I’ve been calling gender ideology/queer theory a form of grooming for a number of years, but Twitter deleted my account so you’ll have to take my word for it. Here’s a perfect example. Lauren Rowello has been groomed and is now grooming her readership.
"Angela Mason, Stonewall’s Director through most of the 1990s, wrote in Stonewall 25, "the need to create a shared sense of identity, a shared understanding of injustice, is common to all emancipation movements." But the yoking of T to the LGB undoes this; there can be no sense of commonality with a demographic whose ascension rests upon the suppression of others. Unsurprisingly, to those who are same-sex attracted, sex matters. To those who identify as transgender, sex itself is something to be overcome as discriminatory and outdated. Acceptance of the nonsense science of "gender identity" is at odds both with the liberation of women, and the advancement of lesbian and gay communities"
I have a reliable shortcut when faced with some new hot take on gender ideology… just ask how it affects the lives of young lesbians, because the combination of being young, gay and female must feel impossibly stressful at this point. LGB Alliance need our support.
Some of the comments on that Lauren Rowello thread are disheartening too. Lots of people saying ‘See! This is what we said would happen if you allowed gay marriage’. Wish I could wave my wand and let everyone understand what’s happening and who’s doing this.
Well isn’t there a point in regards to gay marriage or same sex marriage? An institution that was always for heterosexual couples until about 5 minutes ago. I am gay myself. And I ponder the wisdom of gay marriage. Love is Love. Inclusion without exception. Defining perfectly respectable objections to gay marriage as bigoted? Which became as I saw it as a bullying tactic . Once the fight over gay marriage was won. What’s next? The castle walls are open. It’s all about transgressing cultural norms. There I think has been a very worrying tendency to label objections to ‘gay rights’ with the automatic label of ‘homophobia’. So people shy away from the argument. Just sit back and agree. The TRA movement have picked up this baton and run with it. Along with the whole weirdo creepy pride month/season flag waving self celebratory LGBTQ+ rainbow flag where we all get co opted into a community. It becomes a cult. Love is Love doesn't tangibly mean anything and so therefore the movement becomes everything. We are all here, for the most part, because of loving heterosexual relationships that birthed us and brought us up. It is the underpinning of any civilisation. It is why we exist. The Gay / Lesbian movement need to consider there role in society. Does it need now that it is more socially acceptable to become more conservative? Or is it always there as a bulwark to push back against social norms. I think any movement that has resulted in the lunacy of saying men can be women and visa versa and this becoming a mantra that must not be critiqued has problems. And the whole issue of telling little kids they may have been born in the wrong body is obscene. Transgenderism highlights I would say the danger of the modern left. Along with the critical race theory being pushed now in US. A hodge podge of contradictory illiberal bollox on stilts. That can only be continued by uttering mantras. It can’t brook debate because it can’t debate. If you disagree with a TRA your a transphobe if you disagree with the premise of CRT you are racist. It’s quite hilarious, in a dark way, to see all the lefties realise what they’ve done in the US. Elected a party / presidency that is obliterating the idea of sex over gender identity and is now doubling down on CRT. You live and you learn. The Democrats are the party of a long institutional history of racism. But get a pass because they are of the ‘left’. Strange Fruit indeed.
It’s an interesting point re: gay marriage, until I started reading lesbian feminists’ works I hadn’t really considered the hetero marriage link. I must admit I have always viewed marriage as a legal contract invariably protecting assets, and thought why shouldn’t gay men and lesbians be afforded those protections… Reading more, as with most issues it’s not quite that simple.
In NZ we have the excellent Property Relationship Act 1976 to deal with assets, unpaid labor, children’s costs and economic disparity in common law relationships.
In the UK I was a bit cynical about gay marriage but for political reasons. Tony Blair, who had repealed the horrible Clause 28 then set up 'civil partnership' to give gay couple legal and financial security. This was the vital part.
David Cameron, who supported the homophobic Clause 28 and did not vote to repeal it only enabled gay marriage to court the gay vote. This bit of window dressing cost his government nothing to enact and made him look liberal. It upset a lot of Christians but he figured they vote Tory anyway so why worry about them. Pure manipulation.
There was a healthy controversy in gay liberation circles in the mid-90s about marriage. On one side, those who sought to establish homosexuality, to normalise it, to make it indistinguishable and unremarkable ... on the other, those who believed that the 'transgressive' aspect of it was precious and essential, who sought to preserve the edgy, outsidery, "queer" characteristics of the culture and community that had been formed in earlier, oppressive times.
For me, the queer crew seem like the Deaf essentialists who oppose hearing aids. I understand why you might want to value and preserve Sign Language and the culture of your community, but if you CAN heal your hearing ... once that's a real option ... what's the right thing to do, to cling to the old and familiar ways or embrace the new potential?
So with gay liberation, we have an odd mix of both. Gay lives are entirely established, normalised and institutionalised with marriage equality (like many here I remain unconvinced there was truly a need for anything more than civil partnerships) and at the same time there's a travelling circus of alphabet activism amplifying the 'transgressive' angle, a new Queering (or re-Queering) crew.
Anyway, tl;dr - there is no essential reason for LGB lives to be seen as transgressive, this is a political choice.
The problem is, that if I click on their click bait they will carry on writing articles like this because that’s how they make money now. It’s a vicious circle of outrage, our side needs to be far more strategic.
We need to repeatedly state the case for material reality. I have nothing but gratitude for the feminists that initially spoke out, but we need this to go mainstream and by focussing on a feminist perspective we alienate so many people that don't consider themselves part of that movement. Ultimately this is a fight for material reality and we are at the point now that if we are really strategic we can build momentum and a grass roots uprising against Queer Theory and our WokoHaram overlords.
the gc argument is a feminist argument -where we need to consider how the structures of power - 'patriarchy'- are formed because we all need to understand the structural underpinnings of post modern/queer ideologies. - pomo was created to be a post marxist argument / using divide and rule stratagies and pursuing separate strands of 'identity' politics. these strands liberal feminism or gender ideology or crt have somehow come together in a power grab.
sorry the above reply was a rushed response and was unclear. you are right that that the gc argument needs to go mainstream, and if the general population get to hear the gc critique of queer theory then they will be in a better position to understand feminist insights. for example kelly j (on yt) was wondering why some young women are supporting the the transactivist stance and considering that maybe its because they don't know what is harmful -to themselves - (sorry about the clumsy paraphrasing).
in our porn-normalised and image saturated culture i dont think its easy for women young or old to dismiss the easy availability of cosmetic/aesthetic surgery for visually unappealing physical features. image Branding promotes self-change rather than accepting yourself. also surgery might be attractive to young women so they can erase the body parts that are desired and often misused by others. feminism does argue that women do not need to be feminine and present in a feminine way (by questioning stereotypes/and being gender non conforming), or that we should be judged by our appearances.
most of the problem with identity politics is how the activists spread their message (not always the content). critical race theory recognises that racism is systematic and promoted by powerful institutions, like the feminist idea of sexism in the patriarchy- and it took me a long long time to really understand what patriarchy means . (more on crt at https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05).
queer theorists/ideology pushers have taken advantage of the 'intersectional' feminist critique of white academic feminism of the seventies (see audre lorde and mary daly), by tagging along and hiding in plain sight - shouting down their opponents and calling them terfs/anti-semitic/racists etc. whilst *academics* erase feminst knowledge from educational institutions and rewrite feminism as transfeminism.
feminism is a group effort - and without discussion feminism couldn't move forward. the lesbian feminist separatism that sprung from the second wave might have a been a tactical retreat (and about finding and making the space to speculate and create a future vision) but the ongoing insights of intersectional feminists are vital for a greater understanding of women's collective experience. (sara ahmed - https://feministkilljoys.com/)
"Lauren Rowello lives in the Philadelphia area. This writer, educator, and activist is interested in sharing stories of authenticity and resistance. She is a former sex worker and teen parent who is working on a memoir about that experience and is now married to a woman she loves almost as much as her French Mastiff."
The wonderful thing about civil partnerships and gay marriage is that it has finally pushed governments to have civil partnerships for hetero couples. No longer is marriage the only way forward...
But gay marriage was needed as gay people in couplehood were denied the safeguards that married people have enjoyed for so long. There was no way governments were going to change their minds on equality and inclusion of "married rights".
Stonewall is no longer fit for purpose. This is a good read for those fairly new to the debate:
https://4w.pub/the-fall-of-stonewall/
A quote on why gay and trans rights conflict:
"Angela Mason, Stonewall’s Director through most of the 1990s, wrote in Stonewall 25, "the need to create a shared sense of identity, a shared understanding of injustice, is common to all emancipation movements." But the yoking of T to the LGB undoes this; there can be no sense of commonality with a demographic whose ascension rests upon the suppression of others. Unsurprisingly, to those who are same-sex attracted, sex matters. To those who identify as transgender, sex itself is something to be overcome as discriminatory and outdated. Acceptance of the nonsense science of "gender identity" is at odds both with the liberation of women, and the advancement of lesbian and gay communities"
The article is by JO BARTOSCH - 30 SEP 2020
Gary Powell also wrote a great piece on the homophobia of the transgender movement. Well-worth a read but I suspect you have read it already.
I'll take a link if you have one. I might have read it but my mind is like a sieve some days.
Certainly https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/04/gary-powell-how-the-new-anti-lgb-fundamentalism-of-gender-extremism-mirrors-the-homophobia-of-the-1980s/
That's also an excellent read
I have a reliable shortcut when faced with some new hot take on gender ideology… just ask how it affects the lives of young lesbians, because the combination of being young, gay and female must feel impossibly stressful at this point. LGB Alliance need our support.
We believe you! CJ Liberte's article in Lesbian and Gay News expands on the sensible dissenters - https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/06/cj-liberte-i-dont-think-kink-belongs-at-pride/ and yes, as a hetero, I'm proud to support the LGB Alliance. We all need the Alliance.
Hear hear!
Some of the comments on that Lauren Rowello thread are disheartening too. Lots of people saying ‘See! This is what we said would happen if you allowed gay marriage’. Wish I could wave my wand and let everyone understand what’s happening and who’s doing this.
Well isn’t there a point in regards to gay marriage or same sex marriage? An institution that was always for heterosexual couples until about 5 minutes ago. I am gay myself. And I ponder the wisdom of gay marriage. Love is Love. Inclusion without exception. Defining perfectly respectable objections to gay marriage as bigoted? Which became as I saw it as a bullying tactic . Once the fight over gay marriage was won. What’s next? The castle walls are open. It’s all about transgressing cultural norms. There I think has been a very worrying tendency to label objections to ‘gay rights’ with the automatic label of ‘homophobia’. So people shy away from the argument. Just sit back and agree. The TRA movement have picked up this baton and run with it. Along with the whole weirdo creepy pride month/season flag waving self celebratory LGBTQ+ rainbow flag where we all get co opted into a community. It becomes a cult. Love is Love doesn't tangibly mean anything and so therefore the movement becomes everything. We are all here, for the most part, because of loving heterosexual relationships that birthed us and brought us up. It is the underpinning of any civilisation. It is why we exist. The Gay / Lesbian movement need to consider there role in society. Does it need now that it is more socially acceptable to become more conservative? Or is it always there as a bulwark to push back against social norms. I think any movement that has resulted in the lunacy of saying men can be women and visa versa and this becoming a mantra that must not be critiqued has problems. And the whole issue of telling little kids they may have been born in the wrong body is obscene. Transgenderism highlights I would say the danger of the modern left. Along with the critical race theory being pushed now in US. A hodge podge of contradictory illiberal bollox on stilts. That can only be continued by uttering mantras. It can’t brook debate because it can’t debate. If you disagree with a TRA your a transphobe if you disagree with the premise of CRT you are racist. It’s quite hilarious, in a dark way, to see all the lefties realise what they’ve done in the US. Elected a party / presidency that is obliterating the idea of sex over gender identity and is now doubling down on CRT. You live and you learn. The Democrats are the party of a long institutional history of racism. But get a pass because they are of the ‘left’. Strange Fruit indeed.
It’s an interesting point re: gay marriage, until I started reading lesbian feminists’ works I hadn’t really considered the hetero marriage link. I must admit I have always viewed marriage as a legal contract invariably protecting assets, and thought why shouldn’t gay men and lesbians be afforded those protections… Reading more, as with most issues it’s not quite that simple.
In NZ we have the excellent Property Relationship Act 1976 to deal with assets, unpaid labor, children’s costs and economic disparity in common law relationships.
In the UK I was a bit cynical about gay marriage but for political reasons. Tony Blair, who had repealed the horrible Clause 28 then set up 'civil partnership' to give gay couple legal and financial security. This was the vital part.
David Cameron, who supported the homophobic Clause 28 and did not vote to repeal it only enabled gay marriage to court the gay vote. This bit of window dressing cost his government nothing to enact and made him look liberal. It upset a lot of Christians but he figured they vote Tory anyway so why worry about them. Pure manipulation.
There was a healthy controversy in gay liberation circles in the mid-90s about marriage. On one side, those who sought to establish homosexuality, to normalise it, to make it indistinguishable and unremarkable ... on the other, those who believed that the 'transgressive' aspect of it was precious and essential, who sought to preserve the edgy, outsidery, "queer" characteristics of the culture and community that had been formed in earlier, oppressive times.
For me, the queer crew seem like the Deaf essentialists who oppose hearing aids. I understand why you might want to value and preserve Sign Language and the culture of your community, but if you CAN heal your hearing ... once that's a real option ... what's the right thing to do, to cling to the old and familiar ways or embrace the new potential?
So with gay liberation, we have an odd mix of both. Gay lives are entirely established, normalised and institutionalised with marriage equality (like many here I remain unconvinced there was truly a need for anything more than civil partnerships) and at the same time there's a travelling circus of alphabet activism amplifying the 'transgressive' angle, a new Queering (or re-Queering) crew.
Anyway, tl;dr - there is no essential reason for LGB lives to be seen as transgressive, this is a political choice.
Remember those halcyon days of ‘healthy controversy’ when we were ‘allowed’ debate and not be called bigots.
It's all part of the outrage cycle and we need to step away and stop being reactive. We need to set the agenda, not them.
The problem is, that if I click on their click bait they will carry on writing articles like this because that’s how they make money now. It’s a vicious circle of outrage, our side needs to be far more strategic.
The best practice is for the original poster to archive it and then post the archive link so they don't get the clicks.
We need to repeatedly state the case for material reality. I have nothing but gratitude for the feminists that initially spoke out, but we need this to go mainstream and by focussing on a feminist perspective we alienate so many people that don't consider themselves part of that movement. Ultimately this is a fight for material reality and we are at the point now that if we are really strategic we can build momentum and a grass roots uprising against Queer Theory and our WokoHaram overlords.
the gc argument is a feminist argument -where we need to consider how the structures of power - 'patriarchy'- are formed because we all need to understand the structural underpinnings of post modern/queer ideologies. - pomo was created to be a post marxist argument / using divide and rule stratagies and pursuing separate strands of 'identity' politics. these strands liberal feminism or gender ideology or crt have somehow come together in a power grab.
sorry the above reply was a rushed response and was unclear. you are right that that the gc argument needs to go mainstream, and if the general population get to hear the gc critique of queer theory then they will be in a better position to understand feminist insights. for example kelly j (on yt) was wondering why some young women are supporting the the transactivist stance and considering that maybe its because they don't know what is harmful -to themselves - (sorry about the clumsy paraphrasing).
in our porn-normalised and image saturated culture i dont think its easy for women young or old to dismiss the easy availability of cosmetic/aesthetic surgery for visually unappealing physical features. image Branding promotes self-change rather than accepting yourself. also surgery might be attractive to young women so they can erase the body parts that are desired and often misused by others. feminism does argue that women do not need to be feminine and present in a feminine way (by questioning stereotypes/and being gender non conforming), or that we should be judged by our appearances.
most of the problem with identity politics is how the activists spread their message (not always the content). critical race theory recognises that racism is systematic and promoted by powerful institutions, like the feminist idea of sexism in the patriarchy- and it took me a long long time to really understand what patriarchy means . (more on crt at https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05).
queer theorists/ideology pushers have taken advantage of the 'intersectional' feminist critique of white academic feminism of the seventies (see audre lorde and mary daly), by tagging along and hiding in plain sight - shouting down their opponents and calling them terfs/anti-semitic/racists etc. whilst *academics* erase feminst knowledge from educational institutions and rewrite feminism as transfeminism.
found a link for the open letter by audre lorde to mary daly https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordeopenlettertomarydaly.html
feminism is a group effort - and without discussion feminism couldn't move forward. the lesbian feminist separatism that sprung from the second wave might have a been a tactical retreat (and about finding and making the space to speculate and create a future vision) but the ongoing insights of intersectional feminists are vital for a greater understanding of women's collective experience. (sara ahmed - https://feministkilljoys.com/)
This reply to Mary Harrington’s tweet about the Lauren Rowello article explains a lot:
“This is the wife of an AGP being a good little soldier”
https://mobile.twitter.com/cashewsandeggs/status/1410378941777551360
Stockholm Syndrome?
Also, from Pulp:
"Lauren Rowello lives in the Philadelphia area. This writer, educator, and activist is interested in sharing stories of authenticity and resistance. She is a former sex worker and teen parent who is working on a memoir about that experience and is now married to a woman she loves almost as much as her French Mastiff."
I'll be very surprised if this lasts.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trans-come-out-lockdown-transgender-wife-introduce-colleagues-b425796.html
The wonderful thing about civil partnerships and gay marriage is that it has finally pushed governments to have civil partnerships for hetero couples. No longer is marriage the only way forward...
But gay marriage was needed as gay people in couplehood were denied the safeguards that married people have enjoyed for so long. There was no way governments were going to change their minds on equality and inclusion of "married rights".
"Casting out dicks in the name of Jesus"
😂
'Transgender' (as opposed to transsexual) is to be added to Dougal's list of things that don't exist