Elizabeth Warren

[Tootsweets23]

Didn't see this posted anywhere else, apologies if I've missed it.

Democrats candidate Elizabeth Warren wants to stop putting trans women in male prisons. To be added to her plan to read trans murder victims in the rose garden each week (guess can't do female murder victims as there would be no time left to do any actual presidenting).

I have the fear. If the democrats chose a candidate who is batshit on this issue they will lose to Trump as this position is so out of step with the general population.

mobile.twitter.com/thehill/status/1216533068296704000

[nauticant]

Sorry but I think the choice is between more Trump or even further extremes of this bonkers identity politics stuff. When it comes to people like Warren, I'm not sure that Trump is the worst option.

[terryleather]

I fear it is highly likely that The Donald will get a second term.

Pish like this is one of the reasons.

[HuckfromScandal]

And this is the reason that the Democrats will let Mr Orange rule the country for another 4 years. She is an idiot

[GlitchStitch]

I read a tweet a while ago- 'Elizabeth Warren lost the election the moment she put her pronouns in her twitter bio.'

Spot on IMO.

[NotBadConsidering]

When Sanders told her she can’t beat Trump he is absolutely right. It’s a staggering lack of insight and political strategy. Look at every election in the UK, Australia, the USA: you just cannot get elected if you pander to the whims of small minorities and ignore the plight of the silent majority. Honestly, who is in charge of her campaign? They’re clearly hopeless.

[MangoesAreMyFavourite]

Trump will be a shoe-in.

[Goosefoot]

I am not quite as pessimistic. Clinton almost won, and people not only hated her self-serving commitment to identity politics, her commitment to global capitalism, they really thought she was a liar and disliked her personally.

Warren, on the other hand, had totally bought the bridge with the id politics, but she is less in thrall to global capitalism, and I think people have a sense she is fairly sincere.

But it is shocking, the lack of awareness that the Democrats and their supporters have around how their concerns play to people. Many progressive Americans I speak to aren't really even aware that they are taking such a marginal view, they don't really know what identity politics are. As far as they can see, that's just standard anti-racism.

Sanders seems to me to be the only one who sees all that for what it is, and really wants to run his campaign from a substantial and considered place.

[Kantastic]

Honestly, who is in charge of her campaign? They’re clearly hopeless.

This. I really liked her before she started campaigning! But the relentless emphasis on all things trans soured it, and now the women's prison piece is the last straw.

I vaguely remembered a scandal around some trans employee of her campaign. But I don't get the impression this person is high up enough in her campaign to be the single-handed cause of all this insanity. But I'm including the link because wow, it is interesting this person still works for her - there really is a different standard applied to transwomen than to everyone else.

www.queerty.com/trans-activist-ashlee-marie-preston-elizabeth-warren-surrogate-fire-past-tweets-20191017

[GrinitchSpinach]

I had to stop updating my thread on the Democratic primary candidates because I found it too depressing. Warren's enthusiastic embrace of the elimination of single-sex anything for women and girls has been a massive disappointment, but none of the other candidates is much better. She has certainly been the most performative on this issue, but Biden's been connected to it longer.

[ThinEndoftheWedge]

Wait till she is asked the Luciana Berger and Jo Swinson question in the presidential debates - if she gets that far.

Q if I (as a middle aged man and father) say I am a woman, should I be treated as a woman just on that say so? A - yes.

Q- What is a woman? A - Can’t answer but it definitely includes a man.

Trump ( who I loathe) will have a field day.

I completely despair.

Protect the rights of women and girls. You have to define sex to protect sex based rights first.

This is not bigotry... Democrats - why can’t you see this? The Republicans don’t give a shit about women...

USA - wake up!!

[GrinitchSpinach]

Agreed, ThinEdge.

Warren and the other Dems have given the Republicans a massive wide open goal here, and the GOP are starting to move the ball down the field now:

thehill.com/homenews/campaign/478054-conservatives-slam-warrens-call-to-put-trans-women-in-female-prisons?amp&__twitter_impression=true

[pallisers]

It is highly unlikely she will be the candidate anyway. (I think it will be Bernie Sanders myself)

There isn't any democratic candidate who could openly say that transwomen aren't women. Gender criticism here is seen as hopelessly prejudiced and aligned with the evangelical right. I can't really find a strong feminist response in the US the way there seems to be in the UK.

[justcly]

I'm not disappointed. I always knew she was a dipstick.

[GrinitchSpinach]

Oops, ThinEnd. sorry!

There isn't any democratic candidate who could openly say that transwomen aren't women.

This is definitely the party orthodoxy, but it hasn't been tested with voters yet. The NYT has stopped allowing comments on most gender identity articles because even its readers (who tend to be an urban lefty crowd) voice objections when given the opportunity. No mainstream news outlet has taken up the investigation of the myriad problems with gender ideology in the way that the Times and Telegraph and even Daily Mail have in the UK. Activists have been pretty successful so far in keeping a lid on dissent.

However, I have hope that this is starting to change.

WoLF seem to be growing and organizing bigger meetings. I love that they are connecting with British and Canadian women who have been standing up for women and girls in their own countries.

r/GenderCritical, which is not exclusively American but pretty heavily so, is growing leaps and bounds, to the tune of about a hundred new subscribers per day (over 50,000 total now). The Always Venus symbol, the JK Rowling tweet and other public spats are waking women up and making them curious about what's going on. Then, as has happened with a lot of MNrs, they google a bit, read more and more, and become increasingly more horrified at what's been going on behind the scenes.

The more the general public finds out about the law and policy changes gender advocates have implemented so quietly, the less well it sits. The James Younger pediatric transition custody battle this fall opened a lot of eyes. The CT girl athletes' Title IX complaint has the potential to build on that: even the most progressive political site I follow has posters expressing a lot of discomfort with males pushing females out of their opportunities.

The more sunlight is shone, the better. Just wait until some US paper gets brave enough to publish on the growing scandal of child medical transition.

I despair that none of the Democratic candidates can see this trajectory. I think their unthinking commitment to gender ideology is very likely to contribute to an electoral loss in 2020. And then, Goddess help us all...

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

I have the fear. If the democrats chose a candidate who is batshit on this issue they will lose to Trump as this position is so out of step with the general population.

Yes - see also what happened with the Conservatives in the UK. I find it utterly bizarre that supposedly intelligent members of left leaning parties can't understand something so basic. It's not just trans stuff, it's identity politics in general and other policies which benefit only a tiny minority / are political virtue signalling too.

There's some saying about the right wing thinking women are owned by one man and the left wing thinking women are owned by all men. If that's the choice, depressing though it is and although I'll fight for an alternative, it's the former for me every time because I have decent men in my life who will fight for my rights and my daughters. I'm thinking women in the US pretty much have this choice in this election.

[ThinEndoftheWedge]

Grinitch no worries - I didn’t notice!!

Are you US based?

Have you read the MN threads during the UK general election which link interviews of female politicians being questioned and exposed by the trans fallacy. It really was watching / hearing a car crash in slow motion.

If not - I can dig them up for you

Also - if there are a number of transwomen competing in the 2020 Olympics, it may bring the issue mainstream right before the US election

Ineedacup I fully agree - I am usually left wing in my politics, but on this issue the left is a great deal of the problem. Also it takes decent men - like those in your life - to stand up with us.

[RuffleCrow]

Yeah, i hate everything Donald Trumps stands for but were i an american faced with this lunacy i'd be sticking with Trump. That's how bad things have got. (ten)

[LangCleg]

Until "the left" candidates either side of the Pond stop trying to outWoke each other in some weird game of Woke Chicken, they'll not win another election.

(I say "the left" in scare quotes because they're all LARPers. If the left isn't in touch with material conditions, it's not left at all.)

[DreadPirateLuna]

As well as everything else, it's a slap in the face to the African-American community which suffers the most from America's policy of locking up more people per capita than anywhere else on earth.

Their young men are brought in on trumped-up charges and forced to accept a plea bargain. Their women are imprisoned for minor drug offences while white women on similar charges are let go. Their communities suffer because such a high proportion are in jail. Private prisons make profit from this.

And they are told that the most important reform of the prison system is to put people with penises in the same block as people with vaginas, so long as they identify as female.

The most loyal Democrat supporters have been the black community, but how much longer will this continue while their real problems are ignored in favour of more woke causes?

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

Also it takes decent men - like those in your life - to stand up with us.

Agreed, and they do agree with the GC point of view wholeheartedly (they're very keen on science and facts and so on!) but - like so many others - they won't speak out publicly for fear of being branded bigots.

The left don't seem to understand when they stifle debate and encourage punishment for wrongthink (also known as having a different opinion), then people will be too scared to speak out openly but they'll 'speak' at the ballot box.

[Justhadathought]

The U.S leads the way....as usual......and there is an increasing tendency - due to social media - for American narratives to be swallowed whole here too - especially those around race and gender......Thank goodness there is a kind of resistance on the old left alignment here - in a way that there does not appear to be so much in the U.S.

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

The punishment for suggesting that sexual dimorphism is a physical reality in all mammals including humans can be - let's not forget - losing your job (Maya) or being hauled off to the police station (Posie, Harry, Kate).

[GrinitchSpinach]

Hey ThinEnd, yes, I'm American. Lived overseas incl UK for a number of years but returned to the US a little while ago.

I did indeed read, mouth agape, all the threads about Swinson and other politicians unable to to define 'woman' in clear English words. None of those questions would have been asked of them, though, if you didn't have an active, curious press (and a number of brilliant, organized women who have been pushing for years now to bring this to the attention of others!) I have huge, huge envy of the UK on that front!

Yes on the Olympics. The Democratic candidate will accept his or her nomination on July 16 (I think) and the Olympic Opening Ceremony will take place July 24. Lots of potential for that to become an issue as the general election campaign heats up.

Yeah, i hate everything Donald Trumps stands for but were i an american faced with this lunacy i'd be sticking with Trump.

Ruffle, I think Donald Trump is an unhinged authoritarian narcissist with no actual policy or program beyond "What will make me some money or get me some narcissistic supply right now?" and "I disdain all people who are not Donald Trump, but especially female and/or non-white people." I could never, ever vote for him. Whether I vote for his Democratic opponent or write in a protest vote will depend on 1) the campaign run by the Democrat and 2) whether or not I'm in a "swing state" where my vote will actually make a difference. The latter is not something I'm willing to disclose on the internet.

[GrinitchSpinach]

Extremely good points, DreadPirateLuna. And the thing is, across much of this country, it is women and African Americans (African-American women at the highest rates!) who do the low-level volunteering on which campaigns depend. The door-knocking, the leafleting, the phone banking, the offering rides to the polls.

As Ineedacup points out, people may not want to risk actively speaking out for fear of the consequence, but they can easily stay home from the ballot box---and the phone bank, canvassing, outreach and turnout efforts...

If I were managing a presidential campaign in a nation where the last election hinged on the votes of a few tens of thousands of citizens in a small number of state, I don't think I'd risk alienating the volunteers who drive turnout, not to mention the swingier voters.

[GrinitchSpinach]

(I say "the left" in scare quotes because they're all LARPers. If the left isn't in touch with material conditions, it's not left at all.)

Sorry to keep posting on this, but I am so preoccupied by it! I wanted to say, this part that Lang highlights is why I am so disappointed in Warren. I read her work, "The Two-Income Trap," which is allllll about how American economic and financial policy has betrayed working families, when it came out in 2004. From that background and so much else she has said, I (apparently) mistook her for someone who was capable of and interested in understanding class analysis.