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

By the way - that book you referenced was only published in 2022........This grassroots movement is far older than that. This grassroots movement has defined the terms of the debate.

Pope Francis was only 'elected' in 2013...... ( not the 1990s) and it is he who has become vocal about 'gender ideology'.....but even then it was after the grassroots movement had already defined the terms/terminology of the debate.

Have you read Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment, Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk?

😂Haud me back.

I came up with "gender ideology" for myself in a post a few years ago as the best word to describe the wider system of thinking based on the belief in and primacy of gender identity. I only found out quite recently the same phrase had a history of being used to mean something quite different. Since then I've tended to use "genderism" instead.

I'd guess that's common for quite a lot of the GC "movement" - a genuine grassroots movement where individuals are independently coming up with similar concerns, asking similiar questions , coming to similar conclusions and looking around to see if anyone else is thinking the same things.

Think ink blots starting separately, getting bigger and joining up.

Completely different to the TRA movement which been characterised by outreach activists targetting education, politics, law etc to "educate" people into a specific set of beliefs and worldview that they would not have independently arrived at.

It took me embarrassingly long to get your username.

Julie’s response:

https://unherd.com/newsroom/billy-bragg-still-doesnt-understand-feminism/

I have access to it, so I will. Like the article you posted, it looks interesting although I can't quite see that it's backing up what you're claiming.

Since you've clearly read it cover to cover and imbibed its messages, what have you taken away from it?

Makes me think of the quote from Harry Potter "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends."

Anyone who could think that you have to buy wholesale into every single idea that "your side" proposes without questioning is not principled just a person who has picked a style off a shelf

She’s very good at getting to the point.

Yes that’s a very relevant quote.

Wow so not only can he not tell the difference between a feminist and a religious fundamentalist, he also can't tell the difference between a good write up and a hatchet job.

Mind you this is the guy who also can't tell the difference between a good song and a tuneless cacophony, so...

I just think Bragg is a bit dim. He doesn't get the idea that if someone makes a point, then you try and argue against that point, rather than just shouting "You're on the same table as this bad person, therefore you're also a bad person." When you look at how good JKR is at formulating a logical argument, then it's not an equal fight. Not just that, though - he doesn't even understand that she's wiping the floor with him, because he's not clever enough.

'Feminists — all women — have been deeply and profoundly betrayed by Left-wing men. They have preened and postured about being such good trans allies while we have been attacked, abused, harassed, libelled and shunned for standing up for women’s rights. They turned a blind eye when lesbians were told by transactivists that we are bigots for excluding men from our dating pool. These men clapped along as we were losing our jobs and reputations, agreeing with the zealots that we just needed to be more kind.
Men on the Left rarely prioritise women’s issues, and we are expected to dance to their tune in order to be deemed acceptable. As the late feminist author Andrea Dworkin wrote: “To Right-wing men, we are private property. To Left-wing men, we are public property.”'

Hear hear, Julie Bindel. And Andrea Dworkin was sadly correct.

I think Douglas Adams summed it up rather well: "Michael usually referred to his mother as an old battle axe, but if she was fairly to be compared to a battleaxe it would only be to an exquisitely crafted, beautifully balanced battleaxe, with an elegant minimum of fine engraving which stopped just short of its gleaming razored edge. One swipe from such an instrument and you wouldn’t even know you’d been hit until you tried to look at your watch a bit later and discovered that your arm wasn’t on."

Like countless thousands on the left, whether attacking women, Jews or the working class, they themselves have turned into the monsters a generation ago they sought to slaughter.

Billy Bragg's arguments are always one liners designed for twitter. It is all about stating a position and squaring up to the other side.

In contrast, as soon as JK Rowling became involved in this debate she wrote an essay explaining her position and its complexities.

Interesting comment from the ever wonderful Joolz

Is this the lady who tweeted about her conversation with him when he went to Australia recently, or am I thinking of someone else?
(I appreciate you may not be able to answer that!)

What's relevant to my points here I think is that the authors claim a large part of the ideas we think of as a grassroots response to conditions in those former Eastern block states actually originate from, and are promoted by, networks of powerful people in the West.

For the populist right the idea appears to be that ‘gender’ is being promoted by a corrupt international capitalist elite, who impose their ideas on innocent and authentic ‘ordinary’ people, including the poor and the helpless.

It's naive to believe there's any grassroots movements today that aren't manipulated, infected or co-opted by bad faith actors. Even something like the anti-ulez movement.

True but you also need to recognise when you're talking about a movement and when you're talking about a personal position of faith, belief, fact, principle, etc.

For me no matter what any movement says or promotes, I can't make myself believe that being female is a special feeling that relates to your soul or personality.

THERE’S a good rule in politics which has served me well. Let’s call it the Dora Gaitskell Rule. Dora was the wife of then-Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell. After a fiery speech at a Labour Party conference in 1962 opposing the UK entering the European Economic Community, she turned to him and said: “All the wrong people are cheering.”

Ha ha was that before his heroes and lifelong euro sceptics Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were elected then!* *

I personally woke up to what was happening in 2017 - when a group of women in Liverpool had put a sticker on one of the Gormley figures on Crosby Beach saying "Women don't have penises". The furore that surrounded that small act alerted me. Before that I hadn't a clue. I'd given up teaching in 2010 and 'Trans' just wasn't a thing. No-one had heard of it - let alone the idea that there might be such a thing as a 'trans child'.

My response: to make a phone call - which turned out to be a very fortuitous one - to see if other people were thinking and feeling as a I was. Yes they were......Nothing to do with right wing actors or Eastern bloc populists at all.
At that point there was still "no debate" and people had to meet furtively. We've come a long way since then.

To be honest - that just sounds like conspiracy thinking.

Although it is certainly true that American activists and billionaire philanthropists ( quite a few of them trans identified men) have certainly been funding the trans project.

@OldManLogan
For the populist right the idea appears to be that ‘gender’ is being promoted by a corrupt international capitalist elite, who impose their ideas on innocent and authentic ‘ordinary’ people, including the poor and the helpless.

But this is an exact mirror of your position on gender critical views no?
That they are imposed upon gullible ordinary people by the pope, or right wing Christian Conservatives?

I don’t think so. Joolz is a poet and artist. Particularly known for her relationship with New Model Army. She’s been around music and festivals since the 80s, so I imagine she’s come across BB fairly often.