We’re pleased to publish a sequence of edited transcripts from selected panel contributions given on 18 September First we published Victor Conti’s Marxist analysis of the lockdown. Next up, here is radical feminist Emily Garcia’s contribution on why she joined Left Lockdown Sceptics and a radical feminist perspective on the freedom movement.
Joining Left Lockdown Sceptics
EG: I joined Left Lockdown Sceptics in Feb this year after I submitted an article ‘Germ Theory Extremism in a Post Covid World: Some Holistic Health and Feminist Perspectives’ and was invited to join the supporters group.
My previous involvement in politics has been in the women’s movement. I identify as a radical feminist, so I have ideological points of divergence from Marxism in that I would tend to see the ownership of female bodies and control and appropriation of female reproductive capacities and labour by the male sex class as the original and primary form of exploitation, out of which patriarchy and the capitalist system emerged. I like American feminist writer and academic Marilyn French’s definition of patriarchy as: ‘institutionalised male dominance guaranteed by a set of interlocking structures that perpetuate the authority of an elite group of men over all humans and grant all men power and authority over women of their same class.’
Although second wave radical feminism or the women’s liberation movement largely rejected male political framings, it did emerge out of the left, and from Marxist understandings of disparate class interests and class hierarchy.
I appreciate that this group is open to a plurality of perspectives, in which we obviously converge in our opposition to the new normals and the desire for a fairer, and more equal society. I am grateful to have been welcomed into this community of intelligent, courageous and heart centredness individuals. I feel like I learn a lot from our discussions and reading articles shared in the group and published on the site.
My reaction to lockdowns
David asked me to share a bit on feminist perspectives, and my activism around this. I feel I should preface this by saying that I’ve contributed very little to the pro Freedom movement compared to other speakers today or likely many in the audience.
My reaction to the announcement of the first Lockdown was an immediate hard no, principally because of my beliefs around health & Germ Theory, as well as a strong disinclination to take orders from Boris Johnson or any other man in government! The diagnosis of my chronic illness some years previously started me on a journey of searching outside conventional medicine for things that could help, because there was almost nothing on offer within it. I have gone to quite extreme efforts on my healing path, and yet none of the things I’ve done have ever involved controlling the behaviour of others or impinging on their wellbeing in any way. This whole paradigm of continuing to take no personal responsibility for one’s health and immunity, but instead attempt to obsessively control the movements, behaviours and bodies of strangers remains completely alien and horrifying to me.
I don’t really have an explanation as to why, for many people, actions of personal responsibility and self care towards better health and immunity is almost the only step too far in protecting against serious consequences from respiratory infections. Surely cutting down on smoking, drinking, being less sedentary, eating less of the dead, processed, profiting promoting but health depleting shelf stable foods of industrial capitalism and so on should be there in the toolkit above steamrolling children’s right to education, vulnerable elderly people’s right to human touch and contact, small business owners right to retain their livelihood and so on.
I suspect maybe deep unconscious fears and contempt for anything health promoting that exists outside the ‘medical system’ of the patriarchal industrial capitalism, including the power and intelligence of Mother Nature and the wisdom of the body, is a factor. And in my opinion and experience sadly, almost anything genuinely health promoting or restorative does exist outside this system of disease management.
Rewinding to the 23 March 2020 when I received the Stay at home order by text message, I went into a Chicken Little panicked state. It was obvious to me that we had entered into a new phase of overt tyranny by the state and there would be no coming back from it, at least without the fight of our lives.
I had a definite sense that I needed to set clear boundaries and refuse to comply from the very beginning to withstand the attacks on my sense of self and sense of truth and reality. I‘ve reluctantly worn a mask & put chemicals on my hands on only one occasion- to see my elderly relative in a care home- but haven’t taken a PCR test, given my contact details to any establishment or been injected.
I have friends and loved ones who have continued travelling, socialising, protesting, and meet-up and conference organising throughout the restrictions who have failed to catch any symptoms or have anyone they know get ill after contact with them. So they have either been very lucky or the Germ Theory Extremist measures serve no helpful purpose. And I know which theory I’m incline to favour.
The feminist movement’s response
A few months after the onset of quarantining of the healthy, I started connecting with feminist friends from the anti sex self ID movement who were having serious questions about what was going on. We created online spaces to discuss the issues, which gradually morphed into activism focused on raising feminist concerns with what’s going on including conferences, meetings, articles, YouTube show discussions and speaking out at feminist events like Standing For Women’s Speakers Corner meetings.
Although the number of ‘new normal questioning’ feminists is slowly growing, we are sadly still minority voice in that community. There has been mainly a resounding silence from radical or socialist feminist journalists, academics, authors and campaigners, with a sprinkling of real enthusiasm for Covid fascism and just the occasional dissenting voice. The outspoken critics are almost always grassroots women, usually from lower socio economic bands and mostly without wider platforms or influence.
Lockdown and new normal’s harms to women & girls
All this despite the clearly catastrophic harms to women and girls that lockdowns and other elements of the draconian response have engendered.
If radical feminists oppose structures and systems of power that uphold and further male dominance, then shouldn’t we de facto be objecting to a massive expansion in that power over our lives? If we understand the number one means by which females are oppressed and subordinated is economic impoverishment, how can we support public health policies that have systematically immiserated hundreds of millions of women and girls globally?
If we fight against gendered coercive control and psychological abuse in interpersonal relationships, why are the same tactics used by abusive husbands and pimps the world over a-ok when perpetrated by the state?
And if we really believe ‘my body, my choice,’ where is the outrage over vaccine mandates or ‘no jab, no job’ policies starting with the largely working class female workforce of care home carers?
Women have however stepped up
Whilst the feminist response to the global medical-techno totalitarian push is as disappointing as the rest of radical or progressive political corners, I do want to give credit to the important role that women have played in the UK pushback. Off the top of my head, I can think of Liz Evans who founded Medical Freedom Alliance, the 3 mum team campaign group ‘Us For Them’ who advocate for school children, Silkie Carlo Director of Big Brother Watch, Louise Creffield of Save Our Rights, Fiona the UK founder of Stand in The Park, the many women involved in the HART group, Cheska of Outreach Worldwide, Jo Rogers of Lawyers For Liberty, Helen Gray of the Cake and Liberty blog and campaign, Fiona Diamond of Oracle Films, Debbie Hicks of Stop New Normal currently facing a court case for filming hospitals last year, Karen Dodd of The Freedom Hub network and Rise Up conferences, Samantha Goody of Freedom Education, Nickita Starck campaigning for women’s agency giving birth with When Push Comes To Shove. And I’m sure there are many others I’ve omitted from the list.
And I will end my contribution on that positive note. Thankfully many women do understand there is ‘nothing in this’ for us, our children or grandchildren, and will continue to fight for freedoms on behalf of the younger generations that we birth and nurture.
Next up, read the contribution from Dr Jenny Goodman, ‘The politics of Immunity’ in part 4.
It is good to hear that there are some gender-critical feminists who oppose lockdowns and masks. I have been involved in gender-critical groups for some time and have been very disappointed by their apparent mass adoption of the lockdown and mask fallacies. To me, this shows cognitive dissonance. The idea that mammals can change sex is scientifically incorrect, as is the belief that a bit of material on the face stops the transmission of a virus. Gender critical feminists should, logically, be opposed to both. There is also the wider issue of whether stopping the transmission of a fairly mild respiratory virus among a young and healthy, vaccinated, or previously infected population is a good thing. Science says that it isn’t. My conclusion has to be that those who support lockdowns and ‘gender’ ideology have done no reading and analysis themselves at all; they merely adopt the views of their ‘progressive’ tribe because they are cowards. Wanting people to like them is more important to them than personal integrity.
Fellow radical feminist here and totally agree with both your positions on this issue. If the government is willing to lie to us about the nature of biological sex and effectively eliminate women’s sex specific spaces as a remedy for male violence, why should we trust anything they say about a virus or vaccines?
Nice to meet you and the other g. c feminist commenters on this thread 😊. I see many parallels between the 2 psy ops, not least the driving force of expansion of pharmaceutical markets into healthy bodies, particularly those of children, with big pharma money tracking with ideological subversion through all arms of the establishment including academia, schools, NHS, the police etc. Jennifer Bilek’s 11th Hour Blog is excellent on illuminating the money driving Gender Identity ideology spread in the USA and @stilltish has done some similar research on UK situation. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfPIGDLFI8&fbclid=IwAR0BbSmAuySaYo6eQG2QBx9CpjuhosXwdjdeywnjoyaw3K3eXDoPc0wkkWA
The Bell v Tavistock judgement on Gillick competence re ‘unknown long term effects of experimental treatments’ was struck down in the weeks preceding the roll out of injections for 12-15 yr olds in schools, suspicious timing!
Excellent refreshing read. I come from a natural health perspective and have been so disappointed by how many of my ‘peers’ have completely bought into the covid mainstream narrative. And off course the amount of my ‘left ‘ friends who show no regard now for ‘my body my choice’ is beyond appalling for me.
Thankyou for articulating all my views
Roisin
Yes, the full on fascist attitudes adopted by fellow radical feminists has been terrifying and disgusting in my opinion. I too was part of the natural health community in California and was horrified by the reaction of everyone in my community… after assigning an 80 page paper on the immune system my teacher at The Gaia School did a full 180 on natural health and canceled all classes and began posting condescending memes online about how we all need to mask and stay away from each other and then for the next few months proceeded to get other people to deliver herbs for her to our houses… it all struck me as an excuse for laziness and it made me realize just how many people who claim to promote natural health are actually just outright scammers.
Great post Emily. I can only hope that gender critical covidians have a “peak”moment about the restrictions in the same way that they have about transactivism. The penny will drop sooner or later for everyone.
My consciousness on this issue developed similar to yours. I knew this was all a scam from the beginning and never supported lockdowns simply because the media overhypes viruses all the time and couldn’t see how this was any different, but also i could see that this was clearly an attack on small businesses from the start. Furthermore, far right extremist fascists online (such as Mr Metokur) were promoting the virus as if it were doomsday way back even in November 2019, so I knew something was up and that this was a right wing psyop. Why so much anti-China propaganda in these circles regarding the virus? Because it serves an economic narrative. but it became clear that all politicians and parties globally were in on it by March. The ring wing China lableak narrative was just one narrative in conjunction with others to get ALL of us to believe the lie.
I also knew from actual biologists at my university many years prior that masks do not prevent the transmission of viruses. Even from a mainstream germ theory perspective, everything the government and media has demanded is completely counterintuitive to critical thinking and what the mainstream medical establishment and mainstream science recommended the year prior..
I still proceeded with caution and made my father and brother immune boosting tonics every day, but after a couple of weeks of that it became clear this really was all a scam when I started looking into groups online that were against lockdowns. Surely I couldn’t be the only one who saw through all this? So I searched grouped on facebook and realized hundreds of thousands of people online were against the narrative.
When the government told us to stay out of nature is when I really became vociferously against the entire narrative because historically its being in nature away from civilization that has prevented people from contracting plagues, even if you go by the mainstream germ theory narrative. Keeping huge supercenters like Walmart and Target open and shutting down small businesses made absolutely no sense. It should have been the exact opposite! Keep the small businesses open with a limit on customers and shut down all large shopping hubs would have made more sense, even if lockdowns are scientifically unsound, than what the government pushed. It became clear to me that this was an attack on minorities and women because often these oppressed groups find economic independence through the creation of small businesses, such as co-ops which are more egalitarian in structure. A boss that has to look you in the face every day is also more likely to treat you with respect than a large faceless corporation that forces you to muzzle. This was a clear dehumanization project on behalf of the elite. Furthermore, a small mom and pop store can be more easily sanitized than a giant Walmart.
Lastly, it was my own personal health experience and having to take my health in my own hands, just like you, that helped me see just how fake all of this was. Before November 2019 i was already keenly aware of the fact that MOST (not all) doctors, nurses and the rest of the medical staff, even down to the front desk people, hold absolute antipathy towards the patients they are supposed to be helping. I realized this fact after I had several reproductive health issues, a broken wrist and a torn ACL that their priority was not helping people, especially not in a timely manner (I sat with a broken wrist for a week and my torn ACL for a full month and a half before anything was done about it by my medical provider), and the fact that I was molested by a doctor during an exam (that doctor was never fired they even tried to schedule me with her AGAIN), and I’ve also been gaslit many times over my health. One of the final straws was a Eurologist who wanted to do certain procedures on me without my consent and tried to trick me into allowing him, and then when I vocalized my concern over it he acted like a total narcissistic sociopath gaslighting me, telling me he already told me. He was straight up lying.
The final straw was when I woke up in excruciating backpain that paralyzed my arm for weeks, and my father took me to the hospital. After prescribing me opiates I wanted to ask the nurse a question about the medication and I was removed by a security guard from the hospital as if I were a criminal… for simply wanting to ask a question… I then went to another doctor that day to see if she could refer me to a specialist since the hospital had illuminated nothing about my issue, and she then prescribed me another medication which would have killed me if taken in conjunction with the opiate (which she knew they had prescribed me). It was fortunately the pharmacy technician who informed us of the mistake. I haven’t been back to the doctor since.
I would rather die on the side of the road than let these people treat me since its clear they want to kill us anyway.
Thank you Emily!
I come from a slightly different background. I spent a decade of university in biology, my undergrad thesis was on Female Athlete Triad, back in 1993, and my MSc was on sex determination in amphibians, back in 1994. In my decade of Uni, I did all the same courses as all the other epidemiologists running their mouth off on legacy media. But different than you, my early online activism was atheism, and I did spend a lot of time with “debunkers” of various false medicine and quackery. BUT what became obvious in the atheist community of the early oughts, gnu-atheist days, is that a lot of these activists were post-modernists, who placed a very high trust in Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Military… Pinker, Haidt, Harris, Dawkins, etc. The gnu-atheist crowd were basically a Humanist crowd, in which there was a LOT of room for transhumanism… and by 2008, I’d been kicked out of the gnu-atheist and Atheism+ movement, because I was trying to create female space within the online atheist community!
So already in 2008, the atheist movement was lost to transhumanism and the rainbow warriors. That’s when I turned to radical feminism, and all the gender critical women who hung in the periphery. I thought I had found my clan! ALL these critical thinking women, so many of them Big pharma and Government Critical, I was in dreamland!
But then came February 2020, and my GC and RF “critical thinkers” started the fear-mongering, and I thought WTF! who stole your brain!
As a biologist with the same education as epidemiologists, and having been staying tuned to the covid news since December 2019 on radio, this all made zero sense. Pandemic Plans were all scrapped. NPIs were the new religion, even though ALL previous science was clear that universal NPIs were pointless (mask obsessed Japan has no different flu season than anywhere else) but the worst is the math illiteracy that settled upon the masses. This coronavirus is not “novel”. A virus that is “novel” kills 30%, 50%, 90% of the population, this only kills 0.02% of the population, the population that is already moribund.
It’s been 19 months of hell to watch the world return to the Dark Ages.
We do all come from different perspectives.
But this takeover of public policy by for-profit megacorporations should be even more insulting to leftists than capitalists, it’s all so ludicrous.
Thank you Emily and to all the commenters, A breath of fresh air!!