Anyone else left wing and gender critical?

[Kendodd]

I'm to the left politically.
Support BLM and was at anti apartheid demos even back in the 80s
Fully support gay rights and again, have marched in the street for them from back in the 80s.
Strong feminist, attend feminist meetings.
Support refugees.
Very anti Brexit.
Feel ashamed of the levels of poverty in the UK.

I'm also gender critical and although I do support trans rights, in that, wear what you want, TWANW and have different needs and don't belong in women's sports, prisons etc. When I look around and see who I'm standing with on this though, I feel really uncomfortable.

When it comes to voting, no way would I vote for someone with Farage like views just because they were anti self ID.
Anyone else with similar views?

[ValerieDoonican]

Dismissing GC people as 'far right' is pretty much the juvenile cry of 'fascist' used by people with few ideas of their own to shut down discussion they might find uncomfortable. It makes me think of the Young Ones. And its very convenient for many. Inevitably though, GC posters on here are going to share right-wing media approvingly - possibly making them look right wing themselves - because as you have sadly observed, the left-er media have gone into a collective cringe about "trans rights", so successful has the branding been of trans people as the most victimised victims of all the victims.

[Talipesmum]

Me - left wing voter all my life as are all my family (present and historical). And def gender critical - I’ve always considered “gender” as stereotypes, and irrelevant and should be ignored. Sex is only important sometimes, but it’s very important when it matters.

[DomesticatedZombie]

@Slothtoes

Left wing, GC and politically homeless here. I think there’s been some clutching at straws going on on these boards sometimes. The Tories are not safe on this issue and haven’t actually done or changed anything legally to protect women.

They’re happy to give GC soundbites (which is a start obviously) but they have made no actual changes despite their massive House of Commons majority since 2019. The Tories have been in power since 2010 (including for a short time with the Lib Dems) so they’ve had 12 years to sort something out.

I couldn’t give a fuck if Boris johnson dsays he ‘knows what a woman is’, he’s not prepared to do something about it legally, so his views aren’t helping us.
I don’t think I can forgive Labour for being so unrelentingly sexist on this issue, it’s really alienated me from the current crop.

😭but then who am I going to fucking vote for?

There is no fucker! Nobody! No bastard person willing to stand up for women and take any action.

I'd made up my mind to vote Tory, despite disagreeing with them on virtually all points of fiscal policy, social strategy, economic positions, benefits, NHS - oh, god, the NHS.

Christ.

I can not bring myself to spoil my vote. There is nobody to vote for.

[noblegreenk]

Me! I'm left wing and GC too.

[ValerieDoonican]

Yes I do wonder about the 'bedfellows' aspect - I was shocked by how much i enjoyed the recent piece in spiked by brendan o'neill , i must say. But its kind of teaching me not to 'think like a little leftist and move with the tribe', but to grow up a bit and separate issues out in my mind and address each on its merits.

I do 100% consider myself on the left though, and also very green (though plenty of beef with XR and IB etc) and I am certainly a lot more concerned about social justice and women's rights than I imagine most mail readers are. But i might even be wrong about them too! 😅

[youkiddingme]

I'm with you on all that OP. I think many are.
I hate the way that 'Woke' is used as an umbrella term for many different causes. Some of which I wholeheartedly support, some not. So I'm not woke or anti-woke. I think it's often used by different people to mean different things.

[ValerieDoonican]

@Talipesmum

Me - left wing voter all my life as are all my family (present and historical). And def gender critical - I’ve always considered “gender” as stereotypes, and irrelevant and should be ignored. Sex is only important sometimes, but it’s very important when it matters.

Yup. This. Our age perhaps?

[FrecklesMalone]

I genuinely don't understand how a feminist can vote for the Tories ever. I'm waiting for Labour to see the light but no fucking way would I give my vote to a party led by a narcissistic misogynist whose policies bring down women even more. T

[Slothtoes]

Also want to see Labour commenting very strongly on the awful anti abortion situation in the US, or I really will despair of them.

[IamAporcupine]

@Babdoc

If you are actually “left wing” you have no problem- the British Communist Party is staunchly gender critical. It’s just the centre left - Labour, Lib Dem, etc, who have swallowed the gender woo.
But I suspect by left wing you really just mean “moderately left” ex Labour supporter?
My daughter is a Communist party member and I’m a Tory. We are both rad fems and both gender critical.

This made me smile. Love that you are both radfems, and that the Communist party is GC here. As far as I can tell there is not a single left wing party in my home country, which is not TWAW.

[DuesToTheDirt]

I'm seriously considering spoiling my vote for the first time ever. I'm in Scotland and want independence, so would normally vote SNP or Green, but I cannot vote for people who can't tell a woman from a man.

Yes I know council elections are supposed to be mainly about bin collections and parking, but you can't easily separate local issues and national ones when voting for a party.

[WandaWomblesaurus]

Me and my friends and family - all left.

[Manicsfan]

I'm left wing and GC. I stopped paying subs to very left organisation that I'd been a proud member of for about 17 years because of their TWAW stance.
No one to vote for on Thurs either.
I bet the vast majority of GC activists are lefties.
Solidarity comrades

[TheMarzipanDildo]

I would definitely say most of us on here are in that category OP.

It’s a pain in the arse when it comes to voting, of course. I voted for the Communists last time (list vote in Scotland).

[WandaWomblesaurus]

I agree @tilder
I think also that there are prominent people on the left who are vocally NOT doing something about it, including people who we thought would have a spine. So it's polarised the issues further.

[Pluvia]

@Kendodd

Except, Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP is the most outspoken on this.

The GC posters on here all seem very right wing, slagging off the 'woke' by which I mean TRA but also BLM and XR etc. I don't feel I fit with the GC posters on here. Maybe I'm just on all the wrong threads.

Given that XR put out this today I don't think you'll find many GC women wanting to support them. That doesn't mean that we aren't concerned about climate change (I've work in the field), it just means we don't 'belong' to a particular group.

twitter.com/xrbristol/status/1521462318693076993

[MathSage]

I’ve just spoilt my ballot. I wrote on it why I could not vote for any party that doesn’t support women as a sex class. I wrote that across the boxes for the left and centre parties, left the tories blank. It was a hard decision. I’ve voted in every election I could for nearly fifty years.

I have always been left wing and always feminist, realising early on how discriminated I was as a female. That I had a far smaller chance of getting into my university of choice because of my sex. That once there, I was in an even smaller minority in maths and science. That my work would be judged differently because I was female (remember the study where students marked the identical essay, but half thought it was by John Smith and half thought it was by Joan Smith ? John Smith did well, Joan only so-so). That I would be paid less, promoted less, listened to less.

I marched against racism, held out on the poll tax, and supported the miners during 1984-5 amongst many other campaigns. I was active trying to get women and girls into technology.

One thing that made me unhappy about genderism was knowing a man who appeared to be a leftie feminist supporter for many years, who then came out as trans. I was sympathetic. He was a troubled soul. I refer to him as “he” because I never saw him in anything but male presentation and he wasn’t out. We had a lot of coffees. After a few years of listening to his complaints, though, I couldn’t see anything but a narcissistic man. His idea of fellow feeling with me as a woman was to talk about how nice it is to wear “a bit of slap” - I never wear make-up but he hadn’t noticed. My sympathy evaporated when he invited me to a Burns Supper with his transgender friends. There were four of them, all in bad wigs, flicking their hair like girls and talking exactly like men would while the girlfriend of the one I knew served everyone food and drink.

I am a second wave feminist. I believe that gender is a socially constructed system that acts to keep the two sexes in certain roles. Gender has been restrictive and harmful to women and sometimes not great for men either. Why would I want gender to continue? Why would I want gender to be confirmed as a defining concept? Especially when it would now be confirmed as it is in the status quo by a bunch of people whose self-interest is to keep it restricting women to existing stereotypes.

More urgently, I want women and girls to be protected from males. I am horrified that single sex spaces are being compromised.

[WandaWomblesaurus]

What is trans rights about the climate? XR is full of similar types to the TRAs I see amongst the Uni folk.
Aggressive.
Conformist.
One could say - far right in their outlook and their aggression and their sense of righteous justification.

[NotAGirl]

OP you could be describing me, I’d add concerned about the environment

[NotAGirl]

@Kendodd

Except, Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP is the most outspoken on this.

The GC posters on here all seem very right wing, slagging off the 'woke' by which I mean TRA but also BLM and XR etc. I don't feel I fit with the GC posters on here. Maybe I'm just on all the wrong threads.

You must be on different threads to me as I don’t see much of that if any. I do see a lot of left wing women very pissed off with being abandoned by the Labour Party

[A580Hojas]

Of course, there's thousands of us on here. There have been many recent threads on how the Labour party has alienated a huge number of female voters. I linked a couple in an email of complaint/protest to my local female Labour MP.

[Pluvia]

Well I suppose if you think that left-wing means the kind of adolescent 'smash the system' anarchy that seems to underpin XR and BLM, the more nuanced and moderate left-wing opinions common on this board probably seem, as the OP says, right wing. Social Justice Warrior, anyone?

[Theworkhouse]

Most GC feminists are left wing, Jk Rowling for a start, in fact I would think that most feminists are left leaning. It really is a shame that everyone has to fit in a box these days. I am a feminist but wouldn't vote for the present Labour party. Not everyone fits a "type"

[Tidyspy]

Yep, left wing and GC here. I haven’t stopped voting Labour, can’t bring myself to not vote and they are the best worst in our area. I keep quiet about my GC views at work (traditionally lefty creative industry, currently totally captured), refused pronouns on emails but apart from the that I keep my head down. I am the middle aged back office woman so partly invisible, but I suspect the emails thing + my age has been noted by some and I may be seen as a terf/Karen. I roll my eyes inwardly and get on with it, but feel sad that I’m now wary of creative activities for my DC as they approach their teens because so much of it is gender fucking woo.

[Lurkerlot]

I’m GC, I’m left, I’m voting Labour. Recently joined the Labour Party, our local CLPs women's group seems to be full of senior (not being rude - but they are in their early 70’s) Lesbians, the policy is not set, so it’s no good being on the outside - you fight it for within.