The misogynist left

[catduckgoose]

I'm on the left and have been all my life, but I've been thinking a lot recently about the misogynist strand of leftist politics and how it is that their views cluster around so many women-hating beliefs, such as:

1. TWAW and gender ideology - seeing male desires as more important than the needs of women and girls.
2. Glorifying sex work - disregarding the physical and mental harm to women, in favour of what best supports male lechery.
3. Uncritical support of Islam - ignoring the inherent misogyny and violence of men against women, and using oppression narratives to excuse this.

The last one there has been a huge amount of in the past few days in context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, I made the mistake of watching war footage of Hamas' brutality, particularly towards women (Shani Louk video is absolutely horrifying), and then I see people on the left, mostly men, defending all this as a just cause and crying 'Islamophobia' to anyone disagreeing.

The frustrating thing is those who promote these views don't even recognise their misogyny and sometimes even try to twist it to paint anyone criticising these views as misogynist!

Anyway I just wanted to open a conversation about this and was wondering if anyone else feels the same and has other examples of similar beliefs amongst the misogynist left.

I get the sense ( only articulating this thought for the first time, hence not well developed) that maybe the Left in its attempt to flatten out and equalise all differences has made a mere fetish out of womanhood. A fetish in which women ( as a category of human being) are associated purely with sex.

Motherhood and the family are diminished or seen as oppressive constructs and obstructions in the path of equality. Women must become like men in all spheres except for sexual activity or association - where women are reminded they exist purely to serve male sexual needs.

Hence the 'sex positivity' and 'sex work' commitments. I think most/many men tend to make a fetish out of women and things associated with women. I was told, earlier, by a gay man that many of his sexual partners have had a thing about wearing women's clothes and underwear ( it arouses them sexually). Gay men also make a fetish out of womanhood in the form of Drag - and in their 'stanning' of female divas and actresses.

Autogynephilic heterosexual men ( who are surprisingly large in number) also make a fetish out of womanhood that is rooted in sexual arousal via the wearing of women's clothing - often with an emphasis on underwear and sexualised high heels and stockings; and through imagining themsleves to be female sexual objects of desire.

@RebelliousCow
Woman is no longer the sex of over half the population, now it is a choice on an a la carte fetish menu.

The Left has become attached to openness as a supreme virtue - which by extension means no borders and no boundaries. But without borders and boundaries there is chaos and breakdown of stability; and the breakdown of the sorts of safeguards that all organsisms require to keep themselves safe and protected.

Pushing, and demolishing boundaries, has become an imperative accorded ultimate virtue. As you say this also comes from Queer theory and post modernistic constructions of the self.

Yes, womanhood is a mere construction that anyone can build or buy into.......mainly men in pursuit of sexual kicks.

Along with a society that at the moment is all about 'I'm worth it' and abandoning boring, stuffy things like respecting or caring about other people and your impact on them. And this population's frequently seen co diagnoses also needs considering: do those needs cause social isolation, over reliance on virtual worlds, a desire to not have to manage behaviour to be within boundaries, a need to break boundaries, a difficulty distinguishing between service providers/therapeutic carers who can be screamed at and demanded of and will continue to be all about you and members of the general public with no responsibilities or interest towards you; socially acceptable way to express rage through screaming and obscenities/extreme violent ideation that normally would be seen as unacceptable and a disturbing sign of someone unwell?

I entirely agree.

@RebelliousCow
Oppressed by the state of Israel, and by Jews.
When I was student I had several Jewish friends whose parents had either been expelled from Arab countries, or had left before they were pushed, with their clothes on their backs and bugger all else. It's a story that has been conveniently forgotten by the Left.

Millions were dispossessed after World War II: Germans from Eastern Europe, Hindus in what is now Pakistan, Muslims in what is now India. Most of these populations have been successfully resettled and absorbed into their new countries. Not the Palestinians. Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the UN could have resolved the issue, but have elected not to.

This is what I can't understand.
I saw a flag at a pro Palestinian rally yesterday "Queers for Palestine" - wtf?
Do they know what Hamas do to gay people?
Do they know that you can not only be gay in Israel, but join in the Gay Pride festival every year? It's topsy turvy.

I think we are very lucky and feel safe

It really is a luxury in many ways

The views they align with are very dangerous in reality

I have no idea why the far left align themselves with anti democratic, homophobic, misogynistic organisations and nations. It's the very opposite of equality.

Like the inclusiveness, feminism and religious/cultural/homosexual tolerance being conditional on only token, performative BITS of these things and never letting them inconvenience male people's personal fictions.

It's the very opposite of left politics full stop, in its actual as opposed to 'evolved' fuckedup semantic meaning.

They identify as being left these days. Lots of noise and veneer, but very actual reality optional. (Do not fact shame).

I'll add, logically, as the 'left' (all parties identifying as such) has become the politics of male supremacism, misogyny, racism, exclusion, homophobia about people actually being homosexual, religiously and culturally intolerant and wishing to dismantle safeguarding where it inconveniences mostly adults....?

that kind of leaves the right as the party standing against those things, and the left having made them that way.

Or possibly we now need 'up' or 'down' or 'sideways' or other direction politics, with left and right now buggered beyond any remaining functionality.

I think seeing the misogyny of the left over the last few years is giving me a bit of an identity crisis. I had thought I was left. But am repeatedly told that it’s right wing to think woman = adult human female.
There’s men calling themselves left, feminist even, thinking they are oh so right on, who have appalling views on surrogacy, prostitution etc

They do. It's been hijacked as a cause. By

....a certain type of men.

@Maireas
The sort of man you really don't want to get trapped in a lift with.

I think men on the activist left were bad enough when they were playing around with stuff like nuclear free zones in the 80s (yep, thanks to Ken Livingstone, no soviet missiles would have landed on County Hall), talking up Cuba and Venezuela, reverentially discussing Tony Benn's diaries, viewing Russell Brand as the link to get young voters in board.

But watching the debacle of trans politics unfold, and realising that identarianism is as much a disease as it is a belief, and that they can look the other way while Hamas goes full ISIS, proves to me that they're a group that cannot ever be allowed near the levers of power.

I once identified as socialist, and I certainly was angry back then, and pretty dismissive of the concerns of the same peoples the Left disdains today. I'm very glad I grew up.

Yes, I too, once identified, very much, as being of the radical left. I became a vegetarian and protested vivisection; went on hunt sabs; lived in a tent outside of a nuclear base for over a year; went on 'Stop the City' demonstrations and so on.

But even then, there were always people, always men, who saw themselves as anarchists - and this was just a front for violent destruction. They would smash things, abuse people, call people " scum"........I never got involved with anything like that. I took courses in non-violent resistance instead......and then eventually realised that the enemy we were fighting was also in our own camp.

This led to more of an inner psychological path, then to a spiritual one.

I think some people don't seem to move on from their youthful anger against injustice, and are still saying and doing the same things they did in their youth.
I recall turning up to photograph a confrontation in Liverpool between a right wing/Britian first group who had bussed in to Liverpool for the day........and the anti-fascists, dressed in black and wearing face masks also bussed in ...shouting and screaming and behaving very badly.....some might say like actual fascists. Far scarier than the supposed fascists.

I thought i recognised one of those anti-fascists; a woman around my age......early 50s.......who I'm sure i could remember from a group called 'The Peace Convoy' ( anything but peaceful) an anarchist group from a few decades earlier. Still saying, and doing, what she did then.

Jeremt Corbyn is like that; a perpetual angry student; a professional protestor whose whole identity is tied up in being so.

I hold left wing views.

I think a lot of leftist men are just as bad as men in the general population and hold deeply rooted misogynistic views. They've had to appear to agree with feminism over the years but now the TRA movement has allowed them an avenue for putting their women back in their places and they're loving it.

We were very lucky Corbyn took a big loss

A dangerous option

I have never been able to understand why the left is so keen to bend over backwards to support Islam and not support women’s rights.

Its an interesting dichotomy, this whole conceit of 'boundaries are bad, no boundaries' when it comes to smashing taboos and limits on some things, such as safeguarding, the family, words actually having meaning - and yet huge great enormous boundaries slammed down on other things. Like women saying no in ways that risk making a penis sad. Or defiantly answering back with facts when told to admire the Emperor's clothes. Or daring to explain the downsides and issues for them in enabling someone else's preference on pronouns.

It's actually about re establishing a rather Victorian class system, where those who have been whining and ranting about the evils of it would really actually like to do it, they just want to be the ruling class this time around and get their turn rampantly controlling and oppressing everyone else. And mad snobbery, the hallmark now of the left is the absolute belief in superiority and entitlement. The world and leadership is for you and other enlightened righteous people like you, and anyone who does not agree with you and submit to you is scum who must be controlled and made to do what is good for them (and you), which is whatever you say it is.

Again, hello Victorian out of touch upper class, this is the same attitude historically held towards the working class, servants, the kids taken from their families and shipped to Australia, the indigenous people forcibly moved to reservations and taught 'how to be proper people' with free speech and culture forcibly stifled and punished.

I am naturally left politically. I loathe what the UK political left of all parties has become. It's on no one's side but their own, which is no different to the right- they just identify as being superior and virtuous in all ways. And to colonialism being good if they do it.

The left have absolutely no interest in protecting women's right. It is very much old forgotten Sigmund Freud penis envy theory. These angry women have a suppressed psychosexual development which at the end leads them to a very strong misandry.

Am finding this thread v educational and thought provoking.

Have always considered myself left wing but am really struggling with my allegiances these days.

I did A level Sociology back in the dark ages and remember feeling oh so superior to my parents (who were Tory voters). I actually cringe now when thinking about how I lectured my father over the dinner table about the utopia of Marxism. In my defence I lead a v sheltered life as a teenager due to chronic illness and was swept away my by my v openly communist A level teacher. She was just so cool with her DMs and badges 🤦‍♀️

Yesterday I was discussing the Israel/Palestine situation with my 18 yr old DD as she wanted to know why everyone on social media was supporting Palestine. She also said that many of her friends (a term I use loosely in this context), were suddenly Palestinian allies, whereas previously they had never shown the remotest interest or understanding of world affairs. She said that she wouldn't claim to support either side as she didn't understand the details or history of the situation. Her conclusion was that many of her peers just say what they think is the majority or popular view (and often align themselves with the views of their favourite celebrity)! I guess I shouldn't be shocked btmy this but it also explains a lot about the current gender ideology bollocks.

I must say that I feel very unsure of my political leanings at the moment and although we often have discussions about current affairs I really don't think that I know who I will vote for or support, or how to advise my DD to vote (I do realise that it's unlikely that she would take my advice anyway but we do share many views.)

It feels like misogyny on the right sees women as the private property of men and on the left, we are public property (particularly the enthusiasm for sex work and surrogacy).

I'm surprised that the left has embraced gender ID as it feels almost libertarian to me, you do you and screw anyone else.

Neither is a nice place to be, as a woman.