The US ultra-right should leave the UK alone!!!

[StandFirm]

I was going to use a rude expletive in the thread title to truly reflect my thoughts on this. I've known about this insidious creeping influence for a little while but reading the article in the link below has made me livid. We are not going to be censored by foreign actors who understand nothing about our culture. I have often observed a false sense of familiarity among Brits regarding American culture but it goes both ways, and this attempt at dragging us along into the dark pit of ignorance should stay the fuck away from here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/librarians-in-uk-increasingly-asked-to-remove-books-as-influence-of-us-pressure-groups-spreads

And yet look what the at how far the under funded, disorganised left have managed to push through the trans agenda with such a lack of organisation.

Look how Stonewall have woven themselves into the fabric of both the public and private sector, to the point where they've had the civil service, the NHS, the police and most of the corporate world dancing to their tune and pretending that their misrepresentation of the law is the actual law. Look at the Denton's report.

Seems pretty organised to me.

Stonewall is not "the left".

If you're suggesting that Stonewall was borne out of the political right then I'd agree that they have certain similarities with far right groups but I don't think that is the accepted narrative in the community.

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm stating that Stonewall are not the left. Same as Gingerbread are not the left.

They may well be left leaning, but they are a single issue pressure group. They are not the left.

Maybe not, but they have poisoned the left, who have absolutely swallowed their bullshit.

Some on the right may have swallowed it as well, but not to the same extent.

Like MAGA has poisoned the right in America?

Yes, I'm calling you a hypocrite. Because by "all women" you meant "women and men who identify as women, who we should pretend are actually women, to protect their feelings". It was obvious from the context, and your response here has only confirmed it. If a man is in enough pain and he really believes it, well, then maybe we should say he's a woman! That's your argument. The #bekind argument.

As I and many others have pointed out to you, pretending a man can be any kind of woman strips the word "woman" of its meaning. Which automatically undoes the rights women fought for centuries to secure. It's one of the most disgusting, manipulative tactics ever used to undermine feminism, and years of gaslighting has been required to sustain it. It wasn't "the ultra right" doing that. It was the mainstream left. People like Jon Stewart and John Oliver. Shows like Orange Is The New Black and Doctor Who. Newspapers like The Guardian. People like you. People including you, probably. You seem like the kind of person who unthinkingly swallows propaganda, as long as it comes from the left. You've got a full bingo of their bad arguments, after all.

I can't believe you really think "the US ultra-right" has any real sway in the UK. Come on! The mums of TERF Island aren't trying to get Juno Dawson's books taken out of children's libraries because they've been brainwashed by evangelical Christians a continent away. UK women can think for themselves, and were campaigning on this issue long before the American right decided to piggyback our talking points. As you should know. It's hard to imagine any UK woman on Mumsnet not knowing this. Especially one as apparently passionate about feminism as you.

Since you are a very real and very British woman and missed it somehow . . .

The Guardian has spent years censoring gender critical women. They lost more than one journalist over it. They're trying to sell you this line about the ultra right American bogeyman because they need to believe such a thing exists. Otherwise, maybe they've just been shutting up women all these years. Maybe they've been promoting a sexist, homophobic ideology that harms children, actually. Maybe . . . they're the bad guys?

No, that can't be right! No, it's the American ultra-right, influencing poor feeble-minded British wimmin through the internet! It's the social media! Thank God for that! Now they can get back to the important stuff. Maybe the editor's husband can write them another humdinger of a column about self-service checkouts, or how the holes in his socks just aren't what they used to be 🙄

You are missing the entire point. You don't like the source and therefore the article is BS. It's a false dichotomy. Whatever the Guardian may have done wrong in the past, this article raises an interesting point which I think is worth mentioning because I am familiar with what's happened in the US. Why are you so quick to dismiss the idea that US pressure groups with an ultra conservative religious agenda might be trying to gain ground here in the UK? There are very real prominent British politicians (and from many other countries, look up attendees at the CPAC conference this year) who hang out with the Trump crowd on a regular basis. The religious right played a huge role in getting Trump re-elected. There are also many Evangelical think tanks and foundations that wield international influence. If you care about the rights of women in the mid to long term you should keep an eye out on their presence in the UK.
Or maybe you think it's a good thing in which case from one 'hypocrite' to another, you should own it.
For my part, I will certainly keep being kind to people as much as I can. I'll never be ashamed of that.

Liz Truss was ignored at CPAC, therefore, right wing religious fundamentalists control left wing British women's brains. I see, that's me convinced.

FFS @StandFirm, you clearly don't have a very high opinion of British women's intelligence if you think that we would never have had the idea that we should have our own spaces/services/sports and that we shouldn't be encouraging children to hate their healthy bodies without the influence of the American far right.

But I suppose this is a more comfortable thought for you than the idea that perhaps the American far right is actually right about this issue and you are wrong. Because whilst that doesn't make them the good guys, it makes you worse than the bad guys. I can understand why that makes you want to remain in your ignorant little bubble frothing about how everyone else is bigoted and wrong.

No, I'm using my brain. I'm keeping what I know about the culture and motives of The Guardian in mind, and then I'm looking at the article and noticing where it might be strangely vague. Where The Guardian might be conflating two issues into one to serve their agenda. Trans rights are not gay rights. Trans rights are not women's rights. In fact, the two frequently come into conflict. The sort of people who might protest trans ideology in children's libraries, in the UK, are likely to have no issue with women / gay rights. They may be women / gay themselves. They're more likely to be a Mumsnet poster than an Evangelical Christian.

The Guardian knows this. Any journalist worth their salt knows this. That's why they haven't told you which books are being complained about, or why. They haven't asked 'the other side' their motives. Because they know if they do, the answer will be something like "Well, a user on Mumsnet posted some pages from that Juno Dawson book that's supposed to be suitable for 12 year olds, and there is no wider context in the world that could make what I saw appropriate. It's a safeguarding issue. America's got naff-all to do with it."

Then they might make things really awkward, by going on to ask some more questions. Questions like: "Hasn't Juno Dawson written for your paper in the past? Didn't you give positive reviews to the book I and many other parents are concerned about? Doesn't Juno get fawning interviews with you every time he comes out with a new project?" Cue egg on face for The Guardian.

It would be an awkward conversation. Another awkward conversation would be the reality that the UK has a very different cultural make-up to America. The religiously-motivated homophobia you might find on our shores, is more likely to be coming from Muslim parents than Christian ones, these days. But that's a very dicey conversation, and The Guardian are too terrified of being called racist to have it.

So once again, they avoid digging too deep into the issue, and create a nice easy bogeyman they can lecture their readers about instead. Shadowy online "influences" across the sea are perfect for that.

I am familiar with what's happened in the US.

Once again, I'd like to point out how strange I find it that you claim to be an ardent UK feminist, but you don't know that The Guardian has been a running joke on Mumsnet for years. How strange it is that you've never ventured onto the Feminism board and heard any of the counterarguments to #bekind before. How strange it is that you managed to miss it, all the times the trans issue hit the news over here and the women protesting couldn't be easily written off as hateful bigots. You missed the Cass Review? The NHS nurses? Keira Bell? Maya Forstater? Isla Bryson? JK Rowling? All of it? Where were you?

It seems like you only started caring about women's rights when Trump got elected in America. Now you're terrified misogynist Americans are going to infiltrate the UK. Maybe the reason you find this threat so credible is because your world view revolves around America. Or maybe you see undercover Americans around every corner, trying to influence public discourse in the UK, because there's one staring back at you in the mirror. I'm starting to wonder.

As for British politicians "hanging out with the Trump crowd":

Politicians schmooze with their counterparts in other countries. They try to build relationships. It's what they do. If someone else has a popular talking point, a politician from another country may borrow it and see how far it gets them with their own voters.

This is not some shadowy plot. It's the nature of politics, and always has been. If you don't like the arguments a politician is making to win votes, then you go out and argue back and fight the good fight, and cast your own vote to defeat them. That's democracy.

The religious right played a huge role in getting Trump re-elected.

Again, this is politics. There are many demographics who came out for Trump and swung the election his way. Some will have influence with him. Some he simply used and discarded. Only time will tell how much he appeases any of these groups. Either way, all that's America, and this is the UK. We do not have a huge demographic of Evangelical Christian voters putting pressure on Keir Starmer. You cannot seriously believe "the religious right" wields anything like the same influence in UK politics. So what are you afraid of?

If Evangelical pressure groups want to try and influence public opinion in the UK, they will struggle. The UK mindset is very different to the American one. In America, for instance, the trans issue tends to be seen as a left vs right political issue. Whereas in the UK, the majority of gender critical voices are centrist or aligned broadly with the left. We are not as sharply divided as the US. It's a very different landscape, and not one where many of these American pressure groups can easily take root.

Where do you think these groups will be successful in the UK? What do you imagine that success would look like? And how do you think it could be mitigated?

Do you have concrete concerns about these groups, or are they just a bogeyman you're going to blame every time someone has an opinion you disagree with?

Nail on head! I could have saved myself the bother of replying to OP if I'd seen this first.

I strongly suspect they're American.

Thanks for this post.

Funny how some posters can be on MN and not know about name changing. Preserving anonymity online has never been more important.
Clearly this thread touched a nerve with a couple of people, which I think is interesting in itself. I'm not interested in a bun fight though.
(As an aside, foreign influence in both left and right wing politics is nothing new and it is mostly carried out locally anyway so no, I wouldn't play 'spot the American').

Not sure about ‘touching a nerve’ a couple of pp have countered well though.

Your mistake here is to think that you're getting angry responses because you have "touched a nerve" (which implies that you have spoken an uncomfortable truth which people don't want to acknowledge), rather than because you're just being really fucking offensive.

Damn right you're going to offend people when you come on to a UK based forum for women and casually suggest that British women would have been perfectly OK with biological males in their single sex spaces and sports and their children being encouraged to believe they can change sex, if Donald fucking Trump of all people hadn't put the idea that they are allowed to say "no" into their silly little heads.

I did no such thing. Move on.

You are frankly just insulting now.

Trump, Musk, Vance, Maga, Project 2025 can stay the fuck out of the UK