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Original poster

Jane Clare Jones on purity spirals

1000 replies

IamSarah · 12/01/2024 11:26

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
31
Helleofabore · 15/01/2024 08:15

However, I do want to point out that Sarah did say she was going to email KJK about RISE and that was great to hear. Ending the cycle of demanding that Twitter posts are all that is needed for important discussions is a good place to start.

Froodwithatowel · 15/01/2024 08:17

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.

It's an interesting thing isn't it?

'Educate yourself!' we are ordered.

If we exposed a rabid TRA to half an hour of KJK/Magdalen video would they expect that this 'education' would mean instantly abandoning their views and values and embracing gender critical ones?

There is fear of being exposed to sinful views, it's there in every insecure religious movement who relies on never permitting their followers information beyond the carefully chosen and spun kind that serves the movement; you do not want them contaminated or they might start thinking.

But most people are able to understand that feelings are things that come and go and do not dictate your reality, and also that people operate from a position of critical thought and make up their own minds having seen a range of information. Rather than just simply and blindly parrot whatever someone just programmed them with.

pickledandpuzzled · 15/01/2024 08:20

In the US, there seems (from the outside) to be a respect for God and religion that is lacking here. In the UK any attempt at mission creep by Christian groups would be laughed out of court. Polite tolerance as long as it’s within the status quo, push back if you tried to increase any element of change. And push back if religion tried to hold back change- like euthanasia or same sex marriage. ‘God wouldn’t like it’ holds no sway in the UK.

It’s honestly quite laughable that being in agreement with a group on one thing will lead to assimilation.

It’s a tribalist attitude that perhaps prevails in local political parties. The horror about someone who may have voted Tory is risible.

Enough people were voting Tory to get them in power for a hell of a long time. Your neighbours and friends have been voting Tory. Are they monsters? Hell no. The fear in the left of being associated with a Tory voter…

Most people aren’t tribal about politics. You can’t deduce anything much about most people from their politics.

Some people absolutely are, steeped in the party, and so will agree men are women if necessary. The rest of us aren’t.

Long winded way of saying sitting next to someone who knows people can’t change sex isn’t going to lead to a ban on abortion rights or women being obliged to do all the housework and look pretty for their husbands.

teawamutu · 15/01/2024 08:25

monkeyspaw · 15/01/2024 02:25

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.

Perfectly put.

Floisme · 15/01/2024 08:28

Am I right in thinking there's overlap in 'membership' of the Brighton group and WPUK?

And that WPUK have themselves been described as a 'hate group' e.g. in that Labour trans rights pledge (the one a number of leadership contenders signed)?

So (assuming I'm correct) it's not like they don't understand how this slurring business works and how damaging it is. And yet here they are helping to perpetuate it.

Froodwithatowel · 15/01/2024 08:39

NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision · 15/01/2024 01:32

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.

Show quote history

Fantastic post.

Helleofabore · 15/01/2024 08:43

The point that has been constantly raised that people become heavily influenced by watching a particular documentary or attending meetings or conferences really is one of infantilisation as mentioned up thread.

I have said this on threads who have had posters on it who declare anyone attending or speaking at an event must be aligned to the event organisers. This is a ridiculous assertion and shows just how narrow that posters experience with the world must be. Or their own facile impressionability. Or their own arrogance and contemptuousness of other people.

People will attend events for so many different motivations. Either way, why is it so bad to physically attend an event and hear things you don’t agree with but by the end of the event you understand more about it so you can challenge those with those opinions better? Why has it now become so shocking that people who are diametrically opposed to a philosophy or decision appear at an event with a person that hold those opposed views? Is it because those people who are shocked are so incapable of them hearing and analyzing new information themselves unless it is from a pre-selected and declared ‘clean’ source?

I truly am all for people attending events where they pose no potential harm to others, or that those who might be harmed are pre warned and can make informed choices. That is why I have always found this ‘but those bad people went to an open air public viewing event’ argument bereft of integrity. It absolutely does say more about the person declaring the ‘guilt by alignment’ than it does about anyone else.

Froodwithatowel · 15/01/2024 08:54

Or their own arrogance and contemptuousness of other people.

This is a very core point.

It sees others, as pp said, as empty vessels which could be so easily filled by the wrong sort. This massive lack of respect for others and failure to see them as equals or even really as sentient, and a belief that any view they have that does not align with The Party should not be listened to or understood but controlled, forcibly if necessary, is one of the biggest problems the left has at the moment. It is what has lost them the red wall - and their response is to be angry with the voters for voting wrong.

Helleofabore · 15/01/2024 08:56

monkeyspaw · 15/01/2024 02:25

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.

I think you have made some excellent points here.

Helleofabore · 15/01/2024 09:00

Floisme · 15/01/2024 08:28

Am I right in thinking there's overlap in 'membership' of the Brighton group and WPUK?

And that WPUK have themselves been described as a 'hate group' e.g. in that Labour trans rights pledge (the one a number of leadership contenders signed)?

So (assuming I'm correct) it's not like they don't understand how this slurring business works and how damaging it is. And yet here they are helping to perpetuate it.

Yes. There is a significant overlap. Hence why the WPUK site also has/had a page.

Is that the action of a women-centred group?

TinselAngel · 15/01/2024 09:38

Floisme · 15/01/2024 08:28

Am I right in thinking there's overlap in 'membership' of the Brighton group and WPUK?

And that WPUK have themselves been described as a 'hate group' e.g. in that Labour trans rights pledge (the one a number of leadership contenders signed)?

So (assuming I'm correct) it's not like they don't understand how this slurring business works and how damaging it is. And yet here they are helping to perpetuate it.

There's also overlap with FILIA, unfortunately.

TheClogLady · 15/01/2024 09:52

Much as it pains me to say it, this coercive, ostracising, bullying behaviour is all over the left, from Billy Bragg to Hackney Labour to The Real Feminists of Brighton.

I wish it wasn’t but once you see it…

(perhaps it exists within right wing circles too but I don’t have any experience of that because I have no experience of right wing groups at all)

I think left and right need to go back to meaning economics, where I’m still left wing!

I cannot stand all the petty authoritarianism on the current left, was it always there or has it crept in with ID politics/the progressive stack/intersectuonalism stuff?

EasternStandard · 15/01/2024 09:56

TheClogLady · 15/01/2024 09:52

Much as it pains me to say it, this coercive, ostracising, bullying behaviour is all over the left, from Billy Bragg to Hackney Labour to The Real Feminists of Brighton.

I wish it wasn’t but once you see it…

(perhaps it exists within right wing circles too but I don’t have any experience of that because I have no experience of right wing groups at all)

I think left and right need to go back to meaning economics, where I’m still left wing!

I cannot stand all the petty authoritarianism on the current left, was it always there or has it crept in with ID politics/the progressive stack/intersectuonalism stuff?

I recall a programme on radio talking about shift from ‘liberal left’ to authoritarian left

I don’t feel it’s talked about much but I do know I felt more comfortable when it liberal was a thing for the left

That’s about a decade ago maybe

TinselAngel · 15/01/2024 09:59

Remember there was a WPUK session at Cardiff FILIA along the lines of "The lessers are all becoming right wing and it's Posie's fault"

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4662757-womens-place-uk-filia-event-the-elephant-ignored-yet-again

RebelliousCow · 15/01/2024 10:01

Delphinium20 · 15/01/2024 02:23

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.

I disagree. No longer identifying oneself as a 'feminist' is a personal devlopment away from adhering to dogmatic articles of faith. For me, dogmatic ideological and party politics has become a big turn off.

TrainedByCats · 15/01/2024 10:04

I noticed the authoritarian left in student politics back when I was at uni, that was decades ago. As a young working class feminist I was disappointed that the Labour Party students expected me to shut up and let the men speak. my first experience of Middle Class male dominated Labour and I wasn’t impressed. It’s why despite voting for them I never joined the party.

TheClogLady · 15/01/2024 10:09

I think I agree, Crow.

Deeds not words, I still participate in feminist actions but I don’t need to call myself anything.

I have multiple MN usernames (this one is ‘main’) largely for poking fun, partly to avoid attracting too much attention from The Monitors (‘Under Zir’s Eye’) but the side effect is a sort of online freedom, the opposite of a social credit system.

MN were very wise to set up a forum without avatars or post counts all those years ago.

EasternStandard · 15/01/2024 10:15

The term feminism isn’t some kind of necessary entry card

I think most of us are for single sex spaces and that’s what matters to me

RebelliousCow · 15/01/2024 10:19

What does JCJ do in here everyday life to "help and support women?"

I get it that Julie Bindel is an esteemed expert on prostitution and knows her stuff - and with her partner has done much to aid and find justice for incarcerated women; but what is it these other 'feminists' are doing - any more than anyone else does in their life when they support individual women in need, help or trouble and try to speak up for them?

How has the generalised " fight against the patriarchy" changed anything? It's just feel good/righteous stuff, as far as I can make out. For me when feminism becomes just about grievance culture and feeling perpetually angry - it loses me.

Hepwo · 15/01/2024 10:45

The Labour MP they are all mollifying is the repellent

Froodwithatowel · 15/01/2024 10:52

When words are forcibly redefined and you're told that to have any part of that you have been signed up, consenting or not, to the rest of it - some of which you may have a serious problem with - you often have no choice but to step away from the word. And the hassle.

I don't really use the word 'lesbian' for myself any more for similar reasons, and go with 'female homosexual' as explicit and so far unreorganised by some bastard with an agenda. 'Woman' and 'feminist' (oh and 'kind' and 'inclusion') have been similarly fucked up

ArabellaScott · 15/01/2024 10:59

Hepwo · 15/01/2024 10:51

Still shocking, even after all this time. Imagine heckling a baby. FFS.

GailBlancheViola · 15/01/2024 11:03

The overarching title of this area of MN is: Feminism AND Women's Rights, therefore not an area or part of the overall site where entry is only permitted to card carrying feminists.

Perhaps card carrying feminists could ask themselves why many, many women who by their actions would be classed as feminists and working to achieve feminist aims for women refuse to refer to themselves as feminists? Might it have something to do with the attitude of the feminists in the Brighton Collective? The academic feminists? The ones who refer to other women as Pound Shop Le Pens or Domesticated Zombies? Their attitude that other women just don't know what is good for them and should sit down, shut up and let these esteemed ones do the talking?

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