I took some time today to view the petition to fire/no-platform Meghan Murphy. I was interested in what these people who are calling for the burning of the witch had to say. Their petition tantrum has about 900 signatures.
I’m signing because as a sex worker, I am disgusted that Rabble publishes her garbage. I refuse to even read Rabble anymore because of it.
Meghan Murphy publishes intensely transphobic and sex-worker phobic material that has no place in a feminist publication. You have to do better, Rabble.
Sex work is real work!
Everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
less terfs more surf
Meghan Murphy’s effect on culture is detrimental to my well-being.
Meghan Murphy and all the other TERFs need to go… this is not what a real feminist looks like.
Meghan Murphy is an embarrassment; a anti-black, transphobic embarrassment.
I’m signing because I am a feminist who believes in and respects all women, including those that Meghan Murphy would malign.
My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.
Murphy is a transphobe and a sex work hater and that is no feminist.
A racist, transphobe and anti-sex work rad fem should not have a platform on a “progressive” publication. She actually causes damage and in some cases death to trans women with her hate.
Canadian feminism can do far, far better than someone who is capitalizing on hatred of sex-workers and trans*persons.
The name calling is rife in these comments, as I predicted. Neoliberals are notorious for screaming bad words without an ounce of analysis. I find it odd they think she’s alone in her analysis, as if there aren’t any women who agree with her critiques of the global sex industry, sexual objectification, and transpolitics. I suppose it’s wishful thinking on their part. It should’ve been so easy to take Murphy down, just like MRA’s do.
Currently there are over 1500 signatures on the petition I started to support her. What about the women all over the world who signed in support of her? Are they intersectional enough for you? To think there are no aboriginal, black and Asian women that have signed my petition and stand against the sex industry is very naive. It’s almost as if these people who started this ruckus are more concerned with their own navels.
I can name the organizations right here in Vancouver that represent WoC against the sex industry. Do these fascists live under a rock?
It’s not OK to advocate in opposition to the factual basis of the lived experiences of other people.
It’s time for ALL WOMEN to be accepted, respected, and honored. Period.
Feminism includes all women, not just the women you morally approve of. All women count, not just your favourites.
This is precious. What about my lived experience as a former prostituted woman? What about my experience as a Canadian immigrant? It’s as if these people don’t even think about what’s coming out of their mouths.
Let’s look at some of the comments from men.
I’m signing because exclusionary radical feminism, from which Ms. Murphy not only gets her beliefs but also makes her trade, is a corruption of a social movement which is meant to be powerful and uplifting, especially for those who have been most challenged by our unjust society.
So this dude isn’t happy because he doesn’t feel powerful and uplifted in radical feminism. Oh boohoo, welcome to the women’s movement dude. You’re not supposed to be comfortable. Women aren’t living and breathing to uplift you.
Dehumanization and discrimination against women solely due to their gender status, race, and/or individual consensual sexual preferences, have absolutely NO PLACE on the Left or in feminism.
Except when you’re doing it to her, right dude?
Everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
Except her, right dude?
These people want their own echo chamber. They’re not willing to respond with research and data. It reminds me of what MRA’s did when they found out they couldn’t put just any old bullshit on Wikipedia. They stomped off in a tantrum and started their own wiki called ‘Wikimannia.’
Let’s also remember what happened when MRA’s in Gamergate got upset with Wikipedia. They attacked a bunch of long standing editors and had them silenced.
This is fascism. Feminism is not about cutting women down who disagree with you. Judging by the hashtag these fascists started on Twitter, they haven’t learned a damn thing. It’s ok to burn the witch if she doesn’t march to your drum beat.
These people could be actually doing something constructive rather than trying to cut a woman down. Since they can’t honestly approach the arguments this is the juvenile tactics they employ. I know all about it. It was done to me for almost 2 years.
In 2009-11 I was bullied by the pro-prostitution lobby, which still happens to me today just on a lesser scale. These people stooped so low as to make up false personas to get the personal information of the handful of feminists who didn’t agree with them. Some of them posted images of me they scoured the net with. They made endless videos. One of them even accused me of making a false rape accusation against a man. They made fun of my body, specifically my vagina. They false flagged my work and took down 2 of my channels. Anything they found of mine online they twisted to suit their needs. I was called every nasty name in the book while they went totally about their bullying. This went on for two years straight.
It drove some of us away. Some of us couldn’t tolerate the constant personal attacks. They used whatever strategy necessary to silence others while holding up the banner of feminism and equality.
I’m a very hearty, determined person but I must say, it got to me. Nobody can be that thick skinned. I was banned from two reddit sites, labeled a transphobe for knowing that males are not females. I was called a racist, a bigot, and all the other labels they could find.
One time I stood up for a woman-only pharmacy here in Vancouver. Women in my community desperately needed it since our reproductive health is a huge issue for us. As soon as the pharmacy opened, it was attacked by transactivists. I wrote a comment to one of these transactivists that politely stated the reasons for women’s health needs. Women who need specialized care due to our biology? TRANSPHOBE!!!!!
Women’s spaces have been few and far between and bitterly gained. The erosion of our voices, spaces and our specific needs are considered ‘transmisogyny’ by those who haven’t lived a day of our experience. This is, in my view, criminal. It’s criminal to dismiss our unique oppression as women.
Lesbians and our allies have had to fight kicking and screaming for a single woman only event, Michfest. Women trying to come together in groups are being no-platformed, gatherings cancelled, our sparse female culture and arts are being destroyed daily. This cannot stand.
The neoliberal insistence upon intersectionality doesn’t apply to women or lesbians. Like good women are supposed to, we are supposed to give up our spaces and voices in order to appease and validate others who have no idea, no conception of our lives. We’re supposed to shrink and get as small as possible in public.
The bottom line is this. Men are not women. If you are born a male you are a male. You are not a female. You do not, and never will experience life as a woman. You can spend money on hormones, surgeries and a huge wardrobe of dresses and makeup but you will never be female. This is a fact. Instead of trying to force a falsehood down our throats like a dick in porn, instead of penetrating our space, make your own. We fought hard for what little we have and you’re not entitled to it.
You’ve shown you don’t respect us at all. You insist we be available to validate you but you constantly erase us. We are different. Intersectionality you say? Oh, it’s only intersectionality for you.
Would you demand to be included in Aboriginal space? African American space?
So why the hell is it ok to demand access to WOMEN ONLY space? Tell me. Why is it ok? Why is it ok to murder female culture?
We will not yield. Women have been yielding since the day we were born. Women aren’t even allowed to be born in some countries.
Your threats of violence only make us more determined. Our voices are growing. Like the men you are you want to kill us off cuz let’s face it, that’s what men have been doing for centuries.
Now, let’s address the fact that A Voice for Men, the largest men’s rights misogynist wank fest, is in bed with y’all.
AVFM published a piece today agreeing that Murphy is a ‘TERF’ witch who should be burned. Male support from all over huh? This is the same AVFM that published a piece today titled ‘Why Is Gynocentrism So Hard to Kill?’ Yes, why are women so hard to kill? A petition and a bunch of accusations should kill any woman.
He encourages his fellow MRA’s to join in bashing her on the hashtag. He’s completely lock step in line with the neoliberal term ‘agency’ even though that argument can be used against MRA’s
I suspect Murphy’s visceral disgust for Cox is that Cox’s agency in becoming an attractive women (surgery, money, diet, exercise, makeup, hair, etc.) is too mannish — in the sense of too active — for Murphy to tolerate:
Murphy’s views on men and trans folk are wretched but on other issues like censorship she is moderate and reasonable in ways rarely seen in other feminists.
I keep trying to tell other transwomen that they’re just being used by feminism. However many of them won’t listen. They think buying into feminism lock stock and barrel will give them the acceptance from women that they crave.
Feminism for now has their TERFs locked up in the basement but even so one or two escape now and then and manage to briefly get their hatred of transwomen heard.Praise and thanks are due to the writers and commentators at AVfM who have never taken this view.
* I got banned at ROK the second I revealed that I was a ‘tranny.’
How nice. You get banned in the Manosphere but hey, any old misogynist group who wants to destroy women can count you in.
I’d never thought I’d see the day when AVFM teams up with trans and pro-exploitation of women lobby! I’m so SHOCKED!
Sign my petition here.
Mancheeze 
What’s ironic is that Murphy rarely discusses transgender philosophy. I recently saw a radical feminist harshly criticizing her for avoiding the subject.
Nothing is good enough for these guys but complete capitulation. And it’s widely suspected that a lot of this criticism is coming from pimps posing as prostituted women.
I tried to sign your petition but kept getting error messages. Couldn’t figure out why. Thanks for doing that, anyway.
You’re not the first person whose had a hard time signing. If you aren’t in Canada maybe it blocks you out? I dunno.
I signed from the U.S., and it worked fine for me.
Hi Miep. The anti-Meghan petition appears to have been started by Maggie’s, a Toronto organisation who tries to normalize prostitution and who holds workshops for underage girls telling them they can be safe in prostitution. http://maggiestoronto.ca/
Black Lives Matter Toronto signed onto this? The pimps and trans got to them too I guess. Too bad.
I was very surprised to see that too. I’d like to think it was one person who has control of that particular branch who probably is a man and of course benefits from silencing a woman. These fascists going after Meghan don’t realize there are lots of black women who don’t agree with the translobby and the prostitution lobby. The pompous asses they are think that they speak for all black women and all trans and all prostitutes.
Did you read their ‘petition?’ It truly was a tantrum.
And all the prostituted women who have managed to escape it and support the Nordic model and Murphy’s arguments just don’t matter, right? And it ‘s holding prostituted women in contempt to write honestly about how viciously they are often treated by pimps and punters, to support more options for women, to support wanting women not to get trapped economically and psychologically in prostitution? It is contemptuous of women to want men to stop hurting us? Really?
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
Meghan Murphy racist? This gets more and more interesting.
I remember once some WOC called her a “media whore,” and she took issue with the language, which I supported. It’s one thing for a WOC to point out that female bloggers socially perceived as white have privilege, it’s quite another to use “whore” as an insult. Prostituted women are largely victims trapped in circumstances. But she got accused of racism for pointing out misogynist language usage.
She should take issue with it. Just b/c you’re in a minority group doesn’t give you the right to be a misogynist asshole. Oh and before idiots jump on this, transmisogyny is bullshit. Males aren’t females so misogyny doesn’t apply.
Most accusations of “transmisogyny” I’ve seen are either cases of misandry (disliking or hating trans women for being men or acting like men in all the worst possible ways you can think of) or transphobia.
Just this morning I saw a trans woman complaining about “transmisogyny” in the form of demonizing trans women for being sexually predatory. When people (myself included) note when trans women are sexually predatory, we’re taking stock of how that behavior is fundamentally male. If any hate or phobia applies, it would be misandry. Although really only a man would think criticism of sexual predation is irrational hatred.
If you break down the word, “transmisogyny” would more logically mean trans hatred of women, which is how I personally use it.
There are already some trans activists who are openly MRAs, but it’ll be a relief to me if/when all of the misogynists in the trans movement just admit they’re MRAs. That some pretend to care about women while scapegoating and witch-hunting any woman who disagrees is just really frustrating in a blood-pressure rising kind of way.
There have been some posts on Feminist Current that were somewhat trans critical, or at least willing to address the topic without parroting the current trans talking points. Murphy had a podcast with a gender-/trans-critical trans woman, and Murphy wrote a post about Mount Holyoke banning the Vagina Monologues. But very little of what she writes about addresses trans issues.
I feel like that’s the real crime in the eyes of trans activists. The worst thing to a narcissist isn’t to be hated, it’s to be ignored.
They’ll never admit they’re MRA’s, it would make it much harder to gaslight women.
You have a point about trans activists hating being ignored. Like maybe their issues aren’t the most important thing in the world after all.
It’ll be interested on hearing David Futrelle’s take on this. He hates Paul Elam, but he thinks TERF is an acceptable word to call women.
I generally like Futrelle but have to note that a comment I made not long ago about how women who want their own private spaces are called liars by the right wing MRAs and terfs by the left wingers — the comment went to moderation and never came out and I never got any note about why it was rejected. Guess australopithecene has explained why that is. Oh well.
He had a bunch of feminists, long term commenters telling him that terf is a misogynist term, and he was willing to tell them all to fuck off to please the trans faction. Blokes, they always let you down.
Yep. I was there for that scene. I wished everyone well and took off with all the other like-minded feminists who couldn’t take anymore of the “cis” bullshit. I remember posting that hateful, homophobic men are the ones who are violent towards trans (ergo, the issue should be taken up with men), and this one pomo dude jumped up my ass. He ignored the reality that women don’t wait in public bathrooms waiting to beat up trans people and suddenly, he was telling me he can get breast cancer too because of all the estrogen he gobbled down. And I was thinking to myself, “What the fuck are we talking about here? What’s happening? How did we get here?” In the meantime, all these brainwashed handmaidens (who were relatively new to the site and seemed to be trying on fun-feminism like it was a new, trendy outfit) were in the background cheering him on.
On the bright side, the incident made my feminism all the more radical. Thank you, Mr. Futrelle. I saw the light. Women’s voices are better heard in women-centered spaces that are run by women. That’s the only way we get a fair shake.
I never saw that thread and I’m glad I didn’t. It bothers me that women’s lives are being erased because a male decides he’s going to wear dresses and makeup and get off on it and expects women around him to bend over backwards to support his delusion.
David Futurelle wrote an extremely derogatory and dismissive (even outright misogynist, referring to her writing as “hysterical”) review of Andrea Dworkin.
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-16/books/bk-38664_1_andrea-dworkin
I’m guessing that he will have no sympathy for Ms. Murphy.
P.S. Thank you Mancheeze, for starting the petition.
He’ll have no sympathy for her at all. He likes that brand of feminism that doesn’t threaten the natural order
The review is fucking outrageous.
I like it that he thinks “seminal works” is a perverse term. And imagine thinking pornography actually happens, that real people are involved.
What an embarrassment of a review.
Wow. I read it. It reads like a literate version of something the Manosphere would write. Calling her hysterical and saying she gives no argument? Pot meet kettle. The argument is women’s lives, not some abstract language on a page. Dworkin was passionate about women’s lived experience, not about some high-brow philosophical treatise. She leaves that philosophy to the menz. After all it’s their world, their invention. The fact David didn’t see that speaks to his inability, and all men’s inability to comprehend what it is to be female.
I’ve gotten the impression that he changed the name of his blog because it was deemed offensive by trans women.
Which is too bad just in the sense of drawing attention to his blog. “Manboobz” is easier to remember, has a sense of humor, and somewhat references what his blog is about. “We hunted the mammoth” sounds like something written by a paleontologist.
It was more that he didn’t want to seem to snark at fat men, iirc. He always said the name Manboobz was a sort of stopgap name. Or maybe he just got sick of Elam et al calling him Manboobz …
The new name was poking at the MRAs who actually spout that line to women – we’re supposed to be eternally grateful because they (them! Personally!) hunted mammoth for us.
(Don’t think I’m defending him about anything, I was involved in that trans bullshit meltdown, one of a whole mountain range of peak trans moments. I’m using a different nym here.)
I know valeriekeefe and baileysummers on tumblr are trans women MRAs. How funny would it be if it was one of them who commented this?
Dirtywhiteboi exposed valeriekeefe as Sean Tisdall, a guy pretending to be a lesbian on-line years ago. Pertinent link: http://dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.ca/2010/07/exposing-trans-lies-and-misogyny-under.html
Valerie used to post on babble, the chat forum of rabble, years ago as “Red Tory Tea Girl.” He was given free rein to abuse women because of his claims of being trans. He left rabble when he started getting articles published on HuffPo.
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Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
Reblogged this on Gender Is War and commented:
“Burn the witch!”
Reblogged this on Dead Wild Roses and commented:
Shocking, yet unsurprising.
Your opinions about transgender people are sad. I hope that one day you might be more kind and compassionate.
My opinions? What are those again? Oh and please quote my words when you respond.
‘If you are born a male you are a male.’ It’s an old-fashioned view. It’s a cruel and heartless stance to take, and shows a complete inability to empathise. It’s sad to see, in the 21st century, an educated person taking such a closed-minded approach. I hope that one day you’ll lose your anger and learn to embrace other people. Peace.
So recognizing the reality that people cannot change sex is cruel? How is that cruel and angry?
You and I know this discussion could go on forever. The transgender question is complex across the board – biologically, physiologically, and so on. It’s a cop out, I know, but we’ll have to just agree to disagree.
So you don’t have anything you can name as cruel or twanzphobic. thanks for playing.
Just as I being a male can’t know what it is like to be a woman; both of us can not know what it is like to be transgender.
Yes there can be that argument that one can’t surgically alter their self to be completely of the opposite sex; or what is the root case of transgender.
But alas we are not transgender and will not understand or learn unless we listen.
Right. and MtT aren’t women. So they have no right to female space and culture.
Good for you. You just made my argument for me.
Adam, this may come as a great shock to you, but many women who consider themselves feminists of some stripe did indeed listen to male transgenders, feel sympathy, and try to be supportive, including myself. It was when they started threatening to rape and murder my friends and assaulting them in public and accusing lesbians of bigotry for not wanting to date men with penises who wear lady face, that my sympathy kind of evaporated.
They’re not all horrible, there are even a few standing up and calling out a lot of the crap spun about transgenders. But mostly they are dishonest and narcissistic and have absolutely nothing to offer to women.
Oh, we can empathize just fine, Mr. Rose. We just know better than to empathize with people whose personal philosophy is “My way or the highway.”
Philip Rose, you may feel that biological reality is cruel and heartless but that does not change anything. A fact is a fact. If you tell me that you identify as a seagull, I would not care. If you tried to fly off the Golden Gate Bridge, I would probably try to stop you. I am just cruel and heartless that way, I guess.
So, teh wimminz should STFU about wanting their own spaces and feminism?
Weird that so many transpeople seem to be the ones enforcing gender stereotypes when it seems to be the ‘biology is real’ sort who are saying that no one should be forced to perform ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’. I wish that people would consider the actual real life implications of their broad, sweeping over-generalisations.
Feminists are kind and compassionate, gaslighter.
You know, a sure sign of a male transgender and their narcissist allies is this business of saying “women should try harder to see our point of view, not that we give a damn about theirs.”
I will give Adam Sowa his point, I do not know what it is like to believe that I am a man. I have lived long enough to see how this sexist culture can beat down women and men. I got more leeway as a tomboy than any of the boys in my school who were not considered masculine enough by other boys. They were attacked endlessly and it was a time when teachers did not even consider that an issue. Those boys had miserable childhoods. Some of them grew up OK, some learned to find others weaker to pick on and some of them got lost in drugs. Maybe some of them were or became transgender.
I am sure a lot of feminist women saw what I saw growing up. That is why I have yet to see any credible evidence of feminists being violent against transgender people. It would be unthinkable for me to go into a meeting of transgender people and attack them. Any person who attacks a transgender person deserves to be put in jail.
The point I am ineptly heading towards is that feminists are not the source of transgender folk’s problems. It is mostly non-feminist men who need to learn to understand and listen to transgender people. So maybe the trans activists could direct their ire away from feminists and realize that the desire to have female only spaces does not equal hatred of trans people.
OK, this is about as good as my writing is going to get until I get some sleep, so I hope this was not too awkward a read.
Yeah, what it comes down to is women being blamed for male violence…male violence against women, male violence against nonconforming men. We are somehow supposed to fix this all, along with everything else, while meanwhile being kept firmly in our place. By men. Thus, we rebels say we’ve had enough, we want to put each other first.
I have done nothing but support transpeople in real life, hands on. Volunteering in LGBT community center programs as well as every year attending the Trans March. Both in Asia and Canada. I tried to secure, by using my influence and connections, free lawyers to help trans women from India immigrate so they could live their lives in peace.
And yet I have been pointed at and called a transphobe just as was done to Meghan Murphy. Basically because I had an opinion one day that was most certainly not “phobic” in any way, shape or form, but not the same opinion as they wanted me to have.
That is not kind, nor compassionate. What is happening to Meghan Murphy is downright despicable. To organize a smear campaign of bullying and *racist* accusations? Meghan Murphy has done nothing but speak on behalf of marginalized groups of women. Women of ALL cultures. They are all in her body of work. She speaks for women like myself, survivors of sexual assault and abuse, who often go ignored and swept under the carpet.
And your lot attempts to outright lie about her because you simply don’t like her critiquing your pop culture idols.
Luckily I am an enlightened person, and I’ll try not to let the behavior of first world Twitter bullies affect how l think, but it certainly makes me wonder why I bother if I will inevitably just be called a transphobe again.
..and probably the only thing that spares me from being called a racist (other than NOT being racist, bt when did that matter?) is that I am a visible minority- because I’ve learned in the narcissistic Twitterverse, people can attempt to smear others with absolutely no facts or proof to back it up. And sheep will blindly follow them without even reading why and making the decision for themselves.
Not a single person who raged about Meghan’s LC article would engage with me in a normal discussion. No matter how polite, nor how open I was to understanding them. Not one of them answered any of my ( or other peoples) questions.
They can’t even make the decision for themselves b/c like the petitioners they have no arguments. So they do anything it takes. Blatant dishonesty isn’t a problem for these folks.
It surprises me and disappoints me. You would think someone in the smear campaign would grow a conscience and ask for hardcore proof of the accusations, over all the cherry-picking sentences with paragraphs of willful misinterpretations. You would think someone would look over Feminist Current with an objective eye and see how many articles are dedicated to women across many nationalities and cultures, then say..”Guys.. uhh… racist bigot? Seriously?”
It’s a very cheap, unethical way of trying to snuff out someone you don’t agree with.
I rather suspect that if they actually had anything worth mentioning, they would have done so by now. Smear is all they have. Nice of them to be honest about it, though.
Rejection is hatred
Disagreeing is killing
Reality is cruel and heartless
These are the things that men have been saying to women as a means to subjugate us for hundreds of years. The amazing thing to me is that they are still telling the same lies in the 21st century that they were in the 10th and expecting to be believed, all evidence to the contrary.
Male violence against women is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known. Right here. Right now. In the 21st century.
These people are pretty honest about the whole thing. Listen to them, how about?
“Neoliberals are notorious for screaming bad words without an ounce of analysis.” <— Ain't that the truth! It's like they're allergic to clear, coherent thinking. Weak arguments tend to resort to going for the jugular and nasty personal attacks, 'cuz it's all they got.
I think it's great to have trans/gender critical and prostitution critical voices with the kind of reach that Meghan has, and I wish there were more. It's shitty when people think that to discuss the inherent inhumanity & violence of prostitution is to say that prostituted people are bad &/or undeserving of rights & dignity, or else reduce it to a "moral" (religious) issue. Ridiculous. I guess that comes back around to the neoliberal allergy to clear, coherent thought and talk. And if it's mostly pimps & johns who are tantruming over anti-prostitution stances, well, critical thinking is a moot point, cuz these men clearly & coherently only care about the dollars and uninterrupted, unlimited sexual access to & consumption of women.
Re. the trans issue — some say trans women are women, some say trans women are men. I see trans women as trans women. I'm over trans women's demands into Mich Fest, especially when the trans-welcoming Ohio Lesbian Festival has been running for 25 yrs! It boggles the mind that people demand access to PRIVATE spaces that they are respectfully and politely told they cannot get into. I don't care what the space or place or group is, if I'm not welcome somewhere, I sure as hell wouldn't want to go, let alone demand to be let in. I don't like to use the colonization analogy with the trans/Mich Fest issue because colonization of Indigenous people & their land (via extreme, savage violence) is very different from how trans women are behaving towards biological women, but the commonality of a mentality of DEEP sense of entitlement cannot be ignored.
TERF's and now SWERF's — two reactionary, dumbed-down, not to mention inaccurate (!) acronyms to dismiss deeply thought out positions on important matters that seek to make the world a safer, kinder place for all.
I also see trans women as trans women.
There’s such a wide range of presentation within that community, and it really figures that the more you see completely non-transitioned men demanding she/her pronouns, the louder the cry that you must see all trans women as “real” women is getting. That’s when it starts feeling like newspeak.
I’m signing the petition in support of Ms. Murphy.
Let us be perfectly clear – I’m no fan of Ms. Murphy. I find her position on transfolk has both feet planted firmly in the transphobe pool, her critiques of the sex industry as unimaginative as the current structure of the sex industry itself – not to mention assuming the same privilege as pimps in speaking for rather than to sex workers / performers – and her assessment of pornography is riven w/ class-war contradictions, but these ad hominem slags are just bullshit. I’m wondering about the level of bad faith in Transflok coming w/in sniffing distance of MRAs / AVFM, and the latter’s embrace of the former’s cause has the same stinking-bedsheet fragrance as wingnuts taking up feminist rhetoric about rape in the Polanski case – they couldn’t give a shit less about rape and are active proponents of Rape Culture themselves, but are happy to use any excuse to score cheap culture-war hay in bashing “liberal” hollywood – but Murphy deserves a platform as much as anyone. I’d like to see her be given as wide a platform as possible so she can have her fossilized, myopic and phobic paradigms criticized in good faith for being exactly that instead of being dismissed out of hand just b/c she’s the one saying them.
Given the pathological depths of assumed privilege too many men hold to heart re: entitlement to women’s time, space, energy & bodies, its no stretch to imagine there are Bad Faith Bullshitters who’re more than happy to alter their appearance and reinvent themselves as Trans solely for the sake of violating & dominating women’s spaces. However, for every one of these assholes – & they’re rather easy to spot – there are plenty more who make the transition from Male -> Female both in complete good faith and despite the enormous burden of dealing w/ the perpetual avalanche of misogyny that comes w/ having a female identity surrounded by a patriarchal society. The best Murphy & her acolytes can hope to achieve in realizing their vision are monolithic wedges driven between demographics that have far more in common than they don’t and reduce different groups of women from working together to fighting over scraps – & that is the Oldest Bitch Game in the World. Nothing Radical about that.
Murphy makes two consistent fallacies in her writing with tedious consistency common to every purity troll – letting the perfect stand in as the enemy of the good & ripping the shit out of anyone that points that her arguments has flaws that grow directly out of the Bad Faith Assumption that Biology Is Destiny, the same cudgel used by the Forced Birth Nuts to disparage women seeking to assert their autonomy over their reproductive capabilities. Nothing Radical about that, either.
On the bright side, Murphy’s revival of dusty Feminist Sex War Rhetorical Posturing presents a golden opportunity to reexamine the work of those feminists who’re completely hounded and shut out of the exchange – Ellin Willis, Pat Califina, Gayle Rubin, Nan Hunter, Lisa Duggan, Dorothy Allison, Ann Snitow, Carole Vance, Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, etc. – will finally get their day in the sun. Oh to dream…
I don’t think her ideas on the sex industry are unimaginative. That’s just more rhetoric without analysis.
oh yes, if you’d like to bring up class then let’s do so.
Yeah, it’s POOR WoC and their children being trafficked to supply the demand that legalizing will bring more of.
So she’s got you there.
Nobody said biology was destiny. That’s you making straw. Biology IS reality though and you cannot say being born male is the same as being born female.
You just keep forgetting Patriarchy. Calling it a bitch fight just avoids analysis, as if women are just engaging in this b/c we’re so ‘TWANZZZPHOBIC’ and ‘WHOREPHOBIXZZZZ!’ Whatever the fuck that means.
Yeah, I don’t think abortion, which has to do with ACTUAL females has anything to do with TWANZ.
No, there’s analysis behind what Murphy’s saying, not a bitch fight. The only bitching being done here is by the assholes who think they’re female while trying to get an ACTUAL female fired.
We don’t want crumbs off the masters table. We want to break the whole fucking table.
You haven’t been paying that close attention but hey, if you want to sign for her go for it.
Reblogged this on WolfWomanoftheNorth and commented:
“Women’s spaces have been few and far between and bitterly gained. The erosion of our voices, spaces and our specific needs are considered ‘transmisogyny’ by those who haven’t lived a day of our experience.”