Young TRAs invading the left. What should we do?

[AtlanticLucy]

Hello ladies,

I'm feeling all a bit lost at the moment. After the election earlier this year and with the government wanting to take away women's rights even more, I want to be political and oppose the cuts that are harming us all.

How can I do that when no political party is safe for Women? We see Liam Madigan in Labour, "Aimee" Challenor in the Greens, even WEP are sucking up to these dangerous men!

We've gained a lot of progress and support with the media over Liam, we must keep the pressure on Labour to drop him.
What do we do about WEP and the Greens though? Challenor has his party under heavy control, and WEP seem disorganised beyond belief. We NEED to do something urgently. Though the question is what do we do?

I'm tired, angry, and lost. Help?

[BahHumbygge]

Frustrated with the WEP investigating Heather Brunskell Evans after her appearance on the Moral Maze the other day, along with their complete inability to define one of the key words in their name I suggested setting up a women's liberation party.

However, with the FPTP system and even large parties like Ukip only having had one or two MPs, I doubt how much a goer the idea is. Small parties can operate akin to a pressure group, but takes large amounts of resources and energy to initiate.

I think the best thing we can do is to go to our own natural party allegiance and lobby to change the policy on sex-based representation and discrimination from within. I understand the frustration with Labour Party members cutting up their membership cards in recent days, but it leaves many women in the political wilderness, ironically a few weeks before the centenary of women's franchise.

We also need to coalesce into a new gender critical emancipation movement/coalition by women for women. Meetings, marches, articles in the mainstream media etc to gain and maintain traction.

[DJBaggySmalls]

Dont despair; dig in, stick together, organise.
We are heading for bad times. At some point it will become clear this is a male rights movement, and the pendulum will swing back. Or it wont. It hasnt in the Middle East, or Russia. It hasn't in the USA.

It suits men to have things run in their favour; they are so fragile this is how they need it.

[AtlanticLucy]

I mostly agree with the Greens but I'm genuinely scared of joining when they let men claiming to be women to do stuff like this: www.instagram.com/p/Bbez-uBALxO/

[BahHumbygge]

AtlanticLucy the Greens are my natural home too and I'm despairing at the direction of the party towards identity politics and penis rights (eg the men and non-men issue and the full decrim of sex work). But there are a few little beacons of sanity among local candidates and activists... have a look at Gender Critical Greens here gendercriticalgreens.wordpress.com/ blog
twitter.com/gencritgreen twitter

[DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus]

I will hold my nosr and vote for ant party to oust the tories come election time because people cannot take another four years of their cruelty. I am a member of the labour party and was a member of wep. I am vocal about women's issue and aim on challenging their misogyny from within. There is no party that does not support taking away women's rights so we have to work with what we've got. There are a lot of gender critical greens, get in the party, make your voice heard.

[DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus]

Rubbish spelling! I am typing in the dark!

[badbadhusky]

I suppose we should be grateful Aimee Challenor has had the decency to stand as the Green’s LGBT+++++ officer, not the women’s officer.

[MillicentFawcett]

This person stood for the Greens in 2015 but not at this year's election: content.tfl.gov.uk/wit-stella-gardiner.pdf

Note the '100 years of women in transport' at the top

[ElizaDontlittle]

It worries me, too.
I'm a longstanding Labour Party member and slightly less longstanding campaigner. But I absolutely agree with fighting this from within. Being well thought out, calm, patient but utterly uncompromising on my/our stance on these issues. Being willing to stand and making the effort to network and mentor younger women (or just less experienced I guess - I'm mid 30s but if someone younger was really experienced at speaking out on this issue I'd not say no to accepting their advice and support and direction).

We did vastly better than expected but I'd like to see more of the sort of 'get the Tories out' (it had a proper name but I've completely forgotten it!) tactical alliance of the type Caroline Lucas and others wanted where we work with the FPTP system we have to force the social change we want. I understand why Labour won't do it... but I disagree with them. Again surely more effectively dealt with from inside - I suspect a decent number of the more progressive types agree with me.

So I don't think it's been a bad political year but the undercurrent of erosion of women's rights in society is a nasty, cowardly, rot within almost all the political parties. Maybe that's splitting hairs. Don't lose heart OP.

[IceniLacuna]

DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus I think you are breaking rules for labour party membership by also being a member of another political party. If they find out they will expel you.

[PricklyBall]

I've been mulling over this for the last few days (I haven't torn up my labour membership card just yet, partly because I joined to fight for a moderate voice within the party).

Extreme transactivism is the canary in the coal mine for the rise of the authoritarian left, i.e. Momementum, within the Labour party (we normally think of authoritarianism as a right wing phenomenon, but we need to remember that it also characterizes repressive left-wing regimes - think of Vaclav Havel's comments on the greengrocer with his "Workers of the world unite" poster in The power of the powerless).

Extreme transactivism is a text-book example of "entryism", aimed at infiltrating, coopting and subverting women's politics, then silencing any discussion and dissent. It's Momentum in microcosm, and it's what will happen to all political discussion if Momentum get their way.

In fact the more I think about it, the more the parallels between right and left wing authoritarianism seem frighteningly apposite. Compare, for example, the behaviour of Trump-supporting immigration officials in the USA in the early days of the Muslim ban, pre-empting government policy that was under judicial review, and the number of official bodies in this country - education authorities, health authorities, NGOs like the Girl Guides - pre-empting the arrival of legislation on self identification.

[MillicentFawcett]

@IceniLacuna - the post says she was a member of WEP

[Ekphrasis]

Does anyone have any idea where the Lib Dem’s stand with all this? I tend to vote green or Lib Dem. but don’t know much about them in relation to all this.

[hackmum]

Someone on here wrote to Vince Cable to complain about the gender recognition bill and he wrote back saying he was supporting the bill, Lib Dems support the right of trans people to blah blah blah blah. The usual.

[Ekphrasis]

Ok

[DonkeySkin]

Extreme transactivism is the canary in the coal mine for the rise of the authoritarian left

Interesting comment.

I've lately been thinking about the appeal of trans doctrine to the far left - at first glance, they seem antithetical, as 'gender identity' is such an ultra-individualist, idealist belief system. But look closer and you can see that it's precisely the anti-reality aspects of trans ideology that make it so popular on the far left, especially its Year Zero approach to gender relations.

The totalitarian left has always been obsessed with remaking human culture and human nature itself, and what could be a more extreme example of that than enforcing a doctrine that wrenches us free (ideologically at least) from something as biologically and historically grounded as sex?

Hannah Arendt said that one of the characteristics of totalitarian regimes is that they force people to repeat obvious lies, because this breaks down the will to question anything that the government is feeding them - it's not so much that people actually believe the lie, but rather that they lose their sense of being able to tell true information from false:

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed,” wrote Arendt.

'Trans women are women', indeed.

[whoputthecatout]

I don't understand why more people don't realise that the political spectrum is actually a circle with authoritarian right eventually meeting the authoritarian left.

The left has always been sexist and misogynist - you only have to read Doris Lessing to see that. The problem is that people accept that the right is authoritarian so are instinctively wary but they find it harder to see the real colours of the left hidden behind all the virtue signalling.

[PlonitbatPlonit]

Socialist Feminist Network seems to be one place for those on the left to coalesce.... actively interested in seeking views and connecting with women on this issue.

www.socfem.net/2017/10/labour-movement-experiences

[Ekphrasis]

Thanks, they do seem sensible and reasonable.

[PlonitbatPlonit]

Another thing to do is sign this, and message the poster to have your real name added too if you want www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3101669-A-Spartacus-letter-re-Jo-Cox-Leadership

[therealposieparker]

Trans activists are well funded and well organised. I'm pretty sure the obsessive nature of trans genderism is partly to blame here but also a wealthy older white male issue.