Victim industrial complex: Exclusionary feminists cashing in
One of the joys of doing my research is that I get to see writers and stories in a broader context, seeing who writes for which media outlet and the impact that their personal choices have made on their careers. Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock and numerous others have all come out against some variation of trans rights only to successfully pivot their perceived victimhood into post-diatribe careers. Outlets like UnHeard, the Daily Wire, and the Spectator have scooped these previously progressive voices up into their bosom, coddling them and providing a ready-made right-wing audience that laps up their transphobia.
None of this is news. The Julies Bindel and Burchill have both leveraged their victimhood into nearly two decades of anti-trans rhetoric, treating it as a badge of honour. Debbie Hayton is a trans woman who regularly pops up in support of the sex-based arguments, stating time and again that she is one of the good transes and that all the other activists are to be pilloried between here and the local brig. Once a write comes out as exclusionary they quickly join this victim industrial complex, and it is queasy seeing how swift the transformation is.
Gile Fraser, an erstwhile Church of England Canon with impeccable liberal credentials, declared himself a TERF due to an incident involving an Italian restaurant he frequented. Keir Starmer equivocates because the centrist and right-wing press vilify any attempt at progressing trans rights; indeed, this week has seen a tone shift towards enshrining sex-based rights over gender identity purely because the press is using this victim industrial complex to push trans rights further back.
Chloe Cole, Buck Angel, Blair White, I could go on. Victimhood pays because the right-wing media wants to paint being trans, or at least being the wrong type of trans, as something monstrous that society needs protecting from. Trans rapists are used to tar the whole community, paedophile supports are used as a gotcha, child drag queens shown as hyper sexualising kids. The right-wing dog whistles that three years ago were fringe are the talking points of the mainstream. Every writer who was rightly called out for exclusionary writing is now back in the mainstream with a tailormade audience and money in the bank to boot.
When Andre Neil declared himself a TERF, indeed when anyone declares themselves a TERF, it is done so in the fullness of understanding that this is no longer a negative label. To be a TERF is perceived to be pro-woman, pro-children, and pro-sanity, forgetting that the real victims of transphobia are the dead trans folk slain by those who perceive us as anathema. Victimhood is claimed by those who have been called out, the narrative power seized by those who already controlled the narrative, and those on the margins are being progressively further excluded.
Simply stating that you respect trans rights on the one hand and then state that trans women should be excluded from women’s spaces is not allyship. It is wielding power from a position of authority. Lesbians have every right to not sleep with trans women, that is their personal choice; writers like Julie Bindel who stir up moral outrage over the cotton ceiling never concede that a woman’s right to say no to any partner should always be sacrosanct. God forbid that a trans woman actually feels upset over being rejected. The victim industrial complex conflated many overlapping issues to demonise trans women and infantilise trans men, and gets rewarded with upvotes, positive comments, and cheques.
Then you get the Helen Joyces and Kathleen stocks of this world. Both had no prior engagement with gender or trans issues prior to their epiphanies and apotheosis into TERFdom. Neither are scientists, neither have studied gender issues to any degree, yet the media treats both as authorities on gender rights and women’s issues simply because they are women with degrees. Much is the same with all those who espouse exclusionary feminist positions. Marci Bowers, president of WPATH, is a renowned gender confirmation surgeon, yet all the work she is doing to advocate trans rights is shot down by ill-informed hacks who cherry pick overwhelming medical evidence. Neither Stock nor Joyces are medical professionals, yet they both have attacked the medical profession for upholding trans medicine purely on the fear that a penis owning woman may have need to use women only spaces.
Matt Walsh showcases and upholds exclusionary feminism in its most naked fashion, proudly refusing to use correct pronouns or affirm any gender identity other than that assigned at birth. His Daily Wire podcast ferments hatred of all non-white, non-cisnormative, non-Christian beliefs and people, seeing wokery as the cancer of the age. This is the person that the exclusionary feminists are cozying up to; his stated position is that men are superior to women, all LGTBQI+ people are beneath God’s gaze, and that only monogamous heterosexuality is permissible. Lesbians like Bindel and Stock are in the same camp as him, affirm his narrative, yet do not see the irony in taking the right’s shilling.
Being told you are wrong or the positions you hold might be mistaken is challenging. No-one likes being told they are wrong or that you might need to educate yourself. Yet, in the world of exclusionary feminism the starting pistol on a lucrative book deal is to blow up your world, state that men are men and women need protecting, and you are off and running. Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel both make salient points about sex and gender, their writings are worth reading; yet, their cardinal error is seeing the world as was rathe than the world that is or what it could become. There is nothing inherently wrong with calling out the need for dialogue, saying that women need their own spaces, or that chromosomal biology matters. Yet, the logical fallacy that all of those somehow render trans folk only worthy of separate but equal renders much of the good irrelevant.
When writers and thinkers cash in on victimhood to the exclusion of all else, especially when they go running straight into the arms of the right-wing media, one is left wondering whether that had any moral integrity in the first place. Moral integrity does not pay the bills, but it does leave you with a legacy that is cherished and valued. Instead, as Bindel, Burchill, Stock, Rowling, Angel et al are finding out, while short term victimhood might pay, long term their reputations have been sullied and shown for what they are: hollow, empty, and only respected by those who would ultimately seek to tear them down the moment they are finished with the trans community.
