GCRFs vs the LC: A pox on both houses within the Green Party over the Georgia Green Party; expel BOTH!

I'm not like Abe Lincoln in every way, but I do, like I see him, fashion myself as somewhat of a "cogitator," someone who gnaws for a while on a serious issue, and even after lengthy gnawing, reserves the right to update his thoughts.

This is a follow-up to my previous post on this issue, as the Georgia Green Party gets closer to deaccreditation. 

To translate the initials? As some may guess, the former is gender critical radical feminists. The LC may be more obscure, but it's the Lavender Caucus within the Green Party, which represents the LGBQTIA+ (and hey, can't "I" stand for "incel" as well as "intersex"? #Boom!)  people within the Green Party, and yes, more and more, you see a "+" at the end of the alphabet soup of the expanding list of identity groups.

Let's start right there with that word, "deaccreditation." Or "expulsion," if you will.

And, by pox on both houses? I mean exactly that. Expel or deaccredit both the Georgia Green Party AND the Lavender Caucus. This is going to be primarily about the former, not the latter, but I'll touch on both.

My personal ties will get a bit more revealed here.

When the GaGP was first facing the threat of deaccreditation, a group eventually called the "Dialog not Expulsion Caucus" was formed. I think I heard about it via an unofficial Green Party Facebook group. I eventually signed its statement.

Now, in my previous post, I noted "I can't say more," three or four times, in parentheses. To be upfront, I am a member of a private email group of DnE support statement signees. To be more upfront, I'm probably the second most active non-GCRF member, in terms of commenting. By the letter of anonymity, I can dish on whatever I have said there, and certainly whatever I think about general happenings, and as long as I don't come close to direct quotes of others, and don't mention names along with specific indirect referencing of ideas, I think I'm observing full well the spirit of anonymity as well.

In short, I'm not a spy, and didn't enter the group as a spy.

OK, I think that's all the backgrounding I need.

LC members have consistently claimed that GaGP representatives have consistently refused, brushed off, or loopholed out of offers to dialog. Given some of the nastiness within the GP's Accreditation Committee, where the deaccreditation process started, I think some of the terms for dialog by the DnE Caucus (not an official GP caucus) were legit.

I don't know if all of them were legit back then, and didn't check on every one. I have a life beyond this.

Today? With more learning? I'll bet some of them were NOT legit. Over the past couple of weeks, there's been a GCRF-driven pivot that first styled itself "The Emergency Committee to Save the Green Party." As this, and the DnE, are on websites that aren't (AFAIK) part of the "dark web," no confidentiality violations here.

I think this IS a GCRF statement. (Can't say more.)

I do think its backers, vis-a-vis the dialog notes above, don't want to dialog with non-GCRFs within Dialog not Expulsion. I personally haven't even tried. I have said I wouldn't sign that thing, and reasons are listed in my previous blog post up top.

My perception of unwillingness to dialog, and how this relates to my take on issues going back 14 months ago, has thus been updated, per my first paragraph.

With additional observations, I've updated other thought as well.

First, contra the likes of Margaret Elisabeth, Fernando Mercado and others, I've long insisted that it's the trans activists who conflate sex and gender.

Now, I'm pretty sure that it's NOT "only" them that does this. I still won't say that this is as common among GCRFs as among trans activists, and its certainly done via a different approach angle, but does that conflation exist among GCRFs as well? Yes.

At my previous post, I talked about what I called "sex essentialism." I'm going to copy part of this and expand on it.

I've seen people like this say "you're not a woman if you don't menstruate." In addition to being an attack on transsexuals, it's also fallacious within a poor version of sex essentialism.

So, female marathoners aren't women? Female survivors of Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps weren't women? 

"But that's temporary!"

OK, then females with hysterectomies aren't women? Post-menopausal females aren't women?

And, while I "get" where "The Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights" is coming from, nonetheless, it at least to some degree participates in this same sex-essentialism mindset. Other parts of the site are strawmen. Is there really work on trying to give men the possibility of getting pregnant? That's not happening in 500 years, and what everyday male is asking for that anyway? AND, even if it became possible, I reject the idea that this is sex-based discrimination. This sounds like a turd-polished version of wingnuts' "barefoot and pregnant." Or Nazi Germany's "kinder, kirche, kuche" minus the middle term. (So I went Godwin's Law; sue me.) By the same logic, an attempt to let human woman have the ability for parthenogenic conception would also be sex-based discrimination. So is cloning. (There would be other good reasons, starting with medical ethics, extending to general ethics, and from there going into medical skills issues, to not do any of these, but that's a whole nother set of issues.)

And, while attacking the idea of "transgenderism," the Declaration doesn't even use the word "transsexual." GCRFs who are either clueless about, or refuse to admit the reality of, the "fraughtness" of human fetal sexual development and related issues, do the same. This is, at a minimum, a form of conflation of transgenderism and transsexualism. At a maximum, it approaches cultural genocide.

In short, whether the Declaration's drafters hearts were in the right place or not, it's a flawed document. I had only looked at the summary when I signed the DnE support, not the full thing, but even a careful look at the summary should have given me pause.

Sadly, by now, I the Declaration has become pretty much set in stone as "the" alternative to trans activism. It certainly is set in stone as the GCRF alternative.

Second, given that the Accreditation Committee's original action was what, two months ago, has there been a GCRF-based subcommittee within DnE long planning a "pivot" like this? I don't know, but it's certainly possible. 

That said, time to skewer the LC and the Accreditation Committee, which has officially drafted the document seeking the National Committee to officially deaffilate the GaGP.

And? The objections it raises are largely what the Declaration gets RIGHT, IMO. To the degree the Declaration's drafters worry about gender identity without conflating sex and gender is right, but it's the LC's first point of attack.

Second, the AC admits that the Green Party's platform statement supporting gender fluidity is nonbinding. So, they shoot themselves in the foot.

On the other hand, the AC charges that there wasn't advance notice of the meeting that ratified this becoming part of the GaGP platform, which ties back to my suspicions.

And, most damning of all, Hugh Esco, then the GaGP secretary, reportedly contacted the Women's Human Rights Campaign before the adoption of the Declaration, saying it had been adopted. That's from December 2019, and technically, is about the GaGP's Coordinating Council adopting it, while yes, the Declaration wasn't actually officially adopted until February 2020. Hugh might argue to the LC, AC, and NC that he's narrowly, technically right, but he certainly sells it to the Women's Human Rights Campaign as full adoption by the state party.

How many people were at the 2020 GaGP state convention, in turn? How many took an even more cursory look at the Declaration than my first look? How many were influenced by how Esco and allies sold it? I'll admit that I might not have fully challenged the framing.

So, in summary? The Declaration is not all wrong on transgenderism. It IS ALL WRONG, by a combo of commission and omission, on transsexualism. The same holds true for GaGP leadership and allies.

Expel them. 

But, still don't expect me to support the LC, either. Or the AC, which in that official complaint language doesn't use the word "transsexual." And, the LC and its allies, like Mike Gamms and half a dozen others I blocked on Facebook, have made terroristic threats, to put it bluntly. Their own "framing" contributed to me not looking more closely at the Declaration. And, to the degree it's all been done unrepentantly, it is part of why the LC also needs to be expelled.

The LC and AC don't want to dialog, IMO, and wouldn't even if the GaGP had started off in better faith. Per this Guardian piece, I don't think the "trans activists" want to dialog in general. 

Couple of final notes.

One, the GaGP seems to be one of the "paper" state Green parties, like Ohio was under Bob Fitrakis, as lamented by Mark Lause. It's why I've pointed out before that "decentralization," along with the other Ten Key Values, was originally drafted for suggestion only. In this, it's no different in the last 12 months than the Alaska Greens being hijacked by Jesse-stanners.

Two, on the terroristic threats, the LC and allies faithfully uphold every stereotype? generalization? that gender critical radical feminists have about trans activists. It's really still a stereotype; my "Bayesian" differentiation is that at least 50 percent of the members of a group have to live up to a "caricature" for it to be a generalization, not a stereotype. At the same time, the LC has chosen not to refute them, so, stereotypers plus fellow travelers maybe cross 50 percent and it is a generalization.

Three, had I known six months or so ago everything I know now about the Georgia Green Party and its intellectual dishonesty, I would have been less willing to sign the DnE statement. On the other hand, as I've said, it's not totally wrong, and per the paragraph above, and the paragraph with the Guardian link, I might have signed it just as part of a fuck-you to the Lavender Caucus.

Since I'm not a Green, as is, once the expulsion is official, I expect to leave the DnE email list and to become even less caring about GP issues. I've not looked at either the official FB group or the one unofficial one in more than a month.

===

Update: While "TERF" is a technically accurate alternative description, it can be a pejorative. Besides, it's a #twosiderism framing issue, as I note on Twitter, as part of a thread written in response to David B. Collins' recent post:

Calling GCRFs "TERFs" is kind of like pro-lifers calling pro-choicers "anti-life," or like pro-choicers calling pro-lifers "anti-choice." I don't do either one, partially rejecting at least the worst of #twosiderism on that issue 2/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 30, 2021

Per Wittgenstein and people yet more modern, it's a linguistic "game" issue.  And, I am not playing on either of the two sides who aren't the only two.

Collins is also misinformed, or more, uninformed, otherwise. Not all supporters of the GaGP, even ones more willing to accept their alliances, are gender-critical radical feminists.

Collins also doesn't mention calls for/threats of violence by the likes of Mike Gamms, and the GPUS and LC's failure to disavow them.

 

==

 

Update: The Georgia GP's website and platform were apparently full of antivaxxer info 20 years ago, and whether or not he was involved back then, the pre-decertification party chair was able to, approvingly, cite chapter and verse on its pseudoscience.