The left wing: Why are so many feminists still bothering with them?

[RowlingsArmy]

I have been following these boards, and in particular the GC issue for a while now.

I live in a working-class Labour stronghold, but I consider myself to be politically homeless as no left wing parties support women, and I disagree with most of the policies of the right.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of gender critical people are still holding onto Labour/ Lib Dems/ The Greens. I am really confused as to why this is?

These parties have made it crystal clear that they don't want us. All of these parties have expelled women that have expressed gender critical/ pro-women viewpoints.

Why would you stay somewhere where you're not welcome?

I was an idealist and there was quite some glamour to it. But honestly I was indoctrinated and it took a long time to realise that the gulag was real and not just imperialist lies designed to undermine the great communist project.

Yeah, I was a communist for about 6 months when I was 17. I don't think I realised quite how fucking offensive that was until a few years back when I randomly started musing on quite how many people had died in all the different communist genocides.

I need a hobby.

I was about 17 too. But it took me a couple of years to extricate myself as essentially I'd joined a cult. It is hard to deprogramme but I eventually realised how wrong I had been. I'm sorry now for all the people i tried to brow beat in conversations like this, essentially making all the same arguments seen on this thread. I was so wrong but I had no clue.

Now having lived all over the world and read some history I feel quite a lot of shame over my younger self.

Now having lived all over the world and read some history I feel quite a lot of shame over my younger self.

I was never far into it, but I've made enough mistakes in my youth to know that feeling well.

I read something once along the lines of wisdom just being an accumulation of guilt and regret. I quite like that idea- I think I'm a kinder, more thoughtful, more empathetic person now, because I bitterly remember all the times I wasn't.

My garbled post about one of the reasons why Communism might seem attractive should have read

I suppose for many people in the aftermath of WWII the huge debt owed by Europe to the Red Army was very difficult to ignore.

To expand on that I think for many years after WWII criticising Russian Communism may have felt ungrateful. The atrocities perpetrated by the Red Army in Berlin were downplayed too. In reality the gratitude should really have been towards the individual soldiers but without ignoring the atrocities.

I'm a kinder, more thoughtful, more empathetic person now, because I bitterly remember all the times I wasn't.

That's a great way of thinking about it. I often remind myself how wrong I have been about so many things and maybe the sense of shame I feel over those mistakes could also be understood as the conscience that must be heeded. Anyway I am glad to no longer dwell in mindless certainty!

As for Freedom of expression: that doesn‘t Look too good in Capitalism either. Not only are Media concentrated in the hand of a few rich capitalists, which obvioulsy limits published opinion severely

This is an interesting take on freedom of expression that I haven't encountered before. If it is measured by the ability to be heard, doesn't that suggest that others would then be forced into spreading the word of others, potentially against their will?

On the subject of communism and slavery, might I recommend looking into how Soviet currency worked (not exchangeable for foreign currencies) and their system of internal passports? I'm reminded of the lyrics to 16 Tons.

Dido i think that's a great insight. But also before the wall fell in 89 leftists in Britain were enthralled by the Soviet union. They denied atrocities and decried any criticism as anti communist propaganda. They used the existence of the USSR as a kind of promise to the leftists here, an ideal of what we could have. When the wall fell that was the end of the socialist left in the UK. Obviously there were other big factors in play but I think to be a leftist in Britain for most of the 20th century meant having to position yourself in relation to communism. There wasn't really a leftist movement that didn't support communism in some form.

Middle class liberals in the 90s were infatuated with Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. Edinburgh Fringe for example used to have "best of the Fringe" benefit concerts. I was there- I donated.

I suppose Latin American politics at the time were bloody awful and the alternative was even worse. But Nicaragua under Ortega is not a place I'd want to live.

But also before the wall fell in 89 leftists in Britain were enthralled by the Soviet union. They denied atrocities and decried any criticism as anti communist propaganda.

To be fair to them, essentially all the information they received about life in the Soviet Union was agitprop. The few defectors who spoke of the horrors were, by their very nature, traitors to communism.

@deepwatersolo

Well, for women who are working class, class based oppression may be the more pressing issue than sex based oppression, and from that perspective I truly can't see how the Tories or Libdems or UKIP would do anything for them but sh*t on them. So...

Right wing policy does very little for women, particularly older and poorer women.

We just had a right wing budget handed down that utterly ignored the needs of women, particularly unemployed or insecurely employed women, single women + women over 35.

It's not in my (older, poorer, female) interests to vote or work for the right. I've got a better chance under a centre-left government.

And - it pains me to say - that's even as the left indulges in gaslighting of me over the definition of women.

When you are not m/c, when homelessness as an older woman is a real fear, you don't have the luxury of supporting the right on freedom of speech and self-ID pushback. You can't manage another 4 years in poverty. You need to vote for the party of bigger government/redistribution.

Wealthy women who want to mock me for continuing to cleave left and not 'bravely' embrace the right had better have rw party policies that can show me how they are going to make my poor, older and female life better in a material sense.

I won't give up my freedom of speech. It is the fundamental basis of all other freedoms. I want free healthcare, education and a universal basic income. But those will never happen unless we have freedom of speech.

I'm not wealthy and I'm not interested in mocking others for their opinions. But I don't think freedom is a luxury. I believe it's a basic human right.

BlackWave you vote wherever you chose, women's rights are cross party, cross class. Most of us just hoping that Labour et al will eventually get some sense knocked into their stupid heads so that we can return to our natural home.

@queenofknives

I won't give up my freedom of speech. It is the fundamental basis of all other freedoms. I want free healthcare, education and a universal basic income. But those will never happen unless we have freedom of speech.

I'm not wealthy and I'm not interested in mocking others for their opinions. But I don't think freedom is a luxury. I believe it's a basic human right.

I don't have freedom at all. I am stuck in a house with an abusive ex because I don't have enough money to pay rent on my own and still buy food/pay bills/support my children.

This is a DIRECT result of right wing federal government policy on housing, which has run down social housing, ignored an out of control rental market, promoted policies to benefit those who own multiple homes and refused to get to grips with rapidly growing homelessness in women over 45.

If social housing or rent controlled housing were available to me ( left wing economic policy) I might have a hope of freedom.

But sure, in the meantime I'll console myself with the fact that the right pays lip service to freedom of speech.

If you right wingers don't care about women like me and the material reality of our lives under right wing governance, the don't be surprised we all still voting/working for parties that consider housing a right and not a luxury.

And I still don‘t know what is so horrific about Cuba
Well, they decided they didn't want to have any indigenous people any longer, so removed that category from the census, thus legally obliterating them (Source: one of the legally obliterated).

I once knew an ex-Czeckoslovak... Nah, I shan't bore on.

I have read far too much about Soviet Russia, Mao and North Korea to have any fondness for communism. The Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward, and all the shit that goes on in N Korea now... no thanks.

And to get back to the original question of the thread, I'm not getting a reply from the LibDems so I'll be cancelling my sub at the weekend.

I think it is completely delusional and could only be said if one were determined to believe that the left is always good and morally left no matter what the evidence to the contrary is.

There are people who think that way, but I think RedToothBrush's point is solid, and you can see it in this thread where people keep talking about liberalism and leftism as if they go together.

For various reasons liberalism, and particularly social liberalism, has become associated with leftism in recent decades, but it's not an obvious pairing. Liberalism tends to be individualistic, and leftism isn't. Social liberals have gained a lot of dominance in leftist politics though, to the point that man people no longer realise that they are not identical.

You can also see it in other reversals, most notably the embrase of glabal capitalism and free markets as simply a fact, what had to be accepted, in most supposedly leftist parties. In the UK, Blair carried on with Thatcherism quite explicitly, just as in the US Bill Clinton and Obama carried on Reaganism. Traditional concerns of the left, like protecting industry, or movement of capital and labor, wariness of international trade deals that put power into the hand of corporations over nations - have been utterly and completely abandoned by leftist parties. And people who continue to take the traditional leftist approach are considered crazy, at best.

Those are't minor things, they are completely contrary to any sort of traditional leftist economic perspective. They aren't traditionally conservative either, they are liberal.

It's difficult to see how we could call the people running parties like Labour left. Arguably the Lib-Dems are in fact supposed to be liberals so it would make sense their economics would be liberal.

@queenofknives

So the workers now own the means of production and benefit from it. Work becomes meaningful and valued. People contribute what they can and take what they need.

Firstly, this has never happened in any communist regime. Secondly, I think this is a great example of how leftists ignore or downplay the atrocities of communism. It's a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy - oh, that's not real communism. Real communism gives everyone what they need. Etc.

If fascists used this form of argument people would be (rightly) disgusted. "Oh that's not what fascism really means. That's an inaccurate and biased description of fascism. Fascism is about uplifting the ordinary person and allowing them to reach their full potential."

It's such a strange thing that people refuse to condemn communism. This is why it keeps coming back around I guess.

The problem is that communism is fundamentally an ideology, like Marxism. It could be all kinds of things.

Specific modern communist governments are almost all on a few models, Stalinist, or Maoist, or Leninist.

There are communist models of governance that operate quite differently, but not at the level of the modern nation state. Many religious communities are examples, some traditional societies have communist principles. Communitarianism is a type of communism in many cases. You could look at something like Mondragon for a business example.

As for why modern communist nations have been authoritarian, Marx would probably say it's because they were not at the historical stage where a communist society could occur - which is outlined by Marx as having some very specific characteristics. Therefore it was really just certain individuals forcing people into a kind of false appearance of communism.

However, what I do find odd is that many people on the progressive/liberal side will behave as if the evils of communist regimes are somehow totally separate from the ideology, whereas the evils of right regimes are completely inherent. I'm reminded for example of the way someone like Richard Dawkins sees the persecution of a group with a specific ideology under a historically religious government as a natural result of religiosity, whereas the persecution of people under the Soviets was just a sort of chance thing unrelated to their ideology.

The problem is that communism is fundamentally an ideology

Well, Marxism is an ideology. Communism is used (somewhat inconsistently) in academia to describe a range of moneyless societies but in everyday parlance it's used to mean the political system of communist states (hence my distinguishing it from Marxism before slagging it off).

As for why modern communist nations have been authoritarian, Marx would probably say it's because they were not at the historical stage where a communist society could occur

I think Marx knew communism was a bit pie in the sky for the remotely foreseeable future but I do think he suffers from being very woolly in his predictions and descriptions of socialist societies. This facilitates the 'no true Scotsman' approach of those who want to claim Marx's ideas are completely correct despite the mountain of evidence about their limitations.

I think even the much more benign examples of non-marxist communism you give often have an element of coercion under the surface.

Fundamentally the reason capitalism has been so successful is that it is very very efficient compared to other models at the macroeconomic level.

Of course, left unchecked, it rewards undesirable behaviour and eventually mutates into oligarchy.

@highame

BlackWave you vote wherever you chose, women's rights are cross party, cross class. Most of us just hoping that Labour et al will eventually get some sense knocked into their stupid heads so that we can return to our natural home.

Not cross class if other women vote in ways that leave poorer and older women even further behind than they already are.

Agreed blackwave

The women I know who are holding on are those that have put a great deal of work and talent into the parties involved. It's their party - why should they give it up to misogynists? The TRA lobby has already stolen so much from us.

It's like any of the organisations that have been captured by this nonsense. I respect any woman who wants to leave, but I also respect any woman who wants to stay and fight to reclaim what's been stolen from her.

I “still bother with” the left because there’s no way I want the purity spiral gang setting the agenda. The left is our movement too, not just that of misogynistic blokes covering their hate for women in this TWAW glitter.

If all feminists abandoned attempts to drag the left back to sanity, this would get worse and worse. There would be no opposition to the self id narrative.

Let’s not forget it was under the Tories that the GRA debacle was raised.

It's like any of the organisations that have been captured by this nonsense. I respect any woman who wants to leave, but I also respect any woman who wants to stay and fight to reclaim what's been stolen from her.

Excellent point.

@BlackWaveComing

• great points -

"I don't have freedom at all. I am stuck in a house with an abusive ex because I don't have enough money to pay rent on my own and still buy food/pay bills/support my children.

This is a DIRECT result of right wing federal government policy on housing, which has run down social housing, ignored an out of control rental market, promoted policies to benefit those who own multiple homes and refused to get to grips with rapidly growing homelessness in women over 45.

If social housing or rent controlled housing were available to me ( left wing economic policy) I might have a hope of freedom.

But sure, in the meantime I'll console myself with the fact that the right pays lip service to freedom of speech.

If you right wingers don't care about women like me and the material reality of our lives under right wing governance, the don't be surprised we all still voting/working for parties that consider housing a right and not a luxury."

Austerity is / was an economically pointless ideological punishment of the poor and the vulnerable. This is now, this is in our country (not in the first half of the 20th century) and this leads to people dying, and for a whole generation of the "wrong" class of children, massively reduced life chances. This is a rich country that was pretending that (for instance) decent housing was necessarily economically out of reach for families with an adult in full time work. It's abhorrent, it's practically and ethically and aesthetically absolutely disgusting for people in power to behave that way with the basics of life and dignity.

Yes Labour are currently thick as pigshit about women's stuff, but there is no party ever that has really looked after women. There have been occasional individuals, like Barbara Castle, within movements that were largely run by men, who have done great things. But if you survey the electoral landscape and think "I will vote on the basis of who will look after me as a woman, and mother, and a full time female breadwinner" (for instance) you will come up empty handed.

If you had been thinking "on the basis of a disabled single parent" you would have come up Labour.

If you were thinking "on the basis of who is going to trash the planet least" maybe Green.

If you think it's a good idea to vote conservative because that's the best way to protect the definition of women, I have some respect for that intention, but I also have to respect those who think that the definition is trivial compared to what is actually going to happen materially to single parents and carers in this country.

I wanted most of the things in Corbyn's 2017 manifesto to happen, actually. Most. For example

Fairer taxation
Investing in infrastructure, esp transport
investing in housing including social housing
Direct govt subsidy for EY education for all
More and better apprenticeship opportunities
Free university tuition
Work place rights for everyone, from day 1
Living wage
Fairer benefits

Ok I mean all this came with a side serving of Lily Madigan and her ilk, so yeah. I see the problem. But you're not mad or stupid if you chose the above.

For me, personally, freedom of speech is so basic because without it, all our rights can be taken away. You can't campaign for better housing if campaigning for better housing is against the law. You can't argue for better healthcare if arguing for healthcare is against the law. Without the right to speak, we risk losing every single right and protection we have ever fought for, and we lose the chance to improve our conditions.

We've seen this play out vividly in the area of women's rights. It won't end there [dire prediction klaxon].

If no party will support my right to speak, I have no one to vote for. If I was in the US I'd be very much considering voting Republican purely on the basis of the excellent Executive Order outlawing racism in federal trainings. We take our freedoms for granted, but when they're gone, so much else will go with them.

I don't think this makes me left wing or right wing. Maybe it just makes me a pragmatist.

@raddledoldmisanthropist

The problem is that communism is fundamentally an ideology

Well, Marxism is an ideology. Communism is used (somewhat inconsistently) in academia to describe a range of moneyless societies but in everyday parlance it's used to mean the political system of communist states (hence my distinguishing it from Marxism before slagging it off).

As for why modern communist nations have been authoritarian, Marx would probably say it's because they were not at the historical stage where a communist society could occur

I think Marx knew communism was a bit pie in the sky for the remotely foreseeable future but I do think he suffers from being very woolly in his predictions and descriptions of socialist societies. This facilitates the 'no true Scotsman' approach of those who want to claim Marx's ideas are completely correct despite the mountain of evidence about their limitations.

I think even the much more benign examples of non-marxist communism you give often have an element of coercion under the surface.

Fundamentally the reason capitalism has been so successful is that it is very very efficient compared to other models at the macroeconomic level.

Of course, left unchecked, it rewards undesirable behaviour and eventually mutates into oligarchy.

Yes, I think Marx's predictions of the future are a little wooly, that's a good word. Though they are interesting and you can see why he'd have said the state communism experiments wouldn't work and in fact he was right about that so far as it went. He's overly confident about his materialist version of Hegelian historical progress IMO, it's utopian well beyond any religious system, though that confidence seems to have been taken up by modern progressives for some reason.

I'm not sure about capitalism being efficient. I tend to avoid using the term capitalism for any sort of free market system and there have been plenty of those within lots of different kinds of societies that aren't capitalist - managed economies haven't been all that common after all. The main characteristics of capitalism is the fact that most people are employees, the role of relatively few capital owners dominating/directing the economy, and also elements around interest/inflation/fast economic growth. And you could arguably include the ideas that the economy exists to make money for capitalists, certain ideas about how we decide value, and an ever increasing circle of what counts as a commodity.