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 👏

Whereas her blog post makes me think:

a) I don't know any GC women who would even begin to agree with TR and patriarchal men, so it's a bit like writing a blog saying 'vegans really ought not to invest in beef farming', and
b) I don't think it's focused on him and them at all. It's rambling and woolly, with talk of GC women and what they've done wrong? right? I genuinely can't work it out, but it certainly felt like she was writing around what she really wanted to say, rather than writing something clearly and directly.

And I think (I may be wrong) that there have been perhaps two PPs here who have said 'TR might be on to something' - any other women would see it as just obviously given that TR is not on the side of women in any meaningful, realistic way.

As I said before, it's not the spiral that's dangerous to feminism, it's the bloody men poking their way in and telling us how we're doing it wrong.

This is really great, Malaga, thank you. It makes me think of that useful diagram which often pops up here, about being centrist/centre left and the left reaching so far to the left that our maintained position ends up on the conservative end of the spectrum.

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 think Tommy R and JCJ agree that all men should kept out of women's spaces? Brown ones, white ones, muslim ones, chistain ones, left ones and right ones.

So is she talking about who should be let into the country? Is she sayijng there is no way of knowing which men would be more likely to be dangerous when making that decision? so let them all come? I guess TR would say only letting men who apply legally and who don't have serious criminal records would be a start?

TR would probably also argue that muslim men have poorer attitudes towards women than other cultures, JCJ seems to think this isn't true.

So the only real difference between them is: does muslim culture treat women poorly?

But that's not really the debate JCJ wants to have. She's skirting around it and finds it much easier to say TR and his mates are a bigger danger to women.

Here (I've lightly edited it in light of comments about her prose):

The TRA effort to shut down gender critical women by calling them fascists wasn’t just a random slur. It had a logic to it. That logic is grossly misapplied to the materialist feminist position for several reasons, and it is absolutely true that trying to censor women’s concerns by claiming they were motivated only by hatred and the specific demonisation of trans identified people was a coercive and democratically illegitimate silencing technique. However, as I discussed last year in ‘Feminism is Not Identity Politics,’ at the point of which a putative ‘gender critical’ discourse about keeping men out starts to slip towards thoughts of keeping those ‘bad/ deviant/ brown/ Muslim men’ out, and enlisting the ‘good/ white/heterosexual/Christian men’ to help you do it, things start to look rather different.

Far-right populists are invariably patriarchs. There is no freedom for women, there is no substantive or meaningful idea of ‘women’s rights,’ in the hands of men who think about women in terms of which men they belong to. Like Breivik, they will talk of protecting women from deviant or racialised men one minute, and the next they’ll be calling women some variant of ‘whore.’ They are also, frequently, for the same reasons, homophobic. A gender critical project grounded on defending the interests of women, gay people, and gender non-conforming children cannot be coherently based in any kind of alliance with such men or in any kind of discourse that reproduces their talking points. A ‘gender critical’ project that reproduces key elements of a populist, racist, patriarchal worldview cannot, indeed, be called ‘gender critical’ at all

CassieMaddox · Today 13:06

Can't find one? Can you link it?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5129642-5129642-why-has-tommy-robinson-been-arrested-under-anti-terrorism-laws?page=1

It's been closed to comments.

This doesn’t make logical sense though. Surely if you believe that men statistically pose a risk to women (which JCJ does) it must follow that if you reduce MALE immigration you will reduce that risk. It’s such a basic hole in her argument.

Its a numbers game I guess. Yes, mathematically but the reduction in risk would be tiny.

Meanwhile such an approach allows home grown offenders to continue unimpeded.

It's likely other approaches would be more beneficial. Arresting and convicting rapists and domestic abusers would be a good start

No snark from interpreted from me I hope Cassie?
I was genuinely interested in your thoughts about the question I quote-responded to you earlier in this thread re where you/she/others thinking along similar lines would draw the line. I wondered about JCJ's criticism of Unherd- when both Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel contribute prolifically, well, and I would think in a way JCJ would align with, in Unherd.
Was trying to engage in good faith with a relevant question here I feel?

Actually I think it is simpler than this.

The reason she brought up "brown men" is because she is using the usual leftist tactic of implying those who don't agree with her analysis are racists.

She is trying to imply that for anyone wanting to say that there are strongly patriarchal cultures that are particularly problematic for women's rights, and that those cultures might be present in some way within the UK and this is a problem, the reason for that thinking is they are actually racists. Because actually we know that all men constitute a single, non differentiable group in terms of risk to women. Thus the only reason to differentiate is racism.

So actually, these women like TR because of their shared racism.

The fact that the claim that there are no further risk factors analysis beyond "men" is manifestly false is irelevent, we are not supposed to notice because that is a major feminist dogma we can't question. Just like all women are equally likely to be raped. The fact that both of these facilities are used to justify further analysis, and this will therefore be flawed, is irelevant.

The dogmatic religious quality of gender ideology isn't unique. It comes straight out of this kind of left thinking.

So the only real difference between them is: does muslim culture treat women poorly?

I’m wondering which of them would argue that women living under islamist regimes aren’t treated poorly. JCJ?

That poster holds the belief that the contributers here she doesn't like despise women @CassieMaddox. 🙄 I admire your patience.

I’m wondering which of them would argue that women living under islamist regimes aren’t treated poorly. JCJ?

She certainly seems to imply this. Or at least that TR is a bigger threat to women than muslim culture.

No no - not posters I don't like. It's posters who spend endless hours finding fault with women on here and pretending FWR women are fascist / right wing allies.

They're the posters I believe display their dislike of women.

I find Unherd problematic because its owned by Paul Marshall, failed politician, evangelical Christian, owner of GB news and recently exposed as tweeting/retweeting a lot of far right/anti-muslim content.

Unherd also hosts a lot of content that at best doesn't meet basic journalistic standards and at worst is conspiracy laden misinformation. There's a lot of anti-vaxx stuff on there.

So for me I'd probably avoid, or if I did read an article on there I'd be careful to crosscheck the facts afterwards.

No, of course not I just got distracted by other posts. I've replied now

The fact that the claim that there are no further risk factors analysis beyond "men" is manifestly false is irelevent, we are not supposed to notice because that is a major feminist dogma we can't question.

Excluding all men is possible in spaces that are specifcally for women and we shouldn't have to justify or measure the risk beyond this. Partly because it's also about privacy as well as safety and partly because we have (or had) a social contract where the non dangerous men agreed to stay out to collectively pritect women.

We can't exclude all men in immigration, but we can use other fcators to indicate which are the men who would pose the least risk to women and society at large.

There are sveerol factors you could use, such as criminal records and legal status.
Whether religion or not should be one of these factors seems to be the central issue here.

JCJ seems to think that the immigration of muslim men should be of no concern to women. She won't say this directly though instaed she refers to 'brown men' to suggest this view is just racist.

She's actually very clearly saying that TRs ideology is an example of "strongly patriarchal cultures that are particularly problematic for women's rights". That's why she fights against it.

Me too. Anyone who believes in womens rights should be anti Robinson. He's a viilent dangerous man, paedophile apologist, stalker, misogynist etc. That's before you even discuss whether or not he's racist.

Something has gone badly wrong if feminists are saying "he has a point".

there were plenty of FWR regulars posting about who "knows what a woman is" and the only parties pure enough to deserve our votes.

You must have been reading different threads from me. I remember lots of posters planning to spoil their vote, and some were going to vote for one or other of the main parties. I don't think many (if any) FWR regulars said they would vote Reform.

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.

In that case, you must have confused me with someone else. Although a quick search did bring up a previous thread where you wrongly accused me of doing this. Perhaps you got your false accusation confused with reality.

Do you think TR is far right?

Depends what you mean by far right 😂

I think he's a racist thug and if he has left the country, all I can say is 'good riddance'.

Its a numbers game I guess. Yes, mathematically but the reduction in risk would be tiny.

But the same applies to not allowing men who claim to be women into women’s spaces / services etc. It’s not simply about risk in either case and we have to be able to have these conversations without being called racist or transphobic.

The case that really opened my eyes was that guy who threw alkaline over the woman and her two children (who were also immigrants). He was a convicted sex offender who had been given asylum despite being a convicted sex offender. I mean where is the risk assessment? How can we possibly have an asylum system that grants known male sex offenders asylum? How many other known offenders are we allowing to remain in the country. We aren’t even making the right decisions when it comes to known risk. And then you have the likes of JCJ implying it’s racist to have the conversation. This is why the likes of TR is pulling crowds of thousands.

That poor woman and her children are real people and the risk that man posed to members of the public was not tiny. This is evidence of a broken system and Labour need to be open to a public debate on this issue or we are going to be seeing a whole lot more of TR and Reform over the next few years. And calling people racist or ant-muslim (when it’s islamism that is the real concern) isn’t going to work I don’t think. It didn’t work for Brexit did it?

Interesting thread. I've never heard of this jcj woman (although I have of course heard of kjk who I think is great and has done loads for women). Peoplw like her don't give a monkeys about other women's safety and wellbeing, but im sure she lives in a safe mc (and probably almost 100% white despite calling gc women racist) area. Best ignored.

I'll say directly - I think the immigration of Muslim men should be way down women's lists of concerns. Behind the effective decriminalisation of rape. Behind levels of maternal and child poverty. Behind the tolerance of porn culture and misogyny. Behind the fact the police leave dangerous violent stalkers free to kill women, even when they've been told they are a risk. Behind the fact the prisons are full and so criminals are being released (although thanks to Labour, not the ones proven to be dangerous to women). Behind the fact the police are so understaffed they can't deal with all the men known to be accessing images of child abuse. Behind the fact employers are still routinely discriminating against women for being pregnant/ being mothers/ being menopausal or just fucking well having a vagina. Behind the fact the NHS is so overstretched that women have to go on mixed sex wards, even though we know that's a risk.

Immigrant Muslim men is very very very low down my list of feminist issues.

You've never heard of her but you've decided straight away she's best ignored. OK then.

And @signalbox the reason that sex offender was granted asylum was because of human rights laws that puts safety of asylum seekers above safety of women who are as usual at the bottom of the pile.

I'm asking what you think is far right, quite clearly.
Do you think TR is far right? If not, why not?

@Signalbox
And then you have the likes of JCJ implying it’s racist to have the conversation. This is why the likes of TR is pulling crowds of thousands.
Well, indeed. If mainstream politicians will not have honest conversations about immigration (why we need it, how we might control it, how best to manage it), then people who feel that they have lost out consistently in the current economy, and who see no benefit in immigration at all, will vote Reform.

@OldCrone
I don't think many (if any) FWR regulars said they would vote Reform. Cassie concluded that I was going to vote Reform. This gave me and a number of other posters a damn good laugh.