JK Rowling on Billy Bragg and other progressive male class warriors

[AstonsStolenData]

JKR uses Billy Bragg's quote: “My problem with people like Rowling, like Julie Bindel, is really who they are lined up with” to address the misogyny of many brogressive men:

Over the last few years, a huge number of PMCWs have become men’s rights activists in all but name, and it’s been profoundly depressing, if not entirely unexpected, to see how enjoyable they’ve found it. Even while attacking women for finding themselves on the same side as right-wingers, the PMCWs stampeded to join the team that was threatening women with rape and violence, harassing women’s conferences, attempting to block access to gender critical events and physically assaulting female demonstrators.

It's a powerful essay.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1784586797525184794

I am not sure. I think she's right about some of the psychology in this for some, that's fair enough.

But I don't see gender ideology as some kind of bizarre fuck-up among progressives. I think it is very much part and parcel of the other identity politics and other accepted ways of thinking (for example about psychology or hierarchies of oppression or paternalism) that are found on the progressive left.

It's also very much embraced by many of the women who believe in those things. Is the explanation for those women also that they are about being MRA adjacent?

I do think that jerks and narcissists are all across the political spectrum. But to me, there is a kind of unity of viewpoint among a lot of these people which says it's about believing certain things, rather than just being jerks who hate women.

Very much agree with this. I'd resist an interpretation that says this is a weird aberration from a left that's basically healthy otherwise. I'm not sure that I have a holistic explanation except that (a) many people on the left, particularly the highly educated, are so convinced of their moral superiority that they never examine their dodgy attitudes or behaviour, and (b) the culture of the organisations often brings out the worst in them.

Back in 2013 I was involved in a small way in exposing the rape coverup in the SWP. That group has its own cultish pathologies, but at the time I had a conversation with someone very well connected in Labour circles. I asked her if she could imagine something similar happening in Labour, and she said absolutely yes. Say that a popular figure was accused of something awful by the Mail or the Sun, it would be really easy to imagine party members closing ranks and refusing to ask if it might be true. There was a very similar dynamic in the Tommy Sheridan case.

What neither of us expected was five years of Corbynism where you couldn't make even the most muted criticism of Dear Leader.

I'm not saying misogyny isn't spread across the spectrum, of course it is, but there's a peculiarity about MRAism on the left. Maybe there are a few factors here. Gender identity theory and the progressive stack legitimise it for some. And there's always that Aldous Huxley line that the best way to recruit to a good cause is to offer people the chance to be cruel to an outgroup.

All I know for sure is that there are a lot of Decent Blokes, including former friends, who've shown a really ugly side of their personality.

the progressive male class warrior, usually middle-class himself, whose interest in women’s issues begins and ends with sex work, stripping and abortions.

Doesn't this just sum it up.

I don't think there's anything altruistic in this type of man's support. All three of those campaign points are directly in his interest - his right to enjoy women's bodies on demand without any of the uncomfortable possibilities of being made responsible for a child.

Men, particularly abusive men, have a lot to gain from greater control over women's fertility. I'm very sceptical of the motives behind what some of them claim to passionately support, especially in such a porn-saturated age.

American feminists circled the bandwagon defending Bill Clinton decades ago. I was still in school then but the scales dropped from my eyes. The left is as misogynist and male-centred as the right, it just refuses to acknowledge the fact.

@AstonsStolenData

The truth is that the left has fucked up monumentally on gender identity ideology and until it owns the mistake, it will continue to hand the right valid talking points. As more and more PMCWs realise this, they’ll take shameless refuge in accusations that we, the women criticising the injustice and insanity of gender identity ideology, were enabling the far-right. The fact is that they’ve done exactly that, by refusing to accept that there was anything wrong with a movement that was causing serious harm to troubled young people, trampling all over women’s rights and seeking to remove single-sex services for the most vulnerable.

Why is everything the fault of the left, particularly when for the past 14 years, the Tories have been in office? Aren't the left politically toothless? They cannot influence policy or funding, apart from debate. How can they cause "serious harm to troubled young people, trample all over women's rights and seek to remove single-sex services from the most vulnerable"? In saying there is this "movement", JKR does not say who sponsors it.

Apologies, bold fail.

What a powerful essay, I hope the PMCWs do some soul-searching. Why would they though, there's no consequences to their behaviour and they retain full white male privilege.

Apparently during the civil rights/hippie movements of the 60s it was the same, women were last in line for rights, and the sexual revolution led to a lot of coercion for sex to the benefit of the left-wing men.

Before 2014 I used to do a lot with Labour. Still very much Labour in my heart. I left before Brexit, before Corbyn really.

My then job was in policy and I had to go to conference just once. Feminist organisations were just starting to be under attack, things like maternity care were completely absent while McDonnell and the unions were on the panel for sex-workers rights (all male panel) and the Labour think tanks were all sex-positive, gender focused.

I remember being absolute taken aback that people like Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper were walking down the street while around them the old guard just relentlessly almost laciviously ground the experience of being a woman or girl back to sex and sexual availability. So fucking grim.

I disliked Corbyn. Useless selfish silly old man. But that time in Labour was a bit like a boil coming to the surface. The truly bad ones went when he did and I genuinely applaud Starmer for how he has carefully and almost imperceptibly pulled Labour back from the brink.

The truly bad ones went when he did
Did they though? I think they're still lurking in the shadows and a few months after Starmer gets them in he'll be booted out and replaced.

If we accept that the left has a misogyny problem and an antisemitism problem, then there are two current issues that allow some very dodgy attitudes to hide in plain sight.

Starmer thought, and I believe he was sincere in this, that antisemitism was purely a problem of the Corbyn people, and if he sidelined them then all would be well. That hasn't turned out to be the case. And on lefty MRAism, he hasn't even acknowledged it might exist.

I read him as yet another one of these centre left men who pats himself on the back for being a great feminist ally but is incapable of hearing female voices.

I think it's a good point that this attitude to women isn't an aberration. When I was a Labour member, there seemed to be a deeply engrained view that women's rights would be sorted out anyway once they'd fixed the NHS and housing etc. etc, the message being shut up and stop being so selfish.

It's also not an attitude that's unique to men. As @mirax reminds us, lots of democrat women shrugged off Clinton's behaviour, presumably because they didn't think there was anything that could be done about it. And every day on this board we have posters telling us we have to take one for the team and vote Labour.

Why is everything the fault of the left, particularly when for the past 14 years, the Tories have been in office? Aren't the left politically toothless? They cannot influence policy
The Civil Service and similar are run by PMCW. Gender Ideology has been allowed (celebrated, even) by the health, social care, education, media, sports, culture, etc sectors. The Left allowed it in by the backdoor and the Tories let them because they didn't want another Section 28 situation.

There have always been this element within Labour, though. They always get put back in their box, Labour win elections again, then they lose and they roar back again, keeping Labour out of power until they are kept a lid on again. It's the problem with both main parties, caused by our electoral system. They are coalitions of people who loathe each other and have little in common, stuck together l. We need a new proper social Democratic centrist party, but they don't get aywe under FPTP unless one of the main parties majorly collapses and creates a vacuum. I really don't think there are enough of them in the Parliamentary party at least to ditch Starmer. They have never got rid of their own sitting Prime Ministers.

LOL, this is exactly it. Andrea Dworkin wrote about this phenomenon very well although not as succinctly as you!

thank you, that is high praise indeed!

adds ‘more succinct than Andrea Dworkin’ to CV 😁

I joined the Socialist Party in London back in the1990s. Was always very disappointed by their patronising attitude to women and stopped attending meetings fairly soon. I remain a socialist in my views but these Posturing Male Condescending Wankers put me right off.

I don't think there's anything altruistic in this type of man's support. All three of those campaign points are directly in his interest - his right to enjoy women's bodies on demand without any of the uncomfortable possibilities of being made responsible for a child.

I think this goes right to the heart of it. Most people (including many on the left) are selfish and will support issues that either directly benefit them or are a vehicle for them to virtue signal. When it comes down to it, very few people are willing to put their neck on the line and fight for an unfashionable cause that is not directly in their own interest. Huge respect to those that do.

Is this about male ego? Are jumped up lefty males egoists with tribal thinking? The tribal element being that they are planning the revolution with their fellow males as a pp nails it, and the male ego being propped up by discounting lesser female voices.and seeing us as less than?

...unless we're one of those special 'cool girls' as was coined in Gone Girl.

Agreed, there have been some very vocal posters on here, browbeating anyone who has the temerity to raise questions about Labour and telling them off for not putting up and shutting up with the misogyny to get the Tories out. It’s so wrong-headed.

It's not just women. It's also minority groups who don't do what they are supposed to ( be oppressed and downtrodden) and have the audacity to have as much money as they do, or more. Especially if they then make a choice open to all to become Tories, then they are too stupid to understand racism. And the working class who are too busy being xenophobic to become footsoldiers for the Revolution.

The Corbynistas were desperate to take away the achievements of an outstanding Labour female politician ( Mo Mowlam) and hand it to a mediocre man (Jeremy Corbyn) in relation to NI and the Good Friday agreement

Wasn’t that Tony Blair, not Jeremy Corbyn?

Anyway, I was perplexed to find out about the amount of sexism in the trade union movement. These were left-wing progressives, so it didn’t seem to make any sense.

I can only wonder if it’s a cultural legacy from the days when men supposedly needed to be paid more than women because they had wives and children to support, whereas married women, (if they were allowed to keep their jobs at all), just worked for pin money.

No what I meant by that was that one of the things Jeremy Corbyn was being praised for by his fans was helping to end the fighting in NI. When at the time Tony Blair said he was causing more trouble and was actively working against the government by cosying up to the IRA. Mowlam was the NI secretary at the time and was instrumental in negotiating the agreement with both sides. To give the credit to some annoying backbencher who was not part of the government and voted against the GFA and his own party was minimising her monumental achievement in a massive way.

I didn’t know that. I do remember Blair sacking Mo Mowlam after she’d already achieved so much and cynically wondering if it was so he could take the credit himself.

Yes he didn't cover himself in glory either.