'Virtue signalling coward' Labour's war escalates

[BovaryX]

The Labour war over the trans pledge has escalated, with Rebecca LB et al accused of virtue signalling cowardice. Also, the decision to allow self identified 'women' onto women's only Labour shortlists is going to be legally challenged. Labour have created this absurdity and now the laughable contradictions will be exposed to public scrutiny and ridicule.

Labour’s civil war over transgender rights descended into even deeper bitterness last night after one of Jeremy Corbyn’s senior aides called leadership hopeful Rebecca Long Bailey a ‘virtue-signalling coward’ for threatening to expel feminists from the party – and a crowdfunded legal challenge was mounted against the party

So ... this is horrible - and horribly reminiscent of the social media nastiness of the Corbyn years.

It's utterly misrepresentative of what Hadley Freeman was talking about - which was the concurrence of two political talking-points and Party positions on the same day - and encourages a dog-pile.

I really had hoped this would have stopped with the exit of Corbyn.

Freeman's analogy is not between Nazis and trans people/rights.

She merely pointed out they occurred on the same day.

I am so, so fed up with these social media 'leftists'.

Why are they so disingenuous and nasty?

And, of course, Freeman is Jewish, is decidedly and demonstrably not a fascist, and has called out anti-semitism.

I'm actually shocked by the rank awfulness of this.

And my expectations are pretty low.

☹️

People being shitheads on the internet was a thing long before Corbyn, to be fair.

True. 😁

But I really think it was a structural thing with the outrider-types.

Hadley Freeman has been getting some nasty comments for a while - more than other GC tweeters I follow. I'm not sure what's going on.

Why are they so disingenuous and nasty?

If you're prepared to take a deep breath - I have to admit that the comment thread in response to Tom Chiver's piece about Sabinsky and Dawkins is worth a read for a discussion of decoupling, emotion, logic etc.

twitter.com/TomChivers/status/1229666550858354688

Thing is, if you think ‘biological sex is a social construct’ is actually a perfectly normal thought, then putting it alongside eugenics which is obviously abhorrent is going to rankle.

Hadley’s point is that both are bonkers but if you don’t think one is bonkers at all, you might miss that and go for the ‘both are abhorrent’ interpretation instead.

But obviously calling Freeman a fascist on the basis of your (deliberate?) misinterpretation is not acceptable.

On a side note how can you be on 6% battery this early??

I am so, so fed up with these social media 'leftists'.

Why are they so disingenuous and nasty?

Kerry-Anne Mendoza co-founded is editor-in-chief of The Canary UK.

www.thecanary.co/uk/2016/10/24/watch-canarys-editor-chief-reveal-real-reason-launched-news-site-video/

Not sure if this has been posted, but this is a great article and articulates my feelings completely:

unherd.com/2020/02/the-labour-party-has-chosen-to-identify-as-unelectable/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3

NotTerfNorCis: Because genderism is neo liberal- subjective and individualistic. ... It does nothing to challenge existing power structures and inequalities; it distracts from all that.

Absolutely. And so stunningly obvious that I genuinely can’t understand why the left isn’t shouting this from the rooftops.

The left is being scammed — don’t hand over your integrity!

Tom Chiver's piece about Sabinsky and Dawkins

I’ve just read this, and the comments thread, and what appears to be a major point missed here is that ‘decoupling’ is a technique deliberately used to propagate less palatable ideas. If an idea can be divorced from its context and given a veneer of respectable discussion, then it can be passed around rapidly while the people who understand the real intent (the ‘low decouplers’) have to try to point that out, while the response is ‘this argument is totally valid and reasonable, it is you who are the problem’. But when you dig, the less palatable ideas are never far behind.

For example see Gamergate. It was obviously a misogynist movement. But throw over the top ‘it’s about ethics in video games journalism’ and you have people engaging in good faith about ethics while being chipped away at by misogynists.

Intelligent Design was another similar movement. That was a deliberate ploy to try to get creationism taught in US secondary schools. When outright creationism wasn’t allowed, they rewrote their submissions to remove ‘God’ and replace with ‘Intelligent Designer’ (among other amendments). Then you have people going ‘well we don’t know how the universe started or life, why not teach this alternative view’.

Dawkins isn’t a racist or a eugenics proponent, but by tweeting a ‘dispassionate’ discussion of eugenics, he is acting as the pawn of racists.

i'm a member of unison and so can vote in the labour leadership contest. unison is backing kier and asked me to back him also. i probably will (if i vote at all) as he seems to be the best of a bad bunch. i did let them know why i wasnt voting for the other candidates and that i considered kier to be only marginally better.

i've also been thrown out of a facebook group this week for not agreeing that glinner is a transphobe. i may have called them all handmaidens apparently we here at mumsnet are pissdrips (?) and are glinner's personal army

Pissdrips?

I do so love a civil debate.

Pissdrips - isn’t that what men do?

maybe we are women with penises because obviously thats a real thing?

apparently we at Mumsnet ... are Glinner’s personal army

Graham Linehan is a very welcome member of campaign. But I understand why the TRAs and their supporters would think we’re under his command. Because obviously women couldn’t possibly be in charge of anything.

I always hope this idiocy comes from male misogynists. It’s painful to think there are women belittling their own sex.

Well - who do we tend to see at the back of the crowd of the howlers?

That’s why a boy had to be in charge.

Bit of intellectual dishonesty from Beth Desmond, press officer for Labour Trans going on here.

Pledges 9 and 10 - fight against transphobic organisations like WPUK, expel transphobes

Three weeks later: we never actually said expel WPUK supporters

twitter.com/lisa_trandy/status/1232331864817459204?s=20

1. A million times - and we still won’t believe you
2. Yes there is
3. At least

Interesting that Burgon declined to sign on those reasons too. Good for him.
And yes, such dishonesty. That's precisely what those pledges say, it's not even implied.

So depressing that not one current, female Labour MP has said the same as Richard Burgon.

Wow. What a wierd thing to lie about. It’s written there in black and white!

Good for Richard Burgon MP though

Its the whole trump politics. Just keep saying the lie over and over and brazen it out.

Lordfrontpaw

It doesn't matter if it is the left or right, ordinary people are in a political wilderness, we don't know who to trust because they all lie, or all have different equally obscene agendas.
I stepped away from all that tonight and watched youtube brilliance from Messi, Ronaldo, Ronaldhino and Zidane.
It cheared me up, I know it is a bit shallow in the grand scheme of things, but with all this identity politics I felt I had to escape for my own sanity.

Exactly - it become a everyday tactic.

Reminds me of when you catch your kid with chocolate around their mouth and hand in the biscuit tin and they swear blind they didn’t eat the last kitkat.