JK Rowling on Billy Bragg and other progressive male class warriors

The truly bad ones went when he did
Did they though? I think they're still lurking in the shadows and a few months after Starmer gets them in he'll be booted out and replaced.

Before 2014 I used to do a lot with Labour. Still very much Labour in my heart. I left before Brexit, before Corbyn really.

My then job was in policy and I had to go to conference just once. Feminist organisations were just starting to be under attack, things like maternity care were completely absent while McDonnell and the unions were on the panel for sex-workers rights (all male panel) and the Labour think tanks were all sex-positive, gender focused.

I remember being absolute taken aback that people like Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper were walking down the street while around them the old guard just relentlessly almost laciviously ground the experience of being a woman or girl back to sex and sexual availability. So fucking grim.

I disliked Corbyn. Useless selfish silly old man. But that time in Labour was a bit like a boil coming to the surface. The truly bad ones went when he did and I genuinely applaud Starmer for how he has carefully and almost imperceptibly pulled Labour back from the brink.

What a powerful essay, I hope the PMCWs do some soul-searching. Why would they though, there's no consequences to their behaviour and they retain full white male privilege.

Apparently during the civil rights/hippie movements of the 60s it was the same, women were last in line for rights, and the sexual revolution led to a lot of coercion for sex to the benefit of the left-wing men.

Apologies, bold fail.

@AstonsStolenData

The truth is that the left has fucked up monumentally on gender identity ideology and until it owns the mistake, it will continue to hand the right valid talking points. As more and more PMCWs realise this, they’ll take shameless refuge in accusations that we, the women criticising the injustice and insanity of gender identity ideology, were enabling the far-right. The fact is that they’ve done exactly that, by refusing to accept that there was anything wrong with a movement that was causing serious harm to troubled young people, trampling all over women’s rights and seeking to remove single-sex services for the most vulnerable.

Why is everything the fault of the left, particularly when for the past 14 years, the Tories have been in office? Aren't the left politically toothless? They cannot influence policy or funding, apart from debate. How can they cause "serious harm to troubled young people, trample all over women's rights and seek to remove single-sex services from the most vulnerable"? In saying there is this "movement", JKR does not say who sponsors it.

American feminists circled the bandwagon defending Bill Clinton decades ago. I was still in school then but the scales dropped from my eyes. The left is as misogynist and male-centred as the right, it just refuses to acknowledge the fact.

the progressive male class warrior, usually middle-class himself, whose interest in women’s issues begins and ends with sex work, stripping and abortions.

Doesn't this just sum it up.

I don't think there's anything altruistic in this type of man's support. All three of those campaign points are directly in his interest - his right to enjoy women's bodies on demand without any of the uncomfortable possibilities of being made responsible for a child.

Men, particularly abusive men, have a lot to gain from greater control over women's fertility. I'm very sceptical of the motives behind what some of them claim to passionately support, especially in such a porn-saturated age.

Very much agree with this. I'd resist an interpretation that says this is a weird aberration from a left that's basically healthy otherwise. I'm not sure that I have a holistic explanation except that (a) many people on the left, particularly the highly educated, are so convinced of their moral superiority that they never examine their dodgy attitudes or behaviour, and (b) the culture of the organisations often brings out the worst in them.

Back in 2013 I was involved in a small way in exposing the rape coverup in the SWP. That group has its own cultish pathologies, but at the time I had a conversation with someone very well connected in Labour circles. I asked her if she could imagine something similar happening in Labour, and she said absolutely yes. Say that a popular figure was accused of something awful by the Mail or the Sun, it would be really easy to imagine party members closing ranks and refusing to ask if it might be true. There was a very similar dynamic in the Tommy Sheridan case.

What neither of us expected was five years of Corbynism where you couldn't make even the most muted criticism of Dear Leader.

I'm not saying misogyny isn't spread across the spectrum, of course it is, but there's a peculiarity about MRAism on the left. Maybe there are a few factors here. Gender identity theory and the progressive stack legitimise it for some. And there's always that Aldous Huxley line that the best way to recruit to a good cause is to offer people the chance to be cruel to an outgroup.

All I know for sure is that there are a lot of Decent Blokes, including former friends, who've shown a really ugly side of their personality.

I am not sure. I think she's right about some of the psychology in this for some, that's fair enough.

But I don't see gender ideology as some kind of bizarre fuck-up among progressives. I think it is very much part and parcel of the other identity politics and other accepted ways of thinking (for example about psychology or hierarchies of oppression or paternalism) that are found on the progressive left.

It's also very much embraced by many of the women who believe in those things. Is the explanation for those women also that they are about being MRA adjacent?

I do think that jerks and narcissists are all across the political spectrum. But to me, there is a kind of unity of viewpoint among a lot of these people which says it's about believing certain things, rather than just being jerks who hate women.

Oh god that was the 1970s for me!

Yes, she says it in full at first mention: If you’ve spent any time at all on the left of politics, you’re familiar with the progressive male class warrior,

Merchant Bankers?

Progressive Male Class… but I think the W might not necessarily stand for Warriors.

it’s brilliant, isn’t it?

They identify as progressive.

One of the replies to JKR needs to be added here.

Pictures speak a thousand words.

I grew up around a lot of very left-wing men. The attitude is very much ‘calm down love, we’re planning the revolution here, now make us a cup of tea’. Any reference to feminism that isn’t primarily centred on marxist-feminist concepts (and thus ‘relevant’ to their interests) is seen as hysterical fuss-making by a bunch of harridans who are distracting from the real class warfare issue.

Brilliant. I know which side of the table I want to be on.

‘Progressive’ should be in quotation marks because the stance these men take on women’s matters is not progressive: quite the opposite.

I cheered when I read it.

That's a cracking post Drama

Both are good 😊

At the very least - and it's still hugely significant - she is able to articulate what so few have been able to do. This is a slippery ideology, designed to subvert and up-end. Through it all, JK has been able to stay on an even keel, which can be so helpful.

She is a phenomenal debater. Her arguments, of course, will have no sway on BB himself, but perhaps they will serve to get some others doubting and thinking ...

I normally try and avoid posting on threads about BB because I honestly don't think he deserves all the attention. But I'll make an exception for this, in fact I might have to learn it by heart, particularly this bit:
'The truth is that the left has fucked up monumentally on gender identity ideology and until it owns the mistake, it will continue to hand the right valid talking points.'

And this;
The sense of betrayal women on the left feel towards men like Bragg will take a long time to disappear, if it ever does.'

And, I have to say, I apply it to some women on the left too.
I'm not sure I will ever forgive.

The progressive Left have always been anti women. They blindly accept any male argument, have to be forced to have women on executive committees because everyone knows that the Left wont vote a woman into a position of power. The Corbynistas were desperate to take away the achievements of an outstanding Labour female politician ( Mo Mowlam) and hand it to a mediocre man (Jeremy Corbyn) in relation to NI and the Good Friday agreement, sections of the Trans Activist Harry Potter fans were campaigning again to get the works of an outstanding woman (JKR) and get them reattributed to the mediocre Daniel Radcliffe. Virtually all worldwide murders of trans people where their trans status was a major part have been committed by men, yet its gender critical women who are killing trans people with their words. No campaigning against male violence to women and trans women. The little lambs cant help it. They are radicalised into violence by middle aged women and their defence of science.