Do you honestly still feel part of the left?

[JoanWilliams75]

Don't get me wrong - I don't consider myself on the right. But, wow, this gender identity movement has really opened my eyes to the dogmatism and close mindedness of the left. The left has grown almost conspiratorial in it's critique of capitalism and sees the worst in everybody. I've always been critical of extreme identity politics, but I was pretty 'woke' until about a year or so ago.

Hearing your political allies repeating TWAW or else has really made me question what else is a lie. I realise this gender identity movement is not a bizarre blind spot of the left (I keep seeing Glinner tweet 'why are progressives supporting this?!') but reflects a much broader failure of the left itself. I've found myself much more willing to engage with other perspectives and I am much better for it. I can't believe how close minded I used to be.

I don't know what left and right are supposed to mean anymore. I guess I'd consider myself "left" libertarian. Though I support basic income, free speech, environmentalism and generally live and let live.

Just some thoughts. Anyone else?

Well, the move to change the GRA to allow self-id is coming under the Conservative government.

And IIRC when the question was asked on MN before the last election, those Tories who answered said that, whether or not they liked the proposed GRA changes, the issue wasn't important enough to make them stop voting Tory.

So, very different from the responses by former Labour voters deserting their party over it.

No.
Re the thread, I particularly agree with Bowl on p1. Women are the canary in the coal mine. I said just that to DH a few days ago.

Urgh. I received a call from the LP the other week, asking for feedback on why I left and whether there was anything they could do to tempt me back, including offering a temporary concession on my subs or a period of 'dormant' membership. When I could finally get a word in and politely mentioned AWS, Gareth dropped me like a hot potato, snapped that the LP wouldn't be able to 'help me there', and hung up. Fuck that. This thread reads like a roll call of wasted political opportunity and good intentions, such good people with great political credentials being jettisoned in favour of this craaaaap.

What is AWS?

AWS = All Women Shortlists, Ida.

The party that's actually proposing the GRA?

The Tories were proposing reforms. Labour brought this whole shit show into being in 2004, despite all the current problems being predicted at the time.

Do you think its a huge co-incidence that just as the far Right gains ascendance and needs an effective opposition, the Left has been co-opted, infiltrated, and turned into a parody?

Of course it isn’t, I’ve thought this for a long time.

Yes, I realised after I posted that I should have said:

The party that's actually proposing changing the GRA to include self-id.

This being the crux for many people.

I've felt this way for awhile now. I think though that the left has been sliding in this direction for quite some time but that in my late teens and early twenties I was just as black and white/idealistic as the woke uni students we have now, and couldn't see it.

What's Left by Nick Cohen is really really worth reading for an eye opening look at how leftist politics have changed - and the way they haven't. It's quite a few years old now but remarkably prescient and more relevant now than ever.

But I have often departed from left wing friends on certain issues. I have two close friends that I cannot even raise this with, as I think they will be on board with the TRA ideology, and I can’t bear to deal with it.

Same here. One of my dear friends (though I don't see her often, she lives in a far-off country but we keep in touch via Facebook) has a transgender son. . Throughout the years, my friend's adult daughter has had serious mental problems. When I last saw my friend, two years ago, she told me that her daughter was now a transman, but still had problems and that transitioning wasn't the answer.

Recently, though, she posted a FB meme to the effect that being transgender was like a tin of corn carrying a label of pears inside and outside don't match. It means, basically, that she is now on board that her daughter is now a man. I can't, I simply can't discuss this with her and it's one of the reasons I haven't "outed" myself as GC on FB along with a host of other American "woke" friends whom I've never met, but they don't matter as much. I just don't want to fall out with this one friend. It's such a loaded, personal topic.

Another friend in her 70's has a gay son who is a big part of the Berlin gay scene, and she and him are very close. I have almost no doubt that he would be part of the Berlin TG arty-farty woke set, and she always agrees with him -- she considers herself to be extremely liberal and free-thinking. Again: this is a close friend I just don't want to argue with so I avoid coming out.

Isn't it strange that we are the ones using the words "coming out" when it's really just about expressing an opinion as opposed to our sexuality, "gender identity", etc!
I've never had to hide my opinion before. I'm pretty outspoken about most issues. But this...

I've always been on the left. Heck, my dad was a Marxist and raised me with leftist and atheist slogans and though I grew up to reject much of his stances, I've always, always voted for left parties (in Germany).
Transideology has really broken the spell.

I stopped considering myself left wing when I was quite young. Once I realised the genuine contempt that an awful lot of guardian reading types have for the chavs or schemies they claim to agitate on behalf of, and how much in return, the working or manual labouring classes actually hate them back. The whole thing is pretty ridiculous to me, Corbyn is kind of a personification of that sort of left leaning intellectual and moral superiority. The way they talk about and look down their noses at "white van man" or the red top reading ignoramus etc.

The attempt to ban words on a piece of paper or a screen because they are too dangerous is also something I cannot believe, along with the mandated denial of opinion or indeed, scientific fact.

BickerinBrattle Couldn't agree more. Well said.

I've never had to hide my opinion before. I'm pretty outspoken about most issues. But this...

Absolutely! Same here. I have never, ever been called racist, sexist or homophobic. But guess what..

I left ‘the left’ when I got an email from my union asking me to support Labour. I come from a broadly left-leaning, public sector background. I value trade unions and feel that they have achieved a lot for public wellbeing in general.

But as I stood looking at that email on my phone I suddenly realised that Labour didn’t stand for me. My gut-reaction in that moment was that Labour stood for working-class men, whereas I am a middle-class woman.

The pitiful Labour referendum ‘campaign’ was the absolute end, no turning back.

I am still progressive left, yes. I am not authoritarian left at all, and I very much put Woke excesses under authoritarianism.

Every time I think I might be shifting a bit rightward I go read the comments on hard right publications and it reminds me that the authoritarian right is pretty damned ugly, too.

I am part of the left, yes.

I don't consider fakes, liberals and blue-haired pomo children part of the left.

The right wing thinks that women are private property. The left wing thinks that women are public property.

Marx: But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

Most of the left is still not up to speed on what Marx said 170 years ago. Which is, as far as I can see, the main reason feminism and socialism parted ways.

"Sorry, off on a tangent, but both the left and right have done terrible things under the falsehood they’re keeping others safe."

A spectrum is circular. I think the far right and the far left eventually meet each other on the way round. I struggle to see the difference between them.

I can't any more, they abandoned women and lesbians. Obviously I"m not right wing, but I"m fine with being a clear eyed centirst. I notice there are a lot of attacks on centrists these days. I wonder how much of this is anger at women leaving the left?

The Tories may have started these awful reforms to the GRA but it's the self-identified Lefty brocialists who are running with it. So when the likes of Owen Jones call us bigots for opposing a right-wing Tory idea it's just projection. They're the ones who've turned into what they accuse us of. I for one won't take that shit any more.

I will say though that being a feminist isn't the preserve of the Left. Women of the political Right have no less right to express themselves than anyone else.

I think the far right and the far left eventually meet each other on the way round. I struggle to see the difference between them

The difference is that under Corbyn abetted and aided by Momentum the Labour Party is the far left. The Momentum thugs will be looking to deselect MPs they don't approve of.

I cannot speak for Tory voters but what I will say is that, while it's a conservative government that's initiated GRA reform, I've not noticed them trying to get dissenters disciplined or expelled, or telling them they're not welcome in the party.

So if you don't consider yourself left anymore, have your economic or general political views changed as well? Moved to the right? Or your views are still the same but you feel everyone else's has changed? I'm baffled, is this mainly affecting people who have somehow built 'leftie' as part of their identity? Or is this just labour thing?

From about age 30 I was always on the right wing within the Labour Party. I was also very opposed to Scottish devolution so from the inception of Holyrood in 1997 I voted Conservative as a counter to the SNP.

As far as I am concerned the Labour Party has moved far to the left. It is also intolerant , dictatorial and its leader is wholly unfit to be on.

Of course I’m left wing. Im not letting the sexist anti women, pro men rights part of the “left” claim to be more progressive than I am.

and this, you beat me to it

The youth who identify as left-wing have not actually been taught and have no experience with materialist left-wing political theory or analysis.

Instead, they’ve been taught postmodernism, which is antithetical to left-wing materialist politics, and in fact originated in apologia for intellectual collaboration with fascism and reaction to leftist extremism.

But I would add that the rot started in 68! It came out of the cultural revolution. Identity politics comes about through post modernist theory but where it takes root in mainstream politics and in the consciousness of ordinary people it is nothing more than ideology. I think the reason there was a shift away from a materialist left wing politics and class politics is because this "revolution" at the level of culture was a reaction to Fordism, in left wing/liberal circles but more than that it comes about at a time when capital must renew itself. There is a falling rate of profit at this time and it looked likely (by looking at the data on this ) that we would have had a recession. It also marks a shift from manufacturing to immaterial labour in the mature western economies. It paves the way for corporation to shift manufacturing to less developed parts of the world in order to super exploit unregulated labour markets. It stopped short of being a full revolution for two reasons 1) it was a middle class intellectual hobby horse, students and academics, hippies and liberals, and 2) the working class had been in a ascendancy with a higher share of value and were materially better off than ever.

Of course, we know what follows.....70s......feminism. Shulamith Firestone was brilliant but her paddy at the left split women's liberation from the left. Radical feminism may claim to be "materialist" but it certainly isn't historical. I am yet to read a radical theory of patriarchy that isn't ahistorical. Further to that cultural feminism opens the door to identity politics because it placed GENDER on the table. It made gender central to identity, and gender and identity central to politics. Intersectionality anyone?

I have said this a million times before, politics must centre around class. No woman can be equal with all men, until all women are equal. And the only circumstances in which class can be dismantled is communism.

I won't be voting labour.