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

And I'm totally with you Imnotaclownfish. It's something that's been concerning me for a really long time now. Honey Kinney, Jonathan Ross's daughter is very caught up in it and is a good example of the crossover the movement has with with BLM/trans/sex positive activism work. And Eresh, thank you, that documentary sounds interesting, I'd missed it.

Interestingly, if you watch this documentary, it shows how one of the lead scientists who has promoted the more toxic elements of HAES is non-binary (and incidentally, not overweight - good for her enjoying her good health while she damages others). It is a good documentary - they have done so much damage.

Take Alan Turing. The man was prosecuted for being gay - in the UK. He accepted being chemically castrated over going to prison, which just makes me sick to my stomach. He then committed suicide - do we really think he wouldn't have done so if he was allowed to live his life as an openly gay man?

Surely, if he had been living under current rules made up by Stonewall and the likes, Turing could have found himself a partner (or partners) who had a female (sexed) body and a male gender identity. No, that's not the same as being free to love who you love, but there would be several individuals to chose from and he could have avoided a large degree of persecution, one would imagine. It's not quite equality but it's a decent step up from the barbaric treatment he received. He could live his life with some nice 'man' and other people would go about their business.

Why does OJ not look at that and want to argue passionately in favour of how sexuality is innate and how if you are a gay man you are attracted to other biological men? Because that's my response as someone with little skin in the game (aka, I'm not male and I'm not gay). It isn't acceptable to me to tell homosexual people that it's ok, they can just pick a partner based on gender and never mind if they're actually the opposite sex as it's meaningless.

It's interesting that the fatphobia/HAES thing is brought up in relation to this.

I've been on the internet (and fat!) since I was a teenager in the mid-90s and have seen this movement go the same way as the trans crowd.

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.

Then the usual militant lot start getting involved, purity spirals and identity politics ahoy, and it ends up being what it is now. As I've just said on another thread, most of this stems from American culture, you sort of have to pick a group and follow everything to its furthest possible end. Not just agree with what you want and leave the rest.

There's a lot of overlap with the self-diagnosed mental illness fanatics, self-diagnosed autistic people, the polyamorous crowd, the kink crowd, you'll even find it on pet-owning groups, hobby groups, etc.

It all follows the same pattern. It starts as a simple group for people with like-minded interests and it gets taken over by power-hungry people that change the direction into something completely different and other people get carried along with it.

Sorry for the long, offtopic post, it's been interesting to me for a while and I can see how this all started back before the internet was popular.

It strikes me that there are 2 issues where OJ doesn't think this principle applies misogyny/women's rights and antisemitism. He does the classic 'but some of my best friends are women' to excuse his awful behaviour and blocks or incites pile ons with any women who doesn't agree with him.

Indeed, this is all we need to know about him. I’m going to stop thinking of him as Little OJ and more as OJ the big misogynist, because thats what he is and this part of his character influences him a lot.

fat activists' thinking was eerily reminiscent of TRAs.

I saw a Twitter thread that ended up with a declaration that it should be adjacent to a criminal offence not to date fat people from OLD and that if you've never dated a fat person IRL then you should accept that you're fatphobic.

OJ seems to be one of those gay men who uncritically accepts that the T naturally goes with the LGB and therefore feels they must reflexively support the trans side of the debate out of a sense of "we're all in this together".

I suspect OJ would agree generally with the principle that it's for black people and those from other minority races to define what is racist, similarly it is for gay men and lesbians to define homophobia. Its not acceptable to whitesplain or straightsplain these issues.

It strikes me that there are 2 issues where OJ doesn't think this principle applies misogyny/women's rights and antisemitism. He does the classic 'but some of my best friends are women' to excuse his awful behaviour and blocks or incites pile ons with any women who doesn't agree with him.

That tells me all I need to know about OJ.

Sorry the above was a response to @SmokedDuck on Marxism and ID politics! Of course Connolly wasn't proposing a blanket ban on these questions - after all he insisted on the inclusion of ' Irishwomen ' in the proclamation of Independence. But you can feel his impatience with a lot of what used to be called ' bourgeois deviations' . The full article from the Socialist , June 1904 is both fascinating and witty. It is entitled On Wages and Other Matters. Old Ned Ludd here can't link it alas

'In the first place , I have long been of the opinion that the Socialist movement elsewhere was to a great extent hampered by the presence within its ranks of faddists and cranks , who were in the movement not for the cause of Socialism , but because they saw in it a means of ventilating their theories on such questions as sex , religion, vaccination, vegetarianism etc and I believed that such ideas had or ought to have no place in our programme or in our party.....And that therefore, we were as a body concerned only with the question of political and economic freedom for our class. We could not claim to have a mission to emancipate the human mind from all errors for the simple reason that we were not and are not the repository of all truth.' James Connolly 1904.

see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business

There was a great BBC documentary about this a couple of years ago. They put various people, all overweight, some supporters of the fat acceptance movement and some not, in a Big Brother style house, and the fat activists' thinking was eerily reminiscent of TRAs.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009tvj

:

Somebody pointed out on twitter that he only debates anything do with women's rights with right wing men.

So has more time and respect for them than actual women.

I've read that the reason he seems to exert so much power at the Guardian is because they don't want his fan base to "turn" on them.

I suspect their biggest concern is US readership and US staff.

*snort, I dunno, what do you think, Dougie?

*Rhetorical question.

Imnobody4
Nice couple of replies from Helen Lewis on that Janice Turner Twitter thread:

'If he's busy I could write it for him: Douglas Murray is a bigot therefore GC feminism is bigoted, list a few egregious Murray pieces, quick Taki ref, done. He'd rather argue with Murray - a panto villain - than you, because he's in danger of his fanbase finding you credible'.

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1423610834123730944?s=20

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1423611385087463427?s=20

(I'm also still getting over OJ's references to the 'fallen' Graham Linehan and was it the hard right or far right Speccie? I forget).

I see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business

Health is big business and young people who do not look after themselves become middle ages people with obesity related issues . I know, I am one. I have diabetes. Luckily I have a good doctor who believes the best way to treat it is through diet and exercise and I have been able to do this for four years now. I was lucky I was diagnosed early, others will be less so - the fat acceptance movement really annoys me, diabetes will not accept fat and nor will many other conditions.

Misogynists generally don't change their spots.

He might find that some of his female fans wake up and start smelling coffee rather than drink Kool Aid as their tastebuds mature, but I think he'll maintain and attract new followers who are actively waiting to gulp down his next offering.

A badly written article full of non sequiturs, personal attacks, logical fallacies and cherry-picking of facts.

So, OJ is improving then?

The thing is, OJ's fans will age, and as they age, their opinions are likely to change.

If OJ doesn't change alongside his fans, he will probably lose them anyway surely?

I personally think OJ is a very cautionary demonstration of the dangers of having a large SM "fan base".

I'm sure he still thinks that he's the one spouting 120 character sound bites that influence those following him.

I've read that the reason he seems to exert so much power at the Guardian is because they don't want his fan base to "turn" on them.

Thing is the tail is now wagging the dog.

The consequences of him actually thinking for himself rather than simply holding a mirror back up to his followers with what they want to hear are significant.

They now represent his "power" and arguably he needs them more than they need him.

So no, he can't "reflect" or change direction. The pot has keep being heated and stirred in the same direction.

He's lost his intellectual independence even if he's choosing not to acknowledge that but he doesn't want anyone to notice that either.

That's why he goes for the "soft" targets. The women. Perfectly acceptable collateral damage that the majority of his followers are happy to have the opportunity to froth over.

Getting into a debate with a man that his followers might actually have some respect for is deeply dangerous territory.

This is on that twitter thread about the wiki stuff in xxyzz’s post

I was watching Jeremy Vine on Wednesday, I don't usually watch it but OJ was on and I've seen a lot a bout him on here, so I thought I'd see if he really is THAT bad. One thing that made me chuckle was when he quoted someone as saying 'facts don't care about your feelings' and then said he absolutely agrees with that statement...

A badly written article full of non sequiturs, personal attacks, logical fallacies and cherry-picking of facts.

[quote EmbarrassingAdmissions]This was in a US context so probably a Democrat/Republican divide, but I think you could have, at the time, extrapolated to other western countries, at least English speaking ones.

Is this related to the topic of the Helen Lewis/Karen Stenner discussion about authoritarianism?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4311625-Interesting-interview-about-authoritarianism-R4-Helen-Lewis-Karen-Stenner[/quote]
That's very interesting, I hadn't seen it before.

I don't think the study I saw is the same one, but t looks like this is a more careful/nuanced exploration of the same phenomena. I wonder if it was done as a kind of follow up to the one I saw?

But what she s saying s exactly my observation. It's interesting that openness is the relevant characteristic. A year or so ago on FB a lot of people I know were doing the Big 5 personality test and posting their results. Some of the people who considered themselves the most progressive were very low on openness - it seemed to have no real correlation with political stance.

I stayed around in FatLogic and woke up a bit. I got myself to a healthier weight and lost interest in Tumblr wars, but not before seeing the same kind of language used there and on Twitter to castigate the Gender Critical subreddits. I started reading /r/GC out of curiosity, and now here I am on MN, despite not being a parent. I'm not losing hope that there are or will be more!