Good T**f, Bad T**f Julie Berchill article about Leftwing feminism

I am no more likely to stop thinking of myself as left wing as I am thinking of myself as a woman. - I am left wing because i believe in collective action to amerliorate structural inequalities and disparities. I am a woman because I am an adult human female. Just as i resent the redefinintion of womanhood to mean being feminine, i resent the idea of the left being recast as identity politics

Maybe one day someone will manage to explain how we've ended up 72 genders and yet only 2 political positions: left and far right.

Yep, we have prolific posters on here with things like 'fascist' in their username making good use of this site.

I don't know how someone can 'leave' the Left, if it's largely everything you believe? Unless she just means by voting. I'm unlikely to ever vote Tory, never have, but all sides need to stop putting their fingers in their ears on this topic.

You sort of accept dishonesty from politicians, but on this topic your average 'left' person in the street seems to be completely unable to defend - or even explain - their views honestly and accurately. It's all question-dodging, for some reason.

If there are any fumes on here, you seem to be sniffing them.

Yes fumes can indeed become visible.

As can the racism and extremism of many posters on here.

It's the left that's moving, most of us are standing still:
www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tweeted-my-cartoon-woke-progressive-left-wing-media-right-viral-twitter-politics-culture-liberal-center-11651504379

maybe the kind of poetry you get from righteous 13-14 year olds? The idea of fumes becoming 'more visible' might make at least weak sense in that context.

Oh, give over 🙄

I'm beginning to think that you are a parody account.

thank you for this. that incident had somehow escaped my notice

I have always classified Burchill as 'a bit dodgy', and generally read her pieces expecting to enjoy them but disagree with them.

she's a cracking writer and a disaster as a human being generally (in my opinion, obvs).

It's surprising to find myself agreeing with her on transgender issues and on purity spirals, but I know why I reached my conclusions and it wasn't because Julie told me to, so it's not a reason to change my mind.

good article

Liberalism has infected both leftism and conservatism, neither of which it properly belongs to, but it's become a feature of both to a significant degree. I don't think the left can pass of the responsibility for what it's become by claiming that any kind of individualistic liberalism can only be of the right.

generally speaking women are more left wing than men.

You wouldn't know it from visiting this website where the noxious fumes of the far right are becoming ever more visible,

‘It seems we are at a time where you can offend everyone except Muslims and transwomen – the rest of us are expected to take it on the chin’, she tweeted in 2018. This caused the left-wing gender-critical group A Woman’s Place to distance itself from her and disinvite her from a panel.

What I find really interesting about this, and not just in reference to anyone in this article, is that it's really a criticism of a particular kind of leftist, not of Muslims at all. For the most part it's not regular Muslim people going around calling people racists and trying to shut down discussions, though they may have opinions on things like anyone. It's this whole ideology that doesn't allow for any possibly critical comment about only specific groups of people. So you can't discuss whether hijabs on little girls are a good thing, even if you have no intention of banning them, but you can tar modern Christians with things that happened 500 years ago with impunity.

It's a perspective that treats any disagreements with its racial and ethnic and other hierarchies as attacks against the people which they have placed in those hierarchies.

I am sick of the nonsense. The trans movement is deeply individualistic and right wing, however much morons on both sides claim it to be left wing.

The labour party has become a right wing party that gets called left wing... but the identity "left" is actually right.

The labour party needs to return to the actual left, the economic left.

I’ve definitely shifted my perception of where I sit, and maybe moved to the right on some things. Not on the basic idea that we should share things in society more equally, but on the idea that all right wing people are wrong about everything, worse people or less intelligent than other people. But nothing about what I think has really changed. I always supported free speech and individual autonomy.

Ok, but that whole section about racism: in Burchill’s case that’s not just a spurious accusation, she was actually made to apologize for what she admits were racist comments. She didn’t “just” mention that men in grooming gangs are Muslim or object to young girls wearing hijab, she harassed a Muslim woman and libelled her. It’s fair for people to call her racist when there’s an actual finding against her.

amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/16/julie-burchill-agrees-to-pay-ash-sarkar-substantial-damages-in-libel-case