Overlap of those who are GC on social media and are also Russell Brand supporters.

Imo, people may be more sympathetic to the (without evidence) conspiracy theories that it's targeting Brand because he is talking about pharmaceutical companies or whatever, because there is real evidence elsewhere of dubious censorship by social media companies, including in cooperation with government.

So you get banned for saying, "TWAM", which shows how questionable "hate speech" censorship is. I don't care if they are a "private company"; if major platforms are suppressing the truth out of political bias or other reason, it's a genuine "free speech" issue regardless of whether they can legally do it as a private business.

Or they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story as, "looks like Russian disinformation", when the content was real. Or people got censored for supposed, "medical misinformation".

Odd if true, inasmuch as Brand is himself very TRA. Or used to be. Or pretended to be. Who knows anymore?

Presumably it hasn't made you question whether you're right about humans not being able to change sex though?

So what does it matter if some people you think are right about humans not being able to change sex are wrong about Russell Brand?

IG is Instagran where older women compare cardies and GC is Granny Critical where older women are complained about for being old and out of touch.

Why does everyone speak in acronyms on mumsnet. I don’t understand what they’re talking about! What does IG and GC even mean? 😂 why can’t people just type out the full word so we all understand. Maybe I’m too old for this forum…

I have seen a few women I know personally, who don't believe you can change sex, defend Brand and call it a conspiracy to shut his voice down etc, but I wouldn't call them feminists. They wouldn't call themselves feminists either.
Like pp have pointed out, the opinion that you can't change sex is going to be held by a great proportion of the public, but that doesn't mean they give a fig about their fellow women, sadly.
Or rather, believe women/a woman over a man in these circumstances.

No

Same.

I don't think they support the rights of women and protecting children as much as they say they do.

It's made me reassess all of them.

I really do wonder if any woman is going to really think 'oh - so wanting equality with men and the right not to be forced by law to be used by men, and to lie for men, is right wing now? Ok, here are my rights, I embrace my slavery'.

If that's the left wing for you.... well I'll gladly fund the freedom programme for escapees but count me right out.

I do find the endless attempt to make anything even remotely distasteful right wing very amusing.

That's nonsense. Such a flat unnuanced reading.

People who are critical of transgender ideologuy and Queer Theory ( its originator) are critical because it is not rooted in reality - where we all live. Furtehrmore, it is regressive to push the idea that women have to behave in a certain way, or like certai n things- and if they don't they are men.

As it is regressive and insulting to suggest that men who get an erotic thrill from cross dressing should be including in the category of women - and given full acceees to their intimate protected spaces.

Pretending men can become women and so should have access to women's single sex facilities and categories is what happens to you when you have no practical, common sense and have ridiculously naive, idealistic pretensions based on academic theory - divorced from practical reality.

Yes, good post!

The 'over-lap' occurs around the issue of tribal condemnation whereby people are seen as either being " whiolly good people on the right side of history" or totally "evil, right wing bigots" who must be hounded from society; lose their livelihod, and be cancelled from absolutely everything.

Russell Brand is clearly guilty of the things he's been accused of, and will have to face up to the consequnces of that - but the way that everbody rushes to disassociate themselves from ever having approved of him , or liked him, because they want to. " be on the right side of history" is galling.

I am beyond furious that the political left have put women in a position where we either have to agree that our rights are less important than those of male people who believe they identify as women, or occupy common ground with people whose politics we otherwise deplore, including, in some cases, people who would deny us the right to have an abortion.

@MargotBamborough - absolutely bang on.

"Men will be men" is the opposite of gender critical.

Not everyone who believes sex is binary and immutable is gender critical. Some of them are very accepting of gender, they just think it should be dependent on biological sex.

A lot of GC people are traditional and conservative ‘men will be men and women are women’ sort of thing so it doesn’t surprise me at all. They also hate the general media and ‘new’ woke rhetoric.

I completely agree.

Also, rather like JS, Brand has been ‘hiding’ in plain sight for decades. How anyone could bear to listen or watch him after thé Andrew Sachs call is completely beyond me. But I am well aware that a lot of cool girls would call me a right wing bigot for thinking that that sort of behaviour is vile.

I would boycott anything he did, and I would think less of anyone who had any regard for him, but I don’t think he should be censored or defunded. If there are proven criminal offences, he should pay the appropriate penalty.

If it is accidental...

All I'm threading from that thread title is "if you are critical of gender identity belief you also support alleged rapists".

@Coyoacan I believe the women who have been abused by Brand. And I have no problem with him being suspended from YouTube, just as I would have no problem with a company suspending an employee who is suspected of rape or any other crime. There is no comparison with KJK or JKR: neither are rape suspects.

I also believe the women who were abused by Assange, and Salmond. I couldn’t give two fucks that charges were dropped or they were acquitted. The legal system is terrible at successfully prosecuting sexual abuse and “not guilty” is not the same thing as “innocent”.

The UK court system is already designed to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent.

The trouble with rape is that it's so easy to argue that it was consensual and very difficult to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that it was rape.

The police could probably do a better job of investigating rapes, particularly if they spent less time quizzing women over transphobic stickers.

But as for the court system, in order to get a higher conviction rate with the kind of evidence prosecutors usually have, they would need to lower the burden of proof which would result in more innocent people being convicted as well as more guilty people being convicted.

Caroline Dinenage isn't a government minister. She's Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which is cross-party.

I am very concerned that a government minister has been seeking to have Russell Brand cancelled rather than wait until he is found guilty in a court of law. It shows the same lack of faith in the UK judicial system as many people express here but from one of the very people in a position to make sure it works.

I don't know or follow Russell Brand but pharmaceutical companies have become extremely dangerous opponents, as we have witnessed in the transgender debate and he has lately been speaking out against against vaccines.

I'm always surprised that people who have seen how unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies are expect us to believe their every word in every other area of medicine, but such are the contradictions of this world.

I am not in the least bit interested in defending Russell Brand but a lot of women are very quick to jump on the bandwagon of condemning any man accused of sexual attacks and those types of accusations are often used for political ends. Eg. The charges against Assange were dropped once he was in prison and Alex Salmond was eventually found not guilty of the charges against him.

What is needed in the UK is a court system that can be relied on to send the guilty to prison and let the innocent off. Maybe then there will be an end to trial by media, which seems to a modern form of lynching.

I've seen a feminist lawyer going on about 'due process' and 'innocent until proven guilty'.

which I would agree with if the conviction rate of sexual offenders would actually reflect the actual offending and not the very low % rate we see today.

Yes, there's trial by Twitter and then there's the fact that multiple journalists and high profile news outlets have put their necks on the line over this story.

They wouldn't have run it if they didn't have proof.

The chances of it not being true are virtually nil.

"I think we all need to be sensitive to what's going on.
This hounding of a person, pile on from all angles of the media, the directing of opinion and cancellation is not fair or right without proper process.
Isn't this how some GC people have been treated?"

The news stories about Russell Brand are the result of years of painstaking investigative journalism, cleared by lawyers. There are numerous quotes from RB in which he admits to being a sexual predator. RB has lots of money and can easily launch a defamation action if he disputes the allegations.

It's a totally different situation from a GC feminist being cancelled for saying that a man can't become a woman.

It is a good thread title for the search engines.