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Feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy. We stand up for the rights of women to control our own bodies as individuals and to control women-only spaces as a class.
Women are adult human females. We do not believe that men can become women by 'feeling' like women or 'identifying' as women. We condemn the erasure of females and female-only spaces, the silencing of critical thinking, the cancelling of feminists and critics, the denial of biological reality and of sex-based oppression. We oppose the 'cotton ceiling' and the pressure on lesbians to have sex with men. Women are oppressed to exploit their biological sex characteristics, and women have a right to a movement that is about their own liberation from that oppression. We resist the redefinition of both "women" and "feminism" to make them serve men.
"Women do not decide at some point in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity.’ Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex." –Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts
"Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men—control, violence, insult, contempt—that no threat seems empty." –Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
42 comments
This is such a bloated video. Either make a video specifically addressing JKR, or make a video about trans representation in media. Blending both topics together just makes this seem like a weird grudge video specifically addressed to JKR that she is never going to watch.
Here are some of my thoughts on the points she makes:
1) Trans people never deny biology.
This one is straight up untrue. Just look at Chase Strangio, ACLU lawyer, who tweeted: "Women and girls who are trans are biological women and girls." Not only do TRAs deny biology when they assert that trans people can change sex, they also deny biology when they say that puberty blockers are fully reversible (they aren't) and that sex is a spectrum (it isn't). Puberty blockers seem to have long term effects on bone density, they might affect brain development negatively, and they almost always lead to cross sex hormones. The existence of intersex conditions does not mean that there are more than two gametes in mammals, hence, sex is binary in mammals.
2) Transphobics like JKR hide behind the shield of "think of the children".
Every single person, including trans activists, should be concerned about the experimental nature of trans "healthcare" in children. When the consequences of this treatment range from sterility, to loss of sexual function, to a whole range of other health consequences that these kids and their parents are often not warned about, people have a right to be a little bit concerned (see Scott Newgent's essays in Quillette and Newsweek.) Especially when you consider that most gender dysphoric children will desist if allowed to progress through puberty, it is beyond cruel to sentence them to a life of medicalization just to validate the self-righteousness of someone like Lindsay Ellis.
3) JKR is concerned about trans people in bathrooms which is a ridiculous thing to be concerned about.
Self-ID laws open up female segregated spaces to be used by anyone who self identifies as female. This will absolutely lead to more sexual assaults on women and girls in bathrooms. This is evidenced by the study that showed that sexual assaults are higher in shared changing rooms than in sex segregated ones. It is worth noting that the social taboo of men going into women's spaces has kept some women and girls safe from harm, so even though there are some predators who will disregard the bathroom sign, most likely will not. Moreover, we are not only talking about bathrooms, we are also talking about rape crisis centers, prisons, changing rooms, etc. Personally, I think it is kind of fucked up to make a female rape/domestic violence victim, who is often times also marginalized by class or race, share a dorm room or shower area with a "woman" with a penis.
4) JKR is concerned about how this affects her charities for some reason.
Yeah, because disease (especially autoimmune diseases) manifests differently in males vs females. Again, this requires that you recognize that biology matters.
Admittedly I couldn't get through the whole thing because Ellis does what most TRAs do when confronted with criticism of their ideology - over the top mocking and deflection. Which I kind of get since mocking things you don't like is fun and cathartic, but this video has almost no substance. Even when the voice actors are doing their ridiculous impressions of JKR I found myself thinking that those quotes were the most thoughtful and reasonable in the entire video.
This is actually Ellis's second video on Rowling. She's getting a lot of mileage out of the Rowling bashing.
Ha! I had forgotten about her Death of the Author video because it was so forgettable.
I actually really like Lindsay Ellis's video essays, and I think she is at her best when she is doing a deep dive into an archetype, character, or an internet phenomenon like the Omegaverse. The misstep here is that she takes JK Rowling's comments on this issue way too personally (possibly because of her friendship with Natalie Wynn and it doesn't hurt that she gets lots of views for her JKR screeds). However, she refuses to engage with the actual criticisms of trans ideology. If you want to break down the criticisms that gender critical thinkers have posed, you need to be scientifically literate, which Ellis clearly isn't.
I'm an old fan of hers, a lot of her older videos are still fantastic. The irony about these new videos is.....TRAs are angry at her, despite the attention she's trying to draw to them. She's friends with Contrapoints and that's apparently terrible, and she made jokes on her twitter once (snarking back at someone who made an attack helicopter joke) and that was no good either. Literally can't win.
edit: Lol at the random downvotes in this thread at innocuous opinions on Ellis
I really loved her Loose Cannon videos, and the Nostalgic Woman ones.
Someone posted recently about a university where roommates were assigned based on the gender they identified as, not on their biological sex. So now female students are being forced to share a room with a TIM and they can't complain because it would be "transphobic."
I believe this was University of Oregon.
There are parents from traditional cultures - mostly from non-white immigrant or very religious white American families - who will not allow their daughters to attend college if these policies become more widespread. So much for caring about WOC I guess.
Holy shit, Lindsey if you lurk here, let it go. This is obviously the horse you wanna die on and you're never going to change the majority of women's minds on the "Transwomen are women" dogma. You've been had by a group of pseudo intellectual middle class and wealthy transvestites, plain and simple. No one cares if they want to be transvestites but we will not sit quietly while they attempt to erode women's rights just the get their nut off. You're using the same tired ass arguments as Contrapoints, Olly and literally thousands of other trans rights activists and its all still bullshit.
How else is she going to manage to sell her book but to constantly bring up a famous author.
I tried to read her book and it was very uninteresting. I suspect some of her obsession with JKR is sour grapes. Also TRAs love when you talk shit about Rowling, so it's a great way to drum up interest in Axiom's End and possible sequels.
I tried reading her book too. She’s missing the voice of my favourite authors, the narrative that presents a compelling character on page one. The entire first paragraph of her Axiom’s end book spends excess amounts of words describing the main character’s crappy car. Problem is, we don’t care. This isn’t interesting. Get us hooked on character first before inundating us with such detail, and do it with word economy. While Lindsay puts out entertaining video essays with the aid of voice over artistry, she’s unable to transfer that energy efficiently into fiction writing. I get the feeling she sees her stories as movies in her head and she’s simply describing them, which is an outdated storytelling method for a reason. Experienced authors don’t do this.
Is it weird I found this comment oddly helpful? I've recently started writing, and hearing how important it is to make it interesting from the get-go and not drag down the story with details in the first few chapters is something I'll remember.
LOL I saw one of the first vids she did talking about JK and it was so obvious to get clout to sell her book.
All her arguments are terrible.
And why are you still friends with Contra?
Yeah, I'm done watching her. Apparently she has nothing else to talk about at this point.
Somebody on the site related to a tropical fruit/person from New Zealand said something along the lines of "with every video like this from breadtube, N more new TERFs peak and get their wings." I have to remind myself of that. Drawing more attention to Rowling--one of the kindest, most articulate faces of GC--will only be good for feminism at the end of the day.
Although not surprising, I have found Lindsay's quite severe responses to this debate and Joanne in particular disappointing. In other areas, she exhibits quite interesting nuance (her Death of the Author video, anyone? where she discusses separating the art from the artist but then turns around in her JK video and essentially says you have a moral obligation not to consume her work anymore, and if you do, to accept you're supporting ""bigotry"")
I was, and I guess still am, quite a fan of Lindsay's output - but her takes on this have made me see her in a new light. Unsurprising given the state of the debate in the US in particular, but still. Having not watched the video yet, my response to her choice of video thumbnail was "You know why that story exists, Lindsay? Because it happened and it happens. That's a real thing that happens."
The irony of the voices calling for "normalisation" and "acceptance" - a big part of the whole thing is that it's transgressive (pun intended). It's supposed to be "edgy" to be male and present like a woman - that's, the point. Or at least, that's my understanding of it for quite a lot of them. Why are people erasing their paraphilia?
I think she’s at her absolute best as an essayist when she talks about film history (all of those videos have been legitimately good), she’s occasionally insightful with film analysis (doesn’t help that she limits herself by sticking to dumb blockbusters with nothing that interesting going on under the surface), and she’s mostly out of her depth every time I’ve seen her trying to argue politics. She used to keep the opinionated hot takes confined to Twitter and maintained a fairly professional YouTube presence, but now she’s becoming more and more of a Commentator.
I think it may be a business decision — the success of people like D’Angelo Wallace, who makes long form opinion videos often condescendingly mocking, exposing, or calling out controversial youtubers and celebrities, is probably why. His videos are extremely popular and gets ridiculous amounts of views. He chooses pretty low-hanging fruit to go after — people that are already well-known idiots and easy to hate, and his audience of zoomers think he’s this courageous truth teller for it.
The guy just sits behind a mic and talks about how stupid other people are with a dry sarcastic delivery, and I can see that kind of content being appealing to Lindsay. She’s already got a similar personality. But since she’s got film degrees and published a book, she can be the “intellectual” version of D’Angleo.
And what better topic to focus on than an easy target for her breadtube audience like terf boogeywoman JK Rowling? It helps that contra made this absurdly stale controversy relevant again with his own recent video about her, and PTube coming out as trans even more recently just makes it the obvious choice.
I mean, to D'angelo's credit, his most successful videos criticising Youtube's idiots are good in the sense that they organise information in logical and dead pan way. I knew that Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson were fucking disgusting, but him putting their antics in logical/chronological order made me go "huh".
But it surely is low hanging and not "intellectual", maybe that what's kinda refreshing. For me the most off-putting thing in recent lindsay Ellis and all of the contrapoints is the over the top pseudo-intellectualism with smoke and mirrors tactics and no substance.
Well, this is why they (fetishistic TIMs) have to keep breaking boundaries. It's why they want to be seen as lesbians, use lesbian dating apps, and then whine about "genital preference." They know that lesbians (real lesbians) aren't going to want to sleep with them and will express disgust at "girldick."
But, yeah, this is why I don't understand "no kink-shaming." The erotic thrill of a "kink" is that it's taboo and most people are skeeved out by it. If everyone is blasé about their kinks, then what's the point?
Quite - like this article (my fav) says
Yup, unsubscribed and stopped watching her for this exact reason. Let it end!
I’m counting down until she comes out as trans.
I doubt she would as their would be nothing to gain by her doing so. She might go NB but even that's unlikely and besides she's already a handmaiden.
There's not much to gain, but I'm not sure how many women realize that. Most people who aren't GC don't realize how much TIFs are ignored or shit on in the trans community. How many more women desist compared to men is a possible indicator of the gulf between fantasy (coming out as a TIF gains a woman attention) and reality (only TIMs get long-term positive attention).
On that note, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Elliot Page. I find it hard to see her admitting she made a mistake, but, if trans identity doesn't take off for her (and it's already looking like it won't), I could see her retreating into obscurity faster than if she'd continued to "identify" as a lesbian.
She's too old for that shit.
I would have though Ellen was too old for that too.
Nah. She’s too old, too straight, and at least compared to everyone she surrounds herself with, too much of a normie.
I’ve literally watched her since her first nostalgia chick video. She’s not the intellectual giant she thinks she is, but she’s also not a complete moron. I’ve seen her personality over the years and I think that deep down she’s pretty based, she knows on some level how dumb it all is. She just hangs out with the popular mean girl
dickclique that will benefit her the most.She has to be aware that a woman coming out as a trans man won’t benefit her the way it would benefit her male colleagues, and if anything it’d probably just wreck her life and her health. She would likely get divorced and struggle financially (her husband reportedly makes a good living and this allows her to be a full time internet person), and being contra’s BFF already gives her all the trans clout she could ever want. She’s the Serena Joy of trans handmaidens. No need to even go non-binary.
Hbomberguy on the other hand? There’s where I’d place my bets on the next breadtube sideshow attraction.
Lol someone in the comments said that HIM from Powerpuff girls was twansphobic.
I like deep dive analytical videos but Lindsay Elis has a Tumblr type of personality so I could never get into her.
I only listened to the first 20 mins. But, how come they don't want to be confused with transvestites, yet still say that their portrayal affects them?
The tone felt so off. I haven't watched her in a few years, but it seemed like there were more jokes than substance.
Contra’s influence was strong in this one.
yeah. I saw a pic of them at maybe Lindsay's wedding recently. He's like at least a foot taller than her. The illusion is really tough to maintain when they are next to women.