Jane Clare Jones on purity spirals

[IamSarah]

Really insightful post on X the platform formally known as Twitter I feel it's worth sharing on here:

x.com/janeclarejones/status/1745760345954689255?s=46&t=NGJBRqkXgp1UazF5I8yjXA

I've also seen on Twitter, here and elsewhere that something akin to a US cultural creep where the likes of a Matt Walsh gets discussed, inserted, used etc. to CLAIM UK feminism is being infiltrated because often voices in social media overlap because of our shared language and the dominance of English as a lingua franca around the world.

I'm repeating myself again here but social media isn't real life. Discussing Matt Walsh = potential radicalisation? What's discussed is the content of the film he made, warts & all, criticising him/his personal politics/beliefs & acknowledging the parts of the film he got right on exposing the absurdity of what we're dealing with. To equate that to mission creep & radicalisation of women in the UK who have been fighting for women's rights is, again, absurd.

It's the infantilisation of grown women oblivious to this mission creep & unaware they're turning into, or in the cusp of turning into white nationalists/fundamentalist Christian extremists that's the most ridiculous part of this nonsense.

And if there's posts on here you can point to as evidence of this, again, some proof would be good.

I fundamentally object to the blanket characterisation of women in the UK 'vulnerable' to radicalisation by charismatic US campaigners who have different challenges, different political hurdles to overcome & fundamentally completely different extremes in political spectrums.

When I read or hear people spouting this utter clap trap, it reminds me of the former SNP equalities convener Fiona Robertson. She's steeped in all the left wing progressive theories & claims the exact same thing about women in Scotland. And she too sounds as though she's never met or spoke to or listened to women she disagrees with. She's far too content to malign those she doesn't like or agree with, with spurious claims of US religious funding & radicalisation of mostly middle aged, fucked off women not having this bullshit imposed on us.

Honestly, get a grip. Or start showing your working & give us the proof that this imagined fear is here & a danger to us all.

Apologies @Delphinium20 , my reply has been framed as though you've said what you say you've observed. I've misread your original post.

Won’t people like them when they are angry? What will they do? Assert that men should be allowed into women’s spaces? Oh, wait…

Also named changed to ScathingAngelAgrona.

I don’t really get the not making Labour angry thing. Great name change though. Also I’ve just realised I can use my new name in this thread if I edit my old one below the Add your message here.

I've watched the Matt Walsh documentary. Bits of it were good [does a chicken cry?]. Bits were stupid. [Fuck off with the pickle jar]

I feel no more inclined to ban abortion than I ever have done.

In Scotalnd we've had 'wheesht for Indy' when it came to women's rights, which amounts to the same thing as beseeching Labour not to hate us.

<twirls>

Let’s see.

Thank goodness for that - you were sailing pretty close to the edge of the world there 😅

The Blue Haired Chicken Lady and the Tribesmen were the good bits of MW’s film.

Matt Walsh isn’t very likeable, especially what with the ripping Kellie Jay off with the T Shirt designs an’ all.

Still, I’d rather that film exist than not.

I like all the new names, BTW. Very sparkly!

Me as well especially after the events of the last few days, Labour are a joke and I damned unfunny one

The only infiltration of feminist groups I've seen in the UK is by TW pretending to be the good TW that are or so supportive of feminism as long as they are centred and made a fuss of eg. The Debbie’s, Kristina’s and now Katy’s or and who here remembers Seven-hex trying to brand as the rational TS

I see loads of things, here and there, on Twitter, YouTube, memes, bits of films, etc, which are fascinating. Watching student twits make fools of themselves, or shocking footage of doctors and therapists.

And often made by men I wouldn't listen to about absolutely anything else to do with women otherwise - their rights, laws, lives.

They're clearly practically the opposite of feminist.

No part of me being interested in the footage I'm watching, makes me want to listen to their sexist views on women in other contexts. And if they start to spout off, I click off.

Crikey, if women, who are generally feminist, argue tooth and nail about the slightest deviation in views and what they think should be feminism, I hardly think sexist blokes doing clickbait telly will do better.

Is this mission creep, or just a group that has concerns that don't fit as neatly as you'd like into your own viewpoint?

They aren't the same thing at all. The fact that groups that don't fit into some pre-determined left/right good/bad paradigm exist does not mean that somehow anyone who shares some views with them will adopt their other views.

Maybe they are afraid people might think they are right wing. Tbh, I think that's more likely. They are deathly afraid that someone - people on the left, including LP people - will think they are on the right, or maybe even - they are on the right but they don't realize it. So they need to prove to themselves and others that they aren't.

I think there is a psychological term for this?

Both.

Before I decided the chasm was unbridgeable, and that actually, I wanted to stay well away from the women on the other side of the chasm, I followed Brighton Collective members on twitter and read what they had to say. (That's why I came to decide I wanted to stay well away...)

It did come up at least once that they were very concerned about KJK's policy that women at Standing For Women events take precedence in the speaking order over men, because this could potentially mean a right-wing woman would get to speak and a left-wing man wouldn't. As far as I could ascertain, they thought it reasonable to worry that all it would take to get the whole of the female crowd present dedicating the rest if their lives to banning abortion/women working outside the home would be one fundamentalist Christian woman getting hold of the microphone.

It's like they see women outside their own circle as empty jugs, who will think and campaign for whatever idea has most recently been poured into us.

Yes, they're also terrified of pissing off Labour. More importantly, they think it's reasonable of Labour leadership to refuse to negotiate with their group if women elsewhere annoy Labour.

At first, the claim was more modest. It went like this: women with the Wrong Views about pronouns (i.e. that third-person singular pronouns are sex-based) and so on were calling themselves feminists, which meant the Wrong Women's words and deeds would damage the reputations of the Official Brighton Collective. Damaging the Brighton Collective's reputations was damaging their ability to convince Labour leadership that they weren't bigots, and thus stalling the Brighton Collective's attempts to convince Labour that women should have rights.

In response to these pleas, many women gradually stopped calling themselves feminists, including KJK herself. So what did this lead to?

Did the Brighton collective appreciate the gesture? Did they fuck. Since then, we have had person after person (assuming it's not the same representative of the Brighton Collective under multiple namechanges) coming on to this board to chastise women for posting on FWR if they don't call themselves feminists! On twitter, the Brighton collective bemoan the presence of women who argue for women's rights but won't call themselves feminists!

We had it on this very thread on Saturday, and I have just finished reading a 1000 post thread about JCJ's magazine from last January. Guess what? Exactly the same sentiment -that FWR had too many women on it these days who didn't call themselves feminists- was expressed!

This is gaslighting! I'm so enraged, I think I might have spontaneously developed the ability to breathe fire.

But anyway, since KJK started calling herself a femalist, the complaints from the Brighton Collective have changed. As discussed, before the stalled negotiations were attributed to the Wrong Women also calling themselves feminists. Now, the fault for stalled negotiations with Labour leadership is laid on other women for publicly expressing views at all. I've lost count of the times I've read megatweet threads that implied they would have everything sorted, if the rest of Britain's women had just been good girls and stayed out of sight. It's all our fault for making daddy so cross!

To quote one of JCJ's favourite words, that is bullshit. I'm a mumsnetter and our slogan is LTB; I know exactly what kind of dynamic it is when a man beats his female partner if her sister contradicts him.

In response to these pleas, many women gradually stopped calling themselves feminists, including KJK herself.

Frankly, I find this a really pathetic response because you're allowing a small group to make you think you need to change rather than than saying, "fuck that. I am a feminist and I'll think what I like and won't have you dictate to me," which is what I see from a lot of women on here and which I agree with wholeheartedly. Changing from calling yourself a feminist is actually giving that group the power.

Just a note that some/many of the talking points used by trans privilege activists and mras in the SFW tour of Aus/NZ came directly from the JCJ et al comments about KJK and SFW and the supposed alliance with r/w groups. They were used to whip up support amongst the stupid and violent groups that look for excuses to harass women. Leaflets (bright pink, of course), were plastered everywhere asking people to protest the "anti trans racst r/w, christian fundamentalist funded nazis".

One of the organisers of the Melbourne event is a Jewish union organiser who has run women's d/v and rape crisis centers for years. You can't have more left wing, less nazi credentials really. She was smeared/doxed/libelled by tpas and mras using stuff that originated with JCJ et al. One of the only openly GC politicians in Aus was expelled from her party for attending and smeared as a nazi and a racist. She is actually of Maori descent. Feminist lecturer Holly Lawford-Smith, another attendee, has been continually harassed and threatened ever since. A woman who had run an animal rescue group for years was ejected from the group she started (now folded without her, and animals suffer as a consequence) just for attending. The ripples of harm kept spreading in large and small ways for many women.

The neo-nazi group that gate crashed specifically said they hated the SFW women and weren't supporting them, but were only there for the opportunity to attack some of the other groups that had come to attack the women speaking.
The Aus Jewish Assoc made a statement supporting SFW. Don't even get me started on the horrible tpas and mras in NZ that organised the attacks and violence at the SFW event in Auckland. (Elderly woman punched in the face, KJK attacked, women surrounded, pushed and spat on, remember?) But the media and politicians ran with the story that the women were nazis, anti trans, r/w etc

My (very long-winded) point is that this sort of stuff has ramifications way beyond just some spiteful and vague comments made by some women who don't like another woman. The mud was thrown, it stuck, and it stuck to other women as well, in other countries, causing danger and lasting harm. That mud gave tpas talking points which they are still using against all women who want to speak up for their rights.
Sometimes women who have a public profile have to step back from their personal hatreds/grievances/jealousies/whatever, and consider the spreading harms their ill-considered words can have. Well, I hope the words were just ill considered...as knowing the possible harm and violence that could be caused to other women and then saying something anyway would be worse than irresponsible.

Is this mission creep, or just a group that has concerns that don't fit as neatly as you'd like into your own viewpoint?

Well, it becomes unlawful when you want to remove books from circulation/publication altogether, not just the children's section, which runs amok of our First Amendment. I think this group started out with the right aims: focus on unscientific gender ideology in curriculum and get porn out of under 12 children's library access...but it morphed into something that most people didn't want: book banning, which is not only unAmerican, but also chilling for a lot of people who believe in liberal democracy. So, yes, my viewpoint is freedom of speech and no, they don't fit that.

That's not the question I asked though.

The fact that a group of women agree with you on some things, and not on others, does not mean that there is some kind of "mission creep". That's not what the term means.

There may be all kinds of reasons they are taking the approach they are, and they are entitled to their viewpoints, and to present them in public. Ultimately they may fail, due to the law, or simply because they don't convince enough other people.

There is not some kind of rule that says that because they think gender ideology is false, they have to agree on everything with other people or groups who also think gender ideology is false. Even if their reasons for thinking it is false (ie it is a crock of shit and bad for women) are the same reasons.

Ultimatly, if some of these people in the LP, or the DP in the US, are really at the level where they think at that level, there is nothing you are going to be able to do to appease them. They are possibly just too stupid to get it, or too frightened of looking bad, or maybe they are not so interested in doing what is right and true and are actually just looking to one up the "bad" guys.

The only way is to ignore such people. They will eventually be dragged along by the rest of society no matter which directions things go in, and will probably really believe that's what they always thought anyway.

@TempestTost Their stated mission is parental rights. But, they started moving into book banning which goes beyond parental rights, so I consider that mission creep.

Stupid?

Cracking post, Neighbourhood!

I too, remember they were incensed that women called themselves ‘feminists’ so women stopped calling themselves feminists. Or said they had never called themselves feminists. I remember when KJK said she would call herself a ‘femalist’. Because of this group and their actions.

This group who are also in leadership positions of significant other UK feminist groups! And they fucking wonder why women are fucking angry.

I also remember more recently that even Maya and Helen Joyce had to make noises about being called feminist.

Because of the exact same group!

And yes, the constant refrain of ‘FWR is not the right sort of feminist anymore.’ Along with the seriously fucked, ‘you are all keyboard warriors and you are doing nothing for women in your real life’ prejudiced crap that we get every day is so much about the writer and their own definitions and their own need to feel like they are ‘the good feminist’ than anything else.

It is a cycle. It is undermining. And it seems based on personal bias and personal hurty feelz. Didn’t one poster on here declare it all started with them because KJK said something they disagreed with and now feel they can sink the boot in and we are all just her ‘fan club’. Fucking grow up.