New to this - question about reconciling left leaning politics...

It's worth remembering that the term Left Wing has its origins in the French Revolution, which went from an enlightened and progressive project to a bloodbath within 5 years. Some young activists come across as being more at the 1794 end of the scale.

Yes, she reiterates it again later on. I haven't watched her speak before, I certainly will again!

@MaudTheInvincible
Just been listening to the Bindel talk that you put up. "There is no place for feminism outside the left", going on to explain that its all about structural oppression. Women on the left should reclaim it, is the message.

Julie Bindel in Conversation with Cambridge Radical Feminist Network yesterday evening. Worth watching all the Q&A too. We ARE the left!

Yes you are missing something, Op.

You are missing the fact that, if Left leaning women from the Greens, LibDems and Labour hadn't stood up in the face of bullying and violent attacks while Theresa May's Government was pushing the GRA and TWAW for all it was worth, we probably wouldn't have known a thing about it until it was too late.

Those Left women are still standing firm. It angers me considerably to see the attempts to re-write history by conveniently forgetting what we owe them.

This is not Party political, and reaches right across the political spectrum.

To me it’s also that the right wing are able to question things as they don’t believe in political correctness. The left are so scared of being thought of as bigoted that they just follow the ‘rules’ of what they perceive is the correct way of thinking. This is why so many left wing TWAW types are also antisemitic.

A lot of left wing politics seems to have been stripped of any ideology beyond "help those less fortunate than yourself". Identity politics fills this vacuum because it provides a simple-minded method to determine who is less fortunate than you (and you are therefore obliged to help) and who is more fortunate than you (and is therefore obliged to help you). This in turn lets you decide who are the 'good people' and who are the 'bad people' based on who is 'doing their bit' for those below them in the heirarchy.

This whole system is liable to being gamed, because the lower down the heirarchy you are the more clout you gain. If you can convince others that your group is at the bottom of the pile then you can demand everything of them while they can demand nothing of you.

Interesting the point about class. I used to run women’s refuges. The women living there were mainly not middle class. Because middle class women often had more disposable income with which to escape. Or friends houses they could stay at or whatever. It’s my main overriding thought on the whole thing. That I could feel pressured to letting a trans woman into the refuge. The thought horrifies me. I absolutely believe that trans women should also have access to safe spaces if they are the victim of DV. Just not in a woman’s refuge.

It's strange to me that there are people on the left who can't see this. If you find yourself aligned with these people on this single issue, but stand against them on all others, it's something to consider at least

It might seem "strange" to someone so tightly aligned with tribal identity politics, but there are many areas in which people can find common cause. What is most important is truth and personal integrity, and that is not exclusive to one political party or to another.

People of all persuasions can agree that sex is real, and that this reality has material, social and cultural impacts and consequences.

In Britain we have a tradition of political critique which is not so narrowly defined or identified, and the cultural imposition of U.S style identity politics is really not welcome or wanted.

Ooh, my opportunity to post this helpful diagram I saw on Twitter the other day. Courtesy of ExcelPope, via DocStockk, in response to yet another Yank announcing she wanted to research the U.S. funding of UK "T*RFs".

The fact that you are a U.S poster is always very apparent. You make all sorts of false cultural and political assumptions based on very predictable tropes and cliches that dominate discourse in the U.S.

By the way Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill are two different people, with very different modes of operation. You ought to be aware of that before you start promulgating untruths and cliches about U.K gender critical thinking.

In Britain we have a tradition of political critique which is not so narrowly defined or identified, and the cultural imposition of U.S style identity politics is really not welcome or wanted.

This. Is "not having a clue" a defence to libel?

I didn't leave the Left, the Left left me
This is how I feel. I've always been centre left but that's centre left in terms of economics, public services, concern about inequality.
At some point the left started caring more about what privileged 20 year olds on university campuses felt about identity politics than the reality of most working class to lower middle class people.

The left is losing people because there is a hard core of activists who are so convinced they have right think on a range of issues that they police wrong think by calling people bigots. This alienates the vast majority of people who are concerned about every day politics and not what someone said on Twitter.

The TRA attempt to create a Venn Diagram of Wrongthink so you don't align with The Baddies is striking me as increasingly childish.

I am fairly sure that Steve Bannon believes water is wet and there are 24 hours in a day. I'm not going to take the opposite view because he's despicable on so many other things.

I think some issues are not left or right and this is one of them. So women whether left or right in other matters can agree quite easily. I mostly see “left wing” people as GC often remainers too.
I don’t think this issues aligns to any particular political leaning.

Well quite:
https://mobile.twitter.com/bindelj/status/1371774393479741441

Thanks for starting this post OP - it really hit a spark for me. Ive been thinking about "identity politics" or intersectionality if you use the American term. Its been embraced by many young "progressives" and spawned the no platforming on campuses and elsewhere. How does it fit into some kind of left perspective? I think it can be problematic in setting groups against each other and can also be dominated by those who shout the loudest (The Tyranny of Structurelessness was an interesting report on this), and in the case of the TRA issue, its message has been widely taken up by corporations and thence more widely into the public sector. So you have to ask what the advantage is for them - profit probably - in this particular instance it will prove no threat to the status quo. Id like to add a quote from a book Ive been reading: "Intersectionality in its current form, rather than an irritant to priviledge, atomises society into competing political factions and undermines what really frightens powerful people: a well organised, educated and unified working class". I am working my way through all this so apologies for a long post and Ive been interested to read other peoples contributions.