Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

I shall feel free to do as I please and do not seek your permission.

When is the ‘feminism’ bit going to come along in this part of the discussion…

So what is your alternative bike?

No one is saying what we've got is perfect (and it's certainly being severely stress-tested right now) but I think it's the only model that can actually work and has ever worked.

We've seen communism in action and that always ends in gulags and genocide.

Our system, for all its flaws, has brought tremendous wealth and prosperity to a majority of the populations in the countries that share it. I'm personally quite scared that the stresses on it and the attacks from within are going to break it and leave us with anarchy.

This is all totally off topic but since you've demanded a defence of liberal free market democracy, let's have your proposal for a better system.

Were you around in the 1970's?

Right, so you're not arguing against a free market economy.

EndlessTea if you think I'm derailing a thread about feminism and the right by talking about feminism and the right (and the left) please do feel free not to reply to my posts.

She said a 'safety net', I'm quite sure, but yes we can call it a welfare state. Although of course what that means can vary between ensuring that every person has sufficient income to feed, clothe and house themselves and creating conditions where people have to queue for hours for food and clothing and can't afford to live in decent accommodation or any accommodation at all.

An economy that's run for the benefit of people, with the desires of the free market secondary and tightly regulated.

So, yes, a matter of emphasis and priorities, although they lead to very significance differences in quality of life and opportunity for ordinary people.

I'm not responsible for you lack of understanding

No, but you are responsible for your lack of clarity and your repeated attempts to derail the thread.

I'm not responsible for you lack of understanding EndlessTea.

No, no-one has taken up my invitation to explain what HJ meant by free market economics with a safety net that doesn't rely on some social groups being oppressed.

Other than beastlyslumber and with all due respect to her, it's not a situation based on making society better for everyone.

I don't know, in all honestly, that's why I asked.

'What we've got' is shite for the majority of people, given that the UK is one of the richest countries in the world. The 'safety net' has huge, growing holes in it and there are countless people who have fallen through it with few people noticing.

If the UK were a poor country, millions of children and families living in poverty, broken education and social care systems and a health system being carved up to be sold off for profit might just about be understandable. Huge profits for energy shareholder while schools can't afford to put their heating on and ordinary, working people are struggling to stay warm less so.

Half the public sector is on strike. It's not easy (administratively) to strike now and given that people obviously don't get paid, so it's not an easy decision for many to make. Ordinary working people - the essential workers who got us all through covid - are at the end of their tether.

Nurses are on strike for the first time ever. The queues outside food banks are soul destroying, as is tripping over all the people sleeping on the streets as you walk through any town or city.

The UK wasn't like this for the latter part of the 20th century, nor indeed before 2010.

Seriously, if this is what HJ is arguing for, then she can keep it.

I don’t recall ever saying I would discuss free market economics.

Neither do you.

Because it never happened.

Using the word slippery as something to throw back is just daft. What is it? Playing dumb as a form of persuasion?

Anyway, you never satisfactorily explained it earlier in the thread. I feel none the wiser.

I'm pretty sure she said a welfare state. So the state provides welfare, funded through taxation. As @beastlyslumber says, like we have now.

The mainstream left and the mainstream right can argue about how big the state should be, levels of taxation and welfare, how and to what extent free markets should be regulated etc., up to and including whether some things should be nationalised, but there is no mainstream politics that argues against the basic model of free markets plus a welfare state.

If you are arguing generally against a free market economy then what is your alternative?

As I did earlier in this thread.

It's you that's being slippery, not sharing your insights into free market economics.

Stop being slippery @Shinyredbicycle. I asked you to insert the word of your choice and choose whether to discuss the ‘right’ or ‘far right’. You say you clearly understood what JB meant. I thought you might share that clarity so that others, such as myself, in the thread, may experience it too.

In trying to understand, I did a thought experiment.

In the talk they discussed the terms of who is funding/hosting the debate or talk, what their agenda is and whether a feminist should accept the speaking invitation.

JB discussed her creeping sense of unease at a Christian very well-funded talk and her sense that they want to eradicate lesbians and she shouldn’t be there.

I thought about how I might feel if, for example, some incels or MRAs asked me to join their platform and speak, but it seemed they were setting me up to ‘bait a feminazi’ for their own sadistic entertainment, because they only want to eradicate feminism and they aren’t interested in my viewpoint. I know would not accept that offer. I wondered if that was what it was like for JB.

However, the purpose of a religion is not to be anti lesbian/anti abortion in the same way that MRA/incels are about being anti-feminist/anti woman. So if Christians are inviting a lesbian to speak as an expert on VAWG, for example, it is not analogous to my hypothetical MRA/incel conference. They could honestly be interested in the VAWG expertise, with no hidden agenda.

HJ made the valid point of reciprocity- surely the people who believe that abortion is evil and lesbianism is sinful, are taking as much of a risk platforming a pro-choice lesbian to speak as she is to speak at the conference?

It's what we've got, more or less. Free markets and a safety net, social and legal equality.

What do you think HJ means, bike?

After you EndlessTea. I asked first, after all. Explain to me free market economics that povides a safety net and doesn't rely on some social groups being oppressed.

I did explain some of what I see JB as arguing near the beginning of this thread btw, if you care to look.

Well, the organisers of the debate used that phrase. I agree it's not helpful. HJ is of the right, so is already united so to speak.

So no-one has said that feminist should never interact with the right-wing? Yes., I think we agree on something. A strange, non-existent position for you to ask someone to elaborate then.

Well, they're scarely available at the moment, are they? Do food banks with huge queues growing each week count as a safety net? Or waiting hours for an ambulance? Or home care workers not showing up because Brexit has meant that there just aren't enough for the jobs that the agency has taken on?

And in a free market economy, who provides them?

I'd be interested in who exactly has said that.

I don’t think anyone expressly used the phrase ‘unite’ with either.

Here are some possible terms that seemed to get used interchangeably in the phrase “feminists shouldn’t ………………..the right/far right”.

Work with
Cosy up to
Unite with
Join with
Share a platform with
Align with

etc.

That’s why I used the odd phrasing.

However, @Shinyredbicycle i would love it if you could explain why feminists shouldn’t ………………… with the right/far right (choose the term and delete as appropriate) as far as you believe JB sees it.

Really? But surely it means something like we've got now - national health service, benefits for those who can't work, help with childcare etc. She's saying she wants all those things to be available.

I'd be interested in who exactly has said that.

Not JB, she's regularly published in right-wing press for pragmatic reasons as left-wing outlets won't touch feminism.

Yess, she mentioned a 'safety net' but offered no explanation of who would provide that or what it would look like.

Fair enough, that wasn't the subject of the debate. But it's where free market economics never has anything to say, imvhe.

But by the same token, HJ didn't make any sense to me when she spoke about her political views.

I seem to remember she said she was in favour of free markets plus a welfare state because whenever alternatives to free markets have been tried it has turned out very, very badly for everyone.

It's over a week since I watched this though so I could be misremembering.

Having said that. I would be genuinely interested in the position of ‘never interact with the right wing’ being explained coherently, so I could really understand it.

I flinch at going that far

Yes, I am not pulling any punches. I tell you what though, I have flinched a lot at the stuff JB comes out with. Her nasty streak about mothers and middle-classed women. For me, I had a really tough time as a mother with small children, it often felt that, in public, I was expected to pull off what is humanly impossible as a minimum requirement, trying to navigate around without causing inconvenience, while my kids screamed, wriggled and were impossible to pacify, while strangers could be such utter bastards about it (I do remember some really sweet people sometimes helping me and they were like angels) and her snarky comments about mothers with prams being self-important and stuff, really, really stung at the time. I respect her work, but I am not a fan of her.

I know lots of people fawn all over her darling, quirky hatred of people eating crisps on trains - so amusing.

I just think “nah, just symptomatic of intolerance”. She needs to grow up.