Douglas Murray asks: Does Owen Jones have a woman problem?

"Detransition Baby" worked well in the transport section.

Having read some reviews, this book would actually seem to be a good companion read for anyone reading ‘Trans’.

Waterstones in Edinburgh needed a bit of a tweak when I was there. "Detransition Baby" worked well in the transport section. "Trans" needed to be front and centre of the best new books section.

It had to be done.

I was in Waterstones yesterday lunchtime. Jones' latest lefty whine was on the Buy One Get One Half Price table. Only someone had piled novels by female writers on top of his books.

Is it unseemly for middle aged women to engage in childish acts of rebellion? Asking for a friend.

I used to know someone who worked at Waterstones and I had a mini rant to her once about how Quentin Tarantinos book was displayed throughout the shop but could only find Oliver Stones on the shop.

She informed me that this doesnt mean its popular - when they plaster the shop with copies of certain books its becuase they have loads of unsold copies and can't shift them so they use them to fill display gaps instead

I was in Waterstones yesterday lunchtime. Jones' latest lefty whine was on the Buy One Get One Half Price table. Only someone had piled novels by female writers on top of his books.

Isis is an aggressive fundamentalist worldview. It's also full of young people who have been radicalized in large part through their experience of disenfranchisement. It's not going to fit into a marxist binary easily.

Sofie Hagen is another one. I think identifies as non-binary now too

She is queer

metro.co.uk/2020/10/02/pansexual-only-slept-with-men-not-less-queer-13320599/

but only sleeps with blokes

there is nowt as queer as heterosexual queers

[quote Tesla73]Spiked have an article on LOJ today

www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/08/the-self-defeating-rage-of-owen-jones/[/quote]
That is brilliant. Love it.

IAmNotAClownfish: "Back then fat acceptance started as something completely different to what it is now. Originally it was just to say 'we're here, we're fat, we're normal people, don't abuse us' type thing, ie fat acceptance of other people without abuse. Health At Every Size actually started by saying, 'yes, we're fat but that doesn't mean we can't exercise and do healthier things, do what you can and make a start on getting healthier'. Nothing like what it is now."

This is what I recognise too. I didn't realise fat acceptance had become a full on ideology. When I introduced HAES into my workplace it was more like, "Instead of always banging on about losing weight, which often isn't a practical proposition, we should be offering people the best possible care and encouraging evidence based healthy behaviours irrespective of their body size," which seemed eminently compassionate and commonsensical. The big difference is that no other group was put directly at risk as a result.

[quote Tesla73]Spiked have an article on LOJ today

www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/08/the-self-defeating-rage-of-owen-jones/[/quote]
'Mimimum opus' is worth the price of admission, there.

Hostile to trans activists being handed everything they demand without question maybe, but of course we all know that's literally violent.

Even comparing the broadly compassionate way trans people are written about in 2021 to the way lesbian and gay people were written about “historically” is offensive. I’m old enough to remember homophobic slurs routinely used in newspaper reporting. That is nothing like the media landscape today, where a small number of media participants try to discuss the conflict between women’s rights and self ID.

I agree. When articles are written by thoughtful people like James Kirkup and Janice Turner they are at pains to clarify that they don't think all trans people are responsible for the excesses of the political gender ideological movement, and they use respectful language to speak of people.

It's just hyperbole. As you say, the general public, especially men who are not socialised to centre the feelings of others, are much blunter.

Spiked have an article on LOJ today

www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/08/the-self-defeating-rage-of-owen-jones/

Petition @UKParliament to record bio-SEX of all #Rapists &sexual/violent offenders approaching 10,000 necessary to trigger @Govuk response and well on the way to 100,000 to trigger a debate on the floor of @HouseofCommons thanks to @MBMpolicy petition in @ScotParl petition.parliament.uk/petitions/590123

Will he ever pause his motor gob and just think for a minute?

No. If he did he would understand that there are two parts to equality. The first, which is the only one he sees, is the need for acceptance. The second is structural - different groups have different needs e.g. men just aren’t affected by access to contraception etc. in the way that women are.

Either that or he just doesn’t like women.

LizzieSiddal- could you not think of him as Little OJ the Big Misogynist?

“Overwhelmingly hostile” ffs.

Even comparing the broadly compassionate way trans people are written about in 2021 to the way lesbian and gay people were written about “historically” is offensive. I’m old enough to remember homophobic slurs routinely used in newspaper reporting. That is nothing like the media landscape today, where a small number of media participants try to discuss the conflict between women’s rights and self ID. Generally, the media is pretty TWAW. It’s the general public who aren’t convinced.

Jones is becoming increasingly more preposterous by the day. Will he ever pause his motor gob and just think for a minute?

merrymouse

! would agree with you - it's just that OJ has rather strertched the definition to include his worldview in his attempted rebuttal of DM's piece to move away from a class-based / economic approach to that of chopping up society into different interest groups and sorting them into a hierarchy of oppression:

'Support for trans rights, of course, has nothing to do with misogyny at all. In my own case, the basis for it is the requirement, as a socialist, to use your platform to support the rights of oppressed minorities, the same principle I apply to Islamophobia; and as a LGBTQ person to stand with trans siblings as they are subjected to the same horrors cis (i.e. not trans) gay people were historically subjected to in a media landscape which is overwhelmingly hostile to them.'

Socialism is also theoretically a worker led movement.

doesn't really fit into what he classes as his socialist world view of automatically backing what he sees as the oppressed party no matter what - as there are fewer trans people than there are women OJ will always back the former.

I don’t think socialism can be intrinsically based on supporting minorities, given that workers are usually in a majority.

The idea that only small groups can be worthy of support is more right wing. It’s more of a ‘giving alms to the poor’ view of society.

If we take OJ's rebuttal piece seriously (and he hasn't always been a good faith debater), I wonder if part of the problem is that women / feminism doesn't really fit into what he classes as his socialist world view of automatically backing what he sees as the oppressed party no matter what - as there are fewer trans people than there are women OJ will always back the former.

(On a similar note there was a featured comment on the Guido Fawkes site where someone explained how it was hard for those with a Marxist approach to deal with the ISIS as Marxism has no religious aspect. I took this to mean that, rather than consider them religious fundamentalists looking to inflict their beliefs on the rest of the world, those whose worldview is always through this rigid prism could still see them as the oppressed minority as a racial or cultural group. Obviously this is on a different level to the current trans debate but I do think the connection is the limitations of always considering issues via a simple oppressor/ oppressed approach - I know it's possible to argue that women are the oppressed party in the trans issue but my personal view would be that it's better to abandon that game rather than try to win it and focus rather on the safeguarding angle - the practical angle will do better with the general public than a theoretical one).

Sofie Hagen is another one. I think identifies as non-binary now too.