Blanchard is far from a radical feminist. He believes that gender-reassignment surgery can relieve psychological suffering; he has even counselled people who undergo it. He also accepts the commonly held view that male brains differ from female brains in ways that affect behavior. Nevertheless, Jeffreys believes that the work of Blanchard and Bailey shows that when trans women ask to be accepted as women they’re seeking to have an erotic fixation indulged.

If our planet has any hope, it will be because we repair the perennial polycultures–the grasslands, the forests, the wetlands–and take our place once again as participants in those biotic communities, instead of as destroyers of them. That’s what we did for our first four million years–we were participants in living communities. It’s only in the last 10,000 that we’ve become monsters. On May 24th, a few dozen people gathered in a conference room at the Central Library, a century-old Georgian Revival building in downtown Portland, Oregon, for an event called Radfems Respond. The conference had been convened by a group that wanted to defend two positions that have made radical feminism anathema to much of the left. First, the organizers hoped to refute charges that the desire to ban prostitution implies hostility toward prostitutes. Then they were going to try to explain why, at a time when transgender rights are ascendant, radical feminists insist on regarding transgender women as men, who should not be allowed to use women’s facilities, such as public rest rooms, or to participate in events organized exclusively for women. Echols, Alice. 1983. The New Feminism of Yin and Yang. In Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, 439–459. New York: Monthly Review Press.To go along with that theme, in this and the following Thursday profile blogs I’ll feature two people who faced these forks in the road (pardon the pun). We’re going to have to remember there are better ways and there are people still here who can help us. We’re going to have to learn to listen to them and approach this with a lot more humility. In times of social collapse, desperate people can do very ugly things. Since the book was released, we’ve seen the rise of the Tea Party movement, who have successfully run candidates for office. The public discourse has turned more and more to violence, Gabby Giffords was shot and others killed.

S – As radical feminists when we say anything against ‘sex worker’s rights’ we get called swerfs (sex worker exclusionary radical feminists) L – That’s the basis of patriarchy. Once men invent private property, and then they want to hand it down the male lineage, they have to control women. Every woman knows whether she has had a baby or not. We know who the mother is. There’s no way you cannot know. It’s not true for men. Paternity is a much more sketchy prospect.

Browne, Sarah. 2014. The Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. At least nine people were arrestedin New York Cityduring protests that broke out in opposition to the last stop of Keen’s US tour. Like in Portland, Keen had been unable to attend the event as she was not able to get to the speaking podium safely due to aggressive counter-protestors. Merrifield, Andrews. 1993. Place and Space: A Lefebvrian Reconciliation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18 (4): 516–531. L – when we talk about overshoot, people get anxious because they think you are referencing population control. That has been tried and there’s a reason people recoil from it. It’s involved a lot of human rights horrors especially against women and women of colour so I understand why people recoil.