EXCLUSIVE: James Lindsay ‘restricted’ on X after arguing with radical feminists on trans ideology, Marxism

And X, he said, which was remade by Elon Musk to be a free speech platform, is apparently betraying its mission. "If you think Twitter/X is a free speech platform now," Lindsay said, "it's not."

Lindsay got a notification that X had "put a warning on one or more recent posts because they might have sensitive content." There was an option to appeal, but the link to do so went nowhere.

While the reason for the temporary restriction is not transparent, and no answers come directly from X upon inquiry, Lindsay posits that it may have had something to do with a disagreement he got into with several radical feminists on the site.

Rad fems are opposed to the concept of inclusive feminism, which is a feminist project that includes men who say they are women. While conservatives agree with rad fems on the exclusion of men from the definition of women, they differ on dozens of other issues from social justice to abortion. Rad fems essentially want a return to the previous form of feminism that did not include men. Conservatives want to do away with all of it.

The current disagreement has its roots at the Genspect conference in Denver last week, where admitted autogynephile Phil Illy, or a man who gains sexual satisfaction from gender transition and dressing as a woman, was in attendance. Illy was wearing a dress, he appeared in photographs with other attendees, and his book was mentioned in a social media post from Genspect. This created an outcry from gender-critical individuals who felt his appearance was something of an affront to their cause of fighting for advocating for women's sex-based rights.

That outcry was all over social media, particularly X, as the gender critical and the radical feminists went at each other over whether or not a man in a blue velvet dress and long blue gloves should be part of the conference or the women's rights movement. Genspect weighed in themselves, saying they had removed a tweet recommending Illy's book, though they stopped short of apologizing. "In an unforgiving world where mistakes are pounced upon with zealous fervor, there came a crescendo of abuse towards Genspect because we had posted a photo of a self-confessed autogynephile," they said.

For Lindsay, looking in from the outside, the entire kerfuffle was absurd. For Lindsay, it was in large part the feminist movement itself that led to the trans contagion in the first place. Lindsay has tracked how gender ideology, queer theory, all came out of a Marxist feminist movement, bolstered by anti-racism. All of it, for Lindsay, is part of the Marxist project.

Radical feminists hate this idea, and they let him know about it on X. They hate it because the radical feminist is, at heart, a feminist, with a belief that abortion is an acceptable means to terminate a pregnancy and that the representation of women (or their gender) and biological sex are two different things. This makes it possible for a feminist project to both say that women are not represented by traditional or stereotypical assessments of the female sex and that men who say they are women are not women.

For Lindsay, however, the concept that one can hold their feminism and oppose gender ideology is akin to the eternal question of whether one can have their cake and eat it, too. If gender is nothing but a construct while sex is real, then it's hard to argue that a person of one sex cannot have a gender that is not correlated to that sex.

Feminists, on the other hand, would say the movement itself was hijacked. There are differentiations between first, second, and third-wave feminism that are essential when discussing feminist views and tackling the problem of contemporary gender ideology. Third-wave feminism is the one that ushered in the absurd claim that some men are women (with that claim evidenced by their claim itself). Third-wave feminism is the one that brought us 100s of gender identities, the remaking of the concept of conversion therapy to include attempts to dissuade someone from their belief that they are trans, and young lesbians who believe they are men and take testosterone to grow beards.

"One side is shocked that so many gender-critical people seem to have such a problem with a man in a dress," Eva Kurilova writes of the Genspect conference. "The other is countering that the issue isn't 'a man in a dress' but a man in clothing he admits he finds arousing."

Many were so appalled by Illy's presence that they demanded Genspect apologize for it.

"The rad fems (and many others) say: Absolutely no. No way. A man—and clearly a creep, at that!—being celebrated in a space that already holds people with deep trauma from exactly this sort of cosplay? Reprehensible," Heather Heying writes. "This is damaging to those who are most at risk. Why are we encouraging this public display of fetish?

"People in the other camp argue: Phil Illy knows that he is a man, and is in no way confused about this. He is honest and open, and not a creep at all. He has written a whole book about autogynephilia (AGP). We should be a big tent, welcoming of all, or at least, welcoming of those who are self-reflective, and who see the same reality that we do," Heying writes.

While rad fems and gender criticals pick each other apart over the attendance of a man in a dress at a woman's right's conference, schools across the country, backed by the Biden administration, are feeding gender ideology to students, men are winning women's athletic competitions, and children are being treated for "gender dysphoria" with medical sex changes. The battle over one man's inclusion will do little to win the war, no matter who apologizes to who.