Politics is not for women

There doesn't haven't to be a far right backlash at all. What this needs to become is a liberty vs totalitarian backlash, there are forces on both the left AND the right that would seek to use the levers of state power to crush their enemies. I mean come on that is the politics of the playground not of a higher civilized society.

In fact I'd go so far as to say the ideological distinctions are more meaningful here in general society. In the politcal classes they just basically take turns to aggrandize themselves and their cronies. I don't think the multi-millionaire Corbyn and his illk are hugely different in that respect.

There is a fundemental truth in human behaviour that we follow incentives, the left cannot afford to fix poverty as when people's individual wealth and security increases their alliegence more often than not shifts to the right, so in order to survive and maintain power the left rather than try to fix poverty has instead to try to create dependencies.

I'm currently in the processes of forming my own ideas so I can't honestly come here and say I have an entire solution, I'm generally for smaller governments and free markets, but I can see the need for a social saftey net. However I am becoming increasingly suspicious of when the state tries to do it!

I am trully saddened by what has happened in the halls of academia, as it seems like that is where the first battle was lost, and I'm personally ashamed to say I'm not entirely sure when it was lost.

"TA voice wouldn't be so violent if they didn't fear women and where there is fear there is potential power. "

that's more like it!

What boulshred said - for most of my life I thought the fight was over. It's not. A lot of women in power are my ageish (51) and are still under that delusion, creating the anomaly the female brocialist. Red is right but we mustn't accept the current status quo. To refer, yet again, to the trans debate, the TA voice wouldn't be so violent if they didn't fear women and where there is fear there is potential power. That sounds awful but i hope you know what I mean.

"I was re-reading Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Right's of Women" lately and THAT one book was better recieved and became part of the politcal discussion of the time and it was written in 1792! It couldn't actually be written now in the current climate."

come now.... that is surely not right....

Sexism had no effect on prior US presidential elections?

But wasn't 2016 the first election to have a woman candidate?

"Matt Grossman @ mattgrossman
Sexism influenced 2016 voting, despite having no effect on prior elections (& partially explains authoritarian Trump association); anger also powerfully mobilized sexists, a group that would normally be likely to stay home; New POQ

Matt Grossman @ mattgrossman
Sexism influenced 2016 voting, despite having no effect on prior elections (& partially explains authoritarian Trump association); anger also powerfully mobilized sexists, a group that would normally be likely to stay home; New POQ

So someone has done a study showing actively that sexists were part of strategy to win. That trend is continuing."

It's actually post-modernism that I blame, where nothing is true.

This is my endless frustration. The academy has been entirely corrupted. And it wouldn't matter if it was contained in a bubble on campus but it isn't. The conveyor belt of elite university to media or think tank or policy making or politics means that this nonsense now occupies the top of all our institutions. Even the charities supposed to be helping vulnerable people are infected with it and impose absurd policies.

We have a mediating class entirely divorced from the realities of people's lives and entirely incapable of formulating practical and pragmatic policy that improves as many lives as possible with as little collateral damage as possible.

This is why I fear a backlash from the extremes of the right - not the sensible right, CritEqual! - because they will, at least, have the veneer of common sense on their side.

I agree. The thing that bugs me is the landscape in which public discourse occurs is completely devoid of rationality and critical thinking skills more often than not.

I was re-reading Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Right's of Women" lately and THAT one book was better recieved and became part of the politcal discussion of the time and it was written in 1792! It couldn't actually be written now in the current climate.

It's actually post-modernism that I blame, where nothing is true, and everything is always relative to something else. I am heartened by the trans debate as I am finding more women standing for truth and excercising their critical faculties and that can only be a good thing!

The only thing the opposite side has in response is more tantrums, and aggressions and totalitarian assaults on thought and thinking itself, the post-modernist paradigm is not yet deeply rooted enough for that to work though.

Look I'm a Conservative and I'm betting the political opposite of you, but one principle I value more than conservative values is the principles of democracy itself. Don't bow out and take yourself out of the conversation. Whatever we may disagree on it's vital we are all heard!

As a friendly suggestion for the sake of your own sanity rather than dig into the details of every single way women are disadvantaged, or every single horrific thing that happens to a woman pick one and make that your specialist subject.

Part of what makes the modern media (both traditional and social) so dehabilitating to read is there is so much darkness and unpleasantness in the world it makes it a functional impossiblity to tackle it all, and actually that is part of how they get you. Take some words of Nietzsche:

"..if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

You spend too long staring at the worst of humanity you start to become blind to some of the best of it and once set upon a parth of nihilistic malaise you may miss crucial opportunities where you CAN make a difference.

I'm not advocating being blind to issues, but to focus on the one that seems most significant to you, and fill the rest of your life and attention on some positivity it's not as if women aren't achieving fantastic things each and every day. I know it may seems like a betrayal of other significant issues, but that isn't the point, if you don't come up for some air once in awhile and revel in some of the positives you will sink, and drown. Then you are of no use to anyone.

Best of luck, and I hope this passes.

I agree with thebewilderness that it is one step forward, two steps back. The power hierarchies are generally created by and benefit men, wherever you look in history, certainly in the West, that has been the case.

At the same time, women have achieved an awful lot, often at grassroots level, often for other women. But it’s the difference between exercising agency (within structures of power) and changing the structures of power. It is very difficult to change the structures of power - and if something changes, then the power structures shape-shift.

So, women fought for equal pay and child care in the 1970s, against domestic violence and rape in marriage in the 1980s - by the 1990s the means of control had shape-shifted to sex positive, sexualised femininity and impossible yummy mummy ideals, pink and blue for girls and boys etc.

Whatever women achieve can be turned against them - so access to free abortion means it is possible for the government to introduce a cap on children paid benefit for (poverty or an abortion is the invidious choice); it means women can be pressured to have an abortion by partners who see it as contraception of the last resort and so on; and it is the means of female feticide in some countries.

Does that mean women’s gains are not worth having? I don’t think so. But the pattern of progress and then backlash has a longer history and gains can and have been eroded, because power hierarchies shape-shift. It’s a long fight, and no-one person or group can continually be at the forefront. The agency and opposition women create needs to shape shift too.

For me, some times my opposition to inequality is public and vocal, and sometimes (now) it is saying no to my own oppression and opening up avenues of possibility for others to follow. And sometimes, it is a case of just coping with your own life as best you can and building up your resources, mental and physical, for a bit.

Fantastic women have supported me and I will support others going forward, but I don’t think we will ever reach a point where women’s gains are not being challenged and eroded.

National journalism has turned to click bait for revenue rather than holding power to account.

It has. And 24 hour rolling news was the start of creating a news cycle where saying anything regardless of fact checking overrides content and facts.
You then add in the rise of ‘fake news’ and you create an environment where people feelings and opinions are given precedence over any kind of objective truth.

That feeds into all this odd millennial attitude that my feelings are more important than observation of reality. And we know where that leads.

It has always been three steps forward two steps back for women in politics because men control the narrative. That one out of three forward steps matter, one hell of a lot.

For you RedToothBrush

(I had never seen the Addicted to Love parody -fantastic stuff)

National journalism has turned to click bait for revenue rather than holding power to account.

Definitely agree with that.

Nil desperandum

Holy shit red.

Is it not just the case that there was always limited critical thinking but now t'internet has all uncritical thinking out there visible to the naked eye? There is so much noise now it burns the brain. Surely learning is improved by increased access to information. I know there is lots of very dubious shit around.

My kids think equality is done. I didn't really see really what inequality meant until I had been out in the world in my 20s.

Vested interests are the problem. Single issue lobbyists. We have to do that. It's unbelievable how much shouting down women get right now but you know, shout away fellas. I'm not backing down.

Oh please dont give up Red. I was so thrilled when i discovered mn the other day. We will ensure change comes. People are listening. The tables are turning. Look how Stephen who is an advisor to government got involved. This is because they are worried.

Critical thinking only causes you pain when you feel powerless. Best to go along with it.

RedToothBrush - I feel you.

I think for some women there is a belief that they have already won the war. A belief that they are equal and without actually saying it believe women oppressed in the UK have an element of choice. Personally in my 20s and early 30s I did probably have an element of “if I can do it”. I also too often excused misogyny and tried too hard to be one of the lads and not prove them right that women were weak by complaining. I unfortunately believe critical thinking in general is becoming weaker.

Bit melodramatic red. Maybe you need need a and a break from the politics.

Everyone except the political elite thinks politics isn't for them at some point. Working class men, women, people of colour, etc.

KOKO.

It is for us. We shall make it be for us. That's the beauty of a free press and democracy.

I don’t think anything is for women anymore. We can’t even go out in public without being abused in some way. I mean, that’s a pretty basic thing to do.