Dawn Butler and biology

The politics are indeed a mish mash. I think some of the reason so many on the left/centre don't speak up on this issue is because they don't want others to think they are being 'right wing' about it.

politics is a right old mish mash

I get the impression that people think there is a shared understanding of politics because they’ve done humanities type degrees and know all the lingo.

As someone with a maths degree, I know absolutely bog all about the ins and outs of Marxism or liberalism or whatever bar what I’ve picked up from here and there. Expecting people to have a coherent political position that makes sense across various issues is baffling to me. I’ve got my opinions on this, that and the other but if anyone asked me what my core political philosophy was, I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start.

I don’t think that’s unusual for people on the other side of CP Snow’s Two Cultures.

I'm finding this fascinating.

I've realised a few things:

• the politics is a right old mish mash

• whatever political persuasion we are, we wish they weren't in 'our' group

• there really is a strong authoritarian streak there*

• this has been an eye-opener for me. I kind of new that - but I think it took this thread to drive home just how authoritarian it all is.

What a dick. However, I find this really disturbing. The repetition of this kind of shite is just too widespread and high profile for this not to matter. Needs to be called out.

I think it's tempting to think of LibDems as politically middle ground - in their general policies. But that's not actually the case.

Well the LibDems call themselves liberal (obviously) but we know they are TRA allies which they cloak in the guise of liberalism. It's not a new thing either. LibDems/Liberal Party have harboured some dubious types over time. Cyril Smith springs to mind.

Wrt the conversation about terms to describe what is transpiring in what is currently colloquially called 'the left' - I think 'liberal progressive' misses the mark because this is not liberalism, with it's understanding of the balance of rights in the public sphere.

I think the loss of effective class analysis and the revering of the individual's interests above all is definitely the feature we are all trying to grapple with here, but the defining part of this political outlook is Authoritarian. This is not a live and let live movement. This is a top down enforcement of untestable individualism, one that ignores class analysis almost entirely (except when it is deemed useful to the furtherance of individualist interests)

So my suggestion for a potted label for this pervasive politics is 'Authoritarian Individualism'. That's what Labour looks like now - most egregiously on the women's rights issue, but also very much in why they have lost their base so thoroughly, and continue to wilfully misunderstand.

think there's a certain strand of feminism that thinks being feminist is being like a man

Yes, much of the emphasis has been on 'equality' as sameness.......and equality of opportunity - at the expense of difference and honouring & valuing that......This was an inevitable stage on the journey, though.

But it is also that which has caused many young women to think that equality in law means that everything is now all hunky dory - but at the expense of their own female selves. That so many now think there is no difference between men & women at all..to the extent that biological sex means nothing at all.

I think there's a certain strand of feminism that thinks being feminist is being like a man. Or an imagined idea of a man. LibFem maybe? That taps into prostitution being a good profession for a woman, "empowering" or some such. Whereas women would be much better being themselves.

Tbf the patriarchy is so strong and has been in place for centuries, in most cultures and countries, and feminism having traction for such a comparatively short number of decades that there still aren't enough examples of "being a woman".

I don’t many of them realise this, though.

I don't think they do either. IMO it's an educational failure, the educated elite, generally speaking, no longer have the sort of education where they know what class analysis is, or Marxism, or indeed anything about any of the major philosophical systems of western civilisation.

They don't know that they jettisoned class analysis, or what they've replaced it with. They think their belief system is just facts.

It's the way that so many women are aggressively behind it that is the strange part for me.

This may not be a popular thing to say here, but I think it's become a part of the way some women are maintaining their place in social hierarchies, against other women and men. Totally analogous to the was some high school girls would maintain their status by having the right clothes, listening to the right music, and so on, whether they were popular, goths, or whatever.

In the adult world of these people, embrace of whatever counts as progressive is what places you in the hierarchy and divergence gets you kicked out very quickly.

I doubt people like Nandy think about it that way, but that's how the pressures are working. And that has always been a woman's game more than a man's game.

Ideas don't remain discrete, they tend to be rather promiscuous. Just as identity politics takes some ideas from Marxist analysis but uses them in a way incompatible with Marxism, they take ideas from other thought traditions and use them in new ways. Particularly from libertarian and neoliberal approaches they take a kind of belief in society as atomic, this is where this business of "rights aren't a pie" comes from for instance.

I think Goosefoot nailed it here.
Trans ideology, and wokeism more generally, is an odd hotchpotch of individualist identity politics and personal actualisation on the one hand, and a nod to structural oppression on the other.

I think the trans ideology stands out among all identity politics as the far and away most influential, and it has very little to do with individual actualisation, in spite of the rhetoric used. It is tremendously successful, because it is a men’s right movement, but without saying so in so many words.
It is therefore entirely structural, as it re-entrenches men’s supreme right to rule and the right to define reality on their terms.
So the labour party at the moment, seemed to have abandoned class-based, structural analyses in favour of individualised identity politics, but is actually engaged in class based warfare, where the classes are men and women, and they have come down firmly on the side of men.

I had been thinking their big mistake was jettisoning structural analysis in favour of identity politics, but it now seems to me that they are very much engaged in structural, sex-class struggle.

I don’t many of them realise this, though.

Libertarians don't believe in compelled speech, or criminalization of pronouns or no platforming people or sending agents of the state to check the thinking of those who refuse to participate.

Libertarians don't believe in compelled speech for themselves certainly.

Re Libertarians in my experience they tend to be libertarian only regards to themselves and not bothered about libertarianism for the rest of us. Unless they need like minded thinkers for weight in numbers. Also, Libertarian trans advocates will have chosen to leech onto Labour because that was the way the wind was blowing, they thought Labour's preoccupation with "wokeness" would be more amenable than Conservatives. Look at Harrop! He was Tory until he realised he could use Labour better for his purposes.

could go even further

Al Keir Starmer needs to do is keep his head down, resist the pressure to sign the pledge and the job is his: both women candidates have obligingly shot themselves in the foot

No! During the recent debate on Channel 4 he refused to discuss why he didn't sign the pledge......and furthermore, he thought we " could further" as they have done in other countries. Don't be fooled.

The problem with the old feminism is that men don’t like it. And men are controlling what women say in the public domain in a way that they didn’t have access to before the advent of the internet.

SWERFs and TERFs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women fighting for women’s rights on two entirely different fronts can not only be easily dismissed, but dismissed as bigots and haters in 3 words.

Women don’t want to be piled on for expressing ‘deviant’ opinions to the aggressively policed view.

Me too, FrogsFrogs.

Yes, I think it's misogyny, noblegiraffe - but like FrogsFrogs I just find it odd that so many women seem to think it's feminism. 🤷‍♀️

It's the way that so many women are aggressively behind it that is the strange part for me.

Men always wanted to be able to do what they wanted, and there were always women who supported them, usually passively by turning a blind eye. The idea that prostitution is a job like any other, a great lucrative choice for young women, and really fun times across the board, is not a view you would have heard many women pushing even 20 years ago. It's a total sea change, and a strange one.

@thecatfromjapan isn’t the ‘strange sexual politics’ and ‘discourse around sex work’ just plain old misogyny that is hardly a stranger to the left? Men’s rights to use women as they wish?

Libertarians might think that you have the right to self Id as a poodle or a goldfish, but no libertarian believes in state enforcement of your delusion.

Ideas don't remain discrete, they tend to be rather promiscuous. Just as identity politics takes some ideas from Marxist analysis but uses them in a way incompatible with Marxism, they take ideas from other thought traditions and use them in new ways. Particularly from libertarian and neoliberal approaches they take a kind of belief in society as atomic, this is where this business of "rights aren't a pie" comes from for instance.

Is it just me - or are female MPs way more likely to be waving the flag here? Am I imagining it?

No, I think it's a thing too. Like at Warren in the US Dem race.

I've followed the Greens here in Canada and was a party member until the last election as the only party that was something like traditionally left or traditionally conservative. I left them as they utterly and completely embraced identity politics and progressive individualism, to the point where they left environmentalism behind entirely.

Anyway, the leader Elizabeth May in the last election posted on FB how proud she was that membership was now something like 60% women, more than any other party. Which I thought, well, is that actually what we want, that political parties have a sex imbalance? It might be good in that it would reflect that the policies were woman-friendly compared to other parties, but in itself I'd not consider it ideal. (Interestingly while other parties say what % of women candidates they ran, the Greens tell us what % of women, trans, and non-binary persons.)

Typically they see the end as the most perfect freedom for all to self-actualise - that is the libertarian element

Libertarians might think that you have the right to self Id as a poodle or a goldfish, but no libertarian believes in state enforcement of your delusion. Libertarians don't believe in compelled speech, or criminalization of pronouns or no platforming people or sending agents of the state to check the thinking of those who refuse to participate. The people pushing this ideology which is reinforced by the state are the antithesis of libertarians.

Maybe I am just looking at 'liberal progressives'.

I think the progressive element is probably important in understanding this idea. Because these people believe there is a social movement to some sort of good or complete end. They tend to see history as an increasing of knowledge, of morals, of wisdom, and see us as moving ever more to that point.Typically they see the end as the most perfect freedom for all to self-actualise - that is the libertarian element. It's individualist self-actualisation.

So many of them see conservatism, or any dispute about changes and "progress", as inherently wrong and preventing the pure actualisation of perfect freedom, and of turning back to less enlightened and true ideas. This emboldens them to restrict any discussion or questioning of progress, even if that seems like an authoritarian response they see it as supporting freedom to self-actualise.

I think that a much better comparison is religious orthodoxy. The new totalitarian doctrine has articles of faith. Its proponents are not interested in debate, they want submission to the articles of faith. Their Manichean certainties are beyond question. Questioning any part of the doctrine results in immediate accusations of heresy and the punishment for heresy can be severe. See Harry Miller, Maya Forstater.