Labour candidates

I haven't seen it here yet but I think it's worth mentioning that ex-MP Laura Pidcock spoke out this week

“Violence against women is wrong, full stop. Encouraging people to punch “terfs” in the face, esp when cheered by hundreds (as happened at Trans Pride) should worry us all. That many on the left look away is indicative of a fearful culture,silencing many basic feminist principles.”
https://twitter.com/LauraPidcock/status/1681197395890130944

The inevitable tsunami of abuse followed.

It’s significant because Pidcock was an important figure in what remains of the Labour left. She would probably have been the hard-left candidate for the leadership instead of Rebecca Long-Bailey, if she hadn't lost her seat at the 2019 election.

WhereYouLeftIt · 20/07/2023 19:00
@PlanetJanette is talking about an art history book Greer wrote twenty years ago*.

To give the full quote, which @PlanetJanette has so carefully clipped, I've copied this from Wikipedia:

"In the book's opening pages, Greer writes: "Most people have accepted without question that women are treated as sex objects, viewed principally as body, with a primary duty to attract male attention. Though this is clearly true, it is also true that women are at the same time programmed for failure in their duty of attraction, because boys do it better. This is not good news for men, because a boy is a boy for only a very brief space. He has to be old enough to be capable of sexual response but not yet old enough to shave. This window of opportunity is not only narrow, it is mostly illegal. The male human is beautiful when his cheeks are still smooth, his body hairless, his head full-maned, his eyes clear, his manner shy and his belly flat."

Anyone who knows anything about Classical Greek and Roman art knows that it's full of boys and young men.

I think these Amazon reviews sum the book up quite well:

"study of the changing depiction of boys and young men throughout the history of art, including cupids, archangels and frightened little boys in armour."

and

"Germain Greer courts controversy knowingly. If you get offended by what she writes you are missing the point. The allegations against her in writing this as an advocation of paedophilia are totally stupid. That is, unless you get turned on by the old masters. There is no titillation here unless you enjoy the raunchier side of Greek myth. For me this book was interesting while she was setting up her argument but rapidly became repetitive as Greer rolled out example upon example of how boys are portrayed in art throughout history. Apart from all the pictures Greer's argument stales in later chapters and she resorts to endless retellings of how boys are 'used' in myth/legend and folklore which becomes a bit tiring. However the pictures and the fact the Germaine is a goddess carries this book into the 'good' category."

Not the first book she wrote on art, I think that would be "The Obstacle Race". It's often forgotten that Greer was a Professor of English, she taught at the University of Warwick, for heavens sake! I think I might even have one of her books on Shakespeare on my shelves.

@WhereYouLeftIt Thank you very much for taking the time to give the context to that quote, thereby allowing an entirely different understanding of it: that Germaine Greer is not a pederast after all.

There seems to be a lot of chatter about voters are organising themselves to get rid of the Tories (hence the Lib Dem victory), but would anyone want a coalition Government of Labour and Lib Dem.

And not forgetting that all the Lib Dems giving Labour their votes in Uxbridge and a low Tory turnout didn't vote the Tories out.

And I also feel politically homeless. Never have I voted Tory. A hung parliament may be the best answer. Though that might drive Labour to make even more concessions with LD/Greens over GRA etc.

This is what I appreciate about FWR threads. The temptation to dismiss outright is ignored in favour of reasoned, reasonable, and thorough responses that consider facts and evidence and opening up a wider space for discussion. However, it is also notable that PlanetJanette never returned to the thread to continue the discussion or, at least, acknowledge that the quote was taken out of context.

It is surely a depressing outcome for the Tories when labour select a candidate who appears to be the epitome of all that is absurd and odious about the Labour Party - he’s even called Keir FFS - and he still wins.
god only knows what we’ll be delivered over to in 2024. Considering emigration

The bigger story is that Tories didn't come out to vote.

Agree - and having now (whilst trying to avoid them) heard endless pundits going on about it was this policy or that policy, I just wish they would deal with facts.

Turnout now and previous
% of vote of turnout to each party compared to now and previous
and for instance, is lower turnout = to lost Tory votes?

And in fact even when they did have commentators talking about tactical voting, the commentators just ignored and kept on with their slant (not always the same) but always along the line of Stammer is a winner/loser or Sunak is a winer loser.

The bigger story is that Tories didn't come out to vote. Hardly any switched to voting leftist. Come the GE, things will be a lot more different. And if Sunak has tightened the EHRC to prioritise sex over gender and has got a grip in schools, he'll be 90% of the way to getting my vote.

I guarantee this isn't what Keir Jnr was critiquing when he called Greer a transphobe.

Too bad you're clutching at straws, maybe stick to your clutching at pearls when the ECHR is under discussion.

Coincedently this article was on twitter today by Greer - it was in the Independant in 1989 'On why sex change is a lie'. In it she describes being hounded by a transwoman in New York who sent gifts and letters and waited outside her hotel:

"His letters set out in detail what he wanted me to do, namely to accept his view of the universe, to admit him to instant intimacy and to allow him to describe my feelings. I brought the second and third (letters) on myself by acknowledging the first and telling him I was not interested. I should have said "Gender transience is a lie. You are a man. Piss off."
Because I didn't I have exposed myself again to the same old aggressive, insensitive, arrogant, thoroughly masculine hoo-haa"

She was ahead of her time I think. The first to be cancelled that I can remember thinking what's going on?

twitter.com/salltweets/status/1679714117534511106?s=20

He doesn’t care. Worse, it’s right up his alley

It was interesting to hear on BBC vox pops in both Somerset and Yorkshire how many said they’d voted tactically. I can’t recall that before.
In Uxbridge people said they were voting against ULEZ (though that might have been a convenient excuse for habitual Tory voters reluctant to face up to how awful the Conservatives are).

how badly the LibDems faired

That's because of tactical voting. Many Lib Dems voted Labour to get the Tories out.

The real eye opener is that Labour nearly lost or did lose it's deposit in the seat the Lib Dems won.

If we didn't have such pathetic news reporting these points would have been made.

Even the simplest chart (eg the one for Uxbridge) showed that.

What is disgusting is that in a seat Labour felt more confident to win they parachuted in a 25 year old incel.

Its all very well taking the high moral ground about how corrupt the Tories are, but not to then not apply the same standards to Labour, who used genuine issues such as anti-semitism to get rid a Labour Party members who didn't conform to Starmer's right wing agenda.

And let's not forget all the women expelled from Labour, despite years of loyalty, because they believe in the reality of biological sex.

The prospect of such a morally corrupt, under hand and two faced organisation being allowed to run the country is frightening. Not forgetting the core issue that they wont to talk about - erasure of women.

The LibDems have said they are targeting Tory seats and if they’re successful in this at the next election we will have more than the Labour’s TWAW stance to worry about as the LibDems seem even more wedded to it.

Isn’t this the result of tactical voting with the aim of getting the Tories out?

I am too.

I'm horrified by the backwards anti-womem Wokenazis Labour have adopted to represent the party.
Better off voting conservative even though they're ripping the country to shreds.
What a fucking choice.

I'm enjoying the takedown of this post in this thread 👍

OMG and he got in! Just when Labour were starting to look (infinitesimally) better they recruit a bunch of TRAs as candidates. Is it that identity politics are so dominant these are the only activists around? Thoroughly depressing

I dont like Greer for different reasons. I still dont know what your pererasty comment is about. It's like you never read the book or something?

You didnt read the book did you?
You would know how out of context that is.

Add to that I dont much care what other people think about other people. I vote people in or out of power based on things like, attitude, willingness to work for the country, not a moron, what the manifesto says they will do versus what they have said and done previously, whether I think I'll be better off with that party and currently of course, if they can tell who is a man and who is a woman.
But who they dislike, frankly none of my business. How they talk about those unliked people can be very illuminating.

That other Australian also runs an organisation that goes into schools to talk to children about sex and argues that adults should teach classes of children how to give and receive pleasure .

That's a hypothetical. Germaine finding teenage boys aesthetically pleasing or attractive is moot as well. Her relationships seem to have been with adult males. She isn't campaigning incessantly to have the age of consent lowered. Neither has she said it's fine to have sex with a nine year old child.

Unlike another Australian who is a trans rights activist.

In terms of candidates as well as politics in general, this is increasingly worrying me. Those of us on the left criticise Trump for his willingness to lie and make ridiculous accusations based on the flimsiness of pretexts (and rightly so), but it's become to clear that this is becoming as big a problem on the left.
If us lefties ever have a hope of making a positive difference, then adopting Trumpian politics is the worst way to do it. It's more important than ever for us to call it out.