A Transphobic Hate-Monger Comes to Boston: Sheila Jeffreys Given U.S. Platform a

[Shana A]

A Transphobic Hate-Monger Comes to Boston: Sheila Jeffreys Given U.S. Platform at Wheelock College to Spread her Bigotry

by transmeditations on June 13, 2011.

http://transmeditations.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/a-transphobic-hate-monger-comes-to-boston-sheila-jeffreys-given-u-s-platform-at-wheelock-college-to-spread-her-bigotry/

June 25-30, the group Stop Porn Culture is sponsoring a week of conferences dealing with radical feminism, the anti-pornography movement and media culture.  One of their leading speakers, flying in all the way from Australia, is the rabid transphobic bigot Sheila Jeffreys.  (http://stoppornculture.org/events/) The conference will be held at Wheelock College in Boston, the home institution of one of the lead organizers Gail Dines, who teaches Women's Studies there.  Dines is the author of Pornland and an internationally-known lecturer and activist on behalf of the feminist anti-pornography cause.

I attended the conference in June 2010 to learn more about this issue and hear feminist anti-pornography perspectives.  It became clear to me that the conference was deeply flawed and one-sided when I learned that there were no current or former sex workers who were given a platform to speak from their own experience.  The conference consisted mostly of privileged white cis people of economic means speaking about the evils of pornography.  While there were pro-sex worker activists in the audience, they were treated as enemies and barely allowed to speak.  I knew about the history of anti-trans sentiments in the "radical" feminist community and was unsurprised by some of the subtle hostility I felt by some conference attendees. 

[spacial]

A testament to the incredable power these people hold is that this woman is also openly racist.

An individual who can wander around preaching racial inferiority, child sex abuse, hatred of transgender and sex workers. Yet few seem to have the guts top stand up to this type and those of us who do are generally labeled as paranoid.

Funny old world really.

[spacial]

That would seem to be the case really, since no-one appears to have the guts or the authority to stand up to any of them.

The damage they have done and continue to do to the cause of women and society is enormous. None of them seem ready to face up to it, the latest outburst from Germain Greer is evidence of this.

The problem seems to come from their background in the Trotski-est movement of the 60s and 70s, where the authority of the elaborate term, the power of the extreme complaint and the apparent reality of pessimism imposed an authority based upon awe and facination, rather than argument or democracy.

But Greer's revival of the 'All Men Are Rapists' notion, just a few evening ago, on British TV has demostrated that these idiots are not nearly beaten yet nor are they done wreaking their havock