August 6, 2023 This post is being sent to all subscribers to this Substack. It is free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription.
There's some truth in the claim made by people on the right that progressives "eat their own" and use the "circular firing squad" to keep people in line. The rigidity and lack of nuance is, as you put it, dumb, to say nothing of counterproductive. Why shouldn't you talk to Tucker Carlson, the most famous TV journalist in the country? He understands the issue, he's respectful, supportive and a good listener. If Rachel Maddow invited you to talk to her and offered 1/20th of the positive publicity that you've received from Tucker, of course you would accept. Which begs the question: why hasn't she? What's wrong with the Democrats?
I'm also with you 100% on maintaining a wall between feminists and right-wing militia groups and distinguishing ourselves from them and other right-wing groups. No thank you. Supportive comments from gender-critical men like Andrew Doyle and Douglas Murray are always welcomed, but that's a different matter.
In terms of overall support, however, trans is not just a women's issue and many fathers are outspoken critics because they love their children. The fearless Billboard Chris comes to mind. Trans is a hydra, and male children are terribly affected by trans ideology. So yes, it's a woman's issue, but parents of trans-identified kids can be allies too.
As a follow-up to my above comment, among diehard liberals, I’ve often received more understanding and empathy from men than from women regarding sex-segregated spaces. My brother-in-law understood why women wouldn’t want to share a locker room with men, because he wouldn’t want to share a locker room with women, it would make him uncomfortable to get undressed or to see women undressed. And the sports issue is obvious to him, whereas my sister is defensive and skeptical. She also fixates on trans-identified male prisoners who are targets of rape by other men. They’re so oppressed! They need protection! But men rape women too, I said, to which she replied, how many of them are there, what’s the big deal? How many rapes would be an acceptable number? I asked. That was a conversation stopper.
I just didn't want people googling Dennis Murray and not finding whom you really meant! I recently made a similar mistake in including the wrong last name and led people on a wild goose chase!
I appreciate the clear thinking and logic that informs what Kara writes here. With regard to working across the political aisle in a strategic, targeted manner, here are two more examples to bear in mind:
1. Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch working across the aisle on several issues, including the ADA, CHIP, and the Ryan White Act.
2. Very recently, Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham co-writing an op-Ed in the New York Times on reining in Big Tech.
In the history of the United States, most laws passed by Congress have received bipartisan support and so have most laws passed by state legislatures. Most decisions of the US Supreme Court, including in recent years, have been supported by some "liberal" justices and by some "conservative" justices. Overall, there is great public support for bipartisanship. Democratic politicians know this and so sometimes someone like Biden will tout his experience with working "across the aisle". When it suits him, of course. At other times he and other Dems play to groups which they consider their base and emphasize that they will not "compromise" with conservatives.
When I worked with abused children at a Women's Shelter, I always said, "If some abuser wants to give me money so I can stop him from abusing, I'm happy to take it."
That $15,000 from ADF is $15,000 saved from the money we'll have to raise to protect abortion rights and gay marriage.
I would never want to organize side by side with anyone who doesn’t respect me or my own rights, and with the right wing militia I find it hard to believe they are big supporters of women’s rights. I mean, some of them maybe, but overall, I just don’t see it.
That said, if I am being honest, I will let those people do heavy lifting on this topic if they want to go block these insane bills or laws that erase women as a biological sex. I mean, it’s not like the world is listening to women when they stand for actual women’s rights. Only when the so called rights they fight for are for the sole benefit of men (sex workers, trans BS, stuff like that).
So I stand firmly and speak openly about my support of women, and that we are fighting literally based on our material biological reality. Full stop.
But in this political nuthouse where the lunatics have taken over the asylum, I won’t fight alongside any of those hate mongers, but I also don’t have boo to say if they are the ones who stop this crazy train. Because no one is going to do it for the benefit of women, as far as I can see.
If anything, this has been the final frontier for my own awakening. Seeing how fast people whom I once loved and respected turned on women as a class over the idea that any man can be a woman if he feels like it, and will even do a better job, well, that says it all. I despise the fake values and self-righteous preaching of liberals and progressives as much as I do any conservative fundamentalist. In fact, I see no difference. Except the liberals and progressives are often much more educated and worldly so in a way it is worse, since they have no excuse for being such indoctrinated sheep.
I live for the day when this all comes down on them.
So yeah, right wing, left wing, centrist…it matters not to me anymore. I just hope someone can slow this down to help the young people being sacrificed to this men’s rights movement. And to bring back at bare minimum the definition of woman into law.
This is such a good response. Your focus on principles rather than parties and ideologies is the only way we’ll be able to create a consensus that’s not dependent on speech codes and the inevitable feuds and cancellations. When you say “right wing, left wing, centrist…it matters not to me anymore,” I’m with you. The corruption of the Democratic party, specifically its zeal for censorship, has driven me away. This doesn’t mean I walked across the street and registered as a Republican. The political dyad is irrelevant, because neither party reflects the spectrum of my values, grounded in civil liberties.
When I say that I’m not looking for a coalition with, for instance, Matt Walsh and his right-wing colleagues at the Daily Wire, it’s not because he’s a man or because his documentary “What Is A Woman” has no value. On the contrary, that film has had a very positive impact by highlighting how bonkers trans ideology is. It’s because at their core, Walsh and his buddies are paternalistic, anti-feminist, anti-choice conservatives. One of the false narratives coming from them is that women have been sitting around doing nothing about the trans issue and therefore the men needed to step up and take over. The ahistorical ignorance of decades of feminist resistance and the ghosting of radical feminist action by the media continues to the present moment.
Indeed, even successful activism around sports by conservative WOMEN, through the International Women’s Forum, receives very little attention in the mainstream media.
Because of conflicts in values, coalitions can be untenable. But to win, we should welcome the participation of everyone who gets it, even if we don’t agree on much else. Kara was correct to talk to the Left’s incarnation of Lord Voldemort, i.e., Tucker Carlson. She went where she would be heard, and where her message would be treated with respect and disseminated widely. Which it was. Imagine that.
It sure seems like this is a religious fight. Trans ideology is a religious cult like movement. Having Muslims and Christian’s on our side is good. Truth is truth no matter political party. Kellie was just on Jordan Peterson podcast and she is an Atheist. Anyone promoting nuclear family isn’t trying to take rights away from women and children. Let women speak has been met with some serious hazards. If police are not going to protect then having bodyguards is necessary, agree not radical right armed guys but this is a fight to be heard. I would say the typical nightclub bouncer might be a good middle ground.
For better or worse, I think women are going to have to win this without male *protectors*. Needing a male chaperone in public doesn’t look like liberation.
Hmmm the radical trans are males! Maybe call Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and ask for liberation support. All kidding aside their are some strong female University Presidents, maybe that can be a place to start a domino effect.
Ms. Dansky is brilliant as usual, and I also note that she's allowing herself to be put on the defensive by criticism from trans-captivated lefties regurgitating BS TRA talking points.
Just a reminder, they are not doing that because they have the slightest interest in hearing your justification. They're doing it to make us look bad, make us less effective and to sap our confidence and will.
What if, the next time the champagne liberals trot out the "wOrKiNg wItH rIgHt-wInGeRs" canard, our response, instead of "B-b-b-b-but Oren and TED", was "YOU'RE being stupid, passing up the opportunity to further your goals with temporary alliances. YOU care more about your group's self-image than your group's effectiveness. How do you justify that with your donors?"
I don't see much difference between what KJK does, hiring security, which may or may not be right-wing, in order to prevent violence, and what, for example, WDI does with its avowed non-violent events, in which they depend on hired police to hopefully bring their assailants to justice after the fact, or depend on outrage generated by the violence perpetrated on them in order to bring about political clampdowns on those assailants after the fact.
Political clampdowns are, of course, enforced by men and women hired to be violent if needed. And police may or may not be right-wing. Just like those hired security guys.
I fully support what WDI does. I just don't support needless pretense. See above if you're sorting New First, below if Top First.
Please don't pretend that non-violence is a virtue. It's a tactic, and an effective one if done right.
Gandhi didn't espouse non-violence on principle. He espoused non-violence because his movement lacked the means to violence, so he chose the most effective tactic given the circumstances, and played up the virtue angle to make the Brits back home who influenced policy feel guilty and push for change.
WDI and other groups advocating for women's sex-based rights and the safety of children do NOT engage in non-violent protest with the hope that our assailants will be brought to justice after the fact. We are not trying to "bring about political clampdowns on those assailants after the fact" either. What NVDA (non-violent direct action) seeks to do is to make visible the violence and threat of violence that is in fact used by those in power to maintain their power, whether they act on behalf of a government or on behalf of a group like transgender activists. We know that RARELY is anyone ever arrested or prosecuted for assaulting people who have engaged in NVDA. But public opinion can be greatly influenced, as we saw in the 1960s when the Freedom Riders in the South were brutalized and that got national and local media coverage, resulting in a big shift in public support for Black civil rights which enabled civil rights laws to be passed. The problem is getting the media to report on how transactivists and their supporters do assault women who attempt to speak about women's sex-based rights and how the gender movement is harming those rights. The Black civil rights movement did not always get coverage of how white supremacists attached Black protesters, but they persisted until the media did start providing coverage. Television, a new medium in the 1950s, was particularly important because then people could actually SEE and HEAR how Jim Crow supporters assaulted and murdered civil rights advocates, including children. No newspaper or radio coverage could ever be as gripping as watching what happened on television.
Eh, you're pretending not to see how the non-violence tactic works. "Getting the media to report" and "influencing public opinion" lead (hopefully) to what? Changes in policies, laws......? And who enforces those?
Face it. In the end, our society depends on those willing to be violent in order to keep order. Whether it's before the fact, as in KJK's case, or after the fact, as in WDI's case.
The question ultimately is how, and for whose benefit, governments will use their police and military forces, which of course both employ violence and threats of violence. But governments need broad public support to continue to exist and to avoid rebellions and revolutions. By using non-violent direct action protests, the Black civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s succeeded in exposing the violence used by Jim Crow local and state governments, and built public support for the federal government deploying federal forces in the South to escort Black children to formerly all-white schools. And to pass and enforce civil rights laws. If Black protesters in the 1950s and 1960s had physically fought back against racist Jim Crow governments, that just would have given white supremacists the excuse to say "See how these people are animals! Violent animals! Not worthy of civil rights!" That was why it was a mistake for the Black Panthers and other groups to show off their guns and talk about "Black Power" as if they could shoot their way to freedoms they were being denied.
While I understand the intent of this piece, and would agree were I to think the assumptions made by the author about the political reality of the physical confrontations at these rallies, it’s difficult for me to think that splitting hairs as she does is constructive.
It’s difficult for me to believe that a government (the US government, specifically), which wholeheartedly supports the most dangerous and pernicious aspects of trans ideology at federal levels, is not secretly funding and supporting antifa as a false flag operation.
This would achieve two aims. One of which is delegitimization of leftists in general, but men on the left in particular. This divides people who identify aa left from those who identify as right. It also serves to separate leftist women from leftist men.
Division is how ruling elites maintain rule. To continue to pretend that the US has a functional left in power, or that Pelosi and Schumer are leftist in anything other than name, is laughable. The Overton window has been pushed so far to the right that only social justice issues are considered issues relevant to divisions between left and right ideology.
Abortion has been similarly used as a political football to divide the population in the US for decades, despite most of the nation agreeing on wanting fewer wars of empire, with more funding for education and healthcare. Pelosi and Schumer pretend to want the latter, but suspiciously only achieve more wars, with the occasional social justice ‘victory’ to legitimize their financial tyranny, together with Republican elites, to disenfranchise us all.
It is the financial aspects of the left right divide that are most important to improving social justice for all. The rest is divisive rhetoric. Economic power leads naturally to political power. Bernie Sanders was vilified by ‘feminists’ for espousing this over the nebulous empty feminist rhetoric of Hillary Clinton. She didn’t even openly support full abortion rights until relatively recently.
Antifa militants have a shocking amount of time on their hands to harass women at rallies in many places. They are given suspicious leeway from attendant law enforcement, in the US and Europe, where neoliberal insistence on austerity for the masses is pushed to continue allowing a financial aristocracy, be it hereditary or corporate in origin.
MLK preached equality for all. Ending the billionaire class and wars of imperialism would go further toward that end than all this infighting over affirmative action and sex-based rights. Vilifying leftist men and criticizing radical feminists for allying with men on the right certainly prevents solidarity between radical feminists and men, period.
Working with people across the aisle is a good and necessary thing to do, especially with regard to the really heinous atrocities that are committed against women today. Many, many people share a similar vision of what is right and just here, though, of course will not agree on all things politically speaking. I think that Kara's points illustrate clearly that progress is being made.
As a woman, I support women-only groups, gatherings, etc.
But, Kara, this is not just a women's issue. The matter of what's happening to children alone makes it an issue for every person female or male. The matter of Big Brother-like forces persuading swaths of the population that War is Peace, Men are Women, and 2 + 2 =5 makes it an issue for every person, female or male. Etc, etc. etc. It is a mistake to label fighting the Gender Cult a women's issue, because it ignores the reality that it is more than that.
In all my years of business, I’ve found that in financial partnerships, there’s always one which receives the lion’s share of the benefits, and it’s almost never the smaller entity.
Likewise, In the past, the web of power relationships between feminists and right wing groups was unnerving for me. I watched, read, and lived through it in the 80’s while in University.
I saw Feminism and Gay life inextricably intertwined. Low status and institutional discrimination against gays is strongest in societies where there is low status and institutional discrimination against women.
Having said that, The MacKinnon/Dworkin alignment with the Meese Commission on pornography was particularly unfortunate since they managed to get gay and lesbian sex swept up in their baldly authoritarian anti-sex campaigns in “defense of women and children,” (in their words). Well, we know how well that anti-porn thing spectacularly failed…
The reality is that status of women was strengthened by title IX and other statutes, not by fighting depictions of sex, however rancid. More women graduate universities and move into higher paying positions than men today, statistically. That wasn’t due to trying to ban “Hustler”.
[The slogan coined by feminist Robin Morgan (Ms. Magazine Editor), “Pornography is the Theory, Rape is the Practice,” for example of a bizarre outcome.]
It’s the osmotic branding of all feminism as anti-sex from this alignment which became destructive. The imbalance ate them alive.
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As long as your program is strengthening women’s political and legal rights which it is, as opposed to somehow creating or supporting legal oppression of women who do not wish to live in traditionalist conservative models, all power to you.
It’s threading that fine line - fighting sex essentialism disguised as “gender” fiction vs pro-women autonomy vs traditionalism … that’s going to be the trick.
In a twist of historical complexity, porn has won the day -- to the point where young girls are exposed to it, in school, by their under 18 male peers showing it off on their smartphones.
So "pro-sex" and "anti-sex" is too simple a binary to deal with this issue. Your reference point is the 80s. That was then. This is the internet Only Fans now.
There are no walls anymore between a porn subculture and the internet culture that's raising our kids.
Misguided alignment with the right to “fight” porn only made 80’s feminists look emotionally stunted and sadly authoritarian. The point isn’t porn, it’s misalignment since you inherit features of the source of funds. Emotionally stunted and sadly authoritarian was an 80’s model. There’s a difference between voting together and taking funding. I believe the entire homophobic and anti-woman infrastructure of gender debate is due to funding dependencies created with GLBT organizations.
Agh. Being anti-porn was bad -- because the effort failed? The % of women who graduate college is evidence........that opposing porn was a bad idea? Your lazy reasoning collapses immediately under scrutiny.
Sorry to break it to you, but everyone outside of woke academia immediately recognizes "essentialism" as the BS obscuritive buzzword that it is. Why not just admit you dislike reality and prefer to reject it whenever it suits you?
The fight was not only ill-conceived but failed at what it tried. Women as a class advanced irrespective of what they wave of feminists decided was key issue (porn), clarifying that their concepts were irrelevant. By appearing both sexually illiberal and wrong, they became a point of humor instead of leadership.
When you take money you inherit features of the donor class. Voting together is not the same as being bought.
Oh goodness, it’s time to crack open the books Hazel. You’re hopelessly outdated, and ill-informed, perhaps start with Judith Butler and then read in expanding circles. But this posting was not about porn, but about being alignment with the right. Your obsession with porn is detracting from the focus.
There's some truth in the claim made by people on the right that progressives "eat their own" and use the "circular firing squad" to keep people in line. The rigidity and lack of nuance is, as you put it, dumb, to say nothing of counterproductive. Why shouldn't you talk to Tucker Carlson, the most famous TV journalist in the country? He understands the issue, he's respectful, supportive and a good listener. If Rachel Maddow invited you to talk to her and offered 1/20th of the positive publicity that you've received from Tucker, of course you would accept. Which begs the question: why hasn't she? What's wrong with the Democrats?
I'm also with you 100% on maintaining a wall between feminists and right-wing militia groups and distinguishing ourselves from them and other right-wing groups. No thank you. Supportive comments from gender-critical men like Andrew Doyle and Douglas Murray are always welcomed, but that's a different matter.
In terms of overall support, however, trans is not just a women's issue and many fathers are outspoken critics because they love their children. The fearless Billboard Chris comes to mind. Trans is a hydra, and male children are terribly affected by trans ideology. So yes, it's a woman's issue, but parents of trans-identified kids can be allies too.
As a follow-up to my above comment, among diehard liberals, I’ve often received more understanding and empathy from men than from women regarding sex-segregated spaces. My brother-in-law understood why women wouldn’t want to share a locker room with men, because he wouldn’t want to share a locker room with women, it would make him uncomfortable to get undressed or to see women undressed. And the sports issue is obvious to him, whereas my sister is defensive and skeptical. She also fixates on trans-identified male prisoners who are targets of rape by other men. They’re so oppressed! They need protection! But men rape women too, I said, to which she replied, how many of them are there, what’s the big deal? How many rapes would be an acceptable number? I asked. That was a conversation stopper.
I think you mean Douglas Murray, not Dennis?
Yes, thank you for the correction.
I just didn't want people googling Dennis Murray and not finding whom you really meant! I recently made a similar mistake in including the wrong last name and led people on a wild goose chase!
No apologies needed, I really appreciate it. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one.
I appreciate the clear thinking and logic that informs what Kara writes here. With regard to working across the political aisle in a strategic, targeted manner, here are two more examples to bear in mind:
1. Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch working across the aisle on several issues, including the ADA, CHIP, and the Ryan White Act.
2. Very recently, Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham co-writing an op-Ed in the New York Times on reining in Big Tech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/lindsey-graham-elizabeth-warren-big-tech-regulation.html
In the history of the United States, most laws passed by Congress have received bipartisan support and so have most laws passed by state legislatures. Most decisions of the US Supreme Court, including in recent years, have been supported by some "liberal" justices and by some "conservative" justices. Overall, there is great public support for bipartisanship. Democratic politicians know this and so sometimes someone like Biden will tout his experience with working "across the aisle". When it suits him, of course. At other times he and other Dems play to groups which they consider their base and emphasize that they will not "compromise" with conservatives.
When I worked with abused children at a Women's Shelter, I always said, "If some abuser wants to give me money so I can stop him from abusing, I'm happy to take it."
That $15,000 from ADF is $15,000 saved from the money we'll have to raise to protect abortion rights and gay marriage.
I would never want to organize side by side with anyone who doesn’t respect me or my own rights, and with the right wing militia I find it hard to believe they are big supporters of women’s rights. I mean, some of them maybe, but overall, I just don’t see it.
That said, if I am being honest, I will let those people do heavy lifting on this topic if they want to go block these insane bills or laws that erase women as a biological sex. I mean, it’s not like the world is listening to women when they stand for actual women’s rights. Only when the so called rights they fight for are for the sole benefit of men (sex workers, trans BS, stuff like that).
So I stand firmly and speak openly about my support of women, and that we are fighting literally based on our material biological reality. Full stop.
But in this political nuthouse where the lunatics have taken over the asylum, I won’t fight alongside any of those hate mongers, but I also don’t have boo to say if they are the ones who stop this crazy train. Because no one is going to do it for the benefit of women, as far as I can see.
If anything, this has been the final frontier for my own awakening. Seeing how fast people whom I once loved and respected turned on women as a class over the idea that any man can be a woman if he feels like it, and will even do a better job, well, that says it all. I despise the fake values and self-righteous preaching of liberals and progressives as much as I do any conservative fundamentalist. In fact, I see no difference. Except the liberals and progressives are often much more educated and worldly so in a way it is worse, since they have no excuse for being such indoctrinated sheep.
I live for the day when this all comes down on them.
So yeah, right wing, left wing, centrist…it matters not to me anymore. I just hope someone can slow this down to help the young people being sacrificed to this men’s rights movement. And to bring back at bare minimum the definition of woman into law.
This is such a good response. Your focus on principles rather than parties and ideologies is the only way we’ll be able to create a consensus that’s not dependent on speech codes and the inevitable feuds and cancellations. When you say “right wing, left wing, centrist…it matters not to me anymore,” I’m with you. The corruption of the Democratic party, specifically its zeal for censorship, has driven me away. This doesn’t mean I walked across the street and registered as a Republican. The political dyad is irrelevant, because neither party reflects the spectrum of my values, grounded in civil liberties.
When I say that I’m not looking for a coalition with, for instance, Matt Walsh and his right-wing colleagues at the Daily Wire, it’s not because he’s a man or because his documentary “What Is A Woman” has no value. On the contrary, that film has had a very positive impact by highlighting how bonkers trans ideology is. It’s because at their core, Walsh and his buddies are paternalistic, anti-feminist, anti-choice conservatives. One of the false narratives coming from them is that women have been sitting around doing nothing about the trans issue and therefore the men needed to step up and take over. The ahistorical ignorance of decades of feminist resistance and the ghosting of radical feminist action by the media continues to the present moment.
Indeed, even successful activism around sports by conservative WOMEN, through the International Women’s Forum, receives very little attention in the mainstream media.
Because of conflicts in values, coalitions can be untenable. But to win, we should welcome the participation of everyone who gets it, even if we don’t agree on much else. Kara was correct to talk to the Left’s incarnation of Lord Voldemort, i.e., Tucker Carlson. She went where she would be heard, and where her message would be treated with respect and disseminated widely. Which it was. Imagine that.
It sure seems like this is a religious fight. Trans ideology is a religious cult like movement. Having Muslims and Christian’s on our side is good. Truth is truth no matter political party. Kellie was just on Jordan Peterson podcast and she is an Atheist. Anyone promoting nuclear family isn’t trying to take rights away from women and children. Let women speak has been met with some serious hazards. If police are not going to protect then having bodyguards is necessary, agree not radical right armed guys but this is a fight to be heard. I would say the typical nightclub bouncer might be a good middle ground.
For better or worse, I think women are going to have to win this without male *protectors*. Needing a male chaperone in public doesn’t look like liberation.
Perhaps you haven't seen who the protective Stewards are at women's rights events in recent years. They're mostly women.
Hmmm the radical trans are males! Maybe call Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and ask for liberation support. All kidding aside their are some strong female University Presidents, maybe that can be a place to start a domino effect.
Ms. Dansky is brilliant as usual, and I also note that she's allowing herself to be put on the defensive by criticism from trans-captivated lefties regurgitating BS TRA talking points.
Just a reminder, they are not doing that because they have the slightest interest in hearing your justification. They're doing it to make us look bad, make us less effective and to sap our confidence and will.
What if, the next time the champagne liberals trot out the "wOrKiNg wItH rIgHt-wInGeRs" canard, our response, instead of "B-b-b-b-but Oren and TED", was "YOU'RE being stupid, passing up the opportunity to further your goals with temporary alliances. YOU care more about your group's self-image than your group's effectiveness. How do you justify that with your donors?"
I don't see much difference between what KJK does, hiring security, which may or may not be right-wing, in order to prevent violence, and what, for example, WDI does with its avowed non-violent events, in which they depend on hired police to hopefully bring their assailants to justice after the fact, or depend on outrage generated by the violence perpetrated on them in order to bring about political clampdowns on those assailants after the fact.
Political clampdowns are, of course, enforced by men and women hired to be violent if needed. And police may or may not be right-wing. Just like those hired security guys.
WDI USA’s nonviolent protests neither hire police nor depend on them.
I fully support what WDI does. I just don't support needless pretense. See above if you're sorting New First, below if Top First.
Please don't pretend that non-violence is a virtue. It's a tactic, and an effective one if done right.
Gandhi didn't espouse non-violence on principle. He espoused non-violence because his movement lacked the means to violence, so he chose the most effective tactic given the circumstances, and played up the virtue angle to make the Brits back home who influenced policy feel guilty and push for change.
WDI and other groups advocating for women's sex-based rights and the safety of children do NOT engage in non-violent protest with the hope that our assailants will be brought to justice after the fact. We are not trying to "bring about political clampdowns on those assailants after the fact" either. What NVDA (non-violent direct action) seeks to do is to make visible the violence and threat of violence that is in fact used by those in power to maintain their power, whether they act on behalf of a government or on behalf of a group like transgender activists. We know that RARELY is anyone ever arrested or prosecuted for assaulting people who have engaged in NVDA. But public opinion can be greatly influenced, as we saw in the 1960s when the Freedom Riders in the South were brutalized and that got national and local media coverage, resulting in a big shift in public support for Black civil rights which enabled civil rights laws to be passed. The problem is getting the media to report on how transactivists and their supporters do assault women who attempt to speak about women's sex-based rights and how the gender movement is harming those rights. The Black civil rights movement did not always get coverage of how white supremacists attached Black protesters, but they persisted until the media did start providing coverage. Television, a new medium in the 1950s, was particularly important because then people could actually SEE and HEAR how Jim Crow supporters assaulted and murdered civil rights advocates, including children. No newspaper or radio coverage could ever be as gripping as watching what happened on television.
Eh, you're pretending not to see how the non-violence tactic works. "Getting the media to report" and "influencing public opinion" lead (hopefully) to what? Changes in policies, laws......? And who enforces those?
Face it. In the end, our society depends on those willing to be violent in order to keep order. Whether it's before the fact, as in KJK's case, or after the fact, as in WDI's case.
The question ultimately is how, and for whose benefit, governments will use their police and military forces, which of course both employ violence and threats of violence. But governments need broad public support to continue to exist and to avoid rebellions and revolutions. By using non-violent direct action protests, the Black civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s succeeded in exposing the violence used by Jim Crow local and state governments, and built public support for the federal government deploying federal forces in the South to escort Black children to formerly all-white schools. And to pass and enforce civil rights laws. If Black protesters in the 1950s and 1960s had physically fought back against racist Jim Crow governments, that just would have given white supremacists the excuse to say "See how these people are animals! Violent animals! Not worthy of civil rights!" That was why it was a mistake for the Black Panthers and other groups to show off their guns and talk about "Black Power" as if they could shoot their way to freedoms they were being denied.
Yep, I agree it's a great tactic, the best in certain circumstances.
While I understand the intent of this piece, and would agree were I to think the assumptions made by the author about the political reality of the physical confrontations at these rallies, it’s difficult for me to think that splitting hairs as she does is constructive.
It’s difficult for me to believe that a government (the US government, specifically), which wholeheartedly supports the most dangerous and pernicious aspects of trans ideology at federal levels, is not secretly funding and supporting antifa as a false flag operation.
This would achieve two aims. One of which is delegitimization of leftists in general, but men on the left in particular. This divides people who identify aa left from those who identify as right. It also serves to separate leftist women from leftist men.
Division is how ruling elites maintain rule. To continue to pretend that the US has a functional left in power, or that Pelosi and Schumer are leftist in anything other than name, is laughable. The Overton window has been pushed so far to the right that only social justice issues are considered issues relevant to divisions between left and right ideology.
Abortion has been similarly used as a political football to divide the population in the US for decades, despite most of the nation agreeing on wanting fewer wars of empire, with more funding for education and healthcare. Pelosi and Schumer pretend to want the latter, but suspiciously only achieve more wars, with the occasional social justice ‘victory’ to legitimize their financial tyranny, together with Republican elites, to disenfranchise us all.
It is the financial aspects of the left right divide that are most important to improving social justice for all. The rest is divisive rhetoric. Economic power leads naturally to political power. Bernie Sanders was vilified by ‘feminists’ for espousing this over the nebulous empty feminist rhetoric of Hillary Clinton. She didn’t even openly support full abortion rights until relatively recently.
Antifa militants have a shocking amount of time on their hands to harass women at rallies in many places. They are given suspicious leeway from attendant law enforcement, in the US and Europe, where neoliberal insistence on austerity for the masses is pushed to continue allowing a financial aristocracy, be it hereditary or corporate in origin.
MLK preached equality for all. Ending the billionaire class and wars of imperialism would go further toward that end than all this infighting over affirmative action and sex-based rights. Vilifying leftist men and criticizing radical feminists for allying with men on the right certainly prevents solidarity between radical feminists and men, period.
Working with people across the aisle is a good and necessary thing to do, especially with regard to the really heinous atrocities that are committed against women today. Many, many people share a similar vision of what is right and just here, though, of course will not agree on all things politically speaking. I think that Kara's points illustrate clearly that progress is being made.
As a woman, I support women-only groups, gatherings, etc.
But, Kara, this is not just a women's issue. The matter of what's happening to children alone makes it an issue for every person female or male. The matter of Big Brother-like forces persuading swaths of the population that War is Peace, Men are Women, and 2 + 2 =5 makes it an issue for every person, female or male. Etc, etc. etc. It is a mistake to label fighting the Gender Cult a women's issue, because it ignores the reality that it is more than that.
Also: we can't lament extreme polarization if we are not willing to find shared meeting points.
In all my years of business, I’ve found that in financial partnerships, there’s always one which receives the lion’s share of the benefits, and it’s almost never the smaller entity.
Likewise, In the past, the web of power relationships between feminists and right wing groups was unnerving for me. I watched, read, and lived through it in the 80’s while in University.
I saw Feminism and Gay life inextricably intertwined. Low status and institutional discrimination against gays is strongest in societies where there is low status and institutional discrimination against women.
Having said that, The MacKinnon/Dworkin alignment with the Meese Commission on pornography was particularly unfortunate since they managed to get gay and lesbian sex swept up in their baldly authoritarian anti-sex campaigns in “defense of women and children,” (in their words). Well, we know how well that anti-porn thing spectacularly failed…
The reality is that status of women was strengthened by title IX and other statutes, not by fighting depictions of sex, however rancid. More women graduate universities and move into higher paying positions than men today, statistically. That wasn’t due to trying to ban “Hustler”.
[The slogan coined by feminist Robin Morgan (Ms. Magazine Editor), “Pornography is the Theory, Rape is the Practice,” for example of a bizarre outcome.]
It’s the osmotic branding of all feminism as anti-sex from this alignment which became destructive. The imbalance ate them alive.
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As long as your program is strengthening women’s political and legal rights which it is, as opposed to somehow creating or supporting legal oppression of women who do not wish to live in traditionalist conservative models, all power to you.
It’s threading that fine line - fighting sex essentialism disguised as “gender” fiction vs pro-women autonomy vs traditionalism … that’s going to be the trick.
In a twist of historical complexity, porn has won the day -- to the point where young girls are exposed to it, in school, by their under 18 male peers showing it off on their smartphones.
So "pro-sex" and "anti-sex" is too simple a binary to deal with this issue. Your reference point is the 80s. That was then. This is the internet Only Fans now.
There are no walls anymore between a porn subculture and the internet culture that's raising our kids.
Misguided alignment with the right to “fight” porn only made 80’s feminists look emotionally stunted and sadly authoritarian. The point isn’t porn, it’s misalignment since you inherit features of the source of funds. Emotionally stunted and sadly authoritarian was an 80’s model. There’s a difference between voting together and taking funding. I believe the entire homophobic and anti-woman infrastructure of gender debate is due to funding dependencies created with GLBT organizations.
On the contrary, it's porn addicts who are the emotionally stunted ones.
Agh. Being anti-porn was bad -- because the effort failed? The % of women who graduate college is evidence........that opposing porn was a bad idea? Your lazy reasoning collapses immediately under scrutiny.
Sorry to break it to you, but everyone outside of woke academia immediately recognizes "essentialism" as the BS obscuritive buzzword that it is. Why not just admit you dislike reality and prefer to reject it whenever it suits you?
The fight was not only ill-conceived but failed at what it tried. Women as a class advanced irrespective of what they wave of feminists decided was key issue (porn), clarifying that their concepts were irrelevant. By appearing both sexually illiberal and wrong, they became a point of humor instead of leadership.
When you take money you inherit features of the donor class. Voting together is not the same as being bought.
Your lame attempt at hand-waving to distract from your BS arguments being exposed is the only ill-conceived thing I see here.
The only people who had (or have) a problem with feminist anti-porn arguments are emotionally stunted men.
Oh goodness, it’s time to crack open the books Hazel. You’re hopelessly outdated, and ill-informed, perhaps start with Judith Butler and then read in expanding circles. But this posting was not about porn, but about being alignment with the right. Your obsession with porn is detracting from the focus.
Uh huh. The person who brought up the topic of porn and talking about porn in every post insists it's not about porn.
And Butler? Folks, we've got a Butler-endorsing, porn-promoting pedo-apologist on our hands here. Shouldn't you be on r/trans or r/askAGP right now?
Ok, got it.
People banning books with naked people are the emotionally sophisticated ones, contrary to several decades of debate.
Porn addicts?
Not that they were even the subject of the conversation, clearly they’re meaningful to you, as if porn were an actual addiction.
The subject was debating aligning with the far right through financial resources, to clarify, and past dangers.
Look at the apologist for violently misogynist pornography trying to pass it off as "books with naked people"!
That's some TRA-level gaslighting.
Ah, yes. the British expounding on what's wrong with America.
The same people who call women "cows" and use "c*nt" as an everyday insult.
Quelle surprise.
Ah, yes, British people pronouncing themselves experts on America.
Quelle surprise.