The Tories know full well where their rhetoric leads. When Jonathan Gullis, for example, names Stoke-on-Trent hotels that have taken on refugees, he doesn't do this supposing this information won't be acted on. Given the city's bleak history with the far right, he's fishing for racist votes in a doomed attempt to cling on at the next election. If someone with brown skin is attacked or one of the hotels is targeted for vandalism or worse, that's just the cost of doing political business. As if to underline the cynicism about small boats in the Channel while smirking at the camera, the Home Secretary's "condemnation" of far right protest violence keeps the racist ball rolling. She writes,
I condemn the appalling disorder in Knowsley last night. The alleged behaviour of some asylum seekers is never an excuse for violence and intimidation. Thank you to @merseypolice officers for keeping everyone safe.Just Suella Braverman saying the "protesters" had a point but things got out of hand. She can't condemn the far right for what they are, because she's implicated. Indeed, that is precisely why Sunak appointed her. And as the culture war is central to the Tories' survival strategy, they can't well disown something they think will win them votes. And so the more the press and the government feed off each others' hysterical rantings and lying rhetoric, the more emboldened the far right will be to target another hotel. Or, thanks to the government's deliberately fanning the flames of hate against trans people, we're seeing LGBTQ events becoming a focus for far right violence too. Like Saturday's "protest" against a drag queen story time for kids at the Tate.
There are no shades of grey when it comes to fighting the far right. The frustrations they feed off are real enough, and confronting them on the street has to go along with direct refutations of their politics. This is the province of anti-fascism, because Labour aren't going to do it. Yvette Cooper's response to Knowsley is just as self-serving as Braverman's. She treats the far right as a policing as opposed to a political matter, and squeezes in Labour MPs' antipathy toward social media for good measure. Nothing about demonising refugees, nothing about the politics of scapegoating. Because it's a poisoned well she'll regularly draw from, when occasion demands it.
Unfortunately, while the decline and coming electoral drubbing of the Tories means the ground becomes less fertile for the far right, electorally speaking, the dynamics of how a new Labour government plays out in politics affords street-oriented fascist outfits like Patriotic Alternative more opportunities. Following a heavy Tory defeat, they're likely to lurch to the right as they did between 1997 and 2005. This is because following the trauma of a heavy pummelling, returning to "core values" is with an eye to consolidating a new base. We can expect the new Tories to run on issues of migration, asylum, and controlling our borders even harder, parroting whatever rubbish the out-of-sorts right wing press come up with to attack Labour. As past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour, it's entirely likely Labour accepts this framing (because it already views immigration generally and refugees in particular as problems) and cleaves to their position. Just as Uncle Tony did 20-odd years ago. And that empowers the far right, a cycle of cynicism and racism for grubby votes and nice editorials.
Unfortunately, what happened in Knowsley will happen again.
32 comments:
'anti-fascist' activity today is hopelessly compromised by the lack of appropriate politics and tactics on the 'Left' . As a peripheral, but emblematic example, those 'Black Bloc' street-fighting young anarchist 'AntiFa' in particular (who have in the past been important in the physical side of anti fascism to deny the Right control of the streets) are keener on bullying feminist woman than confronting the much meatier Far Right male street thugs !
Unfortunately, all across Europe, and the USA, the decades long utter capitulation of a reforming mainstream political alternative to rampant neoliberalism, whether in its European social democratic form, or the even more opportunist polity of the US Democrats, has left a huge space for the growth of mass Far Right parties. As in the 1930's , in the UK case, the growth of Moseley's BUF fascist party was not entirely on the back of its demonising of Jews and ultras nationalism - but also on the back of Moseley's 'offer' to those in the working class and petty bourgeoisie crushed by endless economic Slump (originally as a Labour MP let's not forget) of an economically expansionary neo Keynsian economic strategy - rejected by budget-balancing Labour, as usual.
Today, what passes for the UK 'Left' is totally divorced from the mass of the equally crushed poorer working classes - contemptuously dismissing their mass voting for an end to unlimited labour supply via the EU as based purely on knuckle-dragging racism and ignorance. This is a 'Left' more concerned with the opaque requirements of trans ideology and 'correct pronouns' than mass impoverishment - a problem now increasingly fracturing the SNP;'s support base too ! In the 1930's the BUF built a mass poorer working class base in the East End of London and elsewhere from campaigning on tenant rights (non Jewish tenants of course), and it was only the Communist Party, not Labour, that broke into this base with its own uncompromising campaigning too.
Today the middle class, identity politics-obsessed 'Left' has no chance of repeating the successes of the 1930's Communist Party or sections of the Labour socialist Left - so the political field is wide open for the emergence of a pseudo radical populist Far Right to harness the rising tide of mass anger at 'the elite' , in a VERY toxic manner. Think of the astonishing , though temporary , rise of the UKIP /Brexit Party , which was in no way economically radical, and we should be very afraid of the near future rise , very fast when momentum is gained, of a avowedly pseudo economically RADICAL far right mass party, once the hopeless politics of a Starmer government sinks in , and mass impoverishment continues apace.
Strange: I have misspelt the old fascist, Oswald Mosley's, name repeatedly in my post. Definitely old age creeping up on me fast !
Who are the feminist women being bullied out of interest?
I have to say I'm disgusted but not at all surprised to see 'Old Trot' carrying water for feminist-identifying transphobes! 'Old Trot' really ought to hang their head in shame - I know they won't, but they should do!
Old Trot kind of gets it.
Dan Hodges also gets it.
This constant 'far right' ... 'extremist' line will result in normalising far-right politics. If your definition of 'far-right extremist' is thinking that rapists shouldn't be put in women's prisons, that biological sex is real, that we shouldn't simply allow anyone who turns up to live in a hotel at our expense, then millions of people will decide that they are far-right extremists.
This is awful. You are all heading down a rabbit hole of hate. Hatred of women, hatred of white working dlass people. Wrong wrong wrong. You need to stop this nonsense. It is extremely dangerous.
@Old Trot - "by the lack of appropriate politics and tactics on the 'Left'" - what are the appropriate politics and tactics?
You talk a lot but say nothing.
Probably he's thinking about something like the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s -- basically leftie skinheads. Or the old claims about "Antifa" in the U.S. in the Trump era, though I don't believe they accomplished much.
I'm not sure it's all appropriate to current circumstances, because politics is much more confused and leftism is much weaker than it was even just a few years ago. Again, the core values of fascism have been so mainstreamed that it's hard to believe that fighting idiotic neo-Nazis in the street will cure anything.
@Anonymous
> Who are the feminist women being bullied out of interest?
I'm guessing that Old Trot is talking about TERFs.
Who are increasingly in bed with the far right these days. Enemy of their enemies, right? Making them friends of the enemies of the Left.
Old Trot's message, as far as I can make out - they seem to have deliberately worded it to hide the fact that they were trying to say this, if I'm reading their comment correctly at all - sounds quite a lot like "questioning the heteronormative ideals of decades past is the reason why the fascists are taking over the streets". How very Stalinist, eh? It also sounds a lot like "gays cause hurricanes".
@Dipper
> If your definition of 'far-right extremist' is thinking that rapists shouldn't be put in women's prisons, that biological sex is real, that we shouldn't simply allow anyone who turns up to live in a hotel at our expense, then millions of people will decide that they are far-right extremists.
Fringe cases and straw men, and fundamentally far-right message framing in general.
The right wing thrives on the failure of people to keep up with current thought, and on pushing simple, emotional, wrong solutions to complex problems. That's what they DO, that's what they ARE. If you do that too, then you might as well be one of them.
The left wing thrives on people in general turning out to not be as dumb or ignorant as the right wing depends on them being.
Thinking that rapists shouldn't be put in women's prisons doesn't make one a far right extremist. Thinking that the prospect of ONE rapist being put in a women's prison is a sufficient justification for rolling back trans rights, DOES make one a far right extremist. Framing trans rights as being about "biological sex" is a dead giveaway that one's understanding of sex and biology ends at what was being taught in middle school several decades ago. Framing the handling of refugees as "putting them up in a hotel to live at our expense" begs the question of what we should do instead, given that they are going to keep coming no matter what? Should we put them in death camps, as Braverman was heading towards doing? Are you prepared to say out loud that you want that?
Age split is key here. Older people will always fail to keep up with current thought. If younger people are also doing that in large numbers, then we have a problem.
> This is a 'Left' more concerned with the opaque requirements of trans ideology and 'correct pronouns' than mass impoverishment
I thnk that this bit of Old Trot's comment sums up their problem, accidentally.
For the entire neoliberal era, the economic establishment have traded ground in the culture war for victory in the economic war. They will allow their media empires to pass on leftist messaging about all non-economic matters (such as LGBT rights), in exchange for complete exclusion of any leftist ideas about mass impoverishment. Leftist solutions to mass impoverishment are not allowed in the Overton Window. If they somehow force their way into it - as happened in the Corbyn years - then all guns are brought to bear on them.
This is how the people whose thoughts are dictated by old media are conditioned to believe that the Left is more concerned with "trans ideology" than with mass impoverishment. Of course it isn't; the left is still, and always will be, extremely concerned about mass impoverishment. But very powerful and entrenched forces are always working very hard to throttle the reach of those concerns, giving the far right a golden opportunity to exploit the framing of leftist thought that has been created by the neoliberal establishment.
So, blaming the Left for the rise of the far right is about as wrong-headed as it comes. Supposing hypothetically that the Left as a bloc were to (somehow) agree unanimously to throw social liberalism under the bus in order to focus solely on economic politics, what do we think would happen? Do we think that the old media empires would simply give in, and allow space for the Left to reach the economically oppressed masses with a message of hope?
We see and hear a lot more (and in more generous terms) from Sturgeon than we did from Corbyn, because she is astute enough to frame herself as a culture warrior so as not to frighten the economic status quo. Contrary to what Old Trot thinks, it seems to me to be working quite well for her. What happened to Alba, and how did their apparent embrace of anti-trans sentiment work out for them?
To 'Anonymous 3' above
"Probably he's (Old Trot is) thinking about something like the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s -- basically leftie skinheads....I don't think they accomplished much."
A bit of a cheap snipe, I suggest.
Large scale confrontations, disruption of meetings, sabotage and street fighting have been part of the practice of anti-fascism back in the early 20th century. Rarely endorsed by any political party, the use of collective bodily strength remains a strategy of anti-fascist activists, from the disruption of Mosley's rally in the Olympia arena in 1934 and Cable Street in 1936 to Southall in 1978 and Bradford in 2010.
Does it work? Yes. I suggest you read Dave Hann's book, 'Physical Resistance, a hundred years of anti-fascism.(2012)
Anonymous, @ 11:17. What a dreadful reply. Just arrogant and utterly brainless.
'thinking that rapists shouldn't be put in women's prisons doesn't make one a far right extremist. Thinking that the prospect of ONE rapist being put in a women's prison is a sufficient justification for rolling back trans rights, DOES make one a far right extremist.'
So Trans rights is about putting rapists in women's prisons? Women being exposed to rapists is necessary to enable something called 'Trans rights'? Seriously this is dreadful logic.
To be clear, What self-id and trans rights does is give those men who harbour violent and sexually oppressive views on women a clear roadmap on how to achieve them.
Society has constructed a set of refuges and special privileges for people deemed vulnerable or in need, privileges because they involve removal of rights from those not in those categories. the left now favours people being able to self-id into these categories (women, refugee) so that individuals who are not in the groups these privileges were intended for can claim these special privileges for themselves.
Biological sex is a concept that works really well. It is scientifically clear and well established, in that just about everyone reading his, everyone participating in the trans-rights debate, almost everyone you have ever met, will fall into one of two sexes; male, based on possessing a Y chromosome, which generates male sexual organs plus other features of physiology; or female, not having a Y chromosome, and resulting in women having a baby-growing biology. Furthermore, politically, these biological features help explain features of human society that keep repeating across centuries and across races; that men pursue women in order to reproduce, that having a baby-growing body means women are likely to experience a degree of capture and oppression.
When we use the terms 'woman', 'she', or 'her' we are describing people with a female anatomy. Without these words, we cannot talk about biological females. We cannot discuss their circumstances, their experiences, their outcomes in society. Without such discussion we cannot prevent their oppression.
The trans-rights movement, with its appropriation of the words 'woman', 'she', 'her, is a deliberate move to remove women's ability to talk about themselves as a group. It is done in order to enable an assault on their sex-based rights. It is an anti-woman movement and anyone who calls themselves 'left' should be in complete opposition to what is a men's rights movement.
Obviously it wasn't a cheap snipe if you completely agree with my suggestion that "Old Trot" was talking about physical force anti-fascism. You are saying that my interpretation of the past, that violently challenging fascists (or, in modern terms, the people whom you choose to call fascists) is still a viable project. "Antifa" certainly accomplished nothing. The Anti-Nazi League, which had actual fascists to contend with, was nevertheless not very successful. (One of my colleagues roomed with one of their members, who was a terrifying bodybuilding shaven-headed thug, not someone you'd want to meet in a dark alley.) Cable Street was in 1936, and was all but irrelevant even then, since Mosley had little or no public appeal and the Tories were itching for an excuse to silence him.
If you want to challenge the extreme right, it might be useful to challenge it in an effective ideological way. While I don't agree with Dipper on much, there are serious problems with the self-indulgent and almost reality-independent politics of identity and gendering, problems which are not in any way addressed by calling those who dislike those politics fascists.
Well said, and very logically and clearly explained, Dipper. Unfortunately today's inward-looking bubble of middle class left Liberalism, not class-based socialist theory or analysis , masquerading as 'The Left', is trapped in an echo chamber bubble. Today's 'Left' seems to both despise and even fear the hugely majority working class out there, in a way strongly reminiscent of the Fabians, like the ghastly Webbs or H.G.Wells, within Labour in its early years - with their mad beliefs in Eugenics, and prediliction for dictatorships (of both fascist and Stalinist hues) over popular democracy.
Today's Left Liberal 'Left' never penetrate down to the pubs and clubs , and certainly not the workplaces, frequented by the still vast 'blue collar' working class, and has no conception how much they are hated and despised by these old 'Red Wall' type voters . I still do, socially, and it is quite salutary. I remember a year ago or so the supposed 'new orientation strategy' by the Momentum Leadership, to get engaged at very local levels with activities like food banks and tenant struggles. Never happened of course , but it was easy to see , from comments made then, that this was intended very much as 'missionary work' by the enlightened middle classes - hoping to persuade the 'great unwashed' of their ignorance-based ideological error in wanting to leave the benevolent EU , and to accept unlimited labour supply competition in their workplaces and over-stretched local facilities with equanimity ! The content-less comments on my original comment on this article just demonstrates the bankruptcy of today's ersatz pseudo UK 'Left'. Slogans are not analysis folks.
Dipper,
1) I fail to see how you drew the inference from what the other commenter wrote that they were admitting that trans rights was allowing rapists into women's prisons. That can only be either a reading comprehension fail or mendacity on your part.
2) Biological sex isn't black-and-white, no matter how much transphobes like you pretend it is. There is no one who fits perfectly into textbook ideas of what constitute 'male' and 'female'. Rather, those are rough templates to which the vast majority of humanity approximates ('approximates' being the operative word). Moreover, the roots of women's oppression are not reducible to reproductive biology. That's trite, simplistic and reductive.
3) The assignment of gendered labels and pronouns to people is not an objective, neutral reference to biological reality (a biological reality which is in fact far too messy and complicated to be neatly categorised as a binary). Rather, it is part and parcel of the ascription of norms, roles and stereotypes to people on the basis of their birth-designated biological sex.
4) The term 'woman' shouldn't be considered to belong exclusively to people with certain karyotypes or reproductive organs, and no, trans women are not guilty of misogyny by virtue of identifying as women. Fuck that noise!
5) It never ceases to amuse me how feminist-identifying/feminism-appropriating transphobes describe trans people and their allies as 'men's rights activists', given that actual MRAs despise trans people just as much as they do.
Old Trot,
I hope your head gets acquainted with the pavement by an out and proud and angry trans person sometime. Hang your fucking head in shame!
Dipper,
Another thing:
'What self-id and trans rights does is give those men who harbour violent and sexually oppressive views on women a clear roadmap on how to achieve them.'
No, it doesn't. That's just bigoted BS. Such men already have clear roadmaps for acting on their misogyny.
Anonymous @10:59
'the self-indulgent and almost reality-independent politics of identity and gendering'
Just say that you hate and despise trans people! That would be far more honest, rather than hiding behind dogwhistles.
More argumentum ad populum from Old Trot and Dipper.
If you want us to believe that the majority view really aligns with your personal beliefs, then bring proof. Convincing proof.
As said earlier, the left wing will only thrive on large numbers of people turning out to not be as dumb or ignorant as the right wing depends on them being. If those people ARE in reality as backward and vicious as Old Trot and Dipper appear to believe that they are, then anyone who isn't merely interested in a very long shot at becoming a member of a new class of elite oppressors - in an overturning-of-the-apple-cart event - need not bother. Nothing else is going to happen.
If that's how you view leftist politics, then good luck with that. You'll have a lot more whining to do before your day is out.
@ David Parry - Anonymous wrote 'Thinking that the prospect of ONE rapist being put in a women's prison is a sufficient justification for rolling back trans rights, DOES make one a far right extremist.'. The inference from this is that Anonymous believes the prospect of one rapist being put in a women's prison is not a reason for 'rolling back trans rights'. In other words, if Trans rights allow a rapist to be put in a women's prison, then that is what should happen. It is clear from the Scottish experience that that is in reality the trans rights/self-id position.
'Biological sex isn't black-and-white, no matter how much transphobes like you pretend it is. There is no one who fits perfectly into textbook ideas of what constitute 'male' and 'female'.' this is as wrong as it is possible for two short sentences to be. Biological sex is black and white, in that the definition of males having XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes and their respective physiologies are determined by that distinction is as comprehensive and well established as a process like biology can be. A small number of people have different sexual development, but with the exception of certain aspects of women's sports the trans debate is not about 'intersex' people, it is about people with XY or XX chromosomes. And as for the phrase 'There is no one who fits perfectly into textbook ideas of what constitute 'male' and 'female'' this is nonsense, in that the textbook says that XY is male and XX is female and doesn't say they must all be identical, hence well over 99% of the population do fit the textbook idea.
Moreover, the roots of women's oppression are not reducible to reproductive biology. That's trite, simplistic and reductive. So what is the basis of women's oppression then? A what is your definition of 'woman' in your sentence?
You say 'The term 'woman' shouldn't be considered to belong exclusively to people with certain karyotypes or reproductive organs'. So what is the word for that half of humanity with XX chromosomes and baby-growing apparatus? And if the word woman doesn't refer to sex, what does it refer to?
The Trans movement aims to remove well defined words and concepts and replace them with a complete meaningless mush of word soup. It does this deliberately to remove from women the language they need to talk about themselves and their circumstances, and to argue for their rights.
Biological sex is a really simple concept, well established in everyday observable facts, and has great explanatory power. Pretending that its really complicated so you can rubbish other people's arguments just makes you look dishonest and/or stupid.
Well , dearie me ! You BTL commentators have excelled yourselves, as fully expected ! I think any impartial reader will conclude that all those frankly part sad, part darkly hilarious, sometimes pure gobbledegook pseudo science, filled comments have made my case about the irrelevance of the current identity politics obsessed 'Left' in the face of radical Far right agitation. I think we can safely say that those refugee centres currently under attack from the Far Right are on their own - the Left Liberal 'Left' is far too busy with its own peculiar inward-looking priorities to give a monkeys.
We have an identitarian , left Liberal, not socialist, pseudo Left far too busy with its self absorption to offer any useful radical counter narrative or politico/economic strategy to the millions of our poorer citizens now having to choose between heat and food, as rising inflation meets static wage levels, as neoliberalism grinds on remorselessly. So those millions of hyper-oppressed blue collar workers, many, many, being ex Labour voters, will just have on offer , a Tory-lite non offer of any change from Nulabour, and Lib Dems, but a cynical, but apparently concerned, growing radical populist Far Right on hand to offer them a socially divisive, scapegoating, pseudo route forward - rather than a socialist one. Tragic stuff .
Only a day or two after a working clsss trans teenager was murdered in Warrington, Mr Dipper's and Mr Old Trot's comments appear more grotesque than usual.
@ Anonymous - how so? Where have either Old Trot or I suggested any harm should come to a Trans person?
Dipper,
'The inference from this is that Anonymous believes the prospect of one rapist being put in a women's prison is not a reason for 'rolling back trans rights'.'
But that isn't the same thing as trans rights being about allowing rapists into women's prisons.
'Biological sex is black and white, in that the definition of males having XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes and their respective physiologies are determined by that distinction is as comprehensive and well established as a process like biology can be.'
Bollocks! Among intersex conditions, there is something called 'complete androgen insensitivity syndrome', where someone is born with female external genitalia, but without a pair of ovaries, uterus, Fallopian tubes, cervix, and (in some cases) a fully formed vagina, and has a pair of internal testicles and vas deferens, and has an XY karyotype. There's also something called 46XX DSD, where, despite having an XX karyotype, someone has what one might describe as a mostly male physiological appearance, and is born either with ambiguous genitalia or (more typically) with male genitalia. Then there's another condition called 'persistent Mullerian duct syndrome', where someone who has an XY karyotype and can otherwise be described as physiologically male is born with certain aspects of female internal reproductive anatomy, specifically a uterus, Fallopian tubes, cervix and/or a partially formed vagina. It's simply scientifically illiterate to characterise XX and XY karyotypes as necessarily determining physiology when these conditions exist.
'the textbook says that XY is male and XX is female'
There's more to textbook ideas of what constitute 'male' and 'female' than just karyotypes. There's also hormonal sex, as well as primary and secondary sex characteristics.
'So what is the basis of women's oppression then?'
It depends on which aspect of it you're talking about. For sure, there are instances where reproductive biology is relevant. For example, efforts to ban abortion are fundamentally about seeking to control the sexual behaviour of people deemed to be 'women'. Equally plainly, though, there are some aspects of it in which biological sex is not so relevant. Sexual harassment, for example, is about people being more likely to be treated in certain ways if they're perceived to be 'female' on the basis of standards of appearance that are arbitrary, inconsistent and have (at best) a very tenuous connection to biological sex.
'A what is your definition of 'woman' in your sentence?'
An adult human being who is most comfortable being labelled and referred to by signifiers typically applied to persons designated female at birth.
'So what is the word for that half of humanity with XX chromosomes and baby-growing apparatus?'
If that's how you're defining 'woman', then where does that leave cis women with CAIS?
'The Trans movement aims to remove well defined words and concepts'
They're not objectively well-defined words and concepts. They're arbitrary social categories.
'Biological sex is a really simple concept'
... says no one who is both honest and knows what they're talking about.
'Pretending that its really complicated so you can rubbish other people's arguments just makes you look dishonest and/or stupid.'
Actually, it's those who deny the complexity of the reality of biological sex who appear dishonest and/or stupid to those with any modicum of understanding of the matter and fealty to the truth.
@ David Parry.
The existence of something called a 'sofa-bed' dos not mean there are not things called sofas and not things called beds. Without things called 'sofas' and things called 'beds' there cannot be a thing called a 'sofa-bed'.
Similarly with Trans politics. In order for trans women to be women, there must be something called 'woman' that exists external to the person saying they want to be it. If they were women, they'd just be women.
The existence of edge cases does not invalidate the binary description of the nature of human sex. Your biological parents consisted of one male and one female, as defined by biology. They weren't two males, one of whom 'felt like a woman' whatever that means. The women in my family have no idea what 'feeling like a woman' or 'identifying as a woman' means. They are just women.
The trans debate is not a debate about how we categorise inter-sex people. In as much as they have had a voice and used it, inter-sex people have used it to say this debate is nothing to do with them.
The debate is entirely about XY men claiming to be women and about XX women wanting to be men. It isn't about XY men wanting to be intersex. So in that sense the debate is entirely about two sexes.
And in as much as trans rights generates policy, the policy of putting males who claim to be women in women's prisons the implementation has been clearly on this basis. Hence, in a practical sense, allowing men to go into women's prisons is clearly a Trans-rights policy.
Sofa-beds...! My word.
Despite the repellence of our two stalwart transphobes here, it is quite amusing to see how both sides think that the other is making their point for them.
Imagine, if you can, that all the regulars in your blue-collar hangout of choice happen to have personal friends who are trans. How do you fancy making that "sofa-beds" argument to their faces, in this scenario?
David Parry, I wouldn't waste too many words on these two. They're leeches sucking your time. It's painfully obvious that neither of them has been capable of properly incorporating new information into their worldview for quite some time now. Their love of linguistic prescriptivism is a commonly observed symptom of such a state.
I particularly liked this bit from Old Trot...
> I think we can safely say that those refugee centres currently under attack from the Far Right are on their own
Well, we sure can if Dipper's advice is followed! After all, he gave us this:
> If your definition of 'far-right extremist' is thinking that ... we shouldn't simply allow anyone who turns up to live in a hotel at our expense, then millions of people will decide that they are far-right extremists
So if we're singing from Dipper's hymn sheet, then we can hardly dare tell the oppressed blue collar masses that they're wrong to go and besiege hotels full of refugees, can we?
@ Anonymous.
Well you are certainly making my case for me.
How do you know I don't have Trans friends, or haven't worked with Trans people?
Identity politics is about establishing a hierarchy of identities, and the apex identity gets to remove rights from identities lower down the hierarchy and demand constant submission to the higher identities. In many cases a non-identity group claims ownership of an apex identity and then uses that ownership to oppress lower identities. Hence many non-Trans people have assumed the right to speak for Trans people, and demand constantly that we become subordinate in our behaviour in case it offends Trans people. Hence "How do you fancy making that "sofa-beds" argument to their face?" which I would happily do, yet Anonymous does not consider that making these arguments to women is a problem. Because 'woman' is a lesser identity.
Needless to say many actual trans people recognise the complexity of their identity versus the identity of biological women, and are sensitive on that subject. But their views get ignored.
One way in that subordinate identities lose power is they no longer have the right to define their own identities. Trans activists have the right to define who is trans, but women do not have the power to say who are women. As a woman on Twitter said, the Trans argument boils down to : Do women have the right to say no? And the answer is, they don't.
Incidentally It is no co-incidence that many the women who speak about 'Transphobia' are women with class privilege. As Julie Bindel says, this is class oppression at work as the victims are primarily working class women, Elite women having security from their own networks of privilege. It's why so many fee=paying schools have gone woke. They are instructing their pupils how to oppress the lower orders.
These arguments are really simple and basic particularly to anyone raised on class politics and who studied any reasonable subject to a level that required logical argument, clear definitions, critical reasoning. I can do this all day long, as no doubt Old Trot can do too. And I will.
Well reasoned, spot on, arguments again , Dipper. For such calmly stated, fact-based, reasoned argument, you (and I) obviously need to be burnt at the stake, pronto - or maybe guillotined, as a recent, much publicised placard held up behind two Trans supportive female SNP MSPs at a recent Trans Rights demo in Scotland demanded for 'TERFS' ! Why are (always male) Trans extremists always so violently inclined ? Even a post on here has explicitly wished me violent harm !
I wonder how many Trans 'women ', in addition to all the special , hard-earned, female safe spaces, and women-only shortlist, type privileges they demand to share, would be willing to also 'share' with natal women the global business-wide huge wage differentials between males and females ? The answer is none of course. Still, even the ever-slippery Kier Starmer has now apparently grudgingly admitted that a 'woman' is 'an adult human female' so maybe those opportunist politicians are realising that the vast bulk of the electorate, whilst generally, like myself, having no animus at all against those very few people who wish to live as a gender identity other than their born sex, do not want to sacrifice the hard won special rights and protections of 50% of our population to assuage a minute cohort of extremists.
So, 'refugees'
We know about refugees, because we have lots from Ukraine. They are mainly women and children. They have clear well established identities, and passports. They have been universally welcomed.
But these 'refugees'? They are mainly single young men. They have no ID as their traffickers have told them to ditch them. they are escaping the humanitarian hell hole that is Macron's France. You have no evidence that these people are actually refugees in the sense that anyone sane understands the term.
If you genuinely believe that these people in the channel in dinghies are refugees, why are the people who bring them here 'evil people traffickers'? why are they not humanitarians? Why is the UK government, or the church, or any other organisation not actively funding bringing these 'refugees' to safety?
In a real sense, the left now allows people to self-id as refugees, and those gain entrance to the UK and live off the money that would otherwise be going to pay public sector workers, Liz Truss having comprehensively demonstrated there is a limit to Financial Markets Largesse.
And this self-id applies to literally anyone in the world. Just as self-id allows any man to claim they are a woman and gain entry to women's spaces, so self-id allows anyone from outside the UK to gain access to the UK and the assets of the state.
This is an exercise in class and race humiliation, fuelled by hatred. The clear and obvious questions, as stated above are never answered. This is in itself a humiliation, that genuine concerns are not deemed worthy of response. Why are these migrants placed in Knowsley? Why are they not placed in one of those leafy suburbs that love migrants? Because the authorities want to make it clear to the people of Knowlsey that there opinions do not matter. That just as they trans-rights debate is about denying women the right to control their lives by saying no, the placement of migrants is about denying the right of working class communities to exercise control over their lives and circumstances by saying no.
So save your hand-wringing. The state has lots of options that do not involve dumping gangs of lone young men into impoverished working class areas. It simply chooses not to use them.
Mysterious to note that Dipper is so attuned to the travails of women, yet somehow ignores basically the entirety of human history that if a man took it upon himself to sexually assault a woman, he sure as hell didn't need to become a trans woman to do so.
The idea that trans women are conspiratorial men choosing to go through a - deeply stigmatized - process of transitioning in order to assault women collides immediately with that reality of historic, endemic, cis male violence against women.
Sorry to see Old Trot brought into this; I usually support their perspective. I'd say to them that I believe it is possible to be strongly class conscious, but that the concept of intersectionality enables us to consider how different groups can be victims of both the capitalist class but also other facets of discrimination within or aside from that.
I don't think then that it's incompatible to stand up for individual groups whilst recognizing a broader class struggle against capital of which we're all a part.
@ Jay
But self-id means every 'cis-male' has a route to become a trans-woman and so gain access to women's areas. And it is evident that many abusive 'cis-males' absolutely choose his route. There is clear evidence from Scotland that some males are transitioning to Trans-women, gaining entry to women's prisons, and then on release transitioning back to being men.
And the point about allowing women to have women-only areas - toilets, changing rooms, prisons, is precisely because they need protection from cis-male violence against women. Which is why the Trans Lobby policy of giving aggressive violent abusive men a clear legal road map to gaining entry to women-only areas has got so many people annoyed. And should annoy you too.
This discussion has been an eye-opener. Sofa-beds. Wow. What about bunks? Futons? Loungers? Chaise longue? Quite astonishing. I started reading this without any strong views on the topic. By the end I had concluded that whatever @Dipper thought I really didn't want to be on their side of any argument.
I don't profess to know much about trans issues, but I recognise when people are trying to undermine and vilify a minority. What is truly sad about this is that one historically oppressed group is being pushed or led into taking an aggressive and antagonistic view of another oppressed but much smaller group.
Yes, some individuals belonging to such groups can be very aggressive and strident, but this is true for most. if not all, groups in these circumstances. It should not then be used to stereotype the group as a whole and to justify repression and further victimisation.
Hard cases make bad law, the saying goes. The case of Isla Bryson is an extreme case. It should certainly not be used to justify a policy, any more than kidnap and murder laws should be based on Fred West.
It is well established that paedophiles are attracted to jobs with access to children, and the evidence is strong that many have successfully infiltrated professions that offer this - schools, the church, social services etc. Is that an argument for banning all men from these workplaces? Of course not.
In any case, some paedophiles are female. Some may be trans. The issue is the unacceptable, inappropriate, damaging and dangerous behaviour, not the gender of the perpetrator. Therefore it is that behaviour that needs to be addressed and sanctioned, not the sex or gender identities of those involved.
In other words, it is the rape that is the problem, not the way the person who commits it describes themselves. Some policemen are rapists. But not all rapists are police, or trans men. In fact, only a tiny minority are. Any policy focused exclusively on dealing with this group will have negligible impact on rape as a whole. It would be far better to look for a way to minimise or eliminate rape across the spectrum. That way it would stop, or discourage, any individual of any description or identification from committing the crime, while also not labelling, discriminating against or criminalising a whole group because of the actions of a few.
Most people would agree that to label a whole group because of the negative actions of an individual who happens to share a characteristic of that set, except where the group sanctions or promotes those actions, is wrong. I am not aware of any Trans groups encouraging rape. The same cannot be said for some right wing factions, and some so-called men's rights groups.
@ Zoltan Jorovic
"The issue is the unacceptable, inappropriate, damaging and dangerous behaviour, not the gender of the perpetrator. Therefore it is that behaviour that needs to be addressed and sanctioned, not the sex or gender identities of those involved."
Quite. And a good indicator of someone who displays "unacceptable, inappropriate, damaging and dangerous behaviour" to women would be a rape conviction. Hence keeping that person away from women as much as is possible would seem to be a good idea. And allowing said individual to gain access to women by wearing a dress, a wig, some lippy and shouting "I'm a woman" would seem to be a very bad idea indeed and one would have to be a total idiot or harbour a hatred of women to fall for such an obvious ruse.
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