Jane Clare Jones blog on Tommy Robinson

[CassieMaddox]

Just a really great read
https://janeclarejones.com/2024/07/28/tommy-robinson-far-right-populism-and-gender-criticism/

These are my favourite bits:

The greatest danger to women and girls has always been, and remains, the men inside their own houses. This is the nature, and the devastation, of endemic male sexual violence. It usually happens in the place, and with the people, who are supposed to be most safe. It would perhaps be comforting to imagine that we could easily identify the men who are dangerous – the Muslims, the brown ones, the ones in dresses – and then we could keep ourselves safe by keeping them out. But the argument materialist feminists made throughout the early years of the gender wars applies equally here: men are a statistical danger to women as a class and there is prima facie no way of working out which ones are dangerous and which ones are not.

The argument is no longer ‘guilt by association’ or ‘purity politics,’ it is now a) What even is the far right anyway?, b) The far right doesn’t mean anything because I was called far right for knowing men aren’t women, c) You people think anyone who disagrees with you is far right, and d) He is not far right anyway. That is, it has moved from claiming that association with the far right is either not happening or if it is happening has no impact on the substance of GC discourse, to people openly associating with the far right and recycling far right talking points while denying that the far right is the far right.

But what feminist women have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to get across, is that these kinds of men are not on ‘your side,’ if ‘your side’ is genuinely defending women’s rights. These men are on their side, and their side wants a largely white patriarchal nation, in which ‘their’ women know their place and are ‘protected’ only insofar as ‘protection’ means keeping them guarded from ‘other’ men.

The pictures at the end of the article are very illuminating too.

Brava JCJ 👏

Full disclosure, I have only read your extract above!

We know they're not on our side. It's tedious to keep hearing how stupid we are for thinking that they are GC allies. They are genderists as much as the TAs. Not GC.

Sex realism is what we have in common with TR and everyone on Earth except fringe nutters. Knowing that sex is real, binary and immutable in mammals is very important for law and policy but it's not a political position in itself.

Being a sex realist is not associating with the right. Some people are GC and right wing. Some women are feminists and also right wing. They arrive at feminism via a different path and with priorities ordered a little differently. There's no intrinsic connection between being a GC feminist and socialism. Socialism does not own feminism.

We know they're not on our side. It's tedious to keep hearing how stupid we are for thinking that they are GC allies. They are genderists as much as the TAs. Not GC.

Thank you. I'm another one sick of this.
Off to read the actual post now, as JCJ is always worth reading!

Agreed about JCJ in general. Brilliant writer and analyst apart from this blind spot.

They're not called the far right because they know what a woman is, it's because they're highly nationalistic and mostly racist, ie, they have all the traits of right wingers and are hardline about it.

The greatest danger to women and girls has always been, and remains, the men inside their own houses.

Respectfully, on behalf of just about every woman in just about every country in Latin America, I completely and utterly disagree. And I really wish that privileged Western European women people would STOP perpetuating this myth.

Yes, you're more likely to be killed by someone you know. But no, it's NOT likely that the person is a member of your household. And saying "just don't open the door" is bullshit. Once he has his eye on you, he will find you and he will hurt you and yeah, it's very likely that he will kill you. He doesn't have to be in your house because he is in your town and outside your town and he will find you somewhere and there is no defense because there are no consequences. In fact, he'd be pretty fucking stupid to attack you in your house where the evidence would be greatest against him rather than in any other place where he can attack you.

And I hate, hate, hate the misogynistic British commentators' "gotcha" (to women objecting to the general danger for women on the streets) with this OH SHUT UP ABOUT STRANGERS AND MEN ON THE STREET BECAUSE YOU HAVE MEN IN YOUR HOUSE WHO WILL KILL YOU FIRST bullshit(e).

Maybe it's someone in YOUR house, but if so and if you're confident of that - you worry about someone in your house ONLY and not also about everyone outside your house - then I will tell you: you are pretty fucking privileged. Because the people who want to kill me and my family and my friends don't need to get into my house to do it.

Thank you for listening, and please reconsider your prejudices and don't be a fucking know it all arsehole about them.

Thats childishly unpleasant, why post that comment at all, there is no nessecity for it, just mute the thread.

I broadly agree with Jones' analysis of right wing nationalism here. But I'm not sure where her raising (and rehashing) of the Heart of Oaks attendance at a LWS event is supposed to lead.
Is the argument that, whilever populists roam among us, open-mic, open-invitation events are too dangerous?
I tried to have this conversation with friends when Keen came to Australia - they were critical of Keen's events from the perspective that one shouldn't platform transphobia. But they couldn't hear what I was asking - I think because they are wedded to the idea that if the voice of The People (TM) was truly being heard it would say much the same thing as them (well educated progressives).
Is Jane Clare Jones arguing that Kellie Jane Keen should change the format of LWS to be invite-only so that she can vet attendees and speakers? If this isn't what she's arguing, could someone please help me and explain what Jones is saying should change?
Maybe it's true that the best society - or the best political movement - is created when democracy is modulated by oversight by the better educated and more insightful members of that society (or poitical movement). But have that argument honestly, not with sideways digs (and it would have been a more honest article if Jones had named the "promined gender critical women" she was talking about, but then the snarkiness of it would have been more evident, too).
Again, for emphasis, I'm impressed with Jones' analysis of right wing nationalism, and if her article had stopped there I'd be sharing it far and wide. It's the disciplining of specific other women that I don't understand and am seeking clarity on.

I think JCJ never got over the fact that KJK says in 4 words what she spent a lifetime trying to say in long-term essays. And still, nobody understand quite what she is trying to get across.

@Malvarrosa I think your post is really important (and even deserves a thread of it's own).
I think this assertion that women are most under threat from men in their own homes (/in the private sphere) is a dogma of second wave feminism that has alot of truth to it, but needs to be challenged.
When I started working in disability support services (in the noughties) the most confronting part of the work was coming to terms with the fact that 100% of the women I worked with had been raped or violently sexually assaulted. When I was studying nursing I heard the same thing when I was on placement from nurses who worked with homeless women who slept on the streets. These stories were awful to hear because of the suffering of each individual woman, but it was also difficult for me because I had to acknowledge that being most at danger from men known to me, in my own household, is actually a sign of priviledge - there are classes of women who are universally exposed to stranger violence. I think Dworkin addresses this but it's not something that gets talked about enough.
@Malvarrosa your perspective is important and if you write on any other platform I'd be really interested to know, thanks.

I liked the article. I don't agree with all of it. My experience of how the GC -far right discussions go are a bit different to JCJ's. For example..

The argument is no longer ‘guilt by association’ or ‘purity politics,’ it is now a) What even is the far right anyway?, b) The far right doesn’t mean anything because I was called far right for knowing men aren’t women, c) You people think anyone who disagrees with you is far right, and d) He is not far right anyway.

I'd say those points are more like..

A) defining what is and isn't far right and where those boundaries lie seems like an essential part of this discussion, and one I'm sure JCJ has herself been a part of.
B) I think it's more that "I don't trust the judgement of who is and isn’t far right, coming from those people who think that knowing what a woman is is far right".
C) this is true for some people.
D) I think most GC people agree TR is far right.

I had a go at reading it but it is way too long. JCJ has far too much time on her hands and is seriously in need of a ruthless Editor.

I agree with Popeydokey and will rely on Cassie's unerring skill in highlighting the essence of an argument that we have heard many times before.

"men are a statistical danger to women as a class and there is prima facie no way of working out which ones are dangerous and which ones are not."

So knowing their politics is no help at all?

"It would perhaps be comforting to imagine that we could easily identify the men who are dangerous – the Muslims, the brown ones, the ones in dresses – and then we could keep ourselves safe by keeping them out . . .

. . . But what feminist women have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to get across, is that these kinds of men are not on ‘your side,’ if ‘your side’ is genuinely defending women’s rights. These men are on their side, and their side wants a largely white patriarchal nation, in which ‘their’ women know their place and are ‘protected’ only insofar as ‘protection’ means keeping them guarded from ‘other’ men."

Let's deal with the "men in dresses" first, citing sapholives83:

🧵 "(Fair warning: this is a long one, even for me.)

For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a law enforcement officer with experience investigating both homicides and sex crimes."

https://x.com/sappholives83/status/1816266309555884491

Archived thread: https://archive.ph/SQXLm

She says it is a long read but it is probably shorter than the extract Cassie has lifted from JCJ's screed.

Now "the Muslims, the brown ones"
vs
the men who allegedly want a "largely white patriarchal nation" also "in which ‘their’ women know their place and are ‘protected’ only insofaras ‘protection’ means keeping them guarded from ‘other’ men."

This is a weird contrast, ambiguously written.

Who are "the brown ones"? Is JKJ taking about Muslims or some other group of brown men?

Presumably some of "the brown ones", as JKJ so dehumanisingly refers to them, are Muslims, just as some Muslims are white?

Apparently, according to Cassie's carefully selected extract, JCJ thinks that none of these "Muslims, the brown ones" want a "largely . . . patriarchal nation in which ‘their’ women know their place and are ‘protected’ only insofaras ‘protection’ means keeping them guarded from ‘other’ men."

Seriously? Which religion has its women cover their hair, their faces and drapes their bodies in shapeless robes as a means of keeping them guarded from other men? No need for scare quotes around "other" in "'other' men" because it is all men.

Seeing as I could not be arsed to wade through JCJ's blog, are you posting here because you think we all want to marry Tommy Robinson and we are in danger of him killing us in our homes? That would at least make some sense of the extract you have posted.

Maybe the reason "feminist women have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to get across" their patronising lectures is because they are illogical brain dumps of scrambled, offensive stereotypes.

Malvarrosa: Thank you for speaking up. I am sick of having generalities cited that take no account of who we are, our personal circumstances or where we live.

Statistically, I am far more at risk of serious injury or death by falling down stairs than being killed in my home by "domestic violence", even if there was a man living in my home.

Personally, I have been physically and sexually assaulted many times outside my home and even threatened with being killed. All by strangers. I know for a fact that where I live I am more at risk of being attacked outside my home by a stranger than by any friend or family member who I might invite into my home. If I need to admit a strange man into my home then I make sure that I have a friend or neighbour round.

It sounds far more dangerous where you live than where I do, by the way 💐

We know they're not on our side. It's tedious to keep hearing how stupid we are for thinking that they are GC allies. They are genderists as much as the TAs. Not GC

Oh is that what this article is going on about. I did wonder.

JCJ is really obsessed with this. It’s based on her utter hatred of KJK. I heard her say she is more worried by KJK than TRAs.
TRAs we’re going to call us right wing, with or without KJKs existence. Just like they were always going to call us Nazis and fascists. It’s just a default insult of that branch of the left.

@Malvarrosa Thank you so much for writing this. I completely agree.

The ‘you are most likely to be attacked by men in your home’ argument has been weaponised ( to use a modern phrase) to shut down women raising legitimate concerns about the entry of males into female spaces.

It’s also clearly true that some groups of men do pose a higher risk to women, because they live in cultures ( I mean social cultures here) where attitudes to women, or acceptance of a certain level of violence to women, make this so. We are all social mammals, we are all formed by the cultures we live in, not just National or ethnic cultures, but the smaller sub cultures we move in. It’s surely a no brainer that these cultures will either increase or decrease a man’s threat to women. We see this happening in the TRA culture where their attitudes to sex realist women mean their threat to us increases, as they dehumanized us and legitimized violence towards us.

The reason why we are most likely to be abused inside our home is because our home is the one place where we let our guard down.

I don’t believe any male, no matter what his political leaning, will ever truly understand the pressures females face - they just can’t because they aren’t us and they don’t experience the world the way we do🤷🏻‍♀️

We have difficulty, amongst ourselves, understanding and empathising with each other when we have can have widely varying backgrounds and experiences.

But no matter how hard we can find relating to a viewpoint or life of another female we can always come back to the universal truth that JCJ is saying (however limited by her own prejudices and blindspots)

Males, all males and any males, do not come with an easy ‘mark of Cain’-type thing that shows us which ones are dangerous to us

Ergo female only spaces, female only services, female only provision of other aspects of life are essential for females only

And given the widespread and endemic nature of male violence against females of all ages regardless of their colour, creed, views, ages, background etc

it is essential that those males who do not abuse females, or other males, stand up and tackle their fellow males who do

The call is coming from inside males own house and it is time that they cleaned their own fucking house up themselves and quit calling females in to do it for them

And I agree that females are not just in danger from males they know - or even have met and the proliferation of images of abuse and use of technology means a female can be minding her own business anywhere in the world - maybe not even feeling in any way in danger - and not know that they are being stalked by some male who, as Mal says ‘has his eye on you’ because he saw you in the street - or an image of you online.

Where they live, in any sense of the phrase, is irrelevant because the common denominator is that they are biologically male

That's a really thoughtful essay. Thanks for posting it.

Poor old OP (& JCJ). Spending so many hours behind screens obsessively poring over Tommy Robinson's life in order to find fault with women.

One day I will open a thread started by this OP and it won't be yet another thread criticising women. One day... maybe.... perhaps.....

See my issue with JCJ is she feels like a gatekepper.

In her version of the movement you can only be a GC feminist if you've got a degree and understand modern feminist theory and marxist theory and can read her incredibly complex and difficult to follow blog.

Well none of that applies to me nor to many of the other WC and immigrant women who are my friends and fmaily. We are more exposed to the dangers of the TRA cult. Posie Parker and JKR have done way, way more to expose TRAs than JCJ ever has and yet JCJ spends all her time slagging Posie off because she isn't the 'right kind of feminist'

Bollox to that.

I would also like to point out that JCJ's opening argument, that male friends and family are more dangerous that strangers, is exactly the same argument TRAs use when telling us we shouldn't fear men in our spaces.

Well duh we know that Jane. I've experienced DV. I KNOW all that. That's why I want safe public spaces, safe refuges, safe changing rooms.

On the day when Anita Rose (remember her name) has died, don't tell me not to fear strange men, JCJ. Intellectual snob, well removed form the struggles on the ground, as you are.

She’s such an intellectual snob. Urghhh

I think it's easy for people to forget that many feminists like JCJ are from the same pool as the TRAs. The language used, the ideological viewpoints are exactly the same as any other academic and activist immersed in far-left 'critical theory'. They all think and speak the same way because they all follow the same school of thought.

TRAs are their closest pals. Hence why all these women are very happy to call blokes she/her if the bloke is someone nice and their friend. It's standard in these circles.

They are 99.9% indistinguishable from TRAs in terms of political and ideological viewpoints and the kind of policies they support.
The only tiny difference between them and their TRA pals is that they don't think any man can identify as a woman - nice men and their mates are ok, just not 'bad' men like rapists.

For this tiny disagreement with their TRA pals, they have been cast out of their friendship and social circles and labelled as bigots. Must have been quite jarring to be on the receiving end for a change.

They still love 'cancel culture' and labelling everyone far right and thoroughly enjoy the racist denigration of 'people of colour' that they claim to love. Identity politics is their favourite way of viewing the world around them. They gush over dark skinned people, poor people, immigrants etc but only if you are the type that agrees with them. They are not interested in your 'lived experiences' or viewpoints. You are not a full human being to these feminists. Just a NPC in their white saviour cosplay. You're meant to know your place and not deviate from the far left script.

They genuinely don't know what else to write about. There's very little materially different between them and TRAs. They are desperate to get back into that hallowed social circle and be with their pals again. I think they hope one day they will be granted forgiveness by the TRAs. Hence they need us, the unwashed, unschooled gobby women, to behave ourselves so they can be let back in by their she/her, he/him, they/them friends.

It was the unschooled, gobby women who said NO to all men being women. NO man is ever a woman, and we will never use female pronouns for any man no matter how nice he is or if he's anyone's 'friend'. It was unschooled, gobby women who said repeal the GRA.

These feminists are grossed out at being metaphorically cast out from their ivory towers and made to sit in the muck like the rest of us. They want to get back in and carry on pontificating about the world using unlimited public funding. They don't like us and are not interested in us. They are part of the elite and they talk about us in the abstract, not flesh and blood with a mind of our own. They are our superiors and in the natural order of things, they rule, we follow.

Well that was particularly twattish

She makes a few good points, but this division between "acceptable feminists" and gobby working class women like KJK is doing the gender squads work for them. Is there a way of discussing the problem of the far right without demonising our own?
It all feels immature a rather "I'm not sitting next to KJK, she smells!"

@Malvarrosa, you make a really solid point. I grew up in a very safe area, and have generally lived in very safe areas. My experiences of sexual assault are that it happens outside the home, sometimes men you know, sometimes men you don't.

Abuse of women and children by men inside the home is also enabled by two other simple facts; access and privacy.