Article: Lefty men’s failures have radicalised women by Victoria Smith

[UtopiaPlanitia]

Another excellent article by Smith.

'Here’s the thing, though: it’s not because we’ve been “radicalised” by dark forces stuffing our passive ladybrains with far-right propaganda. It’s because before, we didn’t think we’d need to clarify anything. Before, we trusted trans-identified males not to abuse our goodwill. We trusted “progressive” men not to start pretending not to know basic biology. We trusted that women counted enough not to have our own interests so thoroughly discounted. It turns out we were wrong to be so trusting, and that is why so many of us no longer are.

It is sad to admit, but it seems lefty men cannot be trusted with anything. I write as one of those weary ex-liberal feminists, who once lived in the fantasy land where the interests of “progressive” men generally mapped onto my own. They hated gender norms? Me too! They found masculinity stultifying and oppressive? Good for them! They were all for “my body, my choice”? Brilliant!

Sure, there were some areas where I remained a little uncertain (their “respect” for those in the sex industry seemed somewhat suspicious) and they never seemed terribly interested in the more mundane aspects of feminism such as care work or pensions inequality. I never thought these men were full-on feminists, but I did believe they had compassion for women, didn’t view us as walking stereotypes, and would not misrepresent feminist arguments for their own gains. I don’t think any of that now.'

https://thecritic.co.uk/lefty-mens-failures-have-radicalised-women/

She is so very good.

Nail. On. Head.

The Left have always had a problem with women who don’t sit down and shut up.

Ooh this is an excellent article and sums up my feelings exactly. I'm also glad she has provided external links to back up her opinions and I'm sending this onto some friends and my DH!

DH still isn't quite there yet. His opinions are formed listening to the rest is politics podcast, Reddit and the Guardian and BBC. All who I used to trust (minus Reddit as I've never used Reddit) and for him, my constant rage is (in his view) disproportionate. He did listen to Jo Rowling's "witches" podcast but then for balance (his words) also listened to the trans one after and was then sucked back onto agreeing with that side. It's like back and forth with us right now on this subject. This is another article to send him!

I feel your pain; I’m in a similar situation and my DH is convinced (by his reading of posts on Mastodon) that people on the GC side are somehow every bit as awful as the extreme TRAs. I know it stems from my DH being a compassionate person who wants people to be treated fairly but in this case his compassion is misdirected. I also know from talking to him that he’s never had to encounter even half the horrible things I (and other women) have encountered when dealing with men over the course of several decades. It’s disheartening to live with at times but at other times it inspires me to keep campaigning and crowdfunding.

This is such a good article and Victoria articulates the problem extremely well.

My DH was a "lefty man". I say "was", because he refuses to class himself as left-wing anymore. He hates what the left has become. So even though his beliefs and ethics are still very much socialist he refuses to be classed as a "left-wing man". I'm glad to say he became "radicalised" right along with me when all the trans crap began to blow up years ago.

We all know what a female person is, but we also all know that, if you tell a certain type of man that you value female-only spaces, he will start waffling about genital inspections, clown fish, toxic debates, intersex people, policing people’s femininity and various other gambits which, you sense, he quite enjoys deploying (the birds get so wound up!).

Men should be banned from social media, all it's done is give them ever more stupid arguments to parrot when we point out how misogynistic they're being.

I have a very left male friend I'd love to send this to, who I felt let down by, but I doubt he'd listen and it would likely damage our relationship further.

Really good article, I agree with all of it and it's helped me to put my thoughts in order. Where she says about all the things we didn't think needed to be said, such as "we did not think men would take the piss, not in prisons, not in sports, not in rape crisis centres. And if some men did take the piss, we did at least think the average lefty man would speak up. By and large, they didn’t".

There's a man I'd love to send this to and have him finally understand what women have been saying for years, but I'm pretty sure he'd just shrug and go down the clown fish and genital inspection route. I've realised I no longer trust him so can't be friends any more.

Great article. I add to this: rich women.
Those so over privileged that they aren't heading to an NHS MH ward or prison, they know that. They are the worst to me. Traitors.

Very well said Victoria. These lefty men are the same ones who are full of support to make our streets safer for women. They were vocal following the horrific murder of Sarah Everard calling for lots of initiatives to to protect women. At the same time they were also telling women to stop being so mean for requesting single sex spaces and calling us bigots.

This gives me hope for my DH! He is almost there, but like @UtopiaPlanitia 's DH he tries to conflate the two as if both sides are just as bad (out of a sense of being reasonable and wanting to appear compassionate I guess) but fails to realise (or read all the links and articles I show him) that show just how insane the tra threats have been... He'll get there though. He shared Sonia sodhas article with me the other day. Thank god for her btw as she still raises the issues and it goes on the guardian online app and he sees them. Otherwise he'd just be reading LOJ etc all the time. Pah.

It gives me hope too but I'm also aggrieved that my DH just can't see my entire point on this issue - he'll admit I'm right on some things but retreat back to both sides are as bad as each other on other things. Having said that, we've never been the sort of people that feel we have to agree on absolutely everything to have a successful relationship (or successful friendships with others) and we've differed on issues in the past without it causing problems. However, the issue of erasing women's rights is hugely important to me (as a woman who grew up/lived in a highly sexist, theocratic country [Ireland] in which the middle-classes have all recently decided to adopt IDPol as a way of rejecting our country's past) and so on this issue I would dearly love to have the man grok me.

Re Sonia Sodha - weirdly, about 4 years ago, I remember my DH mentioning that various people he read/followed on Twitter were saying that The Grauniad was transphobic - my jaw literally dropped in surprise at that one lol. I mean, maybe they meant The Observer which has been more GC-receptive but even then it's a huge stretch to deem the paper transphobic 🤷‍♀️ I think that, plus Corbynmania, was when I realised the problem of being in a Lefty Twitter bubble and I made an effort to broaden my range of media sources.