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!):

It's what we've got, more or less. Free markets and a safety net, social and legal equality.

What do you think HJ means, bike?

In trying to understand, I did a thought experiment.

In the talk they discussed the terms of who is funding/hosting the debate or talk, what their agenda is and whether a feminist should accept the speaking invitation.

JB discussed her creeping sense of unease at a Christian very well-funded talk and her sense that they want to eradicate lesbians and she shouldn’t be there.

I thought about how I might feel if, for example, some incels or MRAs asked me to join their platform and speak, but it seemed they were setting me up to ‘bait a feminazi’ for their own sadistic entertainment, because they only want to eradicate feminism and they aren’t interested in my viewpoint. I know would not accept that offer. I wondered if that was what it was like for JB.

However, the purpose of a religion is not to be anti lesbian/anti abortion in the same way that MRA/incels are about being anti-feminist/anti woman. So if Christians are inviting a lesbian to speak as an expert on VAWG, for example, it is not analogous to my hypothetical MRA/incel conference. They could honestly be interested in the VAWG expertise, with no hidden agenda.

HJ made the valid point of reciprocity- surely the people who believe that abortion is evil and lesbianism is sinful, are taking as much of a risk platforming a pro-choice lesbian to speak as she is to speak at the conference?

Stop being slippery @Shinyredbicycle. I asked you to insert the word of your choice and choose whether to discuss the ‘right’ or ‘far right’. You say you clearly understood what JB meant. I thought you might share that clarity so that others, such as myself, in the thread, may experience it too.

As I did earlier in this thread.

It's you that's being slippery, not sharing your insights into free market economics.

I'm pretty sure she said a welfare state. So the state provides welfare, funded through taxation. As @beastlyslumber says, like we have now.

The mainstream left and the mainstream right can argue about how big the state should be, levels of taxation and welfare, how and to what extent free markets should be regulated etc., up to and including whether some things should be nationalised, but there is no mainstream politics that argues against the basic model of free markets plus a welfare state.

If you are arguing generally against a free market economy then what is your alternative?

I don’t recall ever saying I would discuss free market economics.

Neither do you.

Because it never happened.

Using the word slippery as something to throw back is just daft. What is it? Playing dumb as a form of persuasion?

Anyway, you never satisfactorily explained it earlier in the thread. I feel none the wiser.

I don't know, in all honestly, that's why I asked.

'What we've got' is shite for the majority of people, given that the UK is one of the richest countries in the world. The 'safety net' has huge, growing holes in it and there are countless people who have fallen through it with few people noticing.

If the UK were a poor country, millions of children and families living in poverty, broken education and social care systems and a health system being carved up to be sold off for profit might just about be understandable. Huge profits for energy shareholder while schools can't afford to put their heating on and ordinary, working people are struggling to stay warm less so.

Half the public sector is on strike. It's not easy (administratively) to strike now and given that people obviously don't get paid, so it's not an easy decision for many to make. Ordinary working people - the essential workers who got us all through covid - are at the end of their tether.

Nurses are on strike for the first time ever. The queues outside food banks are soul destroying, as is tripping over all the people sleeping on the streets as you walk through any town or city.

The UK wasn't like this for the latter part of the 20th century, nor indeed before 2010.

Seriously, if this is what HJ is arguing for, then she can keep it.

I'm not responsible for you lack of understanding EndlessTea.

No, no-one has taken up my invitation to explain what HJ meant by free market economics with a safety net that doesn't rely on some social groups being oppressed.

Other than beastlyslumber and with all due respect to her, it's not a situation based on making society better for everyone.

I'm not responsible for you lack of understanding

No, but you are responsible for your lack of clarity and your repeated attempts to derail the thread.

She said a 'safety net', I'm quite sure, but yes we can call it a welfare state. Although of course what that means can vary between ensuring that every person has sufficient income to feed, clothe and house themselves and creating conditions where people have to queue for hours for food and clothing and can't afford to live in decent accommodation or any accommodation at all.

An economy that's run for the benefit of people, with the desires of the free market secondary and tightly regulated.

So, yes, a matter of emphasis and priorities, although they lead to very significance differences in quality of life and opportunity for ordinary people.

EndlessTea if you think I'm derailing a thread about feminism and the right by talking about feminism and the right (and the left) please do feel free not to reply to my posts.

Right, so you're not arguing against a free market economy.

Were you around in the 1970's?

So what is your alternative bike?

No one is saying what we've got is perfect (and it's certainly being severely stress-tested right now) but I think it's the only model that can actually work and has ever worked.

We've seen communism in action and that always ends in gulags and genocide.

Our system, for all its flaws, has brought tremendous wealth and prosperity to a majority of the populations in the countries that share it. I'm personally quite scared that the stresses on it and the attacks from within are going to break it and leave us with anarchy.

This is all totally off topic but since you've demanded a defence of liberal free market democracy, let's have your proposal for a better system.

I shall feel free to do as I please and do not seek your permission.

When is the ‘feminism’ bit going to come along in this part of the discussion…

Were you around in the 1970's?

I was thinking about that.

An economy that's run for the benefit of people, with the desires of the free market secondary and tightly regulated.

Sorry - that would be my suggestion.

Well funded health service, education, and social care, paid for by corporate taxes from wealthy companies and obvs private taxation.

Utility, transport, and essential services like bin collection, street cleaning in public ownership.

Basically, a state that exists and functions to improve the lives of ordinary people and a free market that is tightly, tightly regulated so that there is balance between what it provides ie good and services and what it takes ie profit.

Cross posted. So basically you're arguing for the same thing as HJ wants.

Yes, I was.

I remember the strikes and the power losses of course, although I also remember there being far fewer wealth inequalities than there are now, a functioning health and education system, plentiful social housing, no food banks, few people sleeping on the streets. The social care system worked, as did the essential local authority services.

And of course the wave of equalities legislation that benefitted women - Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrmination Act etc that paved the way for the Disability Discrimination Act then Equality Act.

Good times.

Which is surely not so different from a free market economy with a safety net, I.e. what HJ said she is for.

I think there's a lot of corruption within this system and lots of room for improvement but that's not going to come from people trying to destroy it.

I don't recall HJ saying anything about how she felt the specifics of the British welfare state are working right now in the UK, so I am not sure why anyone would assume that she thinks it is working as best it could. There are a plethora of other examples of free markets with a strong, or not so strong, welfare state, that could be considered. There are pros and cons to all.

What there are not example of are states that do not have a free market and also do not have oppressed classes. Anywhere there has been an attempt at a planned economy, it has been a disaster, not just economically but also in terms of human rights. And even those places which tried that model have largely switched to a free market approach, which still of course making great headway at social and political oppression.

So it really seems to me that it is not at all clear why HJ would be the one who needs to provide some evidence that her economic vision could be effective, and possible - it's those who are saying they have a better option.

I don't think so, no. HJ would seem, from what she said, to weight the balance far more in favour of a free market more than me.

I would say the market can't really be 'free' in an economic sense if we want to make society better for everyone. It needs to be very tightly regulated to ensure that what it takes in terms of profits is balanced by what it provides.

If you think the 70s were a better time to be a woman than now, I'm going to suggest you have your rose tinted specs on. Although at least we knew what a woman was, I guess.

Exactly this.

Crime has been a huge change, but I suspect has some other factors involved.

But as far as things being well funded, there is that IMF loan to account for...