Feminism

It's not easy being a woman online, or so the saying goes. When we're not being dismissed as dime-a-dozen bimbos, there's a very optimistic creep in our DMs trying to corral us into ‘showing bobs and vagene’ from thousands of miles away. Twitter in particular seems to be an unwinnable terrain. That said, the constant search for validation on the internet brings out the worst in some of us. If we can only build an audience, we tell ourselves, it will be easier to tune out the occasional misogynistic troll. Thus we resort to building an army of followers in some awfully predictable ways. *** Subscribe for three months’ free access to The Spectator USA website — then just $3.

Sunday March 8 is the most important day of the year for women all over the world: International Womxn’s Day (and if you have difficulty pronouncing that, congratulations, you are a bigot). Yes, Sunday is the day when ALL women are recognized, not just the ones with biologically recognized female parts. Chaka Khan famously sang: 'I’m every woman'. Thankfully today she would be called out as the TERF she is because the correct term is ‘womxn’ (at a push I will except ‘womyn’, but I would require prior notice in order for me to set my acceptance levels to ‘moderate’).‘Womxn’ is being increasingly acknowledged as a more inclusive term when it comes to the complexities of contemporary gender recognition.

I almost backed out completely. I had drafted and redrafted the thread so many times. I labored over each component — the diction, which had to be compelling yet detached; the culling and selective cropping of screenshots; the order in which I would present the anecdotal and documented evidence, to construct a narrative engineered for virality that would at once cast me as blameless and transform an awkward male pervert into a sexual predator. I knew that, if successful, I would be committing myself to a few days, maybe a week, of an extremely stressful public performance. But my curiosity compelled me to continue.

This week, three Canadian writers launched a petition demanding the Toronto Public Library cancel a room rental for a sold-out event, ‘Gender Identity: What Does It Mean for Society, the Law, and Women?’ Sounds frightening, I know.The local women organizing the event, a group called Radical Feminists Unite, asked me in June if they could bring me to Toronto to speak about gender identity legislation and women’s rights, unhappy that the debate was not being given space in their city. This is not an uncommon sentiment. The events I have been asked to participate in generally have been organized by regular women who have serious concerns about how gender identity ideology and policy could affect, and already is affecting, women’s sex-based rights.

The English language is under threat, and with it our reality. This linguistic devastation began with men who imagine themselves to be women, and want everyone else to think of them that way too. Identity politics provided the vocabulary of oppression and victimhood trans advocates use to dupe English speakers into believing gendered feelings are more important than biological facts. It's not enough for trans advocates to demand the new language be used. Scholars, intellectuals, celebs, writers, and basic, everyday people are taken down, canceled, shunned, for not getting on board with the passive group think. The word ‘mother’ is up for debate.

Guess how many women I sexually assaulted yesterday? Zero. You see, it's really not that difficult. I steadfastly refuse to rape a woman or kill a black person; despite the fact I am a straight white male. By being vocal about this I hope to encourage other straight white men to follow my example. Respecting women is a full-time job if you’re a privileged white man (n.b. all white men are privileged by default), but I am living proof that it is possible. Every white man on the planet is guilty of horrendous abuse, even if he believes otherwise (apart from myself of course). I aim to change this. Every day I strive to recognize my own masculine toxicity and male arrogance. I rise above the urge to mansplain.