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????

@MargotBamborough nope, I’m not anti-feminist per say. Women are half the population and a unique social class with a role every bit as important as men’s and deserve equal consideration and treatment, a movement designed to do this is something I support.

Im gleeful about a bunch of self centred liberal guardian readers getting their come uppance though.

That's a little wishful thinking. If there is going to a pendulum swing, it's with Labour winning, the Conservatives moving to a Family Faith Flag position, Thatcher 2.0 with a moral component. Ready to capitalise on Starmer failure. And a strategy of ECHR exit, likely GRA scrapping, and absolute secure borders. I believe Labour won't get a second term, after they replace him with Angela Rayner.

TRA will have no breathing space. But as Duffdee says, there'll be ramifications.

So basically women are screwed whoever wins?

Generally, Margot.

There's some possibility of that. Arrows in history can change direction, but it's never subtle.

There is a proverb:

If a stone should fall on a jug then that is bad for the jug.
But if a jug should fall on a stone then that is also bad for the jug.
It is always bad for the jug.

I guess that we're the jug. I'm just not prepared to be a fucking jug.

@RealityFan

So many on MN are talking about vanquishing the GRA and leaving the ECHR if need be to achieve this. That would be a massive blow against TRA if ever achieved, but would also undermine the left liberal direction of the UK in the last half century.

Maybe a bit, but I'm not so sure.

You could withdraw from the ECHR if you wanted, and go way more towards left-wing economic policy, and still keep a "human rights" culture. It would just be operating in a different way, so protected by national courts as the final stage.

And I can't see the Tory Party banning abortion and bringing back the death penalty.

Obviously modern liberalism did lead to things like the GRA. But that hardly means it had to happen; or the left, or any political party, really has some very consistent principles that they use.

It would seem very strange to think, oh yes, with this set of political principles, in a couple of generations, logically we will believe that men are women and women are men.

Now "human rights" culture presumably did play a part in how things played out.

And I think the left may have been blind to the flaws in the system, because for a long time that system helped the left get what it wanted.

In that case I will spoil my ballot, but I have more disdain for the bad guys who identify as good guys than I do for the bad guys who are just openly bad.

I suspect a National Conservatism would never go down the American route, we have been overtly secular for a very long time.

But there could be some tightening on abortion term limits, much more stringent law and order, absolutely more draconian on irregular migrants, and a tax system very focussed on married families and boosting birth rates per family.

This would likely come with more restrictions on personal rights like demonstrating etc. And remember, no ECHR to appeal to.

Basically a milder version of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia.

By definition there would be pushback on GNC behaviours, and some chilling of LGB peoples and maybe even feminism itself.

I can't see the country ever becoming non secular, but religion would return to having a more visible presence and role. Politicians would once again wear their religion on their sleeves.

I'm curious as to whether this would be a price worth paying by GC women to finally get on top of and eliminate TRA as the potent force it currently is.

@MargotBamborough ”MargotBamborough · Today 19:59

So basically women are screwed whoever wins?”

Nope, a healthier better society could still emerge. You seem to be equating the post 1960’s moral paradigm coming to an end with women getting screwed? Neither of the sexes should be screwed in a future worth building, men and women are of equal value and it’s not a zero sum game. Has 1960’s liberal feminism helped women? Sex work isn’t empowering work it’s exploitation. Porn isn’t freedom, it damages the minds of men and degrades women.

For what it’s worth, here is what I hope will happen in the west:

UK. I hope the conservative party is destroyed electorally because it’s a two party system so a genuinely Burkean Conservative Party cannot arise while the current one lingers on. Difficult times are coming so it won’t be easy for whoever is in charge but I have every faith in the Labour Party to screw up absolutely everything they touch and completely discredit themselves and the wider liberal left for at least a generation.

USA. I don’t know much about the USA but I believe the left have legislated from the bench there and installed a deep state. I hope the Republicans do the same thing to them now they’ve got wise to it and are asking themselves deep questions about how power really functions.

In Europe things seem to be slowing working themselves out but they have different systems over there. But the AfD is now polling second in West Germany and first in the East German states. National rally could win in France etc.

I think the forth turning theory Is basically true and that we are in a crisis in the west that will lead to a radical rethinking and a new consensus. If I’m right that doesn’t mean women will get screwed.

Either these 'debators' communicate by shouting slogans repetitively, or through impermeable word-salad that's designed deliberately to obfuscate the point you'd think they would be eager to make (here's looking at you, Judith Butler ...)

In this case the incomprehensible werriting is incomprehensible for good reason. It boils down to lazy, uncritical, ideological thinking. This is the train of thought that eagerly seizes on specific ideas because they're judged to be emanating from the left or the right, and the 'thinker' has positioned themselves on one side or the other of that spectrum.

And that's fraught with all kinds of difficulties, as the gobbledygook in the post above illustrates, because if the division between the further left and right hasn't always been problematic (cf. the 'horseshoe' effect) then nowadays it's barely discernible. The far right are masquerading as the far left, at the same time gleefully proclaiming that the left is eating itself. And the left has left itself wide open to that. It seems that those who scream loudest that they're being bullied and oppressed can commandeer the ground on which those battles have traditionally been fought. Hence a betrayal from the left stings far more than one from the right, which has never attempted to conceal who it is and what it stands for.

On a semi-related point, this kind of thing is what's got the leftists/rightists in a good old quandary over their loyalties relating to the Israel/Palestine issue (notwithstanding recent awful events) - which kind of 'ism' might have altered its place on the political spectrum with history? How are particular pro-Palestinian unions finding themselves accused of all-out racism in the form of right-wing anti-semitism on MSM and SM? How, and why, has this shift happened? (hint, it's not down to a politics of individualism).

As stated upthread, TR activism is good old male supremacism with a shiny new label. Clustering around the more conservative, British centralism, we have the appropriation of neo-liberalism. But plonking a New Labour sticker on it doesn't remove it any too far from the previously despised Thatcherism, despite having taken on a supposedly leftist mantra. Liberalism and neoliberalism, incidentally, are not the same thing. And just look at which 'charities' (for which read lobby groups) have the strongest financial backing for an insight into that one.

What does your garden variety left/right ideologist do with that? Easy answer. They shout slogans, or they obfuscate. Look upthread.

False dichotomy. Other political systems are available.

@SerafinasGoose

How are particular pro-Palestinian unions finding themselves accused of all-out racism in the form of right-wing anti-semitism on MSM and SM? How, and why, has this shift happened?

For why any shift has happened in the media, I don't know.

What do you think has happened?

Do you think that the left-wing pro-Palestinian side has a real tendency towards anti-semitism?

US, Canada, Australia, NZ, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Finland...all captured.

Name me anywhere other than UK that is TERF Island, and even here, rights are up for grabs if Starmer wins.

Poland via PiS is championing a GC government, but you might not like their policies on abortion and LGB rights. Ditto Hungary.

All I'm doing is putting forwards the reasonable analysis that trans rights are the inevitable end point of Thatcher individualism, Blair codified human rights, refusal for the Conservative govt since 2010 to halt the activist left drift in civic society. The late 60s social revolution chickens have come home to roost.

The drive to authentic self, lived experience trumping material reality, weaponised kindness, have all strengthened this ultimate expression of people's "happiness", their gender ID.

I'm more and more skeptical that putting TRA to bed won't necessitate drastic changes. Not simply returning to the status quo we had in the 90s and 00s

For why any shift has happened in the media, I don't know.

What do you think has happened?

To paraphrase my post above, a convergence of the traditional left and the traditional right. Now more than ever there is an increased blurring of the boundaries between where one starts and the other ends, to the point that the distinction is now all but meaningless.

Couple this with a tendency to compartmentalize particular political positions with ‘left’ or ‘right’. Pro-Israel started from a position on the left, in opposition to Hitler and his atrocities on the far right. Now it's shifted to the right, with Palestine occupying the opposite field.

In between we have the Cold War. Israel would likely not now exist as Israel without the backing of the US. On the other side is Hamas, and Hezbollah as the proxy army of Iran. The US/Israel consequently moves to the right, with pro-Palestinians and Corbynistas congregating on the left. As most people know, the situation is a lot more nuanced than that. There is blame, recrimination and victimhood on both sides.

Do you think that the left-wing pro-Palestinian side has a real tendency towards anti-semitism?

I’ve witnessed what happens when such a claim is made, to be greeted by accusations of racism and the escalation of some really nasty confrontations (thus shutting down any discussion of the kind).

My own view is that as a collective entity, if there is such a thing, then no. It doesn't always make for popularity.

On one hand I’m not sure the U.K. will be an outlier against other captured western democracies. I think we could be, given votes, but I see how children are being indoctrinated and it’s concerning

Oth I see migration as a major and natural consequence which will strain some post War institutions

It’ll probably be this that ruptures the current hegemony (I think I last used that in uni days ;)

All I'm doing is putting forwards the reasonable analysis that trans rights are the inevitable end point of Thatcher individualism, Blair codified human rights, refusal for the Conservative govt since 2010 to halt the activist left drift in civic society. The late 60s social revolution chickens have come home to roost.

This ignores the fact that you don't have to accept any fundamentally unscientific, unevidenced and non-falsifiable beliefs to support any of those other things (even Thatcher individualism, which is just a matter of values, though not my personal ones). Everything else that's come out of the late 60s social revolution - movement towards racial equality, equal working rights for women, legalisation of homosexuality etc - is justifiable (and indeed was argued and won) purely on the grounds of consistency of treatment across groups and removing unjustifiable prejudice.

As far as trans rights activism attempts to do the same thing, its a perfectly valid and valuable extension of that. The problem is that it also requires us to accept a load of nonsense claims (about permanence of "gender identity", changeability of biological sex, etc.) that either exist without evidence or are actively contradicated by the evidence that exists. That leads it into a realm that is different in kind, not just degree, from other types of social activism.

Sorry wrong thread!

Oh, no it isn't.

I think it's difficult not to be a little, maybe not gleeful, but to have a kind of grim satisfaction when the problems of social movements you argued against, and were dismissed for, suddenly become manifest and clear to the people who did the dismissing.

I do think it's pretty clear that some of the liberal and leftist and progressive assumptions of the late 20th century are now birthing their children.And that's how that usually goes, it takes a generation of two for the people's ingrained barriers to craziness to wane, and then society sees the true nature of the change they have instigated. By that time, many will accept the new way of thinking as normative.

Examples - there is the "right side of history" thing which comes out of the idea of progressivism.

There is the hierarchy of oppression - this is one i still see regularly trotted out here as an argument despite its clear problems. Not as just a reminder that we need to consider how this idea or policy will affect the disadvantaged, but with this underlying sense that the most oppressed, however we decide who that is, should be somehow be given more say, their narrative needs to be accepted without question, must be the ones in the right, etc. That is, the argument for accepting a certain POV or policy isn't about the truth of the position, it's that the people it supposedly supports are the bottom of the hierarchy. It's essentially just a flipped version of saying those on top know best so their views should be the ones given precedence.

There is the idea of more freedom as always better, which comes from the liberal side. It includes a lack of consideration of how social structure is important if life isn't just a matter of survival of the fittest.

As Mary Harrington has been writing about, there is the change in thinking about things like the nature of medicine, body modification, transhumanism, in the context of feminism whether becoming free as a woman means suppression of normal biological functions. Add if it does, then what is a woman, in the end?

And while a lot of people on FWR don't like to address these apart from straw-man versions, there has been a huge push in pop culture for decades, which came from feminism, to deny that women's bodies and men's have different capacities, and also to say that single sex provisions are inherently dodgy.

All of these ideas, if we question their foundations, which probably needs to happen, would have knock-on effects on other issues. It does not mean that they would be reversed, but they would need to be reexamined. And I think it's true that a lot of people on the left are really scared about what that would mean. It's a big part of why some instinctively pull back when these topics come up.

The Left are on Miriam Cates neck for simply suggesting more family-friendly tax policies.
If we're getting to the point where liberals attack anything pro-family, then maybe it's time to reappraise.

werriting

There's a word that doesn't get enough outings.

@MadderthanMorris

As far as trans rights activism attempts to do the same thing, its a perfectly valid and valuable extension of that. The problem is that it also requires us to accept a load of nonsense claims (about permanence of "gender identity", changeability of biological sex, etc.) that either exist without evidence or are actively contradicated by the evidence that exists. That leads it into a realm that is different in kind, not just degree, from other types of social activism.

I agree with this.

You certainly do see arguments like, "trans women are women, so therefore they should be in women's spaces".

And that does look like giving people "rights" on a new type of basis, that is operating with a false claim.

Although it would be possible to argue for rights of transsexuals on the basis that it's a medical issue and it's a good thing to accommodate them, even if it's a legal fiction.