Rise of Moms for Liberty in the USA

[TheABC]

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in politics, but this group assembled in just 30 months and they look set to influence the GOP primaries. It's very much a product of the USA (anti-woke and anti-masking, etc), but it also shows what happens when a bunch of motivated, pissed-off women started organizing properly.

https://www.thefp.com/p/whos-afraid-of-moms-for-liberty?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Whilst I don't agree with many of their aims, what I find interesting were the same tactics and insults being used to shut them down, as we see over here - GCs get reported for hate crimes, they got reported for domestic terrorism.

I think the Guardian ran a scornful article on them a few days ago.

Here we go

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/06/moms-for-liberty-long-history-rightwing-activism

I'm in the US. I want nothing to do with these people. They are vile.

But I do agree that we should look at their methods/strategy for raising issues.

The SPLC has lost its way, just like the ACLU.

Quote from the article by Moms for Liberty:
Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?

They want to ban Anne Frank's Diary because it's 'sexually explicit' apparently though they dabble in Holocaust denial too so I doubt that's the only reason. They are a pernicious bunch of extremists.

Can't you find a single other organisation which you think has effective organisation skills to learn from? What made you even look at these horrible people?

They are a tiresome bunch who are making it more difficult to actually message sensibly about this issue. It's going to be even less likely that my North American friends are going to see sense on the trans issue when you've got groups like this in the media, essentially encouraging the idea that questioning the trans narrative is for nutty MAGA hat wearing types.

If you want an inspiring group of women, well, you've got one right here - Mumnset. We did a lot of the work in getting the conversation rolling in the UK.

Reading comprehension appears to be a problem for some people today.

Read the OP carefully. She is looking for a discussion of tactics, not politics. 🙄

Please do not be so narrow minded that you lose the ability to think critically.

They got the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank's diary removed from a school district in Florida. I'm sure there was a thread about it on FWR about this book when it came out. Not the original!

I'm American and MFL and I don't agree on much but yes OP, this misinformation about their positions is very familiar.

There is nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.

The tactics of MFL are inseperable from the political polarization aspect. They have been able to mushroom out of nowhere by lazily tapping into the United States' highly polarized politics and turning this to their advantage.

The equivalent in the UK would be to link "questioning the trans narrative" with anti-vaccine narratives, climate change skepticism, fury about low-traffic zones, being pro-Brexit etc. etc. . Yes, that might help with quickly building a large, popular movement, but it would involve a) aligning with a bunch of shitty ideas that are wrong b) polarizing the issue and making it less likely that left-learning, moderate and undecided people would come to our side.

The UK and European countries are making headway on this issue, slowly and steadily, by sticking to what they know is right, and avoiding political polarization. Groups like MFL are part of the reason why the US will be a lost cause on this issue for a generation, and a lot of young people are going to be harmed as a result.

If this group only stuck to gender identity ideology being taught in school, they'd convince the left. But they've added other issues, like book banning, that I can't accept. I worry very much they will just help the left dig into gender woo as backlash. I really hate our tribal politics .

Here's a balanced article on the group. www.thefp.com/p/whos-afraid-of-moms-for-liberty

Snap! Sorry! Reposted OP's original link here when I meant to post it elsewhere. Well, it's a good article ...

I agree that they are not actually a "hate group" and that some coverage of them has been hysterical and unbalanced. However, they are not helpful in the manner of the feminists who have engaged in pushback in the UK and Europe.

Just because a group is anti TRA doesn't mean it's gender critical, feminist or pro women.

If I understand the OP correctly, this isn’t about MfL as such but about the misogynistic ways in which women are denied political agency and voice. You don’t have to agree with a group to notice how other actors are trying to attack it.

The Guardian article lazily uses historical examples from over half a century ago to dismiss any concerns that MfL might have, and there is the familiar suggestion that the core ideology of mom’s groups is white racism.

Women who are mothers have to be able to mobilise on the basis of their shared experience. If that is pathologised, then that’s politically disabling. Gender identity ideology affects all women of all races, and as we have seen in the US, there are many women of non-European heritage who have huge reservations about e.g. child transition, explicit content in educational materials etc.

The term "Far Right" is flung around with such abandon these days, I'm wary of taking it at face value. (In Australia, for example, it was pinned on both anti-vaccine mandate protesters and "Let Women Speak".)

Back to "Moms For Liberty" - checking out their own website rather than what others have to say about them, they appear to be Christian conservatives whose main concern is the explicitly sexual nature of some of the material taught in schools. I may not share their faith or most of their political stances, but I do agree some of the things being thrust upon children is... inappropriate, to say the least!

The entire modus operandi to try and stop them is really familiar.. Also there is nothing lazy about them. The article deals with the fact that there are extremist elements in the movement and how their existence is used to try and discredit the whole movement. My starting point is that there will be huge amounts of misrepresentation about what people in this group want and believe. Including on this thread.

So what are those on the supposedly 'right side' the 'good guys' doing about it - in the U.S?

You do realise these sort of sentiments ( dismissing a whole campaign group) actually feed the polarisation that is so entrenched in the U.S.

Since this campaign group is made up women, I think we can trust them to decide for themselves what sorts of women's issues they take up. Women's issues do not belong to any one specific political group - nor the way that women's rights and issues are interpreted.

This is the problem with blanket demonisation of anyone who's remotely gender critical we all get called Nazis, fascists and bigots(NFAB). So discerning who is actually NFAB and who just have diverse viewpoints (perhaps on a spectrum) is difficult. Probably one of the reasons they do it. Don't know about this bunch. Are they NFAB? Are some of them? Perhaps one or two? Or are they just being slandered?

"Lazy"? The one thing they're very obviously not is "lazy". What they are is "active" and "effective". Like it or lump it!

they are not helpful in the manner of the feminists who have engaged in pushback in the UK and Europe.

Well true but there was no room for those feminists on the liberal left in the US. The liberal left focussed on shutting them out and shutting them down. I hope it's not too late for the liberal left to make room.

The US school system is politicised in a different way from the UK. School boards are elected locally and exert a lot of power. That makes them very open to grassroots influence and also to groups who can reach and mobilise those grassroots. If the liberal left doesn't support that kind of feminist pushback then the right is more than happy to welcome it with open arms. That's not the fault of the feminists who want to pushback.

Or at least that moms - for liberty or not - should be able to have some opinion on whether material being displayed to their children is appropriate. I don't agree with the extent to which parents are being cut out of their children's lives and branded as harmful bigots if they don't enthusiastically support anything that comes along.