agree that reading the history of women and feminism is valuable. I do feel you are confusing the history of women with feminism. Feminism is a set of beliefs and, as you say, a movement that takes different forms. It is NOT a discipline like any other and the presentation of it as a discipline is dishonest and a way of claiming ownership of ideas and movements that were nothing or little to do with academia. The history of feminism and feminist ideas are a resource for all women to use not just those who have and award credentials.
No, I am not confused. Maybe you should fair-mindedly re-read my whole comment. Of course if you don't like the term "discipline" and think I misused it, fine, but in the sense that feminism has a body of work that should be available to anyone who can read (or be read to) and of course not just to academia, then it kind of qualifies in my view. I am in no way dishonest or elitist, you must mistake me for someone else. I am self-educated in so many ways, never took a women's or "gender" studies course in my life. The academic world never appealed to me, for some of the reasons you mentioned. So don't lay into me like you really know where I was coming from, because you don't.
I did say some nice things too but I apologise for upsetting you and we're obviously coming from a similar POV (even though I am an academic women's historian). From my POV there are a lot of younger women who only encountered feminism from established academics and they treat it as a discipline and I assumed you were one of them. I see your point about a body/bodies of work and the effort to read and think about them but I still have difficulties with the word discipline. I wonder if there's another word or words that would mean the same thing? As simple as feminist writing or feminist ideas? I'm not sure. I totally agree about the history of children and of welfare being relevant also.
Sure, no need to apologize really. Enough criticism seemingly in your comment that it rubbed me the wrong way, plus I'm pretty opinionated (in a good way, I hope ;-)) and these being social media posts, it's easy to get people wrong. Anyway, not sure what word is better than discipline, your guess is as good as mine. Also no problem with me that you're in academia. It can be a wonderful place, full of opportunities for young and old to learn new things, and in depth. It just never appealed to me as a place to work, although I do have a BA and a Master's (in what I see as a non-academic field, if that makes any sense). And some of us are, or were, voracious readers, which I'd recommend to anyone who can read or has the time (which can often be a luxury). Before I blather on, just to say, best wishes to you. Just about any scholar or teacher has my respect, historians especially. Feel free to keep this conversation going if you like. I appreciate that you responded to my comment, truly. And so I'll try to be better-humored in my responses if we keep talking.
Feminism espousing women are absolutely helping to propagate gender ideology. A lot of it stems from the feminists who insisted that gender was nothing but a function of socialization. A lot of off also flows from the idea that men are all shitty asshole men.
My 19 year old now fully desisted son didn’t fit either of the two main types of trans identified males- he wasn’t AGP/cross dressing fetishist attracted to himself as a woman and he wasn’t homosexual.
Just like some girls want a ticket out of girlhood, boys are hearing that men are toxic, men are trash, men are all rapists and they also want a ticket out of being a member of The Worst Oppressor Class (tm). He’s autistic so the regressive black and white gender boxes that Gen Z age progressive left types are pushing right now didn’t help but really, it was mostly misplaced hatred of men and maleness that manifested as self loathing.
I had to look in the mirror and take responsibility for how, as a feminist myself, the things that I was part of at one time were what made my son think that there was no good way, no acceptable way, to be a man. My husband and I were thankfully able to help him desist but the whole process has been like loosing a religion. We aren’t progressive leftists anymore and I’m d.o.n.e. with whatever has become of feminism.
I am having difficulties hearing women like you describe a strange and negative vision of women and men and label that feminism and then declare you are no longer feminists. You also include a strange and limited version of being progressive leftists. How about looking at the positive things that made you progressive leftists and a feminist and rejecting the negative nonsense? Being left is for me primarily about wanting a social democratic society that is egalitarian and has high taxes, regulates big business, includes long term thinking - I want a society that does not coddle billionaires and wreck the climate. I' spent 20 years writing and publishing academic articles and a book about the history of women - and we needed and need feminism. But feminism has always meant many things and has always involved arguing with other women about what is good and beneficial for women.
I am not in the USA and I am aware as a result of doing research that middle USA has a narrow and rigid vision of what males and females do and are - much more limiting than the UK Australia or NZ where I've lived. How about creating left feminist alternatives? (NZ and Australia do have massive trans policy takeover- I'm not saying we're better in that respect).
And, of course, on girls and trans and a lot else, pushing your politicians to regulate social media.
Also- the narrow and rigid view of male and female isn’t coming from the middle USA or conservatives. I live in a very lefty place and the gender crap that the left here is spewing right now is female erasure and flat out regressive stereotypes. The left has lost the plot on this and other major issues.
I no longer believe that political action is the only or an an especially effective path to liberation and the reduction of human suffering.
I was very actively involved in lefty politics in the US- I grew up with parents who were Socialist hippies and spent much of my childhood at political and activism events- anti-war, anti-death penalty, nuclear disarmament, environmental and civil rights action.
As a young adult and for most of my adult life, I was very much of and from the left most wing of the Democratic Party. I served on the board of the the local party organization and spent much of my free time engaged in campaigning and fundraising for progressive lefty Democrats.
Am I done advocating for change? No. Am I done advocating for the change I want from within a political party? At this point, yes. If I lived in a place were there were more major/viable parties, maybe. But I do not - I live in a place where Democrats have super majorities and have lost the plot on a wide range of issues + where you must tow the party line. I have family ties that keep me here (difficult to uproot a gaggle of children who are all in high school and rooted in the community and an elderly father with dementia, to say nothing of my husband’s and my livelihoods). I do not need to be a feminist to push for the changes I want to see or do the work I want to do.
Remember the old feminist adage that the personal is political? Activism and politics don’t matter if I personally don’t show up for my kids and get them through this hellscape (much more than just trans stuff). I am acting *very locally* right now. That’s the season of life I find myself in as a mom and auntie to 6, wife and elder caregiver to an aging father all while working full-time.
Feminism was an incomplete paradigm for me to have spent so long viewing the world through. Was there some value to it? Sure. Do I agree with some basic tenants of feminism? Sure. Was it all good or helpful to me, either personally or politically? No, it was not.
That’s very interesting thanks. I appreciate what you’re saying. Transgender politics has unhomed me politically but I’ve been doing single issue politics for a long while anyway. I do find the prospect of being cancelled again worrying but I think willingness to debate is growing here in NZ. Very slowly.
Thank you for saying this, my 25 year old son hasn't desisted, and he is definitely not an AGP nor a HSTS. I believe he just lacked male role models who were more sensitive, and feminine. I have also heard from other male desisters that they grew up hearing how terrible, cruel, and "toxic" men are! For sensitive men, sweet men, (they DO exist people!) this can make them not want to be male, and loathe being male. Especially for autistic or borderline boys, this can be devastating. Boys need to know that not only do good protective, strong men exist, but sensitive, emotional and empathetic men do too. It most certainly doesn't mean they are female!
So why not reject your lefty feminist friends versions of feminism and being left? Why are those people the arbiters and experts who can tell you what feminism means?
Like what made you decide to be a feminist? Have those issues gone away? T
I fully embraced feminism as a child of the 80s. And yes, a lot of the issues that I was concerned about when feminism was so important to me are things that have gone away. Others are things that I have matured in my understanding of or simply don’t see in the same way.
I haven’t rejected my lefty or my feminist friends but I’m no longer embracing the label feminist or lefty for myself. My views have shifted a lot and I just don’t embrace any of the veins of feminism that I used to be very attached too.
Once upon a time, I was on the board of the local Democratic Party. Now I am politically homeless. I refuse to play politics as a team sport.
I’m not someone who “left the left” and became conservative or right wing but I disagree with both parties on numerous substantial issues.
These are men earlier feminists and LGBs pushed back on. They re-branded as 'transgender' but they are the same male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists they have always been.
Feminism is the battleground where "trans" has been fought. The word TERF implies this reality. As an historian, it's what I would expect. Women were at the forefront of every major social movement and cultural shift in history so far and history has not ended. Anyone who has accompanied Billboard Chris or Posie Parker on her American tour has seen with their own eyes that "feminist" women are pushing the child sterilizing cult and the sports cheats and the prison rapists on us all. Feminist women are also fighting to stop them. We have to accept that both things are true and this is where the heart of the fight is happening.
Yes, there are the lesbian fems and rad fems and other women campaigners who have been pushing back on this 'trans' lunacy' for a long time--the lesbians and rads for decades. But there are the 'Vichy feminists' (some are men, the male fetishists) who do not center women and their rights and needs. They are handmaidens for the troons and they are a disgrace.
hmm. I've always been Republican, conservative, Pro-Life and strongly believe the traditional family is the ideal family for kids, communities and other living things.
I think what you're espousing, is exactly what Pro-Lifers and conservatives have been espousing since the sexual revolution. We've lost every battle and it looks like we've lost the war. Good luck using the tactics we perfected but came to naught.
The reality is, entertainment, Big Media, schools pre-k to graduate level, corporate America and most politicians don't really care about this issue. As Republicans used to say about neocons "A liberal who has been mugged", a feminist who goes against the transcult is a mother who lost a child, metaphorically or literally, to the transcult.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all Republican Governors that are enacting legislation against child transitioning. No Democrat office holder has said boo about it - Not Obama, he started it, Not Pelosi, Not Schumer and Biden is encouraging it. We, conservatives also thought we could get organized, pass legislation and prevent gay marriage. (I personally favored Civil Unions just so it wouldn't become a marriage hatchet.) We got DOMA ACT passed and a few states put amendments in their constitutions prohibiting same sex marriage. Obergerfell changed all that in one fell swoop by the SCOTUS decision literally overnight. Btw, ask me how many of my liberal Democrat friends will agree with me about homosexuality privately but never, ever say a word around another Democrat. Democrats say a lot of crap when they think they're talking to a Republican and can get away with it. They'll "agree" with you too privately but they won't stand with you against the rent-a-mob.
If you want things to change, you are not going to get that change through speaking truth to power because power doesn't listen to truth. Power listens to force and money. Before you know it, SCOTUS will probably flip back to being Democrat controlled and one of the first cases the left is going to cough up, is going to be mandating that kids who identify as a gender other than their biological sex, be allowed to transition without obstacles. The money, the power, the ideology, the media and academia are all on the side of the gender blenders.
You need to take the next step. You need to join with Republicans. It's the only force big enough to actually stop this madness but you won't be able to do it, if you're still in the lefty woman mindset. Whether you admit it or not, women in the 1950's were far better off on every metric than they are today despite your mother's stories. The Sexual Revolution did nothing good for women except make women a box ticking category for Nixon's Affirmative Action policies. Just like other box ticking category groups, it only propelled a few women at the top, even higher. It did nothing for the majority of women but make it so women had to work given the required two income family. Segergated want ads were probably better for women, if you think about it.
I was a liberal, feminist woman. 2004 and the invasion of Iraq pushed me politically and solidified my beliefs. Then with my personal life in despair, I came to Christ. Slowly, but surely, I transition my views about family, seeing eventually, the wisdom and the holiness of our God. The sacrifice of his son for us all. Remember, our strategy is in Christ. "I Christ alone, I can be found." God bless.
I've never been a feminist. I never found a thing about it attractive. I saw nothing but ruin in the idea that women can have it all. Well, maybe wealthy and fortunate women can but that's not most of us. That odious phrase from Gloria Steinem "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" is the most stupid statement ever made by any woman anywhere. A good man is the most useful thing for a woman to have around. Women believing they had to be equals to men by working outside the home and bringing in the equivalent paycheck, didn't move women forward at all in my opinion. It just made it so women had to do most of the housework, managing of the children AND work a job, while other women who are mostly young, uneducated and frankly low paid, get to spend all the time with their infants and toddlers "raising" them. Feminism, in my opinion, didn't empower women. It made generations of women completely unskilled in the use of feminine mystery and power and thus reduced women to beggars for affection, commitment and emotional connections. I know that last statement is really controversial but not if you look at it from an empowered traditional woman's point of view.
That Atlantic Monthly is so biased that any assorted collection of middle aged white men is basically conservative. It's truly laughable.
Exactly how much traction did the supposedly "conservative" crossdressing fetishists get with other conservatives, Republicans, traditional Christians and economic right wingers? I'll tell you: about zero traction.
As much as some people desperately want to hold onto the notion that there's something nefariously right wing, Republican, Christian or conservative and "cisgender homophobic" about the transcult, it is wholly and completely a misbegotten ideology of the left. Even back in the sixties and the seventies, when Dr. John Money was peddling his fake research on the Reimer brothers and universities were teaching Alfred Kinsey's fraudulent research as if it was valid, the entire thing has been a creature of the left, from start to finish. It was that left wing talk show host Phil Donahue that started the cottage industry of dragging out the proto transcult circus freaks and giving them a kind, compassionate, tolerant and wholly gaslighting, lopsided, unchallenged podium to normalize this buffoonery. Face it, all those 70's talk shows were Jerry Springer all along, just in NPR voices.
Even within Christianity, the Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians that are marching in lock step with the transcult, even handing their Sunday Service mics to adult men parading around as women, are all strongly committed to leftist and Democrat Party narratives. Even in my own church, the Catholic church, it is only the left that is seeking an understanding and tolerance with the transcult - that is, the appropriate ordered Jesuit Fr. Jame Martin and his Jesuit compadre that became Pope, Frank. No one has accused the Jesuits of being right wing, conservative, Republican or frankly, Catholic, in about fifty years, including Jesuits themselves (unless it's in an official gaslighting media such as America magazine).
Furthermore, as a right wing, Pro-Life, conservative (economic and social), gun owning, military family and traditional family, The Atlantic trying to tell me who my people are, is hilarious. They're not writing this type of article to convince me of anything. They know they won't succeed. They wrote the article so you would have it in your partisan ammo bag so you could shoot down types like me when we point out: The Transcult is 100% the creation of the left.
For those wondering, the official view of transgenderism from the RCC is that "Gender flows from the biological sex of the human body and is not in contradiction to it." Fr. James Martin himself won't even contradict this teaching but he'll get as close as he possibly can while still playing word games and Jesuitical tricks.
The Atlantic article was originally published in 2002 and I doubt it would be published today b/c the heterosexual, male cross-dresser sexual fetishists (autogynephiles/transvestic fetishists) are the drivers of the trans movement that have not been discussed that much though that is changing. Glomming onto the LGB made it easier for male fetishists to fly under the radar. Legalizing male fetishism is a harder sell so an 'identity' is invented ('transwoman') and 'gender identity' becomes the legal category for protecting what is just males w/ sexual fetishes and paraphilias. But it is not the next civil right. IMO, these men have used DSDs and created the 'trans child' and glommed onto LGB as a veil behind which they have promoted their sexual fetishes as 'transgenderism.'
I have a copy of the OG article and the publication info. is as follows:
Publication Information: Article Title: Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses: The World of Cross-Dressers Is for the Most
Part a World of Traditional Men, Traditional Marriages, and Truths Turned Inside Out. Contributors: Amy Bloom - author. Magazine
Title: The Atlantic Monthly. Volume: 289. Issue: 4. Publication Date: April 2002. Page Number: 94-102. COPYRIGHT 2002 The
Atlantic Monthly Magazine; COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
I don't doubt at all that you're right about autogynephilia. Per previous conversations, I concur that trans fetish adult men wanted their fetish normalized. I told you before that I had read Dr. Ray Blanchard's theory in depth.
However, Atlantic Monthly is still not written to convince conservatives of anything. The article is written to gaslight those on the political left that want to pretend that somehow, this is coming from the right. It's not coming from the right. It's coming from the left, lefty academia and lefty social science.
You're writing LGB isn't going to gaslight us into thinking that for the last forty years it wasn't LGBT. The T part has been there for decades. The T may have gloomed on back in the 70's or so but it was solidly LGBT since the 80's. The 2S, Q, I, A and plus signs started happening somewhere around 2012, that I noticed.
However, I'll take it on step further. Extremely few male could pass for female in real life. I think this bothered them a lot because their goal is to pass as the opposite sex. Leading up to the transcult craze, there were a few medical "professionals" that were in this line of work that noted most of those getting the surgeries had to go outside the country and were getting the procedures as adults. They thought that if they could transition male children before puberty, the resulting "female" would be able to pass more easily having developed as the opposite sex. It's like the Island of Dr. Moraeu type science....that is, by grafting parts here and there and shaving off some other parts and adding some mystery potions, they could actually turn a little boy into an adult woman. It's quite similar to the science of that H.G. Wells novel.
I don't read fraudulent crazy medical papers especially by psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers but my understanding is that the high rate of suicide among trans adults was attributed to their inability to pass as the opposite sex and not to the mental illness of being trans in and of itself. I don't know what sort of convoluted logic those who maintained this position did to arrive at that highly contrived, cherry picked conclusion. I don't care either. Obvious problem is obvious.
This is why there was the push to transition boys before puberty. The whole thing started as a sick experiment to possibly drive down the high rate of suicide of adult men trying to be women because they couldn't pass as women. By transitioning boys before puberty, they thought they could grow the boys (presumably outside a petri dish) to have narrower shoulders, larger pelvis and hips, higher voices and feminine facial features.
So that experiment failed spectacularly. The world's first prepubscent boy put on female hormones was in Germany and I forget his name but he tried to be a rock star in a band. He's obviously a male as an adult. He has more feminine features but put him next to any woman in a real life and he's obviously male. The lengths his publicists and photographers go to in order to make him appear as a woman is ridiculously absurd. For a few months, I played a game with my daughter in which we would find pics of him simply for the sake of seeing how weird the photoshop job was. (btw, this is a very useful skill to have when confronted with these men who seem to pass on a photograph until you look closely at the pose. I recommend the gags on chair poverty in relation to the number of adult male to female transgenders and their lack of chairs in photos. Highly entertaining.)
Anyway, we've had enough cases so far to see the obvious results. I don't really care what the academic papers say because academia is hopelessly corrupted and lies to bolster narratives. Boys who are put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones have numerous problems. I saw somewhere, that not a single boy put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones is able to achieve an erect penis or orgasm because their male sex organs have failed to mature.
What the deranged men AND WOMEN behind this didn't realize would happen at the start of the craze, is that adolescent girls identifying as boys and men would be a classic case of social contagion. So right now, girls trying to be boys or men or some variety of gender blending has sky rocketed. Also, it seems a high percentage of both girls and boys who are identifying as the opposite sex are on the autism spectrum (as I suspect both my nieces are). In fact, I think the autistic kids are being targeted because they lack the ability to pick up on social nuances and to navigate the brutal social terrain that is middle school and high school. Also, porn is way too prevalent in our society. I think that also has a huge impact on the numbers of adolescents seeking a way out of the gender binary.
My point is, that men did initially push this down to the child and adolescent stage on the pretext of trying to lower the suicide rate of trans people. I think a lot of the anti-bullying legislation was also pushed for the same reason. It was a way to bully parents and other actual responsible adults who tried to stop children from transitioning by labeling them as proponents or practitioners of the dreaded "conversion therapy."
I know Lister that you want this to be a right wing male patriarchy plot, but it's not. It's a left wing, consequences of the sexual revolution phenomenon. The right wing has nothing to do with it. We don't even read the Atlantic Monthly or bother with the pseudo-science most "professionals" on the left espouse.
I was not suggesting that all of the 'trans' lunacy was coming from the right. But these conservative troons were living their 'repectable' and seemingly 'normal' lives by day but making forays to gay bars and clubs at times and gathering in their groups of other men who shared their fetishes. From personal experience I can say that the male cross-dressers were really just tolerated for the most part in gay clubs years ago. Frankly, most LGBs thought they were weird and really did not want much to do w/ them.
The T was not consistently attached to the LGB until sometime in the 2000s. By sometime around 2010 it was prob. consistently tagged on to LGB but even then (and to the present) many LGBs would not and will not append the T as it really does not belong. In fact there was a time the L pulled away from the G as they were so different and had different needs and concerns and different ways of sexual expression. But there has always been ambivalence about the T.
None of the letter groups in LGBTQIA2S++ is entirely allied with any other letter group. This is true of even the new gender categories such as furry, polyamorous and otherkin groups. I've seen girls who identify as transmasc and nonbinary ridiculed by "cis" transgendered. I watched a parade entry of asexuals mocked at one point (Toronto). Furthermore, back in the 80's, I saw bisexuals ridiculed by L and G. LGBT was the acronym years before 2000. I'm quite sure I ran into it for the first time around 1996. I distinctly remember because my gay brother was wearing rainbow suspenders with an LGBT button on it for the Gay Pride parade in Minneapolis. I spent a year referring to him as "Mork" as in Mork and Mindy because of the suspenders.
This is where I am now. I was a liberal, pro-choice, feminist and it was the mistake of my life. (This unjust invasion of Iraq pushed me over) I spent most of my young adult in a spiritually starved, indecisive. Most of my career choices involved, service or taking care of other people's kids. Now I get to care for my own, because I allowed myself to change my mind about marriage, motherhood and education. Praise God.
"I'm guessing you're mostly focused on the money" I forgot to mention, I'm a lifelong NRA member and up until Obama's second term, a hawk. I come from a once proud military family - not so much at this point. At this point in my life, this ol' honey bunny is focused on the guns, where they are pointed and how quickly I can reload.
I said force. On the right, when talking about power or violence, the word force is generally used. For example "Government is the only entity that can legally use force against citizens."
Long-time lurker here. Mid-thirties, young kids, no trans-ID’d family, some trans-ID’d former friends from my all-girls high school.
“‘Pick-me’ feminists and Not Like Other Girls-types are always eager to flatter men by distancing themselves from other women, especially older and wiser women. It’s a kind of intergenerational self-harm that is irresistible to these young women.”
Perhaps. But did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s less about “I pick men over women” than it is about simply not relating to self-described “older and wiser women,” or being convinced by their arguments? That maybe they see themselves as people first, women second, and they’re siding with the people with whom they feel more ideologically aligned?
This is what I find so off-putting about a lot of gender-critical feminists, even though I agree with them that women are a separate category from MtF trans people and deserve their own spaces. (No adult penises in the women’s locker room, thanks.) They act like other women owe them philosophical allegiance because they all happened to be born with two X chromosomes. “I’m older and wiser than you, you silly, easily-swayed, dick-chasing little woman-child” is not a persuasive argument.
The prime example of this was when Gloria Steinem claimed young women supported Bernie Sanders because “when you're young, you're thinking, 'Where are the boys?' The boys are with Bernie." They couldn’t just find Bernie Sanders a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for ideological reasons - any THINKING woman would have picked Hillary, so therefore young female Bernie supporters weren’t thinking. And what must motivate any young woman who isn’t thinking? Sex and male approval, of course - those air-brained, lusty bimbos. Gee, what a great way for feminists to win friends and influence people.
I agree with you that feminists have created an unnecessarily dire picture of life as a woman. The one and only time someone told me, “You can’t do that, you’re a girl” was when my five-year-old cousin told five-year-old me that I couldn’t be Robin Hood for Halloween. (I did it anyway.)
I am a Radical Lesbian Feminist and Lesbian Separatist, as I've been since I was 19 in 1970. We fought the trans cult from the beginning, and mostly succeeded until about 20 years ago when the medical system and drug companies realized what a lucrative market they found. The GB didn't help, but no Lesbian I know joined the "LGBTQ" crap that erased us. It was clear from the beginning when the man who targeted me when I was 17 decided he was a "Lesbian" and stalked me into the Lesbian community, where he was finally welcomed in spite of also being a sado-masochist. This was before the murders of Lesbians and women and girls who say no to these men. And yes, then women (many het/bisexual, like Pat Califia) decided they were "transmen" to increase their status and power.
But real Feminism, Radical Feminism, and Lesbian Separatism is vehemently against all this trans crap and have named it as a female-hating cult from the beginning. Yes, there is Janice Raymond and so many others who have said no and said the truth. I did with my collective in our newspaper, Dykes and Gorgons, in 1973, and our book Dykes-Loving-Dykes in 1990.
We never stopped warning about this cult, so why are we slandered?
The issue of torturing children for profit by this cult could be what finally stops it, but so few know. This group is so important as one of the only ways this mess will be stopped.
Perhaps some privileged women never felt in danger from males, but most are and most have been assaulted as girls or adults. That has not lessened or stopped.
And it's much worse with the trans cult now. I live in Oakland, California, and almost now one I know even knows or cares about the triple hate crime murder of an interracial Lesbian couple and their son by a white man (whose pedophilic porn is still sold at Amazon) who claims to be a Lesbian.)
Rabbitholed #78: Dana Rivers Is the Story the Media Doesn't Want You to Read
"This is a story unparalleled in media censorship about deadly white male violence against a lesbian interracial couple and their black son. When the media goes silent, there is always a reason why."
In my late 20's I had a hysterectomy, I might have settled for a dust and clean, as we used to call them, but the thought of 'having' to have a smear test in the future, pushed me towards the hysterectomy. Thats as an adult woman after two births, in my late 20's. If I was a girl in my early teens today, I would want rid of anything that meant I would avoid that.
I agree that I’m not sure what she means by toxic femininity, or professional feminist, either. Perhaps my definition of feminism is unusual? I raised both of my daughters with feminist ideals which included reading books about strong women; pointing out men who treated women as equals; talking about the wonderful pride and bond I felt for nursing them both and watching them grow from tiny babies into healthy toddlers. I don’t know if my younger kid’s gender dysphoria is perhaps based in homophobia or misogyny but if so, I don’t accept direct blame for that because neither her dad nor I raised her to think that way. I can’t say the same for our culture, of course. I do know that if I could get a do-over, I would not give her a phone or laptop until high school at the very least.
This article is too long.
What "modern popular feminists" have been saying isn't feminism in any true sense. I think that it's gotten to this point as part of a backlash against the very idea of women's rights, and waves of backlashes against women's rights movements started very long ago indeed. Can I suggest, if you have time, delving more into women's history and the history of feminist ideas? Feminism is a discipline like any other and can't really be understood on any meaningful level without some study (unfortunately). It's something for good men to study too, as a way to understand the state of male-female relations and how things came to be the way they are for so many. Also recommend studying the history of children/child welfare.
I totally agree that reading the history of women and feminism is valuable. I do feel you are confusing the history of women with feminism. Feminism is a set of beliefs and, as you say, a movement that takes different forms. It is NOT a discipline like any other and the presentation of it as a discipline is dishonest and a way of claiming ownership of ideas and movements that were nothing or little to do with academia. The history of feminism and feminist ideas are a resource for all women to use not just those who have and award credentials.
No, I am not confused. Maybe you should fair-mindedly re-read my whole comment. Of course if you don't like the term "discipline" and think I misused it, fine, but in the sense that feminism has a body of work that should be available to anyone who can read (or be read to) and of course not just to academia, then it kind of qualifies in my view. I am in no way dishonest or elitist, you must mistake me for someone else. I am self-educated in so many ways, never took a women's or "gender" studies course in my life. The academic world never appealed to me, for some of the reasons you mentioned. So don't lay into me like you really know where I was coming from, because you don't.
I did say some nice things too but I apologise for upsetting you and we're obviously coming from a similar POV (even though I am an academic women's historian). From my POV there are a lot of younger women who only encountered feminism from established academics and they treat it as a discipline and I assumed you were one of them. I see your point about a body/bodies of work and the effort to read and think about them but I still have difficulties with the word discipline. I wonder if there's another word or words that would mean the same thing? As simple as feminist writing or feminist ideas? I'm not sure. I totally agree about the history of children and of welfare being relevant also.
Sure, no need to apologize really. Enough criticism seemingly in your comment that it rubbed me the wrong way, plus I'm pretty opinionated (in a good way, I hope ;-)) and these being social media posts, it's easy to get people wrong. Anyway, not sure what word is better than discipline, your guess is as good as mine. Also no problem with me that you're in academia. It can be a wonderful place, full of opportunities for young and old to learn new things, and in depth. It just never appealed to me as a place to work, although I do have a BA and a Master's (in what I see as a non-academic field, if that makes any sense). And some of us are, or were, voracious readers, which I'd recommend to anyone who can read or has the time (which can often be a luxury). Before I blather on, just to say, best wishes to you. Just about any scholar or teacher has my respect, historians especially. Feel free to keep this conversation going if you like. I appreciate that you responded to my comment, truly. And so I'll try to be better-humored in my responses if we keep talking.
Feminism espousing women are absolutely helping to propagate gender ideology. A lot of it stems from the feminists who insisted that gender was nothing but a function of socialization. A lot of off also flows from the idea that men are all shitty asshole men.
My 19 year old now fully desisted son didn’t fit either of the two main types of trans identified males- he wasn’t AGP/cross dressing fetishist attracted to himself as a woman and he wasn’t homosexual.
Just like some girls want a ticket out of girlhood, boys are hearing that men are toxic, men are trash, men are all rapists and they also want a ticket out of being a member of The Worst Oppressor Class (tm). He’s autistic so the regressive black and white gender boxes that Gen Z age progressive left types are pushing right now didn’t help but really, it was mostly misplaced hatred of men and maleness that manifested as self loathing.
I had to look in the mirror and take responsibility for how, as a feminist myself, the things that I was part of at one time were what made my son think that there was no good way, no acceptable way, to be a man. My husband and I were thankfully able to help him desist but the whole process has been like loosing a religion. We aren’t progressive leftists anymore and I’m d.o.n.e. with whatever has become of feminism.
I am having difficulties hearing women like you describe a strange and negative vision of women and men and label that feminism and then declare you are no longer feminists. You also include a strange and limited version of being progressive leftists. How about looking at the positive things that made you progressive leftists and a feminist and rejecting the negative nonsense? Being left is for me primarily about wanting a social democratic society that is egalitarian and has high taxes, regulates big business, includes long term thinking - I want a society that does not coddle billionaires and wreck the climate. I' spent 20 years writing and publishing academic articles and a book about the history of women - and we needed and need feminism. But feminism has always meant many things and has always involved arguing with other women about what is good and beneficial for women.
I am not in the USA and I am aware as a result of doing research that middle USA has a narrow and rigid vision of what males and females do and are - much more limiting than the UK Australia or NZ where I've lived. How about creating left feminist alternatives? (NZ and Australia do have massive trans policy takeover- I'm not saying we're better in that respect).
And, of course, on girls and trans and a lot else, pushing your politicians to regulate social media.
Also- the narrow and rigid view of male and female isn’t coming from the middle USA or conservatives. I live in a very lefty place and the gender crap that the left here is spewing right now is female erasure and flat out regressive stereotypes. The left has lost the plot on this and other major issues.
I no longer believe that political action is the only or an an especially effective path to liberation and the reduction of human suffering.
I was very actively involved in lefty politics in the US- I grew up with parents who were Socialist hippies and spent much of my childhood at political and activism events- anti-war, anti-death penalty, nuclear disarmament, environmental and civil rights action.
As a young adult and for most of my adult life, I was very much of and from the left most wing of the Democratic Party. I served on the board of the the local party organization and spent much of my free time engaged in campaigning and fundraising for progressive lefty Democrats.
Am I done advocating for change? No. Am I done advocating for the change I want from within a political party? At this point, yes. If I lived in a place were there were more major/viable parties, maybe. But I do not - I live in a place where Democrats have super majorities and have lost the plot on a wide range of issues + where you must tow the party line. I have family ties that keep me here (difficult to uproot a gaggle of children who are all in high school and rooted in the community and an elderly father with dementia, to say nothing of my husband’s and my livelihoods). I do not need to be a feminist to push for the changes I want to see or do the work I want to do.
Remember the old feminist adage that the personal is political? Activism and politics don’t matter if I personally don’t show up for my kids and get them through this hellscape (much more than just trans stuff). I am acting *very locally* right now. That’s the season of life I find myself in as a mom and auntie to 6, wife and elder caregiver to an aging father all while working full-time.
Feminism was an incomplete paradigm for me to have spent so long viewing the world through. Was there some value to it? Sure. Do I agree with some basic tenants of feminism? Sure. Was it all good or helpful to me, either personally or politically? No, it was not.
That’s very interesting thanks. I appreciate what you’re saying. Transgender politics has unhomed me politically but I’ve been doing single issue politics for a long while anyway. I do find the prospect of being cancelled again worrying but I think willingness to debate is growing here in NZ. Very slowly.
Thank you for saying this, my 25 year old son hasn't desisted, and he is definitely not an AGP nor a HSTS. I believe he just lacked male role models who were more sensitive, and feminine. I have also heard from other male desisters that they grew up hearing how terrible, cruel, and "toxic" men are! For sensitive men, sweet men, (they DO exist people!) this can make them not want to be male, and loathe being male. Especially for autistic or borderline boys, this can be devastating. Boys need to know that not only do good protective, strong men exist, but sensitive, emotional and empathetic men do too. It most certainly doesn't mean they are female!
My lefty friends:
“If your feminism doesn’t include transwomen and consider sex work empowering, THEN YOU’RE NOT A FEMINIST”
Me, after a bit of thinking:
“Yeah. I’m really not a feminist anymore”
Lefty friends:
“HOW DARE YOU REJECT FEMINISM?!”
So why not reject your lefty feminist friends versions of feminism and being left? Why are those people the arbiters and experts who can tell you what feminism means?
Like what made you decide to be a feminist? Have those issues gone away? T
I fully embraced feminism as a child of the 80s. And yes, a lot of the issues that I was concerned about when feminism was so important to me are things that have gone away. Others are things that I have matured in my understanding of or simply don’t see in the same way.
I haven’t rejected my lefty or my feminist friends but I’m no longer embracing the label feminist or lefty for myself. My views have shifted a lot and I just don’t embrace any of the veins of feminism that I used to be very attached too.
Once upon a time, I was on the board of the local Democratic Party. Now I am politically homeless. I refuse to play politics as a team sport.
I’m not someone who “left the left” and became conservative or right wing but I disagree with both parties on numerous substantial issues.
These are men earlier feminists and LGBs pushed back on. They re-branded as 'transgender' but they are the same male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists they have always been.
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/conservative-men-in-conservative?
Feminism is the battleground where "trans" has been fought. The word TERF implies this reality. As an historian, it's what I would expect. Women were at the forefront of every major social movement and cultural shift in history so far and history has not ended. Anyone who has accompanied Billboard Chris or Posie Parker on her American tour has seen with their own eyes that "feminist" women are pushing the child sterilizing cult and the sports cheats and the prison rapists on us all. Feminist women are also fighting to stop them. We have to accept that both things are true and this is where the heart of the fight is happening.
Now re-branded as 'transgender' but still insufferable male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists.
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/conservative-men-in-conservative?
Yes, there are the lesbian fems and rad fems and other women campaigners who have been pushing back on this 'trans' lunacy' for a long time--the lesbians and rads for decades. But there are the 'Vichy feminists' (some are men, the male fetishists) who do not center women and their rights and needs. They are handmaidens for the troons and they are a disgrace.
hmm. I've always been Republican, conservative, Pro-Life and strongly believe the traditional family is the ideal family for kids, communities and other living things.
I think what you're espousing, is exactly what Pro-Lifers and conservatives have been espousing since the sexual revolution. We've lost every battle and it looks like we've lost the war. Good luck using the tactics we perfected but came to naught.
The reality is, entertainment, Big Media, schools pre-k to graduate level, corporate America and most politicians don't really care about this issue. As Republicans used to say about neocons "A liberal who has been mugged", a feminist who goes against the transcult is a mother who lost a child, metaphorically or literally, to the transcult.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all Republican Governors that are enacting legislation against child transitioning. No Democrat office holder has said boo about it - Not Obama, he started it, Not Pelosi, Not Schumer and Biden is encouraging it. We, conservatives also thought we could get organized, pass legislation and prevent gay marriage. (I personally favored Civil Unions just so it wouldn't become a marriage hatchet.) We got DOMA ACT passed and a few states put amendments in their constitutions prohibiting same sex marriage. Obergerfell changed all that in one fell swoop by the SCOTUS decision literally overnight. Btw, ask me how many of my liberal Democrat friends will agree with me about homosexuality privately but never, ever say a word around another Democrat. Democrats say a lot of crap when they think they're talking to a Republican and can get away with it. They'll "agree" with you too privately but they won't stand with you against the rent-a-mob.
If you want things to change, you are not going to get that change through speaking truth to power because power doesn't listen to truth. Power listens to force and money. Before you know it, SCOTUS will probably flip back to being Democrat controlled and one of the first cases the left is going to cough up, is going to be mandating that kids who identify as a gender other than their biological sex, be allowed to transition without obstacles. The money, the power, the ideology, the media and academia are all on the side of the gender blenders.
You need to take the next step. You need to join with Republicans. It's the only force big enough to actually stop this madness but you won't be able to do it, if you're still in the lefty woman mindset. Whether you admit it or not, women in the 1950's were far better off on every metric than they are today despite your mother's stories. The Sexual Revolution did nothing good for women except make women a box ticking category for Nixon's Affirmative Action policies. Just like other box ticking category groups, it only propelled a few women at the top, even higher. It did nothing for the majority of women but make it so women had to work given the required two income family. Segergated want ads were probably better for women, if you think about it.
I was a liberal, feminist woman. 2004 and the invasion of Iraq pushed me politically and solidified my beliefs. Then with my personal life in despair, I came to Christ. Slowly, but surely, I transition my views about family, seeing eventually, the wisdom and the holiness of our God. The sacrifice of his son for us all. Remember, our strategy is in Christ. "I Christ alone, I can be found." God bless.
I've never been a feminist. I never found a thing about it attractive. I saw nothing but ruin in the idea that women can have it all. Well, maybe wealthy and fortunate women can but that's not most of us. That odious phrase from Gloria Steinem "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" is the most stupid statement ever made by any woman anywhere. A good man is the most useful thing for a woman to have around. Women believing they had to be equals to men by working outside the home and bringing in the equivalent paycheck, didn't move women forward at all in my opinion. It just made it so women had to do most of the housework, managing of the children AND work a job, while other women who are mostly young, uneducated and frankly low paid, get to spend all the time with their infants and toddlers "raising" them. Feminism, in my opinion, didn't empower women. It made generations of women completely unskilled in the use of feminine mystery and power and thus reduced women to beggars for affection, commitment and emotional connections. I know that last statement is really controversial but not if you look at it from an empowered traditional woman's point of view.
Now re-branded as 'transgender' but still insufferable male, heterosexual cross-dresser sexual fetishists.
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/conservative-men-in-conservative?
That Atlantic Monthly is so biased that any assorted collection of middle aged white men is basically conservative. It's truly laughable.
Exactly how much traction did the supposedly "conservative" crossdressing fetishists get with other conservatives, Republicans, traditional Christians and economic right wingers? I'll tell you: about zero traction.
As much as some people desperately want to hold onto the notion that there's something nefariously right wing, Republican, Christian or conservative and "cisgender homophobic" about the transcult, it is wholly and completely a misbegotten ideology of the left. Even back in the sixties and the seventies, when Dr. John Money was peddling his fake research on the Reimer brothers and universities were teaching Alfred Kinsey's fraudulent research as if it was valid, the entire thing has been a creature of the left, from start to finish. It was that left wing talk show host Phil Donahue that started the cottage industry of dragging out the proto transcult circus freaks and giving them a kind, compassionate, tolerant and wholly gaslighting, lopsided, unchallenged podium to normalize this buffoonery. Face it, all those 70's talk shows were Jerry Springer all along, just in NPR voices.
Even within Christianity, the Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians that are marching in lock step with the transcult, even handing their Sunday Service mics to adult men parading around as women, are all strongly committed to leftist and Democrat Party narratives. Even in my own church, the Catholic church, it is only the left that is seeking an understanding and tolerance with the transcult - that is, the appropriate ordered Jesuit Fr. Jame Martin and his Jesuit compadre that became Pope, Frank. No one has accused the Jesuits of being right wing, conservative, Republican or frankly, Catholic, in about fifty years, including Jesuits themselves (unless it's in an official gaslighting media such as America magazine).
Furthermore, as a right wing, Pro-Life, conservative (economic and social), gun owning, military family and traditional family, The Atlantic trying to tell me who my people are, is hilarious. They're not writing this type of article to convince me of anything. They know they won't succeed. They wrote the article so you would have it in your partisan ammo bag so you could shoot down types like me when we point out: The Transcult is 100% the creation of the left.
For those wondering, the official view of transgenderism from the RCC is that "Gender flows from the biological sex of the human body and is not in contradiction to it." Fr. James Martin himself won't even contradict this teaching but he'll get as close as he possibly can while still playing word games and Jesuitical tricks.
The Atlantic article was originally published in 2002 and I doubt it would be published today b/c the heterosexual, male cross-dresser sexual fetishists (autogynephiles/transvestic fetishists) are the drivers of the trans movement that have not been discussed that much though that is changing. Glomming onto the LGB made it easier for male fetishists to fly under the radar. Legalizing male fetishism is a harder sell so an 'identity' is invented ('transwoman') and 'gender identity' becomes the legal category for protecting what is just males w/ sexual fetishes and paraphilias. But it is not the next civil right. IMO, these men have used DSDs and created the 'trans child' and glommed onto LGB as a veil behind which they have promoted their sexual fetishes as 'transgenderism.'
I have a copy of the OG article and the publication info. is as follows:
Publication Information: Article Title: Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses: The World of Cross-Dressers Is for the Most
Part a World of Traditional Men, Traditional Marriages, and Truths Turned Inside Out. Contributors: Amy Bloom - author. Magazine
Title: The Atlantic Monthly. Volume: 289. Issue: 4. Publication Date: April 2002. Page Number: 94-102. COPYRIGHT 2002 The
Atlantic Monthly Magazine; COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
I don't doubt at all that you're right about autogynephilia. Per previous conversations, I concur that trans fetish adult men wanted their fetish normalized. I told you before that I had read Dr. Ray Blanchard's theory in depth.
However, Atlantic Monthly is still not written to convince conservatives of anything. The article is written to gaslight those on the political left that want to pretend that somehow, this is coming from the right. It's not coming from the right. It's coming from the left, lefty academia and lefty social science.
You're writing LGB isn't going to gaslight us into thinking that for the last forty years it wasn't LGBT. The T part has been there for decades. The T may have gloomed on back in the 70's or so but it was solidly LGBT since the 80's. The 2S, Q, I, A and plus signs started happening somewhere around 2012, that I noticed.
However, I'll take it on step further. Extremely few male could pass for female in real life. I think this bothered them a lot because their goal is to pass as the opposite sex. Leading up to the transcult craze, there were a few medical "professionals" that were in this line of work that noted most of those getting the surgeries had to go outside the country and were getting the procedures as adults. They thought that if they could transition male children before puberty, the resulting "female" would be able to pass more easily having developed as the opposite sex. It's like the Island of Dr. Moraeu type science....that is, by grafting parts here and there and shaving off some other parts and adding some mystery potions, they could actually turn a little boy into an adult woman. It's quite similar to the science of that H.G. Wells novel.
I don't read fraudulent crazy medical papers especially by psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers but my understanding is that the high rate of suicide among trans adults was attributed to their inability to pass as the opposite sex and not to the mental illness of being trans in and of itself. I don't know what sort of convoluted logic those who maintained this position did to arrive at that highly contrived, cherry picked conclusion. I don't care either. Obvious problem is obvious.
This is why there was the push to transition boys before puberty. The whole thing started as a sick experiment to possibly drive down the high rate of suicide of adult men trying to be women because they couldn't pass as women. By transitioning boys before puberty, they thought they could grow the boys (presumably outside a petri dish) to have narrower shoulders, larger pelvis and hips, higher voices and feminine facial features.
So that experiment failed spectacularly. The world's first prepubscent boy put on female hormones was in Germany and I forget his name but he tried to be a rock star in a band. He's obviously a male as an adult. He has more feminine features but put him next to any woman in a real life and he's obviously male. The lengths his publicists and photographers go to in order to make him appear as a woman is ridiculously absurd. For a few months, I played a game with my daughter in which we would find pics of him simply for the sake of seeing how weird the photoshop job was. (btw, this is a very useful skill to have when confronted with these men who seem to pass on a photograph until you look closely at the pose. I recommend the gags on chair poverty in relation to the number of adult male to female transgenders and their lack of chairs in photos. Highly entertaining.)
Anyway, we've had enough cases so far to see the obvious results. I don't really care what the academic papers say because academia is hopelessly corrupted and lies to bolster narratives. Boys who are put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones have numerous problems. I saw somewhere, that not a single boy put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones is able to achieve an erect penis or orgasm because their male sex organs have failed to mature.
What the deranged men AND WOMEN behind this didn't realize would happen at the start of the craze, is that adolescent girls identifying as boys and men would be a classic case of social contagion. So right now, girls trying to be boys or men or some variety of gender blending has sky rocketed. Also, it seems a high percentage of both girls and boys who are identifying as the opposite sex are on the autism spectrum (as I suspect both my nieces are). In fact, I think the autistic kids are being targeted because they lack the ability to pick up on social nuances and to navigate the brutal social terrain that is middle school and high school. Also, porn is way too prevalent in our society. I think that also has a huge impact on the numbers of adolescents seeking a way out of the gender binary.
My point is, that men did initially push this down to the child and adolescent stage on the pretext of trying to lower the suicide rate of trans people. I think a lot of the anti-bullying legislation was also pushed for the same reason. It was a way to bully parents and other actual responsible adults who tried to stop children from transitioning by labeling them as proponents or practitioners of the dreaded "conversion therapy."
I know Lister that you want this to be a right wing male patriarchy plot, but it's not. It's a left wing, consequences of the sexual revolution phenomenon. The right wing has nothing to do with it. We don't even read the Atlantic Monthly or bother with the pseudo-science most "professionals" on the left espouse.
I was not suggesting that all of the 'trans' lunacy was coming from the right. But these conservative troons were living their 'repectable' and seemingly 'normal' lives by day but making forays to gay bars and clubs at times and gathering in their groups of other men who shared their fetishes. From personal experience I can say that the male cross-dressers were really just tolerated for the most part in gay clubs years ago. Frankly, most LGBs thought they were weird and really did not want much to do w/ them.
The T was not consistently attached to the LGB until sometime in the 2000s. By sometime around 2010 it was prob. consistently tagged on to LGB but even then (and to the present) many LGBs would not and will not append the T as it really does not belong. In fact there was a time the L pulled away from the G as they were so different and had different needs and concerns and different ways of sexual expression. But there has always been ambivalence about the T.
None of the letter groups in LGBTQIA2S++ is entirely allied with any other letter group. This is true of even the new gender categories such as furry, polyamorous and otherkin groups. I've seen girls who identify as transmasc and nonbinary ridiculed by "cis" transgendered. I watched a parade entry of asexuals mocked at one point (Toronto). Furthermore, back in the 80's, I saw bisexuals ridiculed by L and G. LGBT was the acronym years before 2000. I'm quite sure I ran into it for the first time around 1996. I distinctly remember because my gay brother was wearing rainbow suspenders with an LGBT button on it for the Gay Pride parade in Minneapolis. I spent a year referring to him as "Mork" as in Mork and Mindy because of the suspenders.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is where I am now. I was a liberal, pro-choice, feminist and it was the mistake of my life. (This unjust invasion of Iraq pushed me over) I spent most of my young adult in a spiritually starved, indecisive. Most of my career choices involved, service or taking care of other people's kids. Now I get to care for my own, because I allowed myself to change my mind about marriage, motherhood and education. Praise God.
"I'm guessing you're mostly focused on the money" I forgot to mention, I'm a lifelong NRA member and up until Obama's second term, a hawk. I come from a once proud military family - not so much at this point. At this point in my life, this ol' honey bunny is focused on the guns, where they are pointed and how quickly I can reload.
I said force. On the right, when talking about power or violence, the word force is generally used. For example "Government is the only entity that can legally use force against citizens."
This is so brilliant and well said.
Thank you. This is a great write up and much aligned with how I feel and think.
Long-time lurker here. Mid-thirties, young kids, no trans-ID’d family, some trans-ID’d former friends from my all-girls high school.
“‘Pick-me’ feminists and Not Like Other Girls-types are always eager to flatter men by distancing themselves from other women, especially older and wiser women. It’s a kind of intergenerational self-harm that is irresistible to these young women.”
Perhaps. But did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s less about “I pick men over women” than it is about simply not relating to self-described “older and wiser women,” or being convinced by their arguments? That maybe they see themselves as people first, women second, and they’re siding with the people with whom they feel more ideologically aligned?
This is what I find so off-putting about a lot of gender-critical feminists, even though I agree with them that women are a separate category from MtF trans people and deserve their own spaces. (No adult penises in the women’s locker room, thanks.) They act like other women owe them philosophical allegiance because they all happened to be born with two X chromosomes. “I’m older and wiser than you, you silly, easily-swayed, dick-chasing little woman-child” is not a persuasive argument.
The prime example of this was when Gloria Steinem claimed young women supported Bernie Sanders because “when you're young, you're thinking, 'Where are the boys?' The boys are with Bernie." They couldn’t just find Bernie Sanders a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for ideological reasons - any THINKING woman would have picked Hillary, so therefore young female Bernie supporters weren’t thinking. And what must motivate any young woman who isn’t thinking? Sex and male approval, of course - those air-brained, lusty bimbos. Gee, what a great way for feminists to win friends and influence people.
I agree with you that feminists have created an unnecessarily dire picture of life as a woman. The one and only time someone told me, “You can’t do that, you’re a girl” was when my five-year-old cousin told five-year-old me that I couldn’t be Robin Hood for Halloween. (I did it anyway.)
Excellent article!
I am a Radical Lesbian Feminist and Lesbian Separatist, as I've been since I was 19 in 1970. We fought the trans cult from the beginning, and mostly succeeded until about 20 years ago when the medical system and drug companies realized what a lucrative market they found. The GB didn't help, but no Lesbian I know joined the "LGBTQ" crap that erased us. It was clear from the beginning when the man who targeted me when I was 17 decided he was a "Lesbian" and stalked me into the Lesbian community, where he was finally welcomed in spite of also being a sado-masochist. This was before the murders of Lesbians and women and girls who say no to these men. And yes, then women (many het/bisexual, like Pat Califia) decided they were "transmen" to increase their status and power.
But real Feminism, Radical Feminism, and Lesbian Separatism is vehemently against all this trans crap and have named it as a female-hating cult from the beginning. Yes, there is Janice Raymond and so many others who have said no and said the truth. I did with my collective in our newspaper, Dykes and Gorgons, in 1973, and our book Dykes-Loving-Dykes in 1990.
We never stopped warning about this cult, so why are we slandered?
The issue of torturing children for profit by this cult could be what finally stops it, but so few know. This group is so important as one of the only ways this mess will be stopped.
Perhaps some privileged women never felt in danger from males, but most are and most have been assaulted as girls or adults. That has not lessened or stopped.
And it's much worse with the trans cult now. I live in Oakland, California, and almost now one I know even knows or cares about the triple hate crime murder of an interracial Lesbian couple and their son by a white man (whose pedophilic porn is still sold at Amazon) who claims to be a Lesbian.)
Rabbitholed #78: Dana Rivers Is the Story the Media Doesn't Want You to Read
"This is a story unparalleled in media censorship about deadly white male violence against a lesbian interracial couple and their black son. When the media goes silent, there is always a reason why."
Mandy Stadtmiller
Dec 8
This is brilliant. I connect with every word of it and hope you're writing elsewhere for attribution.
That’s good news. Keep up the fight!
More men men have to speak out as well. This stuff was nor allowed even 15 years ago.
In my late 20's I had a hysterectomy, I might have settled for a dust and clean, as we used to call them, but the thought of 'having' to have a smear test in the future, pushed me towards the hysterectomy. Thats as an adult woman after two births, in my late 20's. If I was a girl in my early teens today, I would want rid of anything that meant I would avoid that.
It has become a word that gets my hackles up.
Toxic femininity needs to be defined, what actions or behaviours is it denoting? What would an absence of this behaviour look like?
It sounds like it could be referring to a woman's ability to use her sexual prowess, to manipulate men.
Before we label behaviours as toxic, are they serving some other function that we are unable to observe, are they as a result of unknown stimulus.
What is a professional feminist?
I agree that I’m not sure what she means by toxic femininity, or professional feminist, either. Perhaps my definition of feminism is unusual? I raised both of my daughters with feminist ideals which included reading books about strong women; pointing out men who treated women as equals; talking about the wonderful pride and bond I felt for nursing them both and watching them grow from tiny babies into healthy toddlers. I don’t know if my younger kid’s gender dysphoria is perhaps based in homophobia or misogyny but if so, I don’t accept direct blame for that because neither her dad nor I raised her to think that way. I can’t say the same for our culture, of course. I do know that if I could get a do-over, I would not give her a phone or laptop until high school at the very least.