Who has most disappointed you?

[Calistano]

I'd say Russell T Davies when he had his drunken rant. I get his concern that lgbt is being fractured. But his absent concern for Women and their rights was palpable. I honestly thought he had more sense.

Exactly this. Im exasperated. It seems NO man wants to hear about it and all i hear is 'well what about the man?' Even before ive had chance to talk. Im fed up with it

Recently I've been bitterly disappointed by podcast hosts Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know, who alluded to JKR being just a terrible terrible person. I used to love their podcast but now I can't listen to it knowing they've got such a mental glitch in this area. Although they are American and I appreciate the subject is hugely polarised there to be a left/right issue.

Yes, it'd be a brave US 'liberal' indeed who stood up to be counted, when the only people doing anything for women's rights in the US appear to be awful Trumpists. Much more so than in the UK. Are there any?

Im always disappointed especially with mens behaviour, attitude etc however...Most recently: Michael Lawrence. My grandson age 12..i read to him at bedtime everytime he stays. The jiggy mccue books are sexist, misogynistic, i was shocked tbh.. awfully discriminatory towards girls and women in general. These are books for 8 years old and up. I was upset and angry that i had to explain why i couldn't read one of the books and had to explain to grandson why i , morally, couldnt. In every one of his books there is sexism, although my grandson now knows the reason as to why i am not down with this even in the guise of 'humour'

America is lost.
Are you pro choice or anti TRA?
You can't be both.
And you must sign up to every take on your side.

The UK is as far from this as it's possible to be, despite the lazy tropes that GCs are Nazi adjacent.

I think maybe I'm most disappointed in writers, in general, who I thought included more really thoughtful people.

And also universities, though it's more to do with how they've simply abandoned the principles of free thought and robust debate.

Actors, I was disappointed in Tennant, Ian McLellan, and Patrick Stewart a bit, but then, they really are just actors. There have been a few I've been pleasantly surprised to see get it, or at least understand why it's important to have a serious discussion. Rafe Fiennes comes to mind, and I always thought he was actually incredibly intelligent for an actor - certainly his siblings seem to be across a wide range of areas.

The science people, I don't know. I've always felt the New Atheist types were already quite practiced at ignoring the history of philosophy n it's entirely, and also that some of the greatest minds in human history were in fact theists of one sort or another and often religious. It takes a unique commitment to self-delusion to be able to think that they are all just fools who have no reason for their philosophical conclusions and that logical positivism is some kind of hands down answer. So I tend to think the well was already poisoned there, scientism was an inevitable error that actually makes it impossible to know what is really science and what isn't.

It's finally convinced me though that large numbers of psychologists are people I wouldn't put in charge of the mental health of my dog.

I'm less and less thinking this is a neo-religion, and more a technocratic caste system. Your future prosperity and status are all enhanced and protected by how high you position yourself.

The process is non violent...no more vigilante mobs burning books or individual witches being burnt or drowned, or individuals persecuted by the state and disappeared brutally.

No, that's way too messy for our new "enlightened" age. Now you get props even by saying nothing, and that's the vast majority of artists, media and scientists. More if you're vocally pro TRA. Your company might lose sales but you're golden in the diverse crazy capitalist world.

And this is a self regulating system of levels. You get to choose to go up this ladder of social virtue, with civic society having your back.

Of course you can also choose to slip down the snake to a position of social pariah, now your previously supportive peers turning their back on you.

Its your choice, no compulsion. But you do want a future, especially if you're up and coming, likely eminent in your field, but hugely vunerable to losing it all.

And so, I believe many who have let us down have willingly acquiesced to these social pressures from their in-group and in-groups across civic society. And by doing it willingly, their souls are sold for a pittance. And it becomes easier and easier to lose your remaining principles.

I love your post.

I'm thinking we need to abandon artists en masse. They're absolutely not deep despite their deep words.

Patrick Stewart, you'd assume he's a deep thinker. But why? He's a great actor, but that's it. What would you rely on him to do in real life? Not much. He acts. That's all.

No, actors, writers, musicians, I think they're a big wash out. Of course, eminent exceptions. But that's it. Exceptions.

I've been watching Dawkins videos on YT. He's still angry with God and religious people. Sure, he's GC. But his lack of real interest in what makes people what they are and their drives shows up the whole New Atheist movement to be hugely shallow. And don't get me started on Ben Goldacre. He really is a dagger to the heart. But Dara OBriain? What did he do with his PhD? Sell out to the filthy lucre of the comedy circuit. Despite his science, he's too comfortable rolling in constant demand to be sarcastic 24/7. Maybe his trolling of GCs will be revealed as a comedy skit. More likely he's happy to now be a non-scientist.

No, the culture is what it is. Its being revealed. The fact so many in civic society are so relaxed about teen medicalisation and the suborning of women's rights mean that the West's fine words on upholding women and children is just that. Words.

I read an interesting piece on the balance of paganism and Christianity in the West, that paganism really never went away. I think what we're seeing with the rise of the fastest growing social movement in America ie polyamory, the rush to teen medicalisation, transhumanism rise, and the gleeful dismantling of women's rights, is a kind of paganism 2.0, a male centred misogyny for the 21st century where women and kids are fair game all over again. Just now dressed in pretty words of social justice and accelerated by medical science.

New Dark Age indeed.

Russell T Davies doesn’t give a shit about women except in their role as support humans for males. I thought his series ‘It’s a Sin’ was fantastically done except for the saint/sinner one dimensional portrayal of the female characters.

I don't want to big myself as anyone special, but as a previous male bore on feminism and women's rights and misogyny (from eye rolling to "oh, just fuck off with those slurs"), and moving to a more nuanced take, it's actually exasperating for me to watch so-called progressive men effectively maintain a sugar coated version of that attitude, and so-called female allies effectively wave it thru.

You could almost say this craze has shone a spotlight on society as it really is, not the politically correct version it likes to promote.

Its like living proof of that famous saying, ' You can never persuade a man to believe something that his livelihood depends on him not believing'.

Or, more accurately I guess its now ' You can never persuade a man not to believe something that his livelihood depends on him believing.'

So all hail those souls who haven't compromised themselves and others. All those people are modern day heroes.

We must move in very different circles. The vast majority of men, and indeed women, I know thinks TWAW is a load of bollocks and certainly would have no fear in expressing it. But then they are just ordinary people with ordinary jobs, not anyone who can be cancelled in any way.

Is it belief, or non belief? I'm wondering if these jokers even care. Maybe the only belief truly is the bottom line ie cash cash cash.

Take Sting. Or maybe not (he's all a bit pretentious, really). All that intellectual rock star malarkey with him reading Jung on the inside sleeve of the Synchronicity album. Always talking the big picture, human nature. Always seeming a free thinker and traditional liberal voice. Not for him sticking his face in a coffee table covered in coke and indulging groupies.

What do we find in 2023?...he refuses an interview with Hadley Freeman when he's informed she's GC and likely will ask him some, um, challenging Qs.

If a so-called brave thinker like him has no balls, then you can dismiss whole swathes of artists from this fight. They've happily acquiesced to GroupThink, and even worse, NoThink.

Agreed. But there is a group of men who absolutely rip into feminists, and TRA is their Manosphere. Except it's not in saliva-encrusted basement keyboard lairs as it is to women's faces publically. With the social cover/fig leaf of justification by allying with trans kids and adults. These are like a human shield for this offensiveness.

Obviously we do run in different circles. I am in a small community where views can be very misogynistic and internalised misogyny. Do you think that in cities people are more exposed to diversity , equality etc whereas they understand and agree/ accept it?

I read an interesting piece on the balance of paganism and Christianity in the West, that paganism really never went away. I think what we're seeing with the rise of the fastest growing social movement in America ie polyamory, the rush to teen medicalisation, transhumanism rise, and the gleeful dismantling of women's rights, is a kind of paganism 2.0, a male centred misogyny for the 21st century where women and kids are fair game all over again. Just now dressed in pretty words of social justice and accelerated by medical science.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I’ve been mulling over this shift to a post-Christian age a lot over the last year.

It feels sometimes like we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. It’s been a long unravelling of society built on the idea that there is such a thing as absolute truth and moral standards of behaviour which help bring order. Of course, that is oppressive if you want to be free to do your own thing without judgement and consequences.

It does feel now that people are happy accept a more personal truth and morality which will naturally allow some morally questionable behaviours to flourish. I think this is part of the whole ‘queering boundaries’. Perhaps we haven’t quite figured out how to assert boundaries for the good of the whole in an age of individualism? I’m not feeling much optimism at the moment that the powers that should assert those boundaries will do so or are even capable of it anymore.

This.

I don't think this genie is being returned to the bottling depot for re-insertion.

To expect this generation (actually multi generations, Sir David Attenborough to Greta Thunberg) to have anything meaningful to say on societal mores and any kind of moral outlook, is pointless.

What I think will happen is a kind of drift to shifting sands, with some kind of sanity via the courts, but literally a barebones compromise maybe slightly better than we have now.

Possibly some sort of strongman populist with deep religious roots. What's interesting in the US is that alongside a very polarised atheist/pagan/post modern/progessive push from the Left to banish all boundaries and promote teen medicalisation and sublimate gender critical feminist and ethnic non feminist/mainly Christian and Muslim harsh views on gender ideology (see the schism between coastal elites TRA white Democrats versus working class urban blacks and Hispanics). And a burgeoning New Catholics (check out Peter Thiel) and right wing Jewish communities.

This could lead to a populist beyond Trump, where a very plugged in but overtly religious president holds sway.

Or a kind of aimless drift by the West to hyperindividualism, but unlike the 90s and 00s version, where that was just represented as unlimited consumer culture, opening up of music genres, fashionista explosion, and sub cultures vying for maximum (but essentially inoffensive) visibility (Goths and other teen movements), this will be daggers drawn and drama queen life and death (words are literal violence, you're all Nazis and fascists!).

The law will be clarified for some basic safety net for women, but the beta cucks will rule as more and more trans culture is normalised and embedded. The very negative side of this being a return to real tribalism, the public lynching of naysayers, drowning and burning of witches, and medieval and pre-history human behaviour of sacrifice, this and atheist Roman Empire/pagan rites of seeing women and children as expendable, will see it's 21st century version of male wizards (what else do you call Peter Tatchell and the US Health Secretary with such powers?) holding court, women and children literal cannon fodder for men (now the alpha misogynists and beta cuck trans), and quite brutal tribal behaviour, torch bearing mobs of old replaced by online versions.

Sorry if this sounds overcooked, but there is a real enemy at the gate feel, not just about the phenomenon, but the silent acquiescence of pretty much anyone and everyone with a voice. Other than JKR and Glinner, who well known to the public is saying anything rational?

Of the three options, civic society regaining it's bearings and opting for a solid direction, societal drift, or religious strongman populist, the first option appears the least likely right now. That is sobering.

All of the teachers, social workers, psychologists and other allied professionals who have followed the herd for their careers and fucked over women and children. I now know how other forms of abuse happen. It’s because systems are broken but also because blind eyes are turned for personal advantage.

Its interesting, I've been very prone to herds all my life. Always been a Tory voter, and shrugging off the miseries and casualties of Thatcher, austerity, child poverty as either...not my problem, "ah yes, but...", denial full stop.

Kind of came to a head with Brexit where despite being a Remain voter, I herded to Leave, and was really a nasty POS for a while.

However on this occasion when I started analysing the damage and hearing the poor data coming in, I pivoted to being much more skeptical, pulling away from fingers in ears Brexiters, incl my best friend.

So, I've been there, I know how easy it is to be led, how satisfying it is to take a harsh view, how much "the group" allows you to hide and flourish.

Brexit isn't the point, neither is Tory voting intentions. It could be any politics or heartfelt opinion. Its very easy to get swept along, ironically the more outré the view, the more it requires doubling down and holding the banner aloft, the more intrinsic the emotion and the more stick in the mud the promotion of it, and critically, the signalling to the group of your virtue.

It should be highly instructional. It should blow open the repeated inability of society to grasp misogyny and the meaning, purpose and point of safeguarding.

I wonder if one thing it is doing is illuminating sexism for some who had previously failed to understand? Douglas Murray, the Triggernometry men, etc, noted that the extent of sexism had finally been revealed to them.

It has uncovered rather appallingly large expanses of sexism that I didn't even really see the guts of before.

From an Irish perspective

Amnesia Ireland *
People Before Profit *2
Green Party
Health Service Executive
Marie Keating Foundation
National Women's Council of Ireland
GAA
Hozier
O Briain
Aisling Bea
Sharon Horgan

• Founded by Sean MacBride whose granddaughter Iseult White is GC

*2 especially Ruth Coppinger and Brigid Purcell . Their social media attacks on other Irish women are filled with almost unbelievable hatred. I voted PBP a couple of times. Now I'd be appalled if they got near the levers of power.

I'm in a small and mostly rural community. I think people are much more likely to be conservative and 'traditional' in their views, which means most people are gender critical (if they are aware at all), but sadly also means that racist/sexist/homophobic views are also quite common and openly shared. Among older people there is very much a horror of places like London and Brighton and a determination that "things like that" don't happen here. People will watch a news story about something happening in London with the same level of detachment as something happening in Kabul: "it's all very sad but nothing to do with us." It makes it very easy for people to dismiss stuff without ever having to actually think about it.

I've moved from London to Norfolk, working in both areas, here from home, a pretty small village.

Yes, there is some parochialism, but not as much as I thought, even from older clients. I'd actually say any abuse on social policy areas comes from Londoners in my experience.

I was told I was a racist pure and simple to my face in front of a group for even seeing the reasons for Brexit, and my old E. London market barista exploded using the C word that people up in Norfolk were the scum of scum for voting Leave.

Hmm, I wonder if I railed against TRA friendly Londoners for being child abusers. What would that get me?

@RealityFan I'm not sure that being called a racist, however much undeserved, is on the same level as routinely referring to non-white people as "darkies", or gay men as "poofters".