Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time?

[JaneorEleven]

Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time? If I was SO wrong on those that are GC, what else have I been wrong on?

All my life I’ve been solidly left leaning, and pretty much agreed with most points on the left. I’ve described myself as an old fashioned socialist, love the idea of the NHS, a safety net for lower income people and unemployed, social and economic equality, disability rights, rights for women all tied up with feminism including being pro-choice, LGB and the TQ etc rights, you name it, I supported it.

I had previously been very sympathetic to Trans issues, and had a friend who transitioned, and I supported this person as best I could. But after some time of researching and I guess educating myself for lack of a better expression, I did a complete uturn on this, and found myself agreeing with many wise GC women. It was a bell I couldn’t unring. And Mumsnet played a large part in this.

I’m British now living in the US, and find myself busy Terfing USA. I’ve listened to NPR for years, nodding along, but now almost daily, they have a segment that infuriates me with regards to Trans issues. Could be anything from “trans kids” not getting their meds, to prisons, to bathrooms, schools, and they support it all. Female reporters who I held in high esteem, interviewing and fawning over transwomen, platforming them and letting them hold court without challenging them.

These past few weeks, I’ve started to question myself. How could I have been so wrong on this? I thought GC peeps, or Terfs, were full of hate and lacked patience and understanding.

Which leads me to ask, on what else have I been so badly wrong? Anyone else think like this? Now I don’t think I’m a closet right winger, but is it possible I’ve allowed the left to lead me up the garden path on other issues too?

Re BLM, I saw this a little while ago but not sure if we can watch the documentary here:

twitter.com/realcandaceo/status/1578097354582134784?s=46&t=7e5FW3yy4cZ3SPoTaL9HTw

There has been some coverage of the funds issue here:

Co-founder of BLM paid huge sums to her family

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/79a1a046-d616-11ec-bb99-1bcd45646516?shareToken=31d4dc5662c182f1fd8d8dd14f0d3fb5

BLM co-founder admits using mansion bought with donations

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2ea9b878-cfed-11ec-84ba-2054de44b21e?shareToken=5258ec0d71d53351de8b66852b7f12fc

The Candace Owens documentary on the Daily Wire about BLM covers this too (I've only seen promos/some of her interviews, and the point is made).

@dandelionthistle I am relatively centrist in both issues (eg wrt Israel I believe in a two-state solution which probably has 1967ish borders, I just really object to BDS, the disproportionate monstering of Israel, and the weird amount of energy the UK left has for fighting out this battle in other countries when there are plenty of problems much closer to home

I agree with all you've said in this paragraph here and I suspect the vast majority of British Jews would too.

The 'disproportionate monstering of Israel' is a great, concise phrase. The stats on UN resolutions condemning Israel vs every other country in the world (incl e.g. Syria, China, Yemen, Saudi, Iran, Russia etc.) are almost funny.

I know quite a few leftie Jews who are also gender critical and we have had some interesting discussions about how to negotiate the two issues. i tend to come down on the side of feeling like antisemitism has to be my hard line purely because there are so few of us in the end - antisemitism has been a constant throughout European history, and we unfortunately know that when it comes down to it, there are not that many non-Jewish people we can rely on to stand up and speak out. (Although I am hugely and forever grateful to all of those who have done, including my non-Jewish husband)

I feel like with TWAW it runs so obviously counter to reality and affects such a large number of people that surely in the end, reality must win out? There are many, many more people who are directly impacted by it. I think the sports issue has been really important e.g. Sharron Davies, Martina Navratilova, Judy Murray etc. But maybe this is naive of me.

I agree also with your final paragraph - it was a huge shock to realise that some people really weren't just going along with it as a polite fiction but were/are actually determined to destroy women's safety , privacy, dignity, security and opportunities. It feels like white men ran out of ways to challenge the discourse of equal rights, anti-discrimination, etc. but then found the cleverest way of all - to invert it and put themselves at the top of the pile again

I went from being TWAW to GC.
I also used to be very pro-surrogacy but now I am wholly against it because I feel now it’s buying a woman’s body and also buying a baby.

It is interesting OP.

I had no idea this was happening until a few years ago. A friend sent me a text with a link and I thought ... what the fuck is this? I come at it from an anti-discrimination stance from my industrial relations studies way back and thought, 'well, this goes against all I know about female sex based rights in the work place and in sports'.

So, I looked further. I strangely was hanging around MN on other boards but avoided the Feminism discussions. I discovered that this was where I could learn the background, the current status and what the future direction options were.

And nearly got banned for language and incivility. But I am still here.

I guess I never thought that I was on the wrong side. I was always on the side of women and girl's and what we collectively had achieved. Maybe because I am politically homeless and am always questioning whether I have understood concepts properly.

@35965a Yes, I've also come to feel very differently about surrogacy. In fact i used to take a much more libertarian view on all things to do with 'freedom to do as you want with your own body' before I realised quite how naive that was, and how often that translates into 'the unavoidable pressure to let other people exploit your body, for financial or other reasons'. the power dynamics are terrible. I also have some experience of the surrogacy industry in India and the exploitation (in some cases leading to death or permanent disability) of the poorest women there is just appalling.

I think it's important to not label yourself. "I'm a lefty Liberal socialist and therefore must believe x, y, and z" (or the right wing equivalent.) Judge on issues instead and have guiding principles by which you live your life. Try not to label others either: some of the "tory scum" have been the biggest critics of this current government, and it turns out they're not scum, they're decent people who have different politics to me. Try to find the people who'll see both sides of an argument, and who will listen to those who have different opinions. Forget the extremists of either end of the scale - they may seem opposed but their actually exactly the same.

Oh god I was super liberal about surrogacy and prostitution! Totally forgot about that. But I had a busy life and got all my news from the Guardian and BBC and just didn't look any further into anything. Am quite embarrassed about it now.

Christ, "they're" exactly the same I mean

It might be worth revisiting some books from the 2000s - it predates the trans issue but there are interesting parallels with the Guardian-Left's embrace in the 2000s of patriarchal, conservative religions at the expense of progressive issues including women's and gay rights ('not a shibboleth', declared the SWP). It's a period covered well in Andrew Anthony's book 'The Fall Out: How A Guilty Liberal lost his innocence'. You could describe it as becoming 'woke' to the problems of the (middle class) Left. I've also just revisited the chapter on po-mo theory 'The Demolition Merchants of Reality' in Francis Wheen's How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the world. Again, it predates the rise of trans ideology but exposes the roots.

When I was younger I was aware of the trope of Left Wing people becoming Conservative when they were older and I was determined that I myself wouldn't lose my values that way. What caught me off-guard was not that my values changed but that my perception of what actually worked did. I still believe most of what I used to in terms of morality and I'm still politically active. But I've had some strong shifts in how I apply that morality and become a lot more open to other people's viewpoints on how to achieve those things. I call myself Right Wing these days, without shame. Because whilst there's ignorance and bigotry in all large groups I find no more in the Right than the Left. And frankly the Right are easier to have a conversation with typically. They don't try to control language so much.

I have also seen "Conspiracy Theorists" turn out to be right too often and had first hand experience of the lies in the press and am now very much of the OPs point of view that I re-evaluate accepted fact. Of course there is a big difference between reading some of the now obtained documents that show Pfizer never had any studies showing that their vaccines prevented transmission; and sending articles to everyone you know about nanomachines in the vaccines and how they control our minds. The trick is to begin reading a wider range of sources and evaluating things based on evidence, rather than simply doing a 180 on the things you're credulous of.

The problem is the super-credulous are deliberately used by powerful interests to discredit "conspiracy theorists". Lets stick with the contentious issue of Covid. There's a very high probability Covid-19 WAS made in a lab. Indeed two more Gain of Function versions of Covid have been openly made in labs in Boston and London right now and there's a furore about whether they should be allowed to do this. A report was submitted to US congress alleging lab origins last month and there are very reputable experts in the field arguing why they believe this. We know perfectly well that Gain of Function research of this type is carried out by companies like EcoHealth Alliance. But two years ago when people were arguing this what do we get in the media? Someone sticking spoons to her chest on talk shows and claiming that the vaccine had "made her magnetic" and astroturfed stories about crazy "conspiracy theories".

So yes, I think it's eminently sensible to have a healthy distrust of powerful and vested interests. The bizarreness is that those vested interests continually cast themselves as the underdog and the weaker voice in society. The Trans movement has almost entirely taken over the original LGB rights movement (genuine victims of societal prejudice) and now casts itself as similarly victims, despite that all evidence shows it's people who oppose the TRA viewpoints that are marginalised and socially punished.

"I do not believe Trans ideology is a left wing value even though many of the left wing us captured." - @Live4weekend

Respectfully I think there is an underlying reason why the trans movement is Leftists. I've said this in another thread so apologies for the repeat but the Left Wing is intrinsically collectivist. To greater degrees or lesser depending on where we are from Social Democracy (really not Socialism at all, just high tax approach to pay for social prorgams) to actual Socialism (state control of industry) to full on Communism (state control of property, etc) and Marxism. And collectivists movements are very gung-ho about assimilating causes. Look how the SWP will show up at nearly anything anti-establishment and start trying to present it as a Left Wing / Socialist event). And usually when the Left take over a meeting they quickly subvert it. BLM was originally started by some Black dude in California and the BLM that everybody knows (incorporated in Delaware) sued him for the name and took it over. I know an activist in Virginia said that the new and central group pretty much just drove out her original group and the leadership). Look at the LGB movement. Fun fact, does anybody remember all those Richard Dawkins atheists in the USA? They were an actual (but small) movement for a while and the Progressives similarly tried to bring them into the fold and do the whole "if you're X you're one of us and we represent you" with the atheism movement. Until it became apparent that the atheists didn't just criticise Christianity but also Islam, at which point they were dropped like a hot coal. Because the goal of Leftist Progressivism is to bring weave together as many interest groups as possible into one hydra with many heads. All of which they hold the reigns to. I'm sorry if that's a little conspiracy theorist for some but there's truth to a lot of this. Obama's political mentors were literally members of the Weather Underground marxist terrorist group. Both of the Clintons were mentored by a KKK chapter founder (Robert Byrd - who claimed to have left but was found to still be corresponding with his KKK friends years later). The US educational system has been actively taken over by ideologues who began their "long march through the institutions" decades ago. We're not seeing a sudden take over of institutions and political movements. We're seeing a sudden and open move by those already captured institutions now they're in a position to do so.

There's a scene in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" (and if the name Ayn Rand suddenly causes an instinctive shut down / rejection of what I'm saying but you've never read her work, ask yourself where that instinct came from), where a character says we've moved from an "aristocracy of money" to an "aristocracy of pull". I didn't understand that when I first read it. What did she mean? What was more powerful than money? But I get it now. It's about having the right people in the right place and the right favours. When you're rich enough money is no longer something you require and becomes a tool to manage others. Look at the recent kerfuffle with KiwiFarms. It's broken no laws. It's very hands off by policy the people it discusses. No legal authorities were ever approached about the supposed "threat to life". It was used purely for reputational purposes and the site was brought down by one trans person in one company reaching out to a trans person at another company who was their friend. Similarly it was subject to Denial of Service attacks for weeks openly condoned and celebrated by the trans streamer Keffels. Denial of Service attacks are a crime, and they used hacked PCs via spread malware. Someone(s) was paying for that. But there was never any investigation of it that I was aware of despite very public starting points presenting themselves (those openly advocating and celebrating them). The legal authorities were at no point in the loop with companies bringing down the farms nor did the sites enemies need them to be. It's no longer money (at least as a first cause) but "pull", that is to say networking and influence. This is demonstrable.

Which really, when you come down to it, is what a conspiracy is. You could say that a conspiracy would also be required to be secret by definition and you'd be right... except that so few people actually look outside their favoured sources or question them that you have a de facto secrecy even when something is in the open. And people only normally shake themselves out of that mindset when, like the OP, they run into something first hand which contradicts the prevailing narrative.

Even then, most people will just think "oh, they're ignorant / have lied about this one issue", turn the newspaper page to another story and assume that the next story is accurately reported.

That was a long post. What I really mean to say is there's a tonne of lies and manipulation when you start actually questioning things; that doesn't mean every whacky conspiracy theory is true; also some people get REALLY aggressive when you question something in front of them. Almost as if they're afraid of you being right.

I don't see it as a left right issue. Millionaire surgeons and drug companies are not too worried about the housing crisis or poverty. Several Tory MPs are Twaw.

But I'm dismayed at the so called "dialectical materialists' who have accepted the gendered soul stuff. Or pretend to. You know , those earnest beardy theorists who tell you off for not being a militant atheist?

Actually this mass psychosis - for want of a word - has made me take a long hard look at modern atheism. They range from far right Rand roids to old Stalinists. All very intolerant and shouty with no time for agnostics like me.

• full disclosure...I have a beard but am not very earnest.

It's very anti science.

It's not actually a left right thing, but has become as such via lobbying.

Respectfully I think there is an underlying reason why the trans movement is Leftists.

Respectfully I disagree with most or your post.

I do not believe that many of these young, middle class are actually Left Wing.

They may think they are but they are nothing like the working class, traditional Labour supporters that I class as left wing.

In may be that they have done a very good job of infiltrating the Labour Party. It does not mean their values are Left Wing.

love the idea of the NHS, a safety net for lower income people and unemployed, social and economic equality, disability rights, rights for women all tied up with feminism including being pro-choice, LGB and the TQ etc rights, you name it, I supported it.

I find this bizarre. People from the right agree with all these things too. Maybe older people are a bit more confused about TQ but I think that's an age issue and is across society in general.

The Communist Party in the UK is staunchly gender critical, so you cannot say that the transgender movement is left wing. It is mainly the Greens, Lib Dems, SNP and Labour parties who are pushing it, so centre left really.
The Communists see women as a defined sex class, with rights that are under threat from transgender invasion of their spaces and language.

@Live4weekend "Respectfully I disagree with most or your post."

I have no problem with that - happy to have respectful disagreement and I've no certainty that I'm right on everything. But open to hearing what specifically you would say I am wrong on in your view.

@Babdoc "The Communist Party in the UK is staunchly gender critical, so you cannot say that the transgender movement is left wing."

That's sadly hilarious to me in a way. I wonder if the communist party feels much like older LGB activists do (generalisation) that their movement has been subverted and taken from them by Progressives? I guess they're all economic / class orientated so the US style IdPol Progressiveism is as much an attack to them as it is to the Right. I do recall people observing how the last large class based movement (Occupy) was rapidly collapsed and replaced by Identity Politics based on race, gender and orientation.

Yes I've changed my mind on Israel too.

I have family links to Palestine and have actively supported it over the decades: marched, lobbied my MP, member of free Palestine organisation etc.

And when I heard about the anti semitism in the labour party I dismissed it as being a way to shut down criticism of Israel.

But then I started to listen and read about what was actually going on and what was being done (or not done) I was so shocked to realise it was actual real anti semitism in a major political party in this country.

It also seemed that people who had previously taken no interest in Palestine were now suddenly all over it because it had been presented as a neat narrative of oppressed and oppressor, and teamed with the left umbrella of stuff we stand for.

So I started to listen more to some pro Israeli voices to find out more.

I still have huge sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians but I can now see that the decisions they've made and their continued actions put Israel in an impossible position and allow this 'disproportionate monstering' of Israel to grow and fester.

And I can see that anti semitism has very easily and quickly risen again in the West in a way that after the Holocaust we'd have thought would be impossible.

Agree. They'll mostly be focusing on their careers , the property market and conservative politics in 10 or 15 years. Like the old RCP heads who uses to annoy the rest of the left way back.

But I'd imagine the transhumanists like Martine Rothblatt et al are very much far right libertarians. The ultimate in Possesive Individualism. The vanguard of a new master race. Being held back by mediocrities like us . Sob. Ayn Rand x 100.

For me, it’s the lack of insight from the Left into the inherent tendency for there to be a bad element amongst them. Moderate and centre Left can’t possibly accept the extremes of the left could be in any way nefarious. I’ve had my eyes opened to their sanctimony. Left wing papers can’t possibly publish lies, left wing activists can’t possibly be predatory or nefarious, and can’t possibly be bigoted, anti Semitic or intolerant….

It does now mean I approach everything with caution and don’t accept any source as “right” or “wrong” or good or bad.

Although I have been savvy to this ideology for a long time, I now feel embarrassed to think how I would do the Buttergasp either inaudibly or out loud when people would say or do something morally ‘incorrect’ , for example if someone said they were thinking of voting Tory or for Brexit, or this time an old guy who had worked with disabled people all his life said “mentally handicapped” ~ gasp - didn’t he know we say ‘someone with learning disabilities’ now?

I think I am actually genuinely more tolerant. I am unlikely to dismiss the underlying point of what someone is trying to say because they don’t word it in a politically correct way now.

The thing you said about the left-wing media really resonates with me OP. Although I still have fundamentally left-wing beliefs, I am vehemently opposed to the wronging thoughts and ideas, the ‘correcting’ that the left are so fond of. It narrows the mind and disconnects us from what we truly think or believe, and gives our personal power away as we look for permission.

The reason people swallow all this crap when they consume only left-wing media, is because they have bypassed their own thinking. It’s a huge sacrifice in the name of misplaced confidence that you are one of the ‘right’ people on the ‘right side of history’.

@Abhannmor I found what you said here interesting

"Actually this mass psychosis - for want of a word - has made me take a long hard look at modern atheism. They range from far right Rand roids to old Stalinists. All very intolerant and shouty with no time for agnostics like me."

I'm Christian. I don't force it on anyone, though I'd offer it to anyone. The vigorous atheism I encountered here for the first time was a bit of a shock to the system, and the denial of discussion feels similar to the TWAW outlook- though the atheists would deny that and put me in the same boat as it's a 'religion'.

The shouts of sky fairy and accusations about my vengeful god are reminiscent of the shouts of dinosaur and bigot, you are literally killing children...

Aye, I find atheists can be like that, pickle.

Militant agnostic, myself.

I’ve had my eyes opened to their sanctimony. Left wing papers can’t possibly publish lies, left wing activists can’t possibly be predatory or nefarious, and can’t possibly be bigoted, anti Semitic or intolerant….

Much as I find him to be entertaining NotBadConsidering, on his Radio 4 programme the other week Alexei Sayle was ranting about racism and stating in absolute terms that racism was a feature of the Right and it was impossible for it to exist on the Left. I was gobsmacked at the self-delusion.