John Stoltenberg’s and Cristan Williams’ The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I’ve been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group, started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T–F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin, while ignoring all of Dworkin’s later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote.) The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin’s most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea’s mid-70s discussion of androgyny as something that wasn’t specific to her, and something that was only considered to be of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because those were the only parts of Andrea’s work they wished to deal with. Dealing with anything else–such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy–would have been harder for them to embrace, as it would have implicated some of their own politics as pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon’s work they paid any attention to were from an grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine.

3. There less than five pro-radical pro-feminists in the group. One person, a white trans woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no pro-radical pro-feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, has consistently advocated for feminist values and feminist approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members “liked” her comments. Cristan and John never did. (Again, John was largely absent, although he read a lot of the comments.)

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color or people of color were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo society’s understandings of gender, not because he ever centered how to end white colonialist genocide, but because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color (trans or not). They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered “off topic”. Supporting white, class privileged trans women was always “on topic”.

6. They always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structural enemy class) with nearly the same disdain and disrespect as they demonstrated for some radical feminists. (I call that misogyny and anti-feminism.)

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchy, or anti-colonialism agenda. In this sense and others, the group was willfully liberal, yet tossed the term “radical” into their title twice, for reasons which remain unclear. Perhaps because it was “cool” to do so. Or because they pretended they were radical. There was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of women of color.

9. It became crystal clear to me that neither Cristan, or more surprisingly John, understood the meaning of “radical” when it comes to radical feminism or radical anything. That was disappointing. They were anti-[white] radical feminist because they saw white trans people being harmed by anti-trans political activism. Their own embedded and structural racism didn’t count as being “anti-trans”.

10. Many members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between white radical lesbian feminists and white liberal trans activists. Only the trans woman who left in disgust, and Margo, did explicitly welcome this.) They were intent on demonising some feminists (not just their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, anti-trans, and racist.

Over four months, they always were only “Liberal White-centered Trans and pro-Trans Conversations that Ignore What is of Radical Concern to All Women”. Sad. And predictable.