Women on the left are responsible for austerity

[CarrotyO]

I've heard it said that women on the left actually support and are therefore in some way responsible for austerity. This is because both Labour and the Tories support austerity. Therefore any woman who supports Labour, or the Left in general, also knowingly and consciously supports austerity and are therefore also responsible for the 1000s of deaths of disabled people caused by austerity. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

WPUK are not a membership organisation, but a campaign.

Yes, this is a very fair point which I should have considered earlier. WPUK do not have members so aren't accountable in quite the same way I have been talking about.

Noted. Thanks.

did you know that multiple personality disorder was the last big "identity" thing before some of the same people decided they were trans? They call themselves "multiples". Some believe that they have fictional characters and/or historical figures living in their heads.

That is such a fascinating topic! I have read somewhere that multiple personality disorder is caused by severe trauma before the age of three, that is in the time during which personality is formed.

In fact, personality disorders (at least cluster B I believe?) - borderline, narcissistic, histrionic and antisocial - also form in those first three years.

I’ve seen DID claimed as a gender identity recently too, like multiplegender or something

The theory is that MPD can be caused by trauma over an extended period too. To take that and make it into an "identity" in the same sense that trans is used as an identity I think may point to some really interesting things about how trauma works and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Of course like with trans there were also some kids who were basically just playing Dungeons and Dragons online and making up characters and character classes for themselves.

True, it is indeed interesting for the wider point of 'identity'. I once saw a youtube video of a person with multiple personality disorder, giving a deposition (superofficially for some court case). It is a fascinating watch and very convincing. Even though what was said was so batshit crazy... I sure wonder, how this condition effects memory. But the person sure believed what he said, if it was untrue, it was not a deliberate lie imo.

Of course like with trans there were also some kids who were basically just playing Dungeons and Dragons online and making up characters and character classes for themselves.

Yeah, obviously.

WPUK Statement:
"We can confirm that we have had a meeting in confidence with John McDonnell. That meeting was very constructive and John listened to our concerns and confirmed that women’s rights will be a matter of significance to any future Labour Government. We are pleased he disclosed our meeting to women on Mumsnet who have been at the forefront of pushing politicians on this issue. We encourage more political dialogue and reasoned discussion and hope this can now begin to take place.

Over the past year we have met with several key political figures. We are glad to see politicians increasingly willing to be open about wishing to meet with us and hear women’s concerns. We have been pressing for more such meetings and will continue to do so.

Respectful and open dialogue is the way forward.

18th September 2018"

womansplaceuk.org/wpuk-john-mcdonnell/

I think the comment element with trans (and I'm thinking specifically of young female transitioners here, and some of the more vulnerable young gay males) is that dissociation can have a huge impact on people's perceptions, and dissociation is also a very common side effect of trauma.

That's what struck me, that encouraging dissociation into a new "identity" is against clinical best practices, so why are therapists doing it?

fatuous to suggest that anyone consciously supports austerity/the deaths of thousands of disabled people.

No, but people do say things like "if Labour go too far left they'll be unelectable" and so endorse austerity-lite policies (and the deaths they would cause) as a means to get Labour elected. This refusal to grasp the nettle and say "actually we refuse to kill people by cutting benefits, we will tax those who can afford it, tax land, etc" is an endorsement of austerity.

Austerity should be a totally separate issue

I would argue that austerity and women's rights are very much relevant to each other. I've talked on earlier threads about the Swiss Cheese model of security. Another way of thinking of this model is multiple layers of imperfect safety nets. Some of the safety nets that protect women from having to stay with a violent abuser are destroyed by austerity and others are destroyed by the erosion of women's rights. All the safety nets are necessary because they are all imperfect, and we hope that with enough nets, a woman in a crisis will be caught by one of them and not fall through all of them to the ground.

Imagine, a mother is being battered by her male partner.

1. She wants to leave to protect herself and her child, but the Universal Credit is paid to him alone, so she has no control over money. The old style Child Benefit would have been paid to her and she could have used it as an escape fund, so Universal Credit has destroyed her first safety net.
2. She eventually, whilst he's at the pub, makes a call from the landline to a shelter who agree to take her. She walks there because she has no money, pushing her child's pram. When her violent now-ex gets the phone bill, he dials the unfamiliar number he sees, and, when he realises he's talking to a shelter he realises that's where she went, claims to be a transwoman, and gets the address and turns up. Had that shelter been confident enough in the EA protections to say "no males ever", he'd have been told that he wasn't allowed to come and she'd have been safe. The pressure to abandon single-sex provision has destroyed her second safety net.

The ideology underlying trans identity politics and the ideology underlying acceptance of austerity are the same: individualism.

• Identity politics abandons a class analysis of discrimination and oppression and replaces it with oppression being based on a chosen identity, rather than a sex, race, or socio-economic class that you have no power over.
• For austerity to be palatable, people have to believe that the poor are responsible for their own poverty and could escape if they just worked hard enough, ignoring the huge levels of privilege that come from having parents who are affluent and educated enough to care about your schooling, help you with your homework, pay for your music lessons and sports clubs, support you through university, and leave you money when they die. It's no coincidence that, in an era of £9000/year tuition fees and students as consumers, many of the most vocal TRAs are students and recent graduates: they can't (or don't want to) see their own socio-economic class privilege and so don't (or won't) apply class analysis to sex class privilege.
• Individualism frames crimes like male violence as committed by an individual against another individual (hence Stella Creasy calling a boy transgirl wanking in a communal school shower in front of girls "peer-on-peer" abuse), ignoring the class analyses of sex, educational standard, and wealth. Through an individualist lens, a woman is deemed an equal threat to a child as a man is because Beverly Allitt (the killer nurse) exists and therefore all women could be like her, ignoring the crime statistics that show that men are more dangerous as a class. Individualism is popular with men on the left and right as it allows them to ignore male violence as the principal agent of women's oppression.

No, but people do say things like "if Labour go too far left they'll be unelectable"

They are unelectable in their present form.

No, but people do say things like "if Labour go too far left they'll be unelectable"

They are unelectable in their present form.

I'm a May Day resigner from Labour and there isn't a party I'd give my vote to right now. They are all unelectable.

haxxor thank you, that was genuinely enlightening and provided much-needed clarity.

Great post haxxor.

It is a very emotional post. It does not however make me change my mind about the Labour Party. I will not be voting for a bunch of economically illiterate Marxists or Momentum authoritarians.

@Haxxor
Brilliant post. And you put it so clearly -
I just don't understand what's so difficult for politico types to understand.
It is so obvious. There can't be an argument for anyone sane to make.
I would like to copy parts of this, if that's OK?
Got FPFW stuff coming this week, going leafletting and handing them out to all my family.

Great post haxxor.

Seconded.

yes Haxxor that is it exactly.

This refusal to grasp the nettle and say "actually we refuse to kill people by cutting benefits, we will tax those who can afford it, tax land, etc" is an endorsement of austerity.

This is at the core of the matter and a blind spot for many who do not peronally live with the impacts of austerity.

Another example Lisa gave in her vids are family courts, where representation is apparently not paid for by the state any more, and so those who can afford to privately pay for it (usually not the mothers), will now often get their way, no matter what would be 'just' and 'best' for the kids. Those most directly and viscerally affected are rendered voiceless and are lorded over, in essence.

I think I would have concerns about a campaign being led too heavily by a group who are too heavily pro-Corbyn in all other areas. I don't know if this is true about WPUK. This is why I think there is a need for a pluralism of groups to offset that potential problem.

I'll try and explain why I have reservations about any group which has particularly tribal party ties.

This thread about wider politics does a lot to explain it. Its by someone who conducts polls and political focus groups to try and understand trends. The context to the thread is the possibility of a new centre party:

Election Data @election_data
Mr Blair says you've got to distinguish between an individual choice to stay with Labour based on tribal loyalty to the party and "more pertinent questions"....and then expands on those "more pertinent" points. However....
....it's the tribal loyalty angle which is most often overlooked. I know because I've tested it in polling. If you skirt past tribal loyalties because you believe there are obvious moral reasons not to stay in Labour you're in danger of missing the point.
The most powerful reason for people to vote Labour is that they've voted Labour before. It's a hugely powerful emotional trigger in voters, and one which was played out in 2017. And it was the ONLY emotional trigger which was as powerful as their views of Mr Corbyn
The same is true of the PLP and many Labour members. Their "tribal" loyalty to the party is extremely powerful and much more powerful than Mr Blair appears willing to accept. If he continues to appeal to rationality I believe he's likely to miss this completely. And.....
....many people mock tribal loyalty but it's often a lived experience. People aren't normally irrationally loyal. It's often been the result of reciprocal ties going back many decades, across families and generations. It's something Labour candidates tapped into in 2017.
So my advice would be to come to peace with tribal loyalty rather than brush past it in order to discuss "more pertinent questions". That's a very common mistake in politics.
Tribal loyalty was more important in 2017 than the NHS. Or, should I say, it was better at moving people to vote Labour. Labour's view on the NHS is, for the most part, already baked in. Tribal loyalty was more important as a trigger than any other issue with the exception of
their views of Mr Corbyn, which was on a par in terms of intensity. However a combination of people putting that to one side and the Conservatives reminding them how bad they are meant that Labour performed extremely well. It wasn't JUST that of course but
"tribal loyalty to Labour vs their views of Mr Corbyn" was a significant factor, and continues to be. Just look at the polling. People don't listen to Nick Robinson on Radio 4 (sorry Nick!) outside the square mile of Westminster.
Oh and one last thing. The Labour membership have their own tribalism. The new members, who now overwhelmingly dominate the membership, are loyal to Mr Corbyn first, Labour second. Not all of them but more than not. That isn't true of pre-2015 members. Ahem.

In other words, Labour tribal loyalty is a force which leads to people over looking the ugliness they see in Corbynite politics. They are happy to overlook / excuse political tactics and issues which Corbyn enables and encouraged because of tribal loyalty. Perhaps because they perceive some sort of 'greater good'. (In the spirit of Hot Fuzz).

This is the very definition of a political blindspot.

It represents an inability to be self critical of your own political party, because of a hatred of the opposition. Its almost a hostage type situation which limits how far someone is prepared to examine an issue.

Remember, Corbyn's slogan is 'for the many not the few', yet the trans ideology is very much at odds with that - see HaXXor's very pertinant points about individualism above.

I've just had a bit of a rant on my thread about Shrewsbury which touches on the pattern of power of groups, ideology over science, the role of the media, failure of institutions to do what they are supposed to and money. And how this is prevalent in so many areas of our current political landscape.

I don't think you can properly get to the heart of our political problems at the moment without examining this dynamic.

And that requires all our current political parties to have a hard self critical look at where they are, where they have been and where their political tactics are pulling them.

If certain parts of this conversation are in any way, off limits, because of party tribalism it inhibits the ability of everyone to get to the bottom and the heart of our current political problems. You have to have a willingness to question whether what you believe is actually true. If your tribal loyalty is so strong that you don't have the flexibility to do that, its going to be a problem.

I personally don't know whether Lisa's criticisms of individuals are correct or fair. I'm not going to get into that.

BUT if her comments do have foundation, then yes its an issue and one that should be flagged up so people are aware of it, and one that leaders of any campaign group on this subject, should be aware of.

Those most directly and viscerally affected are rendered voiceless and are lorded over, in essence.

Which we saw distinct echos of in this thread, imo.

If certain parts of this conversation are in any way, off limits, because of party tribalism it inhibits the ability of everyone to get to the bottom and the heart of our current political problems. You have to have a willingness to question whether what you believe is actually true. If your tribal loyalty is so strong that you don't have the flexibility to do that, its going to be a problem.

Precisely. I don't think we'll win this battle without the active involvement of right wing women. Not only that, their voices deserve to be heard because they're women and this effects them too. Doesn't necessarily have to be in the same organization, and in some ways organizing separately may be more effective, but the instinctive sneering and bristling at the very idea of cooperating with anyone on the right is not helpful at all when it comes to this issue.

This is the most random thread I have ever read.

This is the very definition of a political blindspot.

Exactly. And Lisa's case is that the blindspot in leftist politics is, all too often, women. It's no coincidence that her series of meeting is called Correcting a Blindspot.