I am so thankful that you’re out there in the world, thinking and operationalizing and writing. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought “Yes! This!” (And then read aloud to my very wonderful husband) while reading your pieces. Thank you for your work. So glad I stumbled upon you, Helen.
I love your work, Helen, but never dreamed you would hit upon this subject. I'vd also been trying for years to understand the mindset Peter encountered that started this minor fiasco. All the conversation that came out of that got me exactly no closer to understanding the mental processes that are the greatest barrier to helping individual women be safer and feel safer. It's very frustrating.
I think radical feminists do a kick-ass job of bringing lawsuits defending the rights of women and girls against the illiberal nonsense permeating our culture, but I’m much more aligned with the beliefs of liberal feminists like this author. We are one species. Women and men are in this together.
I think an advantage of radical feminism is that they have no expectation nor desire for men to come to their rescue, which empowers them to take action.
Yes, and a single focus. Liberals, by trying to consider the interests of everybody and apply principles consistently across all groups can move more slowly than radicals with a single focus even when our aims to redress an injustice done to that group align.
I am grateful for both liberal and radical feminist analysis in this world. Shoulder to the plow, sisters. There is so much to love about this article and I learned more about Dr. B, and his way of engaging in thought provoking conversation. Lol about the poison bit. Thank you so much for your work, it's such a pleasure to hear/read your thoughts.
I did make a comment on that post as I have some experience using martial arts training to defend myself (summary: it can only do so much to level the playing field. A much larger, untrained man will beat a smaller, well-trained woman in almost all circumstances, and against a group you stand no chance at all. Also studying martial arts can give you a false sense of confidence that can get you in more trouble) and got at least two commenters who told me to stop speaking just because I am a man. Even though I was broadly agreeing with Julie's stance based on my own experiences as an average-sized man.
I’m so glad you wrote this piece and addressed the claims.
I’ll add that I think one of the issues is Peter genuinely asks questions and most people who are asked questions so directly are often being asked or set up for some sort of gotcha. It makes the person he’s speaking to feel defensive because the way he is speaking to them though honest and good faith is also often how people who are acting completely opposite that would engage.
Beyond that I think sometimes the way Peter really wants to clarify things (which I personally really appreciate ) might come across as insincere at times but I don’t think it’s meant to.
I hesitate to suggest he change his style of communication but also if there are small changes made that facilitate better exchanges of ideas perhaps it might be something to consider.
Also the part about poisoning Socrates gave me a good laugh.
Oh, the number of times I have suggested softening the mode of communication and also the body language and letting people see more of his warmth & gentleness. He is a really big-hearted teddy-bear of a man which is why I loves him despite us being so different and disagreeing on things quite frequently. It is not that he does not listen to me on this. He tried following my advice by informing Twitter that he regularly tells his male friends that he loves them (which he does), but this, as a standalone statement, did not really achieve the effect I was trying to help him achieve. The intensity and directness you see is due to him getting passionate about grappling with an idea & zooming in on it. It's no good trying to get him to consciously change the way he engages because he does not have a filter. He's just himself everywhere. I like this about him, but it upsets me when people see him as hostile or insincere, because he is such a compassionate person intensely interested in people. See the interview with Cindy if you can. This is how he goes about the world connecting with people.
Thank you for this, Helen and v23325. I think I'm understanding better now. It did seem to me that Peter was setting Kara up for a gotcha, because that is so often what I see elsewhere.
AJay, thank YOU. One of the biggest problems we have in addressing social issues is that it can be so difficult for people coming from different perspectives (including me, obviously) to hear each other and ever say something like "Thanks. I was thinking about this thing that happened in the context of certain beliefs, behaviours and attitudes that particularly worry me, but now I've seen people look at it from a different one, I feel I understand it better." I think if all the well-intentioned people engaging with social issues did that by default, we'd fix the world!
I appreciate your sharing your personal knowledge of Peter as a friend and colleague. However, I would still like to hear him, or you, explore whether women learning self defence really is a viable means of reducing risk? Both you and Peter seem to assume firstly, that any woman could become a martial arts expert, and secondly, that this would materially reduce their risk of being attacked.
I know the first is not true, as I live in the world as a disabled woman, and know that many women have health problems that would preclude their training in martial arts. Age is also a factor. Many women have autoimmune conditions that caused fatigue and pain as long term symptoms, and menopausal women often have musculo-skeletal problems just to name a couple. Peter did not acknowledge this reality in his conversation with Kara Dansky. His opinion seemed simplistic; either train in self defence or quit complaining. He also seemed to expect women to carry weapons - which is illegal in many countries.
Furthermore, women are generally advised to flee from danger rather than stay and fight, as fleeing is likely to have a better outcome for them. Peter seemed unaware of this, and did not seem to want to acknowledge this point when out to him on X.
I'm interested to learn that you're a liberal feminist - does that mean you accept gender ideology, since this is a tenet of liberal feminism?
I don’t know what the best advice for women on encountering a violent man who intends her harm is and this is why I made no knowledge claim on the subject. I am not an expert on the subject and do not have sufficient interest to go through all the competing arguments by people who are. I just want those discussions to be able to happen without people who take any position being accused of sexism. Separate out knowledge from political ideologies.
No, Pete does not make this simplistic claim. That is an assumption that comes from assuming that questioning why a woman would not learn self-defence if she felt herself to be in danger. It doesn’t preclude fleeing if possible and calling the police which is always better than engaging in violence.
No, liberal feminism did not produce gender identity theory. See the essay I linked within the piece. That comes from Critical Social Justice forms of feminism rooted in queer theory and intersectional feminism, both of which explicitly reject liberalism as a central tenet. I have dedicated many years to opposing it
I strongly doubt Peter Boghossian has moved around in the world fearing he may be raped. As the possessor of a male body he literally cannot be vaginally raped. Whereas it is a commonplace and everyday experience for women to move around in the world being highly conscious we have the sexed bodies predatory males intentionally select for manifold types of violation and abuse.
You seem incapable of acknowledging the very simple fact that according to whether we have male or female sexed bodies we move around in the world with different sensitivities, consciousness and varieties of alertness.
??? What are you responding to? If you want to argue about different kinds of violence faced by men and women, go and find an article arguing otherwise. I'm not incapable of acknowledging this very simple fact and have acknowledged it many times. This piece is just about something else.
You said that Boghossian is not a sexist because you do not experience him as such.
I say that because Boghossian is male he moves around in the world with an alternate sensory experience from being female. While he can certainly have empathy and reason what it might be like to be female, by whit of his actual existential physical reality it can only be an intellectual exercise of imagining. Therefore I interpret his speculations about how women should behave when faced with being in close proximity with men unknown to us, as coming from masculinist privilege, therefore sexist.
Then go away and write a thing about why Socratic philosophers shouldn't talk to feminist standpoint epistemologists or feminist standpoint epistemologists shouldn't talk to Socratic philosophers if you want to. I said all I intend to say on that subject with this bit:
"Radical feminists are completely within their right to find ‘this style of interrogation” (the Socratic method) offensive and inappropriate but those who do cannot reasonably expect Socratic philosophers to agree and just accept that some things are known and that questions should not be asked about them. That is not how they understand knowledge to work".
I'm not stopping you from doing feminist standpoint epistemology. I'm just not doing it with you for reasons I also gave in the essay. There's no point complaining that Peter doesn't defer to feminist standpoint epistemology when his street epistemology is Socratic and anybody who agrees to talk to him knows that. Just go and talk to people who already share your epistemology if that is the only way you are willing to engage. My essay should have made it clear to you that I don't.
I'm not any sort of radical feminist. I lived through the 2nd wave and read Dworkin and Greer contemporaneously. At the same time made a living working as a prostitute. Hindsight and lived experience shows they were not always right. Now that some "feminists" believe sex work is work and surrogacy is a good way for women to make money I know I'm only a feminist in some contexts, never a libfem ( goddess strike me dead first).
I regret commenting on your essay as I didn't understand your resistance and outrage at getting disagreement or critique. It's your prerogative to run it like a self congratulatory echo chamber and I'm sorry to have farted at your party.
AJay, I can tell you that I frequently tell women (and men and children) to flee. Winning a fight means going home safely, not something that looks like scoring points, and not killing your attacker or something else unreasonable (though that may be required depending on circumstances).
Becoming a "martial arts expert" is not the goal or requirement for a woman to defend herself. A good beginner program takes the most realistic, common scenarios and teaches defenses to them in the last amount of time required for the practitioner to effectively employ them. This is not weeks, but it's not decades, either. Matt Thornton (writer of The Gift of Violence which Helen is reading, and participant in the extended discussion on this topic) calls this kind of training ALIVE training, and it is unfortunately not practiced by most martial artists, but it is possible and effective.
As for disabilities and physical limitations: training is possible regardless of any and all limitations if the student actually wants to learn. I've seen people with no legs or no arms train in jiu jitsu. No, they can't do everything. But they can do some techniques and modify others to be useful to them, individually. If arthritis in your wrist makes you unable to use a screwdriver, you use a drill instead, and you don't give up the hammer, the wrench, or any other tools you can use.
I passed my beginner course in 2011 with a 72 year old man. The man who created Brazilian jiu jitsu, Helio Gracie, was training and practicing at the age of 94. Not everyone can do that, but most people are more capable than they think, if they'd just try. A rigid system that doesn't allow for adaptation due to limitations isn't a good system, but that doesn't mean there are no good systems.
I watched Peter's discussion with Kara Dansky, and thought he came across as an obstinately obtuse man. He spent an inordinate amount of time "wondering" why she, and by extension, all women, didn't take self-defense or martial arts training, as if this was some sort of solution to the SOCIAL and POLITICAL problems caused by gender identity ideology destroying women's sex-based rights.
When a couple of young girls are followed into the changing room at the Y swimming pool by a 19-year old male staffer claiming a "woman identity," (as happened in Port Townsend, WA) what good would such training have done? When a teenage girl was raped by a larger, stronger male in the restroom in a Loudon County, VA school whose administrators bowed before gender identity ideology, what good would such training have done? When women prisoners - many of them victims of sexual violence in their lives - are locked in supposedly women's prisons with violent men claiming "women identities," (as is the case in California, Washington, New Jersey, as well as in Helen's UK), what are they supposed to do? It is the authorities who have placed them in that dangerous predicament; the women are harshly punished if they even complain about it, let alone attempt to physically restrain the male. And what is an elderly women, requiring the assistance of a care aid for intimate tasks such as toileting or bathing, supposed to do when the health care agency sends a male claiming a "woman identity"? Or the woman in a UK hospital women's ward, raped by a patient (male) claiming a "woman identity" (as happened in the UK: the hospital then claimed no rape could have taken place, because there were "no men" on the ward!)? What should the women on the University of Pennsylvania swim team supposed to have done when Will "Lea" Thomas was swinging his dick around in the locker room, claiming a "woman identity," while the Penn administration told them to keep their mouths shut? Should Riley Gaines have karate-chopped him when he lined up in the starting blocks at the NCAA Championships, where he stole a position that rightfully belonged to an elite female athlete?
Peter's feigned "bewilderment" was beyond annoying. He clearly knows that gender identity ideology is bonkers. He had the opportunity to converse with Kara Dansky, one of the leading women in the legal and political resistance to Gender Woo. The problems are being caused by adults in the political, academic,legal, and medical establishments. To restore longstanding safeguarding rights for girls and women will take an organized fight back in those arenas. But Peter kept pushing and pushing on the matter of individual women learning self-defense. (Did it even occur to him that, as things stand now in all too many jurisdictions, it would be difficult to prevent a male claiming a "woman identity" from demanding entry into a self-defense class for women?)
Professor Boghossian simply needs to read the Glinner Substack every Monday, the "Week in the War on Women" edition, to see what's actually happening in the real world. The section entitled "This Never Happens" would give him all the examples he needs of the very real impacts upon girls and women caused by adults in positions of authority adopting rules based on Gender Woo. That he either didn't come prepared for his conversation with Kara Dansky by reading her Substack posts or books, or chose to ignore the broader political and social issues in favor of an individual solution of questionable utility, was insulting. It's possible to be both highly intelligent and yet quite stupid at the same time. Sorry for the intemperate language, but I understand completely why Julie Bindel, who has spent her entire life battling violence against women, was so angry at his line of questioning. It was redolent of victim-blaming.
"He spent an inordinate amount of time "wondering" why she, and by extension, all women, didn't take self-defense or martial arts training, as if this was some sort of solution to the SOCIAL and POLITICAL problems caused by gender identity ideology destroying women's sex-based rights."
Jim, you have encapsulated the "all of nothing" thinking at the source of the conflict and miscommunication there. Some feminists take the stance:
"When people advocate practical ways in which women can protect themselves from violence, they are saying it's women responsibility do this INSTEAD of society's responsibility to address social and political issues that cause, facilitate or fail to protect women from violence in the first place and blaming women for becoming victims of violence instead of the male perpetrators of it."
This is profoundly counterintuitive to the rest of us to whom this does not seem to logically follow. Most of us do not agree that addressing political and social causes of violence and taking steps to protect oneself from violence are mutually exclusive.
I can spend all day writing about social and political issues that threaten women's safety and then, in the evening, if my 19-year-old tells me she is going to the shop, remind her to avoid the alleyway and also take the dog. My advice does not in any way indicate that I think route planning or dogs can solve social and political issues related to young men who commit violent crime congregating in that area. The police need to prioritise policing that area and arresting them. If she said to me, "Yeah, I'm really scared of that alleyway since the last stabbing, but I think I'll go through it anyway and leave the dog here" I would not be victim blaming her if I said, "What?! Why?" I would want to understand what she was thinking and why she did not want to protect herself. Feminist theorising on this subject can often differ widely from the thinking of women about their own safety and that of other women in practice.
I am quite sure you mean well, but if you could not put political pressure on people not to create and discuss ways for women to protect themselves, I'd very much appreciate that. I'm not interested in learning self-defence myself, but other women are. We each make our own cost/risk analysis. Women who don't want to have or listen to such discussions and advice at all can always choose not to. Having such discussions in no way impedes anyone from addressing political and social issues.
It certainly doesn't impede Peter. Anyone who follows Peter's work at all will know that it focuses entirely and full-time on social and political problems including those which threaten women's sex-based rights. To suggest that, because he raised the issue of self-defence, he must think self-defence is the solution to social and political problems rather than everything he's ever said or done to address social and political problems in this area is, frankly, ridiculous.
Helen: that's a thoroughly misleading take on what I wrote. As Kara herself said during the conversation with Peter, women make conscious or unconscious decisions all the time regarding the safety implications of their own choices and actions. My point was that Peter spent a ridiculous amount of time badgering Kara regarding self-defense training, when the issues posed by gender-identity ideology are, quite often, not amenable to an individual solution, though girls and women will try their best. Thus we have schoolgirls coming down with UTI's, because they are avoiding using the restroom all day at school. Why? Because idiot adults have decided it's OK to let boys with self-declared "girl identities" enter what have long been single-sex spaces. And if those supposed "girl-identity" boys can enter, how is one to determine which males have that identity? So we've returned to the age of the "urinary leash," where girls and women are limited in where they can travel due to the absence of toilet facilities. It's not an "all or nothing" approach to state the bloody obvious: this is not a problem that can be solved by the schoolgirl taking self-defense training. Let's get the laws changed back to what they were: boys and men are not allowed into the women's restroom/locker room/hospital ward/changing room/prison. If one is seen going in, the girl or woman will be able to call the proper authorities to have the male removed/prosecuted/punished. Self-defense training is at best an adjunct to that. Peter, and his audience, would have been much better served by him discussing with Kara Dansky how this situation came to be, and how we can recover the lost safeguarding rights of girls and women. Peter is a fit, strong man. Kara is a small woman. What was difficult to understand was how he could evidence such a startling lack of understanding of the very real challenges girls and women face, given that disparity. Empathy deficit, personified. You describe the safety recommendations you make to your daughter, and would have even before Gender Woo came along. You thus clearly understand the danger that some males present to females. Why, then, are we altering laws to make it EASIER for those predatory males to victimize females? Put the focus back on the larger social and political side of the fight!
Liberal feminism is how we got into this in the first place. I like Pete but he's consistently wrong on the subject of women and this is likely why he doesn't spend all that much time at home with his wife and children and instead has a Greek style bromance with Reed.
I truly appreciate the grievance studies, it's incredibly valuable. However, my main critique still stands. That is the continued vilification of the radical feminist and the ignoring and plagiarism of the work done by them. "Feminist Glaciology" is not a radical feminist work and has nothing to do with our critical take down of male sexual violence or restriction of female autonomy or respect for women.
Yes, when studying sociology, you do break people down into "class" but when you're actually a practicing sociologist or doing sociological research you keep in mind, these are generalization and do not reflect every individual. This is the essence of the errors made in the grievance studies and how they were related.
Thanks Helen. I always enjoy a good piece on Feminist theory.
But it has its limits and is a luxury for most women. I gave up long ago deciding which philosophical Feminist camp I'm in. Sisterhood is the essence for me.
I just know I ain't a terf.
Not sure I understand why discussing advocating self defence training moves the world forward, or not, for men or women.....
I like this definition of “sisterhood” as the essence a lot. As we keep seeing, the vast majority of women (and people more generally) want equality for women but do not identify as feminist. Clearly, feminism is not widely recognised as defined by that aim. It has collected too much ideological baggage. As a liberal, and just as a human, I care about the rights and freedoms of everybody and respect/like/ love people as individuals. Having a special bond with and concern for the experiences of my own sex does not detract from that, just as a woman having a special connection with her sister does not prevent her from caring about anybody else or forming other relationships. “Sisterhood” it is.
I do not betray the bond of sisterhood by not agreeing with one (subset) of my sisters on everything. If, however, she responds to my disagreement by saying things like “You’re too fat and ugly to have to worry about being raped” or otherwise trying to bully me into submission, she has betrayed that bond with me. Giving in to her or responding to her in kind would be to enable a highly dysfunctional & abusive family dynamic which is something I am not prepared to do.
Instead, I will have to tell her that my commitment to our bond of sisterhood and to her well-being and interests has not changed, but until she stops behaving abusively and domineeringly to me, we will not be able to have a relationship. (Also, if she would stop abusing and denigrating those of our brothers who have our interests very much at heart, that would be nice)
I am so thankful that you’re out there in the world, thinking and operationalizing and writing. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought “Yes! This!” (And then read aloud to my very wonderful husband) while reading your pieces. Thank you for your work. So glad I stumbled upon you, Helen.
I love your work, Helen, but never dreamed you would hit upon this subject. I'vd also been trying for years to understand the mindset Peter encountered that started this minor fiasco. All the conversation that came out of that got me exactly no closer to understanding the mental processes that are the greatest barrier to helping individual women be safer and feel safer. It's very frustrating.
Wonderfully sane, humane and reasonable as always.
I think radical feminists do a kick-ass job of bringing lawsuits defending the rights of women and girls against the illiberal nonsense permeating our culture, but I’m much more aligned with the beliefs of liberal feminists like this author. We are one species. Women and men are in this together.
I think an advantage of radical feminism is that they have no expectation nor desire for men to come to their rescue, which empowers them to take action.
Yes, and a single focus. Liberals, by trying to consider the interests of everybody and apply principles consistently across all groups can move more slowly than radicals with a single focus even when our aims to redress an injustice done to that group align.
I am grateful for both liberal and radical feminist analysis in this world. Shoulder to the plow, sisters. There is so much to love about this article and I learned more about Dr. B, and his way of engaging in thought provoking conversation. Lol about the poison bit. Thank you so much for your work, it's such a pleasure to hear/read your thoughts.
I did make a comment on that post as I have some experience using martial arts training to defend myself (summary: it can only do so much to level the playing field. A much larger, untrained man will beat a smaller, well-trained woman in almost all circumstances, and against a group you stand no chance at all. Also studying martial arts can give you a false sense of confidence that can get you in more trouble) and got at least two commenters who told me to stop speaking just because I am a man. Even though I was broadly agreeing with Julie's stance based on my own experiences as an average-sized man.
Yes, it's not a very useful attitude, is it?
I’m so glad you wrote this piece and addressed the claims.
I’ll add that I think one of the issues is Peter genuinely asks questions and most people who are asked questions so directly are often being asked or set up for some sort of gotcha. It makes the person he’s speaking to feel defensive because the way he is speaking to them though honest and good faith is also often how people who are acting completely opposite that would engage.
Beyond that I think sometimes the way Peter really wants to clarify things (which I personally really appreciate ) might come across as insincere at times but I don’t think it’s meant to.
I hesitate to suggest he change his style of communication but also if there are small changes made that facilitate better exchanges of ideas perhaps it might be something to consider.
Also the part about poisoning Socrates gave me a good laugh.
Oh, the number of times I have suggested softening the mode of communication and also the body language and letting people see more of his warmth & gentleness. He is a really big-hearted teddy-bear of a man which is why I loves him despite us being so different and disagreeing on things quite frequently. It is not that he does not listen to me on this. He tried following my advice by informing Twitter that he regularly tells his male friends that he loves them (which he does), but this, as a standalone statement, did not really achieve the effect I was trying to help him achieve. The intensity and directness you see is due to him getting passionate about grappling with an idea & zooming in on it. It's no good trying to get him to consciously change the way he engages because he does not have a filter. He's just himself everywhere. I like this about him, but it upsets me when people see him as hostile or insincere, because he is such a compassionate person intensely interested in people. See the interview with Cindy if you can. This is how he goes about the world connecting with people.
Thank you for this, Helen and v23325. I think I'm understanding better now. It did seem to me that Peter was setting Kara up for a gotcha, because that is so often what I see elsewhere.
AJay, thank YOU. One of the biggest problems we have in addressing social issues is that it can be so difficult for people coming from different perspectives (including me, obviously) to hear each other and ever say something like "Thanks. I was thinking about this thing that happened in the context of certain beliefs, behaviours and attitudes that particularly worry me, but now I've seen people look at it from a different one, I feel I understand it better." I think if all the well-intentioned people engaging with social issues did that by default, we'd fix the world!
I appreciate your sharing your personal knowledge of Peter as a friend and colleague. However, I would still like to hear him, or you, explore whether women learning self defence really is a viable means of reducing risk? Both you and Peter seem to assume firstly, that any woman could become a martial arts expert, and secondly, that this would materially reduce their risk of being attacked.
I know the first is not true, as I live in the world as a disabled woman, and know that many women have health problems that would preclude their training in martial arts. Age is also a factor. Many women have autoimmune conditions that caused fatigue and pain as long term symptoms, and menopausal women often have musculo-skeletal problems just to name a couple. Peter did not acknowledge this reality in his conversation with Kara Dansky. His opinion seemed simplistic; either train in self defence or quit complaining. He also seemed to expect women to carry weapons - which is illegal in many countries.
Furthermore, women are generally advised to flee from danger rather than stay and fight, as fleeing is likely to have a better outcome for them. Peter seemed unaware of this, and did not seem to want to acknowledge this point when out to him on X.
I'm interested to learn that you're a liberal feminist - does that mean you accept gender ideology, since this is a tenet of liberal feminism?
I don’t know what the best advice for women on encountering a violent man who intends her harm is and this is why I made no knowledge claim on the subject. I am not an expert on the subject and do not have sufficient interest to go through all the competing arguments by people who are. I just want those discussions to be able to happen without people who take any position being accused of sexism. Separate out knowledge from political ideologies.
No, Pete does not make this simplistic claim. That is an assumption that comes from assuming that questioning why a woman would not learn self-defence if she felt herself to be in danger. It doesn’t preclude fleeing if possible and calling the police which is always better than engaging in violence.
No, liberal feminism did not produce gender identity theory. See the essay I linked within the piece. That comes from Critical Social Justice forms of feminism rooted in queer theory and intersectional feminism, both of which explicitly reject liberalism as a central tenet. I have dedicated many years to opposing it
I strongly doubt Peter Boghossian has moved around in the world fearing he may be raped. As the possessor of a male body he literally cannot be vaginally raped. Whereas it is a commonplace and everyday experience for women to move around in the world being highly conscious we have the sexed bodies predatory males intentionally select for manifold types of violation and abuse.
You seem incapable of acknowledging the very simple fact that according to whether we have male or female sexed bodies we move around in the world with different sensitivities, consciousness and varieties of alertness.
??? What are you responding to? If you want to argue about different kinds of violence faced by men and women, go and find an article arguing otherwise. I'm not incapable of acknowledging this very simple fact and have acknowledged it many times. This piece is just about something else.
You said that Boghossian is not a sexist because you do not experience him as such.
I say that because Boghossian is male he moves around in the world with an alternate sensory experience from being female. While he can certainly have empathy and reason what it might be like to be female, by whit of his actual existential physical reality it can only be an intellectual exercise of imagining. Therefore I interpret his speculations about how women should behave when faced with being in close proximity with men unknown to us, as coming from masculinist privilege, therefore sexist.
Then go away and write a thing about why Socratic philosophers shouldn't talk to feminist standpoint epistemologists or feminist standpoint epistemologists shouldn't talk to Socratic philosophers if you want to. I said all I intend to say on that subject with this bit:
"Radical feminists are completely within their right to find ‘this style of interrogation” (the Socratic method) offensive and inappropriate but those who do cannot reasonably expect Socratic philosophers to agree and just accept that some things are known and that questions should not be asked about them. That is not how they understand knowledge to work".
I'm not stopping you from doing feminist standpoint epistemology. I'm just not doing it with you for reasons I also gave in the essay. There's no point complaining that Peter doesn't defer to feminist standpoint epistemology when his street epistemology is Socratic and anybody who agrees to talk to him knows that. Just go and talk to people who already share your epistemology if that is the only way you are willing to engage. My essay should have made it clear to you that I don't.
I'm not any sort of radical feminist. I lived through the 2nd wave and read Dworkin and Greer contemporaneously. At the same time made a living working as a prostitute. Hindsight and lived experience shows they were not always right. Now that some "feminists" believe sex work is work and surrogacy is a good way for women to make money I know I'm only a feminist in some contexts, never a libfem ( goddess strike me dead first).
I regret commenting on your essay as I didn't understand your resistance and outrage at getting disagreement or critique. It's your prerogative to run it like a self congratulatory echo chamber and I'm sorry to have farted at your party.
AJay, I can tell you that I frequently tell women (and men and children) to flee. Winning a fight means going home safely, not something that looks like scoring points, and not killing your attacker or something else unreasonable (though that may be required depending on circumstances).
Becoming a "martial arts expert" is not the goal or requirement for a woman to defend herself. A good beginner program takes the most realistic, common scenarios and teaches defenses to them in the last amount of time required for the practitioner to effectively employ them. This is not weeks, but it's not decades, either. Matt Thornton (writer of The Gift of Violence which Helen is reading, and participant in the extended discussion on this topic) calls this kind of training ALIVE training, and it is unfortunately not practiced by most martial artists, but it is possible and effective.
As for disabilities and physical limitations: training is possible regardless of any and all limitations if the student actually wants to learn. I've seen people with no legs or no arms train in jiu jitsu. No, they can't do everything. But they can do some techniques and modify others to be useful to them, individually. If arthritis in your wrist makes you unable to use a screwdriver, you use a drill instead, and you don't give up the hammer, the wrench, or any other tools you can use.
I passed my beginner course in 2011 with a 72 year old man. The man who created Brazilian jiu jitsu, Helio Gracie, was training and practicing at the age of 94. Not everyone can do that, but most people are more capable than they think, if they'd just try. A rigid system that doesn't allow for adaptation due to limitations isn't a good system, but that doesn't mean there are no good systems.
I watched Peter's discussion with Kara Dansky, and thought he came across as an obstinately obtuse man. He spent an inordinate amount of time "wondering" why she, and by extension, all women, didn't take self-defense or martial arts training, as if this was some sort of solution to the SOCIAL and POLITICAL problems caused by gender identity ideology destroying women's sex-based rights.
When a couple of young girls are followed into the changing room at the Y swimming pool by a 19-year old male staffer claiming a "woman identity," (as happened in Port Townsend, WA) what good would such training have done? When a teenage girl was raped by a larger, stronger male in the restroom in a Loudon County, VA school whose administrators bowed before gender identity ideology, what good would such training have done? When women prisoners - many of them victims of sexual violence in their lives - are locked in supposedly women's prisons with violent men claiming "women identities," (as is the case in California, Washington, New Jersey, as well as in Helen's UK), what are they supposed to do? It is the authorities who have placed them in that dangerous predicament; the women are harshly punished if they even complain about it, let alone attempt to physically restrain the male. And what is an elderly women, requiring the assistance of a care aid for intimate tasks such as toileting or bathing, supposed to do when the health care agency sends a male claiming a "woman identity"? Or the woman in a UK hospital women's ward, raped by a patient (male) claiming a "woman identity" (as happened in the UK: the hospital then claimed no rape could have taken place, because there were "no men" on the ward!)? What should the women on the University of Pennsylvania swim team supposed to have done when Will "Lea" Thomas was swinging his dick around in the locker room, claiming a "woman identity," while the Penn administration told them to keep their mouths shut? Should Riley Gaines have karate-chopped him when he lined up in the starting blocks at the NCAA Championships, where he stole a position that rightfully belonged to an elite female athlete?
Peter's feigned "bewilderment" was beyond annoying. He clearly knows that gender identity ideology is bonkers. He had the opportunity to converse with Kara Dansky, one of the leading women in the legal and political resistance to Gender Woo. The problems are being caused by adults in the political, academic,legal, and medical establishments. To restore longstanding safeguarding rights for girls and women will take an organized fight back in those arenas. But Peter kept pushing and pushing on the matter of individual women learning self-defense. (Did it even occur to him that, as things stand now in all too many jurisdictions, it would be difficult to prevent a male claiming a "woman identity" from demanding entry into a self-defense class for women?)
Professor Boghossian simply needs to read the Glinner Substack every Monday, the "Week in the War on Women" edition, to see what's actually happening in the real world. The section entitled "This Never Happens" would give him all the examples he needs of the very real impacts upon girls and women caused by adults in positions of authority adopting rules based on Gender Woo. That he either didn't come prepared for his conversation with Kara Dansky by reading her Substack posts or books, or chose to ignore the broader political and social issues in favor of an individual solution of questionable utility, was insulting. It's possible to be both highly intelligent and yet quite stupid at the same time. Sorry for the intemperate language, but I understand completely why Julie Bindel, who has spent her entire life battling violence against women, was so angry at his line of questioning. It was redolent of victim-blaming.
"He spent an inordinate amount of time "wondering" why she, and by extension, all women, didn't take self-defense or martial arts training, as if this was some sort of solution to the SOCIAL and POLITICAL problems caused by gender identity ideology destroying women's sex-based rights."
Jim, you have encapsulated the "all of nothing" thinking at the source of the conflict and miscommunication there. Some feminists take the stance:
"When people advocate practical ways in which women can protect themselves from violence, they are saying it's women responsibility do this INSTEAD of society's responsibility to address social and political issues that cause, facilitate or fail to protect women from violence in the first place and blaming women for becoming victims of violence instead of the male perpetrators of it."
This is profoundly counterintuitive to the rest of us to whom this does not seem to logically follow. Most of us do not agree that addressing political and social causes of violence and taking steps to protect oneself from violence are mutually exclusive.
I can spend all day writing about social and political issues that threaten women's safety and then, in the evening, if my 19-year-old tells me she is going to the shop, remind her to avoid the alleyway and also take the dog. My advice does not in any way indicate that I think route planning or dogs can solve social and political issues related to young men who commit violent crime congregating in that area. The police need to prioritise policing that area and arresting them. If she said to me, "Yeah, I'm really scared of that alleyway since the last stabbing, but I think I'll go through it anyway and leave the dog here" I would not be victim blaming her if I said, "What?! Why?" I would want to understand what she was thinking and why she did not want to protect herself. Feminist theorising on this subject can often differ widely from the thinking of women about their own safety and that of other women in practice.
I am quite sure you mean well, but if you could not put political pressure on people not to create and discuss ways for women to protect themselves, I'd very much appreciate that. I'm not interested in learning self-defence myself, but other women are. We each make our own cost/risk analysis. Women who don't want to have or listen to such discussions and advice at all can always choose not to. Having such discussions in no way impedes anyone from addressing political and social issues.
It certainly doesn't impede Peter. Anyone who follows Peter's work at all will know that it focuses entirely and full-time on social and political problems including those which threaten women's sex-based rights. To suggest that, because he raised the issue of self-defence, he must think self-defence is the solution to social and political problems rather than everything he's ever said or done to address social and political problems in this area is, frankly, ridiculous.
Helen: that's a thoroughly misleading take on what I wrote. As Kara herself said during the conversation with Peter, women make conscious or unconscious decisions all the time regarding the safety implications of their own choices and actions. My point was that Peter spent a ridiculous amount of time badgering Kara regarding self-defense training, when the issues posed by gender-identity ideology are, quite often, not amenable to an individual solution, though girls and women will try their best. Thus we have schoolgirls coming down with UTI's, because they are avoiding using the restroom all day at school. Why? Because idiot adults have decided it's OK to let boys with self-declared "girl identities" enter what have long been single-sex spaces. And if those supposed "girl-identity" boys can enter, how is one to determine which males have that identity? So we've returned to the age of the "urinary leash," where girls and women are limited in where they can travel due to the absence of toilet facilities. It's not an "all or nothing" approach to state the bloody obvious: this is not a problem that can be solved by the schoolgirl taking self-defense training. Let's get the laws changed back to what they were: boys and men are not allowed into the women's restroom/locker room/hospital ward/changing room/prison. If one is seen going in, the girl or woman will be able to call the proper authorities to have the male removed/prosecuted/punished. Self-defense training is at best an adjunct to that. Peter, and his audience, would have been much better served by him discussing with Kara Dansky how this situation came to be, and how we can recover the lost safeguarding rights of girls and women. Peter is a fit, strong man. Kara is a small woman. What was difficult to understand was how he could evidence such a startling lack of understanding of the very real challenges girls and women face, given that disparity. Empathy deficit, personified. You describe the safety recommendations you make to your daughter, and would have even before Gender Woo came along. You thus clearly understand the danger that some males present to females. Why, then, are we altering laws to make it EASIER for those predatory males to victimize females? Put the focus back on the larger social and political side of the fight!
Liberal feminism is how we got into this in the first place. I like Pete but he's consistently wrong on the subject of women and this is likely why he doesn't spend all that much time at home with his wife and children and instead has a Greek style bromance with Reed.
I truly appreciate the grievance studies, it's incredibly valuable. However, my main critique still stands. That is the continued vilification of the radical feminist and the ignoring and plagiarism of the work done by them. "Feminist Glaciology" is not a radical feminist work and has nothing to do with our critical take down of male sexual violence or restriction of female autonomy or respect for women.
Yes, when studying sociology, you do break people down into "class" but when you're actually a practicing sociologist or doing sociological research you keep in mind, these are generalization and do not reflect every individual. This is the essence of the errors made in the grievance studies and how they were related.
As it plays out in my brain…
Helen Pluckrose: “Nobody puts baby Boghossian in a corner.”
great. as usual.
I hope you sent a link to this to Bindel
Yes.
Thanks Helen. I always enjoy a good piece on Feminist theory.
But it has its limits and is a luxury for most women. I gave up long ago deciding which philosophical Feminist camp I'm in. Sisterhood is the essence for me.
I just know I ain't a terf.
Not sure I understand why discussing advocating self defence training moves the world forward, or not, for men or women.....
I like this definition of “sisterhood” as the essence a lot. As we keep seeing, the vast majority of women (and people more generally) want equality for women but do not identify as feminist. Clearly, feminism is not widely recognised as defined by that aim. It has collected too much ideological baggage. As a liberal, and just as a human, I care about the rights and freedoms of everybody and respect/like/ love people as individuals. Having a special bond with and concern for the experiences of my own sex does not detract from that, just as a woman having a special connection with her sister does not prevent her from caring about anybody else or forming other relationships. “Sisterhood” it is.
I do not betray the bond of sisterhood by not agreeing with one (subset) of my sisters on everything. If, however, she responds to my disagreement by saying things like “You’re too fat and ugly to have to worry about being raped” or otherwise trying to bully me into submission, she has betrayed that bond with me. Giving in to her or responding to her in kind would be to enable a highly dysfunctional & abusive family dynamic which is something I am not prepared to do.
Instead, I will have to tell her that my commitment to our bond of sisterhood and to her well-being and interests has not changed, but until she stops behaving abusively and domineeringly to me, we will not be able to have a relationship. (Also, if she would stop abusing and denigrating those of our brothers who have our interests very much at heart, that would be nice)
(You seem to have inspired another essay)
https://open.substack.com/pub/helenpluckrose/p/sisterhood-and-dysfunctional-family?r=1nm3qt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true