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?

I also notice a common message is that that older women should shut up. Even though the young woman who are so dismissive will one day, if they're lucky, be old themselves. And a definite sense that motherhood is something to be dismissed as boring and conventional, and if you do it you should feel slightly ashamed of your 'cis-hetero- normativeness.'

Agree with this completely. I'm 34 btw! Cannot stand the vile misogyny of Karen memes.

You did see JK Rowling's lunch pictures, I would say that the most vocal proponents of GC in this country (couple of exceptions) are leftwing. It doesn't surprise me at all because from the 1960s onwards identity politics discourse in the West was a leftist/liberal discourse. It was about tearing down all sorts of essentialising stereotypes. Sometimes that is misunderstood, even on here, with some arguing that identity politics led to this state of things.

In fact, at one stage, many men who transitioned and were in the press were often from quite conservative backgrounds and therefore had a rigid idea of what 'being a woman' was.

By far the biggest surprise is that some of the discourse on the left around gender identity doesn't see the consequences of what is being argued in terms of a return to sex stereotyping. I'm actually fully in favour of the gender fluidity side of things and young people experimenting with their sexuality and identifying with different constructs of masculine and femininity. But believing in innate gender identity is just not anything I have believed for 30 years.

LW and GC here. How can you fight for a better society when you can’t even talk about material reality? Sadly the left just seems to break up into smaller and smaller warring factions. We need a decent opposition and we don’t have one.

Of course I am!

A few allies I know are Conservative (in the UK - really important distinction! UK Conservative is probably fairly similar to US Democrats) But they are allies because they believe in freedom of speech and because they are intelligent enough to be offended by the mangling of truth that trans ideology requires.

Many of my friends are left wing and gender critical. They view gender as the way in which women (and to a lesser extent men) are oppressed. Gender flourishes under capitalism. It is no coincidence that large companies & institutions have found it so easy to back gender ideology. It leaves the patriarchy fully intact whilst creating consumers and medical patients out of the myriad of different identities requiring authentic expression.

Left wing politics in the UK was built upon an understanding of class analysis and materialism. That Labour & Green have been taken in by this hyper individualist movement that forces one to utter an untruth is a travesty.

It is also an absolute gift for our pathetic Conservative government in the UK, and more worryingly, the religious nutjob right wing in the US.

This is exactly how I feel. I have had several arguments about this, for agreeing with right wing commentators like Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson etc on this issue. I agree on this issue and not others. It’s not hard to understand, it’s so childish to think that because I agree on one thing I agree with them on everything. Yet there are always accusations and concerns, “Don’t you care how it looks?!”

No. I don’t care at all. I don’t care one bit if people extrapolate my agreement on the sky being blue to think it means I agree with everything else a person is saying. I know what I think, I know what I believe, and I won’t be cowed into not saying I agree with something because of the optics to people who are looking for any opportunity to discredit us. Why should I keep them happy? They don’t get to dictate to me what I stand up and believe in, and it’s pointless trying because they will just move onto the next thing to try.

I agree with a pp that you appear to be describing mainly social liberalism rather than left-wing economics. I'm pretty far left economically and GC, but not particularly liberal. I've never had a political home (at least amongst parties that actually stand in my constituency - I used to be involved with a far left party, but they were too small to stand candidates in most areas). The only mainstream party I've ever voted for is Labour, wouldn't ever consider Tory or Lib Dem; most often I've spoiled my ballot.

I don’t get this ‘tories are better with women’s rights’ ? How so ? They’ve not done anything yet to rectify the situation and neither have labour. But the conservatives are somehow to be trusted but labour aren’t ? All these changes have happened under a 12 year plus Tory administration - the transwomen in female prisons, the transwomen being admitted to domestic abuse groups, transwomen participating in female sports but labour bad. It really doesn’t make sense and I’m starting to think that some of these posters are in posting bad faith.

Also - those 'voting for their daughters' had better hope that their daughters never need the kinds of services that the Tories are cutting funding to.

I am confused how anyone who has even dipped their toe into this subject has concluded that in the UK, GC + left wing is an unusual combination.

Does anyone have any connections to the Labour Party who could share this thread? They need to see this.

There are so many women who feel like the majority here.

I'm very interested in how the council elections will turn out due to this issue.

I can't help feeling if the tories do better than they should in light of the absolute dishonest corruption omnishambles they are currently showing, part of the reason must be to women turning away from labour in their droves.

Why are they not polling on this to try and understand if this issue is costing them elections?

I would have described myself as LW but i'm pressed to describe myself as a Labour supporter these days.
This issue is cross party though. For different reasons, but it's not an exclusively left/right wing topic in the UK.
Although, as has been said many times already, people with these views are not welcome by the left or liberal parties.

I think the only people I know irl who genuinely believe TWAW are teenagers. Everyone else (of whatever political persuasion) is either openly gc or would prefer not to say so, but when asked directly will mumble a bit about being kind but draw the line at the more obviously bonkers things like lady penises, males in women's sport, 'people with a cervix' etc.

It might be rare to find a gender ideologist who is right wing, but gc people are spread right across the political spectrum. They are undoubtedly the vast majority, even if many of them keep quiet about it. I mean... seriously... what proportion of the global population actually literally believes TWAW?!

The majority of people where I work believe TWAW and it gets mentioned most weeks in some form, as does SWIW. This from mainly 20s, plus some 30s, mainly women but the men's voices are louder. I used to love my job, honest :)

Well, you would think so, but all the members of the opposition, the Greens, the Lib Dems have said that they do believe it whenever they have been asked on TV and radio. These are the people that are asking us to vote for them so that they can make the rules and run the country. They have made it clear that they do believe humans can change sex, that males should be allowed into women's spaces whenever they want etc.

Think what you like but I'm absolutely not posting in bad faith. I was a Labour Party member before and have only ever voted Labour but I will either not vote or will vote Tory because this is the most important issue to me at the moment.

I agreed with an earlier point that a lot of this has come in on the Tories watch and so they clearly have made massive mistakes. I'm not happy with that. But it's what is being said in the here and now and the Tories are the only ones saying anything encouraging on the matter. They need to follow it up with action and SJ appears to be starting that with the review on the impact of gender dysphoria treatment. I hope other action will follow.

The Tories have replaced David Isaac (former Stonewall head) with legal experts Baroness Falkner and Akua Reindorf at the EHRC. Baroness Nicholson, Jackie Doyle-Price and other Tory women have been putting themselves on the line beside Rosie Duffield for the last few years while most female Labour MPs are still stifled and live in fear. In the HoL a number of Tories have presented a GC/ pro-women case. Liz Truss overrode Maria Miller and has made it clear that there will be no self-ID. Back in 2018 David TC Davies, a Tory, organised a last-minute meeting in the HoP when the venue that Venice Allen had booked to hold a GC meeting fell through after pressure from TRAs.

That's just a few examples of Tories doing the right thing on this issue. Others will remember more. The Tories have listened to women and for that they get a thumbs up from me. Labour has completely ignored us — indeed is hostile towards us.

We are where we are and I don't see much point in blaming the Conservatives for what's happened so far. Trans ideology was deliberately spread by stealth (see the Dentons document). Practically every administration in the western world was infiltrated, not just the Tories, and I have no doubt that things would be even worse if Labour or the Lib Dems or the Greens had been in power. All of those parties were quicker to fall to transactivism than the Tories. The Tories listened to women, stopped the flood and now they're putting things right.

For the record, I have never voted Conservative.

@Pluvia you've just said it so much better than me! Excellent examples.

Well, you would think so, but all the members of the opposition, the Greens, the Lib Dems have said that they do believe it whenever they have been asked on TV and radio. These are the people that are asking us to vote for them so that they can make the rules and run the country. They have made it clear that they do believe humans can change sex, that males should be allowed into women's spaces whenever they want etc.

Oh I know. They parrot it, but I'd eat my hat if many of them were true believers.

Well, you would think so, but all the members of the opposition, the Greens, the Lib Dems have said that they do believe it whenever they have been asked on TV and radio.

Eventually this TWAW will be over, and then they will look mighty stupid.

I'm neither right nor left, I think I'm somewhere in the middle.
I'm probably going to be chewed out because of my thoughts, but here goes...
I agree with LGBT+ rights, it goes without saying, however...

1. I don't believe male to female trans people should be allowed to be in women's sports teams, prisons or hospitals.

1. Simple biology should not have to change because it MAY offend a trans person such as "men and women having periods" plus the whole NHS nonsense about "chest feeding" and "frontal births".

Cue hysterical shouts of "TRANSPHOBIA!!"

@LunaMoonHare what's your opinion of tory underfunding of the prison and probation service ? Those same women you claim to want to protect from predatory transwomen..or the loss of legal aid again which affects poorer women ? Or is trans stuff the hill you are prepared to die on ?

Labour supporter for most of my life. In my experience, that's pretty typical for GC women. You are in good company.

Just adding my voice to say I'm left wing and GC too.

Also quite confused about how the OP could have missed the fact that most GC women in the UK are left wing.

Maybe it's because articles from the Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail are shared on here so there's an assumption that that's what we're reading. Or that prominent GC women like M Forstater and Suzanne Moore speak through the Daily Mail rather than any other publication.

If the Guardian or any other left-leaning news source were writing articles about these issues, we'd be sharing them too. Personally, I'd be delighted. But unfortunately they don't.

If we are looking at MN in general, posters are generally left leaning, definitely in favour of abortion, and gender critical. This is of course at odds with the narrative that TRAs are trying to push, and I have to say their rabid appropriation of the current abortion issue in order to try and further push the narrative that Gender Critical feminists are also anti-abortion is particularly grim. Just fuck off!

Outside of Twitter GCism is completely cross party. Loads of people, from all political sides, do not believe one can change sex, do not believe that a woman is any man who says he is a woman, and do not believe in pumping kids full of powerful drugs to stunt their growth and development. Its not a 'left/right' thing.

Yes, I should have said:

Also quite confused about how the OP could have missed the fact that most GC women in the UK on Mumsnet come across as left wing.