Developments in csf.
Email sent by me to Meg Stively, editor of Seamwork magazine 23/03/2021
Dear Meg, I
am reaching out to you again as you kindly asked if there was anything else you
could help me out with.
I am
appealing for you to stop blocking my access to Seamwork Instagram.
I wish to
recover comments recently posted there by myself and to keep following the
comments being made by others about the Degendering Fashion article.
As a
Seamwork subscriber I feel it is unfair to limit my ability to participate in
the community. Stopping my interaction implies my views are not respected or
held as sufficiently valid for others to decide themselves.
Publishing
Degendering Fashion in Seamwork #76 indicated openmindedness to a newly
emerging cultural identity that is to be applauded. Non-binary and trans people
in the sewist community are bravely stepping forward to talk about their
experience. I wholly support this. As bi-queer myself I am part of the LGBTQI+
community and have read widely in the area of gender politics and ideology over
decades. Reflections from me aren’t coming from an ignorant, misinformed or prejudiced
position.
Yesterday I
published the first part of a critique on my blog and plan to keep following up
as the 2nd and 3rd parts of Degendering Fashion are
published. Believing in the validity of my counterpoint view I plan to seek out
other sewist forums who are open to presenting a balanced range of views.
I am
appealing to you to allow me to participate in Seamwork Instagram. Going
forward with my critique as subsequent parts of Degendering Fashion are
published it will be relevant for me to hear the comments made by others.
As a
feminist it’s my belief that all speech is political speech. Having had my
participation in Seamwork Instagram stopped I feel it signals the position of
Collette Media is to believe gender identities are not contested territorities,
but have arrived at a place where they are now fixed and cannot be challenged, examined
or deconstructed. That it requires policing, censoring and denial of
interacting in public forums would seem to contradict that.
Please note
that I don’t regard my correspondence with you as confidential and may choose
to publicly share what your reply or possibly non reply is.
____________________________________________________________________
Hi Pearl,
Meg
Hi Meg
Thanks for
response. I read the community guidelines and are no more clear which one/s
were contravened by me.
As I have
already monopolized your time a great deal and being sure you have a more
important job to do than engage with an irritating, misbehaving person, I won’t
ask for it to be clarified what guideline was crossed. Will just ruminate over
the mystery.
I wish to strongly
state my total support for people who are non-binary and trans gender. I
absolutely support that they have the right to choose gender, perform it how
they wish, that they have a right to a voice in the world to outline their views,
politics, feelings and ideologies. I believe they are a vulnerable community
that is largely misunderstood and actively discriminated against.
The only
thing I am disagreeing with Emilia about is their view that the language of
dressmakers and seamstresses is a problem that should be changed. To disagree
with that view is not an attack on non-binary and transgender people, though
many people seem eager or silly enough to conflate it as such.
I hope you might
look at what I write on my blog in the coming months as the next parts of Degendering
Fashion are published.
The first
big issue I’ll address on my blog is how a small number of high status, privileged
white, tertiary educated, independently wealthy, career advancing and progressive
identifying women in global north society take the high handed attitude that
their views represent those of all women. Or should, if only the lazy lower
classes would educate themselves appropriately. In many respects this group of
high status, privileged white women replicates the way “upper” social class has
always deployed over history to monitor the wrongful views of the working class
by shaming, criticizing and implying we are incapable of understanding
complexity and morality. Upper class women of past eras (some names for them…nobility,
aristocracy, landed gentry or from wealthy capitalist classes) have always felt
it is their mission to drag up the kicking and screaming rabble to their level
of superior understanding and morality.
The
community guidelines you forwarded me are a wonderful explication of how rules
will be applied to keep rabble in their place.
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