Douglas Murray scathing about trans ideology

[BovaryX]

Douglas Murray has a blistering attack on the trans ideology promoted in schools. He highlights the reliance on gender stereotypes and the deliberate exclusion of parents. Douglas Murray has previously expressed anger about the way children are targeted and the damaging impact of this upon vulnerable young people. This article exposes these issues to a wider audience and contains many themes familiar to the denizens of this board. He writes with a palpable outrage about the incoherence of this ideology.

For parts of the curriculum have been colonised by activists who seek to fill children's heads with ideas that are not just disagreeable, but provably wrong and, for the young people in question, deeply disorientating. And nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to a trans agenda that has gained so much official credence it is even supported by the Government. Ministers have endorsed and funded groups making the most confusing claims about trans issues and have promoted ideas that are wildly untrue. This propaganda is now being pumped into our schools, starting with the claim that 'biological sex' (whether you were born a boy or a girl) can be replaced with 'gender', a thing that the activists say you can choose. And they claim that there are many dozens of these genders, which is stupid as well as sinister. One of the loudest voices in the field is the gay rights group Stonewall

What I know of Murray, i do like him. I watch his interviews and have read two of his books.

Of course, with anyone, you have to ask what portion is performance. But I think he's brave and I appreciate I'm not likely to agree with anyone on everything.

well, given that the Spectator has the balls to address the issue of the erosion of women's rights, unlike Left-leaning publications like the Guardian, I see an association with it as a good thing.
Or do you have a problem with James Kirkup on the same basis?

As for Douglas Murray, he seems to think that sexism (and racism) aren't genuine problems in society, and the patriarchy is a myth.

I've read him, but I've never seen any evidence of this

I don't know about '50 shades' but I spend far more time than is good for me talking about clothes and I have never, ever come across a woman who wasn't mortified by camel toe.

I think Douglas Murray makes good points and also talks some shit. But then I could say much the same about Germaine Greer, whom I adore.

Whatever happened to BovaryX by the way?

Whatever happened to BovaryX by the way?

I was wondering the same thing Flo...

I bought the book at a charity shop, thought it was unrealistic and quite horrible, frankly. I also saw the film on - maybe Netflix, it was a while ago - and the bdsm scenes were seriously nasty, I had to switch it off. A young woman like Anastasia would surely have run a mile in real life.

Grim stuff. I am ashamed I read and saw any of it.

I think people like it because it's about losing control, except that she doesn't really lose control of that makes sense.
The male protagonist is shown as so in thrall to her sexual and romantic power, there's never really any sense that he'll lose it.
It's very unrealistic and glamorises abusive relationships. Like Twilight does. But because it's under the guise of romantic possessive love it gets away with being an antifeminist anthem in a 'choice and empowering' jacket.

DH didn't enjoy me reading it incidentally, because every few pages I'd look up and rant. Unfortunately for him that means he's been exposed to the awful plot haha.

I've read him, but I've never seen any evidence of this

He seemed cynical about the idea at the end of the first chapter.

So long as people were willing to claim that we live in a patriarchal society, a 'rape-culture', a homophobic, transphobic and racist culture; as long as they indict their own society and scatter in a smattering of admiration for any other society (from an approved list), then almost anything can be said. So long as the pyramid of oppression is believed in and propagated to others, almost anything can find its way into [...] academic work.

In the next paragraph he disputes the American Psychological Association who write that if men were more aware of the 'beliefs and behaviours that maintain patriarchal power', it would 'reduce sexist attitudes'. Murray then seems to argue that gender is natural rather than performative - although he doesn't clarify what he means.

This is all part of a larger problem, which is that people from all across the political spectrum can reject genderism, and do so eloquently, but it doesn't mean that the they are doing it for entirely the same reasons, or that we shouldn't be cautious in taking them as allies.

I have also never heard of a camel toe being seen as a good thing. OTOH I can't say that it's not true in some other far away place, there have been some pretty weird trends over the years. I thought it was weird when we went from visible bra straps being a fashion malfunction to being a feature.

Anyway, I would tend to agree that his section on feminism is weaker, but I also think that some of what he says there is not so crazy. People are more complicated, and women are more complicated, than sometimes feminism likes to really allow, and there is a tendency to put wrong-think by women down to the patriarchy rather than allowing that it may be something more fundamental.

And for that matter the idea of patriarchy as used in feminism is not something self-evident, it's very much an ideological lens, so it's not so strange that not everyone thinks it's self-evidently a good one. I think it draws far too much on critical theory for my liking and lacks useful explanatory power. It's possible to think that without dismissing the existence of women's issues or sexism.

The rape fantasy thing, or 50 Shades, or the question of make-up from a very anthropological standpoint rather than an individualistic one, are I suspect mean to be examples where he is trying to point out that women as a group are as much as men driven by these sometimes rather obscure and dark forces in our behaviour. Not because the patriarchy forces us to, or anything like that, but because that is what it means to be a human being.

^when we went from visible bra straps being a fashion malfunction to being a feature.^
When did this happen? I mean I don't care if mine shows but that's not fashion it's lazy.
I remember the visible thong craze though. Cringe.

Murray writes: the books recently sold in the greatest numbers to women are one's centred around women's rape fantasies'.

First, I don't think Fifty Shades is a rape fantasy because afaik the female character is consenting and playing a role.

Second, does he really think women as a group bought more copies of Fifty Shades than any other type of book? I mean, personally I've bought scores of books over the last couple of years. None of them have been Fifty Shades or anything like. One was Murray's own book!

I think 50 shades was a bestseller because it fits a certain type of reader. Just like Game Of Thrones or Harry Potter. None of these are sex based. I'm a massive George RR Martin fan because I am a fantasy fan, which people like to think is a masculine genre but has a huge female following.

I'd actually say more women like historical fiction than 50 shades. There are lots of bestselling historical fiction, whereas 50 shades is in it's own catagory (although it does share features with other series aka Twilight).
Is this man using the existence of people with terrible reading taste to prop up a stereotype?

Re: bra straps - I think this was probably around 2000 or so? All off a sudeen tank tops with skinny string like straps came in and the thing was just to let your bra straps show under them. Usually colourful ones, it didn't work if you have substantial books and needed a serious bra.

As for the book, I am sure Murray is not saying all women want to read 50 Shades, or anything else. However, it is fairly well documented that rape fantasies are among the most common of women's fantasies, and there are plenty of women that like books like 50 Shades or other romance novels where the heroine is swept away, semi-against her will. Even Outlander is of that genre. There are all kinds of reasons that might be, but the point here I think that Murray s making is that there is more to women, and what they do and think, that is often allowed for in the feminist paradigm.

We are able to act and shape culture as well and all kinds of things come out of that which are maybe not so compatible with the simplistic oppression hierarchy. That's the target of his criticism, that neomarxist hierarchical oppression stuff, whether it is in CRT or in feminism.

Ah yes, I was guilty of that fashion trend, but didn't realise it was a trend as such.

So is he arguing that women have nuance or is he arguing that women are genetically subservient etc. An important distinction.

I am afraid that I have not read anything of his. I much prefer fiction.

He's arguing that #metoo and action against sexual harassment/banter at work is confusing for men because women read 50 Shades, deceive men through make-up and fake camel toes, and often hit on men with impunity, like Cameron Diaz did to David Letterman back in 1995.

I don't think I'll be making an Amazon purchase then.
Men have been accusing women of artifice since time began.
God has given you one face and you paint yourself another.

I would say that he's arguing that women are not totally sexually passive in society, that they act and have agency toward their own goals and desires, that they are probably as likely as men to have various bad motives even if they express them differently (ie some women aren't very nice people either and don't mind using others) and that a model which doesn't take that into account is going to be incomplete and probably get things wrong.

The book as a whole is about the CT approach to culture, or wokism if you want to call it that. Which sees various groups only in a simplistic hierarchy of oppression where one side is passive and oppressed, and the other side is the oppressor and the action of the oppression is described through an abstract term that is damed hard to define in terms of a materially real explanation and in fact is often defined to shut down any discussion of mechanism (in this his argument is similar to the socialist Adolph Reed.)

He's not wrong that a lot of feminism is entangled with Critical Theory, and has been for many years. Academic feminism was largely taken over by it years ago, which is why so many women's studies departments became gender studies departments. A lot of the CT stuff that has become ubiquitous had it's start in feminism. And it was very evident in the MeToo movement. Thats not to say that is all there is to feminism but it's absolutely there, and it's as damaging as it is in antiracism or gender ideology or anywhere else.

That's not to say Murray has everything right but he's not attacking feminism off the cuff, it's part of the same argument he's making with the entire book and he's right that it has affected feminism negatively.

I haven't read either Twilight or 50 Shades, but I believe that 50 Shades started off as Twilight fanfic before evolving into its own story.

That might explain the parallels between the two.

They are both mired in anti feminist push to be honest.

The premise of Twilight is: Girl goes out with stalker. He gaslights her, She clings to him. She rejects the normal guy. Goes all prolife when she gets pregnant and her baby tries to kill her. Said baby then has a relationship with overtones of pedaphila with rejected guy. Oh and sparkly vampires.

50 shades: Girl goes out with stalker. His stalker then stalks her. He sends out mixed messages and buys her things. She has a wax. Anal. Then a baby, which he lovingly fits into his life despite all evidence in the other books that he's a selfish person who'd make a terrible dad. No vampires. Buttplugs in lieu of vampires.

Twilight was apparently inspired by Wuthering Heights.

Which makes a weird kind of sense, if you imagine Heathcliff was a vampire and the whole thing turned out ok. Instead of love so intense and all consuming is bad and makes you a sort of ghost, it's good and makes you a sexy high school vampire.

Heathcliff was a nasty bastard though. He benefited through having no police around to control his behaviour. As I remember, Edward in Twilight is sparkly and nice, not feeding on humans. He's not made of the same stuff as the Anne Rice vampires.