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 👏

I find it very interesting that posters on here can see the risks of "capture" by gender ideology yet simultaneously think the far right don't pose such a risk or they are somehow immune to them. It must be triggering some serious cognitive dissonance.

When the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and all mainstream media, the public sector and all government departments are relentlessly pumping out pro Tommy Robinson propaganda on a daily basis, get back to me.

No. Because I'm literally as centrist as one could be politically. I'm not sure what "identarian left" means but I'm sure if I'm it then it is essentially meaningless because my politics is unremarkable.

The only place I'm not centrist is in terms of feminism but even there I'm very much evidence rather than opinion based.

I think the evidence is a bit against the identified reality there tbh...

All these posts and articles with their conflation and guilt by association are just getting funny now. The level of obsession combined with poor logic is all a bit tragic.

Who exactly are these argumenst aimed at?

Who are the women claiming Tommy Robinson is a great feminist?? Where are they?

There are women who agree with him on the trans stuff (or I'd prefer to say he agress with them) and there are some women who agree with his position on immigration. And there is a probably a small overlap in these two groups. But it's probably very small, and they probably don't view themselves as feminists or spend much time on the FWR boards or reading JCJ blogs.

So who is she talking to and about??

Yes there are many groups of men who don't centre womens rights:

Many men in muslim cultures. Yet there are muslim women.
Some right wing men who are anti immigration. Yet there are right wing women.
Some left wing men who prefer to support the women who are men. And some left wing women.

Then there are women from all those groups who are gender realists and fighting against a dangerous ideology.

So what exactly is the point, beyond: some people you agree with on one thing have different views on something else. I no longer think the crucial divide is left or right: its between people who can tolerate this, and people who just can't.

Some people seem to only think in tribal terms.

Err no, there were plenty of FWR regulars posting about who "knows what a woman is" and the only parties pure enough to deserve our votes. Luckily it appeared to have minimal impact on the result.

I'm pretty sure we've been on threads together where you've posted about the dangers of Islam and its impact on "British culture" in a way that came across to me as a "far right" talking point. Also asked the JCK question multiple times of "what even is far right?"

Do you think TR is far right?

Thanks for the link - I thought she articulately explained what is becoming more and more prevalent particularly on this board.

And that proves my point.
If you think I'm "far left" or even left at all that shows you must be viewing the world through a pretty right wing lens.

I'm very very central. I don't even agree with anything you could say is "identarian politics". So either you've created a strawman of my views (quite likely given what people say about me) or you think centre = left, presumably because you spend a lot of time reading and discussing right wing stuff.

Hmm. A speedy rough count suggests there's over 40 posters commenting unfavourably on the OPs views (thread has 130 comments with at least 30 of those from the OP) at time of posting.

But don't let accuracy stand in the way of your allegations 😂

But what genuine GC woman is unclear on the toxicity of Tommy Robinson and "his ilk"? Which truly GC woman thinks it's a good idea to associate with them? I don't believe this is legitimately something that needed clearing up, among women who know perfectly well what dangers men present, in or out of the home.

The GC content you'll see alongside right wing nut job conspiracy stuff isn't GC women sliding to the right, it's that crowd trying to protect the women they "own" and drawing boundaries on the objects (women) they want. It looks like overlap but it's not, really; it's two very separate groups who momentarily have overlapping goals (keeping men out of women's spaces) but for very different reasons (GC women demanding security and privacy for women, knowing the threat men present; right wingers not wanting "their" women to be "damaged" by other men).

The threat to feminism isn't just TRAs or right-wing men - it's men, always. Men who don't want women to have autonomy, space and time to think, security to life the way we choose, freedom to organise for the protections of women as a class. It's not women mingling with the wrong bit of the purity spiral.

He's filth, and at the end of the day, his main objective in inventing and repeating lies is obviously money. Awful man. We don't need people like him or Andrew Tate in our society, or their nasty ilk.

"largely . . . patriarchal nation in which ‘their’ women know their place and are ‘protected’ only insofaras ‘protection’ means keeping them guarded from ‘other’ men."
Yes, this describes muslim cultures much more accurataly than TR and his followers.
He's one dodgy bloke vs a worldwide religion which sugjugates women and JCJ is more worried about TR?

It's almost as if JCJ only cares about white women...?

Or maybe as @Bosky says the OP is worried that unless she and JCJ continuoiulsy point out how awful TR is we are all in danger of marrying him?

TBF I nearly did the other day until I saw another thread remidning me he was eveil.

(but remind me is TR in favour of polygamy or is that some other religious group which treats women really badly..??)

What "political, intellectual and emotional insight" do you feel your posts have brought?

Insults get boring. I'd rather not be deleted. Hence biscuits. If you don't want them, engage with the conversation with political, intellectual or emotional insight. That would be fab.

That whole quote is an example of bizarre over reach.

She's basically saying, because drawing boundaries (between male and female) is inherent in GC thinking, it has some similarities to other types of thinking (nationalism, say, also accepting boundaries between citizens and people who are not citizens) that she believes are part of far-right populism. The implication being that there is a kind of danger in GC thought if that boundary thinking might also be applied in other ways.

I find it difficult to decide if that is such a weak connection that we should point and laugh, or completely ridiculous because of course it's true that people who refuse to draw any boundaries at all may be less likely to become nationalists, but that doesn't really recommend it as a method.

I didn't find it hard to understand.

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".

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

What "political, intellectual and emotional insight" do you feel your posts have brought?

There have been several posts with the above that you have resolutely chosen to ignore or berate.

Insults get boring. I'd rather not be deleted. Hence biscuits. If you don't want them, engage with the conversation with political, intellectual or emotional insight. That would be fab.

Where are all these insults? It would also be fab if you would engage with political, intelligent or emotional insight.

Whatever.
I've engaged where I can. I've not berated anyone. And getting told I'm implying people are pearl clutching bigots and that I'm "scolding" for starting a thread is absolutely an insult.

There are various posters whose only contribution is to snark at me, including you. It's dull.

JCJ and OP can't seem to get over the fact that TR agrees with them.

This is so ground shakingly awful to them as he is bad and they are good (everyone is just bad or good to them, and they are 100% ceratin of their 100% goodness /right side of history credentials) they can't accept that.

The horror of this means they have to spend huge amounts of time making it clear they regard him as very bad. and very dangerous. Any one who agress eith TR on anything but who does not do the horror denouncemnt to re-establsih their goodness very clearly to the tribe, is 'dangerous' and no longer accpetbale.

It would be much easier for them if they just ralised they could say: yeh Tommy and I agree on gender stuff, but I have a diffrent view in immigartion and he seems like a twat on a personal level.'

That's all you need to do.

I am not snarking at you. I read the thread with an open mind and asked you a perfectly reasonable question from what I had taken from the thread.

You come across incredibly prickly if people don't just nod along and agree with and praise you.

I'll leave you to it.

Guilty as charged. I'll be quite honest, (picking my words carefully), having encountered some of your views about safeguarding that you have openly posted on this board - views that I fundamentally disagree with - I now only occasionally engage with your posts.
Today I was struck by the standard of political, intellectual and emotional responses from some of the early posters who gave thoughtful and nuanced responses to your OP and decided to engage. I think I only made one more detailed post and have mainly responding flippantly. Your evident frustration that women on here just won't do as you tell them makes me laugh.

One of the things that is interesting to me about JCJs blog is that she's taken a lot of care to keep it focussed on Tommy Robinson and patriarchal men - see the photos at the end. Yet some readers still think it's a "purity spiral" against women.

I think its interesting that people seem to find it so hard to condemn TR. Almost like a knee jerk deflection onto "what she's really saying". Whereas to me, reading the blog on face value, it says a lot of interesting things about far right patriarchy and the potential dangers to women of those mens voices becoming increasingly influential.

I don't agree with your perspective that the entirety of the public sector including teachers are "captured" and a risk to children, no. It is another example of the radicalisation to me, that someone can seriously believe that teachers in the UK are a risk to children. So as much as you disagree with me, I disagree with you and maybe it would be for the best if we just agreed to disagree on it.

I think Mumsnet is unusual in online forums in not showing the thread starter's name on the active menu. Anyone else click on a thread title and then see a particular OP started it and sigh heavily?

Actually I think this makes an intersting point:

On the left (who are more supportive of TRAs) there is a tendency to view any drawing of boundaries as bad or exclusionary, which extends to immigration. they view the whole notion of national borders, and enforcing these as bad.

The right are more generally comfortable with clear boundaries: men and women, nation states, children and adults, and having agreed laws around boundraies.

I think for GC leftist women such as JCJ they struggle with this link. They now see the need for the boundary and the law for men and women as categories but they still view other boundaries as indicatice of dangerous 'unkind' exclusion.

I think she's hit on something fundamental in the thinking.

TBH I don't understand why GC left wing women can continue to think the left is correct on everything except gender ideology when it's so connected to the whole leftist ideology of no boundaries/ equity/ inclusion/ kindness in other areas.

The gender stuff and queer theory more broadly has certainly made me revalaute what boundaries we need as a society, and realise that I'm certainnly more conservative than the current left on most things (although I maintain they're the ones who have moved not me)

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.

I can’t work out if JCJ is arguing that we should keep all men out or that we should let all men in.

Or is it that we can acknowledge the statistical risk that men pose to women but we should avoid alluding to this in any way when it comes to immigration?

She's saying all men are a risk, so no men in womens spaces. And that it's a fallacy to think you could significantly reduce risk to women by focusing on subsets of men e.g. reducing numbers of immigrants.

From an evidence based position she's right. That won't stop people believing that "other men" are the problem, especially when the likes of TR are enthusiastically pushing that narrative.