The misogynist Billy Bragg

[Maaate]

About time he had his own thread to document the anti-women statements he comes out with. First up:

Blimey. That 2014 interview with BB is not what I know about women, more a list of some women I know. And how they are my support humans or wouldn't go out with me. I can almost hear him muttering 'Bitches'.

That kind of is just a standard left wing protest however.

Gender critical beliefs have nothing to do with fascism, and it's a lunatic accusation, but it's just done to smear opponents and try to put them outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

"Women and men are different beings"

Yes Billy they are

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lifes-a-beach-for-billy-of-barking-2pqb50d88ck

Refers to their son Jack age 11 many years ago so I don't think his son is trans.

Yes, I think it's Dorian Lynskey who might have a f2m child, not Billy Bragg.

Bragg's contributions to the debate tend to focus on all the stuff about men in single-sex spaces etc whereas Lynskey seems to be particularly irate about people criticising the use of unnecessary medical interventions on children.

We should all do one of these 'not interested in you, Billy Bragg' videos for X/Twits.

He's so dim he'll probably reply with 'I don't fancy you anyway' or 'I wouldn't touch you with a barge-pole ha ha'. And it would puzzle him.

I'd never heard of Dorian Lynskey, but the trans child makes sense when you look at the utterly unhinged way he's responding on this issue. There's no rational argument, when apparently he's not a stupid man normally. Just weirdly angry insults, making things up, and calling people bigots. It must be frightening when the signs are starting to show that your child is on a damaging and completely unnecessary medical pathway and that you didn't attempt to stop it - if that is what's going on here.

I think parents who affirm their trans kids tend to be the most fervent, self-righteous activists because anything less than 100% adherence to the ideology means they let their children down. Nobody wants to think they’ve contributed to their child suffering unnecessarily. So instead they have to keep those colours firmly nailed to the mast and hold on for dear life, even as the storm rages all around them.

Yes, as Mollyollydolly said earlier, exactly proving the point that Helen is making in that clip.

His response exactly proves Helen's point in the clip that he attacks - she says that parents of trans children are the most angry because they will never accept that they've done the worst possible thing you can do as a parent, which is to harm your child, and that's why they direct so much abuse at her.

I don't agree 100%. My child is ftm trans and I call her they when talking to or about her. I know she's a girl. And I believe she is a girl. I don't believe she's a boy, I do think she doesn't want to be a girl. Which is different.

But I also want her to keep talking to me. And engaging with me. And I can't do that if I don't verbally affirm, even if it's not with my heart. She knows my feelings. We occasionally row. But I don't want to alienate her or shut her out or encourage her to shut herself out. I need her engaged and here and safe, where I can protect her from shitty dodgy predators who have their own agenda and don't care about her interests or future or health or anything that will actually directly affect her. And I'd saying they is what it takes then that's what I've decided to do. To keep them with me.

So I call her they. I can't stretch to he. I just can't. She's not my son, whatever she says. And I hope to get my daughter back one day. I can't do that if I've made her hate me by being the self-fulfilling prophecy she's being fed.

So no. We aren't all zealots sacrificing our children at the alter of the gender butchers and predators. Some of us do it because we are frightened of losing our children to those who want to damage and hurt them. And never getting them back in the whole and perfect form they were born.

Thanks - of course, this is not a black and white issue and I need to clarify my point. I do understand what you’re saying and that for some parents, there is very little choice but to go along with it to a certain extent. To use their child’s new name and pronouns while inwardly being uncomfortable with it.

My post was intended to refer to those parents who unquestioningly affirm and put their kids on an unnecessary medical pathway and become cheerleaders for the cause. You’re clearly not doing that. You’re trying to respect your child’s identity so you don’t push them away and you can keep the lines of communication open. I hope everything works out, it must be so difficult. 💐

TragicMuse, I hope you're okay, that sounds very hard.

Absolutely understood!

I know I'm sometimes a bit sensitive about this kind of thing because I don't want to be grouped with those mutilating nutjobs.

Back to BfB, I would so love to get in a room with him. Principally to confound his sad little brain with my rampant socialist gender criticism. Not a right winger, never have been and never will be. Labour is nowhere near left enough for me now, gender-worshipping bullshit aside. His head could explode. And wouldn't that be a thing to behold...

Good luck. Really. I have a close friend who has a niece who is super sensitive and pushing for FTM, meds, surgery, the lot. Parents have taken your tack, the minimal affirmation, and luckily the love of horses has taken over, said niece on an equine care training course. The hope is that as puberty fully works thru, she will realise that it was a phase.
Broken eggshells on the ground.

Back to BfB, I would so love to get in a room with him. Principally to confound his sad little brain with my rampant socialist gender criticism. Not a right winger, never have been and never will be. Labour is nowhere near left enough for me now, gender-worshipping bullshit aside. His head could explode. And wouldn't that be a thing to behold...

It’s so easy for Billy to have this four legs good, two legs bad mentality. To think that he’s a left-wing goodie and anyone who disagrees with him must be a right-wing baddie (bigot, fascist etc). I’d love to see him taken down a peg or two, and this takedown would be all the sweeter if delivered by someone to the left of his own politics. He needs to understand that gender ideology is not a left / right issue, and left-wing women who disagree with him haven’t suddenly turned into Nazis overnight! Such a petulant and ridiculous viewpoint. One day, perhaps after lambasting a few more gender-critical women on social media, he’ll reflect on his behaviour and ask himself the question: “Am I the baddie here?” Yes Billy, I’m afraid you are.

Re the politcal self-righteousness of the likes of BfB, must get around to reading this at some point.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141039167/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_9?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

Good job us terven don't do the whole guilt by association thing...

Oh dear 😬

https://twitter.com/billybragg/status/1149692946536701953?t=OdV1j870ujjwWhRfG3d8wQ&s=19

Like @TragicMuse i have a trans identifying child and am a member of a couple of parent support groups. I've never met a group of people more vehemently against gender ideology. Whatever you think of the impact of gender ideology on women's rights, it's nothing compared to facing the possibility of your mentally ill child mutilating their body.
I cannot understand any parent that would support it. Most will try to keep lines of communication but it's a very difficult path to tread.

When BB takes potshots at feminists and people put their pronouns in their email signatures its the thin end of a wedge that leads to my child believing their depression can be cured by cross sex hormones 😡

The problem is there is an awful lot of people who think that being pro-trans means they are a great person who is showing how they are open and caring to everyone. Without the critical thinking of who is effected by this support -
children and women.

I now know 3 trans parents who are of course very trans supportive now it’s effecting them. Know what I did when my daughter started down this road, I pushed back as subtlety as I could. We’ve discussed how awful puberty is, and how it’s awful for boys in a different way. How gender norms are bollocks.

I know someone whose m2f child has taken basically the same name as his sister, if that’s not fucked up I don’t know what is. Allowing this doesn’t make you are great caring parent as much as you think it is.

Oops.
Russell Brand gave me the ick long ago.

Unfortunate...

Russell Brand has given many, many women at ick. It's nothing to do with these fresh revelations. In fact, for almost everybody I know, it's hardly a revelation at all.

When people were speculating that the Dispatches programme was about Russell Brand, most people were of the opinion that it couldn't be, because it wouldn't exactly be news.

It's absolutely no bloody surprise, whatsoever, that the likes of Bragg and Jones are pally with him.

Apart from not understanding fight, flight, freeze or appease, the other thing that gets me, too, is how any normal human being could possibly imagine that women would enjoy being followed by a bunch of frothing, violent men screaming at them.

What sort of world does Bragg inhabit that makes him think that any woman, anywhere, wouldn't be less than bloody frightened.

He's SOOO sure that scaring women results in them crying or running away, isn't he?