This is a great video from the Washington Post. Having that perspective from outside the UK is useful, because it can be surprising to find out that the UK version of transphobia is pervasive, as...
This is a great video from the Washington Post. Having that perspective from outside the UK is useful, because it can be surprising to find out that the UK version of transphobia is pervasive, as often from the left as well as the right, not solely tied to religious organisation, and often from people describing themselves as feminist.
Does anyone know why trans-exclusionary ideas gained so much prominence on the left and in academia/media in Britain? I vaguely remember reading something about how the origins date back to the...
Does anyone know why trans-exclusionary ideas gained so much prominence on the left and in academia/media in Britain? I vaguely remember reading something about how the origins date back to the CND movements in the 1970s and 80s.
A curious facet of the groundswell of TERFism in Britain is that, in fact, the phenomenon was born in the United States. It emerged out the shattered remnants of the 1960s New Left, a paranoid faction of American 1970s radical feminism that the historian Alice Echols termed “cultural feminism” to distinguish it, and its wounded attachment to the suffering-based femaleness it purports to celebrate, from other strands of women’s liberation.
The movement crossed over to Britain in the 1980s, when cultural feminism was among the lesbian-separatist elements of antinuclear protest groups who saw themselves as part of a “feminist resistance” to patriarchal science, taking a stand against nuclear weapons, test-tube babies and male-to-female transsexual surgery alike.
In America, however, TERFism today is a scattered community in its death throes, mourning the loss of its last spaces, like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which ended in 2015. And so the strangely virulent form that TERFism takes in Britain today, and its influence within the British establishment, requires its own separate, and multipronged, explanation.
Ms. Parker and Ms. Long may not know it, but they’re likely influenced by the legacy of the British “Skepticism” movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, which mobilized against the perceived spread of postmodernism in English universities as well as homeopathy and so-called “junk science.” Hence, the impulse among TERFs to proclaim their “no-nonsense” character; witness the billboard Ms. Parker paid to have put up last fall dryly defining a woman as an “adult human female.” Such a posture positions queer theory and activism as individualistic, narcissistic and thus somehow fundamentally un-British.
It’s also worth noting that the obsession with supposed “biological realities” of people like Ms. Parker is part of a long tradition of British feminism interacting with colonialism and empire. Imperial Britain imposed policies to enforce heterosexuality and the gender binary, while simultaneously constructing the racial “other” as not only fundamentally different, but freighted with sexual menace; from there, it’s not a big leap to see sexual menace in any sort of “other,” and “biological realities” as essential and immutable. (Significantly, many Irish feminists have rejected Britain’s TERFism, citing their experience of colonialism explicitly as part of the reason.)
But perhaps the biggest factor in the rise of TERFism has been the relative dearth of social movements in Britain over the past three decades. It’s telling that Ms. Parker thinks it was the United States that exported “political correctness” and ideas like “gender identity” to Britain; it might even be fair to say that she’s right.
In other parts of the world, including America, mass movements in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s around the effects of globalization and police brutality have produced long overdue dialogue on race, gender and class, and how they all interact. In Britain, however, the space for this sort of dialogue has been much more limited. As a result, middle- and upper-class white feminists have not received the pummeling from black and indigenous feminists that their American counterparts have, and thus, their perspectives retain a credibility and a level of influence in Britain that the Michigan Womyn’s Festival could have only dreamed of.
This account seems to be too focused on the ivory tower stuff and not everyday stuff. I see a lot of similarities between TERF hysteria and the pedophile hysteria that was pervasive in the UK in...
This account seems to be too focused on the ivory tower stuff and not everyday stuff. I see a lot of similarities between TERF hysteria and the pedophile hysteria that was pervasive in the UK in the early aughts. In both cases it seems to be driven heavily by fear-mongering from their tabloid press. The US doesn't have the same sort of tabloid culture as the UK does, which tends to be way more structured and cynical than ours', which is more chaotic and snarky.
Even in OP's video they specifically reference the fearmongering being written in tabloids. Especially when one of them mentions how many people who likely have never or will never meet a Trans person are getting so worked up about it even though it has no bearing on their lives.
Yes, but not just tabloids. Transphobic misinformation is in supposedly quality newspapers like the Telegraph, the Times, and the Guardian. It's also in other print media like the Economist and...
Yes, but not just tabloids. Transphobic misinformation is in supposedly quality newspapers like the Telegraph, the Times, and the Guardian. It's also in other print media like the Economist and Spectator. And it's rampant on the BBC - Newsnight and Panorama run anti-trans stories without balance.
Indeed, and the Vox article even covered that mainstream media aspect in the UK too, which is why I mentioned it. E.g. From the article: p.s. I included all the hyperlinks in that quote since...
Indeed, and the Vox article even covered that mainstream media aspect in the UK too, which is why I mentioned it. E.g. From the article:
TERF ideology has become the de facto face of feminism in the UK, helped along by media leadership from Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London. Any vague opposition to gender-critical thought in the UK brings along accusations of “silencing women” and a splashy feature or op-ed in a British national newspaper. Australian radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys went before the UK Parliament in March 2018 and declared that trans women are “parasites,” language that sounds an awful lot like Trump speaking about immigrants.
p.s. I included all the hyperlinks in that quote since they're all worth clicking on for more info/context/evidence, especially the de facto face one. But the whole Vox article, and all the hyperlinks in it, genuinely are well worth reading, IMO. It's a thorough and very well-sourced breakdown of the TERF movement, even though it does focus primarily on the US.
I was looking for something focused on the ivory tower, because a) I remember reading that particular NYT article; and b) what happens in the ivory tower and activist spaces eventually tends to...
I was looking for something focused on the ivory tower, because a) I remember reading that particular NYT article; and b) what happens in the ivory tower and activist spaces eventually tends to trickle down into mainstream society.
This is a great video from the Washington Post. Having that perspective from outside the UK is useful, because it can be surprising to find out that the UK version of transphobia is pervasive, as often from the left as well as the right, not solely tied to religious organisation, and often from people describing themselves as feminist.
That last part we already knew... JK Rowling is sort of infamous in trans circles.
Does anyone know why trans-exclusionary ideas gained so much prominence on the left and in academia/media in Britain? I vaguely remember reading something about how the origins date back to the CND movements in the 1970s and 80s.
How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans
p.s. Another article that is well worth reading is Vox's The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained.
This account seems to be too focused on the ivory tower stuff and not everyday stuff. I see a lot of similarities between TERF hysteria and the pedophile hysteria that was pervasive in the UK in the early aughts. In both cases it seems to be driven heavily by fear-mongering from their tabloid press. The US doesn't have the same sort of tabloid culture as the UK does, which tends to be way more structured and cynical than ours', which is more chaotic and snarky.
Even in OP's video they specifically reference the fearmongering being written in tabloids. Especially when one of them mentions how many people who likely have never or will never meet a Trans person are getting so worked up about it even though it has no bearing on their lives.
Yes, but not just tabloids. Transphobic misinformation is in supposedly quality newspapers like the Telegraph, the Times, and the Guardian. It's also in other print media like the Economist and Spectator. And it's rampant on the BBC - Newsnight and Panorama run anti-trans stories without balance.
Indeed, and the Vox article even covered that mainstream media aspect in the UK too, which is why I mentioned it. E.g. From the article:
p.s. I included all the hyperlinks in that quote since they're all worth clicking on for more info/context/evidence, especially the de facto face one. But the whole Vox article, and all the hyperlinks in it, genuinely are well worth reading, IMO. It's a thorough and very well-sourced breakdown of the TERF movement, even though it does focus primarily on the US.
I was looking for something focused on the ivory tower, because a) I remember reading that particular NYT article; and b) what happens in the ivory tower and activist spaces eventually tends to trickle down into mainstream society.
Thanks mate!