Is the Left a “bit male”? Question on Political Currency EMQs Podcast

[CaveMum]

Not sure if many of you listen to the Political Currency podcast with George Osborne and Ed Balls, but today’s Q&A edition had a question about whether the Left has a problem with women. Asking why it is, generally speaking, more likely that a female leader will come from a more right-leaning party.

They invited listeners to comment with their thoughts on why this might be, and given Labour’s current woeful track record on women’s rights I thought I’d flag it up here as an opportunity to help point things out to them 😜

You can listen here (it’s one of the first few questions they answer) https://shows.acast.com/politicalcurrency-1/episodes/emqs-private-school-fees-and-public-sackings

You can let them know what you think via [email protected] or via their Twitter @polcurrency

Of course it is. The leader of the Labour Party thinks that 1% of women have penises. I would say that is more than ‘a bit’ male. I would suggest that the left (in the form of our viable left wing political party) has actually declared itself misogynistic and sexist.

I’ll look at those links later..

Cheers, OP. I find it quite odd that the left seems to have this apparent machismo that disregards women. Seems to be a very deep trend, and a blind spot.

Yeah, thanks and no offence OP but there’s no particular need for a podcast to analyse why Labour haven’t had a female leader. Particularly not a podcast hosted by someone who - at the very least - publicly had an affair and left his wife for a younger woman. A misogynist can know misogynists, perhaps?

For me the stone sank when they failed to properly consider Harriet Harman as leader. That was long before any faffing about with gender identity politics. Remember the role of trades unions in the Labour Party and how supportive they weren’t when women first wanted equal pay and equal rights in the workplace.

Is that the same Harriet Harman that supported PIE, and insists TWAW ?

It isn't even just the obvious gender and leadership issues though really is it? Labour (the party of workers) isn't trying to address the issues of CoL crisis and its impact on minimum-wage workers, who is doing the paid and unpaid caring work that society relies on, what are the financial and physical impacts on that work for the people doing it? Childcare costs, elder care costs etc etc. That's all before we get to the shocking rate of assault and violence against women that all politicians seem to have a kind of snow blindness to.

It's all parties of course, but as the party of workers and given that Labour both relies on the votes of women but also takes them for granted, a blind spot that seems obvious and infuriating to female voters.

@handskneesandbumpsadaisy of course all of those . The difference for me is that I see women’s rights as a foundation for females in all of those things. Without the foundation of women’s rights, in everything else we can be tossed aside so easily. As we so often are (aside from the obvious male to female violence levels, we have impact on wages, sports, female rights in schools, the way females are treated in healthcare, etc etc etc).

Yes, I understand that, and I am a bit conflicted too. I guess I would be prepared to be a bit easier about voting Labour if I felt that they were genuinely prepared to tackle some issues that affect one half of the population more than the other and were vocal and articulate about doing so.

There's this wierd dynamic that seems to separate the worst of the left and the worst of the right. Not all left, and not all right, but certainly their most extreme elements. Gonna use WoL and WoR to make typing easier. I don't wanna use the word Nazi because it's become overused and pretty much means "a person I disagree with" now, but subsitute it in if you want.

WoR seem to have their worst behaviour proudly on full display at all times.
WoL seem to want to portray a good/moral image, but if you get on the wrong side of them only then do they show their worst/true behaviour.

Although both WoL and WoR seem to want to hide their identities/faces when at their worst behaviour. e.g. marching in public with swastikas/beating up women without penises.

Thinking about it the WoR will be up front about their views. Ethnonationalists, race segragationists, racists will advocate for their beliefs without feeling embarassed about it. Embarassed is the wrong word, trying to express it better. The WoR don't care what the view of the listener is to their beliefs. They don't care about being morally judged by an onlooker, and will express their beliefs fully. Their belief is internally consistent.

The WoL always seem to have this coded Orwellian Doublespeak where they have to deny the patently obvious. Rapist being a gender for instance.
Sturgeon could have said "Where male prisoners convicted of sexual assault or violent crimes identify as women and ask to be housed in the female prison estate we will consider their requests but we need to balance those rights along with the rights of female prisoners. We will consider when they first started to identify as a woman, the nature of the crime they are convicted of, any sexual or violent tendancies, how many convictions they have and any patterns of behaviour." etc... but she didn't. She tied herself up in knots trying to answer the question is a male double rapist a man or a woman.
It's this attempt to deny reality for the sake of doing what everyone else says is the right thing and damn the consequences that really brings out the WoL for me. Not being able to say what they believe because as Helen Staniland so incisively puts it "fails to state what rights it's fighting for on the grounds that it may incriminate itself". When you internally know there's a problem then you need to fix that problem before trying to get the rest of the world to believe it. The WoL underlying paralysing fear of being morally judged by an onlooker is the exact opposite of the WoR behaviour, and that fear making them do some really stupid things.

The WoR and WoL can both be really nasty. The main difference as far as I can see is that the WoR wear their convictions with pride and you know where you stand with them, where the WoL try to be nice to your face but the moment they need to throw you under the bus nothing is off limits.
e.g. Peter "Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but (is) not a gay man."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/19/peter-thiel-not-gay-man-supporting-donald-trump-lg/

Women in recent times have voted Labour more than men. Surprised to see that in the 2019 election, 29% of men voted Labour, compared to 37% of women. That's a big difference. Labour is surely at risk of losing many of those votes it's been taking for granted.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/gender-gaps-in-the-2019-general-election/

@BadSkiingMum no offence taken 😜. The podcast isn’t discussing the issue as such, it was a question sent in by a listener and both GO and EB gave their opinions on it. GO raised the same point as you about the Trade Unions not being supportive of women’s rights in the early 20th century.

I think it’s important that people listen to podcasts like this (and The Rest is Politics, which I also love). You don’t have to agree with the individual politics (or morals) of the speaker but things have become so polarised in this country (and globally) that the nuance has been lost. We need to be able to listen to rational discussion of important topics from both sides and find the common ground, rather than focusing on our differences.

I don't think she supported them as such - between 1978 and 1982 she was employed as legal officer of NCCL, to which they were affiliated. She made a statement regretting her connection with the organisation. To put this into context, the Home Office were apparently giving PIE grants at the time...

One of the very few people who recognised and spoke out against PIE was Mary Whitehouse. Thank God.

Harriet Harman was Deputy Leader in 2007, then acting leader of the Labour Party in 2010 and, as a 60 year old woman with experience of government, a completely credible candidate for leader - she wasn't saying TWAW back then!

Of course people will say that she was too affiliated with Gordon Brown, but it's funny how there's always a reason not to elect a female leader in the Labour Party.

Oh completely, I just find the man in question a rather horrible being, that's all! Perhaps I will read the transcript.

Interesting. Labour have certainly lost votes on this issue, as things stand. I would be interested to know how many votes.
Why aren’t they interested?
They’ve thrown all women and girls under the bus. They are not even pretending to be fair or nice. They have been quite clear that some women can have penises. Absolute dystopian rhubarb. They disgust me right now.

They don't think it's an issue that women, or anyone else, will vote on so they can comfortably throw it, and women's rights, out of the window.

I've pretty much become a single issue voter on this over the last few years but not sure my vote alone will swing it.

Well it’s all a bit male, isn’t it