August 25, 2020 - 3:00pm
The latest casualty of the TERF wars is Sasha White, sacked from her job as an assistant agent at the Tobias Literary Agency. Her crime? Alleged transphobia of course. What other issue instils so much fear among the liberal masses?
Sasha tweeted from her personal account that JK Rowling’s TERF wars essay was ‘nuanced and insightful’, questioning whether they/them pronouns are truly progressive and her views and questions as to where trans rights and women’s rights might intersect.
It's true: I was fired last night for my feminist stance. The twitter mob came for me and my employer and my employer immediately terminated me. If you've been through something similar please reach out…
— sasha white (@iamGrushenka) August 24, 2020
The statement released on Twitter by Tobias following a tsunami of complaints from trans activists read: ‘We do not have any room for anti-trans sentiments at TLA. Period. Thus we have parted ways with Sasha’.
The hashtag #IStandWithSashaWhite was soon trending as decent people on Twitter clocked on to the fact that yet another feminist was being burned at the stake.
In recent months, I have heard from a number of feminists living in fear of losing their income as a result of being called to task for a) refusing to add pronouns to emails b) liking a JK Rowling tweet c) questioning whether single sex workplace toilets should become free-for-all, and d) refusing to use language in official documents such as ‘cervix havers’ and ‘chest feeders’. All of these examples are real. These women are all currently under investigation and risk being made unemployed and unemployable.
In the current climate where the trans-led Queer ISIS has the first and last word on anything to do with feminism, women are losing their jobs, reputations, university education and livelihoods. Many of the women affected at present are of colour, such as the Black lesbian barrister Allison Bailey for speaking at an event deemed to be TERF, and the Indian feminist filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar who has questioned extreme trans activism.
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SubscribeA very safe general rule of thumb, if you disagree with Owen Jones, you’re probably correct. Even on general liberal viewpoints
The only edit I would suggest is that all references to Owen Jones should be prefaced with “Silly Little…”
It’s dreadful, it is. But then, so was the cancellation of moderate and conservative voices over the past decades for daring to disagree with the tenets of feminism, such as the “patriarchy” conspiracy theory, the “rape culture” delusion, the “tampon tax” lie, etc, etc, et blooming cetera. The identity politics revolution is coming to eat you, Julie, and all its other children. What was sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.
My favourite thing about this style of reply is not that it conflates a material analysis the commenter dislikes with a dogmatic ideology – that’s just why it is wrong, not why it’s funny. The reason it’s funny, and therefore my favourite thing about it, is that each and every person who writes this sort of thing appears to believe he has come up with an extremely clever rebuttal. It’s a bit like your small child coming home from school to tell you a knock-knock joke.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a ‘clever rebuttal’, it’s making the point, “what did you expect?”
It is the entirely foreseeable outcome of the decades spent spreading the ideological possession by the toxic idiocy of identity politics.
Was there any attempt whatsoever in your comment to engage with what I said? If so I didn’t spot it in amongst the snide and self-satisfied ad hominem attacks.
You can do better than this Chris. I know, because you often do.
There were no ad-hominem attacks. Aliki’s comment was cut-and-paste. You can fit it anywhere that you find a ‘commenter’. That’s why no name, that’s why no attempt to engage.
Some people laugh with people, some people laugh at people. Some people laugh snidely at their own children when told a knock-knock joke (she gave you a gift there).
Interesting: I suppose it depends what one means by ad hominem. I mean that it attacks the writer rather than the argument, not that the attack has to be personalised and unique to the writer. I believe that that is a fairly conventional definition, but you seem to be suggesting that the attack has to be personalised? Could you expand on that?
Yes, I noticed the part about sneering at one’s own child over a knock-knock joke. But I also noticed how generic the whole thing was, and didn’t want to spend too much time engaging. That is a losing battle.
>>
Could you expand on that?
I believed it had to do with the character of the writer, not the motivations, or qualifications, which are often relevant to the argument.
Since the rules are unenforced any judgement is in the eye of the beholder
Did you not think that her attack was on my character, suggesting that I am childish? (Not that she’s necessarily wrong about that!)
My favourite thing about your kind of comment is that it makes me feel even more morally superior than you do – because I’m not generally the type of haughty, condescening, patronising snipe that you appear to be.
Glad to see you enjoying Chris’ funny comments Aliki.
On a more serious note, Chris is right and rather apposite I must say that “What was sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose”, very neat.
Also but not witty, unfortunately, are:
“The means are the end.”
“He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.”
Radicalism is no fun at all unless you can eviscerate your parents and grandparents with the same cruel tools they used to eviscerate theirs.
I’m glad someone else appreciated that one. Laughing at one’s own jokes only gets one so far!
You need to get out more flower.
…an learn to express yourself more clearly
I survived academia for 30 years. Despite the ontological differences between feminism and other identitarian lobby groups, radical feminism is cancel culture’s primary operational model – the original and best! Hoisted on your own petard. Tough.
This is a site for discussion, and so I respectfully invite any of those who downvoted my comment”which you are entirely within your rights to do!”to respond, explaining what you so strongly disagreed with about it. Come now, and let us reason together.
Whataboutery is no replacement for engaging with the central argument of the piece
It is not “whataboutery” (whatever that ill-defined piece of jargon is intended to mean today) to point out the connections between the current cancel culture and the previous cancellations performed by the feminist movement.
Two points occur to me.
One, while there has an element of ‘smash the patriarchy anti men’ in feminism, my experience over nearly 50 years is that it was marginal. Some loud voices but not the majority.
Second, if those who were loud voiced in their anti-patriarchy foolishness have now come to regret being on the receiving end of such idiocy and have changed their minds, then: rather than pointing fingers and laughing about petards and being hoist by them, should not anyone who wants this oppressive tide turned embrace them as new converts and allies?
There’s no room for ideological purity when you’re fighting for your (cultural, societal, political and physical) life.
That’s a very good point, but I wonder if you read the article to the end. I was the one ‘laughing’ about petards. She accuses the trans activists of merely using intersectionality as a weapon because they are actually men (trans women) who want to silence women. That is, more Patriarchy. If that’s true, I think she needs to take some responsibility for creating that weapon, and that it is indeed a weapon, used regularly by feminists and every other ‘oppressed’ group. But no. No self reflection here.
I agree that they will be welcome as new converts and allies, but only if they have accepted that they were wrong before. Sadly, from what I have seen they still think that they were entirely right to brutally cancel non-feminists, they just don’t think the same treatment should be applied to them. Therefore it is important to find out whether they are condemning the cancelling of feminists because they oppose cancellation (good), or only because it is now affecting them personally.
You clearly dont have a clue what you are talking about. Feminism is not defined by right wing conservatives like you. Nor do feminists have to now go along with your gaslighting just because a faction of the patriarchy has decided to infiltrate it by putting on dresses.
If you were informed about the work feminists were actually engaged in, you would know that what has now been deemed as radical feminism, (which in reality is actual feminism) has been fighting against this agenda for decades. Lesbian women especially have been vocal against this agenda and are very much aware of how separate the trans activist agenda is from their own. In fact real feminists view transactivism as misogyny.
So your Fox News talking points don’t work here. If you want to lump everyone into being a Marxist or whatever the current tactic of the week is, in order to make your oppressive patriarchal nonsense fly, it’s not viable. You need to check the history before continuing to run down that road, thinking women are now going to fall in line behind you out of desperation, (simply because males are still doing what they have always done except this time they are feminine males). It’s not going to happen. We have a long history of activism around this that is more than available to all women to get on board with.
I happen not to be a right-wing conservative; not that there’d be anything wrong with that, although one wouldn’t think so from your diatribe. I am also, unsurprisingly for a commenter on a British website, not an American. So even were I a right-wing conservative, I would not get my talking points from Fox News, since we don’t watch it here. I speculate that you may be the American Ree Walker who has written for the Daily Kos, and that this explains your failure to understand the British context.
I note that Julie’s articles seem to draw out many Americans to bring your more aggressive form of culture war into our British context, where it does not belong. If you are indeed American, you would do your doctrinal fellow travellers over here a favour by tailoring your content better. Your full-frontal assault, slamming those bogeymen of “right wing conservatives” and “Fox News” may well be de rigueur in the States, but here you seem off-topic and over-the-top. I politely suggest that you step back and ask yourself whether this kind of jargon-laden insult-hurling is a) really the best way to achieve your ends, and b) an ethical way to treat other human beings. I think the answer is no to both questions.
Are you also all true Scotsmen? You do not have a monopoly over the word “feminism”. Had you read my comment you would know that in principle I in fact support your radical wing retaining the word. But in practice that ship has probably sailed. Billions use the word ‘feminism’ to mean simple equality. It is as foolish to try to redefine the common usage of ‘feminism’ as it is for transactivists to try to redefine the common usage of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.
Most bizarrely of all, you seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I am a supporter of transactivism. This seems to be an off-shoot of your inability to break out of binary thinking: you disagree with transactivism; you disagree with me; therefore I must agree with transactivism. “My enemy is my other enemy’s friend.” This is especially peculiar since you also think that I am a “right wing conservative” who merely regurgitates “Fox News talking points”: do you really think that Fox News viewers are especially famed for their enthusiastic support of transsexualism? I may be an ignorant Britisher, but that is not my understanding of their clientele.
You are furiously talking past me. I essentially agree with the gender critical position of transsexualism. But I extend it to point out that both the false doctrines and the dangerous tactics of the transsexual lobby were cribbed wholesale from their predecessors in their fellow identity politics movements, in particular the feminist and queer rights movements. Please feel free to argue against this view of mine: I could be wrong, and undoubtedly often am. But your present course of throwing insults is not the way to go.
Dear oh dear! does this by any stretch of the imagination look like a way to prevent insults.? There are surely nasty hints here of anti American racism.
Not acceptable nor in the spirit of agreeable disagreement.
Dear Lord. The po-faced wokery has no apparent end.
LOL
Were you joking?
Couldn’t agree more. It really is a bit rich of Bindel to be complaining of the treatment of feminists by the trans crowd when she herself would have treated any man who wished to maintain traditional sex roles as a target for sacking.
“I observed the behaviour of liberals during the so-called Harper’s Letter. Their feeble effort to push back was a canary in the coalmine.
These useful-idiots – who opened the gates to this demonic ideology – took one trembling step against it and folded like a cheap suit.
They fancied themselves to be as bright as the stars in the night sky and as virtuous as the saints. What fools they are and what evil they have unleashed.
Marxists aren’t like conservatives. They will steal your assets and the loyalty of your children then they’ll stare in your eyes and without blinking they’ll break your neck.” Sentient comments on the Quillette essay.
These aren’t Marxists, they are postmodernists. The trans issue has nothing to do with a critique of capitalist exploitation of the working class. or what is value, or how capital accumulation has inherent contradictions that lead to its own destruction, all while running the way it is constructed to (i.e. not because of bad leadership). From today’s vantage point regarding economic analysis, Marx was a conservative. He was a classical economist in the tradition of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, contributing the Labor Theory of Value that goes back to the ancient Greeks. Today’s “marginal utility” subjectivist value theory only exists because of the damning conclusions of classical economics demonstrated by Marx. What does any of this have to do with stealing assets or trans-insanity?
“… only exists because of the damning conclusions of classical economics demonstrated by Marx”
> What,
particularly, are the ‘conclusions of classical economics’ and did how Marx reckon and demonstrate that they were damnable, particularly juxtaposed to what he offered as a ‘workable alternative’ on the street and market place, rather than in a book of theoretical economics?
Should a downtrodden working class, trans-exclusionary radical feminist be described as Serf-n-Terf?
utterly disgusting behaviour by a literary agency; unethical and misogynistic
Indeed. How does it square with employment law, I wonder?
Terrifying and disgusting, although we all know that this has been going on for some time now. If only we could cancel Billy Bragg and, especially, Owen Jones.
OMG! Many of the women affected are even ‘of colour’! The most privileged of victims on the totem pole. Is the irony really that lost on the author? Railing against the very intersectionality that she herself is embroiled in.
Yes, I picked up on that. They even targeted a black lesbian! I guess black lesbians were thought “bullet proof” until now?
Deranged levels of sanctimoniousness courtesy of social media. Shrill displays of virtue and appropriate self-flagellation (or even literal self-flagellation in the case of some white men trying to placate BLM). Where will it end? Show trials? Gulags? Correction camps? Will the cheerleaders (sorry) for this end up like Robespierre? Well, let’s hope so.
I dont think they’ll allow trials itll be straight to the gulags
It’s the “show” part of “show trial” that’s important – I’m not in the habit of quoting from Wikipedia, but this excerpt from the entry on show trials is true:
“The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.”
It also provides some glorious opportunities for showboating sanctimoniousness (for the prosecutors) and equally showboating self-flagellation opportunities for the defendants, before they’re taken out and shot.
What we are witnessing is the death of liberalism itself.
“We don’t know what will happen for certain. But based on the experience of recent years, we can venture a pretty good guess. Institutional liberalism lacks the resources to contend with this threat. Liberalism is being expelled from its former strongholds, and the hegemony of liberal ideas, as we have known it since the 1960s, will end. Anti-Marxist liberals are about to find themselves in much the same situation that has characterized conservatives, nationalists, and Christians for some time now: They are about to find themselves in the opposition.”
Check out philosopher Yoram Hazony’s brilliant essay over on Quillette.
2020 will be remembered as the year a new element was added to the periodic table: sanctimony.
Excellent.
Why all the schadenfreude?
If people are being fired for uttering perfectly reasonable opinions, surely we should 1) sympathise, 2) fight on their side. Simple decency apart, it might help us to have some allies against the woke, even if we do not agree on anything else.
As for all the ‘ha-ha, they started it’, are we talking about the same feminists? I am if anything antifeminist, and disagree with Julie Bindel on most things,but was it actually JB and her friends who started using newspeak as their main campaign tool?
A fundamental tenet of feminism is that gender is a social construct. Feminists have always used this anti science lie to serve their cause. I would be surprised if JB did not wholly subscribe to this lie, at least all the way up until the moment it was taken up by trans activists and used to the detriment of women. I don’t think there would be as much glee in their plight if they would actually admit that for decades they have been spreading this untruth to a gullible public. But no. JB doubles down and implies the problem is because the activists are men. It’s misogyny. The answer? More feminism.
Gender is the social role, expectations etc. ascribed to women. Surely that *is* a social construct – at least within the limits set by biology (whatever they are exactly)? Sex is biology, not a social construct, and I thought most feminists would agree that being a woman involves both.
You cannot avoid a bit of glee wen you see a group that has lived off victimhood being out-victimed. But surely there is a big difference between saying that we can change our social roles (including opening the female role to biological men under some conditions) and claiming that your own sense of self makes biology irrelevant and gives you the right no command the language and thinking of everybody else..
Couldn’t agree more. Every male space had to opened up to these harpies. I say: let’s finish the job guuuuurls! Full EQUALITY now. Why don’t these ladies loos have urinals…? Gender is a social construct and women are not born not wanting to see men pee, it must be a social contruct.
Gender is not sex. Gender is masculinity and femininity. Sex is male and female. Any female can act masculine. Any male can act feminine. The institutions that determine the characteristics of each are the military and motherhood, as well as the traditional husband/wife dominant/submissive arrangement. There are contexts even today where women are traded as the property of men. Gender is a set of personality characteristics that are enforced, and so opposed to individual human freedom. Feminism is nothing more than the demand for people not to be limited by these preconceived roles. Why anyone would have a problem with that is beyond me. Just let people be who they are. The trans cult is the opposite. It says gender is more real than sex, and that “therapy” requires cosmetic surgery to make an outward appearance of the sex associated with a particular gender. In this way it is the OPPOSITE of feminism. Lesbian and gay liberation told people they are ok as they are and there is nothing wrong with them. Trans activism tells people their body is wrong and they need surgery and hormones for life. It is also illiberal, forcing people to change their speech and accept ridiculous views. In what way did feminism of the 60s/70s do that? “Third wave” feminism from the late 80s/90s is antithetical to “second wave” feminism of the 60s/70s. It is a backlash and a rollback, using feminist sounding words to debase women and ironically empower men to demand to become the women in need of the most support and protection. It’s nuts!
In what way is gender being a social construct an anti-science lie unless, of course, you’re one of the many confusing sex with gender?
Gender is how male and female people are expected to behave in a society and is learned. Sex is biological and unchangeable however much surgery and drugs people take ( and pay for, it’s a huge market!). Women deserve single sex spaces how hard is that to understand??
But gender isn’t sex. It is roles attached to biological persons. A (biological) female was historically gendered to not have the vote. A biological female had a gender role that expected her to leave work after marriage.
Feminism is right on those distinctions. Where it went off the rails we when it saw some gender roles as being artificial when they were also biological. Women as care givers is a gendered role but there’s probably a biological reality to women being more nurturing, although all differences are on average.
Trans isn’t even internally consistent. It believes that gender is entirely constructed and not biological. It is merely a gender role assigned at birth. However trans people are definitely the gender they think they are and this is innate. It is in fact the only thing that is innate.
The class woman doesn’t exist then except when trans women say they are women and the class men when trans men say they are men.
“The lesbians will look up and shout ‘Save us’, and I’m going to whisper…’No’.
I’m sure there used to be a phrase for this. Someone help me out. You play with fire, you get … bunt? bynt? burnt?
who played with fire?
The feminists themselves. Intersectionality is their own invention. Hoisted by their own petard.
Intersectionality as envisaged by its creator just said that if you are female AND say, Black you suffer a double oppression. Not as is quoted by the lunatic queer theorists. And please don’t lump me in with the liberal feminists, they aren’t feminists in my book. Given the situation of women world wide not sure anyone can say that female people are not oppressed.
I am not that interested in parsing definitions of intersectionality. It was a pernicious and wrong-headed notion from the get go. To my mind, it totally fails to describe the world in a way that can lead to any good. As we are seeing. The oppression narrative in general is not helpful because it reduces the reasonable goal of equality to a power struggle that fails to recognize the very real power dynamics that already exist and that serve both sexes. That dynamic is and should always be a negotiation between partners. A fight against ‘oppression’ will only lead to more oppression.
Billy Bragg and Owen Jones … honestly does anyone care?
Idiots, self promoters and vanity artists; in OJ’s case a bad case of ‘small man syndrome’. WTAF is Billy Brag anyway, just another r one hit wonder from 30 odd years ago like saint (sir) Bob Geldoph? Ignore these people please.
‘The trans-lobby demand total capitulation from women so that we are not even allowed to question the ‘trans women are women’ mantra.’ The trans-lobby are not just demanding capitulation from women, they are demanding capitulation from men too. If the feminist enclave wasn’t so exclusive. it would be less vulnerable.
Would someone in the position of the lady being discussed have a case for wrongful dismissal in instances like this? I’ve read about tons of people being fired for opinions, none of which are illegal, and don’t see why employers aren’t raked over the coals for that. Any ideas?
She almost certainly would have a good case and she should ask the Free Speech Union to take it up for her. In the short time they have existed they have already helped a number of similar victims.
She will get no joy if Judge James Tayler gets her case, He’s the one who ruled in the Maya Forstater case – doesn’t believe in biological reality. Someone should ask Tayler if he is a man. If he answers yes, ask him how he knows…
Anyone who lives on Twitter that is not financially independent does so at her own risk. I’m sure no one there really gives a damn about Sasha’s feminist stance.
Woman votes for the Face Eating Leopard’s Party.
Is sad when her friend’s face gets eaten.
‘These women are all currently under investigation and risk being made unemployed … .’ Are there no employment lawyers prepared to defend unjustly dismissed employees? Or are all the feminist lawyers more interested in representing companies that pay high fees?
‘This has nothing to do with bigots being held to account for spouting heinous opinions, it is all about silencing women who expose misogyny.’
Sorry – as soon as you complain about the first, you’re laying the ground for the second. All opinions should be allowed and unactionable, but just the ones you yourself happen to prefer.
It’d be a better world if the likes of Billy Brag and especially that little squirt Owen Jones didn’t exist I reckon.
My reality check is this: how does the modern world respond when your 3 year old asks, ‘does mummy have a willy?’ My answer was no.
Whilst I sympathise with Sasha and others who suffer at the hands of the twittermob zombies, I continue to be astonished that they – or anyone – should continue to engage with this toxic medium and its malignant denizens.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
One more apparently reasonable post vanished. I thought it was rubbish software, but it has to be moderation.
Life is too short to play hide and seek with moderators. If you want us to take the trouble to figure out where you put the tripwires and how to express ourselves within them, you should
– leave a ‘Removed by moderator’ mark instard of just vanishing the posts.
– Leave the removed post visible in our acount, so we can see what we wrote.
– Highlight the offending phrase so we can learn where you put the imits.
I am sad that this article betrays some of the limits in belief of freedom of speech which is are the hallmark of those it criticises. Its objection “is to silencing women” who expose misogyny. And it is clearly regarded by the writer as especially shocking that “Many of the women affected at present are of colour”. In this the writer adopts a hierarchy of those who are allowed freedom of speech and who should be protected from persecution for expressing their views, just as the extreme trans activists do (though they are even more narrow minded). In the debates about trans-gender, sexuality, biological sex and the protection of people from abuse, it is essential that everyone should be able to communicate facts and argue (in a way that does not incite hatred), and that they should be free from persecution for so expressing their views.
As a black woman who has been in the fight for the rights of women and girls and black women and girls specifically for decades, I am appalled at the fact that many of these DAFTS (a term I coined meaning Delusional As f**k Transactivist) are now trying to conflate the black struggle for equality with their own. Black people are not, for the most part, on board with this insanity. We know that men are not women. We also know that there are masculine women and feminine males.
Yet they are now equating women, black or otherwise, who speak out against this onslaught from males, with white segregationists in the south. Talk about twisting the history. Women are the ones who are being victimized here and patriarchy is the problem. Any male, feminine or masculine, can still be a patriarchy pushing asshole and will still be oppressive to women whether he puts on his feminine costume or not. This needs to be made crystal clear, especially to younger women who aren’t aware of the fact that they are being brainwashed by the patriarchy.
Actual women are still vulnerable and far too many are not aware of the Trojan horse that this movement is symbolic of as they continue to allow these feminine males to infiltrate our political spaces and dictate to us what feminism is. Which is the exact opposite of feminism. It’s time for these companies to realize that women and well intentioned men, are not on board with this and that we will no longer allow any of these people to continue to threaten us. The REAL feminists must stand up and rally around other women who are being intimidated and victimized and no longer allow this bullying to go on.
I am starting to organize a group, (outside of Facebook and Twitter since they are so hellbent on silencing women who stand up for their rights). It will be announced soon. Look for it and send an email to [email protected] for more info.
I am sad that this article betrays some of the limits in belief of freedom of speech which is are the hallmark of those it criticises. Its objection “is to silencing women” who expose misogyny. And it is clearly regarded by the writer as especially shocking that “Many of the women affected at present are of colour”. In this the writer adopts a hierarchy of those who are allowed freedom of speech and who should be protected from persecution for expressing their views, just as the extreme trans activists do (though they are even more narrow minded). In the debates about trans-gender, sexuality, biological sex and the protection of people from abuse, it is essential that everyone should be able to communicate facts and argue (in a way that does not incite hatred), and that they should be free from persecution for so expressing their views.
Radical feminists are just as mad as the trans brigade get REAL folks, life’s a b***h and then you die.
No. Pity. Whatsoever.
Trannyism is the logical conclusion of feminism. Revolutions eat their own.
If it were anyone else being cancelled, say, a man who disagreed with homosexuality, JB would be chuffed.
An echo chamber, as usual…. And most comments are from men.
The agency didn’t fire her because she is a feminist. Many, perhaps even most feminists, would not agree with her.
It fired her because it’s a business, and it wants to sell wares to under 30s.
How dare you assume anyone’s gender…
Oh,do you think they’re only pretending to be men then Joe?
TERF
(For the slow-witted, I am being sarcastic…)
Most comments are from men = from folks who read Unherd = from folks who have something to say on the matter = from folks who mostly agree with each other. You have something to say. Just saying it is enough. Sociological observations of the nature of a freely and organically formed group are interesting but not relevant.
That’s the attitude that got us here; that the identity of the commenter matters.
Still makes them spineless. Does that sell to the under 30s? And why shouldn’t men comment ffs?
Whatever. They acted illegally and this is a very dangerous precedent. Oh, and just for the record, I ain’t a bloke.