RedFem Black

The women counter by saying they are not complicit in bolstering regressive values; they are, they say, forming “strategic alliances” in order to prevent legislation or policy to be adopted that could harm women, such as transgender self-identification.

I approached WoLF to ask about their work and was told: “We’ve brought feminist arguments to federal court, for the audience of the people who determine the implementation of our civil rights laws. This is an important venue from which we cannot be de-platformed by vigilante social media mobs, and in which the women we represent have a right to have their views represented.”

I understand only too well the effects of being silenced and de-platformed, but joining forces with those who wish to repeal the majority of women’s hard-won rights is a betrayal of the highest order. That’s why I think these alliances are strategically disastrous. Yes, it is a disgrace that Liberal and Left organisations have failed to support sex-based rights, but I do believe women lose out in the long term if we do not fight from a progressive base.

Beatrix Campbell, left-wing journalist, political activist and author of The Iron Ladies: Why Do Women Vote Tory? (1987), knew that in order to be an effective feminist campaigner it is necessary to have a critique of the wider social structures that sustain male power and women’s oppression or we are vulnerable to “odd alliances”. She tells me, “Issues of sexual oppression can arise in the right or the left, and if you don’t locate your women’s activism then you might find allies that are no friends to women at all and want to use us for their own agenda.”

While feminists may find limited common ground with right-wing groups over single issues, they are likely to have very different ideas about how their shared objectives should be achieved and their ultimate goals will be irreconcilable. “The global Right is not and never has been committed to equality,” says Selina Todd, “let alone liberation.”

In 2017, HATAC member Meg Kilgannon spoke at the Values Voter Summit (VVS), an annual gathering of the Christian Right which, earlier this year, compared the Black Lives Matter movement to Nazis. Only one US president has ever addressed it: Trump. At the Summit, Kilgannon outlined a strategy in relation to working with feminists that included avoiding religious terminology in favour of science: “If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.” In other words, this strategy would disguise the general attack on the rights of all LGBT people.

The problem here is finding a middle ground between omitting the person and omitting the truth. Today, we’re expected to omit the person, which means we omit the complete truth. 88% of responders said that there’s a pressure to only report on contributions made by someone deemed politically “good.” Half said there isn’t enough room to discuss controversial topics. Almost all (96%) said that lesbians should be able to discuss controversial topics without deplatforming the opponent.

That is heavenly, but out of reach in the culture of “us vs. them.” Sometimes there are two systematically oppressed groups arguing over an issue that affects them both respectively, where the polarised solutions lead to one or the other being further marginalised. Any discussion to create a non-polarised middle ground is dismissed as problematic because both sides will feel targeted. Compromise? What’s that?

If you actually listen to detrans people, both women AND men alike, without ideological blinders on, it’s clear that they gravitate towards being gender critical because of hostility from the trans community and radical feminism relating to their experiences. The trans community treats detransitioners the way a cult treats apostates, and now trans activists are trying to turn around and lament on what a shame it is that the evil terves got a hold on detransitioners? Mf, practice self-awareness and self-reflection. You treat these people like their mere EXISTENCE is an attack on yours.

And then, many dysphoric/desisted/detrans people are gender nonconforming and/or same-sex attracted females, a lot of them neurodivergent (autistic) too. This is because of the way in which society (mis)treats these groups of people and makes them believe they’re wrong for simply being themselves. Plenty of deeply sexist and homophobic parents would rather have a trans son than a butch daughter (and a trans daughter over a gay son) because they hate gender nonconformity, and many neurodivergent girls especially have “problems” conforming to the social dictates of femininity, which makes them feel uncomfortable as women. Radical feminism offers these people a clear and simple explanation for their feelings, putting their own personal experiences into a broader societal context: that gender is the problem, not the solution.

And to be clear, gender critical/radical feminists have some problems too and aren’t doing a perfect job in taking care of detrans women either. Shit like using dehumanizing rhetoric to refer to them (“mutilated”, “ruined”, “life destroyed”, etc) and being kinda tokenistic with them, just waving them around as political props without actually addressing their concerns. That’s what I see, I’m not detrans so I could be missing a lot, detrans women feel free to add. But compared to the other options, it’s little wonder why many of the most vocal detransitioners align with radical feminism in some capacity. Radical feminists are the ones willing to listen to and platform them, because the existence of detransitioners is very inconvenient to trans activists (“gender identity” might not be innate, people can be mistaken/confused, etc) and their real experiences are also very inconvenient to conservatives (gender stereotypes, misogyny and homophobia motivating transition).

And of course, it should go without saying that not all detrans people align with radical feminism — I’ve personally encountered detrans gender ideologues on both ends of the spectrum, both trans allies and conservatives. But the fact that many (apparently) do isn’t the result of grooming by ebil tervs or feminazi brainwashing, try listening to what said detrans women have to say for themselves instead of speaking down to them so disrespectfully.

Another case, is the case of Razan al-Najjar, which is also emblematic of the IDF’s operational mode. She was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza march of return protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger. The IDF began its usual mantra, blamed Hamas for her death, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield.

This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. What it actually showed was how deceptively the IDF had edited the video to try and put words in Razan’s mouth. It seems killing her was not enough, now they needed to assassinate her character and shift the blame onto her as well. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” routine and nobody expects anything will come of it.

But, as shown, even in the extremely rare cases where the investigations lead to a trial, and in the infinitesimally rarer cases it actually finds a soldier to be guilty, the “punishments” are rather laughable. If you think the case of Nadim Nuwarra is an infuriating mockery of justice, it gets much worse. For example, the commander found to be responsible for the Kufr Qassim massacre where 49 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood was fined 10 measly pennies for giving the order to open fire on civilians. His accomplices were sentenced to very light jail time, but were all pardoned and set free within a year. So even in the rare case where these insulting sentences are given, it’s rare for an Israeli soldier to actually serve their sentence in full.

But these are far from exceptions to the rule, in Israel it seems like normalized savagery towards Palestinians is a prerequisite for a successful political or military career. We say this without any kind of exaggeration, it is difficult to find an Israeli Prime Minister who has not been part of vicious war crimes against the Palestinians, from Rabin, Sharon, Shamir, to many others.

But what is it that attracts these reactionary movements to Israel? Why do they profess love for Israel internationally while championing antisemitic and racist politics locally?

Far-right fascists love Israel for multiple reasons:

1) Israel serves as a model for the ethno-state that they seek to build. For the far-right, Zionism as an ideology and a movement is something to be emulated. White nationalist and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer proclaimed himself to be a “white Zionist”. He also went on to describe Israel as “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state” — the “one that I turn to for guidance.” What is humorous here, is that this white nationalist possesses a more sober understanding of Zionism than most liberal Zionists do.

2) Israel and the far-right have in common their xenophobia, anti-migrant politics, and Islamophobia. They both see themselves as guardians of “Western civilization” and a bulwark against the East. Their political messaging is inundated with “war on terror” scaremongering, and a chilling obsession with demographics. Israel is more than happy to accommodate these groups, no matter how antisemitic they are, as long as they are supportive of Israeli policies. A prominent instance of such was a visit by a group of German far-right, anti-Muslim bloggers, who toured the streets of Israel expressing their desire to blow up mosques, and calling African refugees “invaders”. Unsurprisingly, as they visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust victims memorial, it became apparent that this group was full of Holocaust deniers, but since they spoke about the importance of supporting Israel’s fight against “the Muslim problem”, they were seen as friends and allies. Meanwhile, Jewish proponents of BDS have not been allowed entry at the border.

3) Finally, if all goes according to plan and these movements succeed in establishing their ethno-states, Israel would receive the Jewish population of these countries. In this way, these movements get to establish their racist entities, and Israel would benefit from the exodus of these Jewish communities to bolster its Jewish population. Unfortunately, the well-being or safety of these communities never enters into the equation. This is hardly a new position for the Zionist movement, as Ben Gurion in the 1930s famously said:

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”

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