Matt Walsh Thinks He's Leading the Woman's Movement

[Delphinium20]

I've seen a lot of respected feminist posters excited about this documentary, which on its own may contain useful content. But I want to ask, why promote a misogynist just because he has the right talking points on gender ideology? Women are about to lose abortion rights in my country. Matt Walsh has said women who are pro-choice are "repulsive."

twitter.com/mattwalshblog/status/1521549440406155264?s=21&t=ItXp9--3s8_3_0S8LFNc9w

I urge you to check out this thread on Ovarit where women have documented all the work feminists have been doing already, and how Walsh ignores us. Walsh sees this GC issue not through feminist eyes, but as a way to push his own brand and claim himself leader of this issue. Please stop falling for it.

ovarit.com/o/Radfemmery/91809/matt-walsh-is-literal-proof-of-male-privilege-you-re-not-a-savior-and-many-women

I switched off watching him when I saw him say (paraphrasing) black people dont have a hard time of it. Its exaggerated. - cant remember exactly what he said but that was (I think) the essence of his view point.

@Floisme 🌺thanks!

I agree w/ everyone one of you who says, 'the left is crazy too', 'look at Loudon', 'the left started gender ideology'. Michelle Goldberg's slut-shaming article in the NYTimes was egregious and something I hope she regrets one day. Pretty sure the NYTimes sighs every time I send them another letter...but I'm a 30+ year subscriber and so occasionally they respond to me.

I agree...I agree...but the right scares me more. Honestly, I feel pretty hopeless ...it's why I'm irked w/ Walsh for pretending like he's the first man working on the scene when so many of us our doing our damndest to get our voices heard.

Another American perspective. If Planned Parenthood prescribed your confused 18 year old wrong sex hormones based on a 20 minute conversation without so much as a blood test, you might find you don't give a shit about the politics of any person who thinks that's a bad idea. You also might think that Chuck Schumer (the HRC loves him) can fuck off.

I'm so sorry if that happened to your child...I stopped giving to PP because of this issue. To support women who need abortions, some women suggested Whole Woman's Health Alliance: www.wholewomanshealthalliance.org/

It's sad how HRC was captured as well.

Do you think Matt Walsh’s stance is irksome be used there’s an element of truth in it? I mean, not that he’s personally “saving women’s rights”, that’s clearly just provocative, but the realisation that this ideology came from the left and is still actively propagated by the left.

I don’t live in the US but I get the impression (happy to be corrected) that someone’s political affiliation forms a big part of their identity. There must be a degree of disillusionment and even irritation when the “right (correct) side” is going harm, and “the wrong side” is making sense.

The vast majority of people in the US are not far right. Just like the vast majority reject the extreme positions on abortion being pushed by American activists on both sides. A lot of the move towards the moderate right in the US is being driven by the left whose craziness is not limited to gender ideology. And inevitably some also are attracted to less reputable pundits.

Mass shootings are no longer really connected to politics in the US, they exist as a self-justifying cultural trope.

This business of telling people that their feminism has to look like some American identity politics based leftism, or that anything else is non-feminist, is completely out of line, even in an entirely American context.

There are plenty of black conservatives in the US, and even some who aren't conservative, who say exactly the same thing.

In some ways i think what scares me most is the recent polarisation of left and right. I don’t think it’s as bad in the UK as in the US , although there are certainly people over here who would very much like it to be.
In the UK I think there’s some hope for cross party alliances between women.
I don’t know what you do in the US but I honestly don’t understand how you think the Democrats can be talked round and so I don’t see the point of ducking and diving for their approval - it should be the other way round surely when they’re the ones who need your votes. But then I don’t have to live there.

Internalised racism is just as much a thing as internalised misogyny.

Just because some individual black people feel they don’t experience racism, or they have a better off than white people that does not mean on a population level there is not a racism problem in the US.

Plenty of women are anti feminists, mras, or tras.

So I’m not sure what your point is?

I agree with Flo.

Why do you say he’s pretending to be the first?

It's incredibly patronising to say that because people disagree with you, or some approved group of representatives of their community, they must be suffering from internalized racism or sexism.

Very "If you don't vote for me you ain't black".

The point is that given there are plenty of black Americans who say the same thing, it's not somehow a sign of being a horrible bigot that a particular white American agrees with them. They are just people who share a POV, different from yours.

This kind of thing where the only person able to publicly disagree with or critisize a theory or claim about a group can be a member of that group is increadibly dangerous and fundamentally is anti-rational and creates bigotry.

Which is to say, turning off Matt Walsh because he must be a bigot because he says the same things as, say, Glen Loury, or Morgan Freeman, isn't all that logical unless you would also discount what they have to say for the same reason.

Which maybe you would, from the sound of it. Just suffering from some self-hatred.

Some things are facts. There is a massive problem with racism in the UK, and my understanding is that it’s even worse in America.

People can say the queen is a lizard or trans women are the same as biological women. Doesn’t make it fact. Just like denying racism, or saying there’s no evidence George Flloyd was murdered by a cop, doesn’t make that fact either.

I've read the Ovarit link, thanks Delphinium20

If the argument is that Matt Walsh is plagiarising the work of countless women and claiming the credit then yup, that's a very fair point, one that I'm sure many of us will recognise only too well. Personally I tend to be pragmatic and, if someone with a bigger reach than we have will broadcast our argument then I normally appreciate the coverage. But it's still pretty galling, especially when they do their 'Why haven't the feminists spoken up?' thing.

But if the point is that we shouldn't watch or discuss or share links about it because he's on the right and it might give US feminists a bad name, then sorry but I can't agree.

It's not that we don't get scolded all the time for talking to the Wrong Kind of people but I think a lot of feminists in the UK - at least on this board - have gone way past caring what the left think. Even Ruth Serwotka, co-founder of WPUK, has, I believe now left the Labour Party.

So it sounds like we're in quite a different place from the US and I'm not sure what can be done about it.

plagiarising the work of countless women and claiming the credit

aka The Glinner Method

Hmm I think there's a bit of a difference between plagiarising and platforming.

Some things are facts. There is a massive problem with racism in the UK, and my understanding is that it’s even worse in America.

People can say the queen is a lizard or trans women are the same as biological women. Doesn’t make it fact. Just like denying racism, or saying there’s no evidence George Flloyd was murdered by a cop, doesn’t make that fact either.

The word "fact" is funny. Clearly some things are simply true or false, like the moon being made of cheese - false.

Even with things like that, however, people can be mistaken, even all people, about what is in fact, a fact.

More complex questions like the state of racism in the US is not the sort of thing that would usually be put in the fact/non-fact category. It's too complex a question, there is too much room in terms of how it's interpreted. If you are thinking this is a question with the same kind of objectivity as what the moon is made of, you're likely to make category type errors.

Shocking as it seems to people who only watch their news on one side of the aisle, there are quite a few educated, intelligent black conservatives, who make serious arguments about the state of racism in the US that do not agree with your assessment. Their arguments deserve to be taken as seriously as those of anyone on the left.

And I'll add to that - this is another example of the problem of ideological purity in our politics, people become so siloed into this idea that there is only one reasonable set of views, only one group of people actually deals with facts, all of the members of various identity groups think one way and so if you disagree with that one way, you must be against that group.

I think it underlies why so many of us here have no patience for this kind of "stay away from the bad righties" bs. Having seen the narrowness that approch creates it seems like an obviously bad idea.

I find the suggestion that he's plagiarising women very odd.
You can't own ideas.
One group can't say this is our argument and idea no one else can use it.

Real world politics involves people listening to, using and building on the discussions occurring in different spaces.
It's not an academic thesis.

And the people who are the best communicators or who have the biggest platform will be the ones who get heard.

I also don't care if it's a man or a woman making the arguments.
I want the madness stopped and revealed for what it is.

Also suggesting that right wing black people (of whom there are many) just have internalised racism is so patronising, arrogant and actually a bit racist:

All black people should think the same and if they don't I will explain to them that I know what they really think.

It's so breathtakingly arrogant, and reductive.

Maybe try instead: there are different reasonable views people may take on issues in the world, and the position you take is not related to the colour of your skin.

The ascribing of misogynist, internal misogyny, racist and internalised racism thrown around on this thread to just indicate the badness of people and how they can be dismissed, is exactly the same utilisation as the throwing around of transphobic.

I really don't understand how that penny hasn't yet dropped with people.

You're playing the same game, just on a different topic.

I don't think it's odd to be annoyed if someone you find odious picks up on something you've been shouting about for years, makes a film about it and positions himself as a whistleblower. (Disclaimer: that's based on the Ovarit link - I've not seen the documentary.) It sounds like that old 'Onion' article about a man taking charge of the feminist movement, only not funny.

But like I've said, I'm also pragmatic. One reason the TRA movement has got as far as it has is that they've been able to operate in a bubble of secrecy. And so I will acknowledge anyone and anything that punctures that bubble.

I mean if he is positioning himself as the first person to talk about this, it's just not so, lots of women and men have talked about it.

It might be more of an effort to try and promote his documentary than anything, kind of getting the idea out that it will be bigger than any other documentary on this subject so far, in hope of making it true. So, marketing.

Most documentaries on this subject or articles have pretty similar material, no matter who writes them. Because they are all talking about the same situation. Which is true about a lot of news and social commentary.

I'm so sick of the demands for ideological purity. Yes it's annoying if Walsh gets all the credit and attention for saying things that Posie Parker has been saying for years. But it's more annoying if women lose all our rights. So, you know... lesser of two evils.