Billy Bragg getting challenged in the Observer

[GrimbutGerbil]

By a male journalist…

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/apr/28/billy-bragg-interview-progressive-patriot?CMP=twt_a-music_b-gdnmusic

If I were Billy I'd maybe look at some of the people I was sitting with. He's on the same side of the table as Isla Bryson, Barbie Kardashian, Dana Rivers and Sandi Toksvig

Hahaha

Haven't read it, just flicked down to see the length of the article (and guess at how much time it would take me to read it). So my screen came to rest at the bottom of the article, and this, second last paragraph, was there.

"He regrets not standing up a bit more to bullies as a kid, but he’d like to think he’s made up for that since."

Becoming a bully yourself does not 'make up' for not standing up to bullies in your youth.

For someone who prides himself on a bit of political analysis, it's clearly a stupid reason to disagree with JKR and Julie Bindel. That other people who he despises agree with them over some parts of this issue.

It's hardly something that we don't all know.

When the movement has gone out of its way to jump on the coattails of gay rights, it's not going to be very surprising that homophobes will treat it the same.

It takes about half a thread on here to realise that's incorrect.

That it's got nothing to do with gay rights. That that was a deliberate attempt at legitimisation. And that it actually undermines homosexuality, even as a concept.

Billy Bragg has been taken in, right bloody royally.

He should read the Denton report. His reaction is the exact one TRAs were engineering.

He's been had.

But I don't think he could've been had if his underlying sexism hadn't precluded him from listening to women.

Yes, this is a classic combination which is often to be observed: people who have a lot to say about something, but don't understand or grasp the essential nature of the issues on which they proclaim. This what happens when people simply adopt positions purely on the baisis of ideological or tribal loyalty.

I would genuinely like to see any transactactivist that Bragg truly believes is on the right side of the table.

Just one.

Ha!

Personally I have always found it strange how happy the TRAs are to be on the same side as the Iranian mullahs on this one.

It's incredible how 'the right people' managed to come up with the wrong argument, so he turns around and says that JKR and co sat with the 'wrong people' rather than addressing the issue that those he assumes always have the right intentions fucked up because they had their heads up their own arses and didn't think because they were more concerned about sitting with the cool kids than critically thinking.

Never has image and style over substance been presented as shallow and dumb as well as Silly Billy does here.

Get off the back seat of the bus Billy and stop bullying to keep in with the cool kids at the expense of the smart kids. You're 66 not 14.

I’d originally asked if we might meet at his home, but he declined because he didn’t want it identified (I suspect he also may be wary of the seafront villa backdrop complicating his image).

The journalist certainly seems to have his number.

Yes! A lot of people get embroiled in political activity on the basis of how good it makes them feel to belong to a certain group - with all of the emotional bonds; feeling of solidarity and so on.When you break away from group conformity and this feeling that needing to belong is the most important thing - you are able to see it more clearly

Smug?

Smug and self satisfied, having been rewarded for being that way that for so long.

You’ve nailed it. Also from the article:

’“Because when I get depressed or cynical, I have the privilege of being able to go out in the dark and sing my songs, and when everyone claps, I don’t feel so bad. What I hope to do in my gigs is for the audience to feel like that too. That at least there’s this roomful of people in their town who do give a shit. Music can’t change the world, but it can do that.”’

Some of us think it’s important to engage our brains when doing politics and not just wallow in feelings of righteousness or rebelliousness while actually embracing the side that does harm, but not Billy. And he is dim enough to be completely transparent.

He doesn’t really believe what he says about sitting on the wrong side of the table. If he did, it would be impossible to take a stance on anything.

It's really about conforming and group think. He's outsourced his thinking to his tribe, and thats why hes arguments about this are lacking, he hasnt reach his conclusion through his own thinking. He probably barely understands the issue and i doubt he could steelman the feminist point.

Similarly his arguments for termination of pregnancy will be weak. I wouldn't want him to represent me in a debate because it will not be from a women perspective. What would he have - termination are good because Jacob reesmogg disapproves?

I have always perceived that for most people - say 70% of the population - the most important thing is group conformity. People fall in with whoever is in their environment - rather than consciously seeking out like minds. People form friendships on the basis of occupational similarity, or enjoyment of activities such as clubbing, dancing, jogging, mountain walking and so on.

In this respect most people are not naturally 'political' creatures; they are social creatures. For many people, and especially now in the era of social media - political activism is the social setting for their friendships; their environment. Yet few of them have the motivation or natural interest to actually explore the issues they march/campaign for in full. All of their views are formed via social assimilation and integration.

Sheepy Bragg baa's at the moon.

Indeed. This whole paragraph says a lot about his inability to think outside what he sees as rigid tribal positions:

"..And that’s what I see with Rowling and the others: they are on the wrong side of the table.”
His argument is that some of his opponents on the issue appear to be giving strength to anti-trans campaigns on the fundamentalist religious right in the US and elsewhere – that if any ground is given “the next thing will be an assault on equal marriage and abortion”. But of course there is no suggestion at all that Rowling or Bindel have any sympathy with those groups so, again, isn’t that a problem of social media platforms themselves, which are engineered to promote simple binaries over nuanced argument, and which reinforce “which side are you on” tribalism.

This paragraph highlights that he really doesn't have a clue about how to navigate the topic of gender identity. He clearly saw himself as a people's hero, on the "right side of the table" and hasn't noticed that people like JKR and Julie Bindel are sitting on a completely different table entirely. It reminds me of big family Christmases years ago, where my cousins and I would all be sitting on a table together, leaving the grown ups to their own "boring", nuanced conversations, where they listened to each other and debated topics etc, while all the "best" and "most important" conversations took place on the kids' table.

That may be true for some, but there are many more men (and women) who are followers of the alt-right fundamentalists who are using the narrative of protecting children, or of concern for women's rights to mask their bigotry.

As for the idea that fundamentalists or/and the alt right agreeing is simply a notion, rather than a fact I find a tad disingenuous.

If we're expected to be critical of the pro-Palestine marches because some are funded and supported by antisemites, I can't see why the anti-trans movement shouldn't be exposed to the same criticisms.

The dinner party from hell.

Unfortunately there will always be bad actors. But what is the "anti-trans movement"? Can you give examples?

Presumably this doesn't include people who are speaking out to protect women's rights and children's safeguarding because they refuse to accept trans people's belief that "we all have a gender identity" as if it were factual truth. That's no more anti-trans than me being an atheist is Christianphobic or Islamophbic. Thankfully Christians and Muslims aren't demanding that I accept the "one true god" as fact in laws and policies in the same way as trans people do e.g. when we're told to accept transwomen (men who state a belief that they are women) in women's sports and spaces.

‘If we're expected to be critical of the pro-Palestine marches because some are funded and supported by antisemites, I can't see why the anti-trans movement shouldn't be exposed to the same criticisms.’

Ah the famous far right funding that TRAs never show any evidence of.

No, I wouldn't include everyone. https://www.aidsmap.com/news/may-2021/whos-financing-anti-gender-movement-europe

Rich older white dood who's at the top of the "oppressor" pyramid tries to launder his privilege and gain some relevance by indulging in sanctimonious performative allyship that just so happens to allow him to manifest some world class misogyny at the same time.

Win-win for the tuneless bawbag.

That's also why I think the US government wants to shut down MN because it can't control it.

Wait, what!?

perfect!

From the article:

"Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) presented findings from an EPF analysis of the financial statements of over 50 ‘anti-gender’ organisations. Datta explained that ‘anti-gender’ is a term used in this context to mean something broader than anti-choice: it includes being against the right to abortion, against LGBT rights, against children’s rights and against equality overall."

Other than the specific issues of the impact on women (female people) from replacing sex-based concepts, rights and language with mixed-sex gender identities, and the damage to children of unquestioningly promoting social and medical transition, gender critical feminists would agree with the targets of these "anti gender" agents not align with the agents.

Can you please list the gender critical feminist groups that are being funded by these alt right groups?

Eg

in 2016, the radical feminist organisation, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), accepted a $15,000 donation from the religious freedom giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Its European branch is known as ADF International and has an office in London.
ADF has worked on a range of cases attacking women’s reproductive rights. These included helping to ban ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics, claiming that they forced protestors to shout at women attending reproductive healthcare appointments. It had also acted in favour of a ban on so-called ‘partial-birth abortions’ and supported the Hobby Lobby franchise in its legal bid not to cover women’s contraception in its employee healthcare plan. This is not an organisation with a track record of allying to radical feminist causes. And yet, here it was, giving $15,000 of its vast resources to support the ‘Women’s Liberation Front’.

I'm not saying any of this discredits the sound arguments for single-sex spaces, or for robust safeguards for children. All I'm saying is don't pretend it's a fiction, as was suggested by a pp.