Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

Antibles - Ex-Muslim campaign groups have always highlighted how they have been consistently betrayed by the so-called progressive left, who end up supporting extreme Islamist ideology such as the niqab like it's a good thing while refusing to care about the issues faced by more secular Muslims or those who abandon Islam.

Totally agree Antibles. It’s the same people who want women to be ‘free’ to wear the burqa who also want women to be free to have penises.

I actually understood Boris Johnson’s comment about letterboxes. The point of the burqa is to dehumanise. To erase the person inside from the public realm. How feminists can stand for this I do not know.

Was Johnson wrong to reach for that metaphor? Yes, it failed the "satire should punch up, not down" test.

Was the article itself wrong? No. The whole point of it was to argue that banning the niqab as Denmark had done was wrong, illiberal and likely to exacerbate social and religious tensions. The letterbox comment in context was "I personally may think it makes you look like a letterbox, but I defend your right to choose to do so."

I think it's sometimes difficult to know how best to support strictly adherent Muslim women. I remember a situation where it was requested for there to be a women only language class for Saudi wives of the male clients. Whilst I support female only spaces when privacy is required - for example another class ran for women who could bring their babies and thus breastfeed - I didn't know how to feel because the motivation for this other class was unclear. There's nothing intimate about sitting in a classroom and learning a language, so no reason why the women couldn't come to the regular classes, as other Muslim women did, including those wearing a face veil. I can understand why women might want to be in a female only space so they can remove it, but then I have to question myself and consider if I want to be involved in facilitating a practice I'm against as a feminist, which is rooted in control of women as male property. I wondered if a knock on effect would be that these women attending the mixed classes would be loooked down upon and pressured to attend the female only class instead. There was also the request for a female teacher - would this set a precedent so that the men would request a male teacher? This was likely, considering the deeply sexist attitudes held. Also, it was unclear whether or not it was the men or the women making the request for sex segregation. Education and even workplaces are sex segregated in Saudi, do we really want to be importing Saudi culture to the UK? What if they'd requested a separate class for sub-saharan Africans, for 'cultural' reasons, bearing in mind how racist Saudi culture is (one of the few times I've ever heard black people referred to as 'monkeys' was by a Saudi)? This is the problem when other cultures are elevated for reasons of 'diversity' without any recognition of how sexist (or racist, homophobic etc) they may inherently be. The pro diversity agenda leads to reality being vastly distorted and Westernised to make it more palatable. For example, much is made of the female Kurdish fighters who have battled Isis, and so the Kurds are presented as progressive feminists. This ignores the phenomenon of honour killings in Kurdish culture, and the fact that women are used in war because of the belief that if killed by a woman, the victim will not be martyred and won't go to paradise. I actually find the reluctance of woke culture to criticize other cultures almost paradoxically self-loathing and racist at the same time. There's this underlying message of 'see, they're just the same as us, nothing to worry about!' Or 'look, they're such noble savages!' Surely treating people as equals would involve applying the same amount of critical analysis as you would to anyone else? People are so keen to tick the inclusion box that they don't consider whether their approach really is a helpful strategy or not. Part of the problem is of course that there's often no clear answer as to what the best approach is. People are lazy and just care about what is 'not a good look' or not, and don't think too deeply about it.

I’m also uncomfortable about invoking ‘what about Muslim women?’ as a feminist critique of mixed sex spaces. Their sex segregation requirements overlap with mine when it comes to safety, privacy and dignity and those reasons affect all women. Beyond that the underlying need to keep women separate is to keep women lesser. So I agree with your concerns Upfield.

Incidentally I work with (posh) Arabs who view the burqa as a sign of ignorance. So we should also be wary of ‘Muslims Think X’. Many view the burqa as a tool of oppression and this was a commonplace view in Arab lands until 30 yrs ago.

I'm not a fan of cultural relativism and also not a fan of one law for us, another for them.

I tend to take my cues from those women who live in countries where they do not have any choice in what they wear as the case is clearer cut. While muslim women living in the west may or may not be free to choose whether they are veiled women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere clearly have no choice at all. While that remains the case it is clear to me that we should stand by those women and argue against the practise.

As someone who's spent a great deal of time in the Middle East I tend to view the fact that right-on libfems view the niquab as empowering as another example of their infallible ability to choose the most dick pandering option in any given situation.Their lack of support for Arab feminists who've consistently spoken out against it and awkward sidestepping of stuff like My Stealthy Freedom and failure to support Maryam Namazie when men try to no platform her in the UK speaks volumes.

(Watch as a bunch of libfems come shout at me now)

Living in a multicultural area of Glasgow was pretty eye opening. It's easy to support diversity from a distance. When you're not actually in amongst slum landlords, people trafficking, street fights and attacks/rapes.

The general narrative of inclusion just can't admit there might be any difficult tensions to negotiate, and so where I lived the police pretended there were no issues and stayed away. It was a scary place to live.

Agree kittens. Any choice I make as a white atheist middle aged woman who grew up in the UK is entirely influenced by me being those things. No choice I make is made in a vacuum - I’m influenced by my upbringing, peer group, cultural & societal expectations. I don’t see how it can be any different for a woman choosing to wear a niqab or a burka

I think you only have look at photos of Afghanistan from the 60s/70s to see that the burka was not in fact a “choice” certainly not there anyway

www.cnn.com/2014/06/05/asia/gallery/afghan-women-past-present/index.html

For example, I'm still viscerally shocked by niqabs and dislike them because I simply do not believe covering women's faces up in public

Me too! For me the niqab is not just about 'freedom of choice' but about a sentiment which I feel to be in profound opposition to the values of free speech, democracy and equality for which people have struggled and campaigned. For the right for women to have a public voice and a public face. I always feel that the conditions of women everywhere, is also my condition. I take it personally.

But as you say it is 'verboten' to criticise anything to do with Islamic practice on the left - even as many of those practices run against left-liberal values.

What I want to know is where ppl lost hope that their lives could improve? Growing up I don’t remember a sense of ‘this is how it is and you’re powerless’ . Is there any possibility of bringing back a belief that it is possible for things to change if you get given a chance? And of course to give people those chances?

Stability. If you can't afford to buy a house for stability, and you don't qualify for social housing for stability, and your job isn't stable, and there's no way you can save enough money to see out any hard times, and your entire existence is just "can I get to the end of this month ok?", then you're going to be too mentally exhausted to even contemplate power, change, life improving. Even those who have contracts and mortgages live month to month, each new boss could mean losing everything, a mistake at work, a rise in interest rates. Boom. Gone. Your partner may or may not be around next year. They've got options too, and a smartphone, and you barely see them. It's an insecure existence for most people I know.

It's a hierarchy of needs thing - when all your focus is on keeping a roof over your head it limits your ability to focus on other things. Which is not an unintended consequence, imo.

One of N Sturgeons policies is to increase immigration to Scotland due to falls in population.
There are a million Scots who live in the rest of the UK. Who don't get to vote against dissolving the Union. Why doesn't Sturgeon want them back?
She probably has businesses clamouring for cheap labour who are willing to work for bedsit wages instead of 2-bed terraced wages.
Otherwise the falling population could be quickly resolved by selling Scotland to returning Scots.

The point of the burqa is to dehumanise. To erase the person inside from the public realm. How feminists can stand for this I do not know

Maybe because this'libera'l brand of feminism has arisen in a post modern world, where everything is about free choice and individualism; about people picking and choosing the 'identity' they want - purely as a means of personal self expression. It has little to do with any core values - other than imagined 'liberal choice'.

That's the problem with Liberalism for me.....it has neither means, nor method, for any structural analysis. that's why the Lib-Dems have become a 'never again' for me.

I certainly won't be returning to Scotland any time soon if the SNP implement self ID. I like having a choice over who sticks their hands up my fanjo when I need a smear test.

I certainly won't be returning to Scotland any time soon if the SNP implement self ID.
I'm hoping someone steps up to Gina Miller them all through the courts.
How can it be legal to vote to change someone's nationality? And they can't vote against it? It's not like the Scots in England are low profile, they are massively successful.

Surely treating people as equals would involve applying the same amount of critical analysis as you would to anyone else?
Exactly. Anything else is patronising at best.
A level playing field means some need a head start, but this current system of different sets of rules for different groups is nonsensical.
On a related note, I saw something recently on social media along the lines of: "what is trashy if you're poor but classy if you're rich?"
The answers were things like: working in the family business, not paying taxes, having someone else raise your kids, etc. It was very funny.

Also I showed this to DH and he was all "even in the third world hospitals aren't that bad". I know the SNP aren't directly responsible but it happened on their watch, and also wasn't it Glasgow NHS that published that ridiculous guidance about protecting the right of HCPs to self ID over the rights of female patients?

I fucking love Glasgow. It deserves better than this shit.

Missing link - www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-50823112

I presume you think the half a million English people in Scotland should not have been allowed to vote in 2014.

If they hadn't been the UK would no longer exist.

I presume you think the half a million English people in Scotland should not have been allowed to vote in 2014.
Presume all you like, that's not what I said.

It's a pragmatic question, not blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism.
If one million people in the rest of the UK wake up one morning and find out they are suddenly foreign-born immigrants by virtue of having been born in Scotland, they have had their nationality taken from them. Without having a say in the matter.

That the majority (not all!) would vote to retain the Union is not the point.

They were not having their nationality taken away, they were free to be Scottish or UK, or both assuming Westminster didn't block it out of petty spite, citizens in the event of independence. This was clearly stated in the 700 page document which was freely available for all to consider.

A document sadly lacking in the farcical EU referendum where to this day no one has the first idea what they were voting for or against.

They were not having their nationality taken away, they were free to be Scottish or UK
How would the Scottish government impose that on Westminster? Giving British nationality to someone born "abroad"?
I mean, it's unlikely it would have been refused but it's the principle.
And getting indoctrinated children to vote was a poor show.