Why do Labour women make this so much worse than it need be?

[Pluvia]

I've come under pretty aggressive attack on another platform twice today. Once because I linked to Hadley Freemans's article The Week the Trans Spell was Broken:

unherd.com/2022/04/the-week-the-trans-spell-was-broken/

and once because I linked to an old Times article, which I won't link to here because I don't have a share token.

Each time I was shouted down and bullied by women of the left telling me I shouldn't link to Unherd or the Times because they are right-wing puppets of the Tory party. The women concerned — a group of about six of them — are the kind of hard-line Labour supporters who demand total purity. They have only fairly recently started expressing GC ideas, while I've been out there plugging away for years (and have been shunned as a Hateful Bigot by at least half the people I once counted as friends). Now they've crossed over to the GC side and they're patrolling it with the same ferocity that they do everything else.

I struggle to get my head around it because I have always been a Labour voter, am currently an active member of my Labour CLP trying to beat off the woke bros, and here I have Labour women telling me I can't post a Hadley Freeman article — Hadley Freeman of the Guardian — because the platform she's posting on was founded by a Tory and hosts people with right-wing views.

I've responded very firmly about women being blocked and banned and bullied from posting on left-wing sites. But ffs, if this goes on for very much longer it's going to drive me into the arms of the Tories.

So, these people have no interest in this initiative? How profoundly disappointing and shortsighted of them.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10674135/Three-women-launch-significant-female-movement-Suffragettes.html

Dogmatic tribalism. But you are on the left, you must have seen this before.
Tory scum
Fascists
Racist
All used to without basis close debate down?

They wouldn't read that article because it's in the DM. And if I linked to it they'd accuse me of being a Tory lackey and promoting clicks for 'the enemy'. Which five or so years ago might well have been a position I'd have adopted. But not now, not after Janice Turner risked her career by focussing on gender ideology as her big issue.

I'll strike back tomorrow morning with both Jackie Doyle-Price's article about conversion therapy in the Times and your link to the DM. That will drive them bonkers.

I'm really furious that for years I've been out here on social media and in real life, talking openly about these issues and being abused and shunned and disapproved of by these women as well as the many others who went along with gender ideology to look kind and cool. Now they're opening their eyes and shifting over to a GC position after I've done all the heavy lifting. Meanwhile I've learned that the left can't be trusted and that the right sometimes does get stuff right.

I'm shunned by one lot because I'm GC, shunned by these new converts because I quote the Mail and the Times. Will the shunning and the disapproval never end?

I find your post to be a bit rich, to be honest. For quite a long time people on the centre or right have been bullied, harassed and insulted by people on the left and I don't remember a vein of left wing women standing up for their right to free speech. Here on MN it's regular to hear Conservatives voters described as twats, cunts and scum. And worse. Honestly outside women and gender issues, I don't generally see posters or even MNHQ closing that down. For left wing women abuse of other people has always been acceptable because you agreed with the abusers. Suddenly because you're now on the wrong side of the Labour faithful and the left wing social media, you think what they're doing is awful. Because it affects you.

I saw on another thread a poster praising Boris because now people might be able to have an open and non toxic (paraphrasing) debate without abuse. It's as if the barage of abuse and the closing down of contrary ideas they'd seen and suffered was news to them. But for a whole swathe of the population this has been happening for years. And I wonder if when the GC debate has gone away, if left wing women will settle back into the status quo of allowing abuse of non left wingers by letting their silence be read as tacit encouragement.

Seriously, fuck them. Some of the best reporting on trans issues has been in the Mail, and some of the best opinion pieces in the Times. I have never read the Guardian much because I found its tribalism so pedestrian. I’d rather be challenged than have my left wing preconceptions endlessly validated.

Mackerson makes a valid point. I can't actually imagine ever putting my X against a Tory on a ballot paper, but I have never and would never use the names s/he says are used to describe the Right here on MN.

As a PP has pointed out (helpfully, thanks) it's tribalism. It interests me that once one of these died-in-the-wool Corbyn fans came out as GC, the rest followed.

Thank you, DelurkingLawyer: yes, just fuck them. How bloody dare they?

You're not wrong Mackerson, this whole situation has made me rethink some of my previous views.

If there's one thing Brexit should have taught us, it's that shutting people down, silencing them and calling them names (a) doesn't win hearts and minds, and (b) simply makes them dig their heels in. Quietly.

Stonewall's No Debate policy did the same thing.

Now we are seeing some clinging to their precious purity spirals at a time when so many other women right across the political spectrum are making an effort to set aside their political differences and unite on the one overarching issue that affects us all.

I'm a Conservative (yeah yeah, I know. I'd skin my granny for cash and send orphans up the chimney to earn a stale crust. Heard it all before...) but I'm also a very active member of the Women's Rights Network, part of the Respect My Sex campaign, and I work companionably alongside women whose politics are the polar opposite of mine.

We need to take our allies where we can find them and right now, political differences can wait. This fight is more important, and if it takes the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Times to outrage the country over its toast and marmalade, so be it.

I have voted for Labour, Con, Lib Dem (plus Green on occasion in local elections) over the years so I was accustomed to seeing my voting choices described as “scum” etc. When I joined Labour after Starmer was elected leader I realised pretty quickly that whatever floating voters might do in the real world, most active party members have never voted anything other than Labour and are horrified that you might ever have done so. I once confessed, in a discussion about proportional representation when it seemed relevant, that I had voted tactically for the Lib Dems and there was a horrified silence. It’s an incredibly parochial outlook. Maybe it was different in the Blair years, I don’t know.

Since when does the Venn diagram of gc views and left wing or anything else have to be a circle? For what it's worth you have my admiration for your views and actions.
I admit it makes me uncomfortable when I see people I admire on platforms whose politics don't sit comfortably with me. But they have to get the word out and it's any port in a storm. I'd be happier if the Guardian or the Labour party would see sense, but until then I'll make do with the Mail and (shudder) the Tories.

It must be infuriating op but this is how we win. The important thing is that they have changed their minds and it's quite likely, I would think, that others will follow them. Eyes on the prize.

And yes, Mackerson makes a very good point. One thing I've taken from this is the need for more cross party working.

Should have read the awful venomous stuff directed at Angela Rayner (whose policies incidently I don't like). A whole 300+ thread of bitchy comments and from people who would never dream of voting labour. Thick as shit, loud, brash, common, horrendous dress sense, crap mother, nothing like the sisterhood I might have agreed with you years ago about tory voters being singled out for insults but not lately. The suggestion that MN is left leaning is ridiculous and most vaguely political threads are
generally pile ons scoffing at how shit and arrogant labour are, tories will undoubtedly win a GE because... and labour voters are very much in the minority.

"I'm a Conservative...." Then nothing can save you, Teds, from the Furies of mumsnet and Labour luvvies. Interesting thread, though.

Like DeLurking Lawyer, I've voted for all those but now I don't know.
We have recently acquired an excellent local Green woman whom I'd love to vote for in the locals, even though I generally think the Green Party leaders are mostly batty; the LibDems are hopeless and listless under Davey and I don't know who or where the Conservatives are currently as they are largely invisible or perhaps non-existent. That leaves Labour whose local team doesn't look all that inspiring. Not that I'm implying the national team does, either.

@Tangerinedreamisatheme

Should have read the awful venomous stuff directed at Angela Rayner (whose policies incidently I don't like). A whole 300+ thread of bitchy comments and from people who would never dream of voting labour. Thick as shit, loud, brash, common, horrendous dress sense, crap mother, nothing like the sisterhood I might have agreed with you years ago about tory voters being singled out for insults but not lately. The suggestion that MN is left leaning is ridiculous and most vaguely political threads are generally pile ons scoffing at how shit and arrogant labour are, tories will undoubtedly win a GE because... and labour voters are very much in the minority.

That's the Angela Rayner, incidentally, who got down in the gutter with her common insults and language (which she eventually apologised for) and latterly developed such exquisitely delicate scruples about people vulgarly referring to 'genitalia'. Not very convincing, Ma Rayner. And the shouts of her at Question Time nearly made me leave the house. Gordon Brown used to shout a lot and also lacked appeal. Made it to PM eventually but not by being elected.

This whole debate has left many of us with shifting political allegiances tbh. For me, in the 80s I was in the Communist Party for a while and even then, there was a split between those who wanted to focus on class politics and those who wanted a ' rainbow alliance ' of minority groups ( aka identity politics ). It's been a hard pill to swallow to see Labour and other left wing commentators, comedians etc tell us that TWAW and to be called bigots, Nazis etc, when we know we're anything but. And to be agreeing with the Daily Mail, Spectator, Times and now BJ on this issue is discombobulating to say the least! It's been shocking for me to see the propaganda from The Guardian, BBC, both institutions that I used to trust implicitly and unquestionably.

Now that no debate is over, maybe we have to be a bit patient with those pp who are finally beginning to realise that there's more to this debate than they initially thought and that they have been brainwashed by news sources they initially trusted. Pp have been lied to for a LONG time about this and for many years Stonewall was a very trusted and highly regarded institution, so it's gonna take some time, and some backtracking for those pp to really get the full implications of this and just what a crock they've been sold...

You can get nasty political insults from both sides, but the tendency of voters on the left to say some pretty shocking things about the motives of conservatives seems to be a cut above.

It seems to be a result of thinking that the only reason someone might come to a different perspective than they have is either being really stupid, or having evil motives. Accompanied, in many cases, by a refusal to look at the policies of their own side with the same cynical eye they cast on others.

And I am sad to say there is often a class element involved too, looking down on people they think of as less educated and therefore gullible.

Tell them to sod off. Honestly, why do we give these people so much time? Read what you want, accept there are weirdos in the world, and refuse to defend your right to take in written information from wherever you want to take it.

I think the irony of the situation is that I should be celebrating. Here are women who started out, years ago, chanting TWAW behind Jeremy Corbyn and arguing the usual shit about intersex people and sex being a spectrum when I raised GC issues in real life or on SM. Over the last year or two they've been quieter. Then after I'd posted about the Wi Spa and Lia Thomas they began to quietly approve: the occasional like or retweet. Two or three weeks ago one of them commented approvingly on something I'd posted and then whoosh, all of them are suddenly GC. Which should be great, except for this inability to switch off the purity radar. My guess is that we're going to have a lot more of them around shortly and that Labour will have to change as a result of internal pressure. Which is all good, apart from this finger-wagging disapproval about anything that isn't the Guardian or the NYT.

@tabbycatstripy

Tell them to sod off. Honestly, why do we give these people so much time? Read what you want, accept there are weirdos in the world, and refuse to defend your right to take in written information from wherever you want to take it.

Because there will be a time when people have to recognise just what they've done and they will need a face-saving way to come to their senses.

There has to be a golden bridge in Sun Tzu terms otherwise people will fight to the death when there's no viable escape route. So, people who've previously been all about the #BeKind and purity need to know that they can rethink this.

A different take on why people need golden bridges from an anti-vaxxer perspective and using what is known about perpetrating cons/fraud:

Goffman observed that all “marks” eventually come to understand that they have been defrauded. But strangely, they almost never complain or report the crime to the authorities. Why? Because, Goffman argues, admitting that you have been conned is so deeply shameful that “marks” experience it as a kind of social death – the painful end of one of the many social roles we all play.
…
Within those groups, we can pinpoint influential members who may be turning their backs on Covid denialism, and encourage them in their journey. We can message them offering support, particularly if our reference groups overlap – whether that means sharing the same home town, or practising the same faith. The more shared social space, the better. We might offer to back them up if they get trolled for expressing misgivings about Covid denialism. Or we could let them know that we would admire them for telling the truth.

Those people may not have a television audience of millions, but they nonetheless have the potential to act as “coolers” for those in their reference groups – both online and off. The higher their status within the groups, the more influence they will have in reconciling their fellow travellers to the reality of the pandemic, perhaps enabling them to rejoin society, or at least preventing them from endangering the rest of us.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/09/convince-anti-vaxxers

The Conservatives here are doing a good job of herding me back in a leftward direction. Whinging about people being rude to a party that in the last 15 years has done nothing to prevent the slide of more and more people into poverty isn't a good look. Just because I'm furious with the hard left of my own party doesn't mean I can't see the utter corrupt elitist shit show of the current Tory government.

@TedsFederationRep

If there's one thing Brexit should have taught us, it's that shutting people down, silencing them and calling them names (a) doesn't win hearts and minds, and (b) simply makes them dig their heels in. Quietly.

Stonewall's No Debate policy did the same thing.

Now we are seeing some clinging to their precious purity spirals at a time when so many other women right across the political spectrum are making an effort to set aside their political differences and unite on the one overarching issue that affects us all.

I'm a Conservative (yeah yeah, I know. I'd skin my granny for cash and send orphans up the chimney to earn a stale crust. Heard it all before...) but I'm also a very active member of the Women's Rights Network, part of the Respect My Sex campaign, and I work companionably alongside women whose politics are the polar opposite of mine.

We need to take our allies where we can find them and right now, political differences can wait. This fight is more important, and if it takes the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Times to outrage the country over its toast and marmalade, so be it.

I agree. DH and I were discussing this yesterday, the tribalism of the left and how destructive it is. He commented that he’d noticed amongst our friends and family, the tendency to have a chosen position, because that is the tribal Labour viewpoint and so seems the righteous one, and then to try to make everything fit that decision. Rather than looking at evidence, weighing up different arguments and then making a decision. It is intellectually lazy, and also a way for people who don’t really know much about a situation at all to feel they have an opinion.

The problem with this tribal stance
"Don't link to unherd, don't link to the Daily Mail or The Times otherwise you're Tory Scum" is that it nonsense.

Julie Bindel is a regular writer for unherd. Have they never heard of Janice Turner? These people are groundbreaking feminists and liberals. One of them is a paid up Labour member. The Daily Mail publishes GC feminist articles far more frequently than supposed left wing publications do.

If the painfully woke Guardian or Indie news or the rest would write about women's rights in the way the DM, Times and Unherd do, we'd all be overjoyed. But they don't.
They won't touch sex based rights. They don't believe they should exist.

The Guardian spouts harmful gender ideology myths, other woke stuff and Corbyn is Evil relentlessly, but they have no interest in women's rights at all. So what else can you do?

@Mackerson

I find your post to be a bit rich, to be honest. For quite a long time people on the centre or right have been bullied, harassed and insulted by people on the left and I don't remember a vein of left wing women standing up for their right to free speech. Here on MN it's regular to hear Conservatives voters described as twats, cunts and scum. And worse. Honestly outside women and gender issues, I don't generally see posters or even MNHQ closing that down. For left wing women abuse of other people has always been acceptable because you agreed with the abusers. Suddenly because you're now on the wrong side of the Labour faithful and the left wing social media, you think what they're doing is awful. Because it affects you.

I saw on another thread a poster praising Boris because now people might be able to have an open and non toxic (paraphrasing) debate without abuse. It's as if the barage of abuse and the closing down of contrary ideas they'd seen and suffered was news to them. But for a whole swathe of the population this has been happening for years. And I wonder if when the GC debate has gone away, if left wing women will settle back into the status quo of allowing abuse of non left wingers by letting their silence be read as tacit encouragement.

Thank you. Well said. As someone who is centre right, I have been on the receiving end of vile abuse by the left wing. Many MNers celebrate and encourage horrific language aimed at the right but MN never shuts it down. Because left is always 'good' and right is unworthy of respect.

@Mackerson

I find your post to be a bit rich, to be honest. For quite a long time people on the centre or right have been bullied, harassed and insulted by people on the left and I don't remember a vein of left wing women standing up for their right to free speech. Here on MN it's regular to hear Conservatives voters described as twats, cunts and scum. And worse. Honestly outside women and gender issues, I don't generally see posters or even MNHQ closing that down. For left wing women abuse of other people has always been acceptable because you agreed with the abusers. Suddenly because you're now on the wrong side of the Labour faithful and the left wing social media, you think what they're doing is awful. Because it affects you.

I saw on another thread a poster praising Boris because now people might be able to have an open and non toxic (paraphrasing) debate without abuse. It's as if the barage of abuse and the closing down of contrary ideas they'd seen and suffered was news to them. But for a whole swathe of the population this has been happening for years. And I wonder if when the GC debate has gone away, if left wing women will settle back into the status quo of allowing abuse of non left wingers by letting their silence be read as tacit encouragement.

This site is atrocious atm

The level of insult makes many threads pointless and it is due to many on the left settling in for reams of it.

These people sound like idiots. I know lots of left-wing feminists who have been trying to place gender-critical stories in the Guardian for years, to no avail. What are they supposed to do if the main liberal-leaning paper won't publish them? Obviously they're going to go to places like Unherd, the Spectator and the Telegraph.