Good T**f, Bad T**f Julie Berchill article about Leftwing feminism

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Julie Burchill article about the fall out between some Left wing feminists and Kelly J Keen.
I think she is right in her view that Labour has not shifted and is not likely to, whether women want to leave the left for the other lot is another matter.

www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/29/why-terfs-need-to-leave-the-left/#.Yryqjdi6LWo.facebook

The thought that we must abide by the ideology that men can become women just by them saying words, otherwise we are racists is absurd.

I watched Triggernometry last night with a journalist who pointed out at Trump's ability to not give a shit about being called a racist and not cowering to those that accused him of it, showed up the supposed left who would do anything to not be associated with Trump, including not agreeing with anything he said, to avoid being called racist. And that includes identity politics. So we have this because of Trump, people who were too scared to stand up to what is right, just to avoid the association.

And people come on here, heavily influenced by American activism, to try and do the same. Not realising that most of the cases that are going to or have been in court, have been brought by women who are not white.

@LaughingPriest The only fascist user title I can see on this thread or any other is "antifascist". What do you mean? Report any of it to MNHQ.

And what does fascism mean to you?

Yes, I'm halfway through 'Straw Dogs' by John Gray, which looks at exactly this utopian idealism and suggests it's based very much on our Judeo-Christian/Abrahamic ideas of redemption and salvation. The 'arc of history' leading to some mythical utopia; quite a powerful misunderstanding. Same goes for evolutionary theory that operates on an idea that evolution is progressing towards something rather than (as I understand it) being based on the survival of the fittest of various random accidental mutations.

'right side of history' is a wonderfully batty phrase that underlines this idea that there is a right and a wrong and we won't know until later what that actually is (exactly mirrors the idea of afterlifes being based on our sins/karma/merits).

It's politically probably quite useful, in that it suggests one isn't able to always know at the time of acting whether one is making the correct choice - presumably this means we have to rely on someone else who is more knowledgeable than us to make the decision for us.

Anyway, finally read the article.

I'd love to see both Julies in conversation, actually.

I so much admire so many of the women involved in - well, whatever anyone wants to call this movement. Or loose collection of grassroots movements, or acts, or actions, invididual women. The wit, intelligence, bravery and collective energy is really quite astonishing. I like the disagreements; I think they are a great corrective, necessary, healthy.

More power to all of you, wims.

I really like Straw Dogs - John Gray is a great thinker.

Of course Burchill is right to say that women have been badly let down by the left. It's very hard to discover how much these supposedly progressive men hate us.

But you can't just give up being left. I am not going to stop believing in things like a free, universal health service, the right of ordinary people to a good quality education, the requirement for employers to provide sick pay and pensions and to keep people safe at work, or the importance of the state providing good public amenities such as parks and leisure centres. The fact that the other people who supposedly believe the same things turn out to be nasty little misogynists is massively disappointing, but it's not going to make me start believing that the government should cut taxes or tear up health and safety legislation.

You can't see noxious fumes can you, you can only smell them.

Maybe your nose is too near your arse, as my dear mother likes to say...

Some noxious fumes

How very dare you, antifascist!

Blimey. Bring a gas mask if you ever visit Italy. In my tiny corner alone I rub shoulders with self declared communists and fascists on a daily basis.

I’m coming to the conclusion that many in the anglo-sphere genuinely think “far right” is just a handy card to play in debate instead of making an argument. Comfortable with a sensation that it’s mostly a thing of the past (for them and their loved one, oh dear how sad never mind for the foreign types) and we don’t have to preserve its meaning for the sake of effectively alerting people by calling wolf, when an actual be-fanged creature turns up.

IME women are not more left wing than men because “progress” is change and change can be difficult, full of unintended consequences and dangerous when you are trying to keep small humans alive. We have been told we’re supposed to vote left though, for decades. Cos we need to “be kind”, make no considered judgments (or being judgmental as it is now known) and grateful for what we’ve been given. All my politically aware life all I’ve heard is the right hate women (while creating the only 2 “wrong kind of woman”
PMs Britain has ever had) and the left wants to take care of me.

Unfortunately the left have repeatedly demonstrated, and not just in the U.K. either, that we are the base they feel they have in the bag, so they don’t have to try and give us anything more than lip service. So comfortable in feeling like we’re out of political options beyond them that they can take the word that describes us and make it meaningless.

Bollocks to idea that my loyalty to the left must remain despite all their efforts to make my landscape harder, bleaker, less safe. Also bollocks to the idea that I care anymore what names they call me. The T word, the FR label, hell call me a Nazi. Doesn’t matter. If their only action at my withdrawal of support is to call me names then I know I’m justified in my belief that they think I owe them everything, while they nothing to me.

Plus.. I’ve expanded my philosophical horizons since I moved away from on “the right = wrong about everything”.

I’m having to examine long held beliefs that I picked up when young, cos all the other people on my (leftie) side said it was right and in my Snakebite haze it seemed to make sense. I’m challenging what and how I think about so many issues. It won’t surprise me if I’ll be so changed by the experience of having to open my mind beyond the colour red that even if the left gets its act together I’ll no longer agree with them about enough things to a great enough degree to ever vote for them again. So in that regard, I guess I owe them one for giving me the impetus to belatedly re-examine where I stand and why I stand there.

Is this like Miasma Theory?

I don’t think either the left or the right have much to offer women. We are not considered full human beings. To the right we are private property, to the left we are public property.

Doesn’t matter. If their only action at my withdrawal of support is to call me names then I know I’m justified in my belief that they think I owe them everything, while they nothing to me.

Very well put, Alienated.

Well, I'm wholly convinced by AF's rhetoric and pithy way with an image.

Definitely looks akin to a cloven foreleg to me. If the camera shot pulls back, will it reveal Satan like it did in 9/11 photographs?

www.markdphillips.com/satan-in-the-smoke/

That took me an awfy long time to find. Quite a sort of cute and cuddly version of Beelzebub.

It's reminding me of Mother Teresa's face on a blueberry muffin. Or Jesus on the arse of a dog.

I don’t believe the majority on either side of the political spectrum want to make us property again. Public or private.

I believe that too many running the left, or very passionate about being the left think we owe them, like we as a sex class (rather than a singular political class) had nothing to do with our own emancipation.

I believe that too many running the right, or very passionate about being the right think resolving the myriad of issues that affect women would best be resolved by us fitting tidily back into more traditional sex based expectations of behaviour, desires, ambitions etc.

But I’ve found people on the centre and the non extreme right (talking generalities) at least more willing to have a conversation on the issues I think matter. People on the left (talking in generalities) are more willing to have a conversation only if nobody is listening in. Because at the present time they are the ones most likely to get socially shunned or hectored by their own tribe if they go beyond sanctioned slogans and “reality as I am expected to perceive it”.

That’s not to say there aren’t significant numbers on the centre or non extreme right who enjoy some hectoring or socially shunning of their own tribe. Some might be fairly recent refugees from the left and it’s a question of habit. But the majority have gone nowhere new politically. They just miss the good old days of “We Are The Morally Superior Political Class”, think the tide might turn that title back to them soon and have prematurely elected to knee jerk into bullying rather than thinking out loud in conversation.

It makes for such crude politics though.

Religion, or theological treatments of this idea, tend to be based around the problem that we can intellectually understand the idea of justice or the good, and we believe it, commit ourselves to it, and yet we can see the world around us isn't like that, and we can't even make ourselves act in the way we know is right. It moves the problem from the world to a metaphysical level, and then the practical religion element is about providing structures to help individuals and communities do what is right and deal with wrong.

I have never been able to figure out how secular materialist philosophies can justify maintaining that confidence in justice or the good, and even more, claim that somehow that will be instantiated through normal political or historical processes. It's against all evidence.

And when you try and make it happen it's very ugly. Because you can justify anything to get to the Utopia.

This accounts for a huge advantage that parties like the Tories, or whatever equivalents there are in other places, have. They do have an idea of justice and the good, but not a sense that some inevitable (or even politically created) historical process can take us there absolutely. So any policy has to be looked at very pragmatically, what will it achieve, and what will be the trade-offs.

I remember the heady days of "our Judeo-Christian/Abrahamic ideas of redemption and salvation" when the Christians murdered the Jews on their way to kill the Muslims in the Crusades.

There is no redemption or salvation in Judaism, by the way

Is there not, antifascist? Jewish (in fact any) scripture isn't something I know much about. Is there no heaven, afterlife?

'I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, rewards those who keep His commandments and punishes those that transgress them.
I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.
I believe with perfect faith that there will be a revival of the dead at the time when it shall please the Creator, Blessed be His name, and His mention shall be exalted for ever and ever.'

From wiki on Judaism.

That seems rather a lot like redemption/salvation to me.

'The Messiah in Judaism (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ, romanized: māšīyaḥ) is a savior and liberator figure in Jewish eschatology, who is believed to be the future redeemer of the Jewish people. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism'

Again, I've just read that on wiki. Do feel free to explain otherwise.

Bullshit is the trans movement right wing.

One thing I do know is that many men on the left and right hate women. Left wing men are just better at hiding it.