Lina (a fake name) got a new dishwasher delivered while we were on the phone together. I heard the delivery guy asked loudly “Are you « INSERT NAME » and I covered my ears, like we live in some creepy communist spy-era paranoialand and I was worried I would one day be forced to give up her name under torture.
Once again: what the fuck is going on.
I am fearful of Lina being exposed as the sale terf that she is mostly because she has a particularly sensitive position; she works for an ultra-woke American tech company based in Dublin, one of the big trans-appeasing platforms that polices what people say. Though she’s not a moderator herself, she told me about the platform’s “slur list” which, as the name suggests, is a list of words that are verboten when used in certain contexts.
Would you believe me if I told you that it’s perfectly acceptable to call a woman a dirty fucking TERF on this platform? Of course you would. Even more directly annoying for Lina, a radfem, is the fact that the day-to-day workplace is just as bad. Her colleagues and her HR hierarchy are just as insufferable and authoritarian as you would imagine them to be.
In her home country, resistance to the institutionalisation of trans nonsense has been met with violent tantrums, just like everywhere else. The most famous women’s rights activists in the country are self-described femellistes Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern, who have endured extreme harassment since they came out as defenders of women’s sex-based rights a few years ago. Moutot, who got famous as an Instagrameuse who blogged about female sexuality, has a criminal complaint pending for saying a man called Marie Cau is a man. He’s the absolute unité in the video linked below.
Moutot was invited on a talk show to discuss a controversy involving an advert put out by a national family planning organisation. The ad contained misinformation (disinformation?) about men being able to get pregnant. When asked if Moutot thought “Marie” is a woman, she said he was a transfeminin man, which is way nicer than what I would have called him. Cau, en ravenche, said Moutot was part of something called the “faschosphere”.
A bunch of NGOs subsequently went after Moutot with a criminal hate complaint for saying Cau is male, while ignoring his defamatory insults against her. The outcome of the complaint is en route.
Marguerite Stern was one of the original members of Femen, the much-publicised group of tits-out militante feministes. She was once imprisoned in Tunisia, and ran a street collage campaign to raise awareness about femicide.
She was supposed to come to Brussels last year to the delight of TERFS belges, but she had to cancel because there’s a particularly cranky generation of spoilt humanities wankers in this city who hate her guts. There are lots of young French people here because of more lax university entry requirements, thus the city is full of bedraggled and bepierced French kids desperate for a 1968-type cause. They will smash the fuck out of everything in sight at the mere mention of biological sex.
I still can’t believe the French didn’t shut this nonsense down right out of the gate.
In my personal experience, there is no culture more politically engaged than young French people. Strong Opinion-having is a national sport; forceful indignant reasoning is a staple of every French dinner table I’ve ever been invited to. That so many young people rolled over so thoroughly for transvestite illogic, for the commodification and corporatisation of body parts, for the total usurpation of a proud feminist tradition - I still don’t really get it.
I don’t think it’s #BeKindism: that’s much more of an anglospheric thing. Lina says it might be French libertarianism that’s to blame. But I thought rational disagreement was more acceptable and even expected. I have been disabused.
The fightback: there is an organisation of mental health professionals and parents working behind the scenes to stem the tide of shite, called 'l’Observatoire de a la petite sirene (they also have a Belgian branch). The national health authorities are also on the case. Members of the French senate (not the parliament as I mistakenly said in the recording with Lina) announced last week that they will propose a law to ban all gender “care” for minors. They said there was a risk that it was one of the “biggest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”. It’s not clear how successful the Republicans’ proposal for a new law will be; as usual, the public debate has been reduced to “right-wing-ergo-bad”.
This week we also found out that the French dictionary gods have added “mégenrer” (the verb “to misgender”) to their updates (boooo) and that Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern have just announced they have a book coming out. Keep an eye out on their Twitters (linked below) for updates. Not sure yet if there will be an English translation.
Grift: I take days off to TERF, which affects my income. Some people give me donations and it really helps. Just dropping this button here apropos of nothing:
Did liberté ideals ripen France for trans?