Ted
A few years ago, Ted became a vocal “anti-feminist”.
He is intense about it. He talks about it a lot. He put “anti-feminist” in his social media bio.
He is not a passionately misogynistic MRA. He is culturally & politically on the left, less misogynistic than most men, genuinely concerned with social justice. He was radicalized by seeing feminists who advocate persecution of trans women in the UK.
He shares a lot of misogynistic “anti-feminist” talking points, some of them originating from transparently hateful bigots.
Most “anti-feminist” critiques he shares address real persecution of trans women in the UK. Often the things he shares point to TERFs at their worst … but even when they do not connect to feminism or feminists at all, he shares them as “anti-feminist”.
Many criticisms of feminism he shares offer real facts in a wildly misleading frame. He loves talking about how W.I.T.C.H. claimed to speak for all women, evoked a lineage from a false history of witchcraft, and embraced “terrorism” in the name of their organization. He has a long catalogue of real wrongs feminists have committed, which he insists demonstrate what feminism Really Is.
Most of the criticisms he shares are almost comically wrongheaded about how feminism works. He claims feminism is a religious cult, pointing to suffragettes’ entanglement with the temperance movement, pointing to alliances with the Christian right over porn, sex work, and transphobia. He claims feminism is inherently violent, drawing a continuity from “terrorism” by First Wave suffragettes through attacks on trans women today. He claims that feminists admit to their bigotry and thirst for violent genocide by pointing to figures like Lierre Keith, Valarie Solanis, and Janice Raymond … and sharing misleading out-of-context quotes from figures like Margaret Sanger and Andrea Dworkin. He claims that feminism is not an authentic social justice movement because it stands for “cis female supremacy”, because it depends on a strange & novel conception of “women”, because it only began in the late 19th century.
He is only interested in transphobia by feminists. He recognizes transphobia by other groups, but dismisses those as distractions from confronting the central problem of feminism.
Ted is smugly confident that he understands feminism deeply. He insists feminism is transphobic by definition, repeating slogans like “feminism is bigotry” and “feminism is genocide”.
He takes accounts of feminism that differ from his as just deceitful apologetics for feminist transphobia either created by lying propagandists or repeated by dangerously, irresponsibly self-deluding feminists.
Jane
Jane is a cis woman who cares deeply about trans liberation. She knows Ted shares her basic values, but his confusion about feminism troubles her.
She counts herself neither as a feminist nor as an expert on feminism, but she knows more than most. Since she respects many feminists she knows, she tries to clarify Ted’s confusions.
Neither her alliance with his commitment to trans liberation nor her lack of an alliance with feminism gives her credibility in his eyes.
When she tries to explain to him how he misunderstands feminism, he insists that “repeating deceitful feminist propaganda” makes her a defender of transphobic genocide.
When she assures him that she respects criticisms which understand feminism — women of color objecting to racism in the movement, the “abolish gender” school of queer theory, et cetera — he insists that this is chaff obscuring her defense of feminist transphobia.
When she tells him that the history of feminism, trans liberation, and the relation between them is far more complicated than the version he tells, he objects that referring to “complexity” is a rationalization of transphobia, since transphobes constantly fault slogans like “trans women are women” as simplistic lies.
When she tries to explain to him how his commentaries land with women, feminist and otherwise — especially when he calls feminists “morally equivalent to rapists” — he insists that protecting trans people is far more important than their feelings.
When she points to trans women who are feminists, and points to feminists who have fought hard for trans liberation, he dismisses them as cherry-picked weirdos in denial about the truth of feminism.
When she tells him that she understands that he is not a misogynistic bigot but she is worried about him making moves which enable misogyny, he objects that he does not have a misogynistic bone in his body, that many women are anti-feminists, that feminism deliberately encourages more misogyny to justify itself. When she walks through particular things he says, he says that she is making a dishonest feminist move, weaponizing accusations of misogyny to deflect criticism.
When she tells him that he could stand for trans liberation directly, without framing it as “anti-feminism”, he says he is following the lead of trans women who name feminists as the primary agents of their oppression.
When she tells him that he needs to tread carefully because misogynistic bigots, theocratic reactionaries, and fascists often style themselves as “anti-feminists”, he insists that he has never seen that.
Ted is just one among many “anti-feminists” like him Jane encounters. Every time she engages with trans liberation or feminism at all — and often when she just talks about women in any way — guys like Ted come out of the woodwork to insist that she supports the genocide of trans people.
She remains committed to trans liberation, but these constant slaps in the face create friction in her ability to engage with the movement.
The point
This is a post about anti-Zionism.
The analogy is imperfect in many ways. Zionism is the core ideology of a nation-state. There are forms of anti-Zionism which make a much stronger case than any form of anti-feminism. I have a lot more sympathy for confused anti-Zionists than I would have for Ted; this territory is genuinely confusing. Et cetera.
And. Most “anti-Zionists” I encounter do not understand what Zionism is and offer commentaries on it paralleling Ted’s absurd misunderstandings. They are dismissive of critique, even from people who share their commitment to Palestinian liberation. Most of these people are obviously not motivated by antisemitic bigotry but their “anti-Zionism” does antisemitism.
Bad on the merits. Bad for the cause.
Posts on this subject are obviously fraught, so:
- I keep an index of resources
- the moral question is simple:
Palestinian liberation is right & necessary- the history is complicated:
I have a survey which addresses many common misunderstandings- the praxis is complicated:
antisemitic entryism into the movement for liberation is subtle, pervasive, and unacceptable
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