Actual gender critical left

[JumpingPumpkin]

I read this on their FB page today. I'm under no illusions as to whether Trump is genuinely supportive of women's rights (I don't believe he is), however I don't see how any of this was going to get resolved with the insane left in power.

There was no indication that any rollback was going to happen with Biden/Harris. I'm just wondering if anyone can comment on this as I do feel Trump is going to be a disaster in other areas.

"Ruth Serwotka:

"I'm not disappointed or shocked to see a large number of women who claim to be 'gender critical' embrace Trump and his billionaire oligarchy. It was written in the politics of many of them years ago.

Repeatedly I and other socialist feminists pointed out the ultra right wing drift, the myopic, endless focus on one thing to the point of banality, the reactionary evolution towards the Proud Boys and the shift towards upholding of traditional gender norms that implies.

Many of these women have become the enablers of a new age of reaction in America and elsewhere. They're currently on Musks social media platform cracking stupid jokes about the world not being in the grip of lunatics. They're celebrating as a victory that Trump has declared the existence of only two sexes (as if he's a deity).

There is zero focus on the fact Trump knows for sure which is the better sex, or his complaint that malign feminine energy, otherwise known as feminism, has brought America to its knees. No worries for our GC's. Nothing to see. Let's say we've won!

Well, biological sex is real for sure, but women have won nothing with Tumps election and could well lose everything, especially reproductive rights.

As matters progress I'm interested to see whether the "GCs" will unravel in the face of mass deportations of women and children, or enforced child bearing or the loss of freedom for lesbian and gay sexuality. Will they admit their hapless, clueless niavety or will they finally go down as red hot fascists in the end?"

Worth noting though that this isn't the case everywhere, communist parties in Canada, NZ, and Australia, when I looked about a year ago, all supported gender ideology.

Left parties that don't are outliers.

Susan Dalgety has written movingly about the issue of being a Left-wing feminist and supporting Trump's EOs on women's rights and child transition:

https://susandalgety.substack.com/p/trump-is-an-extremist-but-his-policy

"[Trump's] proclamation earlier this week on sex and gender may have an unwieldy title – “Defending Women from Gender Ideology and Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” – but its core message is simple: a woman is an adult human female. A statement of fact that in recent years has been dismissed as bigotry by a succession of leading progressive politicians, both in the USA and here in Scotland. Who can forget former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon dismissing the views of women’s rights campaigners as “not valid”? Or Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisting that some women have penises. And worst of all, Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman suggesting, in parliament, that children as young as eight should be able to change their legal sex....

...Trump’s executive order highlights what women’s rights campaigners have tried for a decade to explain to left-leaning MSPs and MPs – that the erasure of the biological reality of sex “fundamentally attack[s] women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.” And as it points out, truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, even trust in government in itself. But for a decade, the truth in Scotland was obscured by progress flags, ignored by politicians and public bodies more interested in winning plaudits from trans activists than listening to the concerns of ordinary people.

...As the polls here show, an increasing number of voters are turning to the Reform party led by Nigel Farage, another populist with a sizeable ego and, unsurprisingly, close to Donald Trump. Surely it is time for UK politicians, from Holyrood to Westminster, to stop blaming people for shifting to the right, and instead examine why voters are fed-up being told they are on the wrong side of a culture war, one that was started by progressives in lieu of tackling tough challenges like the housing emergency and a stagnant economy. And so-called progressive politicians need to examine their conscience about the terrible impact their enthusiastic support for gender identity theory has had on the nation’s children....

...It may be too late for the left here to stop the drift of voters to populist politicians such as Farage, despite being warned that their betrayal of women’s rights was, in part, responsible for driving people away. But it is not too late to save the real victims of this ridiculous culture war – our children. And you don’t have to like Donald Trump to agree with him that sex matters."

I was completely taken by surprise reading the Project2025 chapter on taking down Big Pharma and untangling the research / approval / policy tangles between government, civil service, and industry.
I think, beyond Trump's wing of the Republican party, the child gender medicine scandal has shocked U.S. conservatives more widely out of their libertarian take on healthcare. There is acknowledgement that we can't leave it to the market to decide - that there is, objectively, such a thing as "health," and market forces won't always push society towards it.
It's a big change for American style right wingers. They have always resisted thinking of healthcare as a right, and have wanted it treated as a consumer choice issue.
Their position on abortion has always been at odds with this, so I can understand why people are expecting these shifts will shore up the desire on the right to legislate against abortion. Trump doesn't share any of the socially conservative beliefs of the Evangelicals so I don't know how far they'll get.

Also, on the abortion issue, I wonder how long the academic activist left has had a hold over progressive politics that has stalled progress via compromise.
I remember, back in the last century, hearing arguments about how Jimmy Carter's policy that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" was actually not about ensuring women had access to abortions but rather about controlling women because otherwise you wouldn't care whether it was rare or not.

At the time I remember kind of accepting the authority of the people making the argument, even though it sounded unconvincing to me. But now I think it shows such a refusal to compromise that no wonder legislating at the Federal level in the USA never got anywhere.

The ‘actual gender critical left’ are a failure and should apologise to all women everywhere for being so shite.

I don't know - I think they might have won a 4D chess game. They didn't manage to persuade the left, but they might have just baited the right into doing the right thing.

I think at best we thought Trump might let some Matt Walsh type knock together some ill-thought-out headline-grabbing anti-trans measures that failed to actually grasp what the real problem was.

What we got was something that although it may not be coming from a radfem philosophy, manages to take on board and address almost all the actual practical measures that we've been advocating.

Putting together orders so GC-aligned (yes, he's aligning with us, not vice versa), avoiding every dumb Matt Walshism, and creating something that could have been put together any radfem, but sticking it under Trump's name is kind of the biggest poke in the eye imaginable to the AGCL crowd. Who won't be able to say anything good about it, won't be able to say anything bad about it (apart from carrying on the general background "Orange man bad" bleating that clearly bears no relation to this particular EO), and will end up falling back to the usual attacks on women.

So they've served as a target to satisfy the right-wing "annoy the libs and feminists" instinct. The authors could assure the president:

"Acting on this will create a real electoral liability for the Democrats, cos it's exactly what the vast majority of the population wants. But on top of that, if you do exactly what a large chunk of the radical feminists who would never vote for you anyway wants, it will really piss them off because it's you doing it, and they'll try to kick off a bunch of left-wing infighting".

"Sounds fantastic! Get to it".

So maybe inwardly Ruth Serwotka and all are having a warm glow about a job well done, but they've got to keep up the whole "I really hate Trump carrying out my policies and I'm going to shout at women whenever he does" shtick to make sure he keeps doing exactly what they want.

"Mr President - do you want to wind up the radfems again?" "You betcha. Man, doing what radfems want is so much more fun than undermining women's rights. Better for votes too! Wish I'd realised that earlier."

I hope I haven't blown the cunning plan. But maybe I'm playing 6D chess.

I was going to mention Afghanistan too. Biden was quoted in the Times (and I’m afraid I’ll never dig out the article, it was too long ago) as reportedly saying he wasn’t going to keep the US presence in Afghanistan for ‘a bunch of women’. He belittled women’s rights from the off. With tragic consequences - both home and away.

That is a distinction possibility that they are playing that under the table game. They can send in people they know will deliver what they want mostly, such as Kara and team, get May Mailman to produce it and get it signed. And still be able to remain able to stay on the sidelines declaring how horrible some people and their approach to politics are.

They can claim it was all their ideas and that those delivering the outcome took those ideas but they should be credited. All while never getting their own hands mucky from having to do what most lobbyists do - work across the political spectrum to get the policies they want in.

Are there successful lobbyist groups who can claim to never have worked directly with teams of political leaders they abhor if that team is in power ? If there are, I would love to know which group. Because I want to know how they did it all.

Gail "Does one of the AGCL follow ringing a bell and shouting Shame?"

That so reminds me of the TRA preference for tambourine+"repent motherfucker". I feel we are missing a trick in not having our own instrument/call-to-arms combo.

The harder left are wrong that conservative woman cannot be feminists. Just as they are wrong that left wing men are naturally more feminist allies than right wing men.

The harder left has become too obsessed with the idea of everyone either being an oppressor or oppressed, and as a result have lost all common sense. Its lead to them to compromise child safeguarding and womens dignity with the rights of men claim to be women. And ideological they can get out of it.

The harder right support trans ideology because of libertarian ideas. But once the harm to others is established, they can turn away from trans rights and stay libertarian.

Megyn Kelly says she can detect lots of fingerprints on these EOs. I don't know if she had any discussions, but I suspect she's been one of the most important people in getting us here - and as a lawyer she'll have known exactly what needed to be done.

MK has been really open about her own evolution from a Be Kinder to full on GC, and almost a single-issue voter on this. We know she's had a rocky history with Trump, and she says it was only the Biden admin's rewrite of Title IX that converted her into a firm Trump voter, because that was the most effective way to stop the madness.

I can't think of anyone who's had a bigger impact in getting the arguments out to American audiences. I keep recommending her long interview with Riley Gaines for anyone who wants a breakdown of the sports issue. And she's had Helen Joyce on the show, and KJK... and even debated the issue with left wing Congressman Ro Khanna, where I don't think they came close to converting each other, but some people on the fence must have watched it.

So, if we've got EOs with a very precise focus on what women and children need, and a lack of dumb Matt Walshisms, MK has to get some of the credit.'

But - as our betters keep reminding us - no good can come of talking to people on the right!

I bagsy the triangle. Will have to work on a slogan.

I love her, she's intelligent and thoughtful and I agree with everything you say. She's done huge amounts to raise awareness and is actually pretty balanced in all her analysis and commentary. But you know apparently "Far Right"

Love Megyn Kelly too. She's open minded - she changed her mind on this, did her research, knows her stuff. Backed Trump despite not liking some of his personal behaviour which she's been very open about. She's a big reason a lot of people in the US have finally felt able to speak up about common sense on biological reality, I think.

This.

I think USA politics differ from UK in that they like to have the "issues" - so democrats had what near 50 ish years of making out voting Republican would lead to loss of abortion rights while actually never finding the time to put in a federal law to uphold the shaky Roe v. Wade ruling that was always under threat.

There also seem to be this whining that people should just vote for them - rather than going out and convincing people - one of the main points of political parties.

See similar with some Labour supporters on here and many who also now moan the current government polices get criticized as if somehow no one should dare as if they are just the "good guys" and their polices aren't adversely affecting people's lives. You have power you make choices some people will get raw end of the deal and they will likely be vocal trying to get people on side to overturn decisions or get a party in that will next time. All this is basic politics.

One of the saddest, and maddest, things about all this is that gender ideology is fundamentally right-wing. Or to put it another way, it has elements traditionally associated with the right wing:

• It's misogynistic - it gives men power over women
• It reinforces regressive gender stereotypes
• It's homophobic - it tells adolescents who are gay and lesbian that they should be heterosexual, and it tells lesbian that they should accept men as sexual partners
• It's authoritarian - it employs ruthless tactics to silence dissenters
• It allows Big Pharma and private medical practitioners to make money out of exploiting vulnerable children and mentally unwell adults

There is no sense in which gender ideology could be regarded as progressive or left-wing. Yet left-wing, progressive and social democratic parties throughout the developed world have embraced this mad and dangerous ideology with enthusiasm. I am too angry with the left for having gone down this route to have space to feel angry with women for turning to the right-wing parties.

@RoyalCorgi its all tops turvy, the right being leftist, and the left being right wing, in certain policy areas. And then we see the rise of popularism, or as i would rather call it the cult of the individual.

I don't really know if it matters much in the end what wing it belongs to, but Ithink you've made a few serious errors in your list.

The absolute #1 being the idea that being misogynistic is right wing. This is the underlying assumption that has screwed up the perspective of the Real Feminists, they think being good is left wing, almost by definition.

There are woman haters across the political spectrum, and people who respect women And there are plenty of right wing feminist and that's not new - the Real Feminists might have denied them access to the brand, and conservative women in general didn't care to waste energy on arguing over names. But that hasn't stopped them from getting together and talking about women's issues and bettering things for women as individuals and a group.

Authoritarianism is also a very strange thing to ascribe to the right in particular. A good portion of the planet in the 20th century has been dominated by left authoritarian states. The Real Feminists are pretty authoritarian themselves.

The others I think aren't that clear cut either, but those two in particular seem to be totally unrelated to being left or right wing.

And on the other hand, I think we could talk about some of the typical characteristics of left wing movements - a commitment to destruction of boundaries and norms (in line with the idea that we all becomes the proletariat, gender ideology seems to conceptualize sex in the same way,) hierarchies of oppression and an association of being good with being oppressed, the sometimes startling similarity to things like struggle sessions and purity spirals we see in revolutionary left movements, a striking tendency towards utopianism.

I also think it's difficult to deny that identity politics is a pretty much wholly leftist invention. And gender ideology is a kind of identity politics.

It's not a weird error that we see this stuff mainly, almost overwhelmingly, on the left. It might be a sort of new left, but it's coming from all kinds of typically left tendencies. This is why the Real Feminists, who are committed to leftism before anything else, are struggling with these issues. The fact is that apart from the niggling fact that they think gender identity isn't real, they don't really have an issue with the other assumptions found in gender ideology.

The absolute #1 being the idea that being misogynistic is right wing. This is the underlying assumption that has screwed up the perspective of the Real Feminists, they think being good is left wing, almost by definition.

I really agree with this.

One idea that left is good therefore everyone with good morality should automatically vote for them thus the lack of proper campaigning seeking that connection with the electorate and feeling when in power they are somehow above reproach that some seem to have.

Two that the left isn't misogynistic. Last few years I thought it was painfully obvious how painfully misogynistic many left wing men are in public statements - it's not hidden.

It was really interesting to watch some of Bobby Kennedy's confirmation hearing, because he's going to be the key guy for a lot of the issues around paediatric transitioning and whether detransitioners can sue.

RFK is a controversial character I know, and even his friends say he's very eccentric, but he's incredibly interesting. It says something that the Democrats pushed him out of the party and Trump welcomed him into the big tent, because if RFK is anything, he's a left wing populist. His basic politics is that Big Food and Big Pharma are literally making America sick, and the regulatory agencies have been captured.

So you very often hear him say things like "why is American food so full of weird additives, why does Canadian breakfast cereal have colours made from natural ingredients like carrots and blueberries while the same brand in the US is full of synthetic dyes". It's the kind of thing the Green Party used to talk about.

At the hearing, the Democrat senators - looking at Elizabeth Warren in particular, whose whole shtick is supposed to be consumer protection - somehow came off looking like angry lobbyists for Big Pharma, challenging RFK on how dare he say consumers should be able to sue drug companies. The Republican senators didn't really have to do anything, because the Democrats made them look reasonable by default.

I think you make some fair points, but on the whole, the legislative changes that have made women's lives better have come on the whole from left-wing governments. In the UK, for example, the Abortion Act was passed under a Labour government (though it was a private member's bill), as was the Sexual Offences Act, decriminalising homosexuality. The Sex Discrimination Act and Equal Pay Act were both introduced by the Labour Party, as was the Equality Act. The Maternity Allowance and Child Benefit were both introduced by a Labour government. If I had time I'm sure I could think of a few other examples! In comparison, Conservative governments have not done very much to improve women's rights.

It was fascinating especially when they didn't let him finish a sentence. And they accused him of doing things in the future that they themselves are doing right now.

He came off really well in that.

In comparison, Conservative governments have not done very much to improve women's rights.

I guess the clue is in the name - conservative. Starting from a position where women didn't have many rights, you didn't want to maintain the status quo - you needed someone progressive to make changes.

Whereas once they're achieved, then you probably want someone inclined to conserve them, rather than come up with "progressive" reasons why they're not required any more. Maintaining women's existing rights is now a small-c conservative position, so why shouldn't it be a Conservative one?

Thinking of an analogy Douglas Murray used a couple of years back - at some point you'd like the train of progress to actually stop at a station, rather than always keep going and plough off the end of the track.

The Critic has published a pertinent and timely article

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-thoughtlessness-of-guilt-by-association/

I started reading this thread and then googled to find out what Actual Gender Critical Left is - found out it's someone's Facebook group. Since I don't use anything that comes from Meta I have no way of knowing whether it's one person or two. Or more or what anyone involved means by 'gender critical' and/or 'left'. And don't care.

@lcakethereforeIam Excellent article.