Let women speak – then again, maybe not
[Hat tip: commenter “Bob Wilson.”)
Here’s a good example of the workings of the hierarchy of victimhood in the Woke world:
Eventbrite is facing blowback for taking down an event page for women advocating on behalf of single-sex spaces on the grounds that it violates the platform’s policy against hateful content.
Independent Women’s Network chapter leader Michelle Evans, organizer of the Aug. 12 Texas-based event Let Women Speak Austin, said her gathering was “intentionally misrepresented by Eventbrite as hate speech.”
“Eventbrite‘s team of Trust and Safety experts politely communicated to me that they were capitulating to the trans ideologues, the loud minority who are perpetually offended by women speaking out against their intrusion into our sports and private spaces,” said Ms. Evans in a statement…
Ms. Evans said she still plans to hold the event, which is billed on Facebook and other platforms as a gathering “where women can speak freely about the risks of gender identity ideology to women and girls, the dangers of gender self-ID, and the need to protect women’s sex-based rights.”
Right now, in the left’s all-important hierarchy of victimhood, pride of place is held by people identifying as trans. Even though it’s pretty clear that most trans people are not activists and merely want to be left alone to live their lives unencumbered, there is an activist subset that is vocal, energetic, and determined to take over spaces that once were limited to women. And by “women,” I mean what the word has always meant and been understood to mean.
Years ago, when trans activism became a thing, a group of feminists saw the danger and spoke out, and were branded by trans activists as being “TERFS” – which stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminists”:
First recorded in 2008, the term was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists and social conservatives who reject the assertion that trans women are women, including trans women in women’s spaces, and transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists who support transfeminism assert that these “TERF” ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people.
To accuse someone of “transphobia” is a typical leftist rhetorical move, particularly against other leftists who care about such labels. It is typical in the sense that it is just another in a long line of such designations, including “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.” Fall short of complete approval of every aspect of a group’s agenda and one is accused of having such a “phobia” – and even the word “phobia” is not meant in these cases to signify “fear of” but rather “hatred for.” Many people get with the program rather than face being designated as a “hater” of the group in question.
It’s a very clever and useful ploy on the part of the left, and although one would think it loses much of its force over time, it apparently still stings. The “Let Women Speak” group is being called hateful to trans people, and that is considered a powerful tool to silence them. The trans activists in this case who want to enter female-only spaces are predominantly male-to-female transitioners, who are of course biological males. Although I would be labeled transphobic for stating this obvious truth – and although many male-to-female trans people would actually agree with me on this and freely admit that they are still biological males – it has become anathema on the left to say so. That brings us to the highly ironic looking-glass-world phenomenon of trans activists calling male-to-female trans people “transphobes” if they say that they themselves are still males in the biological sense.
Why do women want their own sports competitions? The answer is obvious. Why do they want their own “spaces” – such as in prisons or abuse shelters or restrooms or lesbian bars? I think the answer there is obvious, too, and it is rooted in the differential propensities to violence of men and women, and the danger women can face. Men are not afraid of female-to-male trans people in the same way, in that they are neither a threat in sports nor in prisons, and I’m not even aware of any female-to-male trans people trying to enter male sports or male prisons, also for obvious reasons.
One of the approaches trans activists take is claiming that trans people are the victims of a lot of violence, in particular against male-to-female trans people, and especially black male-to-female trans people. But here’s what’s going on, the gist of which is that most of the victims met deaths that had nothing to do with their trans identities and everything to do with the environments in which they were living or operating (read the article for the details).
But the best way to get a leg up in the victim-identity competition on the left these days is to claim a higher degree of victimhood, and at the moment the trans community has been winning that skirmish.
[NOTE: Here’s the website of the group sponsoring the event.]
A vocal minority? Im sure that Ayn Rand would argue…NOT. It is really a Marxist-Maoist package deal, the consequence of re-queering homosexuals as a victime group and all that flows from the collectivist repackaging of purported “victims” endowed with grievance legitimacy…. As James Lindsey elaborates.
The force binary choices on us to seal the deal.
It’s appalling that companies go along with these manufactured “hate” charges. And it’s appalling that the Democrats are preparing to go into a general election season as champions of sex changes for children, in which the children are sterilized and rendered sexually impotent for life, among other side effects.
And what’s most appalling is that about half the country is buying this insanity.
The rock-paper-scissors of the game of victimization played with deadly determination, to devastating and destructive effect, by the left (from DEI to BLM/CRT/1619 propaganda to radical gender and trans ideology, etc.) derives, ultimately, from the infamous Bolshevik (Leninist/Trotskyist/Stalinist) Who/Whom?. Ignoring the Gramscian “long march” and the influence over the entire culture of Cultural Marxism (from within and without the academy) has been, perhaps, the greatest blunder made by conservatives over the last several decades.
The Democratic party has become the Party of the mentally ill, under which I count LBGTQ+ individuals. RINOs in power are a big part of the problem, and I count Wray of the FBI among them.
As to the Gramscian March, je, it was NOT ignored. It was tolerated by those who believe in freedom of expression, foolishly but in the grand American tradition of the 1st Amendment, which Gramsci obviously did not. A trap door was sprung in the 1960s, releasing all sorts of monsters which we are unable to put back in their cages.
j e:
Agreed.
Although some people sounded the warning.
“Even though it’s pretty clear that most trans people are not activists and merely want to be left alone to live their lives unencumbered…” – That certainly has not been my personal or societal experience. At Hewlett Packard the LGBTQ were all activists, who aggressively pushed out of the company (with the active help of HR) those who would not actively glorify their predilections. You have been unusually fortunate if those T near you were live and let live sorts.
“…just another in a long line of such designations, including “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.”
No self-respecting and sensible person ought to acquiesce in using any of these terms. They were invented specifically to deceive and manipulate and serve no honest purpose. I applaud your putting them in quotation marks.
I’m a fan of the British detective series Vera and of the novels on which they’re based. I was disappointed when an episode of the latest season involved a “trans” young man who had been convicted of a crime and was sent to a male prison. The refusal of the authorities to put him into a female prison was portrayed as an injustice, as he was a frail effeminate boy who no doubt would be abused in a male prison. A terrible situation, but presented as if there could be no good reason not to put a male in a female prison if he “identified” as female.
Since gender is imaginary, how can you be a TERF?
@Ray
It is only imaginary when they want it to be. Gender is how you feel and sex is physical until they get going in the circular reasoning of a trans woman is a woman is a cis woman when they want that to be true.
Paul Harmon:
You’re committing a logical fallacy, I believe. The people you notice ARE the activists, by definition. There are plenty of trans people who are not in favor of the activism. Some have commented on this blog, for example. There are many such people on YouTube, as well, some of whom I’ve highlighted.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but not all wheels squeak.
“not all wheels squeak.”
True on its face…but after “all we want to do is get married” actually was the slippery slope many of us predicted, it’s damn hard not to see a squeaky wheel on every axle.
Like all those “moderate Muslims” and “diversity is our strength” ‘success’ stories.
Oh…and as far as Let Women Speak
Give Moira Deeming a bit of a search and see what the left and limp-wristed center/muddle/right will do to you when you do.
Letting trans-“women” speak gets you nonsense on stilts.
Real women speak back.
https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2023/07/18/trans-activist-lets-the-mask-slip-in-tiktok-rant-on-womanhood-and-owning-periods-n778622
It’s hard to fight the activists when the activists are running your government.
https://notthebee.com/article/admiral-rachel-levine-defends-puberty-blockers-and-transition-for-minors-what-if-youre-going-through-the-wrong-pubertyi
Corollary:
https://notthebee.com/article/two-seattle-public-schools-offer-students-gender-affirming-care-at-no-cost
Good. I hope the corporations and law comes down on them as hard as it came down on single-sex golf courses, fraternal organizations, universities, athletics, and every other male-only space. Live by feminism, DEI by feminism.
re: “differential propensities for violence”
Women commit more acts of domestic violence than men. [And women commit the overwhelming majority of violent acts against children.]
Yes, men are generally capable of inflicting more serious damage (and withstanding a lot of punches, etc. from their wives/partners). But men still constitute 43% of the victims of domestic violence who are hurt badly enough to require admission to a hospital. And we have a reporting problem in that men are culturally likely to deny that a woman was responsible for their injuries.
My point is simply to point out how the propaganda against men has biased people to ignore the reality. (see also similar propaganda which ignores that women are far more likely to sexually abuse students in school.)
As for safe spaces in prisons, etc., I’m all for it. In the tails of the distributions for violent tendencies and criminality, males are indeed far more dangerous. It is not contradictory for women in general to be more prone to violence against a spouse while the males in the criminal tail end of the distribution to be dangerous.
I’m a fan of the British detective series Vera and of the novels on which they’re based. I was disappointed when an episode of the latest season involved a “trans” young man
==
Vera‘s notable for concocting engaging storylines with lame resolutions (if they manage to avoid introducing too many characters and too many subplots). One thing you also notice about it is that it’s a jobs program for black actors. Northeast England has few blacks (about 0.6% of the total population) but they’re all over the cast in every Vera episode (invariably as police investigators or as suspects later cleared).
stan:
You write “women commit more acts of domestic violence against men.” That’s one of those sophistic arguments. It may be technically true, depending how you measure an act of violence, which usually includes a shove or a hit. But it is somewhat meaningless unless you compare the severity of the acts of violence. In that sense, men are far more violent; see this for example:
Speaking of Domestic Violence…
Australia seems to have it in plague proportions. 30+ female deaths this year so far… not sure about /100k population comparisons..but sheesh…