Mumsnet: An echo chamber for the leftist chatterati?

[Cam2020]

Just that really-what do people think?

It's known for trans phobia not exactly left wing

The definition of transphobia appears to have evolved to mean anyone who doesn't actually believe that men can literally become women.

It's not terribly surprising therefore, that the idea that biological sex cannot be changed is not just a right wing perspective but unites people across the political spectrum.

Depends on where you've placed the left doesn't it?
I think I'm centre ground. My Dad thinks he's centre ground. We hold quite different views.

Truth is no one party or political thinking ever really encapsulates someone's thinking about every topic - that's what make it interesting.

ps. Is standing up vociferously for single sex spaces leftish or rightish?

To answer your ps, definitely rightish. The left appear not to gives a shit about women's spaces whereas Tory MPs and Baroness Nicholson are at least speaking up for us on that.

i dont think thats the whole truth- the state we're in, is after 10 years of tory govt, self-id came from the tories and there is alot of pressure from edward lord, city of london etc to give up single sex spaces and the fightback has largely come from trad left-leaning women and jounalists. eg julie bindel, jfk, maya forstatter, hadley freeman, oh and graham linehan. ill also direct you to Paul embury, blue labour.

but yeah i have no words for lisa nandy, layla moran et al,

Lots of interesting and, diverse opinions.

Yes there are certainly a lot of people on here who claim to be left wing but seem to have contempt for others in a less privileged position. To take a trivial example. The threads about workmen using their loos and causing a stink. Some mnetters' shit literally doesn't stink.

This, is actually my biggest bugbear - the faux left brigade who actually hate the working class, their behaviour and opinions.

Sorry for the erroneous commas, my phone seems to like ramdonly sprinkling them everywhere and I don't catch them all.

Isn't the link between education and left voting at least partially a function of the age cleavage in British politics too? Once you're past the early 20s, as obv people don't tend to have degrees before then, the younger someone is the higher their educational qualifications are likely to be, and younger people are also the least likely to be right wing voting. It's at least partly about the expansion of degree provision in recent decades.

There are some very noisy people on the left and the right. Their noise doesn’t equal representative opinions.

When the noise makers get together they goad each other to ever noisier heights. Both sides are full of people with small minds and ever growing prejudices. The trolls love to get them going. And boy do they go. Reasonable people melt away. That’s why they become echo chambers. With the odd troll to keep the pointless arguments going.

Both of these groups have one thing in common. They want to be divisive. In their world there is no compromise or consensus. Both hate the middle ground. And they certainly don’t want to listen to moderate views.

I'm not sure about a left wing echo chamber but there are definitely prevailing man opinions on a number of subjects. For example;
Tories kill poor people and disabled people
Brexit is bad and propagated by knuckle dragging thugs
People cannot change sex

If you are posting in support of prevailing opinion then anecdote is fine and dandy. If you're not, then 'link please' will be the first comment. Followed by a pile on.

But not sure it's a left wing thing - there are left wing leavers (as a pp said).

@Cam2020 I've seen a lot of that. People claiming you must be a Tory shill if you express concern about the economy, MH or children being out of school; because 'everyone' they know has stuck rigidly to lockdown guidance, saved money and had improved MH for them and their children, excellent home schooling from their schools etc.

And that those suffering in shitty conditions would be suffering now and in the future in any case and lockdown/the virus hasn't made much difference.

Which seems quite a Tory view to me ..

People claiming you must be a Tory shill if you express concern about the economy, MH or children being out of school

Tories concerned about mental health? Thanks for giving me a good chuckle.

I'm a mental health nurse who qualified the year the Conservatives came into power. Since then mental health services have been systematically run into the ground and increasingly sold off. I don't feel safe at work.

The link between right wing beliefs and prejudice/lack of intelligence/authoritarianism is present long before university age.

'People with lower emotional intelligence are more likely to hold right-wing views, study finds'

www.psypost.org/2019/09/people-with-lower-emotional-intelligence-are-more-likely-to-hold-right-wing-views-study-finds-54369

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

www.asanet.org/research-and-publications/journals/social-psychology-quarterly/why-liberals-and-atheists-are-more-intelligent

Study links low intelligence with right-wing beliefs

www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/study-links-low-intelligence-with-right-wing-beliefs/article543361/

Cognitive ability, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation: A five-year longitudinal study amongst adolescents

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001339

@Cam2020. Can you define leftie chatterati?

I guess that some people don't express their true views because they don't like pile ons.

Or straw men.
Or rigid binary thinking.

So people then see their views reflected back to them and think that this is what people mostly believe.

Ha. Yes. Constant Boris bashing, DC bashing. No one bashing the leftist media or Kinnock or the Scots Transport Police Chief or Starmer, or Grooming Gangs response.

The whole political spectrum is on here but people have a bigger chip about privileged , in their eyes, Tories than about Labour. There was dismissal of JC at the time but much less of the hatred of some hard wing lefties.
DC is a Slimy venomous toad etc, mind you some are like that about celebrities. Whom they haven't met either.

I tend to find that across threads opinions can vary wildly, but within threads you often get 'clumps' that can act like an echo chamber.

Recently I remember a number of threads in early lockdown about what to do with existing DC if you are due to give birth. Same question, but the tone of the responses varied wildly from thread to thread.

I too have been called both left and right wing - as an insult - depending on points that I make on threads on all manner of things. It is nothing but an attempt to polarise and divide.

(I am also so surpised that so many people who would never allow a Daily Mail headline to reach their eyes are able to accurately identify other posters who clearly have the DM mainlined into their brains! Curious)

Nope, this place is one of the most balanced, intelligent platform on the net. Seriously.

I don't think so. I genuinely think the great thing about MN is that all human life is here. There are a fair amount of left/progressive voices on here (and there were definitely some very foaming at the mouth "Tories are all Nazis"-type threads around Brexit). But there's always a robust alternative point of view.

Its aimed at women, who are often preoccupied with the fact that women have historically been disadvantaged in society in so many ways. That may skew it to the left somewhat. But I don't think its an unquestioning echo chamber.

@Helmetbymidnight

but yeah i have no words for lisa nandy

Here you go...

Leadership candidates Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey signed a pledge card last week, calling for critics of trans ideology to be expelled from the party. And now, Nandy has reignited the row by saying that male-bodied rapists should be allowed to serve their sentences in women’s prisons if they identify as women.
Julia Long, a gender-critical feminist, asked Nandy at a recent event whether violent male sexual offenders, like Christopher Worton, should be let into women’s prisons. Worton, a convicted paedophile who raped two girls aged 13 and 15 five times, began identifying as Zoe Lynes after his conviction. He recentlybrokea sexual-harm prevention order.

Nandy responded with the oft-repeated mantra that trans women are women. For Nandy, that means crimes by trans women should be recorded as committed by women. She also said that trans prisoners ‘should be accommodated in a prison of their choosing’.

I agree with Helmet, people are so tribal about the party they voted for, they dont criticise it. This tribalistic politics needs to stop, politics and the media are in a dark place right now. I wish the media would just present the facts and not the bias. It's a shit show, and frankly its embarrassing.

I well know about Lisa Nandy - That's why I said I have no words for her.

I think characterising the debate as left v right is a mistake though. It seems to me that most of the opposition to gender orthodoxy - as well as most of the support - is coming from the left. I would be astonished if say, Julia Long was a 'right-winger'. :)

Baroness Nicholson is interesting as both a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat - she's not what anyone would call right-wing. She's probably someone who judges things on a case by case basis - which is something we all need to do a bit more of.

There are people who seem to think we should be criticising the opposition at the same rate as we criticise the govt. The Govt make the decisions and hold the power - its quite natural that they soak up our attention.

Yes-endless personal insults at Tories pointless thread about Boris's name only there to be poisonous -completely unchallenged by MN.The other day I posted a thread about my disgust at the hypocrisy of the RNLI. Before I could even return to it an hour later, it had been taken down with zero explanation so have no idea what happened on it, no communication from MN admin but presume that as usual lefties had whined that it was unfair on the charidee sector (who are all saints and not to be questioned and demanded it be taken down.

This, is actually my biggest bugbear - the faux left brigade who actually hate the working class, their behaviour and opinions.

Yes - all those inclusive pro-diversity remainers who would rather have a Romanian nanny than one of those awful people from the North of England.

Thats a massive leap beltane

Ive seen threads criticising charities before on mumsnet

And lots of conservative voters support charities and would be just as likely to complain