International Women’s Day

Sadly, it also seems no coincidence that the anti-feminism and anti-trans-politics also go hand in hand with an affirmation of an extractive relationship to nature. Not sure what this means in terms of strategies against it, but I find it quite striking!

@John Q 2

It depends if Trump is gonna increase polarisation (so that lefties will become more lefties) or if the result of Trump’s excesses are that centrists start to vote more for the left (so the left as a whole becomes more centrist).
For example I saw a video of some Gaullist french parlamentarian who speaks very bad of Trump and insists on the necessity of an EU army and increased involement of the EU in Ukraine. I personally liked his speech because I agree on the Trump-bashing, on the need for an EU common defence/army, and on the support to Ukraine.
But this guy is probably a rightist whose economic policies I wouldn’t like, and I have no idea about his opinions about feminism, trans-rights or immigration, yet he has been spread a lot on leftish social media afaik.
This for all the different sub-intersests of the left, from feminism to economics to immigration to whatever.

More specifically about the OP, I’m not sure that transpeople reclaiming their identities are just rejecting rigid gender roles, if this was just the point then during the Hypatia controversy most trans should have agreed with Tuvel, and this wasn’t the case.
I think that many (but I don’t know how many) trans believe that they are in some degree bioligically of the other sex (that is their is not just an identity, they really have a female brain in a male body or the reverse), and this is the reason they speak of “sex assigned at birth”.

John Q@2: “it is becoming impossible to maintain “anti-woke left” and “gender critical feminist” positions any more. You’re either a Trumpist or you’re not. And the Trumpists don’t need you unless you give Trump unquestioning obedience.”

To compare little present things with greater ones in the past: after June 1941, some could have said “it is becoming impossible to maintain “anti-Stalinist left” and “USSR critical socialist” positions any more. You’re either a Nazi or you’re not. And the Nazis don’t need you unless you give Hitler unquestioning obedience.”

Now, that is not of course an exact parallel; historical ones never are. But I would submit that it might be worth thinking about, especially if you have read some Orwell and thought about Katyn.

There’s actually a Wikipedia page about this “pick a side” thing (although it sadly doesn’t include the 2000s “Decent Left’s” favourite description of opponents as “objectively pro-Saddam”).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us

Fascinating how some people appear far more concerned about a hypothetically powerful authoritarian left than an actually powerful authoritarian right. Almost as if it isn’t the degree of power or authoritarianism which is the concern…

Whatever you think of “DEI,” this is unseemly:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/12/bank-of-england-decides-against-new-rules-on-improving-diversity-and-inclusion

There’s no general principle regarding “with us or against us”. There are times when this is true and times when it isn’t. This is one of the times when it is.

Trump is now enacting a comprehensive anti-woke agenda, scrapping DEI, deporting protestors, banning any reference to racial equality and feminism, as well as engaging in class war on behalf of the billionaires. There is no tenable left position where you support him on some bits and oppose him on others. If you want to keep opposing “woke”, you are stuck with the entire package.

John Q @14, I’m afraid that many of the “pro-Stalinist left-wingers” aka Tankies held their position, and would happily have enforced it given the chance, well into my lifetime and some are still around: possibly not in Australia, a country which I highly esteem.

As for the impossibility of previously being an anti-Stalinist leftist, and now being an anti-woke anti-Trump leftist, I would be happier if you could demonstrate that rather than asserting it. My own position, for what it may be worth, is that I regard Trump as an insolent, ignorant, avaricious, dishonest lout, quite unworthy of being president of what had been an inspiring country; but I don’t see that as being a particularly left-wing view. I also regard some aspects of the woke movement as being unworthy of the Western liberal tradition; but I’m afraid that is not a left-wing view either.

I’m afraid that many of the “pro-Stalinist left-wingers” aka Tankies held their position, and would happily have enforced it given the chance

Well sure – among the 8 billion people in this world many views are held – but their impact was very close to zero; except for some squabbles in obsucre publications and random calls to BBC radio and letters to the editor.

But yeah, they are of course very useful as a foil for alternative versions of history in which valiant liberals and conservatives held the threat of a socialist takeover at bay.

I don’t think the “with Trump or against Trump” framing is very helpful. The problem with (most of) the anti-woke crowd isn’t that they tried to reconcile anti-woke and anti-Trump positions. The problem is that they very clearly identified wokism as the main or exclusive enemy of liberal values and explicitly claimed that Trump and Co were on the side of freedom of speech, or at least (this framing has been around very recently) that Trumpist attacks on DEI etc. were a justified if perhaps somehwhat overblown reaction to the alleged excesses of the imaginary woke dictatorship. So objectively they were never anti-Trump to begin with.

To put it differently, whoever claimed to oppose wokeism on freedom of speech grounds without opposing Trumpist authoritarianism has never had any credibility. I hear that Matt Taibbi and Sam Moyn have finally admitted that Trump is authoritarian but they have for years either supported him outright or downplayed his threat. And Chatterton Williams, to name another one, is in his way even more despicable than Taibbi. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right/681716/) Name whoever you want and they are all like that.

Another comment specifically about Rowling.

I googled “trump rowling” to see what Rowling had to say about Trump, on the expectation that R. would have been quite anti-Trump since she is quite leftish but for her opinions about trans.

I first found a page on the italian edition of the Huffington posts that says: “Rowling says that the left betrayed women, she agrees with Trump with the cancellation of transgender identities”. (I’m translating from italian, here)
Oh no, I was wrong, Rowling is really a trumpist! Trump sucks, hence Rowling sucks too and she is now unacceptable.

But then I found an article on “il foglio”, a more right leaning italian newspaper( here), that has the actual text of Rowling tweet on X, that backtranslated from italian is:
“A noisy part of the left still refuses to get out from the bubble of sex-as-a-social-construct, and to recognize that its embracing of gender-identity ideology has been a calamity. They were warned that the right was capitalizing on their betrayal of women and girls, they didn’t listen”.
While this sentence is clearly quite harsh on the left in general, it isn’t actually pro-trump, the logic is more that the left should become more terfish to get back some votes from Trump.

So the fact that Trump is an asshole doesn’t actually prove that Rowling is also an asshole, since she didn’t actually endorse Trump; however if I based my opinion only on the snippet from the Huffington post I would have believed that Rowling actually endorsed Trump and this would have changed my opinion of her considerably.

People who are more in the leftish “bubble” are more likely to hear only the more party-compliant version of the news, in this case the HP, and are therefore going to see the world in a more manichean way, while people who are already outside of it (in my case, because I’m already a tad more terfish and so I was willing to spend 2 minutes more to find what Rowling actually said) are going to read different news and to react differently.

So in this case it isn’t obvious to me that the fact that Trump is extremistically anti-trans reinforces the pro-trans POW: it will happen for people who are already from that point of view, but not for others.

MisterMr : From what I can see, Rowling isn’t a Trumpist (e. g. https://mashable.com/article/j-k-rowling-shuts-down-trump-supporter-trans-ban). But she has dedicated her public life to a cause that Trump also embraces while dedicating very little of her time and energy to fighting the antifeminist backlash that Trump represents. Given that her claim is to be a feminist, even to represent feminism – the real, anti-trans feminism that she claims has been betrayed by the “left” – it is striking how little she cares about the fascist project to roll back women’s rights literally to the 19th century, while spending so much of her energy to decry leftism and most of feminism for the sin of not agreeing with her transphobia. Just like the alleged liberals who falsely accuse the left of undermining freedom of speech while staying silent when authoritarian right wingers literally ban books and threaten journalists, she can claim no credibility as a feminist. It’s also typical that she accuses “the left” of having caused right wing authoritarianism.

Will Rowling’s feminist supporters (if they exist) have a problem with that? That’ll be interesting to find out.

novakant@17 There was a pro-Stalinist left-winger Executive Director of Strategy and Communications for the UK Labour party for five years.

TM: I don’t know enough of Rowling’s opinions to say if I agree with her or not, so don’t take this a s adefence of Rowling.
But there is a problem here because Rowling saying anti-trans stuff steers controversy, and even more so Rowling (allegedly but not in reality) being pro trump, whereas Rowling being anti-Trump if Trump says some anti-feminist stuff doesn’t, so chances are that Rowling’s opinions about this simply are not as publicised.

I say this because, some years ago, there was a famous italian feminist (Oriana Fallaci) who turned anti-muslim and become an icon of the italian right. This started a period when Fallaci herself, or random female right leaning politicians (who self defined as feminists) whenever they were accused of being racist started with a litany of “where is the left when muslims (immigrants) ignore women rights”, the “deafening silence of the left” about random bad thing that muslimm immigrants did to women (infibulation etc.) and so on.
In reality leftish feminist associations often decried this or that behaviour that some muslim immigrants had, they just didn’t turn it in a general anti-muslim thing, and also feminist group lamenting this or that misbehaviour against women isn’t that noticeable, it only becomes noticeable when e.g. it contrasts with other principles like accepting immigrants (so it creates more drama).
So from this I take the lesson that, in particular on this kind of cultural/moral issues (that are apt to be dramatized mediatically), the “he/she didn’t say anything when…” is often bull and more a consequence of medias stressing one thing and not the other, rather than a real ideological choice.

This, while accepting that people can disagree with Rowling on her opinion about trans; but this just doesn’t really have much to do with Trump (I also doubt that if the left was more terfish Trump would have lost).

#25

And his impact on the course of history of the UK was close to zero, which was my point (I won’t engage with the inaccurate description of Milne as pro-stalinist. FWIW, I don’t have much time for him myself).

I’ve said this a million times but lefties, liberals and righties have all criticised “woke” for different and incompatible reasons and it’s impossible to assimilate their critiques. Roughly: righties think it is left-wing, lefties think it isn’t left-wing, and liberals think it illiberal or divisive.

Iow it’s like lumping together people who hate Kenny G because they don’t like jazz, people who hate it because it isn’t jazz and people who don’t care about jazz but just think it’s shit for other reasons.

accepting of traditional gender roles (in other words critical of the idea of gender, not the reality of gender- or sex-related expectations and to some extent often critical of the idea that those expectations come from culture rather than nature)

I think this is just get right-wing anti-“gender ideology” position. I don’t think it’s what “gender critical” feminism is supposed to be about although I’m sure there’s a lot of confusion by now.

It’s always seemed to me there’s an obvious conflict between forms of feminism that seek to emancipate women from gender and those aiming to protect everyone’s right to have their correct gender acknowledged. Trying to have them both on the same team is like trying to unite people who want to abolish prison with people who want to put bankers in prison.

“It’s always seemed to me there’s an obvious conflict between forms of socialism which seek to abolish class and those aiming to place the means of production in the hands of the proletariat. Trying to have them both on the same team is like trying to unite people who want to abolish money with people who want to have universal basic income.”

the other hand the forms of feminism that promote the ability of women to choose social roles and disciplines that are traditionally coded “male” such as medicine and the law

For those of us raised on Ally McBeal and Star Trek: The Next Generation that doesn’t seem that radical, or critical (there are more women doctors than men in UK now btw.)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/06/female-doctors-outnumber-male-peers-in-uk-for-first-time

ETB@37 Or, “It’s always seemed to me there’s no obvious conflict between forms of socialism which seek to abolish the capitalist class by placing the means of production in the hands of the proletariat, and those which seek to abolish the proletariat as a class by replacing the wage-labor system with planned economy.” One may object there may be an obvious conflict between those socialists who wish to retain wage-labor permanently—particularly those who ideal of socialism includes capital markets (an indispensable part of wage-labor systems?) the decisive element.

“One may object”
Indeed (and a very well formulated and thoughtful point this is too which I sincerely respect).

Perhaps it is worth contemplating whether similar (though of course not the same) considerations may apply to ideological positions not necessarily contained within socialism (not to imply that one must agree with such ideologies, but merely for the purposes of examination) that might shed light on the degree to which seemingly oppositional positions may be resolved?

@ETB 37

This is quite OT but I don’t understand this: workers are defined by not controlling the means of production, once they control them the distinction between them and the owners disappears and so class ideally disappears, where is the contradiction?

I think there is a bigger contradiction between the idea that workers are the class of the future (so they are working for the revolution that will benefit everyone) or it the revolution is supposed to work for the workers: in some cases the two things can happen together, but sometimes there will be contradictions.

MM @ 45
“I don’t understand this”
Fair enough, and definitely my fault for being a bit obscure – I think you might find it illuminating to read the last paragraph of 35, then 37 ;-)

“in some cases the two things can happen together, but sometimes there will be contradictions”
Well, yes. In my opinion, it is not unocmmon for movements to have contradictions – which isn’t necessarily a problem (indeed, IIRC Marx pointed out that a practical approach is sometimes necessary e.g. regarding Capitalism vs. Austrian Monarch). All of which is to suggest that sometimes things that might appear contradictory may not be entirely cotnradictory, or even if they are to a degree it might perhaps more easily resolved than imagined…

Perhaps there are comparisons to be drawn with Marxist approaches to religious or national minorities but I suspect they would immediately alienate the pro-gender side.

ETC@43 If I understand the question, one that comes to mind is resolving the issues in philosophical compatibilism between the knowledge we now have and the moral justification of legal punishments that ignore that knowledge, such as punishment as retribution? Example: Running prisons like torture chambers.

MisterMr 27 and others, I’ll reiterate the point:

“Even more damning is the fact that the fascists are explicitly using arguments supplied by liberal anti-wokists to justify their authoritarianism. At this point, anti-wokeism is the de facto state ideology of a fascist regime and “liberal” or “left” anti-wokeists are inescapably implicated in it.”

engels 31: “lefties, liberals and righties have all criticised “woke” for different and incompatible reasons and it’s impossible to assimilate their critiques.”

This is only partly true. The bogus argument about ze woke hordes threatening freedom of speech – “language police”, “we can’t say what we think any more”, “cancel culture” – is part of any and all anti-woke critique, whether from the right, the librls, or the fake left. Furthermore, while it’s true that wokism as used in dominant discourse has no definite meaning and never had because it was invented as a culture war slur (*) by the Right and then adopted by everybody who wanted to legitimize racism and sexism, I fail to see how that is an argument for taking any of these basd faith postures seriously. And that most certainly includes your incoherent rambling.

Btw that an ideology is incoherent doesn’t mean it’s not an ideology. Take antisemitism. The antisemite sometimes accuses Jews of being capitalist bloodsuckers, sometimes of being communist infliltrators, sometimes of being liberal weaklings. The anti-woke ideology is in many ways a 21st century version of antisemitism and quite often becomes explicit, think of how often anti-wokists invoke Soros.

(*) To be precise, the term “woke” did have a meaning before the Right adopted it as a slur but it only became widely used after the Right, followed by fake librls and leftists, began using it as a slur.

engels: “conflict between forms of feminism that seek to emancipate women from gender and those aiming to protect everyone’s right to have their correct gender acknowledged.”

It’s similar to the conflict between supporting gay marriage and opposing marriage on principle as a patriarchal institution. This is a real difference but if those holding a radical anti-marriage posture were to join forces with anti-gay bigots, I would conclude that maybe this isn’t about radicalism.

Likewise, revolutionary socialists are critical of reformism but what would we think of a socialist who joins forces with capitalists to oppose better working conditions?

J, I wasn’t criticising you and incidentally I think you’re right about what “gender critical” means (and MacKinnon is right that it is misnamed.)

engels: I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “everyone’s right to have their correct gender acknowledged”. I understood something like “having the right to express one’s own gender identity” but you seem to have meant the exact opposite.

@TM 58
Again, not as a specific defence of J.K. Rowling politics (she did criticize Corbyn for antisemitism, that I think was bull, as an example of some of her politics that I disagree with), but in reality there has been varius times when she spoke against Trump, and I’m not following her tweets so ther could be more. Just from wikipedia:

“Rowling made analogies between Donald Trump and Voldemort after the Republican presidential candidate called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States on 7 December 2015.”

“In July 2020, Rowling signed an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”,[38] with 150 other public figures, largely writers and academics. The letter […] warns of fear spreading in the arts and media, and denounces President Donald Trump as “a real threat to democracy”.”

“In 2017, Rowling expressed her opposition to the Mexico City Policy, which blocked US government support for international organisation that provided abortion counseling, when the policy was reinstated by Donald Trump”

So in general she has leftish politics, maybe not the specific brand of left that I like more, and she is a TERF. The TERF thing is the one that garners more attention, as it creates more mediatic drama.

@TM 59
I think a better formulation would be “the right to have one’s own subjective gender treated as the socially and legally valid one”, as we are speaking of legal recognition not as a simple right of expression (that would not in itself prevent others to express and/or act on different gender categorising).
E.G. with toilets the problem is not that transwomen want to express that they are women, the problem (if any) is that other people are forced to accept that transwomen are women.
Also “identity” doesn’t automatically mean “self perceived identity”, even if in current discourse it is often threated the same.

MisterMr, that open letter (organized by Chatterton Williams and co-signed by some Maga-leaning right-wingers like Bari Weiss) was very explicitly NOT about opposing Trump. Here’s the quote:

“The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.”

It was an exercise in bothsidesim, anti-wokism and Anti-Anti-Trumpism. The mention of Trump was simply a fig leaf to cover for a rant against the left, the “resistance”, which was identified as the real culprit. The enemy was never right wing authoritarianism, it was always uppity minorities demanding respect and calling out hate speech.

Now that Trump is actually arresting people for protected speech and his minions are openly bragging about it, now that academic freedom in the US has been abolished and universities are actually censoring their documents and web sites of key words that the regime might disapprove of, you don’t hear a peep from these “defenders of free spech” (unless it is to again blame the left, see 19 above) who just four years ago were so upset about a culture of “censoriousness” (note that the letter gives some examples of perceived “cancel culture” but without specifics and most of these have been debunked as fictitious or misleading).

This is precisely what I have been saying and, I believe, what JQ has been alluding to.

J 64: “as a woman I have a right to be supported in staying home with children and not being required to work”

The Irish constitution indeed says:
“the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

This wording (a change of which failed in a referendum last year) states that women have “duties in the home”, which you may agree places a burden primarily on women. The clause about freeing women from “economic necessity to engage in labour” is curious. Does it actually work that way women with children can ask the state to support them so they don’t have to work? Somehow I suspect that this isn’t really how it works but in any case, I have no idea what you think this rather unusual example proves or disproves. At most it proves that there is no consensus about the meaning of gender roles, and that role expectations have a lot to do with the law, and that the legal expresion of gender roles is, if not arbitrary, then at least highly subject to change. I’m writing from a country where less than 50 years ago, a married woman needed a husband’s written permission to engage in the labor market, and today nobody likes to remember that was the case.

“The idea that “gender” means “gender roles in all their arbitrariness” as Tm and some male op-ed writers seem to believe, is strange to me and I think foreign to feminism.”

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Why is it so hard to engage with what was actually written rather than making something up that nobody has said and is so abstract it’s hard to even know what it means. Honestly I think it’s pretty disrespectful to pretend to put words into other people’s mouths in that way. I have tried to be respectful and engage with actual statements people have actually made, and offer actual verifiable evidence for my claims, but I recognze this approach is a minority position around here.

One more thing. I cannot imagine why anybody would think of knitting as ridiculous but also, it should be obvious that individual tastes and preferences are totally irrelevant to this debate, even if such preferences are sometimes correlated with gender roles. If this has to be pointed out, it’s probably hopeless.

Btw I’m so old that when I went to school, girls were taught knitting (and many other useful skills) and we boys got shop lessons in which we weren’t actually taught anything useful. Shockingly unfair. Now go on explaining why gender stereotypes aren’t arbitrary.

What obligation does that entail?

Just to name the obvious ones that have been discussed to death: linguistic “gendering”, access to single sex spaces and sports competitions, jobs open to particular genders, … with legal (equalities law) and social (eg shunning) sanctions (and I think most this is right fwiw.)

How about proposing to make identifying as trans a felony? My god this country has gone so Hitleresque so quickly I’m ashamed to be part of it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-bill-identify-transgender-state-felony-rcna195642

Overlooked this: “Jobs open to particular genders”. What century do you live in for Chrissake? We nowadays have female engineers and male kindergarten teachers, can you imagine that? When you dig a bit deeper among the anti-woke, the depth of reactionary resentment never fails to impress.

I didn’t say civilisation has ended? I’m mostly in favour of recognising self-defined genders but I don’t think any reasonable person can deny it imposes obligations on other people. Btw if you’re interested in fighting the negative effects of traditional gender roles, it might worth looking at your own debating style…

Thanks Matt (#74) for answering the question more informatively and carefully than I could have.

Steven, here is Rownling’s essay regarding the trans-issue:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

I’m surprised knitting was discussed without anyone mentioning this:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/cast-off-how-knitters-turned-nasty/