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

He kept repeating that he now doesn't engage in debates on trans rights as "he's not trans and it's not his place."
That was what struck me too. He will say that, and yet doesn't get that women have a perspective and experiences that he'll never have.

[quote Lessthanaballpark]The video (linked from the article) is great. Go to 3:58 to see DM neatly identify the clash between trans-activism and feminism.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYOfZ2yV8I0[/quote]

Bloody hell I had no idea Lionel is as knowledgeable about all this as she is. He's absolutely bang on and then she's even more so when she describes the consequences what he outlines around the car crash of intersectionality.

An excellent discussion.

Thanks merry, I'd forgotten I'd read that. I think my brain cba to digest anything OJ. Also, I seem to remember SS really held her own and couldn't care too shiny shits about him.

Someone on twitter last week , I think Janice Turner, repeatedly asked oj why he wouldn't respond to any questions about the effect on women's rights. He kept repeating that he now doesn't engage in debates on trans rights as "he's not trans and it's not his place."

I mean, Jeeze, the male privileged arrogance. It's absolutely fine for him to comment on women!

The video (linked from the article) is great. Go to 3:58 to see DM neatly identify the clash between trans-activism and feminism.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYOfZ2yV8I0

I don’t think it’s difficult to do a cut and paste ad hominem attack on any columnist who has been writing for a decade or more. Very easy if you are preaching to the converted and the columnist is on the other side. It’s just lazy click bait.

Honestly, there is an element of this in DM’s piece, but the core truth is that OJ refuses to talk to women about the issues, and SD’s article did not merit the attack it received.

"I did not used to think so," ?!
I hope that's just a poor editorial intervention.

"I used not to think so," or "I did not use to think so," surely.

But no detraction from a crystal clear, calm, reasoned article. OJ is spitting chips.

I don't know if he's gone for Sodha personally but I remember him having a pop at a leader article in The Observer that was generally agreed to be have been written by her.

don’t understand the snide ‘friend of women’ comment about Murray. I’ve always found him incredibly fair and supportive of second wave feminism. I remember his anger at the left ignoring female grooming gang victims.

Yes but Murray has always been a bit quick to dismiss feminism whilst being clueless about what is currently going on in feminism IMO. Do you remember the Munich attacks? He went on TV stating that feminists were doing nothing to help women because they were too scared to criticise Islam.

I was yelling at the screen “But Douglas! What about Mumsnet?!” cos MN was literally chockablock with outrage threads at the time, they even raised a petition that got ignored.

So it’s nice to see he’s catching up because he’s very eloquent.

Yes.

Ok caught up on the terry pratchett thing.

Does / has Jones go/ne after Sodha?

She another woman absolutely thrashing it right now.

*I think male privilege is essentially about all the seemingly small things men simply don't need to notice or take account of in their everyday lives (safety etc just for starters).

It's the not needing to notice and therefore women's arguments can be neatly reduced to 'looking for sexism', 'getting hysterical about nothing' etc.*

Sorry, reading thread, absolutely this.

Dh recently looked absolutely confounded at the concept of motherly guilt. Guilt about feeling split re work and young kids etc. And how media and other parents exacerbate it.

Because one male privilege is that it's absolutely the norm for the father to work full time and not feel bad about it.

One of my friends is a Gp with other clinical roles and 3 children under 8. She's forever going through cycles of guilt and cutting her hours and then taking on other roles which are v well paid while her husband seems absolutely fine working full time.

Dh didn't know anything about male privilege. I do think my own generation, gen x, last lot to do university fee free, believed, as I did, that equality of the sexes was won in the west.

I only twigged through kids and mn. Though the way many of my friends suffered domestic violence or coercion through my 20s and 30s was a niggling clue something wasn't right.

I've missed what he's done to Ditum. What's happened?

Bang on article. Jones never goes after men. Cowardly bully.

I honestly hold him responsible for a large share of the issues in Labour over the last 6 years, acting as a purely divisive force to split the party and encourage the worst elements on the far left.

He has encouraged racists like Galloway,turned a blind eye to homophobia where it suits him, despite being gay, and led repeated pile ons against multiple women, nearly all women on the left, which is inexcusable from one who claims to be on the left himself.

His writing is execrable too, but of the sort that appeals to the very stupid.

I am fuming that Owen, who had no problem labelling antisemitism in Corbyn's Labour as mere 'smears' and was recently to be seen sucking up to that vile racist and misogynist George Galloway, has the absolute chutzpah to attack anyone else for racism or for associating with undesirables.

Let's not forget that Owen, as a teenage student at Oxford, spent his time editing Wikipedia on the definition of Judaism. Because as a white non-Jews with zero expertise in the matter, he was clearly entitled to define my ethnicity. And yet he objects to women talking about...women's rights!

twitter.com/NudderingNudnik/status/987091414508032001?s=19

I cannot describe quite how strongly I dislike his cheap, clickbaity grift.

OJ is perfectly happy to talk about trans issues with men but never men who are particularly au fait with the issues. A few weeks ago, I was listening to his appearance on Geoff Norcott's podcast and hes perfectly happy to talk about it with Geoff who has misgvings about self ID, sports etc but was not able to gve a good rebuttal to the points OJ had clearly rehearsed and runs through a mile a minute. If he actually is #nodebate then he needs to be that way with everyone not just certain men.

If he only wants to talk to trans people about these issues, why not Debbie Hayton or Rose of Dawn or a detranstioner like Keira Bell?

And, whatever the demerits of individuals, and there will always be some who are bad faith participants, there needs to be a golden bridge for those who start to change their minds.

Otherwise, how does this achieve a liveable solution in which we can all tolerate eachother without damaging impacts on women's rights? How do we stop the progress towards authoritarianism?

Wow. LOJ has really excelled himself in his mysogenistic rants, hasn't he.

This tweet sums OJ up perfectly… twitter.com/OscarWi41720793/status/1423524498670817283?s=20

All mouth and no trousers, that one.

Worse, all mouth and no journalism. He is demonstrating the investigative and analytical skills of Nigel Farage.

Keep talking Owen. You show your bare arse with every word.

All mouth and no trousers, that one.

So today he ignored DM on Twitter but took a swipe at Janice Turner then an article which just calls DM nasty names and has a massive pop at Suzanne Moore. Right.
We see you OJ.

If he was operating in good faith he could have gone in Triggernometry with Andrew Doyle, or he could have read Helen Joyce’s book and critiqued it but he didn’t. I think DM has the measure of this intellectual lightweight and now all the world can see it too.

Hmm that Medium article. I did a bit of counting:

I counted 4 paragraphs (one of them bulleted so quite long) specifically about Douglas Murray. Fair enough - it was provocative of Murray and I'm sure he expected it.
Then there's one paragraph listing men he's locked horns with, from Andrew Neil to Keir Starmer.
One about Graham Lineham and James Kirkup.

Five paragraphs about various women, including one each for Julie Bindel, Nimco Ali and Sarah Ditum (Cleanergate clearly hurt).

Nine paragraphs about Suzanne more.

9 - in an article denying he has a woman problem.

Feel free to check my arithmatic.

That is an incredibly badly written article by OJ. It was really hard to read.

I don’t understand the snide ‘friend of women’ comment about Murray. I’ve always found him incredibly fair and supportive of second wave feminism. I remember his anger at the left ignoring female grooming gang victims. His chapter in TMOC about women was thoroughly researched and insightful. I’m not handing in my feminist card for thinking that.

And he’s got OJ bang to rights on this one.