Douglas Murray asks: Does Owen Jones have a woman problem?

[RoyalCorgi]

I think we know the answer:

unherd.com/2021/08/does-owen-jones-have-a-woman-problem/

I do find OJ fascinating on one level. The TRA movement is a neoliberal one, surely? How clever of it to have persuaded all these supposedly left wing voices to go into battle for it

'Rather than understanding ourselves as individuals who were reliant upon and responsible for one another, the individual came to be seen as an isolated particle, floating freely in space – occasionally bumping up against other particles but really never becoming embedded in a community, a class, or a society.' (from an article on neoliberalism here tribunemag.co.uk/2021/01/how-neoliberalism-created-a-society-of-individuals)

That's relevant to a large part of his argument isn't it? That trans people are just living their lives and how they choose to live has no impact on anyone. None whatsoever. The only reason he can understand that people make any fuss about the issue is fear, which he can only imagine as something which stems from propaganda..... which of course in the past lead to mass murder. It's like he's got a pair of sunglasses glued to his face. He won't see the debate through any other lens. To do so is to let Nazi tendrils wrap themselves around his brain. Or something. If you are being truly pure, you can't allow any chinks in the armour because we all know the Nazis got to lots of perfectly good people and made them do bad things.

Thing is, if you are so very left wing and care so much about vulnerable minorities, then you have to listen to people like rape victims, or those Muslim women who have to have single sex spaces to be allowed out of the house.... etc etc. It is actually completely irrelevant to say most women support things like self-id (even though they don't). Many many many thousands of us are being clear and calm about the serious reasons as to why, actually, we don't. Why don't we matter?

I think if a large number of women think you are a misogynist then you do need to take the time to reflect on your behaviour and your attitudes very seriously. But clearly he won't.

"I do find OJ fascinating on one level. The TRA movement is a neoliberal one, surely? How clever of it to have persuaded all these supposedly left wing voices to go into battle for it"

Absolutely. It's all about centring the self, and conveniently distracts those youngsters who have become obsessed with it from looking at the wider world issues that once engaged politicised students: class, sex, geographical and social inequality, environmentalism, capitalism, globalisation, consumerism, foreign policy (which we barely hear about now).

And will these kids ever wake up and realise they're being farmed by big business, hooked for life on drugs and surgery? "Every get the feeling you've been cheated?"

whenever I hear feminists being criticised for x, y or z - in my head I am shouting look on Mumsnet, we are discussing and taking action and stop following libfems on Twitter and deciding that’s what all feminists think!

I wonder if Murray has never read Kirkup (or other writers) in the Spectator and noticed the references to MN?

Fleek thanks for that Tribune Link. An excellent article on neo-liberalism.

And will these kids ever wake up and realise they're being farmed by big business, hooked for life on drugs and surgery?

I see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business and the only people who will tell you otherwise are mean bigots who hate you and want to deny you pleasure.

Except, not only is it (unfortunately) very harmful in the long term to eat junk food and lots of it, but you are then overconsuming in a planet that is being exploited to the maximum by all sides so you are doing environmental harm. Junk food businesses win financially with their cheap crappy products pumped full of corn syrup, individual women and ultimately society lose out because the healthcare burden will be carried by all of us financially. I hate it, it's incredibly toxic. You see a lot of women in the movement getting very angry (aka defensive), before bringing in arguments about transphobia and BLM in their online postings. It's two sides of the same coin in many ways. But that's a bit of a tangent!

@merrymouse

Maybe the problem with OJ is that he is fundamentally very traditional and right wing but identifies as left wing.

His dismissal of women who question his authority, his apparent belief that equality is a charitable gift only to be bestowed on deserving minorities, his investment in identity and status - all very patriarchal.

This is something I've thought about before.

I remember reading a study years ago that suggested that people who identified as liberal were not worried about new things and contamination - new ideas, new people, diseases, etc. Whereas people who identified as conservative had more worries about new, unknown things, and also a higher disgust response. This was in a US context so probably a Democrat/Republican divide, but I think you could have, at the time, extrapolated to other western countries, at least English speaking ones.

It's struck me a few times that this seems no longer to follow - it now seems to be mainly people who think of themselves as liberals or progressives who are afraid of various kinds of contamination, be it intellectual, moral, or as we see very clearly with covid, biological.

So in terms of personality types, it looks to me like many of the younger progressives are actually conservative in terms of temperament, even though they may not be economically or in terms of how we would usually use the term socially (though in truth I think they are there too.)

Although I part ways with Murray when he starts asserting that Trans activism is a Marxist conspiracy.

I don't like the word conspiracy here, but he's not wrong that identity politics emerged from Marxism, and shares some important features with it. This is why the leaders of BLM could say, probably totally sincerely, that they are Marxists.

It's like Marxism===>individualism===>personal identity categories. So instead of classes being identified on the basis of material relations that can be seen, it's on the basis of these identity groups, which exist mainly subjectively. There's some overlap between them, being black for example is both something that has a constructed material reality, but also exists as a subjective identity. In id politics the latter is the more important, the real source of class, and it's also the source of validation for individuals. So the solution of id politics, instead of destroying in some sense class in order to destroy class hierarchy, is just to remake the hierarchy to keep on validating people, or at least those who used to be on the bottom.

This was in a US context so probably a Democrat/Republican divide, but I think you could have, at the time, extrapolated to other western countries, at least English speaking ones.

Is this related to the topic of the Helen Lewis/Karen Stenner discussion about authoritarianism?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4311625-Interesting-interview-about-authoritarianism-R4-Helen-Lewis-Karen-Stenner

Yes. Wee Owen has a problem with women.

@Fleek

And will these kids ever wake up and realise they're being farmed by big business, hooked for life on drugs and surgery?

I see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business and the only people who will tell you otherwise are mean bigots who hate you and want to deny you pleasure.

Except, not only is it (unfortunately) very harmful in the long term to eat junk food and lots of it, but you are then overconsuming in a planet that is being exploited to the maximum by all sides so you are doing environmental harm. Junk food businesses win financially with their cheap crappy products pumped full of corn syrup, individual women and ultimately society lose out because the healthcare burden will be carried by all of us financially. I hate it, it's incredibly toxic. You see a lot of women in the movement getting very angry (aka defensive), before bringing in arguments about transphobia and BLM in their online postings. It's two sides of the same coin in many ways. But that's a bit of a tangent!

I think you're on to something with this. I was deep into the HAES/Fat Acceptance Tumblr rabbit hole in my early 20s. I began reading the subreddit /r/fatlogic after one too many Tumblr posts trashing it piqued my interest. It had been grouped in with the subs Fat People Hate and Fat People Stories which were genuinely awful places (now banned I believe).

I stayed around in FatLogic and woke up a bit. I got myself to a healthier weight and lost interest in Tumblr wars, but not before seeing the same kind of language used there and on Twitter to castigate the Gender Critical subreddits. I started reading /r/GC out of curiosity, and now here I am on MN, despite not being a parent. I'm not losing hope that there are or will be more!

[quote EmbarrassingAdmissions]This was in a US context so probably a Democrat/Republican divide, but I think you could have, at the time, extrapolated to other western countries, at least English speaking ones.

Is this related to the topic of the Helen Lewis/Karen Stenner discussion about authoritarianism?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4311625-Interesting-interview-about-authoritarianism-R4-Helen-Lewis-Karen-Stenner[/quote]
That's very interesting, I hadn't seen it before.

I don't think the study I saw is the same one, but t looks like this is a more careful/nuanced exploration of the same phenomena. I wonder if it was done as a kind of follow up to the one I saw?

But what she s saying s exactly my observation. It's interesting that openness is the relevant characteristic. A year or so ago on FB a lot of people I know were doing the Big 5 personality test and posting their results. Some of the people who considered themselves the most progressive were very low on openness - it seemed to have no real correlation with political stance.

A badly written article full of non sequiturs, personal attacks, logical fallacies and cherry-picking of facts.

I was watching Jeremy Vine on Wednesday, I don't usually watch it but OJ was on and I've seen a lot a bout him on here, so I thought I'd see if he really is THAT bad. One thing that made me chuckle was when he quoted someone as saying 'facts don't care about your feelings' and then said he absolutely agrees with that statement...

This is on that twitter thread about the wiki stuff in xxyzz’s post

I personally think OJ is a very cautionary demonstration of the dangers of having a large SM "fan base".

I'm sure he still thinks that he's the one spouting 120 character sound bites that influence those following him.

I've read that the reason he seems to exert so much power at the Guardian is because they don't want his fan base to "turn" on them.

Thing is the tail is now wagging the dog.

The consequences of him actually thinking for himself rather than simply holding a mirror back up to his followers with what they want to hear are significant.

They now represent his "power" and arguably he needs them more than they need him.

So no, he can't "reflect" or change direction. The pot has keep being heated and stirred in the same direction.

He's lost his intellectual independence even if he's choosing not to acknowledge that but he doesn't want anyone to notice that either.

That's why he goes for the "soft" targets. The women. Perfectly acceptable collateral damage that the majority of his followers are happy to have the opportunity to froth over.

Getting into a debate with a man that his followers might actually have some respect for is deeply dangerous territory.

The thing is, OJ's fans will age, and as they age, their opinions are likely to change.

If OJ doesn't change alongside his fans, he will probably lose them anyway surely?

A badly written article full of non sequiturs, personal attacks, logical fallacies and cherry-picking of facts.

So, OJ is improving then?

@AtlasNeverShrugged

The thing is, OJ's fans will age, and as they age, their opinions are likely to change.

If OJ doesn't change alongside his fans, he will probably lose them anyway surely?

I'm not so sure.

Misogynists generally don't change their spots.

He might find that some of his female fans wake up and start smelling coffee rather than drink Kool Aid as their tastebuds mature, but I think he'll maintain and attract new followers who are actively waiting to gulp down his next offering.

I see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business

Health is big business and young people who do not look after themselves become middle ages people with obesity related issues . I know, I am one. I have diabetes. Luckily I have a good doctor who believes the best way to treat it is through diet and exercise and I have been able to do this for four years now. I was lucky I was diagnosed early, others will be less so - the fat acceptance movement really annoys me, diabetes will not accept fat and nor will many other conditions.

Imnobody4
Nice couple of replies from Helen Lewis on that Janice Turner Twitter thread:

'If he's busy I could write it for him: Douglas Murray is a bigot therefore GC feminism is bigoted, list a few egregious Murray pieces, quick Taki ref, done. He'd rather argue with Murray - a panto villain - than you, because he's in danger of his fanbase finding you credible'.

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1423610834123730944?s=20

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1423611385087463427?s=20

(I'm also still getting over OJ's references to the 'fallen' Graham Linehan and was it the hard right or far right Speccie? I forget).

*snort, I dunno, what do you think, Dougie?

*Rhetorical question.

I've read that the reason he seems to exert so much power at the Guardian is because they don't want his fan base to "turn" on them.

I suspect their biggest concern is US readership and US staff.

Somebody pointed out on twitter that he only debates anything do with women's rights with right wing men.

So has more time and respect for them than actual women.

:

see so many echoes of it in Health at Every Size/Fatphobia movement. Lovely, often very vulnerable women who have struggled for years in their overweight bodies are being drawn in by a movement which says, eat whatever you want, it has no consequences, your health is only your business

There was a great BBC documentary about this a couple of years ago. They put various people, all overweight, some supporters of the fat acceptance movement and some not, in a Big Brother style house, and the fat activists' thinking was eerily reminiscent of TRAs.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009tvj