Who are the Radicals?

The politics of attraction.

This week I am diving into the politics of sexual orientation, I do so because it’s a key feature of the discord we have seen in the gender critical world.  When we examine simple arguments around sexual orientation, we can see how the split in GC politics exposes a class rather than an ideological divide, where open mindedness and nuance are part of a middle-class aesthetic that is placing irrational arguments in weighted equanimity with key base facts of our political movement.  Two rock solid principles I highlight here; “orientation is not choice” and “choice is not orientation”.

I was introduced to the political nature of sexuality in the lecture theatre of my very progressive university, many moons ago. Feminist academics encouraged us to challenge our own ideas of sexuality and particularly critique how heterosexuality is a bad deal for women. If this is the case, and if sexuality is a choice, women could choose a life, including a romantic life, without men for political reasons. 

The problem was, I wasn’t sexually or romantically attracted to women. Going against your sexual orientation for politics seemed next level hard core feminism to me. 

This was my introduction to political lesbians, women who have made a political choice to exclude males from their dating pool and only date other women because of that political choice. The base rationale of political lesbianism is the socially constructed nature of sexuality, and that heterosexuality is oppressive for women.  Political lesbianism is connected to radical feminism, and historically to the lesbian separatist movement.

If you are interested, this is an informative documentary on the separatist movement from 2007 on BBC Four, called Angry Wimmin.   

You will see that this documentary features some of the famous political lesbians who grace the resistance movement we now call “gender critical”. Many political lesbians are justifiably well respected because of their ongoing dedicated fight for the rights of women and girls.  Radical feminists have been fighting against queer theory since it lifted it’s destructive head, and it is important to give credit here. 

Ultimately, I don’t believe that human sexuality is socially constructed, and I never have. I think sexuality, (heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) is innate, and that belief has become central to my politics.

Queer theory comes from a social constructionist base, but it is not moored in a structured political framework like radical feminism is. Radical feminists use an established political framework to critique transgender ideology, especially the rampant misogyny trans ideology swims in.  However, many radical feminists do believe that we should use the government to re-engineer “gender” (the cultural meanings societies give to sex) and indeed, to abolish gender. 

Some radical feminists don’t consider the performance of feminine stereotypes by men as offensive because gender is ultimately an oppressive framework that they have opted out of. For some, cross sex gender performance can be considered a tool to ultimately demolish gender as a framework of social power.

I should re-iterate here that I am not a radical feminist (as I’ve been labelled by some) nor am I a gender abolitionist, I am a classic liberal and I think we should minimise cultural intervention from government. I am suspicious of government tyranny, as all classic liberals once were. That I have been counted amongst the “radicals” in this fight, is an indication of the poor political education in the centre.  

What I want to highlight is that there is a political stake in the science of sexuality, and we need to stick to basic principles here.  If sexuality is innate and there are only three sexualities (heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality), then the legal protections for sexual minorities should be restricted to minority sexualities, not extended to the public performance of paraphilias. 

This is a key point in gender critical politics, because the theorisation of sexuality into culture and into individual identity frameworks has been vital in the erasing of the connection between human rights and human bodies and the redefinition of sex in law and policy.

The biggest damage we are seeing to western liberal democracies, is in institutional capture. Queer theory, and its baby, gender identity ideology, have been adopted by unaccountable bodies that propose to represent women and minority sexualities. This has had devastating effects to minority protections and personal liberty.  

Amidst this politics there are two issues that are explosive in gender critical politics; These are the claim that sexual orientation is a choice and the claim that sexual choice is an orientation.

Orientation is not choice.

The claim that sexuality is socially constructed is politically contentious because it deems sexual orientation a choice. I am about to put my toes in the waters of lesbian politics, and I know that’s not particularly advisable, but I am open to be corrected.

The protection of lesbians in law heavily relies on the historical fact that lesbians are persecuted in society because of the way they are. Our broad social understanding is that being same sex attracted is a bodily reality for lesbian women.  Therefore, the attempt to change sexual orientation or discriminate against women because of same sex orientation it is a form of social tyranny.  Attempts to correct sexual orientation in women is an historic cruelty that our society has claimed to overcome, but it has not. This is a key feminist point raised in gender critical politics by straight and same sex attracted women alike. Lesbian’s protections are women’s protections.

Minority protections are designed to protect individuals who fall under a class category that suffers from a recognised form of social oppression.  Recognising social oppression is not Marxism. JS Mill called social oppression the tyranny of the majority, and class categories are a liberal state technology to safeguard individuals from social oppression. Class definitions are obviously important.

The battle for the recognition of homosexuality as a minority oppression category in western nation states, involved a long and difficult history of struggle that belongs to same sex attracted people.  The understanding that orientation is not a choice has real world implications and real political implications.

Nobody is arguing that women who practice radical feminist politics in their personal life do not have the right to access minority protections, the point many lesbians make, is that political lesbians, who are mostly middle class educated women, should not be centred in lesbian politics, as their experience is different to women who have no choice about their orientation.

There is also a point that Eggen is raising here that the idea that lesbianism is socially constructed and not innate is only a step from the queer theory that has caused lesbians a great deal of grief.

https://x.com/DrawingEggen/status/1761751462999191843?s=20

Choice is not orientation

Curiously there doesn’t seem to be any political gay men. What we do have in the gender critical political movement, is homosexual men who have a deep sympathy for men who perform feminine stereotypes as an expression of sexuality, even when those men are hetrosexual.

Many of the heterosexual men who perform femininity, as an expression of a sexual fetish or paraphilia, claim that they do so because of an innate kind of sexuality. Phil Illy is such a man as is David Hayton. The connection of paraphilias to sexual orientation, allows the link to be made between the choice of men to imitate women, and the legal protection that is intended to shield the vulnerability of homosexuals.  This, you may recall, is how we ended up with gender identity protections piggy backing gay rights.

Paraphihlliacs (credit to Mark) hide in illegitimate protection categories from nasty women who call them names like “fetishists”, “misogynists”, “creeps” and “he/him”.  Helen Pluckrose has said that such women are enacting social tyranny over these men, lending legitimacy to the idea that “trans people” as she calls them, are more oppressed than women. Such language forms the basis of the kind of class protection politics that gender critical women oppose.

When people with paraphilias claim that the performance of feminine stereotypes is an orientation, they immediately lay claim to the political capital of homosexual people. When gender critical trans or AGP identified men abandon the claim that they are women, and take up the claim they have a minority orientation, they are just abandoning one liberal state protection claim (gender identity) for another (sexual orientation).  

One of the justifications I have heard for the latest surge of blocking and unfollowing people such as myself, from GC elites is to marginalise the “radical feminist” element of the gender critical movement. The centrist’s idea that we must scorn the social constructionists, the cultural Marxists and the women who have come under the feminist curse of gender woo, as bad actors is badly misfiring when reality-based lesbians seem to have been very much allocated to the cheap seats in this debate.  Curiously, people who have adopted a more social constructionist view of sexuality, maintain their positions as chief pontificators in respectable society. 

If I can pull one example from the many, I think it would have to be my latest high profile unfollow, Malcom Clark, who as yet hasn’t blocked me, and I’m thankful for that, because I love his work.

Malcom made a very mild criticism of David Hayton’s strange philosophy on X that I thought was an encouraging sign. But when Hayton replied to say that he had been talking about homosexual transexuals and not regular gays, in the excerpt Clark quoted, it was all sweetness and light from Clark.

In the X thread, Clark treats Hayton and his replies to criticism with equanimity and respect, while women who point out that it is dangerous to place paraphilias on even footing to orientations, are framed as being intolerant of debate. The terribly middle-class civility of weighing disparate arguments as equal, is used as another shield for minimising the voices of women who point out that men performing paraphilias in public are not a reliable source of expertise.

It is not that I don’t think that men who perform feminine gender stereotypes because of a sexual fetish are not worthy of respect as humans, but to me their opinion on sexual politics is like the opinion of practicing gambling addicts on financial safeguarding for casinos. It is fundamentally unjust to treat the gambling addict with equanimity, while ignoring the crying children whose shoes have holes in them.

The ongoing expectation that women will be reasonable and nuanced in the face of the bending of key principles is a false flag. Middle class activists who have a natural sympathy for gender nonconformity and for the trashing of gender as a societal tool, are leaning into the identical aesthetic of “nuance” and “respect” for “trans voices” that disregard the cries of grassroots feminist activists, including sex-realist lesbians. As the song says, it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.