'a certain kind of sex is vanishing from the internet'

[agender]

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/30/congress-online-sex-trafficking-bill-impact-sex-workers-craigslist

One of the Guardian's euphemisms. They repeat it " a particular genre of online sex, it seems, is vanishing from the internet."

They are referring to prostitution.

Why do they use euphemisms?

I've seen various comments on the subject of porn and incest and trans kids / the left wing media on twitter over the last few days. This is a bit of a mishmash of them, but it should give you a very clear idea of thought processes going on here. This is a bit of a brain splurge of various strands of thought going on in politics in general, so I hope this makes sense to someone else. Its late and its thought diarrhea:

Janice Turner @VictoriaPeckham
Pink News thinks incest is fine because it’s a popular porn trope. Unbelievable.

Sister Outrider @ClaireShrugged
Normalising incest is a new low for Pink News. And this reckless reporting buys into the homophobic myth that being gay is inherently perverted.
Why can't gay or lesbian twins have sex of marry each other? Why is incest wrong between same sex siblings

Monica Larkin @mrsovary
I’m going to sound about 902 years of age here but there’s a real push for the elimination of sexual limits and it’s getting more prominent. Boundaries are healthy and keep people (women and children especially) safe.

Lisa Muggeridge @lisamuggeridge3
Does @PinkNews know that incest is largely a crime where adult males abuse female and male children? Not a lifestyle choice?

-----

Lisa Muggeridge @lisamuggeridge3
That understanding the systems around child abuse is now 'terfism' is interesting, cos we dont figure the needs of adults in the centre of those questions, no matter how distressed the adult. Adults offended by this are interesting to me.
The phenomena of adult activists trying to shape medical treatment for kids, and demanding it exist outside our wider understanding of childhood and adolescence and safeguarding, while demanding the end of safeguarding structures, is quite interesting. But only a bit.
Always pay attention to adults who demand that we treat safeguarding children as an insult to their identity. Really.

------

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/30/congress-online-sex-trafficking-bill-impact-sex-workers-craigslist
Scrubbed clean: why a certain kind of sex is vanishing from the internet

Lisa Muggeridge @lisamuggeridge3
What is wrong with you @guardian? Craigslist was being used for industrial levels of child trafficking. Children's bodies were being sold. How can you justify this? How?
Will @guardian be sending journos to Bradford and Telford to ask who has been mildly inconvenienced by our newfound understanding that industrialised child sex trafficking is bad? I mean really? WTAF is wrong over there?
[rtb note: the guardian were offered the Telford story but refused to run it, which is why it ended up in the Mail]

Its the apparently complete absence of any type of base moral consideration. I cannot account for the utter sociopathy of @PinkNews and @guardian. Its so far beyond normal or even understandable. Its not just misogyny, its something else.

Its getting quite difficult to get away from the way @PinkNews and @guardian feel about child abuse. Or rather that they dont understand the notion of abuse at all, in fact see it as desirable if its the right people being abused.

Its the extent to which working class children and women exist to be abused in @guardian's eyes. I dont understand it, I cant grasp it. They mean it.

What Craigslist was used for should be shocking to anyone its inconceivable the way girls were sold through there and yet all @guardian see is inconvenience? How?

I have met people from @guardian. Its deep rooted culturally. THey CANNOT view a woman like me or my daughter as human beings, They literally could not do it. Cannot see it. Its actually disturbing.

The @guardian KNEW about the exploitation in places like Telford, just didnt see those girls as human, same with austerity, the women paying for it were not human to them. It is extraordinary and unexplainable. @KathViner

Julia Morgan @MorganScorpion
Because they are of the class that buys sex, not the class that sells it.

Lisa Muggeridge @lisamuggeridge3
The number of 'sex workers' complainin gto the @guardian about why a move to stop 12 year olds being sold to hundreds of adult men inconveniences them should tell you a great deal about the sex 'industry' and how it is structured.

Its like there is something at @guardian where they cannot see that injury and violence felt by working class children and women is violence. They just cant see it. Dont know they are people.
@kathviner Just dont know.
I have to be honest @KathViner I really want to understand why the @guardian feels teh way it does about working class women and female children, because I cant fathom it. I just cant.
Is it just inability to perceive that british women and children have the same rights and you didnt realise enfranchisement had reached working class women and children or it is it actual malice?
With austerity you would be saying what every person you knew already knew, if women cant afford to leave abuse they are trapped there, and you would just get blank looks. @guardian
Austerity undermined 70 years of safeguarding and equality legislation cos the class around the @guardian including university I just attended, didnt even know these legal frameworks existed, mattered or were supposed to be a boundary.
With this TRA stuff, it should actually be a LOT simpler than it is, but the @guardian and @PinkNews needed their misogyny amplifying and thought trans people were a way to do it.
The absolute inability to perceive that women and children's boundaries, that women's safety, should even be reflected in law is astonishing with this class of people. They think they are above it.
In 2010 I couldnt understand how you could just roll back equality, and then I spent 8 years finding out a class exist who see the rule of law that shapes the rest of us, as an optional for them. THey dont need to be aware of. @kathviner @guardian
Maybe its because I am not from their class but I dont understand how you can be completely oblivious to the basic rule of law regarding safeguarding, sexual assault, coercion, domestic abuse. @kathviner @guardian
The TRA stuff is no more complex than sex exists, and we now need a new classification for gender identity in addition, but look what it has been turned into? Wow.
Virulent misogyny and anti-semitism is coming directly from the same source, a hyper privileged overeducated and extremely stupid mediating class. Labour, LSE Guardian, the whole shitshow needs to tumble for this to change.
I actually cannot fathom a human being with a normal functioning psyche, looking at the Craigslist saga and worrying about how inconvenient it is for the sex industry for people to give a toss about those women and kids. @guardian @KathViner
I feel kind of bad for the young radical lefties I was angry with for not knowing what austerity would do, but they were largely just reflecting their class. Who didnt give a fuck.
I think at @guardian and LSE level they saw enfranchisement of the working class as a temporary inconvenience to service them and never fathomed that meant power was not theirs. They didnt realise enfranchisement meant working class people had the vote.
The tension between narratives sold by @guardian and @pinknews and our basic understanding of child abuse is getting really disturbing. Am sorry but it really is. There is something seriously weird here.

I THINK mutteridge is / was a social worker or something similar.

I think in terms of social media, and efforts to get Gender Critical women banned on twitter - and silence debates like this - and the comments by the facebook executive in the buzzfeed article this is important stuff to look in the eye:
[[www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data?utm_term=.poVnB0E2QM#.qrV2eJ5DYj
Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed]]

Again the dehumanising of people, coming from sources perceived to be left wing. (Noting here that fascism is thought to be the product of capitalism and the military coming together - so social media being used as Psy Ops is relevant here. In theory, I would propose it possible to get a left wing hybrid fascism - which is exactly what some on the right have been saying).

I also note that it was Tommy Robinson who first started to bring the abuse in Rochdale to light.

If we are not very careful, we are setting ourselves up for a terrible swing to the far left followed by a horrendous backlash to the far right.

A posted by the name of Daff0dil put this on a trans related thread earlier today:

In the midst of Carol Caldewaller's long read about Cambridge Analytica is this interesting quote:

"A few months later, in autumn 2013, Wylie met Steve Bannon. At the time, he was editor-in-chief of Breitbart, which he had brought to Britain to support his friend Nigel Farage in his mission to take Britain out of the European Union.
What was he like?
“Smart,” says Wylie. “Interesting. Really interested in ideas. He’s the only straight man I’ve ever talked to about intersectional feminist theory. He saw its relevance straightaway to the oppressions that conservative, young white men feel.”

I have seen this elsewhere too. That Trump is credited with winning amongst a lot of women because of a direct backlash relating to trans rights. It is interesting to see it pop up as a deliberate target point.

When Corbyn's Labour party are so utterly blind to anti-Semitism, it only serves to help a push to the far right.

This is the culture war. See it for what it is and suspend your concept of what you think is liberal and tribal loyalty to political party.

Brocialism is not socialism.
Its not progressive and liberal.
It has more in common with fascism.

And I don't know how to get the point across about the difference and how dangerous this really is.

Brilliant post redtoothbrudh

The Guardian just gets worse. I really don't know why my husband still buys it. He is one of about 5 people in Scotland who still buys the print edition.

And as for the Labour party- I knew Corbyn would be a disaster but nobody would have thought when he became leader that the party would be mired in scandals over anti-semitism.

Brilliant post redtoothbrudh

Yes

Liberalism isn't about being leftie and fair though. It's about anything goes. Liberalism is the natural home for anyone with a sexual kink, whether that be the more dodgy kind of trans or paedophilia.

There is a popular perception that liberal values are some wishy washy halfway house between Labour and the Conservatives. They are absolutely not.

Redtoothbrush, I'm not very smart at all in afraid but your post blew my mind. I had never considered any of the things before that you mentioned.
I don't know if it's relevant but I've gone from die-hard Labour voter to 'where the hell do I go from here' since reading the feminist boards. I voted for Leanne fucking Wood

Liberalism encourages freedom of speech too. In the case of trans, thats not happening. Thats being deliberately crushed.

The idea propagated is that censorship is somehow making us freer is absurd, in this context.

Liberal democracy is about the need to compromise in order to achieve the most freedom across the whole of society. This is the real essence of liberalism, not this faux liberalism where freedom is concentrated in a small group in order to have power at the expense of others. That is the essence of authoritarianism.

The modern understanding and use of the word liberal has been corrupted. We are polarising, because of failure and unwillingness to compromise. The pursuit of power is more important than humanity. The 'greater good' outweighs the suffering its built on.

Ultimately in doing so we lose our freedom and rights because we forget what they were founded on.

Liberal democracy is build on inclusion and participation of many voices. The more you stay in your own bubble of experience and don't listen to people who are different from you, the less liberal the society can be because it can not make compromise decisions. People do not have 'wrong' opinions in many cases. They simply have experienced different things we are unaware of. Sometimes what they attribute that to, is misguided, sometimes from a malicious outside force. Liberal democracy's job is to sift though that, tear the problem apart at its roots and then decide on a course of action, rather than having an ideology from the outset and not taking the time to look at the actual issues and intended consequences. All this business of them and us is a symptom of ideology being in the driving seat and an arrogant attitudes that be are morally superior.

We never know everything. Taking the time to acknowledge our blind spots and weaknesses is the strength of liberal democracy. The ability to admit we are fallible and were wrong is absent from modern politics.

@Redtoothbrush Lisa Muggeridge is/was a social worker and advocate for women and girls in the "system". There's a couple of Youtubes with her talking to a guy friend and they are illuminating. I love her.

I think I struggle, as she does, with the loss of the voice of the dispossessed, the traditional working class and within that, women and girls who are considered the "underclass" by most services and people. The single parents (many not of their own making - they were groomed into sex by men declaring love and then abandoned by these same immature guys), the grooming of young girls who are testing boundaries, the withholding of secure, safe, affordable housing, community and financial support. The services are wilfully blind to the systemic subjugation and abuse, from all sides, that these women and children face. Many mainstream services seem staffed by bullies with "himpathy". Then, predictably, these same women and children are victim blamed for their troubled lives.

I despair too that The Guardian and left traditionally fought for working class rights - the Guardian had its roots in Manchester advocating for factory workers and the like. Labour had its roots in fighting for the workers. But both have lost that focus and been taken over by people (mainly guys but not always - The Guardian editor is a woman as are many Labour MPs). These guys and their women hostages are very deluded and often seem to me to have zero experience of what deprivation is or how it operates. They want poster women and girls, who "lean-in", have a brand and are resilient in the face of adversity. If you don't thrive from adversity you are discarded by all.

Your points about safeguarding are well taken - the one point that all will meet on, whatever their perspective, unless you're PinkNews and its allies of course, is child safeguarding.

BTW I'll finish with a laugh - my daughter encouraged me to watch CBB and "India". I found myself agreeing with Ann Widdecombe on a lot of points - I though WTF is going on - Ann Widdecombe an ally - never thought I'd see that day…..

BTW I saw recently someone (Spectator I think) saying what the hell was going on when MN was considered radical in its concerns re transgender - that gave me heart.

The system is at fault and I am working on that…..

Rights are about protecting the most vulnerable individual in a situation. Not classifying groups in a heirachical manner, in which individuals fall through the cracks. Saying that trans people are the most oppressed in society does exactly that. It fails to acknowledge where some who is trans DOES have privilege over and above another individual.

Ask time and again, when Trans activists are asked what rights they don't have, there is no answer. The problem is social. You can not legislate for it, without there being backlash. You have to bring people with you nd say how its worthwhile to do otherwise you coerce them. That is not freedom.

The argument should stand on its own merits. The truth and justice at the heart if it is the flame of liberal democracy.

We need to find the passion and love for this, that we have become apathetic and complacent about.

Fwiw I see genuine fear to the right of politics as much as to the left of politics right now.

I see a spark of something on mn but it needs to spread and it needs to really take off to break through the crap. I see glimpse of that vision, when those on one side of the political spectrum have light bulb moments about the other side of the political spectrum.

We need to admit to these and say they are positive experiences.

We need to see politics as a learning exercise not something in which we know it all before we start.

I really should get some sleep.

The pursuit of power is more important than humanity. The 'greater good' outweighs the suffering its built on.
Ultimately in doing so we lose our freedom and rights because we forget what they were founded on.
Liberal democracy's job is to sift though that, tear the problem apart at its roots and then decide on a course of action, rather than having an ideology from the outset and not taking the time to look at the actual issues and intended consequences. All this business of them and us is a symptom of ideology being in the driving seat and an arrogant attitudes that be are morally superior.
We never know everything. Taking the time to acknowledge our blind spots and weaknesses is the strength of liberal democracy. The ability to admit we are fallible and were wrong is absent from modern politics.

Absolutely agree. Unfortunately there's no party I can see that fits this bill - hence why I think that there's a vacuum that needs filling by women. We are the traditional safeguarders of the greater good, no matter what the rhetoric around "father knows best". We all know it's actually women that have the capacity to understand the implications and risks of courses of action - except perhaps in warfare (takes a psychopath to know one). Ideology has taken root and that started with Thatcher and Reagan and was carried on by Blair and Clinton.

I do think some of what Corbyn espouses is the best way forward - but he's locked into the 70s and things have changed. He is also up against formidable Blairites who are neocons - I have no doubt the fight is real within Labour. But where are the people speaking up for women, for common sense, for the greater good, for long term thinking and the infrastructure to support that? Where are the proposed solutions to the entrenched problems of poverty? This is not rocket science - there is a better way - I know it as I have seen it - but it needs political will and focus and there's none of that at present - just ideologies and infighting and the Tories asset stripping as fast as the public allows them to.

My conspiracy self thinks it could have all been a plan to wrest back more power and wealth into the hands of the few, by dismantling those mechanisms that has ensured some minor re-distribution of wealth and empowerment post-war. Once the psychopaths get hold they know no bounds as they have proved…time and time again

I agree and think the underlying system doesn't support vision for the nation tbh. It supports divide and conquer.

It should be a continuous learning exercise. It should respond to the nation's problems as a whole. It should be based on truth and what's in the nations's best interests.

But it's not.

There's a systemic indifference to the plight of the disadvantaged and a lack of emotional intelligence about how to tackle it. One size does not fit all. It is possible to build a nuanced system that recognises that disadvantage on an individual basis. But the current system doesn't allow for it nor does it contain abuses of power - that are rampant at present.

Yes I agree there needs to be a coming together from the right and left - no one person has all the answers - a 360 degree perspective is important. But so too is moral leadership - not from a charlatan saying what he needs to get elected, but someone who does what they say they will do and who demonstrates they are acting in the nations best integrates. We are not good at spotting liars and sociopaths who abound in politics unfortunately

I too must get on

Jesus.

So the guardian are moaning about the shutting down of sex ad services for the protection of child sex trafficking and refused to run the Telford story.

And who says we can't educate ourselves on mn?

Thank you for the above posts; not clever enough to join in but reading and learning.

I'm newspaper and politically homeless.

I don't think it's as black and white as it seems, though I wish it was. Some trafficking survivor networks are also not supporting it.

which ones? some of these pressure groups are run by sex traffickers themselves.

I'm newspaper and politically homeless.

Me too. I get the print edition of the New Statesman, as that's the only place that seems to be doing any kind of decent political analysis at the moment. Or maybe it's just the only paper that doesn't leave me foaming with rage.

I was a life long Guardian buyer, until the Cologne New Year reporting fail, then the rah-rah for TRAs took off, and now it's nothing but clickbait opinion pieces written by sanctimonious authoritarians.

Or maybe it always was? I don't know any more.

Some really thought provoking stuff on this thread. Particularly around the concept that we are being culturally groomed to abandon our boundaries, and thinking about who would want that and why is quite uncomfortable. But necessary.

Place marking so I can read after coffee...

I do think some of what Corbyn espouses is the best way forward - but he's locked into the 70s and things have changed. He is also up against formidable Blairites who are neocons - I have no doubt the fight is real within Labour.

I do a lot of ranting and raving about Corbyn. But I do agree is right on a lot. There are lots of people who seem to be fighting for no change in politics within Labour. That is not helpful either. There does need to be a change in society. An inability to shape a vision for the future of the uk is also crippling the conservatives. They are so busy squabbling over brexit they have lost all sight of pressing domestic issues. And the liberal democrats have just totally lost the plot when they don't understand the origin of their own bloody name.

No one is really encouraging critical thinking.

If political debate on MN is doing better than elsewhere then its because there is a cultural encouragement of that within the site. Don't get me wrong, MN is certainly not perfect and we should do better at recognising its flaws.

In tackling cults the most successful strategy is not to repeatedly tell a member they are wrong. Its to force them to think and stop merely repeating what they are told is right and moral.

There is so much to be said for this as a political strategy at the moment.

Force people to think.

At every corner you see attempts to stop that. 'Transwomen are women', is an example of a thought ending cliche. 'Will of the People' is a tool to stop the ongoing need for continual debate within a democracy.

Look out for it.

Be conscious of it. Who is telling you to stop thinking? Every time you see it, look harder at why and ask more difficult questions.

Tell others to do the same.

Do more listening and questioning, rather than simply trying to 'win' an online argument.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-has-been-lost-to-fools-and-crackpots-hlv783z7j?shareToken=4e3854337cf0a7df0efa5e8d8fde595e
Labour has been lost to fools and crackpots
My party is led by a man who prefers to entrench division on every occasion instead of searching for common ground

By Janice Turner.

Its the full article unpaywalled.

Red I think I've said this before on here but I found Lisa M about five years ago, after having been at the coal face of trying to raise awareness of gendered austerity and finding nothing in any of the supposedly left-leaning press. She was saying all the things I was seeing about how equality was being eroded for working class women through intersecting austerity cuts.

For example, you can't leave your DV abuser if all the refuges close or the benefits system is so punitive you think there's a good chance you'll end up homeless, but if anyone ever finds out you allowed your kids to witness DV and didn't leave, social services will take them into care and might even adopt them out against your will. This specific scenario has happened to hundreds, if not thousands, of women over the last 8 years. And that's just one scenario of many. It took until the rape clause, almost ten years into austerity, before the Guardian even noticed what it was doing to women.

So now, when Lisa says that saying exactly the same things about the rolling back of women's equality in the last decade is now also so-called terfism, I also want to know why the liberal media isn't interested.

I think Lisa is right in her analysis - the mediating class as she calls it, of liberal commentators, journalists, policy makers and politicians is now completely dominated by bourgeois identity politics and cannot even see the impact of policy on ordinary people, especially women and children, let alone begin to formulate policy that will benefit them.

And the only consequence I can see is a massive and extreme right wing backlash.

The modern understanding and use of the word liberal has been corrupted.

I'd say instead the postmodern understanding and use of any potentially useful term has been corrupted!