Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I don't think anyone is directly endorsing her position, so much as cutting her some slack in terms of the level of outrage, labeling and dismissal directed at her personally for having expressed a wrong opinion.

Hmm I'm not quite sure that publishing something to a global audience is simply 'expressing an opinion'

It may not be 'simple' but she is definitely expressing an opinion.

It's a long open letter straight-up dragging a trans, Nigerian author

Had she expressed that opinion to a couple of friends while out to lunch instead she would not be facing this current criticism, it might be worth dwelling on how those two scenarios differ

Like if I called you an asshole here and if I called you an asshole in a NYT op-ed I'm sure you would have quite a different reaction to the same expressed opinion

Yes. I am sure that is true. But a clusterfuck is a clusterfuck, wherever it happens. There were options on both sides for avoiding a clusterfuck right from the start, and simlar options for ilxors to avoid participating in the clusterfuck aspects of this situation, too.

if I called you an asshole in a NYT op-ed

The editors would probably have intervened before this went to print. At the very least, it would have been more refereed and measured.

How are we participating, commenting on it here? Is CNA an ilxor that I didn't know about?

How do you respond to someone rolling out a bunch of defenses of their transphobia and... fear of people who disagree with her? Fear of youth? without it being a clusterfuck?

Aimless, what exactly are you trying to defend here?

TERF wars always make me sad because they're always among people who ought to be allies. Which imo takes some allowances and graciousness on all sides, which are the things always lacking. (Especially on Twitter, that part is true.)

🧐

I'm sorry if "allowances and graciousness" is somehow offensive. They're valuable things for everyone.

takes some allowances and graciousness on all sides

writing and publishing are rather insular and are cutthroat competitive worlds, even when the amount of money and status at stake are extremely small. as such, rivalries can get quite bitter, like the range wars among cattle ranchers and sheep herders. this may be a factor in this particular inter-author wrangle.

Even aside from the transphobia, I found the tone of Adichie's essay really unpleasant. In particular the decision to reprint the two very personal emails Emezi sent her, in full, comes across very narcissistic to me - there's an implied "how dare this person write to me, when I am so much more important than her" that makes me more inclined to trust Emezi's account of events than Adichie's.

that's not very allowing or gracious of you

xp Sorry, "so much more important than them" - I forgot to check Emezi's pronouns before posting.

I totally agree, it's a bad essay. I couldn't even finish it because it came off like a rant. It's mostly an excuse for her to air personal grievances. A bad look. I'm also not super impressed with Emezi's take, for a lot of the same reasons. But also, everybody doesn't have to choose sides and have big fights over every single thing. It's exhausting for everybody. Alliances are only successful if they spend more energy on united effort than internal fighting. That's just how they work. I think some people have an overly rosy idea of what an "ally" is. You can't force them to think just like you, you just want people in the same ballpark. There are much bigger fights to have.

Except for, you know, the trans people who are being denigrated and attacked? Like Emezi? Who wrote the thread that horseshoe linked to well before the essay, and doesn't, for example, publish someone else's correspondence.

I live in a state that just passed about a bunch of explicitly anti-trans bills. And the opposition to them has been a unified front of LGBTQ activists and civil rights groups of all kinds, as well as what remains of our state Democratic Party. I personally know some TERFs, and while I don't agree with them on everything, they were right out there fighting the anti-trans bills too. They've been fighting for a lot of things for a long time. So I don't write them off. Like I said, there are bigger fights.

????

xp You have a wildly different definition of TERF than I am familiar with.

Like, have you read JK Rowling's letter, the one that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has defended several times? How on earth is that helping trans people?

I'm not talking about the intramural fights! I'm talking about political mobilization among allies. Endless flame wars don't help trans people either.

???????????????

I know, I know. It's not cool to say that people should work together for common interests and/or against common enemies. But it's true anyway.

¿?

xp Wait, is your theory that all TERFs are actually trans allies, unfairly maligned? Because that's the only way I can reconcile your comments here.

At least, that's the closest thing to a positive interpretation I can figure out.

The TERFs I know were 100 percent vocal and active against the anti-trans legislation in my state, yes. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you are conceiving of both them and the actual battle much too narrowly. If you don't have a definition of "ally" that understands the importance of that, then I don't know what to tell you.

Which is not to say Rowling or Adichie are acting like allies either. They're not! Hence the "on all sides."

"terfs did a thing that isn't reprehensible, therefore we should be nice to them"

love that anecdotal evidence of "some friends", always super convincing

xp I guess I'm confused why you feel the need to attack both sides here, in this thread, as somehow equally responsible for the dialog, and deserving of more grace than they get from every paper, news media property, the Guardian... Are TERFs the ones who are suffering here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YhipiMNiYk

TERFs could list all kinds of ways they're suffering, yes. Or did we achieve women's full legal and economic equality while I was sleeping?

That's exactly the kind of villain framing that's bad for building and maintaining alliances. There are in fact plenty of common interests and reasons to unite. Spending endless hours on internal fights makes all of that harder.

But I don't want to get into an intramural fight either. Like I said, they're exhausting and they make me sad.

I’m not on the same side of any wall as any terf, fucko

Intramural my ass.

Creep.

Lol at coming into this thread saying "both sides are bad, they should be nicer to each other" and then ducking out after saying how much you like your TERF friends.

You do realize that TERFs could stop being TERFs by just not excluding trans women from their definition of womanhood, right? Like, it's not some innate state of being, and they aren't suffering because they're TERFs. Why not just be a non-trans-excluding feminist?

tipsy mothra, do you know what TERF stands for, and that it's not just a synonym for "feminism"?

^^^

as a woman, i do not consider TERFs my ally in any way. they are villains and don't give a shit about women's full legal and economic equality because "full" would mean including *all* women.

i can't believe anyone would defend them on this thread in THIS discussion, let alone anywhere. we have trans posters. for now. jesus christ.

Of course I know what it stands for. And if you don't have a way to bring together people fighting for gender rights and equality that includes people who, e.g., have been fighting for gay rights for decades, then you're making your own fight harder. It takes work by everyone. That's how alliances work. The successful ones anyway.

Fuck entirely off, you can stay off my side, asshole

And yes there is more responsibility on the part of people with more privilege and power.

OK, I'm sorry. I understand and respect the sentiments of the room.

The USA allied with Stalin's USSR in WWII and that alliance was crucial to defeating the Nazis. Flawed allies can help you win battles and even wars, so long as each side of the alliance understands the necessity of defeating a common enemy. After WWII ended, they turned their attention to having it out with one another, but they each knew to address first things first.

Sure ok whatever xp

Go read r/gendercynical for a while and then come back and tell us that you are willing to defend terfs.

aimless, that is pretty nonsensical.

that is pretty nonsensical

not at all. it explains why terfs would show up to fight bills that are specifically anti-trans. it is because the legislators who sponsor such bills have a much broader agenda than anti-trans oppression and such bills are preliminary bouts that test the strength of each side.

this "no terf will ever be welcome in any battle I need to fight" righteousness is fine if all you want is to strike an attitude, but it weakens your cause to confine your allies to those whose ideas align entirely with yours. hence my citing the realpolitik of the USA/USSR alliance. The people who write anti-trans bills are far worse scum than terfs and if the price of stopping them is cooperation with terfs, it's a small price compared to letting the scum take over.

Doesn't mean we should be nicer to TERFs; they should still stop being TERFs and just advocate against bad laws for normal reasons like the rest of us.