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 👏

You may not like Islamist but it is the correct word to describe political ideology driven by Islam.

Which 'right wing' source do you read or subscribe to, out of interest?

Personally, I was formerly a life long subscriber to The Guardian ( print media) but no longer, although I still look at it on-line and buy The Observer on Sundays. I now subscribe to 'The Times', both print and digital. I used to subscribe to 'UnHerd', but now just look at its free content.

I watch the BBC news on TV and look at its on-line content every day - though I do now treat it with a big dose of scepticism. I also read an american site called 'Tablet'; also look at Memri TV; The Jewish Chronicle, and I subscribe to Mary Harrington's blog and receive updates from Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I also read books quite widely. Currently re-reading JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy - which I first read when it came out in 2016, but also recently read Simon Schama's 'History of the Jews - (1492 -1900), and have also skimmed through Illan Pape's 'The Idea of Israel' for contrast. After visiting Auschwitz recently I read Victor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning'.

You?

The article I linked us by a left wing feminist pointing out that people like Tommy Robinson have aligned themselves with the GC cause and as a result now you often see far right points being made alongside GC points. I would argue that's what has happened to this thread.

Isn't this the plan though?
Keep posting articles about Tommy Robinson and GCs, and then stand back and point out that shock horror GCs are discussing Tommy Robinson and his views?

We have an inherent right, and even a duty, to criticise and analyse any ideology - including religious ideologies and religious practices. I seem to recall you yourself are particularly critical of Christianity?

What do you think is the main difference when it comes to Islam as a religion, and Islamism as a political ideology? Why should they not be subject to similar levels of scrutiny or comment?

Islamism is not a dog whistle, it describes a real religious/political ideology, ffs.

What do you think dog whistle actually means?

Thank you Cassie 💐

I guess I still sit with the no males at all view that straddles both arguments then

I can’t see how berating each other gets us any closer to doing something practical like reinstating female only spaces and services

I personally have been let down by left-wing socialists but only those who excluded me from “women’s” services because I couldn’t bear to be around males

That experience remains very hard to cope with on a practical and emotional level but it hasn’t pushed me towards the far right or their view points

All sides over here (NI) also want control over my body wrt reproductive rights though so maybe that’s made it super obvious to me that no ‘side’ can be trusted, left or right, to put female safety above male wants

It is making my recovery from male sexual violence much more difficult

And quite lonely.

I think I’ll leave the thread now bc fighting over who is most feminist while rape victims hide at home due to lack of female only spaces is not really something I want to watch.

Absolutely.

I'm stunned at the level of your ignorance.
I was not talking about Iran I'm talking about the UK. Admittedly they're Councils rather than Courts.

https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2015/06/government-urged-to-tackle-sharia-courts-and-religious-tribunals-by-womens-rights-and-secular-campaigners

Evidence has been heard in Committee in Parliament but for some reason I can’t download at the moment.

https://www.onelawforall.org.uk/sharia-courts/

Opposing ‘Sharia courts’ is not racism or ‘Islamophobic’; it is a defence of the rights of all citizens, irrespective of their beliefs and background to be governed by democratic means under the principle of one law for all. What amounts to racism is the idea that minorities can be denied rights enjoyed by others through the endorsement of religious based ‘justice’ systems which operate according to divine law that is by its very nature immune from state scrutiny.

Saw this on X. This reflects my position. This mindless shutting people down for wrongspeak is not only counterproductive, it's bloody dangerous.

https://twitter.com/TheFamousArtBR/status/1817658004776316982?t=I0NSkgCF-OXTxAKppFffCw&s=19

If we can take “Tommy Robinson” out of the equation for a moment because I’m actually more interested in what so many people are concerned about…

What blows my mind is the enormous numbers of people turning out for these events, being completely and utterly dismissed - not just by leftists - but also by the mainstream media as nothing more than “fascists” and therefore not worth listening to.

So many people, from all different ages, from all different backgrounds, from different ethnicities and religions have so many concerns about what is happening in this country and how we are being divided.
All of these people are worried about everything from issues of immigration, concerns about Islamic radicalisation, antisemitism, trans ideology, two tier policing, media tribalism, the list goes on…

Somehow all of these people who are just people worried about issues which affect them personally, are being completely written off.
This is alarming because it’s not a small number of people feeling unheard and disregarded in their own country.

Yet when a dozen men in dresses stomp around threatening women … Every institution in this country, including the government decides to bend over backwards for them.

This is a problem.

Oh and Julie Bindel, Writer signed the one law for all open letter.

The "other side" think the left wing socialist feminists have a blind spot and wilfully ignore real concerns, leading to the rise of far right ideologies. They would probably argue that by refusing to acknowledge what they see as the intrinsic misogyny of "islamists" feminists like me are the problem.

This is what I think. Cologne 2015-16 and the deafening silence of most leftists changed forever the way I think. I cannot stand TR or his ilk. But nor can I stand the supposed feminists who are using the exact same arguments as TRAs to expose me and my female relatives to higher risks, presumably out of fear of being called racist. (But you're more likely to be attacked at home so we should let these risky people in - no, I live alone with a female cat so I'm perfectly safe at home thanks!) I'm also not scared of being called racist any more than being called transphobic (I know I'm neither). All men are a risk to women, but some are more risky than others. Men who are raised in a culture which is a-ok with appalling mistreatment of women worry me. That is (ime) white skinheads as well as islamists (and a fair few other groups). Feminists who pretend there is no difference between different groups of men are as idiotic as those fools who pretend that donning a skirt magically makes a man safe. I agree with much of what JCJ says in her blog. But it is really quite weak to refuse to acknowledge that some people have legitimate concerns.

As for "radicalisation". Again, a TRA talking point I'm immune to. They claimed I was radicalised by listening to women on Mumsnet - this is objectively quite likely as I've read loads on here and in the early days (pre name change) I was a fairly prolific poster. Far more likely than me being radicalised by following some people on Twitter who also attended a TR march.

Finally, the "I won't like you if you talk to those people I don't like" is insane. We managed peace in Northern Ireland when the freedom fighters / terrorists were able to meet and make a deal with the vicious oppressors / government. The only way to combat the rise of the far right is to talk to those who are drawn to these things and see if they have any legitimate concerns we can address. "La la la you're all racist" ain't gonna cut it.

Oh, and a PS re "dog whistle". I've heard it too many times regarding JKR so now I automatically distrust anyone saying it. If you think the person is racist, point out what they've said that is racist. If you can't then I'm gonna assume the person isn't racist and you are frustrated that they're making reasonable points.

It's even less helpful to respond to a post where someone has said she found a particular sentence difficult to understand, with the comment "I didn't find it hard to understand" followed by a synopsis of another part of the article which is making a completely different point.

I had no idea you were trying to say that the whole article and all the points made weren't hard to understand, since others were discussing a single point, and you chose to make a short comment about a completely different point, for reasons known only to yourself.

What a lot of academia word salad.

Please can someone who’s a JCJ fan explain why she’s great? I’d like to dig in deeper to find her brilliance but her writing isn’t really drawing me in.

Please can someone who’s a JCJ fan explain why she’s great?
I think she is very smart and that a lot of the GC arguments that many of us use to debate TRAs can be traced back to her thoughts and writing.

Having said that I don't agree with her on the topic of this particular thread.

She is saying there is common cause between GC feminists who want to keep men out of women's spaces because men are an inherent risk, and far right activists who want to protect "their women" from "other men".

I am really struggling to make sense of this.

You seem be claiming that JCJ is saying, to paraphrase:

GC Feminists: "all men are an inherent risk" (to all women)

Far right activists: "other men (ie. not far right men) are an inherent risk" (to "our" women)

What exactly is the "common cause"? The only overlap seems to be that, by default, "women are not a risk to men".

(It is as well that you left "white" out of "far right activists" because in the UK they are not all white and, of course, the "far right" exist on every continent, come in every colour under the sun and every brand of religious extremism.)

That common cause means the movement attracts far right/populists.

Whatever that "common cause" is ("women are not a risk to men" or something else) then, if it exists, does it also serve to repel Centrists and/or the Left and/or the Far Left from "the movement" (GC Feminists)?

The far right typically define 'other men' as those with brown or black skin. This is the heart of populism - your life is crap because of immigrants/black people/Muslims.

This let's the economic elites, neoliberal ideology, capitalistic exploitation nicely off the hook.

I think JCJ is saying that the common cause is wanting to retain the meaning of 'woman' and wanting men out of women's spaces.

Feminists because they believe it in women's rights to establishing their own boundaries, privacy and dignity, the far right because they view women as their own that they don't want immigrants/Black people/Muslims anywhere near.

Totally agree with posters who say how much the left's lack of coherent analysis about this, combined with it's capitulating to TRAs has built up the right.

I am reminded of the observation (no idea whose, it's years old) that right wing men see women as private property and left wing men see women as public property.

@Imnobody4 thanks for sharing that tweet. I agree with it.
But I think the whole mindless shutting down of wrongthink has a long history in feminism, and part of what Jones is trying to do - ringfence the gender critical movement from right wing thought - I can relate to.
I had my own "maybe some women can have a penis? maybe it's only my prejudice that assumes not??" moment in about 2012. And part of what spurred it on was real discomfort I experienced with the fact of the "TERF" feminist position and the conservative position being one and the same in response to the demands of the trans' rights movement.
The social and legislative changes that have come about as a result of the feminist movement (second wave / women's lib / not sure exactly what the best neutral term is) are huge. And each successive change that feminism encouraged in society was met with a conservative response: Might that not make things worse?
I think it became too easy for feminists to attribute any and all conservative caution to mysogyny.

So now the movement at the forefront of social justice progressivism, and some iterations of feminism, is trans rights. And the gender critical feminists are saying: if we start organising society around self-declared gender identity rather than sex, might that not make things worse?
Which is exactly the conservative response described above to every previous demand made by the feminist political project.
It took that year for me to get comfortable with having a conservative response to a political movement arguing for change in the name of justice.

Also, slightly tangentially, surely UnHerd isn't considered a news source?
(I like it very much, but that's not what news is.)

That is a very astute observation.

The idea that women aren't property seems to have passed both of them by entirely.

It certainly has.

Totally agree with posters who say how much the left's lack of coherent analysis about this, combined with it's capitulating to TRAs has built up the right.

Maybe JCJ could write her next 5000 word essay on this.
What is the left doing wrong which drives people towards the far right?

Which is why left wing feminists like JCJ have been building a separate left wing analysis and praxis. In no way do left-wing women like her, Julie Bindel or WPUK argue or pretend that there are not systemic sexism, racism and class prejudices in the current left.

Unfortunately, that tends to get ignored in the shouting about them shrilling for left-wing misogynists or troons.

OldCrone or maybe you could read the thousands of word that JCJ has written about this already? They're all freely available on her blog.

The left has been utterly shite on the right of women/supported self ID and so on. This has driven people to the right - see all the 'I'm not going to vote for a party that doesn't know what a woman is', including the far right aka 'At least Tommy Robinson knows what a woman is' comments over the last few months.

Turning a blind eye to anti-woman policies like banning/severely restricting abortion because the person who holds them 'knows what a woman' has, for some, become a political position that they're happy to uphold.