The managed silence of women in politics

When a venue cancels because of protestors threatening to break things, they are putting up a big neon sign that says "we negotiate with terrorists". The venues ought to refer themselves and the protestors to Prevent.

Don’t self censor on here, @PrizedPickledPopcorn, that post seemed pretty accurate! Of course MN in general and FWR in particular is a very unusual discussion forum in being majority female. It might be vaguely interesting to see how some of the ‘sealion’ types who beach up here from time to time post on a more typical, ie male dominated platform.

Self censorship is often associated with lower levels of confidence.

Men who know shit all are much more likely to blah their way through something and fake it than women.

Also, discussion v argument. You can want to have a conversation about an article, work out the implications, see what holds and does not hold. I’d call that a discussion.

Straw man arguments are for when you have no other clue and ad hominem attacks are known as the argument of last resort for a reason. If you have nothing else attack the reputation of MNetters rather than have a credible discussion based on substantive matters.

This is a pattern that's becoming more and more prevalent round these parts as one by one these court cases and emerging scandals give no where else for discussions to go as TRAs literally run out of respectable arguments.

I self censor for fear of displaying my ignorance at times, but here goes- when they analyse conversations/films/meetings and identify the ratio of air time taken by men v women…
I’d be interested to see that done on FWR/MN. Obviously we don’t know who is male, but we do know that some posters take up a lot of space compared to others.

Also, discussion v argument. You can want to have a conversation about an article, work out the implications, see what holds and does not hold. I’d call that a discussion.
In contrast, you can have arguments. When people are focussed on drowning out other opinions, uninterested in refining their own ideas, interested only in disproving other people’s, perhaps even disagreeing for the sake of it, that’s not discussion, it’s argument.

Sometimes MN reminds me of toddlers grabbing your cheeks and turning your face towards theirs, putting their fingers in your mouth, because you are talking on the phone. Me, me, me mummy! Look at me!

Yep.

And I think seeing it, become a factor in women digging to the trenches and setting up for WW1 levels of stagnation.

It was the first signature of trans rights activism that I perceived. The dupers’ delight joy of reversing reality as a DARVO.

🎯

Gatiss has written with both Moffatt and Russell T Davies previously for Dr Who.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gatiss

His career is fascinating.

Toxic masculine nerdsville central. (On a personal level a lot of this works for me, but jesus, there's a blind spot in his writing).

I had no idea there was a Russel T Davies connection.

Nevermind the 'we'.

How did Gatiss, Moffatt and Russell T Davies work together at any level and not end up having conversations about the impact of authoritarianism, censorship or themes about fantasy and denial of reality? These are integral to Dr Who. They all have this idea of 'the dark side of everyday life in all classes' to some degree.

Literally the only explanation is a level of huge misogynist undertones.

When you look at the background, careers and general beliefs of the three of them its pretty mind-blowing on a macro level and micro level.

Politically there's something missing.

There's obviously a massive elephant in the room here thats not a bull elephant but a mighty elephant with tits.

So, I’ve just watched Babs the Taxi driver for the first time, @RedToothBrush . How on earth did we end up where we are when men could clearly see the situation back then? Noticeable that it is men in both shows.

When did that get forgotten? Monty Python (also men) got it, LoG and LB got it.
They knew! So why was that all ignored in favour of the victim mentality?

And I am without a doubt unable to talk about this anywhere else. There are two groups of people in my world- the ones who agree but it’s ’such a tiny problem, let’s just be kind, it will never happen, stop going on’, and the ‘people are literally dying because you said that out loud!’, bunch.

It’s infuriating. The penalty is social (including some family) exclusion for me, rather than losing my job. But my work is without doubt pretty woke.

@IwantToRetire
What is the point of constantly posting on a feminist board where there is a shared understanding that women as a sex class are oppressed by the male sex class.Therefore all discusion is through this prism.

Thanks for the linked article in your OP and for this comment. I might spend more time on FWR if the trolls were kicked off.

Agree, thank you

Women are performing their requisite female roles, or they are worthless.

Put it this way, the term 'terf' is 100% 'gendered'. Women are terfs. Men are just saying something people don't find okay I say, steady on chap.

But women are dehumanise by 'terf' or 'germ' and banished forever. We are easily tainted by the wrong beliefs or statements, and tarnished beyond redemption.

I suppose it's the old virgin/whore dichotomy re-branded for the 2020s.

The whole issue of 'gender' has been used as a Maguffin, a way to signal loyalty, to show who is willing to chant a mantra, no matter how absurd. And then can be used as a way to punish dissenters.

It is phenomenally weighted against women, too.

One only has to look at the difference between what happens when, say, Rosie Duffield says something on the matter and what happens when Wes Streeting says something.

Yes, the TRAs will go mad after both of them, but only one has ever been censured from the top/other party members.

Such an interesting thread. The idea that anyone's arguing women haven't been silenced / are self silencing, both in and outside politics, is nonsense. It's so well documented with the BBC's recent issues highlighting how the media have taken an active lead.

I cannot say anything gender-critical in public in my own name as I work in Equalities in the public sector. I would be an easy target to claim I was transphobic and get me sacked, despite there being no evidence of transphobia because I'm not.

Everyone knows I'm a feminist but I can't discuss this aspect of women's rights or publicly join the battle because I and my children cannot afford for me to lose my current and future livelihoods. Maybe when I retire.

So yes, there absolutely is self-censorship. And it is predominantly women self-censoring.

Interesting

We categorise women as being the female people and men as male. So does the Supreme Court. The Equality Act is how we manage competing rights. There is no right to enter a space designated for the opposite sex.

There is no category of women that contains male people.

Forstater was fired for believing this. FiLiA's conference venue was vandalised because some of FiLiA's speakers believe this. There is stilll a chilling effect on women's ability to say "women don't have penises" and that's what this thread is about.

DH loved South Park growing up BECAUSE it was offensive. Deliberately so. I don't like it. But he has a real point. It goes after EVERYONE and doesn't have a sacred cast. The idea is precisely that 'no one is above ridicule and criticism'. And this IS uncomfortable. On this point I actually agree with DH that it's almost important to have a series where nothing is off limits.

I get nervous about censorship because you don't have much oversight over who is doing the censorship and whether this means you miss really important issues. I have always had an uneasy relationship with South Park but I guess it's not about me and I do see that it does have a value that I agree with even if I probably would prefer it didn't exist.

Certainly this dynamic has implications - pretty much all current politics revolves around this concept of censored political views coming back to haunt so it's a subject we should be looking at. However uncomfortable it is.

One of the issues at the heart of censorship is the idea of protecting the middle classes from the world. I had a lecture back in the middle 90s where they showed footage from a war zone that was edited from the BBC coverage. It was horrendous. It was about protecting the British public from the awfulness of what the British were doing though. At the time there was a debate about how news channels like Al Jazeera were making editorial decisions to show it. The lecture was about what the political implications of this might be in terms of domestic politics and international politics. Now that debate has really shifted to the same point but with social media.

The underlying point is actually that you can try and sanitise the world to audiences but underlying issues and injustices don't go away.

Part of this is actually recognising that it's not only inappropriate to silence politically. It's a futile exercise as it all comes out in the wash eventually.

Attacks on FWR on MN have been politically motivated to shut down all dissent from a particular group. This isn't the same as someone from outside who has the ability to talk about the subject elsewhere, being given short shrift. The idea it's the same is just yet another strategy to politically silence on MN. The whole point is that we centre women here and then take conversations elsewhere with the idea that women's needs and considerations aren't talked about or valued anywhere else and that they remain important, lawful and necessary to see without dilution before they get to decision making circles. Because issues don't just disappear because they are politically inconvenient to you or at odds with what you believe.

(Intentional derail- spotted an opportunity to talk about Little Britain)

Yes, I agree completely; however I think it was maybe too clever? The guy in the wheelchair clearly taking the "nice" guy for a ride bit into the whole "disabled saint" idea...but then legitimised anti-disabled sentiment as "they're all putting it on".

The skits highlighting the casual racism of the English were spot on though:
WI lady 1 - "Lovely scones, did Janet make them?"
WI lady 2 - "no, it was Shilpa", waves to Indian lady baker
WI lady 1 - vomits
(Quoted from memory so possibly wrong)

Absolutely not.

It amuses me cos LoG was always about making you feel uncomfortable and ill at ease. That was the point. It was comedy as horror and the concept clearly followed through with Inside No9 and Psychoville is generally how Pemberton, Gatiss and Shearsmith write and what they are influenced by. It was supposed to touch that line you didn't like and ask questions of society and it's stereotypes as a whole.

I didn't like watching it in my early twenties because I found it disturbing and not politically correct. It wasn't for me. But that's it - I chose not to watch it (my Dad loved it and lots of my friends did). According to wiki - Papa Lazarou has been listed as both the 8th and 14th most popular sketch of all time with British audiences, according to the Radio Times and Channel 4, respectively. If you are of a certain age, you will definitely know how much the phrase 'your my wife now Dave' caught on.

But it's not just about Papa Lazarou.

Think of Pauline Campbell-Jones - the jobsworths job centre advisor who was totally unreasonable and inhuman and thought her clients were her subjects and she was Queen. The whole thing is ahead of its time in it's portrayal of the Middle Class contempt for the unworthy on benefits and the system being stacked against people and how it treated them.

It's an observation that you wouldn't get from other quarters. I can't imagine anyone else commenting on 'the local shop for local people' (based on Alston in Cumbria) apart from a bunch of northerners either - a posh dude from the South doing the same wouldn't have got away with it! And actually there's a real ongoing relevance today with the concept.

It poked at the very edges of acceptability for a reason. They are dark and it's an area of British comedy that they've very much taken as their own without much competition.

Weirdly I think Papa Lazarou has probably become less problematic for the series than the characters played by the male actors and Babs the taxi driver. It's almost like drag acting is popular, but oh no you can't do drag like that because it's not fabulous, it's dark and hideous.

I note Pemberton, Gatiss and Shearsmith are all northerners. They meet at the performing arts college Bretton Hall College of Education in Leeds (it's now part of Leeds uni but at the time it wasn't). They are very much outside the Cambridge Footlights circle. (On that subject we were watching Taskmaster the other week and DH made a comment about the footlights. He ended up looking it up and found that just about every series had two ex footlights on and that if you became the president of the footlights you had a 50% chance of a good high profile career in comedy).

So no I don't think for a second LoG would have been commissioned, I don't think Gatiss, Pemberton or Shearsmith would have careers and that would have significant implications for other notable serieses - Doctor Who, Sherlock, Dracula...

In the context of their careers, popularity, influence and the area of comedy they inhibited it's almost crazy to think that LoG ever got cancelled in the first place tbh. You don't have to like it or be comfortable with it - it was an era defining comedy which still has significant ongoing influence - which unlike some of the more trying ones from the 70s - still resonates. I think in a way, you have to let the datedness of comedy simply fade rather than ban.

But I distress as much as it does give much to ponder...

As we are on the subject - Kemi Badenoch is vocal and excellent on people criticising Shabana Mahmood talking about migration issues on the basis of the colour of her skin.

The people Badenoch are talking about are not far right nuts, they're Guardian journalists.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/badenoch-guns-for-the-guardian/