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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Suzanne Moore - How Progressive Misogyny works - Spectator

76 replies

highame · 27/08/2020 08:10

www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-progressive-misogyny-works

I like her writing just a flavour...........

You can say the word ‘-intersectionality’ as much as you like but, if you do, then defend Raquel Rosario Sánchez, the 29-year-old doing a PhD at Bristol on men paying for sex, who has been bullied for two years because she attends Woman’s Place meetings. Disciplinary hearings were closed down when balaclava-wearing trans activists appeared. Students yelled verbal attacks at ‘Terfs’, chanting: ‘SCUM! SCUM! SCUM! ............

OP posts:
highame · 27/08/2020 08:12

She isn't one of their usual writers so am wondering if she gets a little frustrated?

OP posts:
TalbotAMan · 27/08/2020 08:17

Suzanne Moore is practically surgically attached to The Guardian. She also published something along the same lines in The Spectator in March.

Presumably she's publishing in The Spectator as she wouldn't have a hope in hell of saying things like this in The Guardian.

CasuallyMasculine · 27/08/2020 08:21

I love Suzanne Moore and applaud her stand against misogyny but surely someone of her intellect would realise that there is no logic with this movement.

If the “allies” screaming insults by way of debate were to read Andrea Dworkin’s definition of feminism, they’d probably have a conniption.

DaisiesandButtercups · 27/08/2020 08:21

Brilliant! Thank you for the link!

NotBadConsidering · 27/08/2020 08:26

It’s a great article and the reason it’s in the Spectator rather than the Guardian is because it’s about the Guardian. It may never mention the Guardian but they are as guilty of progressive misogyny as much as anyone else.

BlackWaveComing · 27/08/2020 08:27

No way would TG allow SM to use the word 'cosplay'.

I relate to her sense of frustration.

Floisme · 27/08/2020 08:48

Ah Suzanne, every so often she pulls something glorious out of the bag.

And yes, as NotBadConsidering says, the reason it’s in the Spectator rather than the Guardian is because it’s about the Guardian. And the Labour party.

Thanks for the link.

buttonhole · 27/08/2020 09:19

I love the word 'conniption'.

InspiralCoalescenceRingdown · 27/08/2020 09:37

If she tried to publish this (excellent) article in The Guardian, I imagine Ben Beaumont-Thomas and friends would be scuttling around putting their names to another poison pen letter.

highame · 27/08/2020 09:43

The comments aren't good for her. I think it's a case of 'we've been saying this for years......'

I did put up a defence but they have made some good points (and some not so good ones)

OP posts:
merrymouse · 27/08/2020 09:49

I love Suzanne Moore and applaud her stand against misogyny but surely someone of her intellect would realise that there is no logic with this movement.

There is no logic in the movement itself.

I think she is trying to address the people who deliberately ignore it's impact - e.g. the men who somehow seem to hold most positions of power in politics and government, but who handily ignore this issue because 'it seems very toxic but it has nothing to do with me'.

merrymouse · 27/08/2020 09:50

('its'!)

merrymouse · 27/08/2020 09:59

If she tried to publish this (excellent) article in The Guardian, I imagine Ben Beaumont-Thomas and friends would be scuttling around putting their names to another poison pen letter.

I expect there are letters to the Guardian every time Suzanne Moore tweets, never mind writing an article in the Spectator.

MichelleofzeResistance · 27/08/2020 10:06

There is no logic. It's a faith based ideology that begins from the point that standard facts and reality are unreliable or insufficiently discovered yet, and therefore that you select optionally from them, guided by your personal sense of self. The clash comes in insisting that others must conform to your personal choice of facts and reality, and do nothing that interrupts or confronts you with a contradiction within it. To do so has become 'hateful'.

However obviously not everyone can select/be affirmed: to do so requires others to put you first, not expect to have equal rights to define self/reality/follow their own perceptions, and instead sacrifice themselves to meet your needs and provide what you need to be uninterrupted in your sense of self.

This inevitably separates society into the givers and the takers: those entitled to expect service from others and to allocate punishment where the service providers fail, and those who must not expect equality or freedom of expression or consider resistance and must instead provide. There's something in terms of pattern recognition that consistently comes up to separate the givers from the takers.

That this is a basically ethically wrong, wholly unsustainable and absolutely never going to end well situation, doesn't seem to have entered the heads of anyone stuffing all this into policy.

But then I watch Johnson and his government who also have this very progressive philosophy of selecting their preferred facts from reality, creating a narrative, ignoring and stifling the bits that don't fit, and then pushing that anyone who doesn't believe what they are told is wrong and stupid and should just be ignored. Cummings and his eye sight for example. It's terribly fashionable at the moment.

I re read The Book Thief recently. It was quite sad in how current it feels in many ways.

Shedbuilder · 27/08/2020 10:15

CasuallyMasculine, would you cut and paste Dworkin's definition of feminism, please? I've tried googling and I'm shocked that I don't automatically know it.

Good to see SM back on form, writing with clarity. Love 'cosplay'.
There have been times when she's been so gnomic I haven't really understood what she's aiming at.

buttonhole · 27/08/2020 10:29

I can only read the first bit in the Speccie, what does she say about cosplay?

Floisme · 27/08/2020 10:29

I've not looked at the comments but I'm not surprised if they're unsympathetic - a lot of people on the left are sneery about the Spectator (I've seen it described as 'far right' on here) so I can hardly blame them for not welcoming Moore with open arms.
But at least they allow comments, unlike the Guardian.

And I think Moore has always had a bit of a tempestuous relationship with The Guardian - didn't she have a column in The Mail on Sunday for a while?

BovaryX · 27/08/2020 10:36

It is very interesting that the Spectator is gaining readers, while other craven outlets are shedding their audience. This article by Susanne Moore is superb. There is something ugly, authoritarian and profoundly misogynistic about the Robespierre faction.

NearlyGranny · 27/08/2020 10:40

I can't work out how to get to the comments on this article. Any suggestions? I must be missing something obvious. TIA

merrymouse · 27/08/2020 10:40

Although different UK publications have a clear political leaning, in reality many columnists write for a variety of newspapers and magazines. Katy Balls is the deputy political editor of the Spectator and also writes regularly for the Guardian. Nick Cohen has a regular Guardian column and also often writes for the Spectator.

I know we are all supposed to live in bubbles, but any publication that only wants to publish political diatribes from people with approved views limits its readership and also limits the quality of its writing.

BovaryX · 27/08/2020 10:52

One of the striking things about this article is the palpable frustration with cancel culture and its proponents. The Spectator makes it impossible to copy paste, but at one point she answers her own rhetorical question. Why now? Because the left wing have lost the big battles so are currently engaged in expulsions and re-education. That's a very interesting acknowledgement of who is behind this incoherent fanaticism.

Floisme · 27/08/2020 10:53

I can remember the Guardian publishing articles by George Osborne, David Cameron and even Norman Tebbit - and readers like me survived. I can't imagine that happening now and it's a poorer newspaper for it.

Judashascomeintosomemoney · 27/08/2020 11:01

I can't work out how to get to the comments
Little speech bubble at top of the article, click on that. Think you only get the comments if you’re a subscriber though

Justhadathought · 27/08/2020 11:08

I've not looked at the comments but I'm not surprised if they're unsympathetic - a lot of people on the left are sneery about the Spectator (I've seen it described as 'far right' on here) so I can hardly blame them for not welcoming Moore with open arms.
But at least they allow comments, unlike the Guardian

Yes, the Spectator opens comments for all articles, and there is no 'report' function. People are trusted to mind their manners and post in rational ways, even if they disagree quite strongly with each other.

As someone who has started subscribing to the Spectator in recent times, having given up the Guardian, i do find the comments section a bit 'stuffed shirt', with many commentators modelling themselves as a sort of second rate Christopher Hitchens. Waspish, smug certainty. ( I do like Hitchens, though).

Some of the responses to Suzanne Moore's article were of the " feminists now reaping what they sowed" variety; along with those for whom this whole TRA thing is a bit of a mystery and not something they are much aware of, or even find an important issue.

Personally, thought the piece was a bit rushed and cut and paste - like she'd been copying chunks of text from this forum and then assembling them two minutes before the deadline for publication.

BovaryX · 27/08/2020 11:10

highame

As you say, she is getting some flack in the comments. The highest rated commenter says there would be more sympathy except...

that the writer recently expressed unbridled glee and delight at the news that Jordan Peterson was very seriously ill

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