(no subject)

[rozk]

Presidency - Good
Anti-gay marriage initiatives - Bad

Good luck with that...

*****

In other matters, Bindel has rejected the accusation that she is transphobic, and accused us of bullying her here. It is not bullying to make people accountable and people who are not part of a minority do not get to decide whether or not they are oppressing that minority. This is Progressive Politics 1.01 and I would have thought 'a long-time human rights campaigner' would get that.

Ben Summerskill of Stonewall has described our demonstration against him as 'a publicity stunt' as if the same is never true of any demo any time anywhere. An organization named after a riot has become pompous and stuffy - that is the way of the world, I guess.

Comments

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome quote from you they used, so clear. Brilliant :)

[(Anonymous)]

You wrote "people who are not part of a minority do not get to decide whether or not they are oppressing that minority."

I would have thought that the single most repeated lesson from the Facebook transactions we had with her was her belief that the victimisation which she wraps around herself gives her the right to determine the meaning of all discussions she has with anybody. The mention of Dr boynton was instructive in her original statement (however veiled) because it hows her using similar tactics on a totally unrelated subject.

She is not threatened, but she runs around saying we threaten her.

She is not libeled, but she runs off to lawyers and issues statements saying she's been libelled.

So it's obvious she cannnot be transphobic. Because she says so, even when her every statement on the subject is definitively so.

A question re Bindel

[(Anonymous)]

One thing I don't get about bindel and you probably know more about this than most so perheps you can answer.

She is a feminist who gives all her energies to women's issues, writing about the awful realities which some women's lives. She devotes nothing to men or male issues as being a wasteful diversion of her energy. All well and good and, in some ways, almost admirable.

So if she thinks that transgender MtFs were men and remain men, why does she waste her time on us ?

I know that little about her makes any sense when examined deeply, but this is so obviously contradictory I wonder she's not seen it herself.

Re: A question re Bindel

[rozk.livejournal.com]

This is partly because she is deeply worried and freaked out by trans men - she has said that it concerns her that psychiatrists might have categorized her as one when she was younger. In her Guardian piece, My trans mission she says 'As someone who spurned dolls and make-up as a child, I find it deeply troubling that, had I gone to one of the specialist psychiatrists while growing up and explained how I did not feel like a "real girl" (which I did not, because I wanted to be a lesbian), I could be writing this as a trans man.'

It is also because she just wants to maintain the dichotomy between biology and social construction as much as she possibly can, and trans people are inconvenient to that.

It is also because many of us answer back, these days, and don't want her sympathy or her crocodile tears.

Re: A question re Bindel

[galamb-borong.livejournal.com]

'As someone who spurned dolls and make-up as a child, I find it deeply troubling that, had I gone to one of the specialist psychiatrists while growing up and explained how I did not feel like a "real girl" (which I did not, because I wanted to be a lesbian), I could be writing this as a trans man.'

The phrasing makes it sound like a job choice. I can almost hear the voice-over: "Even as a child, Ms. Bindel knew she wanted to be a career lesbian..."

It's strange, but for a lesbian Ms. Bindel seems locked into traditional heteronormative gender roles in her thinking. I get the feeling she feels trans men are lost, confused lesbians.

"Someone who spurned dolls and make-up as a child..."

A girl could do that and be totally heterosexual.

A girl could do that and be lesbian.

A girl could do that and identify as male.

A girl could also love "dolls and make-up" and identify as male.

A girl could do that and identify as any mixture of those things and everything in between.

I do realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but the idea that gender identity and sexual orientation are related but separate concepts seems so basic to me that I find myself baffled when educated people either don't - or choose not to - see it.

Re: A question re Bindel

[redbird]

A girl could do that and be happily bisexual, which I suspect is another excluded middle in that woman's world.

[misspearlygates.livejournal.com]

These bully tactics will not stop me from exercising my freedom of speech.

I think it's telling that her final argument is "Screw you, I'll say what I want," rather than "I never said what you claim that I said." I wasn't even aware of Bindel before you alerted me to her existence, and I am more disgusted with her every time she comes back to my attention.

[natalie-456.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure she's actually like "Screw you, I'll say what I want" and then on being called to account for it she takes the tone of "I never said what you claim that I said, and if I did, I didn't mean it to cause offense" when what she is say is plain offensive.

Thanks for the link - the best part is that anyone who reads that (who, say for example, knew nothing of who any of the people involved were and had some ideas of what the Stonewall riots were and what Stonewall as a group should be idealy stand for) would come away with a good idea that Bindel is just a bit of a fool.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

And then she says, "I apologised! Why are you still going on about that?"

[misspearlygates.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've followed links to places where she does that. But you'd think that she'd at least be smart enough—or have the guts—to be consistent. Well, I'd expect that. Maybe my expectations are too high. People tell me I'm an excessively logical person at times.

[oatc.livejournal.com]

"...Bindel is just a bit of a fool"

She is far more dangerous and crazy than that. Do you not realise how long this hatred goes back, or how far it has been carried, or how much harm it has done? Not only Bindel (over many years, long before she was writing in the press), but her many friends and colleagues? She is only the thrusting, public face in London of three decades of active hatred.