At least since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Lefties have been rankled by the presence of feminists among their ranks.
But purging these uppity women presents a challenge. Overtly denigrating feminists is risky: it can be perceived as misogynistic, and cedes too much political ground on issues lefties like to call their own – such as abortion rights.
So the Left is stuck with having to marginalise through covert means the political movement organised to resist male supremacy and its violent war against women and children.
An effective covert tactic has been to play wedge politics.
The Left’s first victory came in the 1980s. Throughout this decade, feminist opposition to pornography was beginning to gain traction as a wedge issue. As a result, an entire generation of feminists was driven from the Left for refusing to adhere to the newly minted idea of the sexual revolution that pornography was an expression of women’s political freedom.
A subsequent generation of feminists in the 1990s was defeated, again by a Leftist wedge tactic, but this time the long history of feminist abolitionist campaigning against prostitution was the core demand turned upside down. Instead of sexual slavery, the Left reconceptualised prostitution as a form of work for women, and a consumer service activity for “clients.” Feminists who failed to parrot this newly conceived idea of “sex work” were chased out, and women got rewards for doing the chasing.
The Left today is nonetheless achieving a purge of feminists from its ranks unrivalled by their previous successes of the 1980s and 1990s. Playing wedge politics is still the tactic of choice, but the issue requiring women’s pledge of allegiance is brand new.
Transgenderism bastardises the core feminist insight that “woman” is a politically defined social category generated by male violence and the exclusion, expropriation and colonisation of female human beings. Rendered as a Leftist wedge issue, this insight becomes the distorted proposition that “woman” is a flexible human “identity” with which any individual might associate themselves – even fully-grown rational male human beings.
Transgenderism is not a political movement motivated by progressive concerns – it’s just the latest weapon in the Left’s covert battle against feminism.
Source: Transgenderism: The Latest Anti-Feminist Wedge of the Left – ABC Religion & Ethics