Men have always dominated the Left, other than feminism. Look at the Labour and union movement of the post War period. Beer and sandwiches at No.10, broken bones and skulls at Orgreave in the 80s. We know who did the shouting at picket lines and in negotiations, and put the boot in at demos. Men. And who made the sandwiches and brought the beer in, and who tended to those striking miners. Women.
Even the left anti capitalist movements in Europe, Baader Meinhof etc. Yes, there were women involved, but it was the men making strategic decisions.
So the Left has always been about the men. The only place the little ladies were allowed to have some autonomy was feminist concerns, and the fight for equality in divorce, outlawing marital rape, legalising of abortion and availability of the Pill, workplace rights and equal pay, thence moves to get rid of Page Three, was left to women. At best, many Left men at least appeared to support.
But I suspect there were many men on the Left who hated even that amount of independence, however irrefutable it was. And many men wanted to get their own back here too.
Well, as the socialist dream in the West died with Gorbachev and the fall of Berlin Wall, the Left coopted into capitalism, to find new battles to justify its existence. No more class battle and proper Left redistribution, now it was the mutation of this traditional class battle to intersectional minority interests...we know about all the others, PoC, gay, disabled, but the one that very few ever thought would erupt as a major schism, trans rights, has predominated.
A substack I read posits that the alpha males in the Labour movement (Brown, Salmond, Kinnock, Wilson, Scargill, Crow etc) have been replaced by the beta males, those who are no previous time would have been at the front line of negotiating with the capitalists of the 50s to 80s, would have been seen dead at a violent demo.
But as the Left in the West at least has become a series of tick boxes, badges, identity gripes, and hugely resistant to any objectivism or judgement calls, amoral so to speak, and values organisation and herd instincts, it has championed the beta male, the male able to harass gender criticals and anyone not 100% on board with intersectionalism.
Prime example, Lloyd Russell Moyle and Patrick Harvie. Where the Left used to be about pressurising the real levers of poor people doing badly in UK, ie Thatcher, the bosses, Murdoch...now they'd rather pile in on Rosie Duffield, Jo Cherry, and as we've just seen, Helen Joyce.
This is no accident. As the Left alpha male class, forged in the Thatcher period and before, recedes to be replaced by what I call the Left beta cuck male class, now the attack on GC feminism and sex based realities is unleashed.
What's also different is that the alpha Lefties would spit rather than accept capitalist help, now the beta cuck Lefties absolutely wield the power of woke capitalism and the dominating power of social media, to achieve their aims.
What's also different is the role of Left women. Only a few in the past didn't push to support the sisterhood. Today, Left women are just as likely to stab their sisters in the back re their adherence to TWAW, and refusal to accept the opposite.
This means that you cannot rely on Raynor, Nandy, and a whole host more. Because the Left has lost its definition re battles being class based, resembles more a professional caste based/high worth belief system, and the working class women who won't succumb are dispensable
I don't think the Left women before this period were ever happy to jettison so many millions, they would even fight for you if you weren't Left, weren't pro choice etc.