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?!

[DoopityDo]

I thought it was just me.

Some of the nonsense “anti-feminist” types think feminists believe is ludicrous.

But they’re reacting to things that real human beings who purport to be feminists have said. I have watched a few episodes of “anti-SJW” types and ended up shouting “YES BUT THAT’S NOT A PROPER FEMINIST VIEWPOINT, THAT’S A WEIRDO!”

And some (some) supposed anti feminists seem like vaguely decent humans, they just seem to be anti- a weird young American “everyone is ok except white guys/I am so much more oppressed than you because reasons” kind of feminism that I frankly don’t recognise.

I don’t think most of them have ever actually engaged with a second wave feminist type. But they’re mostly young, at least the YouTube ones...so they wouldn’t have, would they?

I still disagree with a lot of their views but they at least seem capable of debating in a semi rational manner sometimes.

And yeah I’ve been watching a bunch of Dave Rubin too. And am totally in agreement with Blaire White on not giving drugs to kids who might be trans, however much we might disagree on practically everything else.

So there’s that.

[ILikeyourHairyHands]

It's an interesting conversation and I guess OP is using 'red pill' as an analogy rather than aligning her views to any paticular conspiracy theorists or sub-reddits.

I'm a right-centrist, but I'm very liberal and it's for that reason I haven't voted Labour since 1997, there's just too much dogma on the left, there always had been, but social media seems to have polarised debate to extremes. I think it's also allowed groups like the TRAs to gain traction as they have found like-minded individuals and a wider accepted group and cause to hook their agenda on to.

And it's worked, any naysayers or 'speakers of truth' are derided and shut down, often violently. But let's not kid ourselves, this is a fantastic opportunity for misogynistic blokes who love to be seen as right-thinking to stick one in the fucking eye to noisy women, it's an easy win.

If I actually was a conspiracy theorist I couldn't have designed a better mechanism for power-grab and discrediting critical thinkers.

[FloraFox]

Albadross a couple of years ago someone I know met SJ and she apparently spoke highly of MN then, when she was still living in Australia.

[Albadross]

Yes definitely using it in that way rather than saying I’m an MRA - If that happened I’d be more than surprised, I might have to book myself back into the Priory!

[Missymoo100]

I think the left represent a real danger, they are becoming fascists opposing all who don't agree with their ideology. Anything they don't like is branded "right wing", I take the term with a pinch of salt when I see it in MSM. People are getting scared to have an opinion.. they are closing down free speech and right to have an alternative opinion.

[Thesqueezermustghost]

The left are fascists! Jeez gimme a break

[QueenThisTime]

Yes there is a very scary part of the far left movement that is about aggression instead of debate.

I've always been a lefty, but that doesn't mean I have no time for the views of anyone else, or will attack and silence someone who's not on my "team". That behaviour (and the same goes for the current trans rights activism as well) is a basic attack on the right to have your own thoughts and views and it's incredibly damaging, to their own cause and to everyone.

One thing I have noticed and I know it sounds awful, is that a lot of the right-wing press and opinion pieces are better informed and better-written that their lefty counterparts, and in many cases more open to disagreement. Not always of course. But I sometimes like reading them despite fundamentally disagreeing with them, because I like the sense of intellectual freedom it gives me.

Maybe I'm getting old... but even as a young lefty at university I had Tory friends and enjoyed friendly arguments with them.

[CritEqual]

I've been opposed to the left for awhile now, but I've worked out lately it's not so much the values that the left hold (having a social safety net being one I am in favour of). It's behaviours that aren't necessarily intrinsic to a leftist agenda but perhaps to a culturally dominant one.

The left has lost a tremendous amount of intellectual and academic rigour as many truths are passed off as self evident when due diligence is not done when it's just easier to silence the opposition with fear and ostracism. However the right was guilty of the same a generation ago.

I have concluded what I really object to is collectivism over voluntarism and I'm not entirely sure I make any meaningful distinction between the left or right in this regard they can both be as bad as each other.

[Thesqueezermustghost]

what truths are passed off as self-evident by the left?

[CritEqual]

Well the whole notion that socialism can work on a macro scale.

Every. Single. Time. it gets tried anywhere it fails spectacularly. Whilst it's true you can have the odd successful social program it entirely fails on the large scale. Smaller communities can run with it pretty successfully but out of all political systems it is the one that scales the worst.

The lie that wealth inequality is such a terrible thing. Whilst it's true we now live in a world where something like 1% of the population control 50% of the world's wealth what is NEVER brought up is how since the 80s back when 50% of the world's population lived on under $1 a day the number of people in such extreme poverty is hovering in the low 20%. This is down largerly to more free market principles opening up in places like China and India.

Where I have common ground with leftists is a distaste for what passes for crony capitalism wherin big buisness has tremendous lobbying power and control over goverments thus they are able to insulate themselves to a large degree from market forces.

[Missymoo100]

"The left are fascists! Jeez gimme a break"
I think it's true, they continually polarise left and right, anything they don't like is branded "far right", just a smear against any dissenting views. I think it wise to watch the direction this is going.

[Missymoo100]

In fact I think we're all being massively played. I feel like I'm being lied to by MSM on a daily basis.

[unplugmefromthematrix]

I'm not aware of any red/blue pill connection with feminism, only with the film The Matrix where the choice is to take the blue pill and stay plugged in to the artificially created virtual world and be blissfully ignorant of the 'real world', or take the red pill and wake up to the reality that the real world has been almost destroyed.

"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Morpheus

This scenario resonates with me (hence my usename) as all of a sudden I am becoming aware of a really big shift in thinking, where the world is going and what is truth, what is real, words being redefined etc and trans -not- logic where biology is irrelevant.

Re the left-right thing, I remember from school the concept that political thinking is a circle and the if you go far enough left or right, they eventually and scarily overlap especially in the totalitarian aspects. Hitler meets Stalin etc.

I am thinking that maybe there is a similar gender-sex circle but haven't got the analogy sorted in my head yet!

[unplugmefromthematrix]

The other thing to consider about all of this left-right poltics, is that it was all put into action by men and one could argue that maybe the implementation was corrupted by the pursuit of power, control and domination (as sexual abuse is about power not really about sex, the organisation of society became less about successful economics and people's lives and more about the men in power having control over those lives).

[Missymoo100]

Unplugged

That was a good post. I agree with the left/right cycle. As the right are portrayed as the enemy, it has pushed power to the left. A shift too far in any direction is going to cause problems.

[Missymoo100]

I also worry about climate change, another issue where no one can have an opinion because the science is "settled". (I don't know if it can be settled- it's a huge issue with multiple variables).
Years of propaganda and manipulated statistics. Your a loon if you don't swallow it wholesale or a "denier" a term usually linked to holocaust denial, (here's me thinking science is supposed to be unbiased).
Now I wait for the solution- geo-engineering to block out the sun has been mentioned.. will be a disaster no doubt.

[Thesqueezermustghost]

I don't see where the left has power here. All the proposals around liberalisation are instituted by the right. With regard to GRA and so on, I have heard the argument that it is just a general part of the flexibilisation of people and uprooting so that they can be deployed in various and whatever ways for whatever the requirements of capital. So I don't see any thing left about it.

[unplugmefromthematrix]

Thanks Missy! I am trying to re-engage my brain again!

I am definitely going to re-read Orwell's 1984. Did it at school and it was alarming enough then but I should imagine it is terrifying now!

I haven't watched much of the Hunger games film but i understand it to be a dystopian 'warning' type film, yet was it actually popularly perceived as such? I confess I don't know as I say I'm not well generally so am quite out of touch with some things.

This last decade has been quite the odd one.

Anyway, enough late night musings!

[Missymoo100]

I think the problem probably transcends the left/right division- but I think the left are being used as a directive tool.

[unplugmefromthematrix]

yes sqezer that is sort of waht i was meaning by the circle and left and right overlapping. it seems to soem to be liberal eg left leaning and the right moving toward the left, but actually if the effect is to reinforce gender stereotypes etc then as you say it is a move to the right the deployement of economic untis of prodcution. The non-medicalising of body dysphoria; the pursuit of the big business of medical technology - and men having womb transplants, and robots replacing humans. Blurring of statistcs of who holds the wealth, making it impossible to collect data on women in the workplace etc. - whatever keeps capitalism ticking over and those few men holding all the power.

But some people just see being trans friendly as just being kind and inclusive - they don't see the economics and power plays so it just appears to be left leaning.

The right love it as it kills 2 birds with one stone - they get to appear warm and fuzzy and progressive on this ONE super issue, whilst being actually hateful to the disabled etc and regressive on almost every other policy they can whilst they are in power

[unplugmefromthematrix]

opps... and the left have to go more left just to maintain being seen as the left and then it all just goes bad.

[bambambini]

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

Looks to me the majority of feminists are all for full inclusion of transfolk. The “terfy” radfems i follow seem a minority.

[Missymoo100]

Ever increasing "tolerance" promoted as a good thing will eventually be our downfall. If everything is to be tolerated it's going to lead us down a very dark path.

"Tolerance is the virtue of those without convictions"

"If you stand for nothing you will fall for anything"