The "left wing/ right wing" problem for GC Feminists

[GeordieTerf]

One of the most common accusations thrown at GC feminists is that they are "right-wing". Pink News often associates GC feminists with the Christian right in America, for example. It seems clear to me that these accusations (which are easily disproven with 30 seconds of research) upset quite a lot of British feminists. From my observations, a lot of GC people go out of their way to demonstrate that they're left-wing.

I'm a feminist. I care about the rights, welfare, and empowerment of ALL women. Feminism doesn't belong to the left wing anymore than it belongs to the right wing. It is for the benefit of all women. The loss of single-sex spaces will affect all of us.

I used to be left wing, until I "peak-transed" 5 years ago. This issue opened me up to the undercurrent of misogyny in the left wing. My local Lib Dem candidate told me not to vote for her. She told me that she didn't want my vote, so I didn't give it to her. This experience is mild compared to what the left wing has done to other GC feminists. Basically, the left wing has thrown women under the bus over this issue. I will no longer stand alongside them. I am now a politically-homeless centrist.

I'm not saying that the right are any better. In the long run, they are probably worse for women. However, I do think that right wing women matter just as much as left wing women, and they have just as much right to speak out about this issue.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while now and wondered if anyone fancies having a chat about it? Hence the thread.

This thread has really struck a chord with me. I'm very centrist. The left seem to be doing nothing for women. Liz truss does and I respect her greatly for doing so. the whole GC debate has been making me feel pretty rootless.

I'm utterly tired of left/right wing divides. I don't even think they mean what they used to mean. There's not a party out there that I'm happy about voting for (I do, but it's never wholehearted support.)

I’m a lifelong socialist and I agree 100%. I also notice that rightwing journalists and Tory MPs are the most likely to defend women’s rights, presumably because they’re not trying to win ‘woke’ points. Shame on those who fully understand women’s rights, but don’t want the hassle of defending them.

I'm left-wing, by which I mean essentially that I support the public good over private extremes of wealth. Women are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage jobs, which to me is both a left-wing issue and a feminist issue. The fact that so many of my fellow left-wingers turn out to be nasty little misogynists doesn't stop me being left-wing, because for me being left is about a particular set of principles and values: social justice, equal rights and fairness.

I've completely lost my tribalism

Me too! One thing that the whole trans issue( Amongst others...such as Brexit) has done is shake me loose from rigid identification with any one pack or tribe. I've also had to re-look at feminism itself, and what it means, what it implies and ask fresh questions about old dogmas and tenets of 'the faith'.

I now tend to see things through a larger lens; a wider angle; and to be more interested in patterns, forces and symbols than in narrow loyalties.

Interestingly, though, I've also started to see things in a more earthy/natural/biologically deterministic way.....and feel that the biggest dangers we face at present are trying to totally over-rule and manipulate nature; and how much of modern technology is actually very detrimental, and, to my mind, dystopian.

The Communist party are the most genuinely gender critical. Marxist materialism etc.

I’ve posted about this recently a few times, but the same applies to the press. There is no longer a “left wing” paper I rely on, on a “right wing” paper I will refuse to look at. No single paper represents my views any more (if they ever did?). All papers have strengths and weaknesses, all have views I agree with and disagree with and I won’t refuse to read a media publication because of its apparent “bias”, “hate” or “morally superior” position. The quality and accuracy of the reporting is what makes an article good or bad, not the political position of its publisher.

I'm left wing but there is little doubt that the left has as big a misogyny problem as the right, if not more so. Its just expressed differently: two sides of the same toxic coin.
I think that the trans debate has thrown this into sharp relief because the trans movement is so very toxic and damaging to women that women across political divides are fighting back against it.

I'm not right-wing and I'm not left-wing, I'm woman-wing

...or simply 'human being'. We all constellate what is unconscious in us, and tend to see it outside as opposing us. That is why one turns into the other when at the extremes. There is dogmatism, authoritarianism and repression on both left and right.

Shame on those who fully understand women’s rights, but don’t want the hassle of defending them

Maybe that is because the left tends to see things in terms of 'equality' for specific groupings in society; and once that has been achieved ( which in legal terms it now has) you move on to the next oppressed grouping.

I and many like me wouldn’t vote Tory and don’t agree with many of their policies. And women and children still matter.
twitter.com/baroness_nichol/status/1264292456771788802?s=21

As liberationist, collectivist, class/based movement, feminism embodies the left. Feminists have not left the left. It's just that the whole party political spectrum has shifted to the right

Certainly if by 'to the right;' you mean towards individualism rather than collectivism. The problem for me with too much collectivism is that is suppresses individual difference in an attempt to enforce a party line. And often the greatest acts of creativity or inspiration come from individuals.

No single paper represents my views any more (if they ever did?).

I don't think they ever did, though we may have been socialized to think they did. There's an element of laziness too, it's easier to get all your news from one source.

I'm left wing but there is little doubt that the left has as big a misogyny problem as the right, if not more so. Its just expressed differently: two sides of the same toxic coin.

It's Bewilderness's point about men arguing about where to position the foot on women's necks. It's very convenient for men if women don't notice that the same thing is happening to all of us and decide to work together to push back against the misogyny that exists at all points on the political spectrum, and it's easy to see how threatening they find it when we do just that.

ShinyFootball
The laws are in place but we need, still, to take these crimes more seriously.

Who is 'we', the public or the government? If you mean the former, how could the government make the public take these crimes more seriously and, if you mean the latter, what actions do you believe the government should take to take them more seriously?

Please don't try to divert this thread. It's not about sex offence prosecutions, and no one has suggested that the burden of proof in sex offences should be reduced. In fact no one has mentioned that topic at all apart from you.

I didn't specifically wish to debate that topic in particular unless it were being proposed. It was an illustration of one way in which a government might exert more authoritarian control.

The same goes for curfews, my subsequent questions on the matter apply to any segregationist measures (e.g. safe spaces). I'm interested in the means by which their allocation to specific groups is determined, though the specific measures interest me also.

I have never said there is a pure feminism.

And yet there are people here who clearly think there is, that when people add something to their feminism they are no longer real feminists.

I have also said the infighting pisses me off.

Indeed. And there are some who seem to think that we could avoid that if only everyone would be a "real" feminist. I think that results in worse infighting though as it's really just slagging off some for wrongthink which naturally pisses them off. It's much better to be upfront that there are different contexts and backgrounds for different feminist thinkers and discuss them with equal respect and equal rigour.

And of course the larger ideas are man made. Men have run the world though all known history pretty much everywhere. Do you dispute that?

I don't know that I really think that's accurate, TBH. I think many societies have been very collaborative. As far as philosophical perspectives, certainly many of those who have come up with them and written about them have been men. And yet if you want to ask pretty much any women about her beliefs, you will find they fit in to the general history of thought as much as any man's. So what's the point of the statement - that these thought systems have no relevance to women or feminism? It's not like women or feminists have somehow broken free of them. Show me a radical feminist who doesn't owe a lot to Marx - that doesn't change because we point out Marx was a man.

Feminism is the larger idea.

Do you have some sort of support for that statement?

As liberationist, collectivist, class/based movement, feminism embodies the left.

Or maybe the moderate left embodies the values of feminism.

Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are. They all have the same vulnerability to rape, to battery, as children to incest. Andrea Dworkin

Maybe it's not left wing / right wing as much as left wing / liberal (which I know has different meanings in different contexts but bear with me).

Ben Shapiro once defined the difference between left wingers and liberals thusly: liberals can agree to differ whereas left wingers will accept no digression from the beliefs they've pinned to the wall.

The Woke Left therefore believe you can only be left wing if you support Trans rights, whereas 'Old Left' (for want of a better term) can't see how their wanting, say, a more progressive tax system means they have to accept transwomen accessing womens' toilets and changing rooms.

On a slightly different note, some on the left seem to favour feminism as a tool to advance their favoured causes rather than as a cause in its own right, for example Zoe Williams: 'Feminism, in my life’s experience of it, takes the side of the oppressed. That is our raison d’etre... The two major transnational grassroots movements of the recent past are the climate strikes and the women’s marches. Their combined energy – bearing in mind how much crossover there is in those communities – would be awesome'.(www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/10/feminist-solidarity-empowers-everyone-the-movement-must-be-trans-inclusive).

This also explains the split between Rose McGowan and Alyssa Milano when the latter seemed to take the side of Joe Biden over his accuser, Tara Reade (as opposed to McGowan's consistent 'women first' approach).

To paraphrase Joe Biden, the Woke Left"s message to women seems to be that, unless they're on the 'correct' side for all issues then "they ain't feminists". Small wonder we're seeing such a disconnect now.

They don't actually believe we're right wing, they're lying to slander us.

When someone says they are just a feminist, what it really means is that they are not acknowledging where they have embedded it. Which is a good trick for dismissing those who would choose a different way to do it

An interesting observation; and I think you are spot on.

What's a woman, what makes them unique? What does it mean to be liberated? What's society? How do individuals and groups operate in society? What is the purpose of society? What responsibilities do individuals and groups have

These are, for me, now the more interesting questions, and the answers no longer tally along strict left/right lines. You live life and it changes you and it reveals different perspectives.

I couldn’t see this article shared anywhere yet, so I’m posting it here. It is an absolutely superb wake-up shout to those of the ‘woke-cult’ currently squatting in what used to be the political left.

“ The main point is that this movement claims to be about ‘social justice’. Good things. Intersectional feminism, diversity and inclusion, race, disability and LGBT rights. But this isn’t that. Its behaviour resembles Scientology and the Unification Movement way more than it resembles Marx.

Frankly, Marx would be rolling in his grave at seeing how neoliberalism has twisted and morphed itself in his name into a weirdly authoritarian, bordering on totalitarian movement. Wokism is to social justice like Scientology is to self improvement.”

teasmith.com.au/when-will-the-left-stand-up-to-the-threat-of-totalitarianism/

The problem is that while as an individual the sting of being accused of being right wing when you aren't (or even if you are) is lessened by not caring, it does affect the lurkers, the unsure, all those women who have concerns about certain specific things like having male rapists in women's prisons or boys in tents with girls or perverts setting up cameras in changing rooms.
I think that female socialisation is very powerful and the urge to be seen as nice or as reasonable or as inclusive means that although (to use a specific example) I agree that if the only way to platform desperate mothers whose daughters are being butchered was to accept an invite from a right wing group, then that should have happened and was (in my view) a proportionate means to an end, there will be women who are concerned about the optics of such a move and other women who feel that decision was wrong.
Either way, although broad coalitions for single issues are nothing new, we do need to be mindful of the fact those coalitions will sometimes be controversial.
Younger women seem to be particularly sensitive to accusations of being right wing, or exclusive, etc. And there are purity spirals in every movement.
I guess it is useful to read up on second wing feminist thought and to know how Marx identified women as an oppressed group discriminated against for our reproductive capacity but in the end I feel it's best to focus on single issues and to gather as many people as possible.
If, for example the GRA was repealed and women's sex specific rights were further protected by cast iron case law and rewording of policy documents in government departments and in large organisations then we might be at the stage where the fundamentals of furthering the women's rights movement might be better served by various different groups breaking off and formulating their own thoughts but at the moment we are nowhere near that, we have a specific threat to focus on and a broad coalition serves that fight best.

*second wave not wing sorry

It's basically pragmatism, or realpolitik versus purity of thought.
I think if we end up being forced into defending the other stances that members of the broad coalition might have then we are being deliberately sidetracked.
I can agree with Boris Johnson or with Dominic Cummings that today is Monday 25th May but that doesn't mean I have to agree with or defend any of their other ideas and I think we need to refuse to be put in those situations by continuing to emphasise that one can agree with someone on one topic without buying into their entire worldview.
Incidentally, there is a large radfem contingent on Tumblr now pushing back on some of the wilder genderist bloggers quite successfully. Worth having a look particularly as there aren't restrictions on vocabulary in the same way there is here.

It's basically pragmatism, or realpolitik versus purity of thought.
I think if we end up being forced into defending the other stances that members of the broad coalition might have then we are being deliberately sidetracked.

I believe this is something of an issue of party politics. While it is not devoid of benefits, it's quite hard to push single issues separately from the associated policies of a particular political stance. That said, there are rare exceptions, such as Brexit.