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"Members of the gender critical movement are increasingly sharing anti-trans content from members of the far right. In addition, members of the far-right are showing growing appreciation for the gender critical movement. This growing accord between the far right and the gender critical movement over their anti-trans stances is a worrying trend that suggests both a mainstreaming of the far right, using transphobia as a ticket into other spaces, as well as a radicalisation of people who would otherwise not praise open fascists.
[...]
"This syndication of far-right figures and sources by the gender critical movement is not an isolated incident. Trans Safety Network have previously documented this convergence, and noted when mainstream gender critical figures have shared information from far right sources, including their direct communication with those sources in order to help construct narratives.
[...]
"The gender critical movement and the far right appear to accord very strongly on the topic of trans rights. This pattern of GC groups sharing content from far-right sources, and far-right sources sharing content from GC sourc es is worrying in that it both demonstrates a potential entrypoint into far-right radicalism for GCs, as well as a route for fascists and the far-right to enter more mainstream conversations and spaces, using transphobia as their invitation."
-- Meryl Links (minusplnp) and Mallory Moore (
Chican3ry), "Gender Critical and Fascist social media increasingly promoting each other" 2022-01-22 (the evidence is in the bits I elided, so click on through for supporting examples)
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Similarly, the models they envision would exclude a lot of trans people who have medical needs such as hormones and surgery. But it gets more overt with that, with two of the leaders of Deep Green Resistance, Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith, who expressed their transphobia in a lot more overt ways. Here is one of the other founders, Aric McBay, who left the organization after a trans-inclusive policy was cancelled in 2012.
Here are the receipts. TW TW TW
Here's Vancouver's Media Coop talking about it.
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Thank you so much!
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Also, if I wind up writing about this (on
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I also don't identify as an anarchist anymore (though I support a lot of anarchist ideas!), largely because bullshit like this led me to conclude that working with ideologically oriented, sectarian groups is a lot of frustration for very little payoff. So I do not speak for all anarchists. In general most anarchist tendencies are kind of broad tent and were accepting of these people who think that 90% of the human population needs to die, at least until they went explicitly TERF.
Also, if I wind up writing about this (on [community profile] sylloge_of_soughs) do you want credit/a call out?
Oh, sure! I am no expert, though, just a political dilettante.
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Whenever anyone starts going on about freedom, it's important to ask "freedom to what?"
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I'm generally of the opinion that there are better ways to organize society than the one we have, and a lot of anarchist principles go a fair way in doing improving matters. But I also lived in collective houses and worked in collectives and found that weirdly, the burden of the less glamorous work, be it dishes and toilets or tabling at the 'zine fair, mysteriously always ended up being done by women while the men did the important work of talking and thinking. So I am a little skeptical that we can all function in the complete absence of a state.
That said, I am in favour of abolishing a lot of the things that states currently do that are not useful, and focusing on things like healthcare, education, transportation, and environmental regulation, which are actually socially valuable.
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I have a theory! Well, a bunch of theories, actually.
First and foremost, I think TERFs are not unlike a female version of the Log Cabin Republicans. I think whether or not one is attracted to fascistic and bigoted politics is a matter of personality and character, and all things being equal, those vary pretty independently of one's sexual orientation or gender identity. The "problem", of course, for LGBTQ people (and women) who want to join in on the fascist fun is that the fascists don't want them. They have two options. Either give up on bigotry and admit that even if they see the appeal, it's wrong, and they know it's wrong from direct experience + the Golden Rule. Or adopt the principle, "No, see, I'm one of the good ones! You're wrong to be prejudiced against my identity, but it's totally fine to be prejudiced against all those other identities. Prejudice is totally fine! Just mistaken in the case of my minority identity. And I totally agree that some of the people in my minority – maybe even a lot – are just like your stereotypes say, and totally worthy of condemnation and contempt. But not all of us! See, I'm okay! Hey, I'll even help you discriminate between the Good Ones like me and all the Bad Ones."
Which is what gets us people like Blair White, for a really obvious case. I just think TERFs are an unobvious case of the same thing.
Which ties into another theory of mine. TERFs make a lot more sense if you start from the hypothesis that what's actually going on with them is that, contrary to what they espouse, they are all deeply misogynist. If you ignore what they say and observe what they do, it turns out that what a TERF is, in practice, is someone who moves in on feminist spaces to attack other women. All of their most avid policies and principles are about discriminating between the "good" women and the "bad" women and punishing the bad women. These are the people in favor of prosecuting sex workers – a category they themselves conceptualize as exclusively women. These are the people who want to criminalize BDSM – or at least when women participate in it, given they don't care about what happens between consenting men. I gather these are the people responsible for a bunch of really foul movements on Tumblr, all of which turn out the necessitate attacking women.
So of course they attack trans women. Trans women commit the most egregious outrage in the mind of a misogynist: they demonstrate valuing womanhood. That completely wrecks their narrative that obviously everyone scorns women and would never voluntarily be one. That's unforgivable.
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As a corollary, TERFs and the far-right both have very essentialist views of women. TERFs want to dance naked and smear themselves in menstrual blood as tribute to the Goddess or whatever they're into and the far-right wants to enslave women in the home, but both accept woman as Other, as opposed to a human entitled to equal amounts of dignity and human rights. A TERF, when pressed, may suggest that women are inherently superior to men, but a far-right type will also argue that (and that's why they need to be protected at all costs from feminism, brown people, the vote, etc.) through the "Angel of the House" rhetoric.
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Yeah, makes sense. I think gender essentialism and misogyny are deeply intertwined, at least currently.
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