Anyone else GC and left wing in their politics?

[mids2019]

I am finding the conservative party conference difficult in some sense as I agree with some of their GC policies and attitudes yet would describe my self as a working class died in the will leftie. I really don't like this assumption that being for women's rights automatically means people associate you with right wing politics in general. For me it's simply not the case.

Why is it that poor now associate left with trans rights????

(Like you) I think it’s deeply problematic that a pretty privileged group of white men have managed to use very vulnerable young people as a kind of cover within this movement.

The desire for unquestioning affirmation and compliance from this group is being created in ways that actually makes it much harder for those vulnerable young people to receive the social and medical help they need.

And we are supposed to celebrate this as ‘progress’. 😩

It is worth noting that the entire left/right thing is generally built on sand.

Given it started out as a French revolutionary distinction (literally moving to one or other side of the room), it just does not map nicely (or at all) on to all the issues people are desperate to align with it.

It’s intended as a moral value judgement in many contemporary uses. But, realistically, there is no consistent basis for determining that people’s views on new recycling policy or school maths curricula can be positioned as ‘left’ or ‘right’ in any meaningful or objective way.

Even the originally L-R issue - monarchism v republicanism doesn’t fit neatly on more economic or other social variations of the spectrum.

Turns out that people have complicated and inconsistent views across the range of possible issues they might want to form a political view on. Who’d have thought?

Rights are about balancing the needs of ALL and limiting the harms to ALL in achieving that goal.

The issue is and has been throughout about the gatekeeping going on and the exclusion of vested interest groups. Only one group was considered and let this charge on trans rights.

And that's where I find it particularly depressing - Keir Starmer is a human rights lawyer. Not a family lawyer. Not a financial lawyer. Not a commercial lawyer. A human rights lawyer.

And we have had no consideration about the impact on other interest groups even though all legal rulings whether there is a conflict have to take this 'on balance' approach.

It's fucked up that the left, which has particularly strong levels of support from women, from lesbians and gays, from social and economically deprived communities has missed just so many of these impacts that switching from sex to gender produces AND HAS ACTIVELY AGGRESSIVELY TRIED TO SILENCE THEM WHEN THEY DID TRY TO SPEAK UP AND HAS NEVER CHALLENGED THE THREATS OR DISTANCED THEMSELVES FROM ACTUAL VIOLENT ACTS OR PROTEST.

Instead it's played this shit of 'both sides' being to blame.

It's cowardly and as far removed from it's roots as possible.

We have moved from this notion of collective freedoms to one where the individual is king though. That's neo-liberalism not liberalism. Massive difference.

Who said they don't think women should be allowed to exist?

If women can only exist if they include men the word becomes meaningless. You can see on the boards the confusion about wtf Starmer (for example) is talking about when he says woman or even female.

They don't think we should be allowed to have a word for ourselves or any single sex spaces or sports which exclude trans women.

That means they don't believe we should be allowed to exist as a class of biologically female people.

Who are the they that you are talking about, who have said they don't think women should exist?

Anyone who thinks gender trumps sex.

I think the recent discourse has been fascinating. Everyone on the liberal left in the media (NewsAgents podcast, the likes of Ian Dunt and Otto English online etc) has been slating the Tories moving into Alt Right/Trumpist territory. Braverman rhetoric on migration, Sunak GC soundbyte, stuff on 15 minute cities.

Yet this is the country now admitting close to 1m net migration, most from Asia and Africa, asylum for Ukrainians and HKers. Hardly a haven of racism and neo fascism.

And the liberal left are touting themselves as moderate and freedom loving. While sidelining GCs like Rosie Duffield, seemingly happy and in many situations complicit in the cancelling of GC academics and voices in universities, research, arts and the media. Asleep at the wheel at best, fully supportive at worst re TWAW narratives, teen medicalisation, erosion of women's sex based spaces and women's hard fought rights here.

We want to reel back to the 90s, Hilary Clinton's messages on migration...they would make Trump and Braverman blush. You wanna hear what the Left used to say about migration and their working class members' wages? Would get you ejected from Labour Conference in 2023.

Does anyone even think the Labour Party of Kinnock and John Smith from just three to four decades ago would have any truck with identity politics and empty mantras like TWAW?

Yes, Brexit may have created a course correction where One Nation liberal Tories have lost the narrative to more of a distinctly Right of Centre "National" Conservatism (highlighting the likes of Cates and Kruger).

But the whole direction of travel of the Left, from US to Europe and UK, has been to legitimise previously mocked and rejected positions like open borders, TWAW, ID politics, academic bias, freezing of free speech (especially anything criticising BLM or TWAW), and wholesale adoption and application of anti racism, pro trans ideology, critical race theory, via the sledgehammer of the left, ie DEI installed at all levels of civic society throughout the West.

Imho, the Left have moved way further from the centre than the Right have. And were made to feel guilty about trying to row back.

So Tories like Mordaunt, May, Nokes etc.

Yes, and libdem's like that geezer in charge, whose name escapes me...Ed? And Keir Starmer and Lammy and Creasey and....

Looking forward to that Sharron Davies headed project that's going to put all the MPs and prospective MPs on the spot on this.

Of course the same parties that fought for women’s liberation are going to fight for trans rights. They won’t just stop fighting for rights now because women have theirs.

Except they can't and won't define 'trans' or what rights they lack; and they are doing it by taking a sledgehammer to women's rights.

You can't just stick a 'rights' label on something and say 'Of course the party will fight for it; it's a question of rights.'. What about billionaires' rights? Golfers' rights? Aspidistras' rights? Will the same parties fight for those - without defining or justifying them? What about if those rights infringe on the rights of, say, children or disabled people?

You have written something that looks like a reason, but it isn't.

Of course the same parties that fought for women’s liberation are going to fight for trans rights. They won’t just stop fighting for rights now because women have theirs.

I would expect the same parties that fought for women's liberation to want to protect women's hard won rights, not throw them under the bus for the sake of a small group of male people who have decided to identify as the most vulnerable in order to justify them (alone among all males) having access to women's spaces and sports.

Given that "trans rights" are apparently in direct opposition to women's rights, why on earth do you think "of course" people who fought for women's rights are now going to abandon that cause and fight for the competing demands of biological males instead?

That makes no sense whatsoever.

But don't you think it's interesting that these women can operate off the party hymn sheet on sex and gender without paying a political penalty? When they speak in the Commons they aren't booed.and heckled like pantomime villains. They aren't told that they should not attend party conferences. They aren't made a political outcast.

Meanwhile, Rosie Duffield...

Literally anyone who says that TWAW, i.e. all of Labour except Rosie Duffield and all of the Lib Dems.

I remember, back in the closing years of the 20th century, discovering that the French school curriculum included Logic as a subject in its own right - and thinking it was a pity we didn't do likewise.

I've revised that opinion. I now think it's an absolute disaster that we don't.

The French people certainly seem to have a lot less truck with these ideas than the British.

Once you establish right you fight to maintain those rights.

You don't just go 'oh we'd got them, we can take them for granted'. Rights are fragile and not set in stone (as the whole subject demonstrates).

We may seek to increase rights for other groups - but actually trans people ALREADY had most of these rights anyway.

And the law is well aware that if new rights are established this may produce a conflict. These conflicts needs to be addressed properly and balanced. New rights can not superceed and replace old rights - because if you'd established a right you've done so for a reason which doesn't just cease to exist.

Conflicts have to be resolved in a proportionate way relating to the level of impact.

One transwomen walking into a changing room of women has an impact on multiple women. Therefore the impact of asking the single transwoman to use a separate facility is proportionate and reasonable. The right for single sex is established in law and the impact on multiple women is greater than on a single person - especially if this puts them at greater risk of physical harm not just mental distress. Validating the transwomen isn't sufficient reason to impose the rights of the transwoman over and above that of the multiple women.

Thats the point. Understand how the law works.

They sing straight from the party hymn sheet. They are not Off Message.Theresa May was PM when she put Self ID on the table.

What it does show is the Trans issue is not one of Left or Right, it crosses that political divide.

Who's heckling them now that the wind has changed? Who boos when they speak?

I'd say I'm leftish. I believe in equal opportunities, of lifting up those left behind and a society that looks after its weaker members, and a state which supports all of that. But I also believe in personal responsibility and not sitting back and allowing the state to support you when you could support yourself. So maybe that makes me somewhere in the middle.

Wherever I am, I really want to see a decent centre-left party but Labour ain't it - they are pegged to the far left by the unions and I fundamentally disagree with their stance on women's rights. I don't trust their sudden realisation that women don't have penises because it comes across as doing and saying anything to get over the election line. And I immensely dislike the "We know what's best for you, whether you like it or not" that so often comes from the left.

I don't know if I'll vote Tory at the next election - I don't buy the "all Tories are EVIL!!!1" narrative for one moment but then I fundamentally disagree with some of their policies. Maybe I'll just stay politically homeless.

Me. Feel a bit lost with where I would vote politically. Whilst I agree with some of the things stated at the party conference, I worry that it’s also just a front and they won’t deal with other issues such as inequalities in women’s healthcare in general etc. Whilst I don’t agree with biological males being in women’s spaces I also worry that trans people will experience even more abuse and hate because of the speeches and comments made, and I don’t want it to be the case that trans people are discouraged from seeking healthcare, I feel like there definitely needs to be more of a middle ground so women’s safety is prioristised without compromising health and safety of trans people too.

“Fran2023 · Today 10:16

@Duffdee’Of course the same parties that fought for women’s liberation are going to fight for trans rights.’

There is no ‘of course’ about it. It is obvious that Trans rights tramples all over women’s rights. Anyone with an ounce of understanding can see that.”

Oh yes there is. Think these thoughts through to the end and it’s clear where this form of liberal unfettered individualism leads. The rights of the individual will trump group rights and groups will have to make space and be inclusive for all individuals. That’s what has always happened in the U.K. since the 1960’s. Society will make space for trans people and then society will be making space for some other group of people next until everyone can just be whoever they want to be.

Unless the political right wins big across the western world that is. Then things will start moving in a very different direction to how they have been moving for the last 3 or 4 generations. But I’ve no doubt most feminists will vote for parties that support individualism which will of course include trans rights.

I believe the west is in a period of political crisis right now which will be resolved and result in a new consensus. If feminists help the right beat the left and the right do win this then the next forty years won’t look anything like the last forty. Society will drift rightwards for decades regardless of whoever is in power if their ideas become the new consensus in exactly the same way as society’s across the west have shifted toward liberal individualism regardless of who is in power for decades now.

I just wonder what you mean by ‘right’, Duffdee. Because the opposite of liberal individualism is collectivism and that can be found in the Soviet Union and in feudalist societies before the French Revolution.

The ‘right’ can mean many things these days and I struggle to see a coherent programme.

So I think we still see anti-liberalism in the communist and Marxist parties. Because Marxism is modern, not post modern. These parties are like the exception that proves the rule. The modern centre left are like a post-modern metastasis of Marxism and liberalism. I’ve heard it being called neomarxism.