It’s teapot time with the academics again …
Achieving safety for queers
I have anonymised this workshop I attended, not least because a professional photographer was going around snapping us (I await later shame at seeing myself wedged into an official report on violence against the LGBTQIA+ community) but because, for the most part, people were clearly attending the session voluntarily, most likely socially.
The group was made up of young women, who were mostly gender-conforming in outward appearance with sex appropriate pronoun badges, there were a couple of obvious lesbians and a couple of men, who I also assumed to be gay. Importantly though the leads on the project were lesbian women. There was one very obvious trans-identified male wearing a dress and a bow in his hair. The vast majority were white, with a handful of Asians, but no blacks. So overall the group did not seem very ‘queer’ at all (or diverse for that matter), but as we know ‘queer’ doesn’t mean anything these days, or rather it means whatever you want it to mean. Which can be anything from being an ally, theoretically bisexual or feeling a bit wonky in some idiosyncratic way. We were split up into smaller groups for workshops. The results of all the workshops would be written up into a report later to be presented to an intergovermental organisation, no less.
Queering Alliances
In the small group I attended on queer feminist alliances, eight were professional women and one professional man, though that number did include three of the gender studies academics working on the project. One worked for a feminist NGO in her home country in South America, another worked in the area of human rights with a focus on East Africa, there was a lawyer whose specialism was discrimination in the workplace, someone from a feminist anti-war organisation, another from an international humanitarian organisation, and one working in a UK governmental department. Of these, a few were doing PhDs, with at least one of those in queer theory. Of note, three were North Americans.
The point of the session was to understand how we could make organisations think of gender as a concept superior to the factual reality of sex, this would be to improve the ‘safety’ of the queer community with its concomitant assumption that white heterosexual men are the safest. Because people in this sector are so confused about language, there were some confusing phraseology being used, with people talking at odds with each other. For example, the phrase ‘anti-gender’ was used to describe those who were anti-feminism, whilst another appeared to use it to describe those feminists who were anti-transgender ideology.
Every little helps
The one working in a feminist organisation, whose membership had its roots in second wave feminism, was working hard to make the organisation look through a queer lens. (Looking at the organisation’s website, the Millennials appear to be making good headway with drivel about the deeper patriarchal meaning of the recent Barbie movie.)
Another was concerned that anti-gender groups were getting funding and said it could be useful to describe their own groups as ‘counter terrorist’ and thus tar the other side as far right, anti-abortion/ bodily autonomy, etc. (All this said, of course, without any mention, never mind critique, of ‘puberty blockers’ or the mutilating surgeries carried out to the benefit of big pharma and the cosmetic industry.)
The woman from the South American country reported that the government in her country had recently lost a referendum because of the backlash against ‘gender ideology’ (I believe she used that phrase thinking it was analogous to feminism, also her analysis of what went wrong with the referendum appears to be way off). She explained that in her country the phrase ‘gender-based violence’ specifically meant the rape of a woman by a man. She was fighting for ‘gender-based violence’ to mean anyone who felt threatened in their gender identity or sexuality, i.e. a very broad definition. As I understand it, she essentially wanted the violence and hatred targeted at men perceived to be homosexual to be considered as ‘gender-based violence’.
The anti-war feminist spoke of the injustice of ‘trans women’ being conscripted into the Ukrainian army, though another said we should be anti-conscription altogether. Which left the suggestion Ukraine should have allowed a Russian takeover lingering for some while after (though probably only in my mind).
The lawyer worked at a firm set up by a woman about 40 years ago in response to the way women were treated in the law (so essentially a second waver). This woman now understood that she was old hat and had allowed the new intake of lawyers to set up a queer group to eradicate that entrenched feminism which relied on biological definition. The group was intent on queering of the law firm’s practices, as he went on to explain.
The lawyer explained that he used the cases of discrimination bought to him to put pressure on organisations to change policy. For example, at the negotiation stage, before a case got to court, there was a chance to ask an organisation to rethink its policies. This was most effective face-to-face and as part of the settlement discussion. For example, getting rid of one transphobic employee wouldn’t fix the problem, you needed to bring a raft of policies which would ensure trans inclusion and that the behaviour could not be repeated. Once things got to court any chance of that was out of the window, as the judge would only be able to comment on the case in question. (I wonder how many times such negotiations have bought favourable results to the trans-borg?)
One of the women had done work in relation to Title IX in the US, trying to make it inclusive of the notion of gender identity.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing was also discussed. Hedge fund managers were actually quite responsive to their place on LGBT/woke Indexes. If hedge fund managers decided to withdraw from funding those who fell below a certain point in the Index this had real power to ensure that companies stayed on that Index. It was reported that phone calls would be made to ask how it would be possible to go back up the Index.
Barriers
The woman from the UK governmental department was working in a section which dealt with gender (just in admin, thank god). The current phrase the department used was ‘women and girls’ but she was very keen to try to get this phrase changed to the word ‘gender’, to include men and anyone identifying outside of the sex binary. Happily she said she was coming up against a lot of resistance. Each project area had a different team leader and she lived in hope that one could be turned.
There was an acknowledgement in the group that the public at large was not very keen on the idea of ‘queerness’. (I note it was impossible for them to discuss quite why that would be.) It was also made harder by individual politicians pushing back (again no names were mentioned for fear of addressing specific issues, i.e. any discussion of MPs either criticising or approving of rapists being put in female prisons).
An insidious parallel was drawn between the ‘violence’ that trans people in the UK face and the actions of the trans-identified female shooter in Nashville. The insinuation clearly being that the shooter Audrey Hale (a female who identified as male and went by the name Aiden) was forced to attack as a result of violence, rather than the perpetrator of an act of immense evil, targeting children at a Christian school (six people died – three 9 year olds and three adults). See the Guardian’s hand-wringing article about the mass killing which took place in March 2023 here. Hale was alleged to have written a manifesto explaining why she carried out the killings, but the release of this is being withheld, but it is fair to say that many a trans activist embraced it as a call to arms.
The same person also made the point that certain bodies in the UK just get money regardless of how they performed with regards to their stance on gender identity, the NHS for example, so it was hard to impose queerness on them because they were unfortunately guaranteed to be funded, regardless.
The South American woman said that the main obstacles she faced trying to queer feminist organisations was that working with queer issues cost more money (not explained) and that feminist campaigners in her country regarded the guise of gender as a way of bringing men in, which they didn’t like because they wanted to campaign for women and girls (it sounded like they were objecting to gay men being bought in, rather than trans-identified males). It seemed to me the South American woman thought queer analogous to lesbian, gay or bisexual. She said her fellow feminist peers explicitly saw this invasion as ‘men’s rights activism’.
In response to the assumption that queer meant same sex attracted, it was suggested that the lead on the project define ‘queer’, the woman nodded, but funnily enough didn’t furnish us with one.
It was also admitted that many LGBT organisations were not inclusive of women or feminism and only wanted to cater to the needs of gay men. In particular, it was felt there was a perception that ‘queer women’ did not experience violence. The South American woman reported that she had been told by one man that there were no queer women, so it was impossible to cater for them. She said that most lesbian and bisexual women sought help from feminist organisations, rather than LGBT ones, because of this discrimination.
Someone commented that a lot of funding is approved based on the research data collected on ‘cis gay men’. Another was upset about the division of spaces in queer London, some of which were ‘transphobic’ (again no examples given because, bar the one woman who is successfully running lesbian speed dating events, which had recently been in the news, there are none).
It was important to embed trans-identified and queer-identified people into institutions so that they could influence policy to a queer agenda, i.e. a far left agenda. Teaching language interpreters and translators the importance of ‘queer language’ should also be a priority.
Conclusion
Enablers
Yet again we see feminist academics deeply involved in advancing men’s sexual rights under the guise of gender politics/feminism, or more specifically in this case, ‘queerness’. It is inescapable that many at the frontline of installing gender identity ideology in institutions, are women and often lesbian at that. They really are the foot soldiers. I don’t quite know the answer to why that is yet. A double dose of misogyny, perhaps?
The Scientology playbook
The deliberate casting of ‘queer’ people being at higher risk of ‘violence’ (and including in this classification simply being correctly sexed) is in sharp contrast to the actual violent nature of trans/queer activism. Whether it’s Sarah Jane Baker calling for terfs to be punched, and then a ‘terf’ being punched, Audrey Hale’s murderous rampage or the violent assault of Posie Parker in New Zealand, the academic handling of queer issues simply looks like Scientology’s ‘fair game’ attack policy.
Infiltration
The other comparison that can be made to Scientology is the way gender ideologues are infiltrating institutions. Just like Scientologists did when it embedded itself into governmental departments in the U.S. in order to gain its all important church-status, and therefore tax-free-status. Gender social justice warriors are being formed inside Western universities destined for desks inside our civil service and public organisations, ready and willing to ‘queer’ them by any means necessary.
We’re absolutely fucked is all I can say.
Thank you for reading! Sign up to my blog by going to the bottom of the page.
Please share on other forums if you liked it, as I only do Twitter.
The Lies They Tell 
You must be logged in to post a comment.