Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

Living in a multicultural area of Glasgow was pretty eye opening. It's easy to support diversity from a distance. When you're not actually in amongst slum landlords, people trafficking, street fights and attacks/rapes.

The general narrative of inclusion just can't admit there might be any difficult tensions to negotiate, and so where I lived the police pretended there were no issues and stayed away. It was a scary place to live.

(Watch as a bunch of libfems come shout at me now)

As someone who's spent a great deal of time in the Middle East I tend to view the fact that right-on libfems view the niquab as empowering as another example of their infallible ability to choose the most dick pandering option in any given situation.Their lack of support for Arab feminists who've consistently spoken out against it and awkward sidestepping of stuff like My Stealthy Freedom and failure to support Maryam Namazie when men try to no platform her in the UK speaks volumes.

I'm not a fan of cultural relativism and also not a fan of one law for us, another for them.

I tend to take my cues from those women who live in countries where they do not have any choice in what they wear as the case is clearer cut. While muslim women living in the west may or may not be free to choose whether they are veiled women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere clearly have no choice at all. While that remains the case it is clear to me that we should stand by those women and argue against the practise.

I’m also uncomfortable about invoking ‘what about Muslim women?’ as a feminist critique of mixed sex spaces. Their sex segregation requirements overlap with mine when it comes to safety, privacy and dignity and those reasons affect all women. Beyond that the underlying need to keep women separate is to keep women lesser. So I agree with your concerns Upfield.

Incidentally I work with (posh) Arabs who view the burqa as a sign of ignorance. So we should also be wary of ‘Muslims Think X’. Many view the burqa as a tool of oppression and this was a commonplace view in Arab lands until 30 yrs ago.

I think it's sometimes difficult to know how best to support strictly adherent Muslim women. I remember a situation where it was requested for there to be a women only language class for Saudi wives of the male clients. Whilst I support female only spaces when privacy is required - for example another class ran for women who could bring their babies and thus breastfeed - I didn't know how to feel because the motivation for this other class was unclear. There's nothing intimate about sitting in a classroom and learning a language, so no reason why the women couldn't come to the regular classes, as other Muslim women did, including those wearing a face veil. I can understand why women might want to be in a female only space so they can remove it, but then I have to question myself and consider if I want to be involved in facilitating a practice I'm against as a feminist, which is rooted in control of women as male property. I wondered if a knock on effect would be that these women attending the mixed classes would be loooked down upon and pressured to attend the female only class instead. There was also the request for a female teacher - would this set a precedent so that the men would request a male teacher? This was likely, considering the deeply sexist attitudes held. Also, it was unclear whether or not it was the men or the women making the request for sex segregation. Education and even workplaces are sex segregated in Saudi, do we really want to be importing Saudi culture to the UK? What if they'd requested a separate class for sub-saharan Africans, for 'cultural' reasons, bearing in mind how racist Saudi culture is (one of the few times I've ever heard black people referred to as 'monkeys' was by a Saudi)? This is the problem when other cultures are elevated for reasons of 'diversity' without any recognition of how sexist (or racist, homophobic etc) they may inherently be. The pro diversity agenda leads to reality being vastly distorted and Westernised to make it more palatable. For example, much is made of the female Kurdish fighters who have battled Isis, and so the Kurds are presented as progressive feminists. This ignores the phenomenon of honour killings in Kurdish culture, and the fact that women are used in war because of the belief that if killed by a woman, the victim will not be martyred and won't go to paradise. I actually find the reluctance of woke culture to criticize other cultures almost paradoxically self-loathing and racist at the same time. There's this underlying message of 'see, they're just the same as us, nothing to worry about!' Or 'look, they're such noble savages!' Surely treating people as equals would involve applying the same amount of critical analysis as you would to anyone else? People are so keen to tick the inclusion box that they don't consider whether their approach really is a helpful strategy or not. Part of the problem is of course that there's often no clear answer as to what the best approach is. People are lazy and just care about what is 'not a good look' or not, and don't think too deeply about it.

Was Johnson wrong to reach for that metaphor? Yes, it failed the "satire should punch up, not down" test.

Was the article itself wrong? No. The whole point of it was to argue that banning the niqab as Denmark had done was wrong, illiberal and likely to exacerbate social and religious tensions. The letterbox comment in context was "I personally may think it makes you look like a letterbox, but I defend your right to choose to do so."

Totally agree Antibles. It’s the same people who want women to be ‘free’ to wear the burqa who also want women to be free to have penises.

I actually understood Boris Johnson’s comment about letterboxes. The point of the burqa is to dehumanise. To erase the person inside from the public realm. How feminists can stand for this I do not know.

Antibles - Ex-Muslim campaign groups have always highlighted how they have been consistently betrayed by the so-called progressive left, who end up supporting extreme Islamist ideology such as the niqab like it's a good thing while refusing to care about the issues faced by more secular Muslims or those who abandon Islam.

Just wanted to say that I don't know if it's just Corbyn that is the reason for the bad Labour result - it is surely Brexit.
A vote for Labour risked another X years of bickering and wrangling by MPs as to whether to stay leave have another vote.
I think many will return to Labour voters at the next election - presuming they get their house in order by then. It was the Tories house not being in order that caused Brexit when DCameron wanted to shut up EU Dissenters by a once and for all vote.
So hopefully all parties will come to their sense now and work for the country as a whole not just their beef.

I am 67 and was stunned that some MPs in Westminster, the Mother of all Parliaments , home of democracy ever suggested that there could be another 'peoples'' vote. It would have been shameful imv. They made a mistake, they lost, live with it.

May failed to control immigration when in the HOme Office. Didn't get the numbers below 250,000 (I think it was ) - had she looked as if in control then we would probably not have had the Brexit result.

My feelings in the 60s, 70s was that immigrants admired our democracy, freedom of speech, non corrupt law system. and that they wanted to come and adopt our British way of life. This I see now is wrong. and that people are just wanting a better life (understandably, I would do the same) regardless of us, so are not necessarily going to integrate or adopt our lifestyle. Groups of the same religion or ethnicity stick together. But when white British want more non-immigrant british in their street that is racism. If others want to live with others who share their beliefs/lifestyle it is not, apparently.

But free immigration - how many below the poverty line live in India/ China , millions? billions ? Immigration is a world problem. I don't see us having quotas to cream the best educated from these countries solves anything. This needs discussed at International Summit level.

We have the Scottish elections in May 2021 - it will be interesting to see how the vote falls then. Would being in Europe but separate from England work?
One of N Sturgeons policies is to increase immigration to Scotland due to falls in population. Seems barmy to me, what to stop an immigrant moving out of Scotland after a few years, for the same reasons others are. I think the vote in Scotland was anti Labour rather than solely for SNP. We have our own parliament , not sure everyone really wants Independence. So many have family across the border/ all over the world.

I followed my MEPs work in the months before the Brexit vote. He attended meetings with British MEPS of his party and they had discussions. Didn't debate/ didn't vote/ didnt' decide/ didn't promote - ie did FA imv. That's why I voted leave.

Since when is Chris rather than Christine a change in gender rather than a nickname?

Not sure but I suspect it may come as a surprise to my mother in law. And my mum's cousin. And my colleague. And my neighbour.

When you’re super special presumably...

Since when is Chris rather than Christine a change in gender rather than a nickname?

I don't know anything else about her but I think Chris/tine came across really well and sounded very sensible in that clip AutumnRose1 Yeah, I don't know quite why there was a news story about her from that clip alone and they didn't go into a definition of pansexual as she was described by Evan but I was pleased she said unequivocally, "I'm a woman" and "I'm she". She sounds just like she wants to break down gender stereotypes which I'm all for. I wondered if the producers were assuming she was trans or something but it didn't really work because she doesn't identify as any such thing. I liked what she said about the male gaze too.

Regarding mixed grammar schools:

I passed the 11-plus exam in about 1975, so got a grammar school place.

School was roughly 50:50 girls and boys.

Then when I was in Form 2 (second year) there were rumours of imposed 50:50 female:male quotas, and if there hadn't been that imposed quota - my school would have been 60:40 female:male.

The 11-plus pass mark was adjusted for boys, in order to ensure a broadly 50:50 intake.

Which also means that some girls who merited a grammar school place, were dropped from grammar school, in order to meet the "affirmative action for boys" objective that was implemented, at that time.

Yes, heard the arguments about "boys maturing later" etc. etc.

Still, girls were denied places in grammar schools in my county, because a 50% affirmative action quota for boys was implemented, to girls' detriment.

Btw especially as this is on the Feminist board, I wondered if anyone else had seen Christine and the Queens on Newsnight.

It feels like such a fuss is made of Christine becoming Chris. Her pronouns are still she/her etc

She says she wanted to really “deconstruct” gender meaning. I just wonder why people find that important. Perhaps not a great example as in this interview there’s no reason to believe she’s chucking out women’s rights. But I just wonder why any of this genderqueer stuff is such a big deal initially.

I think her music is fab and that’s kind of it, really. I don’t think she needs extra publicity?

Because this is the feminism board I was thinking about how dismayed I've been by what I see as my feminist principles leading me to be judged negatively by the progressive left.

For example, I'm still viscerally shocked by niqabs and dislike them because I simply do not believe covering women's faces up in public comes from anywhere but a male desire to control women yet this feminist view gets me labelled Islamophobic.

Then because I want to defend women's sex-segregated spaces, I am charged with transphobia.

Then back to Islamophobia again because of my concerns about halal meat and animal cruelty.

Then general racism or xenophobia because I'm anti high net immigration (not anti-immigration!) not just because of social cohesion or pressure on services but because of the environmental impact of the human population.

All these things I have always been concerned about and thought were good things to care about - women's rights, animal rights, the environment and indigenous wildlife - but seem in the past couple of decades to have put me on the progressive left's superhighway to bigotry.

PS not a fan of Murray’s views on women.

Sarah Conor Fern

“ Thanks for the tip off about the talk with "Tits" is that also a Spectator event?”

Beg pardon? 😂

I started to fancy him after this

Dare I say, really worth reading Murray’s book Strange Death of Europe.

Have suggested it to one friend who immediately got upset because of the description.

Ive been mulling over the whole Somewhere thing all day. I've no conclusions but a few observations. You cant put a price on that sort of community spirit.
It's the sort of thing you itch to get away from when you are 18, but many many come back to when you are 35, with kids entering education and parents getting on.

You see so many threads on here about people struggling with the normal challenges of life, which is what rooted communities mitigate against.
When you are the first one you know to have a baby, and no experienced aunty nearby to stop anxiety escalating, what happens?. When your parents age 200 miles away, what then?

Single parents are more likely to be in poverty and that seems to be an absolute crunch point. You all know it from rants about popping out kids, and living on the taxpayer. The obvious answer is to get absent parents- overwhelmingly fathers - to actually pay for their own children.
No party, nobody is willing to tackle that.

Another attack angle on the 'somewhere' is crime and anti social behaviour. The perception is it's getting worse, and that's why people seek social mobility and 'better areas'. Why house prices are so high.

My bubble says that people want a decent job in a secure home in a peaceful area. Sometimes you have to get down to first principles.

Yeah there are a few estates that nobody was sad to see go because living in them was awful, but the idea that it's all like something out of Oliver Twist is classist nonsense.

Don't get me wrong Prodigal there have been some appalling blunders with social housing in Scotland, not least the vast post war estates round Glasgow built with no amenities but there is also an awful lot of really good quality, well proportioned, solidly built housing that is far superior to your average Barrett box.

*Agreed that grammar schools are not a great idea for social mobility. They take a relatively small proportion of poorer pupils and a relatively bigger proportion of privately educated pupils8

That wasn't always the case...even if it now is. Now pupils are hot housed and sent to private tutors. That wasn't how it was when I sat the 11 plus.

The worst thing I could say about any of the Scottish council houses my extended family ever lived in was that the wood look panelling in one was a bit tacky, but, you know, 70s. The ones my dad's family lived in where gran and auntie were on the same street a few doors down from each other were lovely, gran's had a garden where she grew strawberries in the summer. My other gran's flat the only thing wrong with it was that the internal stairs were very steep so she had to move once she got too old to manage them any more.

Some locals made comments about it being a council estate and there being loads of trouble there

Maybe this is a Scotland/England divide but I often find comments on here about council estates weird.

I live on what was a council estate. A mix of two bed flats and three bed terraced houses. Most in private ownership these days but some still owned by the housing association that took over council properties locally.

We waited five years for a house to come on the general market here. The majority exchange hands privately. They're like gold dust and far more in demand than the much shoddier and pokier private new builds.

There are shitty council estates round town, but the vast majority are perfectly nice places to live.