Review "Six Conversations we're Scared to have"

[Igneococcus]

I hope this sharetoken works, my laptop has died a lonely death while I was away and I'm doing this from the phone.
Sarah Ditum review if Guilty Feminist book:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/325fffb2-2c93-4dc8-908f-8b9bf22f331a?shareToken

How can someone think there have been no censorious/authoritarian leftism?

What does she think the left is?

TGF has plainly never read Mark Fisher on Exiting the Vampire Castle.

www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/

I think with some of these types of people, "left-wing" simply means good, kind, inclusive and progressive, and most importantly, being left-wing means you're a virtuous person and not a nasty old racist, sexist or homophobe or of course "anti-trans". Having established this, you don't need to think about it or understand the economic, political or materialist basis of leftism.

This is of course why followers of GI can embrace massively sexist and homophobic positions - they can't or won't think it through because what matters to them is not being left-wing because they have arrived there through a thought process – but being left-wing because they know that means they're a good person and can thereby atone for being western, white, middle class and suchlike.

If any regime has ever been totalitarian, censorious, dissent-crushing etc then by definition that nasty regime must have been right-wing. Being right-wing means being mean and cruel to marginalised and vulnerable groups so... that makes sense right?

(I am actually left-wing despite my cynicism - but OMG I'm sick of fuckwitted "progressives")

(Although you do wonder why the editor didn't flag this up either - maybe it was edited by someone similarly clueless. Most editors I know would say "I think this claim needs a fact-check")

Giles Udy’s conversation with Triggernometry is an interesting example of Labour’s purblindness about what was happening in the USSR.

That's interesting rethinking. I actually remember in the 80s, going on a German exchange trip and we were close to the East German border. The people I was staying with talked a lot abut the guard towers and barbed wire and how it was awful for the east germans. While obviously they may have had a view informed by their own politics, I did understand that it was a repressive regime that didn't let people leave.

Then a few years later some lefty types I knew (I was a lefty teen who went on CND marches etc) went on a labour party trip to E. Germany and kept going on about how wonderful communism was etc. East Germany was automatically great, Cuba was automatically great, China was automatically great - if they were left-wing, they had to be. Even at 16 I thought something was a bit off, I'd read Orwell! And I was amazed that these people didn't seem to have the ability to question dogma or admit some things might be a grey area. It's not a new thing.

You don't even have to go back to the 1930s. You just need to spend a bit of time around left activist types. Some are lovely, but for far too many, having an identity that revolves around self-righteousness, being morally superior because they care so much about the oppressed of the world, it gives them a permission slip to be giant flaming arseholes.

If you could bring Orwell to the present day in a time machine, he'd recognise people like Owen Jones or Richard Boyd Barrett as very familiar types.

And it's not a far left thing either. Plenty of bad shit happens in mainstream Labour politics. Not that bad things don't happen elsewhere, but the combination of self-righteousness and arseholery is something I associate with either left wing politics or certain religious subcultures.

I suppose I get triggered by people like TGF using "left" as a synonym for "nice", when that's far from my experience.

I think you are all quite correct. I suppose I find it difficult to understand that an educated person can maintain that. Because you'd have to be calling Maoism or the Stalinist regime right wing, which is clearly bonkers.

Perhaps most embarrassingly, she claims that “it is difficult to find historical examples of public campaigns that target individuals or call for censorship from the left”. Which revises Stalin out of history in a way that Stalin himself could only admire.

I mean David Tennant who is quoted on the front of this book took to a stage and said Kemi Badenoch should shut up and not exist any more. How is that not a targeting an individual with attempted censorship?

"“However, until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up – whilst we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this."

If the level of analysis in the whole book is similar to whats quoted in the article above then it wouldn't surprise me if because Stalin and Mao are now seen as bad, that certain people have retconned them into being right wing

That was an enjoyable read! I didn’t mind TGF but I gave up on it when DFW kept inviting on trans-identifying males and they either corrected women or told women to shut up.

DAVID TENNANT
'A bold and timely manifesto for dialogue over division' JEMIMA KHAN
'If you have ever felt shut down, this book is a godsend' EMMA THOMPSON
'Finally! A book to succinctly express the complexity of our age. Fiercely intellectual, thought provoking and inspiring' TOM ALLEN
'Compassionate, rigorous, electric!'' TRAVIS ALABANZA

Those reviews are so helpful! If the privileged, woke, tedious luvvies love your book then you know to avoid it.

Did you see during the week that Paul Murphy wouldn't even condemn the former PBP candidate who found out where an Israeli person was staying in Dublin and her and another woman went and found him, harrassed him and spit on him. Apparently the media are in the wrong for talking about spitting on him instead of Israeli war crimes.
https://www.thejournal.ie/woman-spits-on-israeli-man-in-dublin-people-before-profit-6652578-Mar2025/

That surprises me not a bit. I only know Paul Murphy slightly though, and there are a lot worse than him around.

I think the main difference they have with far right types is that they've found a socially acceptable way of treating outgroups as less than human.

Do they have editors in publishing any more?

If so, are they allowed to fact check certain subjects? I mean, and keep their jobs / ever get another contract.

Having read some things about publishing on here, I would think the answer to the second question would be "no", but someone may know different.

Just for info, the Observer has been quietly GC for years. It has a separate editorial team and wasn't sucked down the genderist wormhole anything like as deeply as the Guardian.

Yes, some publishers are still quite big on fact-checking - and editing is often a very important stage if something is not very well-written but they want to publish it for whatever reason (big name, good story, good concept etc.)

It’s absolutely true that in publishing a blind eye is turned to the claims of gender ideology often not being factual or logical, and you do risk your job if you point that out. There are plenty of books, including children’s books, full of untruths about that because the ideology has widely captured publishing.

But this glaring error isn’t about gender at all, it’s a statement about political history and shouldn’t be controversial in any way. If you think it’s hard to find examples of openly repressive left-wing regimes you are simply clueless and know absolutely nothing about 20th-century history, not even at a basic general knowledge level. It’s on a par with never having heard of WW1 or WW2.

In the field of publishing I work in, I would absolutely spot and query it, and so would most editors I know, and If I wrote that I’m sure it would be challenged before it got to print.

This book was published by Virago, c/o Little, Brown, c/o Hachette so hardly a fly-by-night operation or dodgy vanity publisher. Shockingly bad.

I attended my local Labour Party Women's Branch meeting on Friday. We had a discussion about the need for the party to accurately define what a woman is in the light of Alice Sullivan's report on the need for accurate sex-based data. Two women stood up and said it was disgusting that we should even think of discussing this in a Labour Party meeting. One of them had a rant about her non-binary daughter and all her trans friends and how we would eradicate them. She was supporeded by a Labour councillor who finger-pointed at the 17-or so of us in the room and told us that we should be ashamed of ourselves and must think about the poor trans children. This was in response to a perfectly rational and polite debate about the need to obtain accurate sex-based data for local and national planning purposes and as a truthful reflection of reality. Both the pious, shaming women (who left the meeting after they'd had their say) are standing for the Welsh Senedd elections next year. Welsh Labour's failed to tackle these ideological zealots and it'll reap the whirlwind at the next election.

Welsh Labour's failed to tackle these ideological zealots and it'll reap the whirlwind at the next election.

Have they even seen the polling? Or do they think in their inward facing bubble that they are right and the pollsters and the population are wrong?

Forget which prisons we put trans women in: Frances-White wants us (whoever “we” are) to “challenge our assumption on the idea of prisons existing’. Those who “genuinely care” about women in prison should be “campaigning to ensure that almost all women (including trans women) never see the inside of a prison”.

What a load of bollocks. I’m very happy that the trans women in prison are in there, because they deserve to be.

“Ensure that almost all women (including trans women) never see the inside of a prison”

To be unable to see what could possibly go wrong with that policy, especially when combined with self-ID, you really do have to be quite astonishingly daft.

We already have multiple obvious cases of male offenders suddenly announcing they’re women after the crime and before the trial. If the policy was that women shouldn’t be imprisoned and that includes TW, I wonder if this phenomenon might possibly increase?

<thunk>

(And I’m strongly in favour of prison reform and don’t think most female prisoners should be there - but come ooooooon!)

It's impossible to have a rational conversation with them. They're like the transactivists we all know, pious and judgmental and finger-pointing and intent on shutting women up by shaming and chilling. I and a couple of other brave women have tried pointing out the polls and trying to sound the alarm. I think many people do see the problem but they're silenced by the fear of being denounced.

I joined the Labour Party a few years ago to try and reform from within. Now I see that the whole Labour system is set up to discourage dissent. Which makes sense. So almost the only people who are actively, regularly involved are people prepared to go along with things and follow the Rule Book (there is a Rule Book and it is regularly invoked). My only power now is to do everything I can to stop this woman from being elected as my Senedd member in next year's elections.

It's impossible to have a rational conversation with them. They're like the transactivists we all know, pious and judgmental and finger-pointing and intent on shutting women up by shaming and chilling.

And I find it so odd that people like this can't reflect on what they're doing and why - if they refuse to listen to rational explanations, evidence of harm, or even just honest questions - why do they think they're right? It must come from somewhere but even they can't explain it.

But such is the nature of authoritarianism and puritanism I suppose. It's just maddening that so much harm is being done, sensible, rational and evidence-aware people are trying to reverse and change it, and people like this are standing in the way because they're convinced of a moral righteousness they can't even defend.

Authoritarian and puritan, absolutely. Though she'd say she was a feminist!

Yes, and the worst thing is that if I really don't want her to be my MS for the next five years I'll have to vote Conservative or Reform (whichever is most likely to be most popular) to keep her out. And try and persuade others to do the same. All because Starmer and co won't define 'woman' as 'adult human female.'

Yes, it's scunnering.

Most women shouldn't be in prison because most women's crimes are not damaging to other people.

'The 2007 Corston report concluded that the issues that lead women to offend are more likely to be addressed in the community using casework, support and treatment. It was noted that prison is unlikely to have any value as a deterrence, recognising that the vast majority of women do not commit crime and, of those that do, only a tiny minority commit crimes of violence.'

https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/our-research/evidence-base-probation-service/specific-sub-groups/women/

The same cannot be said of the population of males who identify as trans in the prison system:

'Almost two thirds of transgender prisoners who identify as female are convicted sex offenders'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/31/almost-two-thirds-of-trans-women-prisoners-sex-offenders/