BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
A quarter of a century ago, when I was at university, Feminism had won. Equality was a done deal. The few women who joined the Feminist Society tended to be sturdy lesbian oarswomen likely blissfully ignorant of the distinction between a leotard and Lyotard. The women students who subscribed to the Cocktail Society outnumbered them fifty to one.
Over the next decade and a half you’d see the occasional beardy-weirdy leftist (male) identify as a feminist. One always presumed this was because they couldn’t get a shag outside of Bangkok and were in the same camp of desperation as those male predators in nightclubs who would pretend to be gay until the early hours of the morning when they’d escort their female friends ‘safely’ home then declare sudden conversion to their woozy quarry, ‘because your beauty has changed me’. (Alas, there were a few desperadoes back then. I trust they are now languishing in jail).
From a decade ago, the number of men identifying as feminists increased markedly as those mistaking the venom of Critical Theory for virtue-signalling succumbed to its divisive, racist message against whiteness and in particular against white men. One by one, creepy, metrosexual half-men started adding ‘feminist’ to their Twitter profiles and simultaneously went out of their way to apologise to everyone for their great-great-great Uncle Basil who owned a tenth of a slave on Tobago. (I recall a Nigerian merchant banker chuckling at some point around 2015 at how pitiable the whole charade had become, mentioning that one could purchase with ease an African slave in that year for the cost of lunch at the Duck & Waffle, and that there were very many Africans still doing so).
Of course, the creepy metrosexual men — no doubt supine to this day — were plain wrong. But now, after the experience of the last few years, I have to say that all good men should readily identify as feminists. For — althought some might argue this is counterintuitive and the succumbing to identification that the Marxists want — this will in fact help expedite the continuing demise of Critical Theory and, hopefully, show solidarity with our dear sisters whose gender is threatened by a tiny gaggle of shouty men.
You see, there are men among us who these days attempt to make a mockery of female equality. Aggressive, activist trans males are selfishly and sometimes cynically erasing the hard-fought, precious achievements of feminists. (Note my use of the words ‘aggressive’ and ‘activist’ — Trans friends, you should be free to identify however which way you wish in a caring society, so long as law reflects biology and clearly stipulates just two genders).
The story is now a well-trodden one: These men are unreasonable, for example, in how they insist trans women—biological males who have changed their gender identity to female—must compete athletically against biological women. These men are unjust, for example, in how they insist trans women—biological males who have changed their gender identity to female—should be welcomed into women’s showers, prisons, bathrooms or anywhere else dedicated exclusively to women and girls. These men are unfair too, for example, in how they insist trans women—biological males who have changed their gender identity to female—are owed, since somehow they are the victims, the cancelling of courageous feminists like JK Rowling, Sharron Davies, Graham Linehan and others.
I should add that it is also a step too far for aggressive post-op trans —biological males who have changed their gender identity to female—to suggest for one minute that gay men must be attracted to them or they should be written off as transphobic. Gay men who do not fancy trans men are hardly transphobic just as straight men who do not fancy furries are hardly furryphobic. Again here, the aggressive activist trans are attempting to erase hard-fought, precious gay rights too, after the gay rights movement (the deviation of queer theory aside) achieved equality, like feminists, by enduring great sacrifices.
In their day, suffragettes and gay rights activists were both depicted by media outlets as disgusting, boisterous and radical but they were fighting the good fight. By comparison these aggressive Trans activists are merely tilting at windmills. Their campaign will fail however high their wail. Too many of their demands threaten the security and hard-fought rights of the female majority while attracting the ire of too many associated male protectors – that is no good for society. They likely do not know it themselves but they were designed to create instability, they are pawns of a defective, divisive ideology that has sent too many like my old friend T to an early grave.
Algeria in its civil war (1991-2002) went through a similar intersectional mass suicide – in their case through increasingly divisive interpretations of ‘true’ Islam. Today the country looks back on that absurd era of national cleaving with chagrin; as a horrid aberration which ripped Algerian society and families apart.
Critical Theory proponents will dismiss me as another ‘racist’, ‘transphobic’, ‘far right’, ‘straight white man’ (choose from a plethora of their insults to score bingo) using feminism to get anti-racist ideas out of public discourse. They will argue, like many parrots before them, that I am merely an example of what their wacky theory is meant to interrogate and illuminate: the centrality and immovability of racism in the West. But they do not know me or my complete lack of any racism, extremism, misogyny or transphobia. Their theory is purposefully too blinkered to grasp the nuances of individuality, whether mine or anyone else’s. Some still do not see it yet but they are mere vectors of some silly academics’ theory, conjured up amidst pipe smoke in ivory towers merely to reach publishing quotas to maintain lousy stipends and free board.
The massive change in all those years, aside from the rise of trans activism on the fugacious wave of Critical Theory, is that feminists who would have dismissed me as ‘patriarchy’ back then now reach out to male allies like me and welcome our support. That is the beginning of the end of the aggressive trans movement. Feminists had won and now they will win again. This time we shall not snigger at the feminists as we — both men and women — used to, somewhat shamefully, a quarter of a century ago over mojitos and daquiris at the Cocktail Club bar.
Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.