Excellent piece and I completely agree. However, I wish somebody would tackle the inconvenient truth that it was third-wave academic feminists who started the slippery slope that led to these ridiculous stories. It was feminists who promoted the pseudoscientific idea of "gender" starting in the 70s. It was feminists who sought to deconstruct the traditional roles and behaviors of the sexes. It was feminists who completely fell for post-modernist attacks on science. It was feminists/lesbians who were a key part of the rise of Queer Theory. And most feminists today still support the inclusion of the T in LGBT. I fully support the minority of feminists ("TERFS") who are pushing back on this trans nonsense, but I hope they recognize their role in its origin.
Thank you. Yes, the feminists liked the idea of "gender" when it worked for them. And they were very much onside with gay rights, because fluid sexuality was part of their toolkit. When it got out of hand in queer theory, they were locked into to many of the basic theories that were now being taken to their logical conclusion that they didn't have a clearly marked exit route. Big-time leaders like the impenetrable Judith Butler went all in for queer theory and so did many other heavyweights. The rot began at the top and filtered down.
there's another inconvenient truth about women: you can be a doctor, lawyer, PhD in an advanced career of your choice, it matters not. women are tribally, historically, genetically programmed to see other women as rivals for access to men's resources and protection. sure, read all the treacle you can stomach about the emotional depth of women's friendships, blah, blah, blah. strip away all the trappings of contemporary society and you basically have two broads who will slit each other's throats over a man.
men will take it out back, work through their aggressions and meet at the bar. women aren't called "catty" for nothing.
i read a book many years ago about the class stratifications of women on antebellum plantations. did i perhaps expect that the lady of the manor would be kinder to the slaves then the men folk? wrong! they took out their lowly status on those of even lower status. the men were just men; the women went out of their way to be bitchy.
i had an employee once who's baby sitter crapped out on her. she called the wife of the supervisor- a woman who had a live in au par- and asked if for one day, she could pay extra to add her child into the mix so that she could get to work on time. if she was expecting some sympathetic sisterhood, she was barking up the wrong tree. the message was very clear- if you had only been clever enough to land an alpha male, you wouldn't have to go begging for childcare and i'm not sharing my goodies with you!
she called me in tears and i told her to bring her child into work and that we would all look after him. the following year, i surreptitiously put someone on the payroll just to watch the child.
the author of this fine (although disturbing) essay came as close as anyone i've ever read to saying out loud why feminism fails, why women don't support other women. they are looking out for numero uno and if that means sucking up to a man who wears inflatable tits to shop class, sacrificing other women and even children, so be it. medea killed her own children to get back at their father who had wronged her. not all that much has changed since the greeks.
i realize i was generalizing a great deal but that's my experience as a woman business owner who employed mainly women and homosexual men (theater costumes, very few straight men had any interest).
recently a friend, who is a high powered business coach and even does secret stuff for NATO, was talking about how he had worked in all the places he advised to bring up women's salaries to parity with men's and that he never got any resistance from male CEOs but always from women CEOs or women in HR departments. he said they fought to keep their power by keeping other women down. i wasn't surprised.
That's a rather sad comment on human nature, but quite possibly accurate. I would add that differences in pay have many factors behind them. For example, the Globe & Mail recently reported that female physicians are paid 34% less than male peers, even in fields where women dominate numerically. What they did not add that was that Ontario pays physicians fee-for-service. That means the female docs are 34% less productive, or that they do the same work but forget to bill for a third of it! It's true they experience slower career progression because of time taken for pregnancy and child rearing, but while that might mean a lower salary if they were paid that way, it won't make any difference in a fee-for-service system. The fact of the matter will be that they choose to work in a different, and probably more sensible way, by having a better balance between work and the rest of their lives. Having been a male physician working solo in a rural area with 24/7 responsibility and unable to even leave the village (before cell phones I couldn't even leave the telephone in the house!) I fully support such a sensible approach. But will the Globe tell you any of that? Nope, it's all a male conspiracy to keep the women down!
Not just exhausting, but they didn't think it through in another way. In terms of productivity, the "investigation" shows that three male physicians do the work of four female docs. In terms of bang for buck, should that be applied to medical school admissions? Currently, we have slightly more female students than male, but for the sake of argument, let's assume they are 50:50. That means in a class of 100 students, 66% of the work would be done by the 50 male physicians that have graduated, and 33% by the female graduates. Given the 2:3 ratio of productivity, a hypothetical class of 100% male students would outperform a 50:50 class by 11%. Yes, that means we could have the work done by our docs increased by more than a tenth for no extra financial cost in terms of medical school seats. That might help to get rid of our waiting lists, although it is certainly not the main reason why we have those lists despite pouring so much money into the system.
Would I suggest that we do it? Absolutely not! It is a matter of fairness—I strongly prefer to live in a society where we can all perform whatever career of which we are capable. Furthermore, female docs have an approach to medicine that is different and valuable, which should not be lost. I came close to dying from leukemia eight years ago, and a lovely lady fixed me up. When I relapsed, a very competent immigrant doc saved me again. I have good reason to appreciate the variety among my colleagues (and I'm an immigrant doc too!) I just wish the Globe would refrain from trying to make a jejune, sophomoric point with statistics that don't even begin to back up their agenda. Especially when the data actually harm the agenda they have in mind.
This piece does a disservice to the MANY women who are fighting gender ideology, individually and through organizations such as WoLF, WDI, Lesbians United. You write as if they do not exist.
Fair comment if this were written for a mainstream newspaper, but consider the publication. Everyone reading and writing for RLS is on the same wavelength. I didn't even bother mentioning that I myself am a dissident to both feminism in general and *of course* to any mindset that privileges multiculturalism over women's rights and trans rights over sex-based rights. My article was about women's inhumanity to women qua feminists within our institutional hierarchies. Ironically the hallmark of feminism in the past was its openly stated misandry (protested by some women, including me, but not enough to crimp the feminist takeover of institutions, just as there are not enough dissidents to stop the takeover of Queer Theory and radical gender theory.) The same feminist gurus who told women it was ok to hate men as a collective (with very few dissidents, I should say, as I was one of them and know how rare were the women who stood up for men's right not to be scapegoated en masse) adopted Queer Theory which ate the old feminism for breakfast and turned the new feminist thought leaders into cheerleaders for trans activism. This was not an article to inform readers of the present state of the resistance movement. The fact is, there are millions of women within these captured institutions like schools, hospitals, government bureaucracies and a hundred other institutions - but mainly education - who are carrying water for the radical gender theorists, and blithely ignoring the pain it is causing girls and women. That was my focus, and I think in the circumstances, defensible.
I think you are harming your cause by using "feminist" to mean only those who agree with gender ideology. There are plenty of gender-critical women who call themselves feminists, and indeed the "F" in TERF stands for feminist! Your choice of language excludes them, to no good purpose that I can see. I suggest using terms like "gender ideologues" or "trans activists" to mean the group you are (rightly) calling out.
I know the "f" stands for feminist. But I can assure you that the "gender ideologues" also call themselves feminist. Only they will tell you they support the rights of all women, which naturally includes trans women because they are women too, see? Since the gender ideologues happen to occupy the dominant positions in government - I am sure Kamala Harris would assure you she is a feminist and she is a witless supporter of trans rights over female rights - and all other centres of power, it would just be playing word games. From my perspective, feminism was a deeply flawed movement from the get-go, so it's too bad there are now feminists on one side and feminists on the other of a doctrine that any observer can see is misogynistic and both are claiming to be the true feminists, but I think on that account it's time the gender criticals stopped calling themselves feminists, ditch ideology altogether and started called themselves plain old classic liberals, which is what I am. It's not as if you have to be a feminist, old style or any style, to be in favour of human rights for everybody. You don't have to be FOR women and AGAINST men to know what an equitable society looks like.
"You don't have to be FOR women and AGAINST men to know what an equitable society looks like." That's a powerfully true statement. In fact, it was the Marxist Oppressor vs. Oppressed framing of human relationships that long ago turned me off the radfem worldview. I think it's corrosive both to individual connections and societal cohesion to filter all human interaction through the lens of power dynamics. Trans ideology, with its aim of erasing all norms by transgressing all boundaries, has co-opted the Marxist oppression narrative and thus brought along every person unwilling to let go of that toxic critique. It's the ultimate power move: convincing do-gooders that justice will prevail by redefining—and so perpetuating—injustice.
It is maddening that women keep throwing women under the bus. Reminds me of the UN study from a few years ago that showed that something like 90% of humans(including women) are biased against women. People crazy.
Great piece, thank you. We seem to have somehow smoothly transitioned from a commonly defined (though often hotly contested) conception of what constituted - "material reality" - through subsequent periods like - post-modern reality - to completely Orwellian reality - through to what we might call "surrealist-reality" - and now into the uncharted waters of our current - "woke-post-surrealist-reality." I'm not sure there are any further levels left for us to traverse in this bat-shit crazy descent into societal madness?? But hey, it's not like I haven't been wrong before about this stuff.
I find it rather frightening that my five year old grandson has no problem explaining - "what a woman is" - yet I've watched many politicians and PhD academics hem and haw and somehow not be able to quite come up with an answer to what appears to now be considered in woke circles - "a trick question." Go figure.
"Have feminist leaders denounced these teachers’ and students’ forced compliance with misogyny? No. But feminists failing to stand up for women being treated badly is an old story."
WRONG! Let's start with the basic fact that 'feminists' aren't one large block of female human beings. Feminism does not and can not possibly represent ALL women in ALL countries, ALL faiths, ALL cultures. Painting ALL feminists as having turned their backs on women in general and the women who are victimized by gender ideology specifically is grossly incorrect and unfair.
Please do your research. There are HUNDREDS of organizations globally who are fighting against insurmountable odds fighting battles on every front. The organization WOLF - https://womensliberationfront.org/ is suing governments in the US for many violations against women's rights. Standing for Women in the UK is another organization fighting to protect women's rights against gender ideology: https://www.standingforwomen.com/. The organization Fair Play for Women in the UK is fighting against gender ideology in women's sports: https://fairplayforwomen.com/. Collective Shout in Australia fighting against porn and sex trafficking: https://www.collectiveshout.org/. These are just a few feminist/women's organizations who ARE standing up for women.
So, PLEASE, don't add to the denigration of feminists as a whole. It's incredibly disheartening and makes feminist struggles so much harder - by that I mean radical feminism, not the current version of feminism that is simply serving up patriarchy with a slice of internalized misogyny.
Why not uplift and share the work of these and MANY more organizations of feminists who ARE doing this critical work despite doxxing censorship, propaganda, loss of jobs and careers, not to mention assaults and threats of rape, death. Even one of the most powerful women in the world isn't safe. J.K. Rowling has put her life, health, family and wealth at risk for over 5 years defending and protecting women in the face of gender extremists. How readily would you be speaking out if you were faced with these kinds of threats every day: https://terfisaslur.com/. A very small collection of the kind of threats made to women in various institutions. Trans ideology is really just another insidious form of patriarchy that exploits women's natural inclination to be kind and inclusive and weaponizes it against us. It is driven by predatory capitalism which seeks to turn everyone and everything into a commodity and young people are now being served up as customers for life once they go down the road to transitioning: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement. The pharma billionaires are having a field day and laughing all the way to the bank between trans ideology and covid. They're all tied in together as a way to destroy our families and relationships.
I, myself, have experienced just how horrific is the abuse inflicted on women who DO speak up. I have been kicked off Twitter, Facebook, Medium simply for stating that we should offer therapy to young people considering becoming trans instead of surgery and drugs. I lost my best friend who got caught up in trans cult and had her breasts removed. She lost her children, husband beautiful home largely because she was raised by parents who repeatedly told her they wished she was born a boy.
Have compassion for ALL women who are doing their best in a culture that dismisses, ridicules and silences women's concerns. Hold those women AND men - in particular the people profiting from the transition process - accountable who are actively doing harm, of course, but just like blaming all women for their rapes is extremely misogynist and inappropriate, blaming feminists for trans ideology reaching this point of extreme behaviour because we aren't standing up enough, ignores the 10's of thousands of women/feminists who are struggling to be heard at all.
If feminism can mean anything you want it to mean, then it is not an ideology. But it is. Or was. And it has tenets and dogmas. It is grounded in Marxism. The original ideologues posited the Patriarchy as a given and women as victims of it. Women's Studies feminists all drank from the same ideas trough. They invented "social construction" but wanted to retain bio-essentialism. The fact that so many of the thought leaders were able to twist their original beliefs around to suit the queer theorists just tells us they are typical Marxists ("today we are at war with Eurasia.") Being good leftists, they also adopted multiculturalism, and BOOM, suddenly all the millions of women around the world living under actual patriarchy were completely abandoned but that was ok, because it was "their culture." There may be a 100 ideas of what feminism should mean, but the fact is that the feminists with institutional power have chosen to support radical gender theory. That is why all the fabulous women trying to make headway against the male misogynists posing as women are taking so much abuse. But really, you have to ask yourself why it is that the good feminists aren't getting grass-level support from women everywhere? Why is it such an uphill battle for them, when women constitute at least half or more of all the administration of these institutions? Why aren't mothers storming the school board meetings? Why are female government ministers on board with all the crap? I recommend Phyllis Chesler's book, Women's Inhumanity to Women. It took her 20 years to write it. It's an eye opener.
I've read Phyllis Chesler's book and I still don't agree with your simplistic summary of feminism. Women are traumatized in this culture. (As are men, for that matter.) What we're seeing in the fracturing of the feminist movement is a manifestation of that. Just as we see a fracturing of the civil rights movement with critical race theory. Do not think for one minute that feminists/feminism alone gave rise to gender theory. This podcast details just how far back gender theory along with transhumanism go: Listen to The Ugly Truth of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Transhumanism and Canadian History by Matthew Ehret on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/G9ZQ3 HINT: It has nothing to do with feminism.
Women make up half of humanity. A portion of this half of humanity began a movement to free women from rigid gender stereotypes and fought to give them a voice, in politics, in law, in the public square. Prior to the women's suffrage movement, women's lives, due to their reproductive capacity, were a hellscape of endless pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths, reproductive issues. Then, there was the raising of children, with the fathers often abandoning them and the destitution of old age where the vast majority of women had little to no property to care for themselves. The educational institutions prevented women from getting an education which continues to happen. These were the issues that the feminist movement fought over and are still fighting over today. We just never hear about it.
What we're seeing now is not feminism. It is a bastardized version of feminism - often called third wave feminism that is unrecognizable to me as a 63 year old woman. The porn industry combined with predatory capitalism reprioritized men's sexual demands and packaged it to young women as a new kind of freedom. Women have been blind-sided by the aggressive campaign to twist women's right to sexual freedom as obligatory, rather than true freedom.
So, I object to your framing ALL feminists and feminism in general as absent and ineffectual. As stated in my original post, there are, around the world millions of radical feminists who are pushing back against the narrative, despite people who constantly deride, dismiss and critique their efforts. They are singularly courageous, fierce and relentless in their defense of women's rights. Feminists are not this blob of feckless, useless, ditzy women often represented in the media. Of course, they exist. However, the radical feminists who continue to do difficult, thankless work are seldom heard because of extreme censorship, but they're fighting the good fight with dignity and persistence in spite of the ignorance of their efforts.
The only feminists allowed to be on mainstream media are the ones that serve patriarchy - the compliant, sex-obsessed, so-called 'Marxist' category of feminists, perpetual victims that everyone loves to hate. Here's the thing: radical feminists also fight for them too. Their indoctrination into internalized misogyny is an unfortunate byproduct of so much of our culture's dysfunction. It's not just feminism that has been corrupted.
Andrea Dworkin's quote comes to mind: "Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, Including all the women you don't like. Including all the women you don't want to be around, Including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are."
I agree that first wave feminism was a necessary reform movement. But it achieved enough of its goals - equality under the law, education rights, reproductive rights, etc - to quit while it was ahead. Instead, because so many women were now invested in it as economic and political stakeholders, they had to find new rows to hoe. So "equality" turned into "equity," and affirmative action, even when it was no longer necessary. And with it a deep misandry directed against all western men, which has been very destructive. Reform movements have natural life spans. Ideologies demand revolutions based on utopian ideals that can never be realized because they are not grounded in human nature. And the big rule about utopianism is that the revolution never ends, the demands just get more granular and unobtainable, so the blame game can continue. That is what happened to feminism. But now that is irrelevant because the new iteration of Marxist gender theory has thrown the gigantic cat of trans privilege amongst the allegedly feminist pigeons. And *most* of the allegedly feminist pigeons are stepping aside to make room for it, pretending it is just an unusually big and super-important pigeon.
I KNOW there are hundreds of organizations fighting. But every one of them is small, underfunded and dependent on a few hundred supporters to promote their dissidence. While there are *millions* of women completely acquiescing or enthusiastically promoting trans mania. Look at Mermaids and the damage they have done. Headed by a woman, who couldn't wait to get her own kid in the trans pipeline to early surgery. I am denigrating feminism, because it is a Marxist ideology to begin with that was opposed to the family as an institution, that encouraged hook-up culture, that sneered at motherhood as a primary focus for women's engagement and that encouraged single motherhood. Above all, feminism dreamed up "social construction" to explain natural tendencies in women that are necessary for successful child rearing, and tried to convince women they should act more like men - and not just any men, but the most libertine of them. Now we're told that it is also feminism to hate straight men but genuflect to men who demand control over women's spaces. They can't all be feminists. Feminism is a failed ideology and completely inchoate today. It means everything and nothing. I don't understand why we can't just support women's rights without signing on to any ideology. I do not feel any obligation to buttress my impulse to support women's sex-based rights with "because I am a feminist." I support them because I am a decent human being whose values were formed by enlightenment western principles. That should be good enough for any dissident to trans mania.
It seems there are far more women joining trans mania in making trans people their new "nazi" like target. Taking ridiculous individual stories and amplifying them to represent feminism when they do not. Feminists support the women in Iran. They don't endorse misogyny like the giant breasts. They also don't manipulate such stories to undermine feminism or the rights of another group of people. Maybe you need to find a better way to spend your time.
I agree with the criticism you are receiving as far as ignoring all the good work gender critical feminists are doing. That being said, what often makes a great article is the discussion it opens up. I 've gotten a lot out of reading the comments and your responses to them. I believe Feminism
is a work in progress and I'm proud to be part of it even when it gets messy.
Oddly, when I discovered my then husband's cross-dressing life and became a single mom, the "feminists" in my circles often recommended "taking my sexuality back" through a more casual attitude towards dating and affairs. I always responded that didn't sound liberating, actually.
It takes too much effort for me to get angry with misguided, illogical brainwash. For self-preservation, I have to put it into the drawer in my mind and close it, only speak in these columns. Looking back into my teaching years, I did help the girls to speak their minds, to be assertive.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
Ute, I ordered and read your book. You are an amazing writer. I don't garden myself, but your descriptions were so evocative and vivid and gracefully expressed, you made me envious of the desire to garden. Your personal story is deeply enraging. I am so sorry your boys fell into that trap. As a Jew, I feel particularly bad that you actually converted to Judaism for that marriage and still take it seriously.
My dear Barbara, thank you. If you wish to help peak others by recommending my book, you can add to the the goodreads.com reviews of it. I hope you are able to grow in a window box or a container on the stoop, for the satisfaction of planting. I appreciate the connections to antiquity which Judaism brings me and I do not wish for you to be angry about it. The most important message I want to promote in my writing is that we can endure great hardship and still love life.
I did post a review, and also on Facebook. I have tried a few times to do a little window gardening. Even that doesn't provide much joy. I dunno, I think you have to have a special gene I am lacking. I am in awe of my gardening friends and the beauty they produce, but with that beauty comes sweat, bugs, sore knees, sore back and other stuff I can't relate to. LOL.
One of the reasons why women and feminists (radfems) are so shocked at the present state of affairs is that this is the first time in their lifespans that public policy has gone against them. They have now been forced to let other people ahead of the in the queue. That doesn't feel good, does it? (Says the heterosexual white male) Previously women's prerogatives were advanced massively, of course much of this was long overdue and was deserved. However their representatives, the feminist movement bought into ideological dogmas like intersectionality, multiculturalism, gender ideology which require women to cede their interests to other, more favoured "victim classes". Their own purported protectors have sold them out.
Now you know how the working class feels toward the left who sold them down the river to globalism and mass immigration. Please don't mistake my comment as bitter revanchism - I strongly support women's fightback against gender ideology and all other "post equality" movements. Like many other commenters I agree that feminists were happy to take advantage of these movements when they gained, and are only aghast after they started losing. That is a finger of accusation to them - not women in general.
Half the population have a right to agitate for their interest. I hope the feminist movement can reform itself from this disaster. A future where it is based around furthering of women's objective interest rather than slavishly following ideological dogmas handed down from their high priestesses like Butler.
Sorry that you’re stuck with us non-ideologues. ;)
Perhaps we provide a good example for trans activists that self identifying is not a sufficient substitute for good methodology nor good arguments.
Regarding your very good article it’s quite an astute observation that Kayla Lemieux is damaging to the great progress of first wave feminism and he might be some kind of provocateur. It’s certainly hard to take his gender expression seriously as some sort of authentic self-expression. Especially with the dangers of large prosthetic breasts around power tools. A snag can easily lead to lost fingers. Unfortunately the left is so gripped by fear of being called transphobic that even common sense is pushed aside.
For what it's worth there is a story by an anonymous online poster that Kayla Lemieux (the supposed trans-identifying male industrial arts teacher with the giant prosthetic breasts) is trolling the school. The author does suggest this as a possibility in the above essay.
This is the post in quotes:
'This dude is gaming the system. An anon here yesterday was in this dude’s class. This teacher was almost fired for ‘toxic masculinity’ last year, as well as not embracing woke culture. He’d drop red pills to his class, such as how silly gender neutral bathrooms are. The school board hates him.
He’s now upping the ante to exploit the very clown world the school and society itself created. His long game is most likely to get fired, and then sue for discrimination. There is no other explanation. No better way to troll clown world than to become an over-the-top caricature of a woman."
But I agree with the author, on it's face whether a troll act or not, this is stereotyping at it's worst. The school administration is being shown for what they are - shallow virtue signalers beholden to an ideology/religion that is demeaning & misogynistic to actual women. They're pandering to a man playing out a fetish caricature of a woman in his classroom and it's gross.
I'm seeing an obvious double-standard here. Would a female teacher get away with coming to school with her nipples poking out like that? Of course not. There are expectations of appropriate professional dress for teachers, just as there are codes (or uniforms!) for the pupils. If this "industrial arts" (we called it metalwork) teacher wants to be treated as a woman, (s)he should expect to be taken aside by a female colleague and told off for making an inappropriate dress choice. Just as I would be if I chose to wear a pair of trousers to work with a non-functioning fly.
I'm very glad Barbara Kay made the connection between gender censors and the Islamophobia racket. Yes these are both massive syndicates of woke word police that will shut down speech under the banner of ----phobia and they both hurt women even though the purport to be feminist. There are academic circles, corporate bureaucracies and plenty of powerful NGOs that are all controlled by the intersectional activists that bully everyone with the threats of unemployment/termination, expulsion, deplatforming, libel, social ostracism etc. I don't anticipate these movements can be countered without massive social rejection of the narratives. It is hard to see that happening from "within" rather it will take conservative countermovements that purge the woke from positions of power.
I agree with most of what you are saying until you decided to claim it was misogyny. Trans people that are born men and now claim to be women are allowed much more leeway because the mainstream sees them as females. So if anything is driving this it is toxic Misandry by teachers and staff in schools that are 95% female.
In education, women ARE the mainstream, not just in teaching, but in the administration and the unions and just about everywhere in that domain. I don't understand how you can say it is misandry that is making women suck up to kinky men like the boobs guy. How can adult women look at this female-mocking man and square it with their conscience that he is walking amongst young girls all day every day, flaunting this grotesque transmogrification of what a woman looks like, and they are forced to pretend this is acceptable to them, and then say to themselves, this is good because he identifies as a woman. How is this misandry?
Because it is the very same leftist female educators that are normalizing and defending the trans nonsense in the first place.
And yes unfortunately the world has chased away most of the male teachers. Women being the mainstream in teaching is a very new thing. And a VERY BAD thing. When I was at school in the 70s and 80s it was about 50/50. Now men are so scared of being accused of inappropriate behaviour against students that education has become a no go for them. This means that we are feminizing our boys because they are not being taught by men and only being taught by women. How can you not think this is a problem? It has directly contributed to the trans issues we are seeing today. The connection is undeniable.
NOBODY sees trans-identifying men as women... Certainly not the mainstream! The reason they receive preposterous degrees of leeway is due to everyone being afraid of being called taboo-names (xyz-phobe), and belonging to a "protected species" minority group. They have a get out of jail card to do anything they want under the current wokeist regime.
Damn I wish that were so. Unfortunately the mainstream of society HAS bought into the ridiculous notion that someone can change sex. They are supporting the activists trying to claim men can be pregnant and that trans should be able to compete in sport and use toilets belonging to the other sex. Why do you think there is so much cancel culture and media being diversified if the mainstream has not bought into it?
"Do you believe TWAW?" is the wrong question to ask if you really want to know what a person truly believes. A more revealing question would be "Would you have sex with a transwoman?". That is when someone's true feelings come out.
The reason there is so much cancel culture and aggressive suppression is PRECISELY because nobody believes it - even the proponents do not - that is why the need to tamp down their disbelief with outward performances of zealous faith. They are "protesting too much" to borrow from the Bard. They are engaging in "performative belief". It is only with mass coercion that a blatant falsehood can remain standing, in fact this fervour actually proves the base claims are bogus.
Just observe the "mean-girl" behaviour in any Grade 5 classroom and you know instantly just how cruel women can be to each other. They don't throw physical punches like boys, but those fights have the virtue of clearing the air at least. Girl on girl hostility smolders.
Once you have a critical mass of "feminists" signed on to the pernicious mantra, "trans women are women," logic demands that they count all the transwomen in these situations as women. They've trapped themselves, but they don't back down. You can't reason with them in this logical way. They will lie and say men really aren;'t stronger, that's a social construct, and they will agree women are being raped by other women and that's a shame and they should be punished, and as for prisons, well, that's not their concern, since it is unlikely they will ever find themselves there.
Excellent piece and I completely agree. However, I wish somebody would tackle the inconvenient truth that it was third-wave academic feminists who started the slippery slope that led to these ridiculous stories. It was feminists who promoted the pseudoscientific idea of "gender" starting in the 70s. It was feminists who sought to deconstruct the traditional roles and behaviors of the sexes. It was feminists who completely fell for post-modernist attacks on science. It was feminists/lesbians who were a key part of the rise of Queer Theory. And most feminists today still support the inclusion of the T in LGBT. I fully support the minority of feminists ("TERFS") who are pushing back on this trans nonsense, but I hope they recognize their role in its origin.
Thank you. Yes, the feminists liked the idea of "gender" when it worked for them. And they were very much onside with gay rights, because fluid sexuality was part of their toolkit. When it got out of hand in queer theory, they were locked into to many of the basic theories that were now being taken to their logical conclusion that they didn't have a clearly marked exit route. Big-time leaders like the impenetrable Judith Butler went all in for queer theory and so did many other heavyweights. The rot began at the top and filtered down.
there's another inconvenient truth about women: you can be a doctor, lawyer, PhD in an advanced career of your choice, it matters not. women are tribally, historically, genetically programmed to see other women as rivals for access to men's resources and protection. sure, read all the treacle you can stomach about the emotional depth of women's friendships, blah, blah, blah. strip away all the trappings of contemporary society and you basically have two broads who will slit each other's throats over a man.
men will take it out back, work through their aggressions and meet at the bar. women aren't called "catty" for nothing.
i read a book many years ago about the class stratifications of women on antebellum plantations. did i perhaps expect that the lady of the manor would be kinder to the slaves then the men folk? wrong! they took out their lowly status on those of even lower status. the men were just men; the women went out of their way to be bitchy.
i had an employee once who's baby sitter crapped out on her. she called the wife of the supervisor- a woman who had a live in au par- and asked if for one day, she could pay extra to add her child into the mix so that she could get to work on time. if she was expecting some sympathetic sisterhood, she was barking up the wrong tree. the message was very clear- if you had only been clever enough to land an alpha male, you wouldn't have to go begging for childcare and i'm not sharing my goodies with you!
she called me in tears and i told her to bring her child into work and that we would all look after him. the following year, i surreptitiously put someone on the payroll just to watch the child.
the author of this fine (although disturbing) essay came as close as anyone i've ever read to saying out loud why feminism fails, why women don't support other women. they are looking out for numero uno and if that means sucking up to a man who wears inflatable tits to shop class, sacrificing other women and even children, so be it. medea killed her own children to get back at their father who had wronged her. not all that much has changed since the greeks.
i realize i was generalizing a great deal but that's my experience as a woman business owner who employed mainly women and homosexual men (theater costumes, very few straight men had any interest).
recently a friend, who is a high powered business coach and even does secret stuff for NATO, was talking about how he had worked in all the places he advised to bring up women's salaries to parity with men's and that he never got any resistance from male CEOs but always from women CEOs or women in HR departments. he said they fought to keep their power by keeping other women down. i wasn't surprised.
That's a rather sad comment on human nature, but quite possibly accurate. I would add that differences in pay have many factors behind them. For example, the Globe & Mail recently reported that female physicians are paid 34% less than male peers, even in fields where women dominate numerically. What they did not add that was that Ontario pays physicians fee-for-service. That means the female docs are 34% less productive, or that they do the same work but forget to bill for a third of it! It's true they experience slower career progression because of time taken for pregnancy and child rearing, but while that might mean a lower salary if they were paid that way, it won't make any difference in a fee-for-service system. The fact of the matter will be that they choose to work in a different, and probably more sensible way, by having a better balance between work and the rest of their lives. Having been a male physician working solo in a rural area with 24/7 responsibility and unable to even leave the village (before cell phones I couldn't even leave the telephone in the house!) I fully support such a sensible approach. But will the Globe tell you any of that? Nope, it's all a male conspiracy to keep the women down!
Not just exhausting, but they didn't think it through in another way. In terms of productivity, the "investigation" shows that three male physicians do the work of four female docs. In terms of bang for buck, should that be applied to medical school admissions? Currently, we have slightly more female students than male, but for the sake of argument, let's assume they are 50:50. That means in a class of 100 students, 66% of the work would be done by the 50 male physicians that have graduated, and 33% by the female graduates. Given the 2:3 ratio of productivity, a hypothetical class of 100% male students would outperform a 50:50 class by 11%. Yes, that means we could have the work done by our docs increased by more than a tenth for no extra financial cost in terms of medical school seats. That might help to get rid of our waiting lists, although it is certainly not the main reason why we have those lists despite pouring so much money into the system.
Would I suggest that we do it? Absolutely not! It is a matter of fairness—I strongly prefer to live in a society where we can all perform whatever career of which we are capable. Furthermore, female docs have an approach to medicine that is different and valuable, which should not be lost. I came close to dying from leukemia eight years ago, and a lovely lady fixed me up. When I relapsed, a very competent immigrant doc saved me again. I have good reason to appreciate the variety among my colleagues (and I'm an immigrant doc too!) I just wish the Globe would refrain from trying to make a jejune, sophomoric point with statistics that don't even begin to back up their agenda. Especially when the data actually harm the agenda they have in mind.
This piece does a disservice to the MANY women who are fighting gender ideology, individually and through organizations such as WoLF, WDI, Lesbians United. You write as if they do not exist.
Fair comment if this were written for a mainstream newspaper, but consider the publication. Everyone reading and writing for RLS is on the same wavelength. I didn't even bother mentioning that I myself am a dissident to both feminism in general and *of course* to any mindset that privileges multiculturalism over women's rights and trans rights over sex-based rights. My article was about women's inhumanity to women qua feminists within our institutional hierarchies. Ironically the hallmark of feminism in the past was its openly stated misandry (protested by some women, including me, but not enough to crimp the feminist takeover of institutions, just as there are not enough dissidents to stop the takeover of Queer Theory and radical gender theory.) The same feminist gurus who told women it was ok to hate men as a collective (with very few dissidents, I should say, as I was one of them and know how rare were the women who stood up for men's right not to be scapegoated en masse) adopted Queer Theory which ate the old feminism for breakfast and turned the new feminist thought leaders into cheerleaders for trans activism. This was not an article to inform readers of the present state of the resistance movement. The fact is, there are millions of women within these captured institutions like schools, hospitals, government bureaucracies and a hundred other institutions - but mainly education - who are carrying water for the radical gender theorists, and blithely ignoring the pain it is causing girls and women. That was my focus, and I think in the circumstances, defensible.
I think you are harming your cause by using "feminist" to mean only those who agree with gender ideology. There are plenty of gender-critical women who call themselves feminists, and indeed the "F" in TERF stands for feminist! Your choice of language excludes them, to no good purpose that I can see. I suggest using terms like "gender ideologues" or "trans activists" to mean the group you are (rightly) calling out.
I know the "f" stands for feminist. But I can assure you that the "gender ideologues" also call themselves feminist. Only they will tell you they support the rights of all women, which naturally includes trans women because they are women too, see? Since the gender ideologues happen to occupy the dominant positions in government - I am sure Kamala Harris would assure you she is a feminist and she is a witless supporter of trans rights over female rights - and all other centres of power, it would just be playing word games. From my perspective, feminism was a deeply flawed movement from the get-go, so it's too bad there are now feminists on one side and feminists on the other of a doctrine that any observer can see is misogynistic and both are claiming to be the true feminists, but I think on that account it's time the gender criticals stopped calling themselves feminists, ditch ideology altogether and started called themselves plain old classic liberals, which is what I am. It's not as if you have to be a feminist, old style or any style, to be in favour of human rights for everybody. You don't have to be FOR women and AGAINST men to know what an equitable society looks like.
"You don't have to be FOR women and AGAINST men to know what an equitable society looks like." That's a powerfully true statement. In fact, it was the Marxist Oppressor vs. Oppressed framing of human relationships that long ago turned me off the radfem worldview. I think it's corrosive both to individual connections and societal cohesion to filter all human interaction through the lens of power dynamics. Trans ideology, with its aim of erasing all norms by transgressing all boundaries, has co-opted the Marxist oppression narrative and thus brought along every person unwilling to let go of that toxic critique. It's the ultimate power move: convincing do-gooders that justice will prevail by redefining—and so perpetuating—injustice.
Exactly! See my comment above.
Right on Barbara! So thankful for your voice!
It is maddening that women keep throwing women under the bus. Reminds me of the UN study from a few years ago that showed that something like 90% of humans(including women) are biased against women. People crazy.
Great piece, thank you. We seem to have somehow smoothly transitioned from a commonly defined (though often hotly contested) conception of what constituted - "material reality" - through subsequent periods like - post-modern reality - to completely Orwellian reality - through to what we might call "surrealist-reality" - and now into the uncharted waters of our current - "woke-post-surrealist-reality." I'm not sure there are any further levels left for us to traverse in this bat-shit crazy descent into societal madness?? But hey, it's not like I haven't been wrong before about this stuff.
I find it rather frightening that my five year old grandson has no problem explaining - "what a woman is" - yet I've watched many politicians and PhD academics hem and haw and somehow not be able to quite come up with an answer to what appears to now be considered in woke circles - "a trick question." Go figure.
"Have feminist leaders denounced these teachers’ and students’ forced compliance with misogyny? No. But feminists failing to stand up for women being treated badly is an old story."
WRONG! Let's start with the basic fact that 'feminists' aren't one large block of female human beings. Feminism does not and can not possibly represent ALL women in ALL countries, ALL faiths, ALL cultures. Painting ALL feminists as having turned their backs on women in general and the women who are victimized by gender ideology specifically is grossly incorrect and unfair.
Please do your research. There are HUNDREDS of organizations globally who are fighting against insurmountable odds fighting battles on every front. The organization WOLF - https://womensliberationfront.org/ is suing governments in the US for many violations against women's rights. Standing for Women in the UK is another organization fighting to protect women's rights against gender ideology: https://www.standingforwomen.com/. The organization Fair Play for Women in the UK is fighting against gender ideology in women's sports: https://fairplayforwomen.com/. Collective Shout in Australia fighting against porn and sex trafficking: https://www.collectiveshout.org/. These are just a few feminist/women's organizations who ARE standing up for women.
So, PLEASE, don't add to the denigration of feminists as a whole. It's incredibly disheartening and makes feminist struggles so much harder - by that I mean radical feminism, not the current version of feminism that is simply serving up patriarchy with a slice of internalized misogyny.
Why not uplift and share the work of these and MANY more organizations of feminists who ARE doing this critical work despite doxxing censorship, propaganda, loss of jobs and careers, not to mention assaults and threats of rape, death. Even one of the most powerful women in the world isn't safe. J.K. Rowling has put her life, health, family and wealth at risk for over 5 years defending and protecting women in the face of gender extremists. How readily would you be speaking out if you were faced with these kinds of threats every day: https://terfisaslur.com/. A very small collection of the kind of threats made to women in various institutions. Trans ideology is really just another insidious form of patriarchy that exploits women's natural inclination to be kind and inclusive and weaponizes it against us. It is driven by predatory capitalism which seeks to turn everyone and everything into a commodity and young people are now being served up as customers for life once they go down the road to transitioning: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement. The pharma billionaires are having a field day and laughing all the way to the bank between trans ideology and covid. They're all tied in together as a way to destroy our families and relationships.
I, myself, have experienced just how horrific is the abuse inflicted on women who DO speak up. I have been kicked off Twitter, Facebook, Medium simply for stating that we should offer therapy to young people considering becoming trans instead of surgery and drugs. I lost my best friend who got caught up in trans cult and had her breasts removed. She lost her children, husband beautiful home largely because she was raised by parents who repeatedly told her they wished she was born a boy.
Have compassion for ALL women who are doing their best in a culture that dismisses, ridicules and silences women's concerns. Hold those women AND men - in particular the people profiting from the transition process - accountable who are actively doing harm, of course, but just like blaming all women for their rapes is extremely misogynist and inappropriate, blaming feminists for trans ideology reaching this point of extreme behaviour because we aren't standing up enough, ignores the 10's of thousands of women/feminists who are struggling to be heard at all.
If feminism can mean anything you want it to mean, then it is not an ideology. But it is. Or was. And it has tenets and dogmas. It is grounded in Marxism. The original ideologues posited the Patriarchy as a given and women as victims of it. Women's Studies feminists all drank from the same ideas trough. They invented "social construction" but wanted to retain bio-essentialism. The fact that so many of the thought leaders were able to twist their original beliefs around to suit the queer theorists just tells us they are typical Marxists ("today we are at war with Eurasia.") Being good leftists, they also adopted multiculturalism, and BOOM, suddenly all the millions of women around the world living under actual patriarchy were completely abandoned but that was ok, because it was "their culture." There may be a 100 ideas of what feminism should mean, but the fact is that the feminists with institutional power have chosen to support radical gender theory. That is why all the fabulous women trying to make headway against the male misogynists posing as women are taking so much abuse. But really, you have to ask yourself why it is that the good feminists aren't getting grass-level support from women everywhere? Why is it such an uphill battle for them, when women constitute at least half or more of all the administration of these institutions? Why aren't mothers storming the school board meetings? Why are female government ministers on board with all the crap? I recommend Phyllis Chesler's book, Women's Inhumanity to Women. It took her 20 years to write it. It's an eye opener.
I've read Phyllis Chesler's book and I still don't agree with your simplistic summary of feminism. Women are traumatized in this culture. (As are men, for that matter.) What we're seeing in the fracturing of the feminist movement is a manifestation of that. Just as we see a fracturing of the civil rights movement with critical race theory. Do not think for one minute that feminists/feminism alone gave rise to gender theory. This podcast details just how far back gender theory along with transhumanism go: Listen to The Ugly Truth of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Transhumanism and Canadian History by Matthew Ehret on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/G9ZQ3 HINT: It has nothing to do with feminism.
Women make up half of humanity. A portion of this half of humanity began a movement to free women from rigid gender stereotypes and fought to give them a voice, in politics, in law, in the public square. Prior to the women's suffrage movement, women's lives, due to their reproductive capacity, were a hellscape of endless pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths, reproductive issues. Then, there was the raising of children, with the fathers often abandoning them and the destitution of old age where the vast majority of women had little to no property to care for themselves. The educational institutions prevented women from getting an education which continues to happen. These were the issues that the feminist movement fought over and are still fighting over today. We just never hear about it.
What we're seeing now is not feminism. It is a bastardized version of feminism - often called third wave feminism that is unrecognizable to me as a 63 year old woman. The porn industry combined with predatory capitalism reprioritized men's sexual demands and packaged it to young women as a new kind of freedom. Women have been blind-sided by the aggressive campaign to twist women's right to sexual freedom as obligatory, rather than true freedom.
So, I object to your framing ALL feminists and feminism in general as absent and ineffectual. As stated in my original post, there are, around the world millions of radical feminists who are pushing back against the narrative, despite people who constantly deride, dismiss and critique their efforts. They are singularly courageous, fierce and relentless in their defense of women's rights. Feminists are not this blob of feckless, useless, ditzy women often represented in the media. Of course, they exist. However, the radical feminists who continue to do difficult, thankless work are seldom heard because of extreme censorship, but they're fighting the good fight with dignity and persistence in spite of the ignorance of their efforts.
The only feminists allowed to be on mainstream media are the ones that serve patriarchy - the compliant, sex-obsessed, so-called 'Marxist' category of feminists, perpetual victims that everyone loves to hate. Here's the thing: radical feminists also fight for them too. Their indoctrination into internalized misogyny is an unfortunate byproduct of so much of our culture's dysfunction. It's not just feminism that has been corrupted.
Andrea Dworkin's quote comes to mind: "Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, Including all the women you don't like. Including all the women you don't want to be around, Including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are."
I agree that first wave feminism was a necessary reform movement. But it achieved enough of its goals - equality under the law, education rights, reproductive rights, etc - to quit while it was ahead. Instead, because so many women were now invested in it as economic and political stakeholders, they had to find new rows to hoe. So "equality" turned into "equity," and affirmative action, even when it was no longer necessary. And with it a deep misandry directed against all western men, which has been very destructive. Reform movements have natural life spans. Ideologies demand revolutions based on utopian ideals that can never be realized because they are not grounded in human nature. And the big rule about utopianism is that the revolution never ends, the demands just get more granular and unobtainable, so the blame game can continue. That is what happened to feminism. But now that is irrelevant because the new iteration of Marxist gender theory has thrown the gigantic cat of trans privilege amongst the allegedly feminist pigeons. And *most* of the allegedly feminist pigeons are stepping aside to make room for it, pretending it is just an unusually big and super-important pigeon.
I KNOW there are hundreds of organizations fighting. But every one of them is small, underfunded and dependent on a few hundred supporters to promote their dissidence. While there are *millions* of women completely acquiescing or enthusiastically promoting trans mania. Look at Mermaids and the damage they have done. Headed by a woman, who couldn't wait to get her own kid in the trans pipeline to early surgery. I am denigrating feminism, because it is a Marxist ideology to begin with that was opposed to the family as an institution, that encouraged hook-up culture, that sneered at motherhood as a primary focus for women's engagement and that encouraged single motherhood. Above all, feminism dreamed up "social construction" to explain natural tendencies in women that are necessary for successful child rearing, and tried to convince women they should act more like men - and not just any men, but the most libertine of them. Now we're told that it is also feminism to hate straight men but genuflect to men who demand control over women's spaces. They can't all be feminists. Feminism is a failed ideology and completely inchoate today. It means everything and nothing. I don't understand why we can't just support women's rights without signing on to any ideology. I do not feel any obligation to buttress my impulse to support women's sex-based rights with "because I am a feminist." I support them because I am a decent human being whose values were formed by enlightenment western principles. That should be good enough for any dissident to trans mania.
It seems there are far more women joining trans mania in making trans people their new "nazi" like target. Taking ridiculous individual stories and amplifying them to represent feminism when they do not. Feminists support the women in Iran. They don't endorse misogyny like the giant breasts. They also don't manipulate such stories to undermine feminism or the rights of another group of people. Maybe you need to find a better way to spend your time.
I agree with the criticism you are receiving as far as ignoring all the good work gender critical feminists are doing. That being said, what often makes a great article is the discussion it opens up. I 've gotten a lot out of reading the comments and your responses to them. I believe Feminism
is a work in progress and I'm proud to be part of it even when it gets messy.
Oddly, when I discovered my then husband's cross-dressing life and became a single mom, the "feminists" in my circles often recommended "taking my sexuality back" through a more casual attitude towards dating and affairs. I always responded that didn't sound liberating, actually.
It takes too much effort for me to get angry with misguided, illogical brainwash. For self-preservation, I have to put it into the drawer in my mind and close it, only speak in these columns. Looking back into my teaching years, I did help the girls to speak their minds, to be assertive.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com (healing somatic movements recently highlighted)
Ute, I ordered and read your book. You are an amazing writer. I don't garden myself, but your descriptions were so evocative and vivid and gracefully expressed, you made me envious of the desire to garden. Your personal story is deeply enraging. I am so sorry your boys fell into that trap. As a Jew, I feel particularly bad that you actually converted to Judaism for that marriage and still take it seriously.
My dear Barbara, thank you. If you wish to help peak others by recommending my book, you can add to the the goodreads.com reviews of it. I hope you are able to grow in a window box or a container on the stoop, for the satisfaction of planting. I appreciate the connections to antiquity which Judaism brings me and I do not wish for you to be angry about it. The most important message I want to promote in my writing is that we can endure great hardship and still love life.
Shanah Tovah. Ute
I did post a review, and also on Facebook. I have tried a few times to do a little window gardening. Even that doesn't provide much joy. I dunno, I think you have to have a special gene I am lacking. I am in awe of my gardening friends and the beauty they produce, but with that beauty comes sweat, bugs, sore knees, sore back and other stuff I can't relate to. LOL.
One of the reasons why women and feminists (radfems) are so shocked at the present state of affairs is that this is the first time in their lifespans that public policy has gone against them. They have now been forced to let other people ahead of the in the queue. That doesn't feel good, does it? (Says the heterosexual white male) Previously women's prerogatives were advanced massively, of course much of this was long overdue and was deserved. However their representatives, the feminist movement bought into ideological dogmas like intersectionality, multiculturalism, gender ideology which require women to cede their interests to other, more favoured "victim classes". Their own purported protectors have sold them out.
Now you know how the working class feels toward the left who sold them down the river to globalism and mass immigration. Please don't mistake my comment as bitter revanchism - I strongly support women's fightback against gender ideology and all other "post equality" movements. Like many other commenters I agree that feminists were happy to take advantage of these movements when they gained, and are only aghast after they started losing. That is a finger of accusation to them - not women in general.
Half the population have a right to agitate for their interest. I hope the feminist movement can reform itself from this disaster. A future where it is based around furthering of women's objective interest rather than slavishly following ideological dogmas handed down from their high priestesses like Butler.
Sorry that you’re stuck with us non-ideologues. ;)
Perhaps we provide a good example for trans activists that self identifying is not a sufficient substitute for good methodology nor good arguments.
Regarding your very good article it’s quite an astute observation that Kayla Lemieux is damaging to the great progress of first wave feminism and he might be some kind of provocateur. It’s certainly hard to take his gender expression seriously as some sort of authentic self-expression. Especially with the dangers of large prosthetic breasts around power tools. A snag can easily lead to lost fingers. Unfortunately the left is so gripped by fear of being called transphobic that even common sense is pushed aside.
For what it's worth there is a story by an anonymous online poster that Kayla Lemieux (the supposed trans-identifying male industrial arts teacher with the giant prosthetic breasts) is trolling the school. The author does suggest this as a possibility in the above essay.
This is the post in quotes:
'This dude is gaming the system. An anon here yesterday was in this dude’s class. This teacher was almost fired for ‘toxic masculinity’ last year, as well as not embracing woke culture. He’d drop red pills to his class, such as how silly gender neutral bathrooms are. The school board hates him.
He’s now upping the ante to exploit the very clown world the school and society itself created. His long game is most likely to get fired, and then sue for discrimination. There is no other explanation. No better way to troll clown world than to become an over-the-top caricature of a woman."
But I agree with the author, on it's face whether a troll act or not, this is stereotyping at it's worst. The school administration is being shown for what they are - shallow virtue signalers beholden to an ideology/religion that is demeaning & misogynistic to actual women. They're pandering to a man playing out a fetish caricature of a woman in his classroom and it's gross.
I'm seeing an obvious double-standard here. Would a female teacher get away with coming to school with her nipples poking out like that? Of course not. There are expectations of appropriate professional dress for teachers, just as there are codes (or uniforms!) for the pupils. If this "industrial arts" (we called it metalwork) teacher wants to be treated as a woman, (s)he should expect to be taken aside by a female colleague and told off for making an inappropriate dress choice. Just as I would be if I chose to wear a pair of trousers to work with a non-functioning fly.
I'm very glad Barbara Kay made the connection between gender censors and the Islamophobia racket. Yes these are both massive syndicates of woke word police that will shut down speech under the banner of ----phobia and they both hurt women even though the purport to be feminist. There are academic circles, corporate bureaucracies and plenty of powerful NGOs that are all controlled by the intersectional activists that bully everyone with the threats of unemployment/termination, expulsion, deplatforming, libel, social ostracism etc. I don't anticipate these movements can be countered without massive social rejection of the narratives. It is hard to see that happening from "within" rather it will take conservative countermovements that purge the woke from positions of power.
I agree with most of what you are saying until you decided to claim it was misogyny. Trans people that are born men and now claim to be women are allowed much more leeway because the mainstream sees them as females. So if anything is driving this it is toxic Misandry by teachers and staff in schools that are 95% female.
In education, women ARE the mainstream, not just in teaching, but in the administration and the unions and just about everywhere in that domain. I don't understand how you can say it is misandry that is making women suck up to kinky men like the boobs guy. How can adult women look at this female-mocking man and square it with their conscience that he is walking amongst young girls all day every day, flaunting this grotesque transmogrification of what a woman looks like, and they are forced to pretend this is acceptable to them, and then say to themselves, this is good because he identifies as a woman. How is this misandry?
Because it is the very same leftist female educators that are normalizing and defending the trans nonsense in the first place.
And yes unfortunately the world has chased away most of the male teachers. Women being the mainstream in teaching is a very new thing. And a VERY BAD thing. When I was at school in the 70s and 80s it was about 50/50. Now men are so scared of being accused of inappropriate behaviour against students that education has become a no go for them. This means that we are feminizing our boys because they are not being taught by men and only being taught by women. How can you not think this is a problem? It has directly contributed to the trans issues we are seeing today. The connection is undeniable.
NOBODY sees trans-identifying men as women... Certainly not the mainstream! The reason they receive preposterous degrees of leeway is due to everyone being afraid of being called taboo-names (xyz-phobe), and belonging to a "protected species" minority group. They have a get out of jail card to do anything they want under the current wokeist regime.
Damn I wish that were so. Unfortunately the mainstream of society HAS bought into the ridiculous notion that someone can change sex. They are supporting the activists trying to claim men can be pregnant and that trans should be able to compete in sport and use toilets belonging to the other sex. Why do you think there is so much cancel culture and media being diversified if the mainstream has not bought into it?
"Do you believe TWAW?" is the wrong question to ask if you really want to know what a person truly believes. A more revealing question would be "Would you have sex with a transwoman?". That is when someone's true feelings come out.
The reason there is so much cancel culture and aggressive suppression is PRECISELY because nobody believes it - even the proponents do not - that is why the need to tamp down their disbelief with outward performances of zealous faith. They are "protesting too much" to borrow from the Bard. They are engaging in "performative belief". It is only with mass coercion that a blatant falsehood can remain standing, in fact this fervour actually proves the base claims are bogus.
Women are, generally speaking, not the solidarity sex.
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
Just observe the "mean-girl" behaviour in any Grade 5 classroom and you know instantly just how cruel women can be to each other. They don't throw physical punches like boys, but those fights have the virtue of clearing the air at least. Girl on girl hostility smolders.
This was an amazing essay. Thank you. I tweeted it.
Once you have a critical mass of "feminists" signed on to the pernicious mantra, "trans women are women," logic demands that they count all the transwomen in these situations as women. They've trapped themselves, but they don't back down. You can't reason with them in this logical way. They will lie and say men really aren;'t stronger, that's a social construct, and they will agree women are being raped by other women and that's a shame and they should be punished, and as for prisons, well, that's not their concern, since it is unlikely they will ever find themselves there.