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I am glad to read Susan Stryker handled herself well.  She sounds like a thoughtful person.  

I had to wonder if your account of Julie Bindel was fair, but after following your link to her own words . . . um . . . she really is a crude, nasty, and unconcerned with rational discourse.  Her definition of woman as pure victim may be her experience, which would be sad, but when she assumes she can speak for feminism from this stance it is worse than sad, it is absurdly narrow.  

I can remember when feminism was very explicitly about over-coming oppression, and from that standpoint it is hard to see how seeking out new minorities to oppress would fit with that.  Since she herself claims to be "old school" she has no excuse.  But I see Bindel more as a psychological study rather than a sociological position:  She wants to abolish gender roles but her understanding of gender is so shallow that she cannot have the least clue how to go about it.  Since gender plays a role in just about every social interaction that a human can have, has she really given thought to restructuring every social interaction?  Never mind how to do it, just what the restructuring would consist of?  If she had, bothering transgender people would be very far down her list of concerns.  

But I suspect this is all psychologically driven, that she is not at all happy with herself, and that the idea that women could be happy with themselves as women (not self-defining themselves as victims) is not an idea she is willing to entertain, and thus MtF transgenders do hit a real nerve.  

I admit, her words remind me a bit of Janet(?) Raymond, "Transexual Empire" (from a couple of decades back) a very emotional and persuasive expose of the "transgender industry," which was fine, until you thought about it, and then it just all fell apart.  Raymond criticizes the doctors but saves her hatred for the patients, and then you begin to wonder.  I hope I am not projecting Raymond onto Bindel, but the style of thought did seem similar.  

 . . . Ah, well.  Good luck on the future of your account of this debate, Helen!  

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Sun Dec 7th, 2008 at 12:34:47 AM EST
I depends what "old-school" you mean and depends if the only oppression you recognise is global patriarchy.
My view of UK 2nd wave feminism during the 80s is that it was really essentialism, where womanhood was defined in opposition to patriarchy, and so a lot of victoriam mythologies of womanhood were dusted down and embraced as being a true reflection of who women were. Logically laughable, it was a sad reflection of the times that pointing such a thing out would have been considered a typically male position of logic that denied heart, emotion and feeling.

But yes, Raymond features, however Bindel's principal influence is the neo-Stalinist Sheila Jeffreys, whom she has interviewed several times for the Guardian. Jeffreys has a far wider set of hatreds than Raymond manages, becoming more of a feminist taliban imposing her world view and suppressing all others than challenging oppression per se.

I have heard tales of what she and her bullygirl supporters got up to in the 70s/80s that, if even remotely true, are genuinely nasty.


keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 7th, 2008 at 08:12:14 AM EST
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