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 👏

If one sees "the patriarchy" as the problem then "other cultures" become shades of grey in the overall issue that is the patriarchy, the subjugation of women and the tolerance of male violence.

Which is why many people who aren't academic feminists consider it an absolutely laughable concept. I think there is value in it, to a point. Like the concept of "privilege". Good for class analysis, not so good at the individual level.

https://janeclarejones.com/about/

Thanks @Shortshriftandlethal so I wasn't really missing anything then.

Yes I’ve made this point on another thread and in response was called xenophobic with no attempt to engage with the argument at all.

It’s simply illogical to argue that mvawg is largely (or even partly) the result of socialisation and societal attitudes towards women but at the same time argue that men the world over pose an identical risk to women.

What would be the point of equality laws or education or bringing boys up to respect women or having domestic violence campaigns or all the other things we do in an attempt to make society safer for women and girls?

In the UK, as a woman, I have equal right to go to school, to go to university, to work in any profession, to be paid the same as a man for doing the same job, to own my own property, to vote, to rise to high office, to have my own bank account, to wear what I like, to control my own fertility.

Obviously there are areas where women are disadvantaged, and I wouldn't want to downplay those. However, it seems absolutely pointless to pretend that things are just as bad for women in the UK as they are in, say, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or any one of a number of other repressive countries.

As a woman in the U.K., if I want to become a lawyer, let's say, do I have an equal chance to go to university and eventually to graduate and practice in my home country as I would in Afghanistan?

X post @RoyalCorgi!

If I live in Alabama and are made pregnant by my rapist, can I go to a clinic and get an abortion near my home? How about in Middlesbrough?

Why indeed would Trump be a problem for women in the US if every country in the world was justa "shade of grey" when it comes to the "patriarchy"?

It’s simply illogical to argue that mvawg is largely (or even partly) the result of socialisation and societal attitudes towards women but at the same time argue that men the world over pose an identical risk to women.

What would be the point of equality laws or education or bringing boys up to respect women or having domestic violence campaigns or all the other things we do in an attempt to make society safer for women and girls?

YY.

I don't think it is useful for class analysis. Quite the opposite. People use it as a crutch so it looks like they are saying something.

In as far as a Marxist analysis can be useful, it has to be based on a material analysis. There has to be concrete causality. That's hard to establish in many cases, or sometimes even reveals that an issue is not actually about make sexism or society upholding it. Far easier and more satisfying to put it down to the patriarchy as the casual factor.

Adolph Reed wrote a really excellent piece some years ago about this problem in race based analysis on the left. He said that the vast majority of academic racial theory was just complete bollocks, because it relied entirely on the idea of systemic racism to answer why disparities existed. It doesn't reveal anyone, it's just a way for people to attribute phenomena where they want.

More than anything it reminds me of concepts like "The Invisible Hand" or the Treasury of Merit - although at least the latter is meant to try and describe a spiritual phenomena so is outright a kind of metaphor.

I'm not an academic feminist. Just a radical feminist.
The concept of the patriarchy is necessary to being a radical feminist.

https://www.radfemcollective.org/what-is-radical-feminism

Others can sneer at it, feminists are used to thar. Same old patriarchy at work. I personally find it a bit sad in the place that introduced me to radical feminism but nothing lasts forever.

I am not going to pretend I have followed every point and every nuance of this thread, because I am a thicko non-university-educated working class Northern woman, but there are a couple of points I want to make.

In the same way as "I didn't leave the Left, the Left left me" has become something of a truism, so "I don't agree with Tommy Robinson on single-sex spaces, he agrees with me" should be. Gender-critical feminists have been holding this line long before those on the right - far or otherwise - saw there was political capital to be gained by taking the same stance but for very different reasons.

As for discounting a piece of writing based on the publication which carries it, do me a favour and grow the fuck up. Of course, fact check; that's just good sense and critical thinking. But the question to be asked is why people whose track records show their left/centre 'credentials' (for want of a better word) have to resort to writing for right-wing publications? Why are the left-wing media so resistant to carrying a message as fundamentally factual as "men can't be women and women need and are deserving of their own spaces for a number of reasons"? [Rhetorical question, we know why, because we know who holds the power and it isn't the women who want our rights upheld.]

I don't think it is useful for class analysis. Quite the opposite. People use it as a crutch so it looks like they are saying something.

In as far as a Marxist analysis can be useful, it has to be based on a material analysis. There has to be concrete causality. That's hard to establish in many cases, or sometimes even reveals that an issue is not actually about make sexism or society upholding it. Far easier and more satisfying to put it down to the patriarchy as the casual factor.

Yes, I take your point, and as I'm neither a Marxist nor an academic feminist I'm probably using it in a bit of a lazy way myself, tbh.

Sorry meant to quote @TempestTost

 right back at you @CassieMaddox

I'm not an academic feminist. Just a radical feminist.
The concept of the patriarchy is necessary to being a radical feminist.

I'm a feminist, I don't label myself. If I have to make my position clear on the trans issue I'm a gender critical feminist. Many of my positions align with radical feminism, others do not, because I don't buy into some of the academic underpinnings wholly.

If one sees "the patriarchy" as the problem then "other cultures" become shades of grey in the overall issue that is the patriarchy, the subjugation of women and the tolerance of male violence.The fundamental issue really, which we touched on upthread, is some feminists (like me) believe no society treats women as "broadly equal to men". And therefore the "threat" of immigration seems like a distraction from a bigger issue.

If it is all just a shade of grey how do you measure progress?
How do you analyse the effective ways of achieving the end of the patriarchy? Let's stop collecting Comparative data on the global situation on human rights, it only creates an illusionary hierarchy of oppression.

If all patriarchal societies are equal, then it makes no difference where you live. How in this patriarchal hellscape do we 'smash the patriarchy '

If the patriarchy is eternal through space and time isn't the most sensible strategy to use it for your own personal benefit.

Seriously?
Shades of grey does not mean "all the same".
Trump is a problem because he is the epitome of the patriarchy and will uphold that system. That doesn't mean if Harris gets in feminism has done it job and American women will live in an equal society.

And it hasn't escaped my notice that like Tommy Robinson, many prominent GC voices are also pro-Trump.

My opinion is you can't be pro-Trump or pro-Tommy Robinson and be a feminist. I believe that's also JCJs point.

Unfortunately radical feminism has been so overwhelmed with responding to gender ideology we are now a rare breed in GC circles and more common are the gender traditionalists and right wingers.

I should say, I don't label myself further than calling myself a feminist. And I don't think you have to buy into "the patriarchy" in the way some people are here, so that it is all important to any analysis, to be a feminist.

Your choice. Maybe you can respect mine also.

Shades of grey does not mean "all the same".

What shade of grey is Afghanistan?

My opinion is you can't be pro-Trump or pro-Tommy Robinson and be a feminist. I believe that's also JCJs point.

Not really a problem on FWR, is it? Why are we constantly harangued about it?

In the same way as "I didn't leave the Left, the Left left me" has become something of a truism, so "I don't agree with Tommy Robinson on single-sex spaces, he agrees with me" should be. Gender-critical feminists have been holding this line long before those on the right - far or otherwise - saw there was political capital to be gained by taking the same stance but for very different reasons.

This.