Sexism

Leftist Shaming Of Conservative White Women Is Anti-Feminist

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

White women vote for Donald Trump - US midterms 2018

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Some women fail to vote for progressive candidates because they happen to be conservatives. Accusing them of acting against their own self-interest — or at the behest of the “white supremacist patriarchy” — is offensive, condescending and presupposes that women should vote based on a more limited palette of issues than men

The US midterms brought some results which were fairly encouraging for Democrats, but also a number of prominent disappointments – charismatic longshot Beto O’Rourke’s failure to unseat Senator Ted Cruz in Texas, the likely failure of Democrats to win senate and gubernatorial races in Florida and disappointment in Georgia.

And predictably enough, the crazy wing of the progressive left know exactly who to blame for these setbacks: traitorous white women who sucked up to their fascist overlords by voting for conservative candidates.

No, seriously:

You see, these white women voted for the “wrong” candidate. Because in the dystopian world inhabited by the Women’s March and others, there is only one allowable political opinion, and all women must vote in a bloc for that option. This might strike you as not being quite what the American founders intended, or what should happen in any healthy democracy for that matter – but nonetheless, the 59% of white women who voted for Ted Cruz are thought criminals, gender traitors and must be publicly shamed before being reeducated.

Telling an entire class of people that “there’s a lot of work to do, white women. A lot of learning. A lot of growing” is incredibly condescending. In fact, the language brings to mind the scolding comment a parent might make to a misbehaving child, not the kind of rhetoric which has ever persuaded a grown adult to change their mind on a given issue ever in the course of human history.

But it turns out that the Women’s March are positively respectful and restrained compared to some other activists:

Charming. Katie Herzog of The Stranger analyses the impetus behind these angry expressions of incomprehension:

While I understand the impulse to blame anonymous populations for our problems and defeats, it’s not hard to see why people bristle at this kind of message. Blaming white women for not electing Democrats is based on the false presumption that white women are a homogenous population, that we are all supposed to be allies for the great feminist cause.

[..] White women are not a monolith. We don’t all know each other. We don’t all go to the same church or yoga class. Some of us, in fact, don’t go to church or yoga at all. White women, like all populations, are a large, unwieldy group made up of individuals with an array of concerns and values, and less than half (48 percent) of white women lean Democratic. The fact that conservative women voted for Republican candidates should be no more surprising than the fact that liberal women voted for Dems, regardless of their race.

[..] As the election results in Missouri, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere show, plenty of white women reject the idea they should vote Democratic just because they are women. They don’t feel like “foot soldiers of the patriarchy,” as feminist Mona Eltahawy put it, and I’m guessing plenty of them don’t even believe in the patriarchy at all. They’re not going to change their votes because progressives they’ve never met think they have some kind of obligation to vote for Democrats because of their double-x chromosome.

Exactly so. Maybe, just maybe, some women voted Republican because they are more than the sum of their reproductive organs, the sexual harassment they may or may not have experienced, their alleged brainwashing by the patriarchy or any other identity politics wedge issues. Maybe, just maybe, the white women being so sanctimoniously lectured by  the woke brigade are human beings and American citizens who base their votes on a variety of factors, just the same as everyone else.

Yet the progressive identity politics brigade would have it be otherwise. Foreign policy, fiscal policy, education and trade? Not the concern of womenfolk, apparently. Civil liberties, free speech, science and innovation, religious freedom, church and state? Don’t worry your pretty little minds about any of those complicated issues, ladies, they’re above your pay grade. Just vote for the party that keeps banging on about your genitalia and reproductive organs.

We see exactly the same phenomenon in Britain, with the establishment Remainers trying to thwart Brexit increasingly resorting to panicked cries that leaving the European Union is a plot of the patriarchy designed to “hurt women”, and should thus be opposed on feminist grounds. Continuity Remainers (those who want to overturn or disregard the result of the 2016 referendum) arrive at this conclusion by creating a tenuous logical chain in which they assert without evidence that Britain’s attitudes and laws concerning women’s rights will revert to Victorian standards upon severance from Brussels, and that Brexit will inevitably lead to a recession which would decrease government tax revenues, which would automatically result in spending cuts which would automatically fall on those elements of the welfare state on which women disproportionately rely.

Again, there is zero expectation that women might support Brexit for the same reason that motivates male Leave voters, be it arguments about democracy, governance, self-determination or immigration. No, Remainers reduce women to the role of passive consumers of government services who should be expected to vote according to whatever they are told is in their material short-term interest rather than entertaining any highfalutin notions about what is best for the future of the country as a whole. This is an incredibly paternalistic argument – one, in fact, which would not have been out of place in Victorian society. But today we hear these sentiments openly and proudly expressed by leading politicians, celebrities and activists agitating to keep Britain a member of the European Union.

Given the degree to which the Republican Party has not only made its peace with Trumpism but (with very few exceptions) cravenly failed to stand up to or condemn the president’s worst excesses, I would have had trouble voting for any candidate with (R) next to their name this election cycle. But unlike the Women’s March and other prominent voices of progressive wokeness, I believe that the white women who did vote Republican in the midterms did so after engaging in the same kind of civic thought process as any other American citizen. I would not be so arrogant to assume that they are brainwashed by the patriarchy or seeking to lord their first-among-second-class-citizen status over women of other ethnicities.

Moreover, haranguing and abusing women for failing to vote the “correct” way its about as strategically sensible as a car salesman reacting to a wavering customer by running out of the showroom after them, yelling abuse and insults, and telling them to bone up on their automobile knowledge before daring to set foot in his dealership ever again.

Herzog goes on to explain the blatantly counterproductive nature of responding to the fact that conservative women vote for conservative candidates by shouting at them:

There are reasons not to blindly shout about “white women” when you’re pissed about the outcome of the election. For one, why the hell aren’t you shouting at white men? They vote for Republicans at even higher rates than white women. This women-blaming rhetoric reeks of misogyny, which may be ironic considering it comes primarily from progressive women. Regardless, it won’t fix anything. The way to win races is to actually appeal to voters (or to suppress them), and the only way to appeal to voters is to either try and change their opinion (and good luck with that) or to meet them where they already stand.

[..] Blaming and shaming conservative white women will not win elections. If Democrats want to win this population over, they need to find a message that actually appeals to them, and faraway progressives screaming “white women do better” is not it.

Yet this seems to be the primary strategy right now:

It’s hard to see how New York Magazine writer Hillary Kelly’s plan to “drive [her] ass down there next election and personally talk to as many of these fools as possible” can fail, given that she clearly intends to meet with them on a basis of mutual respect.

The mind struggles to comprehend how anybody – let alone people who consider themselves part of the cognitive and moral elite – could possibly still think, after all the evidence of 2016-2018, that haranguing people, criticizing and shaming them will somehow make them see the error of their ways and turn them into fellow woke progressives.

But self-flagellation has become such a big part of the required performative routine for the progressive left – witness the endless seminars and university courses popping up, focusing on how to deal with one’s “internalized white supremacy” – that the true believers have apparently forgotten that the rest of us are not whipped into waves of ecstasy by being told how evil, oppressive and stupid we are.

Intersectional identity politics ruins everything. It forces us to focus on what distinguishes and divides us from one another rather than that which unites us – which is slow-motion suicide in a multiethnic democracy like America. As an academic concept, intersectionality undoubtedly has its uses as an analytical framework, but for an increasing number of activists it has become the only lens through which they view the world. For these people, everything is now seen in terms of personal identity, and everyone is judged according to where they fall on the oppressor/oppressed matrix.

Strong electoral mandates, however, are won by building a positive and forward-looking vision which everyone can get behind regardless of gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. And if you want to build that coalition, the very worst thing you can do is expend the bulk of your energy making well over half the country feel bad and/or guilty about inherent personal characteristics which they did not choose, cannot change and have no reason to apologize or be ashamed.

If progressives do not learn this lesson rapidly and disown the intersectional extremists who are willing to tear apart society’s fabric in the name of their ideology, they risk defeat after electoral defeat. And given their reckless behavior and toxic agenda this might be quite satisfying to behold, but for the fact that they will drag the entire country down with them.

 

UPDATE: 9 November

There is undoubtedly some validity to the claim that historically speaking, the feminist movement was largely led by heterosexual white women to the exclusion of gay women and ethnic minorities, and though this is hardly surprising given that white people were the majority, a degree of resentment is perhaps understandable. The solution is to be more inclusive in the future without fixating on past wrongs which cannot be changed. But recasting white women as Vichy-style collaborators in female oppression will only drive more and more women away from the movement; and meanwhile, the rest of the country looks on with revulsion while this most self-obsessed of revolutions busily eats its own.

 

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Unsurprisingly, The “Disparate Impact” Test Reveals That Brexit (And Everything Else) Is Sexist

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Brexit - gender equality - womens rights - identity politics - EU - European Union

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Leftists to women: “Don’t you worry your pretty little minds with complicated talk about geopolitics, democracy or the long-term national interest – just think about Brexit in terms of whether you stand to gain or lose government benefits and entitlements”

It must have seemed like a godsend to whichever scheming left-winger first thought it up – the notion that any proposed government policy should be analysed primarily according to its impact on different identity groups, with any disproportionate impact expected to be felt by minority or designated victim groups providing concrete “proof” that said policy is inherently racist, sexist or otherwise deliberately prejudiced and therefore political Kryptonite.

Here, suddenly, was a super-weapon which could be deployed effectively against almost any policy originating from the right-of-center, and an argument structure which could be adapted and endlessly recycled by lacklustre, uninspired left-wing politicians and activists who would otherwise struggle to string a coherent sentence together on television.

Why does it work so well? Because since right-of-center policies often involve reducing or re-targeting government programs (or encouraging their future provision through the private or nonprofit sectors rather than directly through the state) and since the Left ostentatiously claims to work and speak for the recipients of many of these services, leftist politicians have been able to insinuate that innumerable conservative policies were not conceived in the national interest but rather out of a burning desire to hurt certain vulnerable communities.

Since women and certain ethnic minority groups are disproportionate consumers of certain government services and benefits, virtually any policy which rolls back government spending in these areas can be condemned not only as misguided or callous but as inherently racist, sexist and discriminatory. And the policy’s proponents, in turn, go from being wrong on a matter of policy to inherently evil. Couple this with a left-wing media which is only too happy to take up the clarion call of discrimination without putting too much actual thought or analysis into the matter and you have effectively built an automatic, reflexive Conservative Policy Smearing Machine.

One need only put the conservative policy du jour in the machine’s slot, crank the handle (sometimes multiple rotations are needed depending on the number of degrees of separation between the policy and being able to suggest a favoured minority getting less stuff from the government) and out flies a prefabricated furious press release, a viral social media campaign and an eager up-and-coming left-wing politician to make their name fighting for justice and equality.

And so it was inevitable that leftists, once their initial shock at the EU referendum result had subsided, would seek to crank up their trusty Conservative Policy Smearing Machine and aim it square at the heart of Brexit. This blog has previously highlighted one such effort being promoted by EU idolatry magazine The New European, in which the author declared:

Let’s get one thing straight. This self indulgent pratting about over Brexit will be stopped. But not by MPs kowtowing to party whips in rapture to the latest autocratic executive power grab. And not because media silence blanks out the protests of citizens, but by women kicking off.

Let’s face it. Brexit is essentially sexist. Those spitting out their dummies need a good slap as my gran would have said, and she would have been only pleased administer. She’d have probably denied them sweets, treats and pocket money until they came to their senses too. Her view would be behave like brats, and get treated accordingly.

The chain of “logic” here is that because Brexit (or specifically a mishandled Brexit resulting in economic damage, not the concept of Brexit itself, though it is not in the author’s interest to acknowledge this nuance) may have negative economic consequences, this will result in a recession, which will result in lower government tax revenues, which would mean that the government would have no choice but to cut spending (though the Left also love to argue for stimulus spending, not cuts, during economic downturns) which would then disproportionately impact women, since women are more likely to claim tax credits or various other taxpayer-funded benefits.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this chain of illogic is rather too long and twisted for the conclusion to justify the premise, being more akin to the Underpants Gnomes from the satirical TV cartoon South Park (in which little creatures busily steal underpants from the town’s inhabitants, feverishly working to the formula Underpants + ? = Profit, with the question mark never being identified). And you would be right. But for Continuity Remainers and leftist defenders of the European Union, any embarrassment at drawing such a tenuous connection is outweighed by the opportunity to smear Brexit as being not only misguided but motivated by a callous desire to hurt women. No matter how implausible, if a line can be drawn linking Brexit to misogyny or racism then that line will be drawn, personal dignity and intellectual integrity be damned.

And now, charging into the debate, we have the London School of Economics’ execrable Brexit blog, an embarrassment to academia which exists primarily as a platform to cast as many aspersions against Brexit as possible without ever once seriously engaging with democratic or constitutional criticisms of the EU.

In a new essay by Julie MacLeavy of the University of Bristol for the LSE Brexit Blog, it is suggested that the goal of gender equality is “adrift in the Brexit backwash”. Good luck trying to decode the following identity politics word soup:

With European legislation and regulation on gender equality framed as inhibiting economic growth, the post-Brexit environment is likely to see the simultaneous intensification and erosion of gender. Should the UK government deregulation fail to enact sufficient legal protection to compensate for the removal of EU laws, directives and charters, the prior neoliberal tendencies of individualisation and the transfer of reproductive responsibilities towards the feminised spaces of communities and families – renewed in part through the implementation of austerity measures in recent years – will no longer be restricted by the promotion and implementation of gender equality policies.

At the same time, deregulation and the reprivatisation of social reproduction are likely to affect not just women, but a number of feminised individuals upon whom the burden of additional care work falls. The dimensions of class, race and ethnicity mean that any change in the gender regime will affect constituted groups differently. In this sense, Brexit indicates the significant intensification of the practices that reflect and reproduce gendered labour and economic inequality.

Making the case for Europe’s democratic values and its commitment to social justice will depend on both the popularisation of a feminist campaign in which gender equality as a main goal is rendered legitimate, as well as the incorporation of a feminist ethic within the auspices of the state. This latter task is becoming increasingly difficult given the support expressed for the repatriation of European powers by previously pro-European factions.

Left Foot Forward has also been promoting the same infantilising line of argument.

MacLeavy’s line of argument is distasteful more for its haughty contempt for democracy rather than its condescending view of women and minorities. The entire operating assumption of the article and the academic “thinking” behind it is that because Britain is a terribly backward and barbaric place, crucial and fundamental human rights have to be imposed on us by a higher, outside authority (in this case, the EU).

Since nasty, backward British voters cannot be trusted to believe in or vote for the right things, we need human rights imposed on us at a European level, so that present and future UK governments could not dial back certain rights or entitlements even if they wanted to. This is predicated on the belief that democracy, popular will, should not trump everything, which is actually a perfectly reasonable position – any good constitution should have checks and balances built in to it in order to prevent the passion of the moment finding its way onto the statute books without due discussion, diligence and consideration of the rights of dissenting minorities.

But the academic Left’s naive approach assumes that the EU will always be a force for the kind of socially progressive agenda that its academics seek to champion. By defending a structure which permanently paints the UK as the authoritarian bad guy and the EU as the right-dispensing good guys, it provides no defence in the event that the EU flips and takes a less expansive view of human rights than is currently the case. And this is more than a theoretical, irrelevant supposition – with the rise of populists and authoritarians throughout Europe, a time may eventually come when some decidedly illiberal policies flow down from Brussels. And what defence would Britain then have, given that the Left trust European voters and politicians over British people to be the final arbiter of rights and freedoms in the UK?

Thus, at best this “resist Brexit to preserve women’s rights” movement is guilty of exceptionally short-term, two-dimensional, narrow thinking in which the policy thought most likely to guarantee certain rights and entitlements today is mistakenly held as the optimal policy for the longer-term, and at worst it is as contemptuous of women as it is of democracy itself.

In truth, women should be insulted by this definition of sexism based on disparate impact, by the suggestion that women are helpless supplicants without agency or power, whose lives and livelihoods are dependent on government largesse. Self-respecting women should reject the condescending notion that their worth or societal footprint is somehow bound up in how many taxpayer resources they consume, and that they are effectively “gender traitors” if they allow their constitutional and democratic arguments for Brexit to overrule the grasping desire to secure government entitlements in perpetuity.

Is anyone else getting tired of the intellectually dishonest, emotionally manipulative “disparate impact” political test to determine the presence of sexism or racism? No policy or political decision will ever affect all identity groups equally, but this fact does not make them all inherently discriminatory. That much can only be determined by considering the intent of the policy – is there or is there not reasonable cause to believe that a particular policy was proposed or implemented with intent to disproportionately impact a specific demographic group for no reason other than an innate physical trait shared by that group?

Under this far more reasonable test for discrimination, the idea that Brexit is somehow sexist rightly appears absurd – one may just as well declare that going to war is sexist and deliberately antagonistic toward women because it would redirect taxpayer resources from welfare to the military, even though men would be doing the lion’s share of the fighting and dying. Brexit, like going to war, is based on a foundation of interweaving ideas and aspirations far wider and more complex than a desire to roll back societal progress toward gender equality. It encompasses arguments about governance, democracy, trade and regulation, almost none of which are even tangentially linked to the relative status of men and women. Even so far as Brexit can be conceived as a desire to roll back employment and other regulations, the idea that the goal of such rollbacks is to harm women because they are women is utterly ridiculous.

If politicians, activists or academics came to me and told me that as a mixed-race man raised in a single-parent family I would be disproportionately impacted by Brexit and should therefore abandon my existing views on the European Union in order to vote in accordance with someone else’s interpretation of my best interests, I would tell that person to take a hike, and none too politely.

As a country, isn’t it time we shut down this growing cottage industry of left-wing wannabe heroes whose loudly stated conception of what is best for minorities always conveniently gels with their pre-existing leftist, Utopian worldview? Isn’t it long past time that the entire country told these unwanted saviors to mind their own business?

 

Remainer paints EU flag on her face - European Union - Brexit

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Is Brexit Sexist?

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Remainer paints EU flag on her face - European Union - Brexit

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When anti-Brexit hysteria and identity politics collide…

As the question of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union is folded ever more deeply into our ongoing culture war, it continues to be the establishment centre-left – that bipartisan group who broadly support the status quo of the past two decades and viscerally hate the very idea of Brexit – who continue to acquit themselves the worse in public debate.

The country already has very low expectations when it comes to mainstream Brexiteers, both within government and without. Whether it is the increasingly Alex Jones-style populism of Nigel Farage, the polished and carefree ignorance of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the unhinged provocation (and potentially illegal activity) of Leave.EU or the most proudly obnoxious Brexit supporters on social media, few people think of the Brexit movement as one characterised by profound intelligence or abiding statesmanship. That may be unfair on the more earnest, thoughtful Brexiteers – such as those of the Leave Alliance, with whom I stand – but it is undeniably the case, and few of us now waste time trying to challenge the abiding impression given off by our movement, particularly in the face of a fundamentally uncurious media who have no interest in looking beyond their preset narrative.

This is not the case when it comes to the Remain camp, however. From the beginning, EU apologists and campaigners against Brexit have sought to trade on their reputation as cool-headed, fact-based, reason-driven pragmatists who alone are untouched by base motivations such as nationalism or political tribalism. While Brexiteers may be gammon-faced nostalgics or barely concealed racists, goes this narrative, Remainers think with their heads, not their hearts. They take a broader, more strategic view of affairs. They certainly do not need to resort to rhetorical trickery or emotional manipulation in order to win support for their cause.

After a two-year public meltdown on the part of Britain’s political, academic and cultural elite, I think we can finally disabuse ourselves of these unhelpful stereotypes – because it turns out that in their sorrow and rage, Remainers have quickly caught up with the worst traits of the worst Brexiteers, often exceeding them in both passion and delusion. Whether it is intellectual pin-ups such as the eminent Professor A C Grayling peddling risible conspiracy theories or establishment fossils such as Andrew Adonis attempting to save the country from Brexit with their trusty swords of sanctimony and shields of superiority, not only has the Remain camp failed to learn a single lesson from their 2016 referendum defeat; worse, they have decided to double down on all of the political tactics, talking points and personality traits which led them to defeat in the first place.

Since June 2016, Remainers have replaced arrogance with an even more supercharged arrogance that they and only they could have correctly weighed up all the important variables worth considering and found in favour of the EU. They have replaced intellectual and cultural contempt for their opponents with an even deeper, uglier form of largely class-based hatred which they espouse with ever-decreasing shame, particularly the racist and classist term “gammon” which they use to describe white working class Brexit supporters. They have replaced a naive total faith in supranationalism with an even more derisively hostile attitude toward the nation state and any continuing relevance it may have for the good governance of human society.

But worse than all of that, Remainers have become the very caricature which they attempted to make of Brexiteers. It was long claimed that Brexiteers won the referendum by painting a dishonestly simplistic view of the world and proposing glib, simplistically local solutions to global challenges. Now it is Remainers who promote a falsely simplistic worldview where supranationalism solves everything and nations with very different cultures, priorities and national interests hold hands beneath a rainbow and joyfully hand their worries over to a benevolent continental technocracy. No longer do Remainers grudgingly admit that the EU needs reform; now it is a perfect and noble institution with greater claims to democratic legitimacy than the British government itself. Now it is Remainers who peddle simplistic and misleading slogans such as the idea that Brexit means “going it alone” and “trying to resurrect Empire 2.0”, that supporting Brexit means rejecting the very concepts of friendship and cooperation among individuals, groups and nations.

This much became inevitable when Brexit was folded into the larger culture war. At that point, reinforcing the dogmas and credos of one’s own tribe (whichever it may be) became more important than meaningful discussion or attempting to empathise with the other side. Acceptance by and membership of one’s own tribe became contingent on adopting a pure and uncompromising position rather than engaging in introspection or admitting doubt, with dissenters either shamed into silence, bullied into conformity or else simply left out of a prestige media narrative which sought to pitch the good and the right (Remainers) versus the stupid and malevolent (eurosceptics).

This is a problem afflicting both sides. For example, in the past this blog has often found common cause with Brendan O’Neill and other writers at Spiked magazine on matters of liberty and democracy, but that publication’s uncompromising take on Brexit – effectively asserting that anything less than a total severing of every link with the EU and single market, be they related to political union or not, represents some kind of betrayal of the people – is an extreme stance which I cannot and do not share. Unfortunately, the culture war lens applied to Brexit by the likes of Spiked has become the prevailing view among Brexiteers, to the extent that pragmatists favouring a compromise form of Brexit are now regarded with suspicion at best, and as traitors to the cause at worst.

But this pathology affects the Continuity Remain side of the debate just as badly, and often worse, since they are able to use their public platforms and reputations to give their tribal anti-Brexit behaviour an undeserved veneer of serious thought and respectability. There was a time when prominent Remainers could be found admitting through clenched teeth that “of COURSE the EU needs reform”, before quickly changing the subject with an impatient wave of the hand. Now, this is increasingly rare. Mention any of the EU’s once commonly accepted and lamented democratic flaws, for example, and Remainers are far more likely to shoot back with an irrelevant wisecrack stating that the existence of the House of Lords or our First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system invalidates any criticism of Brussels (thus totally skirting the EU’s glaring lack of a demos coherent enough to justify the institutions established in their name).

In other words, just when Remainers need to show contrition and understanding if they are to have any hope whatsoever of persuading Leave voters to change their minds, many are instead doubling down and insisting on the EU’s relative perfection. Their rage and political tribalism blind them to the politically astute path of action.

The latest sign that Brexit has fused with our ongoing culture war is the risible claim that Brexit is inherently sexist. We have long been lectured that Brexit is inherently racist, because wanting to control immigration from other majority-white European countries is somehow a sign of white nationalism, but now many Remainers are advancing the idea that Brexit is sexist too.

While the tempo of these claims has increased, the seed was planted before the referendum even took place, with articles such as this in the Guardian, declaring:

If you were feeling waspish, you might conclude that women’s major contribution to the EU debate so far has been to say that more women should contribute to the EU debate. On 27 January, Caroline Lucas of the Greens called out the abundance of “men in grey suits”. On 1 February, Barbara Judge, chair of the Institute of Directors, asked if “women had been sidelined or have chosen to absent themselves from the debate”. On 1 March, Labour’s Mary Creagh warned we should not leave the decision to the “old boys’ club”.

But ever since the Remain campaign lost the EU referendum, despite enjoying every conceivable advantage, the exculpatory narrative has moved on from women’s voices supposedly not being heard enough in the public debate to Brexit causing real, tangible, gender-targeted harm to women.

Professor Juliet Lodge, writing in that bastion of pro-EU groupthink The New European, recently wrote a masterpiece in which she crowed that it is good that the EU makes Brexit nearly impossible for a departing member state, declares Brexit to be immoral, sexist and doomed to defeat by an army of angry women who will supposedly rise up and stop the “nonsense” of a democratically determined secession from the EU.

Money quote:

Let’s get one thing straight. This self indulgent pratting about over Brexit will be stopped. But not by MPs kowtowing to party whips in rapture to the latest autocratic executive power grab. And not because media silence blanks out the protests of citizens, but by women kicking off.

Let’s face it. Brexit is essentially sexist. Those spitting out their dummies need a good slap as my gran would have said, and she would have been only pleased administer. She’d have probably denied them sweets, treats and pocket money until they came to their senses too. Her view would be behave like brats, and get treated accordingly.

The Fawcett Society, in thrall to intersectionality, published a report warning of the specific impact of Brexit upon women back in March this year, based upon the Harriet Harman technique of making dubious predictions about absolutely every possible variable and claiming that any sphere where a particular impact might be felt more by women than men is de facto evidence of sexism.

The report was full of the kind of tenuous nonsense and logical overreaches which now sadly characterise the identity politics Left, and thus we learn that clothing and textile industries being vulnerable to potential trade barriers will disproportionately affect women, though the fact that hits to engineering or aerospace industries might disproportionately impact men is of seemingly no relevance at all.

We also learn that a potential fall in GDP may lead to government cuts, which would impact more greatly on women as they are more likely to work in the public sector and consume public services. Never mind that the inevitability or even desirability of this state of affairs being taken as given by the Fawcett Society and others is itself a sign of a condescening, paternalist attitude towards women, assuming that women are perpetually vulnerable wards of the state – no, we are supposed to take this seriously too.

And from there the report delves into all kinds of Remainer fantasyland predictions about what Brexit “could” do – the Fawcett Society’s most gnawing fear that an economic crisis would lead to draconian rollbacks of employment rights – though at best this fear is tied to one potential governmental response to Brexit rather than being inherent in Brexit itself. Nonetheless, we are firmly told that with Brexit “we risk turning the clock back on gender equality”, because women are incapable of articulating or defending their own interests and require the EU and its hagiographers to do so on their behalf.

CapX effectively rebutted many of the report’s claims in a piece by Madeline Grant:

But relying on potentially faulty forecasts is the least of the report’s crimes. The authors call on the Government to “amend the EU Withdrawal Bill to protect [gender] rights from being weakened”. This is where the report becomes disingenuous. The EU Withdrawal Bill already enshrines all EU rights into UK law. Any alterations made by a future government would have to be approved by Parliament, and so the amendments they propose would be both unnecessary and meaningless.

More broadly, their insistence that, free from the EU, the UK government would choose to scale back gender equality legislation is tenuous. So far, all indicators suggest that the government is moving in the opposite direction, and strengthening these rights. This year, the UK became one of the first countries in the world to require private- and public-sector employers with 250 or more employees to publish their company-wide gender pay gaps.

[..] Historically, the UK, far more than the EU, has led the way when it comes to women’s rights and workplace and family protections. The first Equal Pay Act (championed by the sewing machinists in Dagenham) in 1970, predates our accession to the European Union by several years, as do the Abortion Act (1967), the Divorce Reform Act (1969) and the decision to make the contraceptive pill free on the NHS. FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985, but the EU only passed legislation addressing it in 2012.

The infamous “tampon tax”, which levies a 5 per cent VAT on sanitary products and contraception, is an EU directive which we have been obliged to impose despite the opposition of government and a majority of MPs. Moreover, the UK’s 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave is considerably more generous than the 14 weeks guaranteed by EU law.

In short; suggesting that EU intervention is required to safeguard these rights is to ignore reality, and shows very little faith in British lawmakers.

Others, including Nina Parker of the #WomenAgainstBrexit movement and the Our Future Our Choice campaign have taken up the same self-debasing arguments, writing in Left Foot Forward:

Equality rights have for too long been second to the interests of business. Trade is not the most impending risk posed in Brexit Britain. It is human rights which should be at the forefront of negotiations.

The Brexit path being taken is very male, very right wing, deeply un-progressive, extremely unrepresentative. if we get a chance to vote on the final deal, we owe it to the memory of the suffragettes too, to use it. And we owe it to ourselves to fight to get that vote and reverse the catastrophic path we are on.

One might have thought that the suffragettes strove to win the very right to influence political decision-making in their country which Remainers are now desperate to continue divesting to a more distant, unaccountable supranational body. But today’s EU-supporting progressives, playing their part in the culture war, instead seem to believe that the goal of women’s suffrage is the right to meekly accept or petition for rights underpinned at a supranational level, through fear and mistrust of the domestic electorate. There seems to be little to support this patronising and fundamentally antidemocratic worldview in the historical literature, but nonetheless this is what we are asked to believe.

And what can one say in response? Identity politics and the culture war have firmly taken hold of Brexit, with the progressive Left (minus a Corbynite subset) co-opting the Remain position and fiercely clinging to that stance. And since the modus operandi of identity politics activists is to identify and exploit any angle or facet of an issue which can be shown to affect designated gender or minority groups, it was inevitable that we would eventually be told that Brexit is a specific assault on women, on ethnic minorities, on gay people or transgender individuals. Because the identity politics Left long ago gave up any concept of unifying shared citizenship, many activists are now only able to communicate in terms of how a particular issue or eventuality will impact specific subgroups with competing and often diverging interests.

The downside for progressive Remain campaigners is that in folding Brexit into the wider culture war and making the issue indistinguishable from all their other intersectionality-soaked grievances, they risk speaking only to themselves. Unfortunately for them, many British people do still acknowledge the idea of a unifying bond connecting all British citizens regardless of race, gender or sexuality, even if those bonds are frayed or even inarticulable at times. Few Leave voters went to the polling booth motivated primarily by thoughts of how Britain’s future relationship with the EU would affect them and their country based on their particular gender, and many are suspicious of Remainer entreaties to view basic matters of democracy and self-determination through the ludicrous prism of their genitalia.

After two years of furious denialism and rage against the EU referendum result, Remainers among the identity politics Left have become world experts in talking amongst themselves and telling one another exactly what they already think and want to hear, with arguments perfectly tailored to their own worldview and niche obsessions. As an act of misguided, unhelpful civic engagement this is depressingly predictable. But as a strategy for overturning Brexit and re-establishing the status quo it is incredibly tone-deaf, short-sighted – and ultimately doomed to failure.

 

EU protest - You Stole Our Future From Us

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‘Vile Misogynist Abuse’ Or Harmless Political Skulduggery?

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

hatchet

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Theresa May is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – she does not need defending against George Osborne’s non-existent misogyny by an army of sanctimonious professional offence-takers

Until today’s heinous (but thankfully largely unsuccessful) terror attack on the London Underground, much of this week’s political chatter has been dominated by a lengthy profile of George Osborne in Esquire magazine.

The rather gushing article detailed the various ways in which the former Chancellor of the Exchequer was seeking to leverage (or abuse) his position as editor of the Evening Standard to exact political revenge on former colleagues who had previously crossed his path:

At a little after 6.30, nearly every weekday morning, George Osborne — 46 years old, tall, rich, boyish, tieless — takes the bus from Notting Hill in west London, where he lives, to Kensington High Street, where he works, orders his breakfast to take away from Leon, arrives at the marbled and airy headquarters of the London Evening Standard, takes the lift to the second floor, enters his corner office, and sets about destroying his political enemies.

Following this riveting introduction there follows a lengthy and somewhat depressing account of exactly how Osborne came to land the position of Editor despite having no journalistic background, and the new direction in which he is taking the newspaper.

But this is the passage which stirred particular controversy:

Osborne seems to reserve his choicest weapons for Theresa May, the beleaguered prime minister. On his first day as editor, the front page of the Standard announced “Brussels twists knife on Brexit [as] EU chief mocks PM May with her own ‘Strong and Stable’ leadership slogan”. The attacks on May have become only more intense since then. (One clinical sentence in a Standard editorial from 21 June simply read: “Enough of this nonsense.”) Osborne’s animus against May is complicated in origin — personal, political, ideological, tactical — but purely felt. When I met him at the Standard this past spring, he was polite enough about the prime minister. But according to one staffer at the newspaper, Osborne has told more than one person that he will not rest until she “is chopped up in bags in my freezer”.

To any sane person, this is clearly a political threat, not a serious threat of impending physical violence against the prime minister. But one would not get this impression judging by the outrage from many politicians and journalists, who sought to fold Osborne’s case of sour grapes into a broader narrative about online abuse and violence against women.

Labour’s Chris Bryant was quick off the mark, declaring that Osborne was clearly a misogynist, the Huffington Post reported:

During a debate on barriers for women entering Parliament on Wednesday, Labour’s Chris Bryant said he should apologise.

“It’s that kind of language, which I think is misogynistic in its basis, which should be done away with,” he added.

This, of course, conforming to the Left’s new working definition of misogyny, which can basically be described as “any negative statement about a woman, regardless of whether or not it actually concerns her gender, made by somebody we dislike or wish to discredit”.

Even Tory MP Nadine Dorries got in on the act, ranting to a WhatsApp chat for fellow Conservative MPs:

I’m sorry but Osborne’s vile, and I think sexist language towards the PM has now crossed the line. He’s either going the way of James Chapman, or he’s become a security risk.

Yes, Nadine Dorries is literally positing that George Osborne has either become mentally unbalanced or is flirting with the idea of committing an act of political terrorism. Let that sink in for a few moments.

And is anybody else getting sick of the word “vile” being appended to every object of criticism as the default go-to word of condemnation? Can we not have a little more variety in our self-righteous denunciations, at least? George Orwell would surely have a thing or two to say about our rote, unthinking repetition of the same tedious adjective.

Dorries continues:

He would never say these things of a man. Won’t be happy until she’s chopped into bits in a bag in my freezer. Dead woman walking. Living dead. Wants her immediate execution.

This is the kind of hysterical, overwrought language more commonly adopted by the most unhinged of Social Justice Warriors, who see physical harm in the most innocuous of words, not the language of a sober-minded parliamentarian.

No serious person could possibly believe that George Osborne literally wants to kill and dismember Theresa May, or fantasises about her death. This blog has about as low an opinion of George Osborne as it is possible to hold, and even I do not believe that the ex-Chancellor is a full-on psychopath who daydreams about the violent demise of his enemies.

And in fact Nadine Dorries and most of the other people who came scuttling out of the woodwork to declare their outrage also probably do not believe this of George Osborne. They just know that accusations of sexism or violence against women have enormous power to ruin reputations (as they should when such acts are actually committed), and think nothing of levelling such accusations in retaliation against language or behaviour that they dislike. Playing the sexism or racism card is fair game, in other words, when one’s cause is just – even if the evidence to back it up is not there.

And indeed it then becomes immediately clear why Nadine Dorries is actually upset:

He spent ten years undermining her and trying to squash her. He mounted whips operations against her in the chamber when she was Home Sec. I’ve written to Gavin [Williamson, Tory Chief Whip] and said I think his pass for conference should be removed because we would never allow a punter in who had said any of that, for security reasons. I hope some of you feel strongly enough to do the same.

So this has nothing to do with “security reasons” at all – it is just a convenient opportunity, gifted by Osborne’s crass language, to exact political revenge on an opponent (Dorries has had a fractious relationship with the Tory leadership since having the whip temporarily withdrawn after she skipped the country to participate in a reality TV show).

But of course, being honest about the real reasons for her animus toward the former Chancellor would make Dorries look small-minded and petty, so instead she slaps on the faux-outrage like a suit of armour and wades into battle, declaring that Osborne’s schoolyard threats somehow represent a security threat to the prime minister.

There is a very ugly and unseemly trend among an increasing number of MPs to wallow in their own supposed victimhood. Despite occupying one of the most high-status occupations it is possible to hold, one which opens up endless future career opportunities – to say nothing of conferring the ability to shape the course of the nation – a growing number of MPs seem to see themselves as uniquely oppressed and vulnerable.

This trend has greatly picked up since the ghastly murder of Jo Cox last year, an act which was universally condemned but which seems to have provided some more cynical politicians with an excuse to “turn the leaf” on past expenses scandals and abuses of public trust in order to cast themselves as the fearless public heroes and members of the public as little more than a source of menace and danger.

To be clear: Members of Parliament are public servants and have the absolute right to discharge their duties in the full expectation of safety and security. Any legitimate or even ambiguous threats of violence or vulgar verbal or written abuse is reprehensible. But it does not help the effort to crack down on real trolling and abuse of politicians (such as that received by Diane Abbott) when cynical and calculating people falsely conflate the kind of standard political skulduggery which has always been a part of politics with real racial or sexist abuse.

If anything, the fact that George Osborne has apparently been telling anybody who will listen at Evening Standard HQ that he wants to politically dismember the prime minister is itself proof that he sees Theresa May as much as a worthy opponent to smite as he would any man. Osborne’s colourful and rather gruesome imagery does not reveal a deep-seated loathing of women, but rather is evidence of real parity of esteem – he doesn’t see any reason why Theresa May should be spared from his ranting and plotting any more than a male politician.

A true feminist would surely approve of this acknowledgement of equality and see George Osborne’s posturing as evidence of social progress. In fact, the only people who might not take this stance are cynical political opportunists who like to use accusations of sexism as weapon, and babyish fourth-wave intersectional feminists who see all words as potentially harmful and any political dissent as a threat to their very personhood.

Why? Because their dispiriting, identity politics-soaked worldview is predicated on the notion that women are in fact not equal, that by virtue of their historic and present oppression they are uniquely vulnerable and in need of perpetual protection against the “harms” which may be inflicted by stray words.

There is real violence, misogyny and hatred in this world. Let us be vociferous in condemning any such incidences wherever they appear. But pretending that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer is one meat cleaver purchase away from dismembering the prime minister of the United Kingdom is risible at face value, as is the notion that his petty political vendetta might encourage anybody else to commit physical violence.

On the other hand, with Halloween around the corner this tedious episode has at least provided some inspiration for a few new costumes which will see all of Britain’s snowflakes running for their safe spaces.

 

George Osborne

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Donald Trump Victory Reaction: Everybody Take A Deep Breath

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

shun-the-non-believer

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America’s new president-elect is bad, but he is hardly evil on a world-historical scale. Unfortunately, the hysterical media reaction to Donald Trump’s election victory leaves no room for nuance or restraint

In these fractious times, it is very difficult for those of us who fall into the “really didn’t want Donald Trump to win, but don’t consider his victory to be quite the end of civilisation” crowd to say anything, for fear of reprisal – not from Donald Trump supporters, but from certain anti-Trump activists who have taken to using a person’s level of anger at the election result as an indicator of their personal moral code or worth.

Since Trump’s unexpected victory, the strong message being transmitted by much of the left-wing post-election commentary has been that if you aren’t rending your garments, taking to the streets with burning torches, retreating to a safe space or dissolving into tears every five minutes then you must be a closeted Donald Trump supporter.

Look: I really really did not want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. This blog has been pretty clear about my estimation of Donald Trump and the low regard in which I hold the president-elect. But not every charge flung at Donald Trump by left-wing partisans deserves to stick, because some of them are major overreaches prompted by partisan fervour rather than objective accuracy. And it should be possible to point out where criticism of Donald Trump goes too far, or is flat-out wrong, without being accused of supporting the man himself.

It does nobody any good if this election causes America to fracture into three distinct factions: unapologetic pro-Trump supporters, furious anti-Trump activists and a group of pragmatists who want to make the best of a difficult situation but who have been cowed into sullen silence for failing to pick a side and express either blanket admiration or total hatred for Donald Trump. If the country is to knit back together, it is this final group which must act as the cords which bind the nation’s wounds and bridge mutual suspicion. Assailing people for neither hero-worshipping Trump nor treating him like Hitler really is not the smartest thing to do in terms of improving the toxic atmosphere in American politics.

I’m told that I cannot possibly understand what it is like to be black, disabled, Mexican, female, gay or transgender in Trump’s America. Well, okay. But I did grow up mixed race in 1990s Britain, when not everybody was super friendly toward people who are not white. Sure, I never had to fear being gunned down in the street by a policeman for walking or driving suspiciously, but as a child I have been shoved and called all the worst racial epithets one can think of. I didn’t let it scar me for life and as I’ve grown older I can probably count the total number of verbally or physically hostile interactions over the past decade on two hands, but I certainly don’t have the dreaded “white privilege”. Yet while I certainly do not look forward to Donald Trump’s presidency, I do not fear it in a physical sense.

Donald Trump is objectionable for all of the reasons that the mainstream media has (belatedly) gotten around to pointing out. He is vulgar and thin-skinned, and in a confrontational situation he will use any defining characteristic to taunt or belittle an opponent. If you are fat, Trump will harp on about how massive you are. If you are not conventionally attractive, Trump will be sure to point that fact out to everyone. And most distastefully, he will apparently do the same if you are disabled. Donald Trump is not a nice person.

But there is vast gulf between being personally repellent and representing an active physical danger to the very same people that Trump insults on Twitter, in television interviews or on stage at his rallies. And we need to recognise that fact. It should be possible to abhor Donald Trump’s mockery of a disabled journalist without making the leap of imagination that a Trump presidency will somehow lead to the state-sanctioned persecution of disabled people. It should be possible to oppose Donald Trump’s most ignorant or insulting rhetoric about racial minorities without imagining World War 2 era Japanese internment camps for black people and lawful, legal immigrants.

The point is this: if we go nuclear in every single criticism of Donald Trump, we have nowhere left to go when somebody with truly severely racist or homophobic views comes along. It is important to leave some slack in our language so that we have room left to describe true evil when it crosses our path. If we wear out our strongest warnings and our most alarmist rhetoric on somebody who has a foul mouth but no evident plans to single out American citizens for persecution, what do we do if one day there is a presidential candidate who actively refuses to associate with black, Hispanic, gay or trans people and who runs on an unabashedly Jim Crow platform?

(Furthermore, I feel compelled to note that right now it is the Social Justice, Identity Politics Left which is clamouring to bring back racial and gender segregation, and not the conventional or alt-right).

Even as I write this, I can feel some people becoming outraged and accusing me of being a Trump apologist. But Trump is terrible! Yes, he is really bad. But the momentary catharsis of accusing Donald Trump of every prejudice and evil under the sun, whether each one is deserved or not, is really not worth the additional damage which going nuclear is doing to our political discourse. At some point it might be nice to persuade some of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 to vote for somebody else in 2020. It will be much easier to engage them in dialogue if we have not first accused them of being latter-day Nazi collaborators.

If it sounds like I am rather treading on eggshells in this piece, it is because I am. Trump’s election victory has divided America, divided the world, divided families. And maybe two weeks after the election is too soon to expect the blood to have cooled and objectivity to reign. So while I struggle to put into words what I am trying to say, I encourage everybody to read this piece by Scott Alexander of the SlateStarCodex blog, who offers some excellent perspective and advice.

(Hat tip to Brendan O’Neill for bringing the piece to my attention on Facebook).

It’s a long piece of analysis, but I will quote the conclusion, which should be required reading for everyone in America (and anyone else moved to write about American politics):

Stop fearmongering. Somewhere in America, there are still like three or four people who believe the media, and those people are cowering in their houses waiting for the death squads.

Stop crying wolf. God forbid, one day we might have somebody who doesn’t give speeches about how diversity makes this country great and how he wants to fight for minorities, who doesn’t pose holding a rainbow flag and state that he proudly supports transgender people, who doesn’t outperform his party among minority voters, who wasn’t the leader of the Salute to Israel Parade, and who doesn’t offer minorities major cabinet positions. And we won’t be able to call that guy an “openly white supremacist Nazi homophobe”, because we already wasted all those terms this year.

Stop talking about dog whistles. The kabbalistic similarities between “dog-whistling” and “wolf-crying” are too obvious to ignore.

Stop writing articles breathlessly following everything the KKK says. Stop writing several times more articles about the KKK than there are actual Klansmen. Remember that thing where Trump started out as a random joke, and then the media covered him way more than any other candidate because he was so outrageous, and gave him what was essentially free advertising, and then he became President-elect of the United States? Is the lesson you learned from this experience that you need 24-7 coverage of the Ku Klux Klan?

[..] Stop turning everything into identity politics. The only thing the media has been able to do for the last five years is shout “IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS!” at everything, and then when the right wing finally says “Um, i…den-tity….poli-tics?” you freak out and figure that the only way they could have possibly learned that phrase is from the KKK.

Stop calling Trump voters racist. A metaphor: we have freedom of speech not because all speech is good, but because the temptation to ban speech is so great that, unless given a blanket prohibition, it would slide into universal censorship of any unpopular opinion. Likewise, I would recommend you stop calling Trump voters racist – not because none of them are, but because as soon as you give yourself that opportunity, it’s a slippery slope down to “anyone who disagrees with me on anything does so entirely out of raw seething hatred, and my entire outgroup is secret members of the KKK and so I am justified in considering them worthless human trash”. I’m not saying you’re teetering on the edge of that slope. I’m saying you’re way at the bottom, covered by dozens of feet of fallen rocks and snow. Also, I hear that accusing people of racism constantly for no reason is the best way to get them to vote for your candidate next time around. Assuming there is a next time.

My emphasis in bold. Scott Alexander concludes with this plea:

Stop centering criticism of Donald Trump around this sort of stuff, and switch to literally anything else. Here is an incompetent thin-skinned ignorant boorish fraudulent omnihypocritical demagogue with no idea how to run a country, whose philosophy of governance basically boils down to “I’m going to win and not lose, details to be filled in later”, and all you can do is repeat, again and again, how he seems popular among weird Internet teenagers who post frog memes.

In the middle of an emotionally incontinent reality TV show host getting his hand on the nuclear button, your chief complaint is that in the middle of a few dozen denunciations of the KKK, he once delayed denouncing the KKK for an entire 24 hours before going back to denouncing it again. When a guy who says outright that he won’t respect elections unless he wins them does, somehow, win an election, the headlines are how he once said he didn’t like globalists which means he must be anti-Semitic.

Stop making people suicidal. Stop telling people they’re going to be killed. Stop terrifying children. Stop giving racism free advertising. Stop trying to convince Americans that all the other Americans hate them. Stop. Stop. Stop.

I have no desire to denigrate the fear and pain of anybody who is in genuine fear following Trump’s election victory. I do not take perverse joy from laughing at the terror and misery of other people. But it is my contention that much of this fear has been manufactured by various people and for various reasons – some vaguely noble, others much less so.

Frequently we hear the refrain that various identity groups “no longer feel welcome in America”. Would that include gay people, whom President Barack Obama did not consider worthy of the institution of marriage until changing public opinion (and a big helping hand from Joe Biden) caused him to shift position? Would that include illegal immigrants, whom Hillary Clinton voted to thwart with a border fence and Barack Obama deported in record numbers? Would that include black people, whom the sainted Hillary Clinton once described as “super-predators“?

Once the excitement of the election has properly died down we urgently need to separate the things which are actually concerning about Donald Trump from the frivolous dangers which exist mostly in people’s minds.

Much is (belatedly) being written about how the media failed to do a good job covering Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy in the early months. Quite right too – they chased ratings, broadcast voyeuristically lingering live coverage of his meandering speeches for entertainment rather than educational value and failed to ask tough questions or do proper investigative journalism until way too late in the process.

But the media is failing now in a different way, having overcompensated for past sins by now reporting any hysterical fear about Donald Trump, no matter how absurd or far-fetched, as though it is inherently legitimate and worthy of consideration. Take this hypersensitivity to Donald Trump’s boorish rhetoric coupled with an infantilised population who sometimes seem to prefer to act like helpless babes rather than autonomous and resilient adults, and the result is not pretty. In fact, it is downright ugly.

I am very aware that this blog post is not up to the usual standard – it probably does not “flow” as it should, and is much more a stream of consciousness than anything else. But the bottom line is this: there will be enough work to do scrutinising the Trump administration and keeping its worst excesses at bay for the next few years without also turning on each other, fellow people who opposed Trump’s candidacy.

This post will likely see me damned by those who are fully on board the Trump train as well as those implacably opposed to Donald Trump (as I was) and determined to see only evil in everything that occurs until he departs the scene. So be it. I find it very strange to be in the position of the “moderate middle” for once – somewhere I never find myself when it comes to British politics – but there we are.

I knew there was a reason why I named this blog Semi-Partisan Politics.

 

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