A Plague On Both Your Houses!

Neither Trans Activists nor Gender-Critical Feminists are the "Good Guys"

The recent release of thousands of live crickets at the LGB Alliance conference in London truly represents a new low for trans activism, and the fact that no mainstream gay rights charities spoke in defense of the LGB Alliance (see https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/18/how-gay-rights-charities-turned-against-gay-people/) is greatly telling. Indeed, given the well-documented colonization of gay rights groups by trans activism (see https://getoutspoken.com/big-trans/were-living-in-an-era-of-leftwing-gay-erasure), lobby groups to specifically advocate for the rights of homosexuals and bisexuals (whatever sex they may be), nothing more or less, have arguably become necessary. As such, non-leftist and heterodox-leftist publications have frequently given positive coverage of the LGB Alliance. It is certainly fair to note that many of the LGB Alliance's criticisms of contemporary trans activism are valid, and that the LGB Alliance has been treated quite atrociously and subjected to both malicious mischaracterization and lawfare. But I write this to argue that we should exercise some skepticism towards the LGB Alliance, not because it stands up for the rights of sexual minorities (this is a very noble cause), but because it is arguably a trojan horse for Gender-Critical Feminism.

Gender-Critical Feminism is a synonym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, but if we strip away the verbiage, they're just devotees of the Radical Feminism of the 70s. This ideology believes that sex (male and female) is real, but that the notions of "gender" (masculinity and femininity) are nothing more than social control mechanisms designed and enforced by men (collectively) for the purpose of controlling and exploiting women (collectively). As the Radical Feminist Cathy 'Bug' Brennan put it, "'gender' is a war on women." The ideas of "sex of the brain" or "gender identity" (or, in some cases, even the much more modest claim that there are some on-average population-level psychological and/or cognitive variances between the sexes) are utterly anathema to Radical Feminism, precisely because they suggest that notions of masculinity and femininity may have more basis than the collective interests of males.

One particularly interesting offshoot of this kind of feminism was the practice of political lesbianism. Political lesbians typically denied that sexual orientation even existed, and thought that female heterosexuality was really just a product of male oppression. Women having sex with each other was an act of political resistance to patriarchy, a radical act that forged a new kind of women's sexuality free from men's control or the Male Gaze (this is one of the reasons Radical Feminists are so angry about lesbian porn produced for male audiences). Radical Feminist ideology, however, was not supportive of male homosexuality. Indeed, male homosexuality was often seen as the ultimate in misogyny (the complete rejection of women), and (as John Lauritsen observed back in 1976, see https://www.paganpressbooks.com/jpl/DTF.HTM) gay rights was seen as little more than an attempt to make homosexual men equal to heterosexual men but above women. Instead, Radical Feminists demanded that homosexual and bisexual men become auxiliaries to the women's rights movement (on the grounds that, allegedly, discrimination against male homosexuality and bisexuality was an outgrowth of sexism against women).

The misandry of Radical Feminism is already known to some degree, but it is hard to overstate just how misandrist it is. Every possible expression of male sexuality is demonized by it. If a man is attracted to women, he is almost certainly a rapist because (as Catherine MacKinnon argued) women cannot truly consent to heterosexual intercourse in a male-dominated society. If a man is attracted to men, he is rejecting women, and his rights movement is sexist too (unless it is subordinated to feminism and lesbians). And if a man likes female-on-female porn, he's trying to assert male control over women's sexuality via the Male Gaze.

This extends even to men who are autoheterosexual (i.e. autogynephilic or attracted to being women). Sexology research suggests that autoheterosexuality, at least in males, is about as common as homosexuality, and that autoheterosexuality may be the most common cause of gender dysphoria (and, consequently, identifying as a transwoman) in males, although trans activists have attempted to suppress this information. But that doesn't stop the Radical Feminists from not only talking about the subject, but in actively pathologizing it. When Phil Illy - an autoheterosexual man who advocates for the acceptance of autoheterosexuality as a valid sexual orientation - wore a dress to a Gender-Critical conference, it caused outrage (see https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/i-blew-up-the-internet-by-wearing-a-dress-to-a-gender-conference) among the Radical Feminist contingent of attendees. Radical Feminists frequently talk about autogynephilia in sinister, pathologizing terms - not as a morally neutral minority sexual orientation (which is how contemporary sexologists who study the phenomenon conceive of it) but as something truly evil and depraved and corrosive and dangerous. And whilst there are valid reasons to be concerned about opportunistic predators taking advantage of transgender identities to access potential victims, and it is valid to protest the idea that it is "transphobia" to not be sexually attracted to transgender people, the Radfem hatred of autoheterosexual men goes far beyond this (again returning to Phil Illy, who was targeted despite the fact he doesn't claim to be a woman, hasn't undergone gender transition or identifies as transgender, doesn't use feminine pronouns, doesn't claim to be a lesbian and doesn't use female spaces).

In summary, Radical Feminist theory disapproves of men being attracted to women, of men being attracted to men, of men being attracted to women-whom-are-attracted-to-women, and of men being attracted to being women. Should conservatives and libertarians be uncritical towards an ideology that is so clearly hateful towards an entire sex? And this sex-based bigotry is bad enough, but add to it the fact that Radical Feminism commits the same basic methodological errors as Marxism and habitually rejects enlightenment Liberalism. Libertarians and conservatives should absolutely exercise some caution towards the Gender-Critical crowd even if the GC crowd does have a valid claim to some sympathy.

So let us return to the LGB Alliance itself. They're clearly a Gender-Critical organization, but do they represent Gender-Critical Feminism (i.e. Radical Feminism) with all of its associated misandry? I will gladly concede that not everyone in the LGB Alliance holds the same views. However, let us remember that the LGB Alliance was founded by two lesbian feminists, and that part of the LGB Alliance's statement of purpose (see https://lgballiance.org.uk/purpose/) is "to highlight the dual discrimination faced by lesbians." What is this dual discrimination? As the LGB Alliance USA (see https://lgbausa.org/about/) says, they "amplify the voices of lesbians to highlight the dual discrimination of both homophobia and misogyny faced by women who are exclusively same-sex oriented in a male-dominated society." The same language can be found on the website of the LGB Alliance Australia (see https://www.lgballiance.org.au/objectives). In other words, the LGB Alliance explicitly embraces the same "double victim" doctrine that Radical Feminism embraces.

If I were being cynical, I'd ask myself the following question: Is the LGB Alliance (and much of the Gender-Critical Feminist crowd) mostly about lesbians aggrieved that they've been beaten at the same Oppression Olympics they were complicit in for decades? After all, from a Gender-Critical Feminist perspective, a lesbian transwoman is nothing more than a straight man who fetishizes (and thus oppresses) lesbians so intensely that he wants to become one and is highly likely to be a rapist-in-waiting. And, even worse, thanks to Intersectional Feminism, these straight men have managed to take control of feminism and colonize lesbianism since Intersectional Feminism says they are triple-oppressed (trans + woman + homosexual) rather than merely double-oppressed. Since the mid-70s (as Lauritsen observed), Radical Feminist lesbians have been using their double-oppressed status to pull rank, but now they've been leapfrogged by a group of people they perceive as their greatest oppressors. Clearly, they aren't taking it well.

Again, there is reason to have some sympathy for the Gender-Critical, including the LGB Alliance. Certainly, some of their members are deeply misrepresented in the mainstream press. Their discourse is targeted by extremists. There's also a plausible scientific argument that gender identity, as a neurological phenomenon completely separate from sexual orientation, doesn't exist. But conservatives and classical liberals should be careful to reject the misandry and illiberalism of Radical Feminism. Whilst Gender-Critical groups can't even meet without literally having a plague of insects unleashed upon them, in a conflict between trans activism and Radical Feminism, the proper response is "a plague on both your houses!"