TERF Wars

Posted By Spencer J. Quinn On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled
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Sign seen at the Equality March in Wrocław, Poland on June 11, 2022.

2,062 words

On December 5, a group of lesbian and feminist activists held a silent protest [2] outside the county courthouse in Oakland, California. They wore sashes identifying themselves as “Woman Adult Human Female” and carried a large banner which read “No Men in Women’s Prisons.” They were protesting the possible transfer of convicted murderer Dana Rivers — a man who identifies as a woman — into a women’s prison. Things were going swimmingly until masked transsexual activists (“trantifa,” if you will) attacked them [3] from out of the blue. They stole their banner, pelted them with eggs and pies, and slammed into them with a bicycle before running off.

It was four obviously-male trantifa versus about nine women, and the fight wasn’t fair. It lasted several seconds and left the women in disarray. All they could do afterwards was complain about “violent men” and explain to a passerby that this sort of thing happens all the time [7].

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By now, many of us should be aware of the ongoing civil war on the Left, which is both internecine and noteworthy. On one side, we have feminists and lesbians who identify as women and who draw the line at transsexual men becoming women in a legal sense. They are not opposed to transsexualism per se; they just wish to protect spaces traditionally reserved for biological women and girls, such as public bathrooms, prisons, and sports. Such people are known derogatively as “TERFs,” which stands for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” and they may not be a match for the forces they are up against.

Opposing them are violent trantifa thugs who are busy claiming status on the Left by projecting their power into mainstream Western life. They do this by forcing normal, “cis-gendered” people to kowtow to their gender prerogatives — which often change with the wind — while claiming to be oppressed along the Civil Rights model of the 1960s. Such people are supported legally and financially by anti-white, globalist villains such as the Anti-Defamation League and George Soros. They also ghoulishly bolster their numbers by promoting gender transitioning among children, and are quick to use violence to get their way. And since the TERF movement consists mostly of women, violence is proving to be an effective tactic.

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You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s novel Charity’s Blade here. [10]

For excellent rundowns of this Left-wing unpleasantness, see Meghan Murphy’s 2017 essay “‘TERF’ Isn’t Just a Slur, It’s Hate Speech” [11] and Tobias Langdon’s Counter-Currents review [12] of Helen Joyce’s 2021 book Trans. Murphy also appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast [13] in 2021 to discuss her permanent ban on Twitter, and how she holds common ground with feminism critic Jordan Peterson. (She has been reinstated on Twitter in the Musk era, apparently.)

I have a conflicted take on this issue. One on hand, my instinct is to revel in schadenfreude as these ladies are forced to reap what they themselves have sown. You want to ignore gender realism, break down the so-called patriarchy, and install women as equals or betters to men? You want to browbeat and feminize men into submission? You want to ensure that men have no place that they can exclusively call their own? Terrific. Trantifa wants to do the same thing with women. And they’re starting with you.

How does it feel?

On the other hand, watching the video of those women being assaulted, I felt an archaic kinship with them. I wanted to leap through my screen and start throwing punches against their cowardly oppressors. I wanted to protect them. Feminism may be misguided on so many counts, but at least what the feminists are defending in this instance is natural. Cultural gender distinctions have a basis in biology, and are indeed ancient and just. Women do need their spaces away from men — and not just for safety concerns. Transsexuals attempting to invade these spaces — in a swift, Bolshevik-style power grab, no less — upends what it means to be a woman. It opens the door for abuse from criminals and degenerates who use transsexualism as an outlet for their predatory behavior. Factor in that no amount of surgery or hormones can make a man less physically imposing and that many of these transsexuals are psychologically unstable to begin with, and you have a genuine threat to women’s safety and identity.

And any threat to women is a threat to men as well, since we are all in this together, right?

Of course, that the feminists are the only ones behaving in a civically responsible manner — which is their God-given, First Amendment right — is another reason to want to take their side in this regrettable dispute.

And the violence trantifa wishes against these so-called TERFs is vicious. Observe:

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So what can be done? What should be done?

As sympathetic and courageous as Meghan Murphy, Helen Joyce, and other feminists are in combating this evil, I don’t think the Dissident Right should lift a finger to assist them unless they undergo a long-overdue attitude adjustment regarding gender realism. (And I say this because I want to assist them; they have truth on their side, after all, and their antagonists are loathsome.)

Here is a list of feminist principles excerpted and paraphrased from Murphy’s article above, followed by my Dissident Right responses. Murphy claims these principles are “at the root of feminism.” So, if the issues I raise with them can be overcome (or at least discussed in a productive manner), then perhaps one day some kind of Fem-Right alliance can be forged against this Leftist scourge. Am I being optimistic? You be the judge:

  1. MM: Feminists believe that women are members of an oppressed class. SJQ: Yeah, no. And certainly not by white men. Gender roles had been assigned out of necessity and honed over thousands of years. Further, differences in outcome between men and women can be chalked up to proven cognitive differences between the sexes rather than oppression. We can talk about anti-female abuse, which, unfortunately, happens. Moving forward, I’m even willing to mete out extra punishment to male criminals in some circumstances if their victims are female. Call it female privilege, if you wish. But this privilege ends there. If women care to compete in male-dominated spheres, they will have to meet male standards. How many women would survive in the military or in physics labs if they had to do that? Further, they will have to put up with men as they are and not insist they censor themselves for being in mixed company. You can’t have it both ways: wanting to be treated like an equal when it suits you, and wanting to be treated like a lady when it suits you. Further, what class of men ever shared as much influence and power with women more than white men? And who gets precious little credit from feminists? You guessed it: white men. White men need to start getting props for allowing feminism to take hold in the first place. Oh, and whenever you throw around the word “patriarchy,” that is an anti-male slur. Awful rich coming from people who decry sexism.
  2. MM: Feminists challenge the notion of innate or internal gender. SJQ: Yeah, we do, too.
  3. MM: Feminists have conversations about “gender identity.” SJQ: Whatever.
  4. MM: Feminists question whether or not children should begin the process of transitioning. SJQ: We on the Right forbid that sort of thing and would impose maximum penalties upon any therapist, counselor, or medical professional who dares even to start transitioning a minor.
  5. MM: Feminists associate with and defend women who have been labelled “TERF.” SJQ: Give us a reason, and we will, too. First, accept the biological basis of gender realism. Next, accept the biological basis of race realism. I’ve written a lot about Richard Haier’s The Neuroscience of Intelligence [18] regarding the neural reality of IQ (hence the reality of race), but he also discusses sex differences in brain function (going beyond the well-known brain size and structure differences between men and women). After observing brain activity in 44 college students (22 male and 22 female) as they solved math problems, he found that the men showed increased activity in their temporal lobes. Not so with the women:

In the 22 women, we found no systematic statistical relationship between mathematical reasoning ability and brain activity. How the brains in the high SAT-math women were working could not be determined, even though they were solving the same problems as the men equally well.

He concludes that “men and women may process information and problem-solve with different brain networks” and whose brains apparently show “different patterns of activity.” Because of this difference, he argues for always performing separate neuroscientific analyses for males and females.

Then, once we’re on the same page with biology, you can join us on the Jewish Question. Tobias Langdon reveals that many of the most influential pro-trans villains in Helen Joyce’s book are indeed Jews (for example, Judith Butler, Magnus Hirschfeld, Jacques Derrida, Jennifer Pritzker, George Soros, and Jonathan Yaniv). In fact, Jews are grossly disproportionate [19] throughout much of the transgender movement. Yet, Joyce doesn’t connect the dots. It’s almost as if she really doesn’t want to win the existential war feminists are fighting against the totalitarian Left. Remember the oft-quoted Sun Tzu line? “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear a hundred battles.” If you’re too afraid to even name your enemy, what chance in Hell do you think you have?

  1. MM: Feminists understand that the root of women’s oppression and male supremacy is in biological sex. SJQ: Yes and no. The root of traditional gender roles and gender differences in ability and temperament is in biological sex. That’s more like it.
  2. MM: Feminists understand that gender is imposed, and is oppressive/exists to create a hierarchy between men and women. SJQ: Yeah, walk into the teeth of Jewish power and you’ll see what an oppressive hierarchy really looks like.
  3. MM: Feminists question dogma and mantras like “transwomen are women.” SJQ: We don’t question it. We reject it. And so do you.
  4. MM: Feminists support woman-only space. SJQ: We do, too. But on the flip side, that means feminists should also support men-only spaces. We can start with the Augusta Country Club and the Boy Scouts of America. Still waiting on the quid pro quo.
  5. MM: Feminists dispute an ideology that claims “male” and “female” are not a material reality. SJQ: Yeah, except that the Dissident Right takes this a step further and disputes ideologies claiming that race is not a material reality as well. Care to be a rebel and join us?

Of course, if feminists disagree with any of this, they are welcome to a debate. We on the Dissident Right promise to smash only their ideas, unlike trantifa and the Left.

The problem here stems from the lie that feminist icon Gloria Steinem once told about women needing men like a fish needing a bicycle — which was cribbed from something written by male philosopher [20]. (Natch.) If the fish analogy were true, then the victims of the trantifa episode in Oakland would have repelled that puny assault rather than simply get punked and complain about it afterwards. But, you see, the fish analogy isn’t true. Women really do need men. How do you think that attack would have gone if those women had had their husbands present? Less well, I would imagine.

Feminism essentially rejects or deemphasizes not only men as mates and breadwinners, but also the very gender roles that men have evolved specifically to perform. This may work well enough during peacetime, when men are polite and their gender roles are not terribly crucial for survival. But during war, when such roles do become crucial, feminists will have little room to complain when there’s no one there to protect them. This is why feminists who wish to keep their integrity during these TERF wars should consider shifting to the Right for protection — and shifting their minds rightward as well — because with all the malevolent forces they have stirred up with this transsexual business, protection is exactly what they are going to need.

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