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Living rent free in gender critical heads
Sarah McBride came out with an exquisite attack on Republican Lawmakers, stating that she lived rent free in their heads, a focus for their abuses and bullying. I have previously suggest that gender critical extremism is rooted in grievance politics, and as Sarah eloquently demonstrated when gender critics are challenged all they have is bluster and more bullying. You only need look at the past output of people such as Julie Bindel, J K Rowling, Riley Gaines, Chloe Cole, Suzanne Moore, and Kathleen Stock to see that their gender critical beliefs are rooted in personal slights, misunderstandings, and axes to grind. Like all true believers no amount of evidence or hospitality is enough to sway them, indeed, all attempts at coaxing them with kindness and tacit evidence is met with further hostility.
One only has to look at the sanctification of Magdalene Burns and the continuing support for Kelly J Keen in the UK and Chloe Cole and Riley Gaines in the US to see how gender critics have created saints for their cause. Burns’ “woman face” mantra is plastered all across current gender critical discourse, drawing from the deep well of second wave feminist anti-trans discourse typified by Janice Raymond, and even earlier arguments propounded by late 19th Century European nations when they sought to ban cross dressing. Since her death Burns has been used as prophet for the cause, a patron saint whose holiness cannot be undone by siding with actual Nazi like Kelly J Keen.
In drawing attention to the increasingly cult-like nature of the gender critical cause my intent is to show that we need to stop seeing gender critics as feminists and more like any other cult movement which periodically sweeps the world. Keen’s puritanical zeal extends to threatening to annihilate any trans inclusive cis person, a radical firebrand straight out of the 17th Century. Indeed, one feels on watching her whether she would prefer to be in 1930s Nuremburg than 2020s London. Zealotry has suffused the gender critical cause because the world has not accepted their grievance politics wholesale. It is why the likes of Riley Gaines are still whaling on Lia Thomas for tying with her for 5th in a college swim meet five years on. It is why Kathleen Stock has self-radicalised into a dark space. It is all they have, and all their five minutes of fame will allow them to…
