Mick Hartley

Suzanne Moore, the Guardian columnist who only seems to write what she really thinks – at least on certain sensitive subjects – away from the suffocating confines of Kings Place, has a piece today in the Spectator on How progressive misogyny works:

Some of us panic because we take nothing for granted. We were not born to power, we clawed our way in and we see what is to be lost. Those incredible images of women in short skirts in Afghanistan in the 1970s? I have one on my wall. Progress is not linear.

Think feminism – or gay rights – made advances here that can't be reversed? Think again.

Why then is there all this denial of biology, a deep disgust at women’s bodies? Why are gender-critical feminists subject to violent threats? Why is being a woman now seen as being somehow privileged when every marker of equality (domestic violence, access to childcare, rape convictions, the pay gap) is showing we, as a sex class, are less privileged than ever?

Progressive misogyny, you see, doesn’t recognise women as a class at all; a class whose employment rights need protection. […]

You can say the word ‘-intersectionality’ as much as you like but, if you do, then defend Raquel Rosario Sánchez, the 29-year-old doing a PhD at Bristol on men paying for sex, who has been bullied for two years because she attends Woman’s Place meetings. Disciplinary hearings were closed down when balaclava-wearing trans activists appeared. Students yelled verbal attacks at ‘Terfs’, chanting: ‘SCUM! SCUM! SCUM!’

This kind of intimidation stops women from speaking and teaching on our campuses. Rebecca Solnit, a writer I admire, wrote an excruciatingly vanilla essay on why San Francisco is cool and why cis women should not fear trans women. We don’t. We fear what we have always feared: male violence, in whatever cosplay it chooses. We fear losing our incomes. We fear that womanhood is such a scary place that some young women will be medicated out of it.

Why all this now? Perhaps because the left, having lost its big battles, is keen on some expulsions and re-education. The Labour party would rather be pure than in power. It’s deeply peculiar.

Gay men I know are rightly worried about the homophobia inherent in some trans activism. Wouldn’t you rather have a daughter than a gay son? Look at Turkey or Iran if you dare. We now have Stonewall supporting the right for trans women to bust the skulls of natal women playing rugby.

We stand back and watch this insanity. How is this progress?