Typical BBC bias

[Gone2far]

Has anyone just seen Newsnight? It's just had a short segment on No Outsiders, with Emily Maitlis and a female spokesperson both saying earnestly how important it is. AND NO OTHER POINT OF VIEW.

what we are seeing in the media as a whole is the outcome of the backlash against women's liberation in the 70s, particularly the takeover by queer politics in universities.

First of all they dismantled women's studies and set up women's studies. That is the origins of how sex started to be talked about as gender (and prostitution became sex work). ie choice.

I remember being really furious and feeling helpless as feminism was replaced by gender studies, feminist truths were reclassified as hopelessly old fashioned, and getting your tits out for the lads was a fun, glamorous and empowering choice for girls.

Feminism even seemed to go out of fashion for lesbians, with the new generation distancing themselves from us old-style, 'man-hating' dykes, proclaiming themselves queer, and choosing BDSM over fuddy duddy persuits such as female consciousness raising, setting up women's shelters, feminist libraries and lesbian retirement homes.

I too could only watch in utter dismay as feminist studies were colonised by gender studies. Those of us who recognised the backlash for what it was, as it happened, and who tried to stand against it, found ourselves increasingly isolated and frustrated.

All the knowledge accumulated by feminists was never disproved, it was just sidelined, made to seem hopelessly old fashioned, irrelevant and unnecessary in the new, fun, post feminist world. Where women had all the equality they could possibly need, free at last to express themselves by having plastic surgery (for themselves though, absolutely nothing to do with pandering to the male gaze) and spending vast sums on empowering items like shoes and handbags.

It was a horrible, depressing time. Having to stand helplessly and watch women's power being sidelined and trivialised. Yet never for a single moment even in my wildest most dystopian nightmares did I imagine a time when women-hating men would be able to declare themselves female and force their way into every protected space women had managed to claw out for themselves. Or that it would happen with the full support of all political parties. Including a party calling itself the Women's Equality Party ( a party where a room full of members would cheer heartily at the suggestion that every female MP being replaced by a male who identified as a woman would bring about true equality for women in parliament).

I dunno. My dad used to get apoplectic at the sight of lads wearing earrings back in the early 70's. Why can't we older women have something equally trivial to get worked up over? Why do we have to live in such interesting times?

I don't know about the BBC shifting to the left, but politics has certainly shifted to the right over my many decades as a voter.

New Labour got elected by galloping rightwards and seizing the middle. Mrs Thatcher described New Labour and Blair as her greatest achievement, and for a long time you couldn't get a cigarette paper between the policies of New Labour and the Tories. When the Tories went looking for any more votes at all, the only place they could find to go was even further right.

This shunt to the right has indeed left a lot of people feeling like no one represents them, and that they're not being heard. This was true well before the referendum and it certainly showed in Brexit: I heard Leave voters saying things like, “Worth a punt: things can hardly get any worse.”

It's funny, the political shift in many cases has been to the right in terms of economics, but at least superficially, towards progressivism on social policies.

There is a link in terms of both being related to individualism, but I think the social issues are also meant to disguise the economic shift. We aren't supposed to notice our left wing party is using a liberal capitalist economic approach because we are dazzled at what they say about equality, immigration, or whatever.

IN fact I think in a lot of the English-speaking nations, and maybe in some European ones (I am not so sure there, I don't have as much sense of their political landscape) there is really room for a party with a traditional leftist economics but a more conservative social approach. Something like that might garner a lot of votes.

Interestingly, no one in politics seems eager to try it.

What do you mean by "a more conservative social approach", though?

Because in my experience that often involves "Women! Get back in the kitchen!"

And actually that's already started with austerity and the restructure of welfare. Women are disproportionately affected – as the government knew they would be.

Why are we surprised Universal Credit hurts women? That was the plan, after all
The welfare reform’s core “family first” ideology was always going to degrade women’s autonomy.
www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/10/why-are-we-surprised-universal-credit-hurts-women-was-plan-after-all

It does seem that the more left wing the media becomes, the more the people seem to be rebelling, as can be seen by how the majority voted for Brexit and how much support the Brexit Party got, and now the new women's movement emerging in response to this attack on our rights from the left. I think there is growing awareness and resentment amongst the people about a lot of left wing issues and people are not feeling heard, since when they speak up they are usually told they are some sort of 'phobic' or 'bigot.' So, not feeling heard, people use their vote instead

This. It's also the reason for Trump being elected.

there is really room for a party with a traditional leftist economics but a more conservative social approach

That's the Blue Labour approach. Valuing stable communities, leave-voting, leftist economics.

I saw an article on the BBC news app yesterday that I now can't find but it was titled something like "how the right attack women" and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that title. Like there's a whole fucking chunk missing...

It's not the only "whole fucking chunk missing", is it?

Something I keep noticing about this topic is that – again and again – the actions of our right-wing, Tory & DUP government are branded "an attack from the left". Repeated till it's a cliché.

So Maria Miller is "from the left". Penny Morduant, Theresa May.

I've never seen this before – where a ruling party is bringing in legislation and the opposition gets the brunt of the opprobrium. I've seen plenty where people rightly add as an afterthought, "and the opposition is no better", but none where the opposition is so consistently headlined as responsible. Someone coming from outside would be forgiven for thinking that the Labour party, or at least left-wing parties, were in government in the UK, and the right-wing parties were just poor, helpless lame ducks impotently wringing their hands.

Another thing that's really struck me.

MN gets a lot of threads titled, “So, who feels they can never vote Labour because trans?”. I could understand it if this was Labour supporters wanting to fix their own house – and I'm sure a lot of posters are exactly that. But some of the “Oooh, Labour, you just can't” threads were started by a poster who was vocally anti-Labour in general. And no, that poster wasn't all over MN with similar threads about right-wing parties.

In fact, on rare occasions Tory MNers are asked, the few that reply at all say, “I'm not keen, but I'll still vote Tory: other issues are more important to me.”

The UK now has a candidate for Prime Minister who stated only a few weeks ago that the time limit for abortion should be halved from 24 weeks to 12. He will be appointed by the votes of the right-wing Conservative Party only.

MN FWR section has almost no time to talk about this, because trans. Yesterday I actually counted the first page, and out of 50 threads all but 12 were about trans. The choice of next Prime Minister rated 0.

So many wonderful posters on FWR have been doing so much superb work on trans issues, teasing out everything from AGP to social contagion. I'm hugely grateful to many of them for their sterling work.

But tearing one's gaze away from the trans spectacle for a moment, it's hard to escape the impression that there are people for whom the trans issue isn't a threat, it's an opportunity. And I'm not talking about lefties this time.

If you want an example of just how murky this all is, here's a screenshot I took a couple of years ago when this stuff was just blowing up.

It's a twitter-handle called “BostonAntifa” (supposedly v left wing) posting pro-trans memes. The poster's location is set in Vladivostok. They were later supposedly identified as a pair of right-wing trolls in Oregon.

Fake antifa Twitter account fools media on right and left
Right-wing actors appear to have taken their trolling game to another level.
thinkprogress.org/boston-antifa-russia-tweet-adb3b2ab4918/

I looked other accounts in conversation with the “BostonAntifa” one and there was plenty more of the same: trans memes; posters checking in saying this was their new account name after their last banning; some posters with accounts named to look like eg black, female Democrat politicians and posting controversial stuff. (I think Twitter has tightened up a lot since then, with blue ticks etc.)

I've no idea who these posters really were, or why it was important to them to pretend to be far-left-wing Americans.

But someone somewhere's enjoying this, that's for sure.

What do you mean by "a more conservative social approach", though?
Because in my experience that often involves "Women! Get back in the kitchen!"

Well, it could, I wasn't really looking to define it. I'm thinking very much of the kind of communities LangCled mentioned with Blue Labour. Now, I would say actually in most of those, women have been working longer than middle class women have been, and there can also be more respect for unpaid women's labour. Maybe that means they don't see paid work for women so much as a freedom as a lack of freedom. But certainly in terms of all kinds of social progressive causes they tend to be more cautious.

But they have also traditionally supported very leftist economics.

These people have become the despised working class conservatives, Trump or Brexit voters, because they no longer have political representation.

there can also be more respect for unpaid women's labour. Maybe that means they don't see paid work for women so much as a freedom as a lack of freedom.

Sorry, I'm not really sure what this bit means.

I also don't understand whether the "they" in your sentence is male or female. For a woman, access to paid work almost always means more freedom (unless we're also expected to do it on top of the bulk of the unpaid work – and sometimes even then. God knows we see it enough on MN: women being urged to carry on having their own income, by those who've learned the hard way).

I would love to see respect for unpaid women's labour – in fact, all unpaid domestic labour – regardless of class, but don't see much of it about.

Well, right up to the point where it looks like women might be cutting down on some of that unpaid labour and men will have to do more – then, yes sure, there's screeching about women's sacred work in the home, and how women are so much better at vacuuming because that's nurturing, doncha know.

That's across all classes. I certainly don't see women's unpaid work being given honour and respect more in working class families than others. Do you think you might be romanticising somewhat?

Oh hang on, are you saying working class conservatives, and Trump- and Brexit-voters, are more likely to vote for a party saying, "Women, get back in the kitchen"?

If so, I suspect you may be correct, sadly.

the format, content and language they use feels more like what they used to reserve for newsround articles aimed at children

It's been like this for a while, even comparing the BBC news channel to BBC worldwide news you can see how much they dumb down for the UK.

In the US, the 2015 Case-Deaton study documented a sudden startling increase in mortality rates, a rate of increase not seen in a developed economy since the fall of the Soviet Union, for middle-aged working class women due to what they called "diseases of despair."

They documented middle-aged working class women working shit jobs for shit pay and no benefits, meaning no sick pay or paid vacation, who were becoming increasingly injured and ill, self-medicating in various ways, while also caring for children, elderly relatives, and often unemployed husbands or boyfriends.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if these women looked back on a time, which of course they're too young to have actually experienced, when working class wives were in the kitchen rather than dying prematurely from overwork and despair in a system that provides no support whatsoever to working mothers who lack means and who are increasingly taking on care duties for others as both the state and men refuse to.

Oh hang on, are you saying working class conservatives, and Trump- and Brexit-voters, are more likely to vote for a party saying, "Women, get back in the kitchen"? If so, I suspect you may be correct, sadly.

Well, I think that's a rather negative way to look at it. For one thing I don't think that more socially conservative is particularly synonomous with women back in the kitchen. Though I think saying women are generally better off having gone back to work ignores that a lot of working class women always worked. And yes, when you are working in a job that's not very valued, being able to not work, and choose to stay home with your kids, is absolutely a freedom. For that matter I know plenty of middle class women these days who consider the necessity of them working, while having to pay for someone else to care for their kids, a burden, and would consider having the option to stay home a freedom. They feel that way whether or not other people think it's properly feminist of them or whether they think it makes them retrograde somehow.

My main point however was that there is a whole sector of people who have pretty shit political representation, including by those who claim to represent the working classes on the left. Both because those people in power look down on them and despise their social views, and also because they would in the end rather have a libertarian free market system. They've now been courted by economic libertarians on the right in terms of the social agenda for a generation, which is frankly what the supposed leftists deserve.

There are good reasons the working classes tend to be more socially conservative, they depend on the long term stability of their local communities.

I certainly don't see women's unpaid work being given honour and respect more in working class families than others. Do you think you might be romanticising somewhat?

I think for middle class women, they had the privilege of seeing entering the workforce as a freedom, rather than something they did and had always done out of necessity. They were more likely to have work they enjoyed for its own sake, and they had the ability to make arrangements for their domestic labour, be it as washing machine or paying for childcare.

It's fairly easy in that position to look down at domestic work as unimportant, easy, something you pay someone else to do.

It looks quite different when from necessity you have a job that is less interesting, doesn't pay so well, and where you feel taking care of your own home or kids would be more immediately rewarding and valuable in itself. Especially if you have to do more of it yourself as well as the other job, or need to rely on less desirable options for things like childcare.

Those are very different perspectives from which to think about domestic work.