Acknowledging reality, is what this about.  Prioritizing women’s struggle against gender or glorifying the concept that enslaves women in patriarchy.  Women who dare to speak out against patriarchy, as always, are singled out and laid bare for threats and abuse.  Thank you to the brave tenacious women who dare to soldier on with their ‘heretical’ messages and disagreements.  Telling the emperor that he has no clothes, speaking truth to power, addressing the root problems of society – this is the wheelhouse of radical feminist politics and ideology.

This is an excerpt from The New Statesmen that describes the power of the ‘newspeak’ gender identity movement and how it is attempting to silence debate and discussion of gender politics and ideology.

 

“Another thing we are supposed to deny is the differences that now exist among self-identified trans women. The category has broadened over time to encompass more biologically male individuals who have not modified their bodies, and who in some cases do not live permanently as women, but alternate between male and female identities. Their status as women is based on a combination of performative declarations that they are women, and surface features of ‘gender presentation’ like the names they use and the clothes they wear. Nevertheless, they invoke the ‘trans women are women’ principle: if you identify as female then you are female, and should be treated as such by others. In some circles it is considered transphobic for women to question the presence of people with openly displayed male sexual organs in spaces like communal female changing rooms, or for lesbian women to refuse to recognise those people as potential sexual partners (a resistance sometimes referred to as ‘the cotton ceiling’, a phrase which smacks of misogyny and male entitlement). It isn’t just radical feminists who find this problematic: some trans women do too. Is that really just irrational bigotry?

During the debate on the Observer letter, a man who had finally grasped what the trans v TERF dispute was about tweeted (I paraphrase for his own protection): ‘So, you’re saying we have to pretend to believe lies to be nice. Like saying I think cats can fly’. To avoid giving offence to a minority group — or to avoid persecution by its most extreme and vocal members — it’s as if we have all agreed to live in a fantasy world where reality is whatever certain people say it is. My penis is female. It is exclusionary for feminists to talk about female bodies. Cats can fly. Ignorance is knowledge.

A TERF is not someone who disputes trans people’s right to exist. What s/he disputes is the right of a small subset of trans extremists to impose their definition of reality, and their political agenda, on everyone. A TERF is someone prepared to say that the Emperor has no clothes. Though I understand their fears, it troubles me that we have got to the point where people like Mary Beard and Peter Tatchell feel obliged to throw the TERFs to the wolves rather than stand up to the Emperor and his court. ”

Amen to the last two paragraphs.