Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

[ILikeDungs]

By Unherd, a debate-style response to the purity spiral after Brighton. I do admire Helen Joyce and her ability to calmly and logically discuss the issues. Unherd have made it age restricted (because of all the fucks, I suppose!):

Finally finished watching the interview!

I'm just in awe of both of these women. Their intelligence and integrity and humour is astonishing.

I find lots to agree on with both of them - even when they're in disagreement.

And I'm not surprised there is disagreement, because this is two women who are honest, well intentioned, and experienced bringing all of their wit and wisdom to the table. There's a huge range of issues all coming to a point - feminism, male violence, religion, societal movements, linguistics, sexuality, history, political leanings. And all of these are nuanced and interlinked and changeable and changing. So OF COURSE there will be disagreement. Sometimes it seems like one could define the issues more by what is not included than what is.

Imagine if the HoC was filled with women like this. More power to both of them. I know people worry about disagreement within the feminist movements; I think disagreement if it's done like this is powerful and positive and useful.

I'm still mulling this discussion over and I think I'll watch it again. But having watched Nimco Ali on TV recently ably shooting down a sex work is work type, it recalled to me JB's apparent belief that feminism can only really be left wing.

Nimco Ali has shown astonishing personal courage to talk about the things she was put through, and to decide that it's her job to make sure no other little girls go through it. I would call that true feminism. I think she is politically right wing though. I wonder how JB would reconcile that?

Yes, it seems an odd position to take. If a woman who has views on the economy that are to the right, how on earth does that preclude her from working to help women and girls? It clearly doesn't.

I'm basically a suffragette. We all are, who do this. You don't have to throw yourself under a horse to be part of this.

There have been suffragist v suffragette discussions on FWR before now. iirc, Sarah Pedersen has written about that discussion and likened MN to a subaltern counterpublic.

“It’s what the suffragettes would have wanted”: the construction of the suffragists and suffragettes on Mumsnet

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2022.2032788

counterpublic.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/an-introduction-to-counterpublics/

I agree with every word of this. They're both brilliant.

In the interview, JB's point was that second wave feminism was created through the work of left-wing women and that working within this framework of the bigger picture of women's rights is the only way that we will counter the material manifestations of gender ideology is medicalising of children and loss of single sex spaces, services and provisions.

That's why orgs like WPUK have been so important to women who are politically and materially on the left but have no place in the Labour party or other supposedly leftist groups.

I dunno

maybe I’m not clever enough to understand words like ‘framework’ and what meaning or relevance it has in this context

but HJ isn’t left wing and she seems to do good, solid feminist work. Likewise Nimco Ali

I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether the left wing owns feminism

In the interview, JB's point was that second wave feminism was created through the work of left-wing women and that working within this framework of the bigger picture of women's rights is the only way that we will counter the material manifestations of gender ideology is medicalising of children and loss of single sex spaces, services and provisions.

This kind of academic language is one of the things I struggle with when it comes to the left. It sounds fancy, but when you break it down, it seems to rest on many questionable assumptions.

First of all, it may be true that second-wave feminism was the work of the left, but second-wave feminism achieved many of its goals and no longer exists in the same form, and the left of the 60s and 70s is likewise totally gone, the political landscape completely unrecognisable. So while it's fine to point out the roots of this part of feminism, I don't think it automatically follows that this established a "framework" which is the natural way or space or form within which we can counter gender ideology. "Working within the bigger picture of women's rights" - I assume this is saying that fighting against gender ideology is a narrow concern? I completely disagree there. If we can't say what a woman is, all our rights are up for grabs. But even if agreed, I'm not sure why it should follow that you can only effectively fight against gender ideology if you are working within this "framework" of leftist feminism. Clearly we can see that's not the case - some of the most effective campaigners are centrist or right wing or otherwise apolitical. Some of them are men!

If we retain the word woman, our rights are still up for grabs!

Also, first wave feminism definitely wasn’t left wing and that was

1. feminism
2. effective

of all the ‘feminisms’, third wave is to my mind the most leftist, and also the shittest

And the left doesn’t give two hoots about women’s rights, any more than the right does

I doubt that lobotomies were stopped due to a feminist analysis and I see no reason why stopping children being harmed through "puberty blockers" needs a feminist analysis either.

(Of course one can be done)

I think I meant a left wing feminist analysis there.

Well maybe. But I'm not sure how exactly? If 'woman' as a sex category/political category is erased, then it's easy to take everything else away from us. It seems to me that's the biggest threat we face right now. But women have been on an upward trajectory in the west as far as rights and freedoms are concerned. It's wokism and gender ideology that are knocking us off course.

But that was really an aside in my comment to you above, and I agree that we need to always be vigilant and defend our rights and freedoms.

Something that also does not seem to get recognized by those third wave leftist feminists is they pretty much alianated huge numbers of women due to their political partisanship. Those women still went on and have talked about women's rights in their communities, voted according to their beliefs, joined groups of women to achieve concrete aims, and so on.

The fact that their views were cut off from the feminist discourse didn't stop them from existing, it only thinned out feminist discourse itself.

HJ said in the conversation there aren't very many left wing feminists.

If people implement a rule that only left wing feminists can fight gender ideology, we'll all be calling men 'she' and having to pretend we believe in lady brain by 2030.

trying to muscle others out because you disagree with them on economic policy is MENTAL

For goodness sake, is it really so difficult to understand that you have have leftish political beliefs and want to work to make society better for everyone AND despise the current institutional left of the Labour party?

It's not about muscling anyone out, it's about the wider beliefs that actions happen within. Or not.

There are plenty of people on the right who dislike the current government. That doesn't make their political beliefs suddenly not right wing

Not sure what the relevance is of being left wing and not supporting the current labour party. (especially as that would describe me)

I think you said

the only way that we will counter the material manifestations of gender ideology is medicalising of children and loss of single sex spaces, services and provisions.

I still don't understand why you have to be left wing to be effective at preventing children being mutilated. Nimco Ali has been very effective at preventing children from being mutilated, and she's not left wing?

That should have been an 'ie' not 'is'. Sorry! Doesn't make sense as it is.

If the wider political context isn't relevant you you, fair enough, it's just that that was the topic of the discussion and of this thread.

I thought Maya was left wing too?

On another point, KJK certainly does guilt by association: she harasses anyone who associates with Debbie Hayton.

That's not what anyone is claiming.

You know that wanting society to be better for all isn't a sentiment that belongs to the left, don't you?

The narrowing of feminism to being a politically partisan movement is absolutely about muscling women out, it's about claiming the voice of the whole class for a certain segment of that class, and being able to dismiss dissenters as "handmaidens" or some similar term without really engaging with their thoughts.

That wasn't what JB was saying in the film. She pointed out that second wave feminism went hand in hand with effective campaigns like anti racism and gay rights.

So what plans do the right have to make society better for everyone?

Because several posters have criticised me for saying that HJ didn't actually explain this in the discussion, but no-one has responded to my requests that someone spell it out for us.

So what plans do the right have to make society better for everyone?

That isn't what the discussion was about, so HJ wasn't going to be spelling out her personal political beliefs.

But obviously the right (broad grouping) want to make society better. Nearly everyone wants a society where people are free and equal and have a good standard of living and good health and enough to eat.

The discussion wasn't about the history of left wing campaigning feminism either, yet plenty of posters have criticised JB for not explaining this in greater detail.

Reflecting on the ever growing social inequalities in UK society since 2010, forgive my hollow laugh at your description of right wing political ideals beastlyslumber.

If that was their plan for the last 12 years, it's gone as far off track as it could really, hasn't it?

I wasn't aware anyone had criticised JB for this? Maybe I missed it.

Yes, agreed that the tories have not been great in government but then again, labour has been atrocious in opposition. But you were asking about the right in general, rather than the current incarnation of the tory party in particular. That's a whole other debate!

The point is that both right-wing and left-wing people want a better society. They just have different ideas about how best to achieve this. The mentality that left = morally good, and right = morally bad is childish and clearly not true. The attempt to dehumanise the right as bad and evil is very worrying. We should all know by now what the risks are of dehumanising and hating large groups of people.