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 👏

Once someone is labelled "GC" it seems that an extraordinary set of amorphous and undocumented rules kicks in that they have to conform to and be measured against.

99.9 recurring percent of the planet knows that humans don't ever change sex and yet this whole "GC" malarkey is a club no-one will qualify for shortly.

No-one will care though as it appears from the outside to be a bunch of ferrets fighting in a sack.

Tinfoil hats on everyone!

Really, you are a loss to GCHQ, Cassie 🙄

Oh even GC posters on here have to deal with guilt by association and called a TRA if they don't tow the line. And TRAs and all trans people are all as bad as the worst behaved violent people they have any similarities with but mention any of their favourites costing up to bigots or Nazis and you'll get reams of responses about how you're on a purity spiral. But it's not a hive mind of course! 🙃

Still amazed that the thread title encouraged so many posters to click on this thread yet so many very few have any comment to make on the actual topic in the article.

that's been my exact experience too. I'm not GC enough apparently either.

They expect us to police the TRA bigots but won't do the same for their own like KJK and the like? We should be shouting down any bigot who tries to have an 'in' on our movements, but it seems to be the Trans one seems to be the only one where people accept awful other opinions?

Well maybe the venn diagram is a little bit more of a circle than previously thought, considering how every other poster on this board says how they are left leaning usually etc.

There were many comments about the article.

Bear in mind that the OP posted three extracts that she says are her "favourite bits", thus inviting comments on those extracts rather than the full article.

Just as a reminder, the OP says:

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.

I think the vitriol posters have for @CassieMaddox speaks for itself. I've always found her contributions to be well thought out and polite but this thread is full of posters lamenting her tone, her unlikeability etc but critique KJK and apparently it's doesn't matter if she's downright abusive to people, her message is what counts not how she says it. It's embarrassingly obvious that people just don't like that Cassie has quite consistently lately highlighted the growing infiltration of the far right into GC spaces and the far right coopting GC concerns. If it wasn't a thing I don't know why people can't just just ignore the threads, but any mention of it and the usual suspects pile on...

If you're a trans rights activist, you can choose to distance yourself from the nutjob violent TRAs or not, it's up to you.

I'm a GC and I am happy to distance myself from TR and any other racist idiot. What I won't do is accept the lie that he is in any way part of the GC movement, or influencing GC thought.

No there's really been very few compared to the pages and pages of comments of posters doing the exact same deflection noted in the extracts you quoted funnily enough though. And the pages of childish teeheeing over posters mutual dislike for the OP. Oh the really insightful comments of those who tried to read the article but it's "too many words" 🙄

If you're a trans rights activist, you can choose to distance yourself from the nutjob violent TRAs or not, it's up to you.
I'm not despite this board accusing me of it all the time. I do call out anything i see just as i do with all bigotry.

I'm a GC and I am happy to distance myself from TR and any other racist idiot. What I won't do is accept the lie that he is in any way part of the GC movement, or influencing GC thought.
Ok, so call it out? Not you specifically but distancing yourself only from those who are trying to get in on your movement just looks like silence. So makes others emboldened to think its the norm to be 'GC' and also be anti immigration or homophobic etc. I would never say he is influencing GC though, he's far too single issue to even bother. The issue is when these types turn up, they should be denounced thoroughly. I've interacted with you various times on here and you've been good to discuss and debate with. I just hate how it feels like i'm expected to call out the bigots jumping on with one opinion in common with me for example, and yet it's not the reverse? (again. not your specifically)

It's not a "lie" though, is it? Prominent GC women like his stuff, retweet his stuff, go on his marches. Other GC campaigners (e.g. Harry Miller) speak at his marches. Twitter is full of posters with suffragette hearts posting and reposting awful far right content.

The days of writing this off as "a lie" are over.

The best one can say now is it doesn't matter. I wouldn't tolerate someone saying that about TRA violence, so I'm not going to say that about far right violence either.

Agree 💯

Agreed. Glinner has very recently tweeted some insane abliesm about how many walking sticks at Pride and assuming all those who used them were trans people with brittle bones?

I’d agree with this, but I feel there has been an increasing tendency, rather than saying ‘TR is no part of the GC movement ‘, to adopt a kind of faux naive ‘in what way is he far right’. Ironically it’s very reminiscent of TRAs’ “what even is a woman?”

And no I don’t mean everyone, which apparently we need to spell out now.

Yes it is polarising. That doesn't mean it's irrelevant. The same can be said of those arguing for completely closed borders and no doubt you wouldn't say that was not a serious topic (I am assuming). What's interesting is the vast majority of people (including you apparently and myself) fall somewhere in between these two extreme positions when it comes to immigration which means we believe not everybody who wants to come to the UK should be allowed to come here. So there needs to be a debate and people need to able to express their opinions and if you are slightly more liberal on immigration than me it doesn't make me a bad person or a xenophobe or anti-muslim.

and if you are slightly more liberal on immigration than me it doesn't make me a bad person or a xenophobe or anti-muslim.
unless your points are just xenophobic or anti-islam. In which case, it does make you that. If it's not, that's obviously a different story.

It can be a lie that he is any part of the GC movement (unless ‘knows what a woman is’ is the sole criterion of being GC), while also being true that some GC women support him. The mistake is maybe believing it’s the GC bit they find most appealing.

Yeah I remember your name. I couldn't remember if you were a TRA but the part about being expected to denounce TRA behaviour didn't make sense to me unless you were in some way supportive.

I wouldn't think to call out TR involvement in the GC movement any more than I would have thought to call out Fred West's part in the stamp collection community. I just don't think there is any relevant connection. A few GCs, just like the rest of the population, will be anti immigration, some will be sceptical of Islam, some will be against all organised religions, some will be devout followers of those religions, many will have no strong opinion on any of these things.

There are lots of people who would love for the sense of some inherent connection between GC and far right views to be solidified in the minds of the public. I obviously wouldn't want that to happen.

You are assuming wrong. I'd think someone arguing for completely closed borders was similarly extreme and would not be very interested in discussing it 😂

I don't think people who want to discuss immigration concerns are xenophobic or anti-muslim. I base those judgements on whether people say xenophobic or anti-muslim things.

It's not "a few" though is it. That's why some feminists are alarmed about it.

Yeah I remember your name. I couldn't remember if you were a TRA but the part about being expected to denounce TRA behaviour didn't make sense to me unless you were in some way supportive.
Too GC for TRA and too TRA for GC over here apparently.

I wouldn't think to call out TR involvement in the GC movement any more than I would have thought to call out Fred West's part in the stamp collection community. I just don't think there is any relevant connection. A few GCs, just like the rest of the population, will be anti immigration, some will be sceptical of Islam, some will be against all organised religions, some will be devout followers of those religions, many will have no strong opinion on any of these things.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, i personally feel that it always needs to be called out whenever Bigots try to make themselves more legitimate by posing/getting involved in topics like this. But what if i said the same thing in reverse? Imagine if i said there wasn't a relevant connection between those sending rape threats to people like JKR just because they say TWAW like TRA? Where do we draw the line? Personally i'm of the opinion (which is mine and obviously different to yours) that we should be stopping them from trying to align with us on any issue, they should be outcasts for their abhorrent views on not only race but women and so on.

There are lots of people who would love for the sense of some inherent connection between GC and far right views to be solidified in the minds of the public. I obviously wouldn't want that to happen.
I think the problem is very visible people within the movement reposting FR views and media. If it was just people turning up at their rallies for women, thats one thing but it's not. I wish it were, but unfortunately not.

CassieMaddox · Today 08:57

Quote
GenderBlender · 29/07/2024 17:43

I really hope to fuck I am wrong, but I have a horrible feeling that some of your posts are going to age very badly, very quickly @CassieMaddox

What happened in Southport last night is a reason why none of us should be amplifying far right talking points. Or posting rubbish like this in the aftermath of a tragedy.

Imnobody4 · Today 10:38

I feel very uncomfortable about bringing what is a live and tragic situation into this discussion. Let's leave that until we have all the facts.

CassieMaddox · Today 11:41

What happened last night was what happens when people amplify far right misinformation online and embolden racists and islamophobes.

What happened last night was what happens when gullible people are persuaded that "the elite" are controlling what we think and so you need to look at information about worrying about the source.

What happened last night is exactly why I'm so concerned about the risk of the far right. Handwaving it away as "just men" and pretending it isn't all our problem doesn't cut it. Unless you want to live in a society where this kind of riot is par for the course.

CassieMaddox · Today 15:03

I've reported the whole thread earlier and asked it to be removed in light of the Southport riots and other posts on here. Providing opportunities to amplify misinformation that leads to the kind of stuff that happened last night is the last thing I want to do.

So it's gonna probably go at some point anyway.

CassieMaddox · Today 15:35

I asked them to remove it after hearing this:
He told Times Radio: “We’d had all sorts of lies being spread and misinformation being spread about the alleged perpetrator and some people with the best of intentions then they tried to rebut this, they tried to argue back, but all that happens is you’re just amplifying people’s false messaging.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/31/southport-mp-condemns-rioters-as-victims-mother-calls-for-calm

Maybe they will leave it up, obviously when I posted it I had no idea we were about to have far right riots like last night's.

CassieMaddox · Today 16:08
Quote

Signalbox · Today 15:52

Well short of one vile post about "patriotic men" nobody has been spreading misinformation on this thread have they? We haven't been discussing the perpetrator at all. So no need to delete, just deal with the post in question.

Someone yesterday posted that "this thread wouldn't age well" earlier yesterday and there was a lot of discussion about Islam. The timing seems too coincidental now.

CassieMaddox · Today 16:16
Quote
Whatever1964 · Today 16:11

I'm sure @GenderBlenderjust happened to post that just as there was breaking news about Southport and all the twitter racists were already spreading fake news that the attacker was Muslim. Maybe they can tell us what they were referring to instead @GenderBlender

Yes. Iirc that was just before the "debate" about immigration and Islam happened too.

I really couldn't care less about Cassie and her biscuit. I've noticed she uses it when she's well and truly cornered.

What's your point?