James Kirkup: On bomb threats to WPUK meetings: apathy or fear or speaking out?

[R0wantrees]

Article in Spectator concludes:

(extract)
"...Yet women turn up anyway, in large numbers. And what does it say about public and political debate about gender issues that this stuff has become normal and almost unremarkable?

In Britain in 2018, women trying to hold public meetings to talk about politics and the law are being subjected to intimidation and threats. The police are investigating a bomb threat against one of those meetings. Yet politicians and large sections of the media are silent. Would that be the case if any other group or community were subject to such threats and intimidation? Why aren’t politicians, of all parties, shouting from the rooftops about this?

It’s not as if they don’t know or don’t care. Since I started writing about the gender debate in February, I’ve lost count of the number of MPs and other political people (of all parties and ranks, from policy advisers to Cabinet ministers) who have privately told me they are worried about the nature of this debate and worried about the implications of policy. Yet almost all of those people have also said they are not willing to talk about this publicly, for fear of the criticism and vitriol they believe they would face from people who believe the interests of transgender people are best served by shouting down questions with allegations of transphobia and bigotry. I understand that silence, but it has costs. When the people who are supposed to speak for ordinary people – and the rules that allow those people to exercise their basic democratic freedoms – stay silent, they leave a vacuum of leadership and moral courage that can be filled with hostility and fear.

I’ll end by repeating the basic facts of this story once more, in the hope that some of the politicians who talk so much about free speech and equality and fairness finally pluck up the courage to talk about this. Some women had a meeting to talk about their legal rights. Someone threatened to blow up the meeting with a bomb. The police are investigating that threat and say it is being “taken seriously”. And this happened in Britain in 2018."

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/why-are-women-who-discuss-gender-getting-bomb-threats/

The Guardian does what you expect - it has its hierarchy of victims. Trans gender ticks the top victim box at the moment. A year or so back it was the immigrants who assaulted women in Cologne etc. but were, of course, the real victims. It is so up its own arse.

Lang - because I broadly agree with you, I’m not going to defend MPs any further. At the end of the day, they SHOULD speak up on this issue, and all my explanations as to why they might not are really no excuse.

Just one further caveat, though, if I may. My big fear, as a politically active woman, is that this issue has the potential to become very divisive within parties, as we’ve already seen. If some party members refuse to support others because of their views on gender, we potentially end up with a result where a talented progressive female politician fails to win against a regressive privileged man because she was taken to task by her party for her gender views and he wasn’t. The answer is for strong minded women from the party’s leadership to challenge the prevailing view, but there are very few women in strong positions in politics atm. Which brings us back to not wanting to threaten the prospects of our future leaders by encouraging division.

That’s my last thought on this subject. But I will keep reading the gender critical threads and look for opportunities to sweat I can.

*do what I can

As time moves on, I do believe this will be seen as an Emperor New clothes scandal. Anyone who fell for it or was a swindler will have no career, political or in a public body.

Lang - because I broadly agree with you, I’m not going to defend MPs any further. At the end of the day, they SHOULD speak up on this issue, and all my explanations as to why they might not are really no excuse.

Would we agree that there is a crisis in our mediating class - with this being one symptom and, say, Brexit being another? I don't think they even see what they need to see, let alone find themselves capable of formulating policy for it. Lisa Nandy talks about town vs city a great deal and I think that is another prism through which we could look here.

Really interesting points being made - Treats you are getting me to rethink my strategy. Lang I absolutely agree, as you know, and I can also see some of the divisive issues at play that we will have to work within - even though it disgusts me on one level - that the behaviour of many MPs is reprehensible.

PS One of my other projects is re-inventing democracy but that's another longer convo.

ScienceIsTruth Thx for the reference - he sounds like my sort of person with the title of one blog post being Synanon, the Brainwashing “Game” and Modern Transgender Activism: The Orwellian Implications of Transgender Politics.

I do think there is a totalitarianism regime being implemented, with social media at its heart, gaining control of the masses, by a small group of men. It's the mind control at play, seen with the TG agenda, that should have everyone worried. I will read and listen some more ...

Yes - everything is becoming so divisive that it’s becoming impossible to build a broad coalition of support for anything. We’re at stalemate and Brexit is only the most obvious (and frightening) manifestation of that.

It was actually quite a deliberate strategy from the Tories in 2015 - we don’t need to persuade everyone, just x number of voters in y constituencies. But the obvious end point is that we’ve reached a political stalemate which is becoming more entrenched.

I’ve been following the “why would anyone vote Tory” thread and you can see the entrenchment all over it.

If MPs don't want the far right to hoover up a large number of Ednas, they are going to have to be proactive opinion formers, not reactive lobby group slaves. I have no sympathy with them at all.

I’ve seen this happen. I used to live in Sweden - the SD (who are genuinely extreme right, not the sort of UKIP shambolic rubbish) got 13% of the vote on the single issue of immigration. At one point it looked like they’d get 20%.
I have close family in Austria - look what happened there.

When mainstream political parties fail to address the Edna’s, the fringe will step in and capitalise on saying what the others won’t. The SD, incidentally have general economic policies that are very Swedish and left wing - but they were vocal on immigration. The mainstream parties realised too late that they needed to stop telling people all immigration is fabulous and they were a bunch of racists and they did actually pot stronger controls in - if they hadn’t, the SD would probably have made larger gains.

See also: brexit. You can’t addressthe worries of the electorate with condescension and calls of racist, because the average woman or man in Page Hall in Sheffield will tell you to fuck off.

The vast, vast majority of British voters, both rural and city based, see Westminster as a bizarre metropolitan bubble that has no connection to or genuine interest in their lives. They are perfectly happy to put the boot in when needed.

Nature abhors a vaccum - and the vacuum created by the lack of moral leadership since the neo-cons started their ascent back in the 70s is being filled by evil and malign forces, who want to divide and conquer - because they can get on with stealing the family silver out of the back door, whilst everyone else is distracted by arguing semantics

It was actually quite a deliberate strategy from the Tories in 2015 - we don’t need to persuade everyone, just x number of voters in y constituencies. But the obvious end point is that we’ve reached a political stalemate which is becoming more entrenched.

I didn't know about that strategy, but that's where the targeted advertising on social media plus mainstream media's collusion worked wonders with Trump and Brexit -all enabled by toerags like Lynton Crosby.

They play with fire - most distracted and divided, arguing about anything other than the elephant in the room. Keeping people lean and mean is a great strategy for dominators.

The vast, vast majority of British voters, both rural and city based, see Westminster as a bizarre metropolitan bubble that has no connection to or genuine interest in their lives. They are perfectly happy to put the boot in when needed.

Absolutely.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/22/khawla-barghouthi-jailed-not-alerting-uk-authorities-terrorist-plot

My MP has stopped replying to me since I first contacted him on this subject - actually, though it's an outrageous attitude on his part, I find this obvious show of cowardice hilarious. He's a Tory, in the Cabinet, and too afraid to reply to some mad woman in his constituency!

Anyway, I'm sending him a l8nk to the JK article and asking him for his thoughts. I wonder if he'll reply?

Interestingly, to me anyway, is that the passport thing has peaktransed my dh, whom I thought had no interest in it at all; in fact, he said exactly that to me last time I mentioned trans issues: "it doesn't affect me, it'll make no difference to me and I'm just not interested" were his words. I am quite delighted to find that he was so wrong. I may not have to divorce him after all (was seriously considering it).

Another excellent James Kirkup article!

I sent the article to my MP and asked for a meeting.
Now have one for early July!

It's going to be interesting for me as he's a Tory male, but one I rate as being bold and prepared to be controversial if it's what he believes... this will be a test of that!

Am preparing for disappointment , but can't help but hope.

Good luck, BabyItsAWildWorld!

BabyItsAWildWorld excellent!