Issues of poverty are being neglected by social justice movements because of the overwhelming focus on sexuality...

[MaryRoseSatOnAPin]

...a comment heard at a conference today.

Would you agree? The person who made the comment was speaking from a Latin American context, criticising the Western focus towards the developing world. Has the West disappeared down a wormhole of LGBTQ+ rights whilst people in the global South, ignored, continue to starve?

I'm an avid lurker on the feminism boards, but haven't posted before. Asking here because you are a knowledgeable bunch - someone, somewhere must have written articles on this, but I can't find anything! It is a controversial viewpoint, but I'd be interested to read more.

The complete rules of misogyny list.

14: Women's words exist to be twisted to benefit men and discredit feminists. Anything a man or his proxy (e.g. handmaid) claims a woman said, she must have said it, even when proven otherwise.

Example: see Tumble's accusation that we accuse anyone we disagree with of being men.

the left in this country were galvanised by the second world war

We had an influx of returning servicemen, many of whom were disabled; the housing stock had been trashed by the Luftwaffe; and of course there were widows and orphans of those who did not come home or were killed during the Blitz.

The whole country got behind the idea of high-quality, socially-funded, affordable "homes fit for heroes"; a socially-funded health care service that would care for these men and their families cradle-to-grave regardless of means; and a social security safety net so that those who could never work again or who were raising children alone wouldn't starve. Anything less would have felt like, and been, a betrayal of those servicemen and widows and orphans.

Since then, the British people have lost sight of that. It's been easy for the right-wing press to demonise the poor and single mothers. It's been easy to paint pictures of "undeserving poor" to distract from how capitalism requires unemployed people to act as a reserve army of labour. It's been easy to portray motherhood as a personal choice made in total isolation, when in reality capitalism and the State both need women to keep on bearing the right number of future workers, consumers, and citizens: Romanian and Chinese policy inform us what happens when the State decides that women are bearing too few or too many future citizens.

HaXXor - interesting post and thought provoking. It depresses me that we now have food banks and the poor often vilified by the right wing. All notions of a society caring for its vulnerable have gone and if that goes hand in hand with capitalism then it’s woeful

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but historically the only things that have led to closing of wealth gaps to the benefit of ordinary people have been major wars, famines, epidemics. Situations where millions have died leaving survivors with greater bargaining power. World War Two is an example of this. The 14th century plague another. In between such major disruptions the tendency has been the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Society never has given much of a damn about the poor.

I agree, Arnold and that scares me too. There is a kind of hysterical fantasy/high emotion wankery to society at the moment that very much echoes the Edwardian era. Which ended in them being very sharply yanked back to reality and having no time for wankery when things like food rationing, flooding casualties, deprivation and direct threat to life took up every waking hour. And there was the tragedy of over privileged, very protected wealthy young people who had no skills to survive in a demanding real life, who had strong opinions and the money and time to indulge them, and were wholly unable to cope once their bubble burst.

the current focus on identity does feel very fin de siecle decadent

this idea that no-one really knows what sex is for

a woman being able to maintain that pretence is completely reliant on being able to get hold of reliable contraception if she wishes to be sexually active

it takes so much for granted which is not available to many people and was only relatively recently available here