I’m in an abusive relationship with Julie Bindel

This is a full length version of an article I wrote this week for The Queerness

I’m in an abusive relationship with Julie Bindel and I can’t escape.*

I come from an abusive family, I’ve worked for years with abuse survivors, I have an MA in Trauma Studies that focused on the consequences of abuse. I know what abuse looks like and feels like. It looks like this.

The cycle is familiar by now. It begins with Bindel and her enablers organising a talk that they know will have a negative impact on a minority – often that minority is trans people, as this seems to be her special interest, and I will focus on this, although her attitudes to sex work, bisexuality, mental health and Islam are equally questionable.

Her stated aim is to cast doubt on the validity of trans identities, which is appalling in itself, especially given the weight of scientific evidence and historical record that supports our identities. But her covert but equally apparent aim is even more pernicious – to whip up a storm that she can then claim to be a victim of, through which she achieves personal gain.

It is a sad fact that one abuse tactic is to make yourself look like your victim’s victim. Bindel excels at this.

In her latest escapade we find Bindel imposing herself on a space that should be inclusive of bi and trans people, as she is scheduled to give an LGBT history month talk. It’s not enough for her to bring her afab lesbian separatism to afab lesbian separatist spaces, she has to push herself on LGBT spaces she doesn’t believe should even exist.

Of course this is pure provocation and of course she knows it. Naturally, people will be frightened, upset. This will embolden biphobic and transphobic people and lend power to their discourse.

My Facebook feed is full of trans friends hurt and agonised over what to do. Ignoring her feels like being assaulted and pretending it isn’t happening, although my policy has long been to try and ignore people like Bindel and not be a pawn in their nasty game. I wrote about this when she came to my town two years ago and my position has not changed. Fighting back will bring the focus onto us and we as a community will be on trial for what any one of us does and says next. And with this much hurt and anger, somebody somewhere is bound to misfire.

This is another abuser trick – torment someone until they snap and then calmly tell the world “look how mad and bad this person is”.

Yes, we are traumatised

Bindel says we cannot be traumatised by her, but we can and we are. I have seen it and felt it. My heart rate goes up when Bindel’s name is mentioned. My body tenses. I lose sleep. I have intrusive thoughts about the verbal abuse I’ve experienced from her friends and enablers in relation to previous events. I have internalised Bindel’s own cruel words and they continue to taunt me even in her absence. Most of all, I feel something is being forced onto me and that I am powerless and voiceless.

I can speak out through a blog but I know my words will be drowned out because her audience is so much bigger and we are such a tiny community. Her lies have greater reach than our truth, and have the ring of veracity to people who know little about us and haven’t done their reading.

Fortunately the law now recognises the existence of emotional abuse, and I hope it’s only a matter of time until we recognise that the internet is not some magical place where words don’t hurt. Emotional abuse is real. Bullying is real. Harassment is real. Harassment is coming into a space that has “T” in it whilst being a very persistent and prolific campaigner against trans civil rights and the very idea of “LGBT”.

Another abuser trick is to spin what’s happening with a manipulative rhetoric. It’s easy to choose your words carefully and be charming when you’re not really the one under fire, of course. Abusers talk about people “taking offence” as some very cerebral and quite academic response to their abusive words. This sanitises the process and denies its real impact. MRAs will say this about survivors who are traumatised by rape jokes, that they are needlessly offended. When someone is emboldened to say something they absolutely know will chip away at another person’s safety or social inclusion, or their very sense of self, spinning their trauma-related reactions as “offence” is just so much newspeak.

“Free Speech” is a dangerous red herring

Bindel will claim that we should be always ready and refreshed to have the same debate over and over again that has been going on for 40 years now. She claims that the correct ideas will magically triumph in this Just And Fair World. Bindel seems somehow oblivious to the fact that America is now ruled by possibly the world’s worst misogynist.  This trendy and highly manipulative version of “free speech” ideology that she, along with people like Trump and Milo Yiannopoulos espouse, has certainly contributed to the awful shape the world is in.

It’s a kind of neoliberal version of discourse, a sort of “free market economy” for ideas, where somehow all will be well and the fittest ideas will win out. Of course, as we know, what happens with a free market is that wealth unjustly concentrates in the hands of a few fat cats. And equally, the people with the biggest platforms dominate and manipulate the ideological landscape when there are no ethical checks and balances.

Where once someone would have drawn a line and decided this had all gone way too far, people fell over themselves to give Trump a platform, claiming that enabling his hate would expose him. The policy failed not just because those that gave Trump an enormous media platform enabled his voice to be heard over others, but also by platforming it they endorsed it. Putting someone on a platform is not just permission to speak, it is validation of what they have to say. It is giving power to someone.

Trump dominated and people allowed him to. Almost as if people are scared of bullies and suck up to them.

Bindel herself argued for Trump to be given a platform.

Meanwhile, Trump showed such fragility, or such superb victim game, whichever you care to see it as, that he could weaponise any dissent as a good excuse to escalate. This is what abusers do; they create a pattern of coercive control which you either go along with, thus enabling them, or resist, which they use as an excuse to “retaliate”. You are trapped either way because they have the power. The whole point about abuse is the victim has less power.

Bindel is no different. She has such a strong media platform in a world that generally hates feminists exactly because she reinforces this abusive idea that it’s a fair world and if someone has power over you they deserve it. Bindel constantly manipulates in order to gain a greater platform, hurting bi and trans people, sex workers and PoC to consolidate her own position. People who give Bindel a platform are endorsing her, and they are also removing that opportunity from many other speakers who do not hurt people to get their own needs met.

With power, you control the narrative

Bindel also uses gaslighting techniques highly effectively. Telling us our lifelong deeply held experiences of self are illegitimate against the casual appraisal of strangers. Telling us that a mountain of medical and historic evidence are nothing compared to her feeling that trans people can’t be real.

Gaslighting works only when you have control of a situation. Bindel has an army of men and women who will jump at any opportunity to bash trans identities, diagnosing us as crazy, pathologising us as dangerous, legitimising any level of attack on us based on the lie Bindel herself espouses: we are a threat that must be ended at all costs. In this post truth world there doesn’t have to be any evidence of this, it just needs to feel true.

Of course if we are dangerous our fighting back against this hate takes on quite a different appearance. Somehow instead of being this tiny, marginalised community that meets daily abuse and disrespect, and is subject to disproportionate amounts of violence and trauma, we are the ultimate agents of patriachy/ satan and have all of the power behind us. Lies about our level of power and threat legitimise any level of attack against us. Dismissal of the impact of these behaviours makes the actors entirely unaccountable.

Just as Donald Trump could talk about women however he liked because he had a chorus of people denying, minimising and blaming on his behalf, Bindel is enabled to be as disrespectful and hateful as she likes toward my community, and in particular trans women.

Power always has accomplices

This cycle will continue as long as people give Bindel a platform, give her power. Once that happens, she has already won because both ignoring or attacking from the trans community will enable her. Cancel the event, she gets to play the victim and she gains more support and more power. Let her speak and she gains an audience (one inclined to be on her side) – more power again. There is no winning here.

Two years ago I made a commitment to myself I try (and sometimes fail) to keep. Recognising I was becoming increasingly traumatised by Bindel and her ilk I started to ignore them as much as possible, and bring people together to do positive work. From that decision a huge amount of supportive community organising has come about. But I’m by no means over the profound negative psychological impact that gender critical feminism has had on me, and it’s impossible to protect myself fully from it. Their tendrils are everywhere, influencing my cis friends, influencing policy, weighting the media discussion about us and generally making life miserable for trans people in multiple ways. I blogged about how much I had internalised their hateful doctrine here.

We are powerless and we are vulnerable; perhaps a natural state that should be embraced more by human beings, but never more true than if you are an outlier on the bell curve of humanity.

As long as people give power to bullies they will have power. And a platform is power. It’s not a right, to be elevated over others. It’s not an entitlement, although some seem to act like it is, have a sense of entitlement that is once again the characteristic of an abuser. It’s not free speech to have a newspaper column or a speaking engagement. It’s power. And using it to subjugate a minority and advocate the removal of their rights is abuse of that power.

Like Trump and Yiannopoulos, Bindel finds in these frightening days an opportunity to become powerful and wealthy and be surrounded by enablers. That she is representing a notion of “working class” at this latest event is the ultimate irony. Whatever her origins, Bindel is elite, dangerous and bad for the health of working class LGBT+ folk everywhere. Particularly trans people, bi people, PoC and sex workers, but her ideas are calamitous to all of us as they render us powerless to say “stop” when we are being abused, because “stop” and “no” are apparently censorship of her freedom to come at us relentlessly.

And, to be clear, I want to holler Stop! and No! I want to beg and plead – just leave me and my friends alone and find another special interest, please Julie. Your behaviour is intolerable and real people are profoundly affected by it, people who matter every bit as much as you.

But if I holler, just watch how many people will clap their hands over my mouth and tell me I “won’t help my cause” that way. These silencers – they’re enablers too, telling me if I acted just the right way the abuse would stop. That’s a lie, too.

I know as long as hurting me gives her power and wealth she will never stop, so ultimately, it’s her enablers who need to look at what they’ve created. Just as rape is enabled by rape culture, so this relentless abuse is enabled by our obsession with seeing gladiator-style opinion-fests based on ignorance and entitlement.

There is no solution to abuse as long as people are creating a culture that enables it. In the face of this abuse we must stay safe as best we can and look after the inevitable impact events like this have on the mental health of our community. My love goes to all my trans siblings who are in pain right now from this. My respect to you however you are dealing with it; whether you’re keeping your head down or struggling to make your voice heard. I know you are doing your best and this is not in any way your fault.

Meanwhile we must do all we can to raise up the voices of people who empower and support others rather than clawing their own way to personal power and wealth through the propagation of hate and division.

*after a threat of libel action my editor made the following addition, something I think should already be clear but apparently needs spelling out: “An abusive relationship in the multi-media world of the 21st Century does not need to have romantic or sexual connotations.” Clearly I am using “relationship” in the sense of connectedness. Bindel’s actions have a profound impact on my life, in that way we are in a relationship with each other whether I like it or not.

Why we should ignore Julie Bindel’s presence at Nottingham Women’s Conference 2014

The take-home message from last year’s Nottingham Women’s Conference was surely that, if the event were to be repeated, much more effort needed to be made to consult different groups and be open-minded, inclusive and balanced from early on in the planning.

The uncomfortable drama of last year’s conference was triggered by current sex workers not being given a voice in the content related to sex work – this long but excellent blog from local feminist Uncharted Worlds explains further.

When I saw that they had booked Julie Bindel as a speaker for this year’s conference, I realised if lessons had been learned, they were the wrong lessons. I am not qualified to discuss sex work, but I suggest that choosing a speaker with a history of a similar kind of problematic commentary around sex work is rather provocative after the events of last year.

In addition, the booking of Bindel speaks to a systemic issue with the conference that marginalises other groups as well. Bindel has historically been called out for problematic comments about transgender people and bisexuals, and my personal reaction towards hearing her name associated with the conference was, “I will not be safe there”. I know I am not the only person having this reaction. This, of course, is the easiest way to exclude people – not to actually say “you’re not included” but to make the space uncomfortable, a little like making sure the chairs only fit cisgender bottoms.

Transgender people are likely to feel unwelcome because Bindel is “transcritical” – she feels entitled to speak for and about transgender lives, rights and surgery in a disparaging and dismissive manner. To be clear, Bindel apologised for the worst of her comments about transgender people, made in 2004, but to this day she continues to speak against us being given access to medical treatment. This is comparable to a man speaking on the subject of a woman’s right to abortion.

Bindel, as a Guardian columnist, has a strong platform for her views and her “brand”. Intersectional feminism would hold that it is simply unacceptable to use your power to undermine the rights and the voice of one of society’s most vulnerable minorities. It would say that it is for transgender people themselves to work out where they fit in relation to feminism, how to integrate theories about gender inequality and social construction within their lived experience of being transgender, and how to negotiate the power structures of the medical profession and “Big Pharma”.

Trans feminists are aware of all these concerns and are having a vibrant, radical discussion – it is not for others to impose their views from a position of superiority (and often surprising ignorance), nor to ensure that their negative opinions are heard above those of transitioning people themselves.

Bindel, in an interview with Paris Lees in 2013, identifies herself as fitting the description of a transgender person, presumably as a means of avoiding the accusation of cis privilege. However, cis and trans are not binaries but a continuum; just as South American people may experience racism but should not speak for African people, gender non-conforming people who are comfortable with their birth sex assignment do not have the same experiences as many other transgender people and cannot speak for them.

Bindel will talk at the conference of her experience of being “no platformed”. Although we have been assured she will not speak about trans people, calls for her to not be given a platform at certain events were connected to her transcritical views. It is hard to see how Bindel will not seek to convince listeners, as she does in the above interview, that she is being “silenced” by transgender people – that is, that she is the victim and they are the threat. The perception of transgender people as a threat could, of course, lead to further oppression and marginalisation. It is an easy way to hold back a civil rights movement; to constantly highlight the worst behaviour of some activists.

It is important to highlight the economic, institutional and academic power of folks like Julie Bindel, Sheila Jeffreys, Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, Julie Birchill and other transcritical feminists. Whilst women’s rights have a very long way to go, we should not be blind to the fact these individuals are now inside the system (or cis-tem, if you like) and have a certain amount of institutional power. As such, I think it is for these individuals to reflect more on how they silence other voices than on how they are silenced.

There will inevitably be a twitter storm over this. A lot of frustrated, marginalised people are likely to get angry and some may say things they regret. Somebody, somewhere may well say “f*** off and die” or something similarly unhelpful in a heated moment and then it will go down in cistory that transgender people (all of us) make credible, violent death threats and cannot be trusted.

All this drama is so predictable it’s almost as if it is being orchestrated. It looks like shock doctrine; a way of stirring people up and manipulating them in order to gain power and control. The controversy will no doubt sell plenty of tickets, but please remember that it is as fabricated as the “War on Terror”.

Meanwhile, folks like myself are genuinely triggered into a trauma response, because every time stuff like this happens, trans people get more marginalised within feminism, and our social support, the thing that is intimately connected to our mental wellbeing, lessens. I personally would rather devote my time and energy into dismantling patriarchy than feel sick with worry about whether it’s ever going to be safe for people like me in feminist spaces in Nottingham.

I need to be allowed to speak up and say I don’t feel safe in any space that allows a platform for transcriticism or notorious transcritics. I have stated my reasons for this previously. These imperious and damaging ideas have enough of a platform – I cannot go online without stumbling into them. Ignoring and sidelining the views of powerful people with Guardian columns is not “silencing” anyone, it is redressing a massive power imbalance.

That being said I am not going to engage in campaigning against Bindel’s invitation. Partly because it is too traumatising, but also because it would appear to be exactly what is being invited, and I do not want to serve an agenda that seeks to marginalise trans people even further.

I urge the intersectional feminist community and all elements within it to ignore this provocation – a lot to ask, I know, but please don’t feed this monster.

What I am interested in doing is getting together with other (non-transcritical) feminists in Nottingham and discussing how we can make Nottingham’s feminist spaces safer for transgender people. A meeting, led by Nottingham’s Intersectional Feminism group, will be happening in October. Contact me if you’re interested (go to the “about” section of this blog), and let’s build a more collaborative future built on consciousness raising and self-reflection. There’s work to be done here, but it isn’t going to happen on Twitter.