Women come last in Labour's deranged victim hierarchy - Rod Liddle in The Spectator

[AttillaThePun]

No punches pulled (but no names named either, probably sensible):

www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/women-come-last-in-labours-deranged-victim-hierarchy/

That conhom article is very good. I don't agree with it all, but it may just give some food for thought.

Red: I'm a fan of the FT atm. Not just because of the Presidents Club report but because they've covered issues relating to politics months before the shit has hit the fan of reality of politics and anyone else picks up the story.

I think that's partly in the nature of the subject matter of the FT - economics/business news is the canary in the coal mine for political events 3 to 6 months down the line. A lot of people think of political decision making as pro-active, driven by wanting to shape the world in line with your ideological beliefs, but a hell of a lot of the time it's reactive, coming up with the best fudge you can without giving up on too many of your core beliefs in a shitstorm driven by economic shifts.

Kiss thank you for getting this out there. It needed to come off the echo-chamber that is Twitter and go mainstream.

Whatever we think of RL it’s out there now. That’s huge.

We believe that our point of view is right, and that the TRAs view is wrong, i.e. if we believe that you cannot become a woman by means other than being born one.

If the TRAs argument is fundamentally flawed (which I think it is) the important thing is to get this out there by any means possible. People are not stupid, they know that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. TRAs are reliant on the whole issue staying in a very small bubble where they are getting support.

As soon as the wider public become aware of this issue properly, the TRAs have lost.

If you look at the comments on newspapers like the DM that is the great British public and that is what they think. Pink News (for e.g.) only represents a tiny number of people.

Yes, the ConservativeHome article is arguing it means no more shortlists and everyone on their own merits. This ignores the structural barriers people face because of sex, race, gender, disability, and class. I also think it is about more than identity politics, because sex or disability, and indeed race, are not an identity that you can change. Class you can change more, although that is debatable. Women don’t get to choose being female, and the barriers that come with it.

On another note, of course I should know the left can be authoritarian- the whole former Soviet bloc is an example. I think I would have said i am liberal, but in the sense that society needs to work holistically. Now I am wondering if i am a conservative feminist

Those who describes themselves as Libertarian left - can you suggest any good reading material?

Lots that's good in that piece, although the 17 Momentum regional chairs thing isn't from last week - that's from January 2017.

Cultural revolutions are the hallmark of an authoritarian left

Yep. And what bigger cultural revolution could there be than obliterating the meaning of woman, man, girl, boy, mother, father - which are the oldest and most universal social categories in existence because, unlike other social categories (e.g., class), they are rooted in our biology itself? Not even the Khmer Rouge was so ambitious. They tried to erase thousands of years of Cambodian culture and history with their Year Zero proclamation, but do you think they would've thought to try to erase the concept of human sexual biology itself? No wonder trans ideology holds such appeal for the resurgent authoritarian left.

Great work kiss

Gets the snowball rolling, no matter what we think of RL

Very interesting post about the Czechoslovakian greengrocer hairy, I shall have to read the Vaclav Havel essay. Very reminiscent of today's virtue signallers.

Except that of course the poor greengrocer wasn't doing it to virtue-signal, he was doing it because he was terrified of the consequences if he didn't. (Having said that, how many of us, particularly those of us working in the public sector, would not so much chant "transwomen are women", but at least stay silent while someone else did, simply because we'd be frightened of disciplinary action at work?)

One major change in my thinking is that in the past I'd have struggled to reach across the Left-Right divide in discussing political views with someone on the "opposite" side.

Now I find that's rather easy compared to getting over the Authoritarian-Libertarian divide. (Although not surprising since these days I'm more Libertarian than Authoritarian minded.)

Him and Bindel are great mates actually. I love Bindel she’s a heroine.

To what degree though are virtue signallers doing it because it's an authentic pov to them, and what degree because they're terrified of looking like bigots... hence getting corralled into the hive mind of the authoritarian left?

Since reaching peak trans and becoming gender critical, I've really got the "shy tory" thing (even though I remain very much a leftie). Unless you've got a steel coat of armour, it's terrifying to put your head over the parapet and express a contrarian point of view to the prevailing narrative. I posted a couple of tentatively gender critical things on FB, but never drew a link to the trans issue. Many times I had to heavily sit on my hands when friends posted those memes that were like "share this if you don't mind a trans person sharing the next cubicle to you". One time in a feminist debate with a trans handmaiden, she was lambasting TERFs, I did actually feel I had to do the Czech greengrocer thing and like her comment But, mostly I kept silent. I deactivated a few months ago, largely because I resented my own silence, but didn't feel brave enough to swim against the tide. Silence is still complicity.

God knows. I would lose my job probably if I said anything at work. I am quite serious. I would not be offered more work, that is for sure, and my work is precarious. So I say nothing. Complicit in my silence.

Weird, isn't it? TIMs are supposedly the most oppressed people who have ever existed and yet everyone is in terror of them, and with good reason.

not in academia they aren't. They get all the airtime, believe me.

Well, I did say 'supposedly'.

the ConservativeHome article is arguing it means no more shortlists and everyone on their own merits. This ignores the structural barriers people face because of sex, race, gender, disability....... sex or disability, and indeed race, are not an identity that you can change.

This is very well put, and absolutely right. Thank you, that's a response I'll remember to 'well AWS are sexist anyway'.

Rather likes the responses about 'well it's silly to have women only spaces/ it's insulting to men to imply women have to be kept safe/ in Europe everyone gets naked all the time and aren't prudish' as a response to women trying to protect all women spaces. Much whataboutery and women having to re fight ground they have already fought once, just to be allowed to keep their existing protections.

To what degree though are virtue signallers doing it because it's an authentic pov to them, and what degree because they're terrified of looking like bigots... hence getting corralled into the hive mind of the authoritarian left?

I suspect rather more than you think.

Its the expression people give when you tell them you have a trans sibling, followed by the immediate virtue signal which slowly disappears when you reveal how you feel about it, and you don't expect them to make all the 'right' polite noises.

Its people desperately trying to be nice and not be seen as a bigot or impolite.

If everyone in your circle was a kool aid drinker, I reckon in most cases you'd just go with it, unless you had a trusted friend you could freely discuss with.

Cecily

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism

Like all things in politics, describing oneself as left libertarian can be tricky because it means different things to different people but you could just start with this basic Wiki article and then follow the links to libertarian socialism and anarchism* and the rest of it.

I see myself as left libertarian because I am a) socially liberal, b) big on free speech, c) anti-capitalist but not a believer in centralism in economics, so also not really an old school socialist.

*Another thing that annoys me about the authoritarian left of today - they keep calling themselves anarchists!

Thank you so much for your invaluable work on getting this issue in the press, Kiss.

One thing I wanted to note is that the Rod Liddle article is so much stronger than the ConservativeHome one, and a big reason for that is Liddle's clarity of language.

CH says that it's about the inclusion of 'trans women' on AWS, whereas Liddle states bluntly that it's about 'men who identify as women'. Readers will instantly see the absurdity of Labour's position in Liddle's framing, whereas the CH framing obscures the issue, because most people assume 'trans woman' means 'transsexual' (and indeed, the very first CH commenter mentions surgery, while another wonders 'how many transgender women can there be in Britain?').

I think this might come down to each publication's style guide - CH might mandate the use of 'trans woman' for TIMs, whereas the Spectator probably doesn't (or maybe Liddle is simply allowed leeway that others don't have). But it shows what we're up against in exposing what is really going on, when most publications are imposing Orwellian TRA language even on articles that are critical of the TRA agenda. Perhaps a crucial step for GC feminists will be highlighting to sympathetic journalists the importance of language in this debate - some might be moved to take it up with the subs, or at least find ways to write around the style guide .

In any case, if, as Ereshkigal said, 'this issue will be won or lost on public perception and what politicians think the public want', then GC feminists must find a way of overcoming the trans Newspeak that is now embedded in most publications, because such Newspeak completely obscures the issues and reverses reality (which is its purpose, obviously), rigging the debate from the start.

Thank you kiss

Lidfle obviously is interested and well read up on the whole Id politics issue and no platforming. This is him on Andrew Neil’s “This Week” destroying a transactivist SJW - and defending Julie Bindel.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=boCmsa6wRas

The left libertarian point is interesting (that the TRAs are adopting authoritarian tactics) because of the connection that has been drawn with PIE - which was decidedly anti-authoritarian.

So the PIE argument was more that an age of consent and child protection was authoritarian, conservative and bourgeois and children should be free to explore their sexuality (with adults). It found some traction because homosexuals did have a higher age of consent than heterosexuals in the 1970s and people were wanting to be inclusive (although there is a difference between saying consenting sex at sixteen between males is not a crime and with children, which obviously is). My point is that paedophilia was wrapped up in a more palatable argument about young men, if that makes sense.

Similarly, the TRA argument that children should be able to choose their gender-identity and consent to medical processes (which could damage their fertility and has other unknown risks) could also be seen as libertarian (individual choice, age of consent is authoritarian), but the enforcement of this POV is not libertarian, it is authoritarian.

The argument is not only about AWS, it is about the control of young people’s minds and bodies - young people who generally don’t ‘get’ sexual inequality until they have children; and they are being socialised to consider TIMs as women (and TIFs as male) and accept that TIMs dominate the space/discourse/discussion in the name of equality/inclusivity. Older adults are scared of voicing GC views; and if you cannot express GC views, you lose the language to express your experience.

Not sure if that makes sense. I see the connections with PIE, but I don’t think it is a linear parallel.