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@AnnetheQuene15 1)I think your thread is very valuable & you make some very valid points but here your argument is seriously flawed imo. You imply an equivalence between two entrenched and purely metaphysical positions. This is wrong in two major ways. Firstly, gender as a social construct is
@AnnetheQuene15 2) a very well evidenced, observable & often measurable social reality. See Prof. Cordelia Fine's books for instance for recent award winning scientific writing on the subject. Secondly, there's no equivalence in terms of the democratic nature & implications of those positions
@AnnetheQuene15 3) Central to the practice & underpinning ideas of proponents of self-ID & of gender identity is the attempt to legally impose & otherwise coercively impose disputed language & ideas, to deny women & trans people who disagree the right to hold meetings, campaign, meet MPs etc
@AnnetheQuene15 4) This has often involved a degree of violence or the threat of it. Consistently it has attempted to portray even socialist women as nazis and bigots in order to marginalise us and avoid any debate or scrutiny of their claims. If the basic democratic rights of working people
@AnnetheQuene15 5) are not the business of socialists then I don't know what is. It's a terrible mistake for socialists to look the other way in the interests of some superficially fair triangulation as feminists & socialist women are subject to a campaign aiming to criminalise and silence them
@AnnetheQuene15 6) In my opinion as a transwoman the movement is being very badly misled and it's central tenets are a fundamentalist conception of gender that's intrinsically sexist and anti-collectivist. For me, the defeat of this trans leadership & it's regressive ideas is the pre-condition
@AnnetheQuene15 7) for a genuinely progressive, anti-sexist trans movement to emerge & be in a position to work with a more united women's movement to confront male violence, toxic masculinity, the gender norms we are othered for transgressing & to challenge an elite which perpetuates it all
@AnnetheQuene15 8) If many more socialists spoke up to oppose hatred & prejudice against trans people, fight for service & healthcare improvements that do not impinge upon women AND opposed the sexist ideas & authoritarian practice of the trans leadership this could be achieved pretty rapidly
@AnnetheQuene15 9) These intolerant & sexist ideas are being taught in schools & police training rooms, universities & teen vogue. We're kidding ourselves if we believe simply opposing the self-ID push but not the ideas & anti-democratic methods that underpin it will end the toxicity & division
@AnnetheQuene15 10) There is no more important job for socialists than overcoming toxic divisions within the working class and progressive movements, but that has to be done on a principled and consistent basis of opposition to ALL oppression not by half-measures which seem politically expedient
