#in that it is slapped on anyone who's writing in any continuity w/second wave feminism or even simply responding to it

[poison-doll]

In what way was the baeddel post poor scholarship?

there are rhetorical and structural issues.

first, a lot of the sources are extremely weak. while he does use some primary sources, the vast majority of the posts cited are "someone who is clearly in opposition to so-called 'baeddelism' and/or 'baeddels' writing about them." if your argument about the formation and ideology of a group hinges on—not critical analysis of—but what amounts to hearsay, one needs to rewrite. this one is especially interesting because most of the secondary sourcing isn't even necessary, given the ( relative ) strength of the primary sources. this leads into another issue,

the framing, overall, is that

a) baeddelism was in its original form a coherent and organized group

b) that group was socially subservient to one or two rapists

c) all ideological and philosophical successors, and all successors who self-identify as baeddel for any reason, are intellectually subservient to those original ideas

i don't think that nothorses sufficiently proves those assertions. most importantly, i don't think in any way he demonstrates as clear and tight a lineage between the group of baeddels that were centered around eve in the early 2010s, and the loose network of theorists who describe themselves as baeddels in the mid-2020s. that would be a very hard assertion to demonstrate.

several times he compares both contemporary baeddels and the baeddels of yore to extremist GC groups, which i think is an extremely dangerous and transmisogynist assertion. loose sets of trans women writing and theorizing along similar lines, no matter how harmful their ideologies may or may not be, are a far fucking cry from highly organized, well-funded, and politically powerful hate groups. attributing lines of philosophical inquiry to a shadow council of wicked trans women is not good scholarship if you can't demonstrate that and it's just, like, a wretched thing to do.

there are several patently true things that he says: yes, there have been trans women who were ideologically opposed to the existence of trans men. yes, some of those trans women committed unspeakable acts of sexual violence. yes, people have been actively harmed by some people who have described themselves as baeddels. and, yes, trans men are oppressed, in ways that are specific to trans men. i don't take seriously anyone who would argue against those points. however, by failing to conclusively demonstrate his biiiig conclusion of bullet points, and by the number of subtly false statements ( there simply is not an organized cult of man-hating trans women seducing innocent eggs into hating trans men ) the work as a whole is undermined.

another, smaller, thing: there are a number of references to trans women being "seduced" or "controlled" by baeddels which feels to me very infantilizing and "oh these poor silly girls," which leaves a bad taste in my mouth

i don't hate nothorses, and i think he's done some very good writing on occasion. the post to which i am referring is not one of them. he's not making a conversational tumblr post. he uses the aesthetics and rhetorical framing of an argumentative critique and it should be judged as such.