New to this - question about reconciling left leaning politics...

[scaredsadandstuck]

....when the mainstream support for GC thinking seems to mostly come from more right wing people and organisations?

Hi - I've been lurking for a little while but am still very new to this. I am pretty sure I agree that women are being erased in a way we've not seen before. But I also feel uncomfortable when it seems like it is those on the right that are the mainstream voice supporting that view. I feel like I don't trust my own position! Am I missing something?

How do you reconcile this if you are left leaning but don't buy in to TWAW and you don't think being a women is something you can choose, and you really believe that women need single sex spaces. Am I overthinking it?

Please do direct me to any existing threads if this has been done to death already!

the mainstream support for GC thinking seems to mostly come from more right wing people and organisations?

I disagree on "people" but agree on "organisations". Here in the UK at least, it's predominantly left-wing grass-roots.

Look harder, and I think you'll see that.

The problem is that left-wing organisations have bought in too hard to an "individual rights" model, and are seeing this stuff as part of it, and thinking it's the next "thing like gay rights". The problem is that it isn't really analogous. Gay rights did not impact others in the same way. This stuff needs class analysis, but they're thinking like neoliberals.

Check out this piece by Jane Clare Jones - Gay Rights and Trans Rights - A Compare and Contrast

JCJ is brilliant and utterly on the left, and she attacks this neoliberal stuff with a venom. And coloured pens. Check out the other stuff on her site.

There are plenty of non-feminists on the right happy to just use it as a stick to beat the left with. There are also those who are more concerned with the free speech/anti-authoritarian issues. But since when were those "right-wing" things...?

Hi and welcome.

Once you get out of the mindset of automatically thinking that left=good and right=bad, it makes it a lot easier.

Even our current government, whilst Conservative is still fairly central. Certainly more centre-right than actually right-wing, whilst the main opposition has swung massively left.

Most peoples political beliefs are more central than they realise and they reject both far right and far left politics.

You are not aligning yourself with the right by holding GC views, you are aligning with the majority centrist position. :)

Well, mostly I'm here because I am left-wing, and I thought about what was consistent with my values, as opposed to "this is accepted as the left-wing position".

For example, I passionately believe in inclusiom. Including the inclusion of Muslim women. I have argued that councils should provide women's only swimming sessions, because otherwise the leisure centres aren't accessible to strict Muslim women. There are people who used to say Muslim.women should just get over it, and everyone on the left called that religious discrimination by the back door and Islamophobia.

I still believe in making things accessible to people with religious beliefs. What has changed, is that other, so-called lefties champion the right of transgendered people to access the women's only provision, even though we know the impact it has on Muslim women.

I am leftwing and believe that anyone pressuring women to have sex with them needs to fuck off, and that women can say no for any reason. I'm a feminist. It's kind of a standard position. But some people have decided that there is an exception for transgendered people and that's the left-wing position. I say no.

I think a little discomfort can be a good thing - it keeps me awake. Plus I'd rather feel discomfort than support locking rapists up with women so there's that. Besides if you check out WPUK I think you'll find both Kiri Tunks and Ruth Serwotka have pretty impeccable left wing credentials.

Someone has been lying to you. These groups are almost to a woman left leaning. Sorry if this does not fit your narrative.

From a working class socialist standpoint the TWAW chants feel like middle class indulgence. As an example I’m concerned about dignity and safety of women in prison, and know women who have been in prison, this is not theoretical. I’ve never really felt UK Labour was interested in my views as a working class female so whilst I detest the current cabinet with pretty much every fibre of my being I acknowledge some conservatives are decent people and am grateful for their support for women and girls.

As an example I’m concerned about dignity and safety of women in prison, and know women who have been in prison, this is not theoretical.

Me too.

Thanks for the replies and the pointers for where to look for more information.

@NecessaryScene1 - I think it is the 'is this the same as gay rights' question that's part of it for me, so thanks for the link, I'll read it.

@Highwind - yes I agree most people are fairly centrist (not sure I think our current govt is though ) and I do believe that most people think that a lot of this stuff is just blindingly obvious.

@PotholeHellhole - 100% agree with you

@Floisme - thanks for the pointers and yes happy with discomfort if it means getting to the right place.

@334bu - don't understand sorry.

My apologies for thinking that you were asserting that the main stream support for GC thinking in the UK comes from the right .
As I have pointed out, this is a lie often used to try to tarnish the groups of left wing women trying to stand up for Women's rights.
I accept that you do not believe this lie .

I am in this position, because not to be conflicts with gay rights.

Reading this may clarify some things for you. It's the testimony of lesbians who have been pressured to have sex with transwomen.

oursuperstories.com. Some utterly heartbreaking, enraging accounts there.

@334bu - ah I see. I can certainly see how that lie would be used against women, sadly.

Reading this may clarify some things for you. It's the testimony of lesbians who have been pressured to have sex with transwomen.

I haven't read yet, but this issue is absolutely one that horrifies me and one (of several) that helped me to start questioning things.

It's really difficult, if you've voted Labour all your life and bought into them as The Goodies, to realise they are totally, utterly, your-vote-losingly shit on this issue, and the Tories are the ones with a bit of sense. Very jarring.

I did the political compass thing again the other day - I'm pretty much on exactly the same spot as Gandhi. Labour have left me, and I refuse to hold my nose and keep voting for misogyny.

BTW, OP, as no-one else has linked to it yet:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

Someone else asked basically the same question 3 years ago (during the GRA reform consultation) and it turned into quite the primer thread.

Yeah, I do quizzes occasionally to test I haven't gone all conservative. I haven't.

I am firmly socialist. I just don't want to deny that water is wet.

From a working class socialist standpoint the TWAW chants feel like middle class indulgence.

This.

@Highwind

Hi and welcome.

Once you get out of the mindset of automatically thinking that left=good and right=bad, it makes it a lot easier.

Even our current government, whilst Conservative is still fairly central. Certainly more centre-right than actually right-wing, whilst the main opposition has swung massively left.

Most peoples political beliefs are more central than they realise and they reject both far right and far left politics.

You are not aligning yourself with the right by holding GC views, you are aligning with the majority centrist position. :)

This. The attack on everyone's (men's and women's) sex-based rights has happened 'under the radar' while pretending that sex and gender are the same thing when it suits. I am guessing abused men could set up a men's refuge and keep all women out if they wanted to under the current Equalities Act which Stonewall keep misrepresenting. However now we are told there are twenty billion 'gender identities' , it seems we are no longer allowed to say there are only 2 biological sexes which is clearly anti-science. This means if gender and sex are used interchangeably in regulations/laws, you lose sex-based rights overnight. Also as you get older you do become more conservative with a small c, however much this surprises you when it happens. Maybe this explains why in most European countries it tends to be moderate centre right parties in Government most of the time despite the different electoral systems.

From a working class socialist standpoint the TWAW chants feel like middle class indulgence

This. I'm from a working class northern town classic red wall territory. Its absolutely middle class navel gazing, the people in my town worry about feeding the kids, paying rent, finding work. The stuff Labour used to focus on.

There are some great articles about how gender ideology is not left wing at all as it doesn't focus on structural oppression or class but I have no idea where I saw them and I am not that brainy so perhaps not summarising well. Perhaps Jo Bartosh? I think the Morning Star had some good articles too. Hopefully someone else will know. The Labour Party is a disgrace for making people feel like they are not left wing if they are concerned about this.
Oh and Woman's Place is mainly made up of LP members and trade unionists.

Socialism uses class analysis; identity politics does not. It isnt left wing or socialist, its neoliberal. Its also being pushed by the current Govt which is decidedly not left wing.

"This. I'm from a working class northern town classic red wall territory. Its absolutely middle class navel gazing, the people in my town worry about feeding the kids, paying rent, finding work. The stuff Labour used to focus on."

100% this. This is why the Labour heartlands didn't vote Labour in the last election, sadly the Labour party are lacking self reflection, and are full steam ahead on the "identity politics" train.

Andy Do you recall the last time there was a scandal about the food parcels for children to replace free school meals over lockdown, that were supposed to provide £30 of food (and looked like a fiver's worth)?

It really struck me that GC/radfem twitter was up in arms about working class children going hungry, and sharing stories of how they'd been on FSM as children themselves, and meanwhile the focus of North West Labour Party twitter was... how much they hated Rosie Duffield.

Not a bloody word about children being given two spoonfuls of tuna in a filthy bank coin bag, to last them the week. Not. A. Bloody. Word.

@Thelnebriati

Socialism uses class analysis; identity politics does not. It isnt left wing or socialist, its neoliberal. Its also being pushed by the current Govt which is decidedly not left wing.

It has gone 'under the radar' across the board but right now the UK Conservative Party is the least captured of the mainstream parties and so needs to be encouraged to keep on rolling things back especially the misinformation about 'being born in the wrong body' in schools.

@PotholeHellhole

Yeah, I do quizzes occasionally to test I haven't gone all conservative. I haven't.

I am firmly socialist. I just don't want to deny that water is wet.

good way to put it.

I'm neither northern or working class, but I was raised in a very left wing household. My mum is a 60s/70s feminist (I remember being terrified when she went to Greenhamin the 80s - I thought she'd never come back!). I marched for the miners and against apartheid. I was raised to believe people are people whoever they love, whatever they look like, wherever they live. I find the Labour Party bitching and infighting alienating really.

Anyway, I'm here to learn. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Welcome OP. I tend to think less in terms of left and right nowadays than how best to stay true to my own principles. I question myself all the time. I don't believe that male rapists should be incarcerated in the female estate with vulnerable women. I don't believe that adolescents should be encouraged to consider disfiguring surgery and put on a pathway to lifelong medicalisation, with a likelihood of sterility. I don't believe the safety of women and girls should be compromised and the language they use to describe themselves changed to protect the feelings of a tiny minority. I don't believe that men can be lesbians. I don't believe the motivation for these things - that human beings can change sex - is based on robust science. I try to read the views of people on both sides of the argument, I have done for a long time, I just don't believe the other side.