Refreshing insightful discussion- Unwoke - Douglas Murray and Titania McGrath

[BolloxtoGender]

This was really good. Thank you for posting it.

At around 47 minutes there is an audience question from a primary school teacher. Will cross reference this to the ROGD support thread.

Oh yeah.... I watched this the other night and completely forgot to respond to this thread.
It was quite a good conversation between them and also the questions from the audience.

I have subscribed to the Battle of Ideas newsletter for a while now. It's good to see there are still some avenues where people can debate and discuss and critique ideas and current issues.

Thanks for posting....

That first chap made a great point:-
nowhere else in society do we take the threat of suicide as a carte blanche for the person to get their own way.

AND,
they mentioned the impact on other children .. if they see one of their schoolmates change from boy to girl or vice versa, that must raise a worry in their minds i.e. "what if that happened to me?"

There's a really startling observation in the comments that I can't believe hasn't been noticed before: parallels between "woke" and "erwache" in Nazi Germany.

I think they both have a blind spot.

I think trans ideology is a backlash against woke trends.

Trans ideology lends itself to wealthy white males claiming worse oppression than any other demographic.

White men have had a tough time the last 15 years, by being blamed, as a demographic, for largely all oppression going.

Trans ideology is not so much an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ response, as it is an ’if you can’t beat them take them over and hitch a ride off the backs of oppressed peoples’ liberation struggles’ response.

They talk a lot of sense against purity politics and shutting down difficult conversations, but they have missed the obvious, that trans ideology mostly benefits white affluent men, and differs from any other identity politics, in that it was pushed from the beginning by some of the richest, most powerful people in the world.

Trans ideology can be seen as the powerful using the narratives and ways of speaking of the moment and bending it to their own advantage.

There is a danger, that the growing anti-woke sentiments may help usher in a new era where we cannot talk about any structures of oppression at all.

Having said that, they are starting a very important debate that we do, as a society, need to have.

Thanks for this OP

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to laugh about this stuff but this has helped restore my sense of humour

I also want to give them both a big hug and I feel like they won’t mind me saying that!

While I agree that transgender ideology primarily benefits wealthy white males and has been spearheaded by such individuals, I'm not sure how useful or noble other types of indentity politics are in the long-term. It seems to divide people into simplistic, homogenous categories on some imaginary totem pole of who is most oppressed.

I’m also relieved I’m not the only one blaming academics, I got told off for that here.

I’ve just today looked up the band MUNA as I listen to them a bit and apparently they’re alt-pop as well as woke and queer.

I’m convinced there’s a huge number of people taking the piss. Note to self - don’t bother googling bands!

@fallingirl

Yes I had the same thoughts that trans ideology could be seen in part as a backlash against feminism, because I could see that in the last few decades, men seems to have lost their sense of purpose, for some/many the traditional stereotypes worked well for them, for others it was oppressive, but they’re now having to somehow redefine what it means to be a man.

And agree that they are twisting the language to turn it against women by wearing the cloak or pretence of victimhood, and this is where I think their Achilles heels might be, because this cloak, pretence and the language of ‘identify as’ which allows them to do t3xt book DARCVO is NOT ANCHORED IN REALITY.

As a society our inability to have these conversations seems to be in part not only the lack of free speech, free thought but critical thinking, and crucially we need to be anchored in reality and language to cut through the crap.

Yes and I do blame the post modernist academics, in particular so called Queer Theory.

Re lacking critical thinking, increasingly I think more people are worried about the woke but can’t say so.

I see Lots of parallels with the Little Red Guards and Cultural Revolution in China.

I see Lots of parallels with the Little Red Guards and Cultural Revolution in China.

Yes, and with this coming at a time of growing inequality, the parallels with 1930’s Germany are equally frightening.

I find it embarassing that academia is not recognising this. Though obviously, there may be more than we think who do recognise it, but are scared of speaking up.

Great discussion, don’t agree with all their politics but pretty much onboard for what they discuss here. Thanks for the link, passing it on.

I enjoyed this. It's great when people have time to talk properly not in sound bites. There was a great Titania column in the Times the other day, I hadn't come across Doyle before.

I really enjoyed watching this. Thank you.

I was also glad Douglas mentioned Lionel Shriver

I’m in a creative writing group and the vitriol directed against her is really alarming. This was following an incident where she was annoyed that she had to answer a diversity questionnaire from her publisher, which I agree is a right lot of shite.

Autumn you might enjoy this one, then!

I've just listened to two of the TRIGGERnometry podcasts on a similar theme after listening to the one Posy Parker did.

The Rod Liddle and Douglas Murray ones were interesting but a bit hard to listen to, but Posy also mentioned something about identity politics at the end of her interview.

It does make sense that trans activism is a backlash to equal rights.

I don't think I would say that it's a backlash. But there has been a real danger in the tendency to want to claim privileges or rights for some people based on some kind of marginalised or oppressed status.

What this does in essence is set up another hierarchy of value, sets of people with special protections. Perhaps it's been profoundly naive not to think that over time this would create its own, new set of privileged people. Whether they are the people who were previously marginalised and are now able to use the system to their own advantage, or people who are able through power or advantage to get themselves included into categories they aren't entitled to.

In hindsight, this was a problem some people gave warning about back when we were seeing a lot of special named protected categories in laws and constitutions, hate crime laws, affirmative action policies etc. That together this direction could be problematic, that it was creating essentialist categories of people. At the time the general response of progressives was that these were overblown fears, probably coming out of bigotry. The one that really seems naive now is the idea that people from a marginalised background would never be in a position to take advantage of such laws and protections in a way that was detrimental to others. In fact there almost seemed to be a sense that such people would not behave that way because of some kind of solidarity.

What we seemed to be really seeing was the beginnings of identity politics, which have been completely toxic. Even women's rights, which ought to be a material category, have been brought under the identity politics tent in many cases.

I find it embarassing that academia is not recognising this. Though obviously, there may be more than we think who do recognise it, but are scared of speaking up.

I'm seeing three groups in academia. The aggressive woke who are pushing this stuff hard, and the scared who know what is going on but keep their heads down are two of them.

But a third are people who are basically good, but their tendency is to think that there must be some kind of goodness to come out of this moment in history, they have a sort of faith in people and progress. They keep trying to fit what they see into that mould.

The fourth, the loud objectors, are pretty small, too small to call them a group. Mostly people who can't be fired.

I think it's more like a form of entryism than a backlash.

they have missed the obvious, that trans ideology mostly benefits white affluent men, and differs from any other identity politics, in that it was pushed from the beginning by some of the richest, most powerful people in the world

This ^

It's lumping everything in together. Inescapable reproductive and bodily differences, and the shit women have always suffered because of them, is nothing like the ideology of gender and the apparent oppression certain biological males are purporting to be suffering from.

My biology is not an identity.

It's no coincidence that transgender erupts like this immediately after women have achieved considerable social and economic advances.

What man would bother if it meant you were stripped of your vote, rights, and work opportunities?

The one that really seems naive now is the idea that people from a marginalised background would never be in a position to take advantage of such laws and protections in a way that was detrimental to others.

This isn't the problem. It might be a problem but it's dwarfed by the real problem. The real problem is people who are not marginalised (in the lingo these would be called people who have privilege) weaponising identity politics to damage those who they perceive as the enemy, who can be anyone, privileged, marginalised, whatever. The knitting wars is a good example of this.