Billy Bragg is a wanker

Also, nice to see he's happy to use the Tory-graph to publicise his gigs, but he'll bash Maya Forstater for being interviewed in the Daily Mail because it's "right-wing".

Yes, so we can assume one of two things from that odd wording.

Either Billy Bragg thinks his son may grow up to abuse women and girls, and despairs of the danger men put women in

Or

Billy Bragg thinks that it's hard to be a man nowadays because everyone's hassling men about sexual assault and MVAWG and they may even get accused of it, falsely or otherwise.

Based on his output on this issue of the safety, privacy and dignity of women v some male people's need to be validated in their identity, I wonder which is more plausible?

This is Billy Bragg being interviewed by the Telegraph a few years back.

Now he will have a chance to explore these ideas further at the first Being A Man festival - a weekend which will see Grayson Perry, Alastair Campbell and others discuss their experiences of masculinity as well as featuring workshops on subjects like depression, promiscuity and race. Bragg will appear for an evening of music and discussion with the rapper Akala, comedian Phill Jupitus and singer Tom Robinson, which will close the festival on Sunday evening. He will also take part in an event on the Saturday evening with novelist Nick Hornby and designer Wayne Hemingway.

“I think men need a place where we can talk about things that are a problem,” Bragg explains when asked why he was so keen to be involved. “I don’t think any man who’s watched the news since Christmas can feel comfortable with what’s been going on with Operation Yewtree, with Lord Rennard, with those men who were convicted in Peterborough. I look at the TV and I despair for my 20 year old son.

I don’t think any of us can be complacent. I think there’s a responsibility for all of us to be putting out a message. I’m hoping that Being A Man will open up a can of worms and allow us to start talking about these issues.” Bragg bemoans the lack of a "blokesnet" - a Dadsnet does exist, but it has nothing like the same scope as its female counterpart - and other online forums where this discussion could otherwise happen.

Quite an interesting interview. You can read it in full in the Telegraph's Thinking Man section. Perhaps the Thinking Woman of mumsnet would also care to think about "those men convicted in Peterborough". Does it make you fear for your sons? Why? Here's an extract from the BBC.

A gang of men and boys convicted of sexually abusing teenage girls in Peterborough used "sophisticated" tactics to groom their victims, detectives have said.

They befriended vulnerable girls, gave them gifts, money, drugs and alcohol and used violence and intimidation to control them, subjecting them to "appalling" abuse in places such as children's playgrounds.

Two men and three teenage boys were found guilty of a series of rapes and sexual assaults on five girls.

Their convictions were the result of a "victim-led" investigation, involving Cambridgeshire Police, Peterborough City Council children's services and other agencies.

It formed part of a wider investigation, called Operation Erle, into allegations of sex abuse by other groups of men and boys against young girls.

I think there is a rule of misogyny for this: the worst thing about Male Violence against Women and Girls is that it makes men look bad?

😂

Oh good God. Now we also know he attempts to initiate sex with her by asking for a bit of how's your father and keeps his socks on throughout.

😂
And the thread dies because nobody can top that line!

Oh dear Billy, have womens sexual politics left you all in a muddle?

Accountability = I can hurt you because I don’t like you.

Sorry missed an apostrophe there

Exactly.

The normal meaning of ‘accountability’ is something that goes hand in hand with ‘responsibility’.

It now means ‘your enemies vengeance is justified no matter what form it takes’.

Nicola sturgeon I’m looking at you- just say what collateral damage is more acceptable to you, stop pretending it doesn’t exist

The cowardice of refusing to face head on this key issue disgusts me.

Except that accountability can be positive and help people do better, eg governors hold head teachers to account, meaning that they require them to justify their decisions

Well yes, that’s what it should mean when you are talking about ideas, or advocating for policy or legislative changes. It should mean being accountable in terms of being prepared to have your ideas rigorously critiqued and debated and being able to robustly argue and defend your position. You know, in the way that Stonewall et Al completely failed to do with their ‘no debate’ position. Was BB criticizing them for failing to be accountable? Was he praising FPFW for wanting to be accountable by engaging in public debate with Stonewall? Anyone got the screenshots of this?
And you know, cancelling people is the precise opposite of holding them to account, as it’s an attempt to stop their ideas being scrutinized and debated.

When he says

“I have long believed that what right-wing media call “cancel culture” is nothing more than the tendency of reactionaries to cry wolf when caught conducting a rearguard action against the progress made by minorities over the past half-century.”

I think, why?

On what evidence?

Where did that belief come from? What informed it Billy?

He’s like a brainless weathervane waiting for a gust of wind to point him in the direction of what to believe.

A complete absence of actual thinking.

I feel annoyed about the attention that gets wasted on this gormless nobber.

IIRC the first casualties of ‘cancel culture’ were Julie Bindel, Germaine Greer and Meghan Murphy, just before intersectional feminism was weaponised by pornsick men.

OP 👏
Awesome thread title 👏
Wanker is such an inclusuve term for all persons with cocks, however they identify.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again.

Billy Bragg’s singing sounds like a moose that’s popped a bollock.

I don’t really understand what Billy Bragg is saying. It seems to me that this whole thing boils down to “do you accept that trans ideology means collateral damage occurs and who are you more bothered about it affecting?” The mealy mouthed refusal to accept the collateral damage seems so disingenuous and we should welcome those who highlight and try to tackle the nitty gritty issues of this ideology rather than those who wax lyrical about being kind and don’t raise the problems because otherwise your words kill. I’m not interested in what a celebrity or politician has to say unless they talk to the blunt realities of what’s going on here. Nicola sturgeon I’m looking at you- just say what collateral damage is more acceptable to you, stop pretending it doesn’t exist.

Collateral damage to young people who might calm their dysphoria by long term therapy (that doesn’t exist) instead of harming their bodies in the short and long term, that kids/ people will die by their own hands if they can’t trans as quickly as possible, that women will die / be harmed by predatory men (of whatever persuasion) who use trans as a perverse entry pass to “safe” single sex spaces, that the end point of trans ideology will ensure data collection and allocation of scant sex based resources won’t occur and women be harmed as a result of that, that denying the reality of sex based experience will harm women versus that rejecting sex based experience will make trans people feel better and therefore less likely to self harm and that a society that labels people instead of accepting their dysphoria as fact means trans people will be victimised and harmed.

JK is an expert communicator. She is clear as day in all she says. Her refusal to STFU and accept, hide or minimise the inevitable collateral damage to this ideology for women but also trans people is brilliant.

Every time he opines on something women's rights related on twitter, I end up singing the first few lines of "Valentine's Day Is Over" to myself
Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see
That what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone
That you want to play your little games on

I can't decide if he's just thick or he really hasn't been paying the slightest bit of attention.

It was awful timing, his article seems to have come out just before the Daily Mail published the story of the sexual assault survivor denied medical care for being 'transphobic'.

Fair enough. I think I have only just stopped to think about what "accountability" actually means.

As for Norton, am I right that he an JKR are friends, but disagree on this, hence the weasel words?

Same here. One of the joys of liberating myself from the left is no longer having to pretend to like the output knobs like him.

Just read through BB's exchanges with Sal Grover. I can't decide whether he's completely disingenuous, utterly cowardly or thick as pig shit. Possibly all three.