The “Woke Left” being called out on their hypocrisy

[MangoSeason]

Brendan O’Neill on the money again. A most unexpected ally, who has been all over this issue for years.

www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/04/oh-so-now-the-woke-left-cares-about-misogyny/?fbclid=IwAR2IvMp7S-r4yyAjfGtV6RUmNEfhYcxzO6odUBNV2m9Eo3njNT36Bw03RTI

@VladmirsPoutine

Isn't this why some think GC feminism is a gateway drug to the far right.

Surely that would only occur to people who are superficial rather than critical thinkers?

Or who were looking for something to support their cognitive biases rather than exploring ideas?

When it comes to some issues, far right and far left are a political horseshoe that results in authoritarianism. Largely, the posters here are resisting the path to authoritarianism although some visitors appear to be advocates for it.

The far right..the far left..just as long as it has the effect the gc women shutting up, seems to be the strategy.

How rude though to insist that a gc woman reads so passively, without the ability to see an agenda or suspect rationale? Do they believe gc women to be particularly prone to being led astray, hooked by an issue and reeled in to a place with a sinister perspective - or do they consider themselves to be as equally manipulable?

I would say that being able to agree with people selectively and partially is an indication that gc women are not interested in forming an orthodoxy but an engaged and active understanding of gender critical perspectives, at least I am.

And there's nothing in O'Neill's article that smacks of reeling a readership into anything other than the observation that the Guardian are hypocritical self serving shits. And yet, I'm happy to agree with them when they say the sky is blue.

@VladmirsPoutine

Isn't this why some think GC feminism is a gateway drug to the far right.

I shouldn't think so. At least not unless they were absolutely desperate to say anything to deflect what GC feminists were saying.

Thanks for that link TimeToDateAgain

"Gateway drug to the far right" 😂 off you pop now

@VladmirsPoutine

Isn't this why some think GC feminism is a gateway drug to the far right.

I always wonder what people mean by "far" right.

I'm not convinced that left or right are meaningful in the context of questions about gender ideology or identity politics generally.

They much more happen against a background of liberalism and authoritarianism, where traditional liberal democracy is a fairly centrist position, and id pol is both "far" liberal and "far" authoritarian.

@VladmirsPoutine

Isn't this why some think GC feminism is a gateway drug to the far right.

The far right? What on earth are you talking about?

I looked up 'far right' on wikipedia:

'Political scientist Cas Mudde argues that the far right can be viewed as a combination of four broadly defined concepts, namely exclusivism (e.g. racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, ethnopluralism, chauvinism, or welfare chauvinism), anti-democratic and non-individualist traits (e.g. cult of personality, hierarchism, monism, populism, anti-particracy, an organicist view of the state), a Traditionalist School value system lamenting the disappearance of historic frames of reference (e.g. law and order, the family, the ethnic, linguistic and religious community and nation as well as the natural environment) and a socioeconomic program associating corporatism, state control of certain sectors, agrarianism and a varying degree of belief in the free play of socially Darwinistic market forces. Mudde then proposes a subdivision of the far-right nebula into moderate and radical leanings, according to their degree of exclusionism and essentialism.[7][8]'

This is what you think feminism is all about?

I think maybe the suggestion is that by people reading this stuff because they are sympathetic to the feminist element, they become "softened up" to the other things the writers might say or argue, or be exposed to dangerous arguments.

There is some kind of truth there, but I would say even for those really worried about some kind of radicalization, the response of not reading dangerous authors might be short-sighted.

I didnt think this bit was very helpful, minimising street harassment, isn't it OK to discuss it all as being degrees of the same thing? Am I missing something/being dim? Can we only talk about the murders and rapes, the headline horror of it, its an ok comparison to make?
'Now, some of us think this discussion hasn’t been entirely helpful. Linking relatively minor incidents of misogyny, such as a man making lewd comments about a woman in the street, with a horrific act of kidnap, rape and murder ends up lumping together bad behaviour with barbarous crimes to the detriment of serious public discussion.'

@ArabellaScott No, not wholly.

@Coyoacan

If there is one thing I have learnt from the gender debate, it is not to take people who make ad hominem attacks seriously.

Hear, hear.

Not a fan of Brendan O Neill but he is bang on the money here and does have a great turn of phrase. He is no friend to feminism which he regards as ' policing men'. Of course it can be misused that way in rare cases. But it's a pretty sweeping statement. It's weird how many of the Revolutionary Communist Party are on the right now. Fox is in the House of Lords. Another woman , whose name eludes me , running a Tory council.Perhaps some people are just natural extremists. Anyway fair fucks to him for sticking it to the Graun and LOJ.

[quote ColourMagic]@dyslek - Not bullshit. Factual background on Brendan O'Neill's Living Marxism/now called Spiked, just some of the damaging nonsense they have got up to over the years .....

.
'ITN wins Bosnian war libel case'

'ITN and two of its reporters have won Ł375,000 in High Court libel damages from a Marxist magazine which claimed they had faked pictures of Bosnian Serb war crimes.

Reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams were each awarded Ł150,000 over the Living Marxism story which called into question ITN's coverage of the Bosnian war.

The left-wing magazine was also ordered to pay Ł75,000 to ITN for libelling them in a February 1997 article.'

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/677481.stm[/quote]
Was Brendan O'Neill involved in this at all? Mick Hume was the editor of LM at the time and the author of the article was a freelancer, Thomas Deichmann. I can't find any evidence that O'Neill had anything to do with this.

Coyoacan

If there is one thing I have learnt from the gender debate, it is not to take people who make ad hominem attacks seriously.

Yes. Useful lesson.

Winston Churchill reportedly said (about Britain’s pact with Stalin after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union) that if Hitler invaded Hell, Churchill would make a pact with the devil.

Brendan O’Neill may not be a feminist, but our interests coincide on the question of self-ID. He is speaking up for sanity. We are too, but with the powerful added motive that we need to keep single-sex spaces for our physical safety.

some think GC feminism is a gateway drug to the far right

I’ve heard of people saying that too. And it is so far from anything approaching reality, it could only be believed by people who would believe anything. Anti-vaxxers, young-Earth creationists etc. And they would only believe it if they were looking for an excuse to badmouth feminism.

You couldn’t know anything about feminism, even in its mimsy man-pleasing ‘third wave’ guise, and think it was compatible with the far right.

Actually I realise those who connect feminism with the far right probably know nothing about rightwing politics either. It’s just a mantra they’ve been told to repeat, so they obediently repeat it.

No offense, thinkingaboutLangCleg, but being vaccine critical has no more in common with racism and survival-of-the-fittest economic policies than being gender critical.

It is the same mentality to slur a whole genre of thinking as nasty, without having to argue to point.

None taken, Coyoacan. But I mean feminism is the opposite of far-right. No one who knows even a little bit about feminism would associate it with the far right. And the far right themselves know they are not feminists! That would only be believed by the sort of people who believe conspiracy theories. (Not necessarily racists etc.)

But, but Purgatory you can't quote John Henry Newman - you do know he was a Christian don't you?

@Coyoacan

If there is one thing I have learnt from the gender debate, it is not to take people who make ad hominem attacks seriously.

👏🏻👏🏻so true!

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-trans-assault-on-reality-with-bev-jackson/id1436524071?i=1000538589476

This is also very interesting and relevant to this thread