J Rees Mogg

[Mumsnut]

In The Times today:

He is uneasy about some aspects of the transgender rights debate.

‘If you have people who have no intention of changing sex but think it would be fun to go into the women’s changing room, we cannot ignore that.’

And if you don't think a man of incredible personal wealth using his power to consistently harm the poorer and more vulnerable member s of society, whilst voting through measures to aid and abet his millionaire cronies, the very people who exploit the poor an vulnerable can be classed as evil then we will just have to agree to disagree.

People's opinions can vary all they want. JRM's voting history is a matter of public record. A fact, if you will. If you look at those facts don't think it's terrible then that is your opinion... but it doesn't mean I have to respect it. I have looked at the facts and drawn my own conclusions.

People who are only looking at his mannerisms, and laughing at the Victorian posh boy act and thinking he's a character are not looking at the facts. Therefore their opinions are on shaky ground.

Trumpdump said

"Sadly, I think he may be coming from a place of bigotry, rather than feminism...
I do agree with him though, obviously. I just think we need to be careful with allies like him."

Unbelievable.
Considering there is a vast army of people, including hundreds of thousands of self declaring feminists, queing up to call you and most people on this forum a bigot I would have thought you put aside your political differences and name calling for once. It strikes me at a time like this that you need every friend in politics that you can find.

JRM ^is% a "bad man" as far as I am concerned.

He is against abortion in any and all circs. That's enough for me.

This is not "purity politics" it is recognising a religious maniac who hates women, who is filthy rich and acts for people "like him" and cares little for anyone else. He is vile.

I am one of the people who finds this deeply distressing an I like the venn diagram further upthread.

Also, the idea that right-wing "traditional" men see women as property and want their property protected from other men, is hardly new or revoluntionary, so I'm not sure why that poster is getting such a hard time.

So he's said this, which is a straightforward thing to say, in a sea of views which given that he has power and wants more, should worry all feminists.

On abortion

"Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says he is "completely opposed" to abortion, including in cases of rape or incest.

The backbencher told ITV's Good Morning Britain that abortion was "morally indefensible".

"Life is sacrosanct and begins at the point of conception," he said.

The North East Somerset MP has recently faced questions about his leadership ambitions, dismissing reports linking him with the job as "jolly August stuff".

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, he again distanced himself from leadership talk, before being asked for his views on same-sex marriage, which he opposes.

"I am a Catholic and I take the teachings of the Catholic Church seriously," he said.

"Marriage is a sacrament and the decision of what is a sacrament lies with the Church not with Parliament."

The Church's teachings on faith and morals were "authoritative", he said, but he added it was not for him to judge others.

However, he said he was completely opposed to abortion.

"With same-sex marriage, that is something that people are doing for themselves," he said.

"With abortion, it is something that is done to the unborn child. That is different.""

On rape the abortion - he sees the abortion as equivalent to the rape:

"n Wednesday, in an interview with Emma Barnett on Radio 5 Live, Conservative MP and mooted future Prime Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg defended his belief that abortion is unacceptable even in cases of rape. When questioned on his stance, he claimed that women who terminate a pregnancy after rape were committing a "second wrong"."

I am perfectly comfortable seeing him as a "bad man", personally.

So he said something that is kind of obvious. Well OK but it doesn't mean he isn't a total utter bastard.

I think AskBasils earlier comment is right. There’s the common sense view held by probably 90%+ of the population, and the trans activist view, which is held by a few fringe nutters, who somehow hold sway on Twitter and in the Guardian. We agree with Rees Mogg for the same reason we agree with him that the Earth is round.

Yes that seems about right.

Can I point out that JRM is agreeing with us, not vice versa.

Didn't we do reductio ad hitlerium on Rod Liddell recently?

Errol,
I was studiously avoiding it....

I have found myself agreeing with a number of journalists etc that I wouldn't normally expect to on this issue. I even agreed with a headline in the Sun newspaper the other day.

It does seem to be the people we might normally label 'right wing' who are taking women's concerns seriously. It was a Conservative MP who hosted the WPUK meeting and is now getting serious flak for it.

If our concerns are now being flagged up by people like JRM then that is good news. I don't agree with much of his opinion on other things but his support on this issue is valuable. The way Labour are going on at the moment they are going to lose the next general election so I think we need to make sure that we have politicians of all stripes on board. This needs to become a cross-party issue.

I agree with other posters who have said that he has neatly encapsulated the concerns in language most people will understand .

I don't understand why anyone is discussing JRM's views on anything other than his self-id comment. It's obvious that on a feminist board we are unlikely to agree with most of his views. Those of you who are pointing out how evil he is - are you trying to reach the point where we all say 'everything JRM thinks is evil, JRM thinks self-id is a bad idea, therefore self-id must be a good idea'? Because it's not going to happen. I agree with him about self-id, I agree with him about freedom of speech. I disagree with him about abortion, and just about everything else.

I don’t like him or his politics but that doesn’t mean he can’t be correct on individual issues.

A stopped clock is right twice a day.

I’m not going to infer any further meaning to what he said other than, he was, as a pp said “stating the bleeding obvious”.

Fishfingersandwichnocheese At least he has gone against the current climate and stated it.

Yes and I do appreciate that.

His views on women's rights are shocking! Don't give this drip the time of day.

Yes he's right about self id. Yes he's stating the bleeding obvious. That doesn't mean we shouldn't query why he is saying it and from what angle he is approaching this from. We shouldn't just accept allies wherever we find them - some people are not worth aligning with, no matter how much you agree on one particular issue. Although - as this almost certainly doesn't come from a women's rights perspective it would be naive to believe that you have more than a surface agreement with him. Drill down and there may well be some very nasty ideas under that statement. And as this is a man known for his nasty ideas then it makes sense to be wary of what they may be. Or why he might have decided to come out with a statement of what appears at face value to be thinking about women's concerns. He will have made it because it benefitted precisely one person - himself.

He wants to be prime minister. Women all across MN and beyond are decrying the fact there is no one they can vote for because all main stream politicians have drunk the Koolaid regarding self id. And then - behold - here is JRM speaking on behalf of women's concerns. He recognises the dangers of self id!
There are only 70000 members of the Tory party (there are over 500 000 members of Labour for context). If women suddenly decide to flood to him because he has spoken out for his concern then it would take only 70001 to join the party and make him leader should TM fall. 70001 is peanuts. Add in that lots of the Tory members (though not voters) already would like him to be PM anyway, and he's laughing.

And that would be one of the biggest disasters to hit the women of Britain that we can imagine. As well as poor people, and disabled people, children, refugees and asylum seekers and anyone who isn't a millionaire.

Now that might all sound a bit tin foil hat, but he is a clever man playing a long game. His other viewpoints are entirely relevant. The character of the man is relevant. No one should be so gushing with gratitude that this person has recognised object reality in this one circumstance (he is less of a fan of reality when it comes to Brexit) that we discount all the harm he has done and is capable of doing and declare him an ally.

Yes, I wonder if this very clever man, so adept at playing the long game, isn't taking note of women's feelings, in a really calculated, distant and uncaring way, and throwing out a buzzy line that we will latch onto.

We stand for women's rights and children's rights.

We don't agree with JRM, he just happens to agree with us on this issue.

I don't imagine many of us are going to do a complete 180 on all our principles and come out in support of JRM or any other obnoxious right winger simply because they agree with us on this issue.

As time goes on, more and more people, some of whom we disagree with on almost everything else, some of whom we consider 'bad people' will agree with us on this. Because it's just obvious.

'You agree with a bad person' is such a childish bullshit silencing tactic. So what? Everyone with any sort of majority viewpoint has a huge number of 'bad people' agreeing with them on it.

Fretting about being agreed with by someone whose other principles we don't support is a waste of energy. We can't stop people agreeing with us!

Oh yeah, so if it's so easy why aren't all the MPs doing it? Because lots of them are cowards waiting for the clear tipping point of public opinion to shift first, and until they are sure they'll just keep their heads down and hope that they can avoid saying anything at all.

oh yes, of course that's true, I totally agree with that. JRM is making a name for himself by saying the "commonsense" stuff that people enjoy hearing. Some of the commonsense stuff, eg about brexit, isn't commonsense of course, but he's good at making it sound like it is - just like Farage.

I don't know what people want. For him not to have said this? He is not an ally, clearly he isn't. But are you arguing that it's a bad thing he's spoken out? I disagree. He is popular, because he's good at manipulating people's views of him and the media are stupid - they get right behind these manipulative PR people like Farage, Boris, JRM, Katie Hopkins, because they're easy, there's a hook they can hang reports on over and over again without doing any real work. That's why they sell these people in this way- easy narratives. But anyway, back to the issue - JRM is popular, he will be quoted and thousands of people will look at that and say "hang on - men with penises going into women's changing rooms? Say what?" and they will find out that this is happening. And that can only be a good thing IMO - because when people find out about this stuff, they hit peak trans immediately, which is precisely why it's crucial to the transborg, that there is silence around this.

I can't see JRM breaking the silence, as bad news. I think it's a good thing. But no, of course it doesn't make him a feminist ally, anymore than brocialists supporting abortion rights makes them feminists.

We just can't have the wrong type of person agreeing with one of our views

I cannot find the article on the Times website, anyone able to provide a link please?

I can't see JRM breaking the silence, as bad news. I think it's a good thing

I don't think it's a good thing because the dude bros, the brocialists, the allies and the woke types will use his agreeing with us as a way of proving that we are wrong. Because on the hard left there is a lot of ideological purity. The people who are already running this discourse and are pushing this through - breaking equality law because they are ahead of it - will use his agreeing with feminists against feminists. They will punish feminists for what JRM believes. They do it with everything else - why on earth would this be different?

So on the one hand we have the lefty types who will use his concerns over the issue as 'proof' that self id is morally right.

On the other we have him saying this for his own nefarious purposes.

No we can't stop him agreeing with us - but we also don't have to acknowledge him. He is a person so toxic that his support is damaging - in the way the support from Britain First or the EDL would be damaging. We don't have to accept any ally we can get on this. Yes he has said something that is basic common sense, no there is nothing we can do about him agreeing with us - but that doesn't mean we should act like this is a good thing or acknowledge him in any way. We are playing into the hands of both the left and the right by doing so.

ignore ignore ignore and keep putting our own point of view across calmly and sensibly without any reference to Jacob Rees Bleeding Mogg.

The thing is if JRM and his natural constituency don't think Self ID is a bad thing then it will happen.

Imagine if he cane out said he was pro Self ID?

In order to kick Self ID into the long grass we need a majority to be against it - that includes socially conservative.

I'm a centrist, there's lots of things I don't agree with people on who are anti Self ID. For example, I can't stand Corbyn - really can't stand him, I think he's a piece of work, I really do but if i tried to distance myself from every pro-Corbyn but anti-Self ID person, i would miss out on a lot of good support and analysis.

Right wing politicians are able to speak out more easily on this topic because the socially liberal ones are worried about losing the vote of the lefty dudebros, their handmaidens and the rest who haven't given it much thought & assume its a gay rights issue.

Let's just be thankful that it's not a front we have to fight on right now.