Am I Red Pilling?!

[Albadross]

Since all this trans stuff started igniting a fire in me, I've somehow started to see everything in a different light.

It feels like the only things I'm sure of are that I am a feminist - the old-school radfem ilk and that perhaps I have bought too much into the lefty media. Clearly I'm not right wing and I still think Trump is a twat but when you start looking into all the weird things going on, it does feel like I've been going along with something that reeled me in because I'm naturally caring and want to include others, but perhaps at the heart of it all is something more sinister.

It's like waking up one day and finding everything you thought you knew is wrong. I even watched Katie bloody Hopkins on The Rubin Report earlier and thought that actually maybe she was just already doing what we're now frightened to do because we actually need our jobs, but just in a horribly inflammatory way!

Am I broken?!

No I'm with you. I am fairly centre left, but that's now a crime, according fuckers like Owen Jones. I am finding myself listening to podcasts by conservatives and liberals like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin and while there is much I disagree with, I can certainly see where they are coming from on many issues and I especially enjoy the willingness to debate ideas, which is an increasingly absent concept on the left
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I am of the firm belief that the current dogma of the left is pushing liberals to the right. I reserve the right to think what I fucking like and for those that want to censure me for not having the 'right' ideas, well they can do one.

I confess that I haven't actually watched The Matrix, so although I have an understanding of the Red/Blue thing, I don't fully get it.

But I do know I'm mightily pissed off

Yup. Ben Shapiro is another one that’s begun making sense.

Have you seen the red pill black lady? She and KH have both mentioned ‘media hit men’ who actively set out to discredit business and individuals. I suppose before I fell victim to the idea that you have to agree with all of something or none of it and now I’m realising that just isn’t true.

I don't know about The Matrix either, but the way I see it is that the relationship between the mainstream media, politicians and social media is a swirling, interdependent thing. There are so many trolls, misogynists, white supremacists and presumably Russian propagandists all with lots of time and determination to use robots, 'fake news', threats, sock-puppets, etc, etc within social media, that the relationship between the mainstream media, eg- holding politicians to account, as a central part of democracy/free speech has been thoroughly undermined.

Politics and the mainstream media are increasingly losing touch with actual people/voters because they 'believe in' social media as being representative. Everyone underestimates the influence of these robots and sock puppets.

Real people don't share the views of there social media propagandists, but are being actively manipulated by them. Probably because it is fashionable to think politics and the mainstream media is a meaningless circus.

I did listen to the debate with the red blue lady, Candice Owens isn't it? and Blaire White, which was a fucking car crash of an interview. And what made it worse was all the comments about it being a 'bitch fight' etc. I couldn't finish listening to it. It was excruciating and I have never hear two 'women' behaving that way in an interview. Funny that. The MRAs were delighted though

''The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are popular cultural symbols representing the choice between: Knowledge, freedom and the (sometimes painful) truth of reality (red pill) Falsehood, security and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill)''
(from Wikipedia)

But ''Red Pill'' is a philosophy that states that in society, women actually have the upper hand. Red Pillers point out that while women complain that they arent represented equally in business or in politics, most men arent in positions of power either.
How is it compatible with feminism?

Red Pill came out of the US, and most of the facts they use are from the US system, which is completely different from the UK.
For example, in the UK its common to have a DNA test to establish paternity before making a claim for child support. Feminists support that.

I dont see what Red Pill has to offer you that radical feminism doesnt. There are plenty of intelligent commentators to read such as Feminist Current, Meghan Murphy, Glosswitch, Jenni Harvey and Miranda Yardley that arent liberal, mainstream or right wing.
Have you read Andrea Dworkin? Start with Right Wing Women. She predicts current events with startling clarity and precision.

Jenny Harvey
medium.com/@GappyTales/dear-men-on-the-left-f20fbf6272cf

Male violence against women ensures our compliance.
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/10/25/the-gentrification-of-womanhood/

That explains a lot of the anti feminism in the US DJ, thanks

As I said, I didn't really get the red pill thing. I do have a problem with rigidly polarised opinions and the mass censure if you deviate from them

Now the term is used for anyone who swerves away from the left.

I pretty much get most of what people like Candace Owens says except from her denouncing of feminism - although I consider myself a RadFem. It’s so weird how now radical feminism is almost red pilling women over the trans thing

No, radical feminism has nothing to do with Red Pill.

Another one here who’s a bit puzzled by the use of ‘red pill’ in this way. I have only ever seen it used to refer to the subreddit mentioned, and the misogynistic lines of thinking associated with it. To the extent that I was immediately suspicious of your motives for introducing it here, in this context. It’s not an idea or phrase you want to widen the use of at this point. No-one needs those associations.

"Have you read Andrea Dworkin? Start with Right Wing Women. She predicts current events with startling clarity and precision."
www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Andrea-DWORKIN-Right-Wing-Women-The-Politics-of-Domesticated-Females-19831.pdf

I think we were (sadly) lulled into a false sense of security. That even if for their own reasons, we had various bits of legislation (equal pay etc), that things were improving and that the most blatant bits of inequality in law/legislation would soon be sorted, and then we could start on the next stage of the process.
Except then we were reminded that even those who are actually opposed to where we want to end up can pass the 'correct' legislations sometimes -- where porn suddenly became okay and 'a good thing', an alternative career opportunity, and 'discrimination being bad' morphs into the whole trans nonsense.

I guess passing the right legislation for the wrong reasons, it's 'liberalism' rather than feminism, and the rise of porn and the rise of the whole trans ideology show how far apart we actually are. Although I think the removal of rights is the really worrying thing, I thought that at least we wouldn't go backwards, but seems that we were lulled into a false sense of security, and have to get arsey again! Sorry, the patriarchy is still here folks, just hiding under a mask of new century, post-modernist, neo-liberal internet-fed nonsense..............

The red pill/blue pill thing sounds like simplistic nonsense to me. I’m confused too op - recently gave up on labour - I’ve been a centre left voter for as long as I can remember but the shrieking of those in charge of labour whose policies I dislike with has worn me out to the point I do believe it’s made me less certain of being a left winger. Get told you’re a red Tory enough times...

It's very confusing - but as I said I think I basically agree with everything EXCEPT the anti-feminism thing, so I've realised a lot about the left but had it not been for radical feminism I don't think I would've ever got the trans thing and then started looking at other issues with the same lens, IYSWIM?

When someone asks what opportunities men get that women don't to prove that things are equal, most of the post-modern feminists can't come up with much, which gets used as proof that feminism is no longer needed and that feminists now want to be superior somehow -
whereas radfems would draw out things like the way women are treated around the world still being overwhlemingly patriarchal, and in Western societies like the UK, drugs testing on men, crash test dummies, sanitary protection availability/cost/tax and other things that would need to be mitigated for things to truly be equal.

'Red pill' seems to be about individualism as opposed to classism, which of course is not aligned with radical feminism, but I can see their point when it comes to evidencing inequalities like systemic and institutional racism. People do use anecdotes as data and that doesn't really help. I'm guilty of it too, but I think the sheer weight of anecdotes of patriarchal oppression makes a big difference. I also cannot agree that where they've apparently achieved equality of sexes in Scandinavian countries, women actively choose lower paid jobs and take more holidays for some innate reason - I think there will still be historical expectations at play that mean free choice isn't really free.

I admit the equal vs equitable thing also confuses me because in the disability rights world we talk about equality of outcome to enable disabled people to function, but red pillers say that outcomes are down to the individual.

All in all I guess maybe I'm juts more centrist than I though...

Just*

fucking great - so now 'the left' is trashed at the moment when the right is massively on the rise. Well, what agenda does this fit then?

No idea but I’m surprised the right hasn’t worked out that feminism hates trans ideology and used it to their advantage.

If you're broken then I am broken too. It is something that I am really struggling to articulate at the moment and it is really very uncomfortable.

Thank you for this thread!

The left/right thing is completely false though. It's not a binary, or even a scale. Perhaps your are a trans-right-winger?

Seriously though, my own views on how politics/society should be run are very extreme, and would generally be viewed as extreme left-wing. But I have considered the issues, and weigh them up in light of evidence (psychology, sociology, examples from history/other countries etc) and can argue my case - and if I can't it's pause for thought and potentially changing my views. Where I feel I'm not remotely left-wing is similar to yourself; the feeling that I've somehow "woken up" whilst my fellow comrades have turned into unthinking sheeple. It actually scares me that people who previously taught me so much about politics, got me to consider so much, opened my eyes in the first place... seem to have stopped thinking critically.

[* ]

I see so much black and white thinking going on. People want to put everyone into a nice tidy box I suppose, we love categories and labels.

That ‘debate’ between Candace Owens and Blaire White was utterly ridiculous, Blaire looked like she was really performing woman with the constant hair flicking and arranging and weird posturing. The whole thing descended into a farce and Dave Rubin was left for dead by the end, or the middle really - I had to turn it off!

this

Love that flora

I dislike the term "red pill" because of the misogynistic connotations that PPS have mentioned, however I think we need to move away from the tribalism of left v right, with all the crap about the dichotomy of media and how certain papers are good, and others are bad and ne'er the twain shall meet.

If you truly want to challenge yourself you should listen to and read a wide variety of opinion and challenge yourself to really think critically about them. It's so easy to get into an echo chamber, particularly with social media algorithms feeding you your own opinions back to you, and it is human instinct to seek out views that reinforce your own. I read people who piss me off and try to see what they are saying that might be fair, and what I can truly argue against as being wrong - it's changed my views slightly but it's also helped to substantiate my own arguments as well.

Yes OneFlew - that's kind of how I got to this point, through forcing myself to watch people like Ben Shapiro. I'm always open to change, it feels odd but I'd rather know the truth and be able to construct a watertight argument.

I'm definitely seeing that the left isn't what I thought, hence related it to red pill as a step away from that I guess.

We got a mention on this!

Sheila Jeffries on Feminist Current podcast:

itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/podcast-sheila-jeffreys-on-neoliberalism-identity-politics/id603245791?i=1000376848016&mt=2

I thought red pill is the reddit forum of MRAs an that kind of ilk. Men have it so bad and women just want everything and no one but us sees it, etc. Although more recently it's the cool way of saying conspiracy theory, as in "we are the only ones who see the truth and you are all being lied to and embrace the lie".

Regarding your actual point, I fully agree. Mostly I am "left", but there are more and more situations where I have to agree with the "right", that is driven by the absolute nonsense the "left" is coming up with. But there is no middle ground, because if you hold "left" views on topic A then the right hate you, but if you hold "right" views on topic B then the "left" ostracizes you.

One Flew
"I read people who piss me off and try to see what they are saying that might be fair, and what I can truly argue against as being wrong - it's changed my views slightly but it's also helped to substantiate my own arguments as well.

^This. It's the only way