Maya’s response to Radical Notion’s GC divisions

Thank you!

Here it is: hiyamaya.net/2023/02/09/on-gender-critical-disputes/

I was going to send this article to my son to read, but it has been taken down! Did anyone save a copy?

The biggest question that came to me was how has the leadership of all the parties ended up being such a bunch of ...... all chasing the woo and without a spark of integrity, morals or ability to communicate with a room of normal people, or to speak without a herd of SPADs feeding them a carefully pre written script when there are people of the quality of Ruzylo in the party, but never allowed to rise to leadership levels .

There is something fundamentally wrong with our political system. There are those of the calibre needed, but the current system ensures that no one of quality is ever allowed to rise to the top.

There are religious men who don't use porn. I'm yet to meet a man who recognises how it hurts women, and the relationship between men and women.

I wonder if there is a selection effect here. The algorithms escalate - someone who doesn’t have a porn habit won’t have seen the worst stuff. Similarly, misogynistic men test the waters with each other first… my male partner has some friends who are the type to send porn videos as a “joke,” but he finds it annoying and doesn’t respond, so it’s never escalated.

Apart from the rare men with an active interest in radical feminism, it’s the men who actually watch violent, degrading porn who are aware of the extent to which porn hurts women, and of course they don’t care.

(This might not apply so much to younger men who had smartphones as teenagers. I assume many of them have been exposed to grim stuff whether they choose it or not.)

Not stuffing envelopes or doing leaflet rounds, that’s for sure.

Hey who needs boring middle-aged women when there are shiny twenty-somethings!

Where is Lily Madigan now; ShireWife I was wondering the other day.

Yep.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive the left for falling straight into the woowoo.

How can we trust governments and public institutions that lose their grip on reality at the shake of some rainbow hued glitter?

It was the first giant clue that things like political skill, real life knowledge, connection with voters and full understanding of issues, socialism, things like that, were all being hurled aside for a bunch of shiny nonsense.

Yep. It’s an utter disgrace that Anne was thrown under the bus by Labour in it’s mad scramble after bullshit new-fangled Tumblr policies demanded by no-nothing teens.

Where IS Lily Madigan now, eh Labour?

Filed in the same political memory hole as Jess Bradley and Aimee Challoner?

Presume that’s where Beth Douglas will end up shortly?

I'll fangirl with you. The first time I heard Anne Ruzylo speak my mouth dropped open. There were people like her in Labours ranks as all this mess started, never allowed up through the ranks, but find any top politician of any party that can hold a room like she can and answer any question asked. If people like her were running Labour I'd be a passionate supporter.

ShireWife;
Julia Long, Anne Ruzylo, Sheila Jeffreys (and Germaine Greer) were right, we have to be able to speak plainly and call a spade a spade, a man
Love these strong women so! Germaine Greer opened my eyes and the "Female Eunuch" turned me to loving being a woman and hating men's bad behavior instead of myself. Revolutionary. Every adolescent girl should get a copy
Demi; I guess they are angry others are indeed more successful.

The fact is that some of those women aren't on the left, and have never really been on the left, and don't identify with the left.

I think it drives the Head Girl types crazy that people might decide/think/realize that feminism isn't just a left wing thing. Or maybe, they can't live with that idea? I don't know.

But all the worse that this feminism that is not of the left seems to be good at political action.

I’ve not seen it and I don’t think I’ll seek it out. The negativity is depressing.

I agree, please excuse the fan girling for a minute but Julia Long is my absolute fave!

Julia Long, Anne Ruzylo, Sheila Jeffreys (and Germaine Greer) were right, we have to be able to speak plainly and call a spade a spade, a man a man.

Women should absolutely form their own orgs and do things their own way, this is a issue that affects us all and if left wing feminists still think they can get through to their non feminist party comrades that’s great.

But we can’t wait around while they are doing it.

Colin Wright is right, this is Reality’s Last Stand.

And I’m standing for reality beside Posie and Helen J and Maya and Heather BE and Stephanie DA and Venice and more.

I can’t tolerate any more PoMo bollox.

Ye olde footage of my shero Julia on TV with Jack Monroe:

Hellebore; I've always been on the conservative side politically though now I'd say I agree with the UK SDP; and frankly it's great to mature and evolve. For all of us. Is it a religion with these left-wing women or what. I really don't get it

I saw that Queen. It really showed how narrow their viewpoint is.

Has anyone seen @gappytales tweets, basically rubbishing Maya for having ideas the official radfems didn't endorse. It's really shocking and telling to me.
Honestly it's like a cult. Maya, Helen Joyce, Kellie-Jay Keen, Julia Long and many others are wonderful wonderful women whom I admire and respect so!

My online experience is that it makes no difference here if the man is left or right politically speaking.

Given that oxfam workers used desperate girls as prostitutes, I can't say I'm surprised. The left just think they are more moral than the right.

I find that older men often think about porn more in the mode of old videos and magazines. They don't always consider the implications of the technological change. But if they do, they can usually see that it could have a differernt effect.

Younger men not so much.

I find a lot of men have a purely pragmatic approach, they think that wanking is inevitable, and they just see porn as a kind of adjunct to that which will always be in demand. People who think that way also tend to see many other potentially socially damaging things similarly, gambling, illegal cigarettes, party drugs, and so on. All of which have a human cost in the end.

I don't think much research exists in this area, but one researcher proposed a hypothesis that porn is addictive, because it takes a basic human drive and presents it more extreme versions of the kinds of signals that might exist in real-life sex, and there is nothing in human evolution that would stop that from having an effect on that part of the brain which responds to sexual cues.

It's like porn is giving you the female sexualised body on steroids while removing all the humanity of the woman and sharp elbows and the need to consider your partner's pleasure. So it is not that unrealistic that many men would ultimately find it more arousing than real bodies, and if this, indeed, is an addiction, it is not at all impossible that the addicted would find tooth and nail for the source of their drug to remain legal.

Also, because of the addictive aspect, more and more boundary-violating porn is needed later for the viewer to orgasm. This means more violent and dehumanising porn about women.

And I agree that most men I have discussed porn with do think they have a right to it (you can take it off my dead hands..), and those who are aware of the harm of porn focus on the harm it does on young men who suffer from erectile dysfunction and can't get aroused with real women etc.

My online experience is that it makes no difference here if the man is left or right politically speaking.

She said “I saw that beautiful young man, with everything ahead of him, I just knew in my heart, straight away that he couldn’t be guilty”. Basically, for her, young good looks + male + looking sad and frightened at the possibility of prison = innocent.

This reminds of the women who sent love letters to Ted Bundy in prison. There's some women who will never, ever get it.

I'm in and mix with a slightly older demographic than @thedankness but share the experience of men's views of porn. Hardly any are aware of the possibility of any physical harm to themselves from using it, and very few give a moment's thought to the societal harms.

Yes. It is insane that they are so invested in female inferiority.

Something anecdotal from my life, to support the idea of women upholding patriarchy.

The thing that horrifies me most about the gender wars is the adult women on the other side - there are a handful of transmen activists who amassed a truly astonishing amount of political influence in the UK and USA (who have then gleefully signed the rights of women away), and then there are the munchiemoms and the female gender doctors like Webberly and Gallagher.

I find them really hard to get my head around.

if my OH spoke to me in an equivalently sexist fashion about Women who can't cope with words like xxxx (take your pick) our relationship wouldn't last 2 minutes.

But that isn’t sexist.

The statement isn't sexist, and nor is the word patriarchy. The latter is a description of a particular type of social system; and the former is a reasonable assumption. If they can't cope with a word describing the problem, they probably won't be very helpful in trying to change it.