Why are so many GC women pro-Israel?

[Krakinou]

This is a feminist forum. It’s in the name. I’m a feminist, therefore logically atheist and frankly anti-religion. Certainly against any kind of religious nationalism (Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, etc.)

But surely feminism is about liberation for all women, not just the ones we agree with? The destruction of patriarchal structures, not of women and children who are conditioned by them?

I constantly see snarky comments in GC articles about Gaza and dehumanizing comments about Palestinians and Muslims generally on this board. And minimizing of the suffering of the tens of thousands of people being murdered in an internationally recognized genocide. I don’t get it. It seems out of sync with the general mumsnet feeling too - I get the impression most people on mumsnet are pretty horrified by Israel’s actions.

Does anyone else get the same impression? If so, what is the connection between being Gender Critical and being anti-Palestine? Is it just that the leftist terfs aren’t so represented here?

I’m in a feminist group in Spain and it doesn’t have the same issue at all.

Yes, i don't think feminism has to align with just one ideology; as I see it 'Feminsim' is a way of viewing the world in which the interests and concerns of women and girls are centred.

When I was on TwitterX at the height of the TWAW nonsense, I would express my GC views, and randoms would accuse me of being on the far right. Ridiculous. I am not far right, I'm left-wing, and like early posts have said, the forced teaming of certain beliefs having to go together is silly.

I'm also an atheist, and I like history. The only people I blame for the shit show in Israel and Gaza are our own British Government in 1917 (Balfour Declaration)!!

If anyone is interested in a fairly middle of the road, nuanced Israeli viewpoint, Haviv Rettig Gur has an excellent podcast and YouTube channel called Ask Haviv Anything. He discusses the history of Israel and various aspects of the war, as well as problems such as the one mentioned above where Orthodox Jews don't serve in the army.

It's on you tube and is called 'The Ask Project'

OP, two things I'd like to clarify.

1). Israel is not a "colonial state". Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, and particularly to Israel, and have been for thousands of years. 45% of Israel's population are what is called Mizrahi Jews, from the Middle East and North Africa. Again, they are not colonisers.

2). Israel is a Jewish state, but this is not about religion, this is about ethnicity and identity. Israel does not enforce religious practices on its citizenry. There are two million Israeli Muslim citizens, and 150,000 Druze and 180.000 Christian citizens. Around half of Israel's Jews are completely secular.

I'm GC and Zionist.

I'm GC and pro Israel because it seems to me the real genocidal intent is flowing towards the Jews and not the other way around. Because I was horrified by October 7th and what happened to Jewish women. Because I am no fan of Muslim fundamentalism and the way it treats women, or Muslim terrorism.

I can only speak for myself, but as a life long leftie, what happened on October 7th appalled me. I have always been broadly pro Palestine, without really keeping an eye on what was happening regarding Hamas. Hamas are not the friends of women or left wing people. And I do not think GC women have become more right wing, as has been said before about other topics, the Overton window has shifted massively.
What was once a left wing stance, pro Palestine, has become a pro Hamas stance. Hamas are anti women, anti gay, anti any lifestyle outside of a proscribed right wing Muslim ideal. I still stand as pro women, pro gay, pro live your life as you choose as long as you do not hurt or interfere with the rights of others. And i have watched that Overton window disappear from in front of me.
The fact that Israel is the only Arabic country where women, gays, other religions are welcome, I dont know. I am definitely not pro Netanyahu, I think he is a war monger, but the Palestinians voted for Hamas. And as I said, October 7 appalled me.
I guess I am just a women who wants peace, I want people to live together in peace, I want women to have rights, I dont want women to live in fear as they do in Afghanistan, and I fear that is the future for Palestinian women under Hamas. What if all the pro Palestine marchers get their way? What happens if Palestine becomes another Afghanistan for women? Will they be out marching for those women? I dont think they will give a toss. Just as they would rather march for Palestine but most cannot be bothered to turn up at vigils for Afghan women. Because that would make them pro women, and we all know these days that means bigot.
I dont want to see films of women and children being bombed out of existence, but more than this I do not want to see films of women and girls being raped, tortured and paraded, and then for people to tell me it is all AI and not real.
Sorry long post, just my personal musings. TLDR FF is a terf and cares about women, and is a hippy,

I don't get that impression at all. I have no idea what most GC people's views are on the Israel situation.

Yes I feel the same - I sometimes feel like there is a bit of an “omnicause” on the GC side as well. Sometimes I strongly disagree with what the leading GC women I agree with on gender ideology are saying - for example with the Kate Clanchy book. (That doesn’t mean I support persecution or ostracism of people I disagree with or criticise, but I did think it was shockingly racist and patrician and was amazed that so many people couldn’t or wouldn’t see it - seemingly because you must support a woman against the workerati whatever the situation, and that was an eye-opener for me.)

On Israel, I think both Palestinian and Israeli leadership and military have behaved appallingly and I feel like the background is too complex for me to take a side (and there is a LOT of background involving other states and the geopolitics of around a century ago, which I think most people including me don’t know about or understand in full).

As you say OP, feminists should logically regard organised religion with suspicion, even those who have religious belief themselves. Both Islamic and Jewish cultures oppress women and some forms of Judaism are just as bad as the more visible misogyny of some Islamic cultures.

Seems like a deliberate attempt to say that feminists support whatever is happening in the middle east.

Let's reframe it, why on a trans rights march is the Palestine flag flown? Do any trans activists know how trans people are treated in Palestine? Why is the trans flag flown by pro-refugee activists outside migrant hotels?

I do feel there is a leaning to the right as well - as a lifelong lefty and feminist I’m sometimes surprised to find a GC woman I follow and agree with is not just right-leaning, but actively Conservative. Because I really do not agree with conservatism on almost any other issue.

But I think that’s partly the result of the left and genderism lumping together so that GC women on the left may be less likely to be public about it or may be more likely to have embraced it in a well-intentioned way initially and now find it harder to backtrack.

I don't get the same impression as you do

I don't get the same impression as you do. They have never felt connected here or anywhere else I read

Well because there definitely is an omnicause on the tra side. Genderists almost by definition lack (or sideline or suppress) critical analysis skills and believe and support things not because they make sense, but because they are the fashionable “in” things that they are told make them a good person.

Which is why they don’t bat an eyelid about the persecution of the Uighurs or Yazidis, the horrific situations in Sudan and Yemen etc. or even really care about women in Afghanistan. They leap on the fashionable cause that comes with a bandana to wear and don’t distinguish between Palestinian civilian victims, Hamas, or even the Iranian regime. Israel = bad so all Israel’s enemies must be good is as far as the thinking goes, at least for the hardest of thinking among them.

But I would have expected GC people to think each situation through on its own merits - I’m sure some do but I don’t like the feeling that is somehow does seem to “go with” being pro-Israel.

Despite being very economically left wing though, I don’t have any time for Corbyn, I think he’s a privileged confused idiot along the lines of the above, and “Jezbollah” is accurate IMO.

I used to be on the left and am now firmly on the right. This is partly because of a shift in the Overton window, but mainly because the batshittery of transgenderism (and critical race theory) made me rethink many of my beliefs, and to do a really deep dive into why I believed those things. I started listening to people I would previously have dismissed and found that they were saying things that were more provably true than the position I'd previously held. I came to realise that I had never truly examined many of my left wing beliefs, but simply inherited them from my parents, my peers and my social group. I'm also old enough to have seen that certain left wing viewpoints are ridiculous, eg. men and women are the same, or that people from different cultures are all interchangeable. I just don't believe many things any more, and transgenderism let the sunlight in so I could have a good clear out.

To be fair I can see why TRAs would support Iran as that country carries out the second highest amount of sex change surgeries in the world. They conveniently ignore the fact that homosexuality is illegal, and it is a result of attempting to trans the gay away.

Like some others I look at this from the other side - why are so many TRAs anti-Semitic/pro Hamas? I also agree about the omnicause - slap a Palestine flag in your SM bio alongside a trans flag.

Also, and others my know this better than me, but Zionism, the belief in a Jewish homeland (next year in Jerusalem) is quite inherent to Judaism, so I find this idea of “I’m not anti-Semitic I’m anti-Zionism” to be quite troubling.

That’s interesting and I don’t actually mind sharing my GC views with right-wing people (it’s evidence and common sense-based apart from anything else) - just have been surprised sometimes. I do think I have thought through my left-wing position carefully too and that’s partly why there are a number of exceptions to the general lefty dogma in my views.

One thing that has always pissed me off about the left, even as a teenager was the tribalism and how you have to hate and shun tories. I don’t agree and I think friendships and debates across that divide (and many others) are a good thing.

This. I’ve never seen racist attacks on Gaza in FWR. I’ve certainly seen rolled eyes at the omnicause/ queers for Palestine etc but I would assume that’s a lot more to do with the people doing the protests than the suffering in Gaza.

I think what the OP has done is say 'oh people who think men can become women are also pro gaza that must mean'...and filed in their own blanks.

There are hundreds of years of conflict in that region, which cannot and should not be down to being on any one side, and im not sure anyone actually has a viable answer to solve the situation. I'm sure if the OP is in that position, make a call to the higher ups and get it done.

Agree. I'm a regular reader here and I've never once seen a single post about Gaza or Israel.

Yes, there is an awful lot of vitriol and intolerance on the left from those who consider themselves to be morally righteous and on 'the right side of history'.
You are supposed to " hate" all sorts of things, even though the social justice movement is supposed to be founded on the formation of a more loving, tolerant and kinder society.When I witness the behaviour, or are subject to the disdain myself, it really makes me think I'm not sure i'd like the sort of society many claim they want to create - if this is how people would treat each other within it.

A kind of totalitarianism group think has taken over...which projects all of its own shadow onto others.....then fights against it. It is like a form of religious fundamentalism whereby if someone is not "saved" and part of the church, then they are necessarily under the influence of the devil and must be cut out altogether. Fundamentalism makes ever increasing and more extreme demands in its bid for ideological purity.

Interestingly I was quite ‘anti Tory’ for many years. It was thanks to the combination of Rayner’s ‘Tory scum’ along with Brexit and Boris Johnson withdrawing the whip for all those Tory MPs refusing to back a Brexit without an agreement that made me revisit my knee jerk politics.

Like others, I’ve come to appreciate that it’s no longer a simple of equation of Left = good and Right = bad. The authoritarian left has much in common with the authoritarian right.

there seem to be a hegemonic positioning among British "terfs" (siding with Israel and even denying the genocidal aspect of its actions)

I disagree that British women critical of gender imposed retrograde norms (I don’t use ‘terfs’ myself as see it as simplistic and misleading) share a hegemonic position on Israel and the Palestinian conflict. How can you know anyhow? Going by this thread, we see a wide variety of quite thoughtful reflections.

Some posters find the term omnicause offensive but there’s no denying that a lot of teaming goes on by those who see themselves as politically left/far left. My wider view is that many on the left are often unreflectively sympathetic to the ‘underdog’. I see this in my own union where every possible left wing cause is advocated for apart from the ones that are meant to be the main purpose of our union. And IMO, it’s the single biggest reason that TRAs/MRAs have been able to asset their anti-women agenda by the back door with so little attention or resistance.

I have seen a lot of discussions about Gaza and Israel on here, and I would say Israel is more supported than I would have expected (though as a fence-sitter myself I'm not judging that especially). But my main impression of a link between GC and pro-israel comes from other social media, like twitter where people display flags in their bios.

I wouldn't want to put any political flag in my bio or by my name - I don't like it at all (except maybe a yorkshire one...)

You're quite literally pulling a page from the TA playbook. Acting like just because women here agree on one issue we have to agree on everything.

You make a contradictory statement in your post. One second you say, as a feminist, you're against Muslim nationalism and a sentence later you question why women here criticize fundamentalist Muslims. All of the criticism about Islam I've read here is about how women a treated under that type of regime which imo is appropriate for this sub.

The war in Gaza is complicated and tragic and based in hundreds of years of history I know little about. All I know is, presently, one side is controlled by fundamentalist terrorists who, by law, put LGB people to death and committed absolute atrocities including using rape as a weapon and gruesomely murdered innocent civilians and children. And those individuals are still holding people hostage and refusing to surrender. The other side, some could argue, is now overreacting in their response and not taking into consideration the massive, disproportionate number of innocent women and child casualties they're causing. As an agnostic myself who doesn't subscribe to Judaism or Islam, it's hard for me to take a side for or against either as that seems to be the driving force behind their conflict - and if they're allowing their religious beliefs to drive them to this level of violence what on earth can I do about that? There's no point in taking a side bc there's literally nothing I can do about it other than hope and pray that both sides, neither of whom I have a personal connection to nor agree with their beliefs, somehow find the peace to move forward.