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????

“It wasn't 'total inclusion' that was ordered, but redress. An attempt to gain equity, and parity.”

Yes it was. And it wasn’t an attempt to gain equality of opportunity either but equality of outcome so as not to be negatively affected by thing like biological reality… And that’s for everyone now. The waiter is bringing society’s meal. Time to eat it up I guess?

The last part is true

Did society order this? Well I guess they did in the starter dish of the GRA which blossomed into a banquet

Where we go next is down to votes

In what ways are trans women negatively affected by the biological reality of them being male, such that there is an inequality that society needs to redress?

@RebelliousCow · Today 15:53

“People cannot be whatever they want - that is just a fantasy told to children to encourage them to aspire.”

REALLY? Well now that’s very interesting. You seem to be saying that reality cannot just always be trumped by the individual’s will?

So if someone said that women who choose to have children cannot expect that not to impact their career would they have a point or not? Let me guess, that’s different because reasons?

“The last part is true

Did society order this? Well I guess they did in the starter dish of the GRA which blossomed into a banquet

Where we go next is down to votes”

Yeah society ordered this. What we call the liberal left put it on the menu and recommended it.

I guess you are right where we go next is up to the voters and it’s no inevitable… I guess what I’m saying is you can’t pick the chips off the plate and send the fish back, either accept the whole meal or send the whole lot back.

I have no idea what point you are making here.

What do you think would happen if all women said "fuck that" and decided not to have children?

Don't worry - nor do they.

My basic take is that is was the Right that kicked this all off, specifically Thatcher. She was the first politician, certainly the first party leader and PM, who explicitly encouraged individualism ("no such thing as society", Harry "Loadsamoney" Enfield, yuppies etc). Sure, she was a God fearing Christian, and socially allied on the Mary Whitehouse fringe, but her breaking of the social contract between the state and citizens, pushed us into selfish, isolated behaviour patterns. I really do think this would have been the acorn laid which grew into men trampling all over women's boundaries. A really good example of The Law Of Unintended Consequences.This was likely encouraged further by Thatcher's education reforms which laid the ground for academies and trusts, and schools outsourcing RSE teaching to third parties, these now being the Stonewall/Mermaid outfits.
So, four decades plus of atomised society, everyone out for themselves, less and less obligation to temper hyper individualism with communitarian needs and preferences.

Then we move on to Blair, he had nothing negative to say about hyper individualism, indeed encouraging it further (pretty much Thatcher 2.0 here), typical liberal left refusal to moralise or judge, and was instrumental in the rolling out of legalistic frameworks in society solidifying these freedoms and further away from anything that could be viewed as bigoted criticism, racism, sexism, homophobia. As encapsulated in the GRA 2004, and EA 2010.

So, the market driven hyper individualism of Thatchers 80s was reinforced in law by Blair's 90s and 00s legalistic protections of freedom of expression.

And so I see the consequent car crash of trans chaos in 2023 as both a Right and Left mess.

I think it's an old fashioned MRA point. You don't see them that often, these days. In my day, we had sexists, and we were grateful.

@RealityFan loved your post about thatcher. I have often wondered to what extent this self individualism that we live under today was cemented then.

The only thing that kicked this off was the GRA

We could have all the individualism we could take and if there was no legal way to change sex it would not matter

Of course we have a measure of free will; but we are all born into a certain set of conditions which we did not choose; and it those conditions which, in large part determine our choices. You have to work with what you have been 'assigned'.

You cannot become a woman if you are a man. You cannot become Prime minister of the U.K if you are not a British citizen. You cannot become a singing legend if you are tone deaf. You cannot become an Olympic swimmer if you cannot swim. You can of course, learn to swim and strive to be the best you can if that's what you want...but unless you've been in training most of your life you are unlikley to win gold.

If you were born a Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu. -then you will never become a brahmin guru......I will never travel to every country in the world - because my circumstances contain limitations; duties; responsibilities, other types of commitment that will inevitably preclude that.

We all have to come to terms with limitation, constraints of one sort or other. That is the nature of life on earth.

I will vote Labour as the only option to get the SNP out.

But they are simply the lesser of the two evils.

Other parties have zero chance in my area.

I've been on a real rollercoaster in the last 7-10 years. Up until the early 00s, I was a died in the wool Tory, libertarian, Thatcher junkie, plus side order of bolshy atheist, Hitchens/Dawkins/Goldacre t-shirt as proud New Atheist.
The future was set, no God, no Leftist posturing, I was cool with Billy Elliot GNC and Cameron's same sex marriage stuff.
Was pretty scathing of feminists at the time (FFS Bindel and Moore, just let us guys alone to have fun).

A decade later, I'm recalibrating EVERYTHING.
Thatcher is now more negative than positive (ideally SDP should have broken the mould in 80s to force Thatcher's demise), my admiration for Blair sunk by knowing what he did to society with the GRA (not sure about EA).

And then my total loss of faith in Conservatism as "my" party acts as Blair 2.0 cheerleaders re no grip on any moral course (GRA should always have been scrapped, but Cameron needed it as the springboard for his place in history, same sex marriage law in 2013).

And as the pot is stirred and something very different from the cream rises to the top, just at the point I'm ready to embrace a Left position as Tories evisceration of UK is more and more visible, we have a movement effectively less advanced than the Druids, as the modern liberal Left movement resembles the Pagans worshipping at the altar of pseudo science like TWAW and teen medicalisation, and complicit in trashing decades of women's rights and centuries of free speech.

And a year of CBT has led me out of the darkness of visceral anger in 2022 re Lia Thomas and Jessica Yanniv, and into reconciliation of my emotions, as I move into a more spiritual headspace, but my skepticism in trans itself now broadened to the whole societal structure that is supporting and nurturing it to the total detriment of women and kids, and free speech and academic freedom that affects us all.

Yes, this has been a real journey for me, and the biggest eye opener, and feeling of abandonment, from so many all thru civic society, all the way across the West.

And yes, it started with Thatcher...

I don’t think society ordered the GRA at all. That really arose out of legal technicalities and a government too spineless to address inequality for gay and lesbian people.

It’s just that society was naive in believing that it was just a teeny tiny number of poor, vulnerable people and couldn’t possibly have wider effects. And parliament let is down by not scrutinising it adequately.

In 2019, a senior pediatric specialist was barred from her own conference.

She said, in all innocence, that kids who say they're, eg, astronauts, shouldn't be humoured and lied to that they are one, but that trying hard at school and going to astronaut college when they grow up, means they could become one. To allow a child to pretend it's something it's not and could never be, was deleterious to the child.

She obviously was alluding to the impossibilities of children changing sex, and the trans/ally attendees knew that too. And she was put out on her ear.

Labour support those people, and not the consultant.

Where would I be able to find more about this please RealityFan (the conference/paediatrician incident)?
(This is my area of interest.)

Apologies for brief derail

I notice you've spoken twice recently about Thatcher's comment about society.

Without addressing her economic approach, I would be careful in how you present this, it's often quoted but usually without the surrounding context. Which was that society, and especially the state, is not an abstract thing that exists apart from individuals who make it up. Whatever ability the state has to give benefits or services to citizens depends on the actual productivity of actual individuals who are also part of society. So asking or expecting things from the state isn't just requesting them from some faceless being that can dispense largess with no consequence - it is asking your fellow citizens to provide them, and the expectation that those people are being productive is inherent in the request.

She was trying to address an attitude that came about for pretty understandable historical reasons, when many workers made almost no wages, where government, often local government, would provide a lot of benefits to families and their children. Eventually due to union action the wages were higher though, and families had more individual resources, but many people still expected the same services.

And what happened was that many of the local bodies were deep in debt. It's easy to forget that the Labour government in 1979 had to get a loan from the IMF, which is really shocking in retrospect, it is difficult to imagine that now. That's the kind of scenario that led to so much distrust of Labour's underlying approach to spending and services, and the kind of approach that Thatcher took. To some extent had to take, it's not like the IMF gives loans without strings being attached.

I'll delve into the recesses of my memory. I remember it, because at the time I was just starting a menopause/HRT training seminar in my work, and it absolutely peaked me, one of the major events that solidified my defiance.

Of course, worse was to come, Helen Joyce reporting on a whole child safety conference being forced to fold when trans ally attendees refused to share the leadership with GC speakers.

And of course Eliza Mondegreen's excoriating reports from WPATH and EPATH.

For me, any self respecting liberal leftist, socialist, should unequivocally pan such behaviour. Shamefully, the opposite is the case. And with such a piss poor record of sticking up for children, free speech and academic freedom, Labour don't deserve support.

Thanks. Yes please- if you can find it. It does ring a distant bell for me.
Yep. Eliza Mondegreen is great on this.

Yes, I know her quote is "misquoted" or her intent was deliberately mischaracterised.

However, the effects of her govt are undeniable. Those dole queues that ripped apart families and communities, the war-like atmosphere during the miners strike, and long term scarring, the absolute move from communitarian to libertarian.

Yes, she may have been down on social progress (Section 28), but she lets the dogs off the leash re selfishness and hyper individualism. To be cemented legally, and it seems irreversibly (GRA and EA will not be revisited to be toned down, only to be made more complex) by Blair. And Cameron not applying conservative oversight due to his need to fast track same sex marriage.

@RealityFan ”And yes, it started with Thatcher...”

Well I’d certainly agree that Thatcher started the economic side of it, but the cultural stuff I think probably mostly comes from the 1960’s.

Saying that I have often thought it could go back to the enlightenment itself. I think Christianity did a lot of the ‘heavy lifting’ in the past keeping society together and stopping and all consuming forces of liberalism dissolving society all together, after Dawkins and the new atheists that seems to be happening now.

In fact I think our current order is breaking down and everything needs rethinking. Mary Harrington seems to be doing a great job of rethinking feminism.

Even the Tories in Scotland are suggesting a vote for Labour to oust the SNP -

news.sky.com/story/douglas-ross-row-erupts-as-scottish-tory-leader-suggests-people-should-vote-labour-to-oust-snp-12853285

He was forced to recant but the recent results of the R&H by-election suggests that it is happening.

I found it really interesting to read that full interview and the context around that quote. Relevant section:

'If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.'

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689