Smegg Wallace

[FinallyPeakedNow]

So I have been quietly considering all the trans stuff for years. Trying to see both sides. Acknowledging that my best friend's policing of my use of her trans kid's pronouns is just how the world is these days, and that my feeling that it is a devastating tragedy that they have removed their breasts and taken hormones that have made their voice break and hair fall out is simply the WRONG feeling and borderline transphobic.
It's been a struggle. I have always hated drag, couldn't put my finger on why. And then Masterchef reveals that they are featuring a drag act called Cheryl Hole and it happened. I peaked. I felt myself resist the instinct to feel that this name is deeply misogynistic, that if I was Cheryl Fernandez-Versini I would be forced to pretend I found it flattering, even if it's essentially being reduced to a hole so that people can laugh at the fact that women have holes.
I nearly peaked when I read that stupid university definition of lesbians as 'non-men attracted to non-men,' but I couldn't have had enough time to think about it then.
I just want it to stop now, please. I hate that left wing comedians I admire are all team trans. I hate that admitting I'm a terf puts me in the same box as a bunch of awful right-wingers, but also, terfs are my people. This is it now.

So, to my question:

WOULD THE BBC's MASTERCHEF PUT ON A MALE DRAG ACT CALLED SMEGG WALLACE?

I am going to get a baldy head cap and paint a dick on it and see if they bite. Who's with me?

I might write a letter of complaint to the BBC I'm that annoyed

Yes you are right, I have believed something reductive and untrue/ a myth about right wingers. It simply hasn't come up before now that I might have been wrong about it. I hadn't thought about it very deeply. I don't have the time or energy to put in the effort to rejig my worldview, and yet here we are. I am raging that I am being forced to reassess pretty much every thing I've been happily going along with for forty years, essentially because of a small group of ridiculous, entitled, misogynist men.

RAGING

<passes OP 🍷>
You don't have to rejig everything all at once. The important thing is that you are asking the questions. Breathe deeply and take your time.

When annoyed by a policy put forward by, well, anyone, the question I try and ask myself is, 'What could you do instead, then?' Followed up by, 'How would that pan out? What other issues might it cause? How much would it cost? Will taxpayers be happy about it?'

I say try and ask myself. Mostly I just rant and fume like a small volcano.

Left and right means nothing anymore, get over yourself.
would you like to be described as someone who cheers on paedophiles because you’re proudly on the left?

I get it OP, it can be very disconcerting to realise you are on a different side than your tribe on certain issues. it sort of shakes your foundations a bit.

I always saw myself as a leftie liberal, and when I thought of 'right wing', I thought anti-abortion, anti immigration, against gay marriage - which I vehemently disagree with. But more and more these days I find myself veering on the more conservative side these days, I suppose because I realise so many things are not black and white but far more complex.

However, this issue is so different to me, it's not like there is a middle ground here where we can compromise. People cannot change sex, and the only people that really lose out with this shit are women and girls - it blows open so much latent misogyny that is present in everyday life.

And I'm reminded of what I was told when i was younger about always asking questions. Don't be afraid to question something, and be suspicious of anyone who wants to stop you doing so. What are they so afraid of? This movement is so terrified of questions and criticism that it lashes out - that is not normal or healthy. None of it makes sense in a rational society.

The fact that we are just expected to move aside and make room, to our own detriment, the fact that a lot of self claimed 'progressive' men get very angry when women assert boundaries. It's just blatant unfairness. But somehow we're the bad guys for pointing that out.

Who am I supposed to vote for!? Both sides have idiots who believe TWAW. Who are you voting for?

On the contrary - it privileges a social good (do not cause offense) over an individual's right to free expression.

I should have added that whatever theorycrafting is fun, the empirical reality is that the trans movement is heavily backed and promoted by the current Left far more than it is the political Right. And when theory meets reality, it is theory that must adjust.

Now one can argue that the current Left is not a real Left by one's own definitions. Just as one can argue that 3rd wave feminism isn't what you may mean by feminism personally. But imo it's very unfair to put the TRA movement on the Right when far more of the resistance historically has been from that sector.

My mp voted in favour of clarifying the definition of sex in the EA last week. I’ve written to my mp numerous times on these issues and been out protesting but I don’t hold much faith in our power to change things through voting.

If we all made our feelings known through our rights to peaceful protest and bombarding our representatives with our evidence backed concerns I think that’s a more effective way forward.
boycotts have also been very successful, vote with your feet, write to your mp, don’t comply in your own behaviours and support other women who are struggling under the pressure to comply.

Yup, I have to fast forward the intro on ADAD AF. I mean it's a great idea to have a podcast for women, it's just sad that they don't feel they're allowed to without "of course we only know about being AFAB, all genders are welcome" disclaimer.

I mean whoever wants to can listen to a podcast, of course. It's just cringy to hear all the women doing podcasts etc for women but they feel they have to use "inclusive language" at all times, instead of owning the fact that ADHD affects women so much differently, for example.

Hang in there. You don't need to throw out everything you value or believe in some Damascene conversion. You can still support unions or high progressive taxation or whatever else you consider part of your political identity. And you most certainly have not become any less compassionate or caring. What you are realising is that your movement has been captured. It doesn't mean it was wrong.

You've actually done a very brave thing in breaking from the beliefs of those around you to choose your own. Though you may blame the TRA movement, the fact is once you've seen you can never unsee. But would you want to go back to where you were anyway?

I think identity politics is a bit of a weird one in terms of where it fits in.

It's certainly used by the economic libertarians and corporate capitalists as a way to feel moral without looking at things like poverty or whatever seriously. The modern anti-racist analysis, for example, is zero danger to the super rich, so long as they can make sure there are super-rich people who aren't white.

On the other hand, id pol comes out of a lefftist group/class analysis lens that has moved away from economic class and role, and now uses groupings based on identity. And it has some of the other features of left politics, like a tendency to utopianism that doesn't really care about reality, a tendency to be willing to sacrifice individuals to the good of the group - I think we all know that the left has long had issues with certain kinds of social engineering.

I am not sure that I really do think gender ideology or id pol are individualistic as such. They truly think people are defined by their identity category, hense the vitriol towards those they see as race or class traitors. They do however have some very weird ideas about subjectivity.

In transgenderism, the right of the individual to free expression is paramount. A man has the right to declare himself to be a woman regardless of the effect on the rest of society. Everyone who objects to this is labelled a bigot. The social good (the effect on the rest of society) is not considered at all.

I think this is why the communist party (in the UK as well as other countries) tend to be against the 'I am what I say I am' of transgenderism. Because one person being allowed to declare that they are what they say they are, in conflict with reality, affects the whole of society. It is an extreme form of individualism, which doesn't really fit with socialism.

And far from privileging the view of 'do not cause offence', men masquerading as women (Dylan Mulvaney, Eddie Izzard), cause great offence to many women. Those men are allowed freedom of expression. Women who object are not.

Transgenderism is extreme individualism. It is not left wing.

Yes, even the idea that they were "assigned" at birth. What does the midwife base her assignment on I wonder? The colour of the mums nightie? The day of the week? I've only just started the podcast and it's truly brilliant, but I can see there's a trans episode coming up and I'm betting its not about gender dysmorphia being a mental illness.

I think you gave a better take on it than I did. I like your explanation of why IdPol aren't individualistic. They never felt it to me - very much the opposite. It's an assigned identity, or in the case of queer and trans a socially approved identity, in place of the actual individual characteristics in play. A transwoman has male genitalia but the social role of being a "woman" takes precedence over any actual facts about the real individual. Same principle applies in other social identities. They matter more to the Left than the actual real attributes and behaviour. I'm trying to remember where I saw some person or guidance that said White women shouldn't report rapes if the perpetrator was non-White because it played into Right Wing narratives, or maybe it was reinforced White privilege. Something like that. Leftism is essentially Society > Individual. And whilst I can see how someone sees "women" as a group and "the transwoman" as the individual, I think the reality is that the latter is the socially protected role. After all, if he was truly acting just as an individual without wider societal backing, he'd be immediately ejected from the ladies loos by other guys if the women themselves didn't do it. But trans movement has big (perceived) societal acceptance so he isn't.

@OldCrone
"In transgenderism, the right of the individual to free expression is paramount."

And broadly speaking the Right doesn't want to prohibit that, it is true. But the transgender person isn't seeking free expression, they are seeking validation from the society around them and boy do they pursue those who deny them it. The problem with transgenderism isn't the individual claiming they are X. It is the socially determined value system that affirms it and punishes those who go against it. That's not an Individualist attitude. That's a group-minded attitude.

(Note, Right = Individualist, Left = Collectivist is a simplification. But these are the traits that tend to draw one to this end or the other).

I think a couple of people reading my post and thinking 'but women are a group, the transperson is not, therefore trans is individual rather than group' are not understanding my point. Women are a group but to mistake that for being representative of Society is, well, optimistic. And this argument takes place in the context of general social consensus. GC women aren't remotely representative of all women (at least in the West). I probably know of more women who are on board with the TWAW/Be Kind/LGBTQWTFBBQ than I do men. The trans movement is enforced on individuals like GC women (and men) as the approved beliefs of society. No point in denying that. If it was all about freedom of expression, the situation would be nothing like this. And again, for all the theory crafting the observable fact is that the trans movement is by far the most backed by Leftist organisations and politicians and the gender woo crowd for the most part in my experience lean heavily Leftist / Democrat / Momentum, etc.

After all, if he was truly acting just as an individual without wider societal backing, he'd be immediately ejected from the ladies loos by other guys if the women themselves didn't do it. But trans movement has big (perceived) societal acceptance so he isn't.

Two things.

One - 'other guys' aren't in the women's loos, so how would they know if there was a man in there? They'd have to actually see him going in, so they have a second or two at that point to notice. I think plenty of men, if they saw an obvious male following their daughter/wife/mother into the ladies would say something, but they have to be watching at that precise moment.

Two - a lot of men have a pretty weird take on this. They see men who masquerade as women as 'not real men'. I remember a thread on here a couple of years ago, where a poster said that a colleague turned up at work one Monday morning wearing a dress and saying his name was Diana (or something), and the men turned round and told him if he was a woman he should use the women's loos. Not because they believed in genderism and thought he was actually a woman, but because they didn't want him in the men's, which was for real men. Homophobia may have played a part, even though it's more likely that a middle-aged male transitioner is heterosexual.

There are plenty of socialist anti-trans and also Christian (which isn't even 100% right wing as such) anti trans. Don't let anyone make you think it's only a select particular ideology that are anti- trans; it definitely can be people across the whole spectrum of political beliefs and none.

I'm a bible-believing Catholic and that's where I get my positions about how society should be run from.

So I have to be anti-trans and pro-refugee, for instance.

People try to portray Christians as right wing (or even some right wing commentators are professing Christians but only stick to right wing topics.)

But the condemnation of Christians as 'right wing' is all due to the modern 'progressive left' being all about moral relativism and self-indulgence.

And of course as PP's say, there are many 'normal' primarily working class people, without some particular high-falutin' ideology, who can just see the potential for letting males in female spaces be a bit perverted or end badly etc.

@OldGardinia I suppose there are arguably two different lefts. The progressive left is 100% individualist. The right is collectivist in that it's about families and also about seeking an objective shared moral standard rather than 'you do you and be a drag stripper Furry' etc. And I suppose the 'old' socialist/communist left is collectivist too.

Ok we've gone a tiny bit off topic now, what about my Smeg Wallace idea?

One way to think about this, and I think it's historically pretty fair even if it's a simplification, is that socialism and conservatism both have significant collectivist tendencies. Traditional conservatism has always seen an important role for families, and also political power for communities at lower levels, typically geographically defined. And also sees a role for the state at higher levels for some types of collective projects.

The early project of the left wasn't so much to dispute the collective as a concept so much as suggest that it was important to look at economic class as a substantial collective, and that as well as institutional protections of geographic communities there needed to be institutional protections of collectives based on economic role, in order to prevent exploitation.

Both of these however were opposed in some sense by liberalism, which tends to be strongly individualistic. We are all, in the West, liberals to some degree, we live in what are, or perhaps were, liberal democracies. Certain rights for individuals in political institutions are the basis of the system.

But over the last 60 years or so, liberalism has really managed to take over both the left and the right, so that progressivism and libertarianism have had huge power in both respective parties. This has to a large extent undermined their socialism and conservatism.

I like it, I have no idea why people don't clue in that certain things are really not appropriate general audience jokes. I have a pretty dirty sense of humour, and I'm not easily offended, but there's a time and place, yk?

Voting Labour because if I’m going to have gender woo bullcrap misogyny in government it may as well be one that taxes the rich.

But why have the left taken the side of the people who want to self-declare their own 'gender' and insist that this is more important than their sex? They could just as easily have taken the side of the women on here who believe that protection for children and women is more important than a man's right to be legally recognised as a woman. And that would have been a more rational and socialist view. So why take the side of transgenderism?

There is nothing about transgenderism that makes it a left-wing issue. It is a homophobic and misogynistic movement.

I don't see how you can say that allowing people to choose which social category they belong to is not individualist.

If men can choose to be women and are from that point are to be treated exactly the same as real women then this gives those individual men advantages (access to women's sports and women-only spaces) to the detriment of women who will lose their access to fair competition and the privacy, dignity and safety of women-only spaces. This is individualist as it prioritises the individual man who wants to self-identify as something he is not over the wellbeing of a large part of society (women and children).

The left has decided to punish women who point this out. The fact that many women can't see this individualism for what it is, and the authoritarian nature of the policing of women who do, doesn't change the fact that self-id of 'gender' is individualist. How could self-id be anything else? It only requires the individual to say 'I am what I say I am'. Surely that is the definition of individualism.