This thread made me go and revisit Gender Critical Disputes because the two are related. Particularly the Rickford piece which was heavily influenced by Jane and her work. I also remember she was part of writing it Scap’s thread explains the origin of the ridiculous conflation of women who hold a firm boundary against trans identified men with white nationalists & fash And the equating of a feminist and/or humane declaration of female sovereignty (our right to control and ownership over ourselves) to the military or sexist argument of men who see women as a territory to be owned Rickford wrote “Femalism, in contrast, is a form of identitarianism, aiming to demarcate an ‘in-group’ (female people) from an ‘out-group’ (males who identify as trans), with the in-group defending it self against infiltration by the out-group. Imagining ‘woman’ as a pure territory that is at risk of being damaged through contamination, femalism aims to build a fortress around the identity ‘woman’ so that no man can get in and harm the territory. Inside the fortress is womanhood in its pure and true form, and the way to protect this is to exile those who would enter and pollute the identity. This is the same structure taken by ultra-right-wing identitarian ideologies, including white nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Proponents of both of these have been involved or associated with women’s activism in recent years… …White nationalism is based on imagining the nation as a sovereign territory that, in order to be safe and secure, must be securely bounded at its borders. Whatever is outside the nation is imagined as a threat to the welfare of what is inside. This requires imagining the ‘inside’ as having some unique quality or character that makes it meaningfully different from what is outside, and thus that the protection of this quality or character is dependent on its purity from contamination by what is outside.” But women aren’t concerned with purity, we’re concerned with safety which is best achieved by firmly excluding all men from the category of woman Women don’t want to build a fortress, they want rational boundaries They aren’t worried about being contaminated. They are worried about the violence male inclusion leads to The conflation of women’s bodily integrity, boundaries & sovereignty with nationalism and radical right ideologies is the same logic TRA’s use when they suggest our exclusion of men is akin to American racial segregation It inverts the perpetrator, & perpetrated against, to make men victims of women’s common sense Similarly this quote is telling “Femalism, like all radical right ideologies, sets out to dominate and eradicate the invading ‘other.’” The idea women in this fight are trying to dominate or eradicate trans identified men also inverts the relationship of who is trying to dominate, erase, & exercise power over who It rewrites women as villainous for asserting unequivocal lines. And that idea obviously loops back to JCJ’s work on the importance of “penetrable being”. Any form of asserting hard lines can be reframed as bad through that position. Even when the lines asserted are beneficial, sensible or vital This finally explains a LOT of intraterven conflict It explains why Jane et al are actually the ones who feel contaminated by others in this fight talking to people, or associating with people, they personally wouldn’t. Without the hard lines of separate personhood, & with constant penetrability, we’d all be some kind of association soup There is something in the inability to see or understand the boundary between oneself & others that lends itself to toxicity It lends itself to the attempt to control others & to react as emotively as though their actions are also yours. Everything becomes an extension of you & it is related to you. That leads to the reduction of other people’s humanity &difference That sadly also explains (to me) Jane’s mistreatment of women she disagrees with