The Julie Bindel interview reported by the HEqual website earlier today was with RadFem Collective. The organization’s strapline displays more self-awareness than we might expect from radical feminists:

POSITIVELY REVOLTING WOMEN

Our thanks to the person who alerted us to the crazy ladies’ next annual event which will be held next weekend in London. From the details, with explanatory additions in square brackets:

RadFem Collective will not tolerate prejudiced and/or oppressive language or behaviour towards any woman attending our event. [Prejudiced and/or oppressive language or behaviour towards men will be encouraged, indeed required.] We are opposed to any ideologies of oppression. [Other than radical feminism, obviously.]

It is a central part of radical feminist analysis that gender is a tool of women’s oppression, not women’s liberation. [It’s a whackadoodle theory, but yes, it’s a central part of radical feminism.] None of the organisers consider ourselves to have an innate gender – neither masculine, feminine, trans, cis, gender queer, or any other gender. We are gender abolitionists who have been raised and socialized as girls and women *because of our female bodies* in the context of patriarchy. [We’ve been raised and socialized as girls and women in the context of a theory, patriarchy, the evidence base for which is considerably poorer than that for the ‘tooth fairy’ theory. Pretty robust, then. Oops, sorry for the female objectifying language there… er… very robust, then.]

It will surely be an uplifting and event, although men and male-to-female transsexuals are specifically excluded, in stark contrast to the 2014 Detroit International Conference on Men’s Issues, at which many of the speakers and audience members were women. For all I know, there were transsexuals there too. They would certainly have faced no hostility.

Speakers will include Julie Bindel and Sarah Ditum. In February 2014 we published a blog piece about the latter, We need to talk about Sarah Ditum. It included a link to a key paper by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and others, published in 2000. The full Abstract:

Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or socio-cultural differences between the two sexes.

102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object).

Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin. [My emphasis.]

What reasonable person couldn’t accept that final sentence?