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!

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

Follow the logic, not the political party. Make up your own mind rather than participating in group think. For everything.

I am definitely GC because I am left wing. I can’t imagine caring so much if I wasn’t.

Being gender critical is not attached to being left wing. I am not left wing. I am gender critical. My beliefs / knowledge and understanding are not attached to group think politics.

I've been left leaning most of my life. The reason I care so much about this ideology is the harm it is doing to the young. This 20 minutes from Kellie Jay articulates the issues perfectly.

@LadyFuHao

The 'Right': Sex is real. Gender is real.

TRA: Sex isn't real. Gender is real.

Gender Critical: Sex is real. Gender isn't real.

GC and 'the Right' have some similar positions but approach it from completely different viewpoints with ultimately diverging desired outcomes.

Oh please, are you seriously suggesting that "the Right" , if that is supposed to be anything on the right, is hell bent on getting women back into the kitchen, out of the workplace etc?

Are you seriously suggesting that is part of the policy of any mainstream, right wing party?

You , (general you) laugh at trans activists if they adopt a "no true Scotsman" argument to excuse unacceptable behaviour by trans people- yet the same argument is being used here to excuse unacceptable behaviour by leftists.

The 'Right': Sex is real. Gender is real.

No. What a sweeping judgement. I despair of what the left has become. Which is why I had to move away from them.

@andyoldlabour

PotholeHellhole

"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."

Exactly, talk about taking their eyes off the ball, that was an open goal, but they didn't even take a shot at it.
Somebody will have to remind me, when was the last time the Labour party ever got involved with social issues, you know, the nitty, gritty things which affect the poorest in society, because the last year has negatively impacted the poor like no other time.
It took a young footballer, Marcus Rashford to question and pressurise the government over the way they mishandled their response to meals for children.

I think many on the middle class centre-left now regard the 'working class' en masse as knuckle-dragging racist 'gammons'. The reaction on my FB the day after the Brexit vote was quite something, even 'these people should never have been given the vote'. I saw the same sort of thing after the last election with the Red Wall / Blue Wall vote. Old Left wing causes, concern about factory closures, offshoring, local jobs, globalisation, the power of multinationals, even food miles are now seen as 'Brexity', while Trans activists have actively harnessed job insecurity as a tool to bully people into silence, doxxing people to bosses for a tweet or FB comment.

GC feminist

I personally think it's not great to get too attached to a "GC feminist" label.

Feminism by its very definition of centring women and not being constrained and limited to by gender/ sex stereotypes is critical of gender.

Feminism, that which centres females, is for women's liberation, is anti gender stereotypes.

The term is becoming politicised in a way it doesn't need to be, and is now not helpful for discussions about the needs and rights of women and girls.

So identify with lots of the posts on here. Would have described myself as a socialist green feminist. Have never voted Tory and never would. However, the Green Party and the Labour party seem to have abandoned me on issues that affect women. Ivy Twines, I definitely agree about the importance of social and economic justice needing to be at the centre of Labours agenda and I dont assume thinking these things are important are "brexity" and ignorant. I`m just reading "Povery Safari" by Darren McGarvey, which makes an explanation of why working class people are so pissed off and disenfranchised and its an interesting read. The Labour party should take note and actually go out and talk to people.

flyingfoxkins

This was Gordon Brown's unforgettable moment, when he did actually go out and talk to people. An ordinary hard working woman who was quite civil to Brown, despite him trying to talk over her.

That really is quite an unforgettable moment. 😂

That was indeed a painful moment!

Ouch. I had never seen that in full before and how he handled it face to face apart from talking over her a bit was done really professionally.
No justification for his 'private' reaction really having defused her 'wrong think' so well.

Labour lost that election and have seemingly learned nothing from that. They are now telling women their sex-based rights don't count.

I think a GC view cuts across political divides to a large degree because its concerned with reality and the truth.

The importance has to be truth and internal coherence not retro-fitting to fixed ideologies or partisan political leanings. There can be a great liberation in that.

@Justhadathought

The importance has to be truth and internal coherence not retro-fitting to fixed ideologies or partisan political leanings. There can be a great liberation in that.

Yes!

@Justhadathought

The importance has to be truth and internal coherence not retro-fitting to fixed ideologies or partisan political leanings. There can be a great liberation in that.

Yes in a nutshell.

Thanks for starting this post OP - it really hit a spark for me. Ive been thinking about "identity politics" or intersectionality if you use the American term. Its been embraced by many young "progressives" and spawned the no platforming on campuses and elsewhere. How does it fit into some kind of left perspective? I think it can be problematic in setting groups against each other and can also be dominated by those who shout the loudest (The Tyranny of Structurelessness was an interesting report on this), and in the case of the TRA issue, its message has been widely taken up by corporations and thence more widely into the public sector. So you have to ask what the advantage is for them - profit probably - in this particular instance it will prove no threat to the status quo. Id like to add a quote from a book Ive been reading: "Intersectionality in its current form, rather than an irritant to priviledge, atomises society into competing political factions and undermines what really frightens powerful people: a well organised, educated and unified working class". I am working my way through all this so apologies for a long post and Ive been interested to read other peoples contributions.

Well quite:
https://mobile.twitter.com/bindelj/status/1371774393479741441

I think some issues are not left or right and this is one of them. So women whether left or right in other matters can agree quite easily. I mostly see “left wing” people as GC often remainers too.
I don’t think this issues aligns to any particular political leaning.

The TRA attempt to create a Venn Diagram of Wrongthink so you don't align with The Baddies is striking me as increasingly childish.

I am fairly sure that Steve Bannon believes water is wet and there are 24 hours in a day. I'm not going to take the opposite view because he's despicable on so many other things.