Why GC feminists shouldn’t trust US conservatives

[turnitonagain]

www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-wiles-calls-on-pennsylvanians-to-rise-up-and-chase-transgender-health-secretary-out-of-the-state/

The Pennsylvania health secretary who is trans has introduced a mask mandate. The response of this right wing news site is this.

“Chase that freak out of the state,” Wiles bellowed. “Chase it out of the state. Rise up in Pennsylvania, and chase that freak out of the state! You don’t have to tolerate this stuff.”

This “news organisation” has been invited to Trump’s White House multiple times.

raskin.house.gov/media/press-releases/24-representatives-demand-white-house-deny-trunews-press-credentials

Just a few weeks ago, Rick Wiles asked his guest whether the “transgender movement gets its origin in Zionism."

I know many GC MNers try to apply British views to America and say they’d back Republicans because of the trans issue. I think many are unaware or naive about how much more regressive the right wing is in general and how their anti trans positions often go hand in hand with racism, anti-Semitism, anti-science conspiracy theories, etc.

You're quite correct that the US right wing has reached a level of corruption and insanity that puts them into some kind of overlap between mafiosos and bedlamites.

Plus, the only reason they invite GC feminists is to give liberals a poke in the eye. "Ha ha. See ? We're more "progressive" [insert sneer} than you are."

Except, of course, what they want is the strictest possible, preferably biology-based, gender roles. (Although they'll settle for trans who obey gender roles when they have to. See Rick Santorum, for example.) Whereas feminists want to put the whole pile o' crap on the Optional heap.

There's no overlap at all. It can sound like there is because the two groups use the same words to mean completely different things, but in reality there is none.

But the US Left has erased women. It's all trans, all the time. Women have no rights at all if anybody else needs anything from them at any time.

Faced with that, a spot on a very circumscribed pedestal can look like an improvement. Women's rights are homeless.

I'm not convinced GC feminists "trust" any political group, quite frankly. But maybe that's just me...

I am aware of some right wing thinking about some things and that often puts me between a rock and a hard place. I'd never describe myself as either unaware or naive but I will agree with anyone when they talk sense and, for me, a woman is an adult human female. Just because someone else agrees with me doesn't mean they agree with everything else I think. And vice versa.
I can fight homophobia, racism and anti Semitism whilst simultaneously promoting women's rights.

Plus, the only reason they invite GC feminists is to give liberals a poke in the eye. "Ha ha. See ? We're more "progressive" [insert sneer} than you are."

That's it in a nutshell. American women feminists are well aware that the right is no friend to women, children, or really anyone who isn't an evangelical white man....and they aren't even good to white men in poverty!

You really can't say that everyone who is a conservative in the US, or even a Republican, is exactly the same or has the same beliefs. Any more than you can say that about the left.

When you say “trust” do you mean happen to agree with certain political factions on some things and not others? For example, I agree with conservatives generally in the right in the US that it’s not possible to change sex. However I do not agree with this particular right wing person about a trans person being a “freak” and needs hounding out and I would condemn such horrible things, as would everyone else here.

It’s so bloody tiresome, seeing this argument made that it’s “one in, all in”, that is if you agree with someone or some vague entity of a political spectrum on one thing you must instantly condone everything else they stand for. It just isn’t true.

And it also isn’t true that the extreme left is immune from racism, anti-Semitism, anti-science conspiracy theories and homophobia. There’s clear evidence of all of those things.

All this comes down to women deciding to be private property (Republicans) or public property (Democrats). It seems like we should just be able to be human?

@NotBadConsidering

When you say “trust” do you mean happen to agree with certain political factions on some things and not others? For example, I agree with conservatives generally in the right in the US that it’s not possible to change sex. However I do not agree with this particular right wing person about a trans person being a “freak” and needs hounding out and I would condemn such horrible things, as would everyone else here.

It’s so bloody tiresome, seeing this argument made that it’s “one in, all in”, that is if you agree with someone or some vague entity of a political spectrum on one thing you must instantly condone everything else they stand for. It just isn’t true.

And it also isn’t true that the extreme left is immune from racism, anti-Semitism, anti-science conspiracy theories and homophobia. There’s clear evidence of all of those things.

All of this.

@Goosefoot

You really can't say that everyone who is a conservative in the US, or even a Republican, is exactly the same or has the same beliefs. Any more than you can say that about the left.

I don’t say that at all. But this organisation was invited to the White House under a Republican president more than once. That gives it an air of respectability.

I’m pointing it out to posters here who have said they would have voted Trump if they were American because of trans. Or who were promoting Sen Kelly Loeffler running in Georgia who is anti trans but they don’t know her other positions on gay marriage or claiming fraud in the Georgia elections against all facts and evidence.

Anyone who wants equality for women, even if they are GC, should be deeply distrustful of the American right.

I'm about to turn in. But I've lived my whole life in the American South and have had an abortion. And I entirely understand not wholeheartedly endorsing the Democrats.

We don't.

US conservative and religious groups are misogyny soaked, corrupt and dangerous.

Abortion provision, contraception, maternity care, women's health in general, equal rights and many social reforms enacted under every administration before Trump's are under threat from these corrupt and venal 'patriots'.

These organisations are the 'respectable' end of the Proud Boys and QAnon crowd.

* I know many GC MNers try to apply British views to America and say they’d back Republicans because of the trans issue. I think many are unaware or naive about how much more regressive the right wing is in general and how their anti trans positions often go hand in hand with racism, anti-Semitism, anti-science conspiracy theories, etc.*

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt OP and not assume that you are trying to imply that a desire to uphold women's rights under the Equality Act (UK) 2010 means that you are a raving right wing lunatic or a naive innocent lured into supporting right wing lunatics because they also know that human beings aren't clownfish and therefore cannot change sex.

So thank you for the above information about the loony right in the USA whom I am sure all of the posters on this board would choose to avoid.

Now if you could explain this statement of yours:

Anyone who wants equality for women, even if they are GC,

How can anyone who wants equality for women not be GC ?

I know many GC MNers try to apply British views to America and say they’d back Republicans because of the trans issue

Screenshots, please.

I've seen GC feminists say they couldn't vote Democrat, I've seen them say they'd vote third party, some (like me) have said we'd feel we had to vote Democrat because of the threat to abortion rights, but would have to hold our noses to do so. I've also seen GC feminists say that as a general, population level point, identity politics loses the left votes. But I've never seen a left wing GC feminists say she'd actually vote Republican purely on this basis.

Oh not this tired old argument again. Republican does not always mean culturally conservative. There are many republicans who are pro abortion, pro gay marriage etc. but whose views on taxes and government align with the right. Women can and should vote and think for themselves. I vilify no one except misogynists. I know American GC feminists all across the political spectrum. You don't have to be left wing to be a feminist. I know many U.K. feminists disagree and frankly I don't care.

Not this again. It's just a cue for the "house" misogynist to pile on Transgender Trend & other women's groups and to perpetuate the myth that feminists are in bed with the American right.
It's a lie.

Anyone who wants equality for women, even if they are GC, should be deeply distrustful of the American right.

There must be huge numbers of republicans in the US who really struggle with the far right fringe, not least because it appears that having republican politics is being automatically equated with being far right, but also because under Trump it has been presented as main stream.

Yes, of course, you are at liberty to dismiss an individual politician (or a whole party because of a policy position) and, yes, for this reason I could not have voted for Trump, but your OP suggests that we should be suspicious of “the right”, as if merely having a republican or conservative outlook on economics or social support structures should be enough to have you banned from the collaboration list, let alone more controversial views, say around abortion, however nuanced or thoughtful they may be.

I remember a previous thread you were on about a similar topic, OP.

I wondered then, and I wonder again now, if you’ve ever done any reading or analysis of the history of right wing women and their place in feminism? Because it seems to come as a surprise to you that not all feminists are left wing, and really, this is not a new problem, or anything related to trans.

I myself remember exactly this issue from a lot of the campaigning we did in the 80s and 90s on porn and prostitution, which was and is a cross party issue. Right wingers and left wingers come at it from a different angle, as do women and men, those of more and less libertarian bents, those who would ban these things for religious reasons, and those who would like to see them phased out on grounds of incompatibility with human (womens) dignity.

Feminism has always grappled with the tribalism of the left. My uni feminist group exploded over the question of whether it was possible to be a feminist and not also be a Marxist (I said of course it fucking was, but to some women this was inconceivable).

It’s the same environment here. We’re being asked, as women, to place issues on a left/right spectrum that have no business there. I am a life long lefty, but so what? This topic is also about enlightenment values and true liberalism- the issue is the compulsion of belief, that is as far from being a liberal quality as it is possible to be. Right wing and left wing women can equally object to this authoritarianism.

I’ve never heard of this Wiles character, he sounds extremely unpleasant, a d what he said is deplorable. I do note however, that he’s not a woman. So what have his views to do with feminism?

From the Joe Rogan thread in September

I've never perceived this as a general opinion on here. It's been acknowledged several times that whilst the GC thinking has certain aspects that overlap with the Christian right in America, it's coming from very different places.
GC thinking is not tribal in its political leanings here. It's left and right wing feminists in the UK who agree on various aspects of how this impacts women's rights.

I’ve never heard of this Wiles character, he sounds extremely unpleasant, and what he said is deplorable. I do note however, that he’s not a woman. So what have his views to do with feminism?

Good point. And what do they have to do with this board?

@Highfalutinlootin

Oh not this tired old argument again. Republican does not always mean culturally conservative. There are many republicans who are pro abortion, pro gay marriage etc. but whose views on taxes and government align with the right. Women can and should vote and think for themselves. I vilify no one except misogynists. I know American GC feminists all across the political spectrum. You don't have to be left wing to be a feminist. I know many U.K. feminists disagree and frankly I don't care.

This is also true.

I know many principled right-wingers both sides of the Atlantic (one of whom tore up her Republican party membership when Trump got the nomination back in 2016) who are right of centre out of a belief in individual self-reliance, small government and small taxation, not because they are EVIL (TM).

This sort of "All Tories/Republicans are evil" jejeune Manichean attitude to politics is one of the most tiresome and annoying features of the left.

I do however judge the hell out of moderate Republicans who choose to continue to support Trump in the knowledge that he's a lying, dishonest, dangerous, anti-democratic, anti-rule-of-law, populist, genuinely far-right narcissistic nutter, simply because those moderate Republicans would do anything to cling on to power. (They're the ones currently distancing themselves from him like crazy... "Used to support Trump? Who, me? Not me, guv...")

turnitonagain I am not sure why you have posted those screenshots? What point are you making?

@turnitonagain

From the Joe Rogan thread in September

Two posters. I don't think you can say that is 'many' by any stretch of the imagination.

I think there is a tendency by none GC people, and people who dislike GC people to suggest we are in bed with the far right Americans

Actually I think the treatment of transidentifiying individuals by the previous American government is pretty aweful and drives an simplistic all or nothing thinking

Personally I have always thought that those people should be asking themselves why 2 groups who think very differently on lots of things reach a similar conclusion on some issues

Triple word bonus for “jejeune” AND “Manichaean” in the same post, cara!