Why the next wave of feminism is conservative

At a recent dinner, an MP told me a story that reveals a great deal about the current state of feminism. One of her constituents had come to her surgery in some distress. She had children at a local primary school, she said, and had been alarmed to discover that the school’s sex education curriculum contained explicit details that she considered wildly inappropriate. She was aware of the prevailing culture in which adolescents – particularly girls – are sexualised at an ever younger age, and she did not want that for her own children.

But parents are increasingly powerless in the face of progressive schools, and not having been to university, this woman felt anxious. She was intimidated by the prospect of speaking with her children’s headteacher. She didn’t understand the progressive jargon teachers used, and was unsettled by their moral certainty. So her plea to her MP was this: help me to protect my children, tell me what to say.

Who would she fare better with, do you think: a parliamentarian of the left, or of the right? The answer, to me, is not obvious. I am the director of The Other Half, a non-partisan feminist thinktank founded with the express intention of representing the interests of women like this constituent, women who feel at a loss as to how to protect their children. And when I say ‘non-partisan’, I really do mean it: my experience of SW1 is that party affiliation tells you almost nothing about a person’s attitude towards issues such as porn, child abuse and violence against women.

Feminism in the second half of the 20th century was strongly associated with the left, since it grew out of the American civil rights movements of the 1960s. But it has not always been so. There have been plenty of periods during which feminism of a much more conservative flavour has dominated. I believe we are entering another one of those periods now.

This rightward shift is a result of two phenomena, both connected to the advent of the internet. First, there has been the politicisation of otherwise non-political women during the Great British Terf War that began in the early 2010s – a war that is now over, by the way, with the ‘Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists’ (who mostly prefer to describe themselves as ‘gender critical’) very clearly victorious.

Witness the downfall this month of Mermaids, a charity whose stated goal is to represent the interests of transgender children and their families and which was, until recently, the jewel in the crown of British trans activism, attracting funding from the National Lottery, and high–profile support from the Sussexes and the BBC.

But in early October it was revealed that one of Mermaids’ trustees had spoken at an event hosted by a paedophile support group, while another member of staff had been caught sharing photos of himself online dressed in a schoolgirl skirt in a sexualised pose. This scandal comes hot on the heels of the discovery that Mermaids staff had offered breast binders to children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. In PMQs on 12 October the then prime minister Liz Truss appeared to lend her support to a police investigation into these activities, and an investigation by the Charity Commission is already under way.

The anonymous women of Mumsnet were not in the least bit surprised by the Mermaids revelations. In fact, they were instrumental in bringing them to light. Sneeringly described by one American media outlet as the ‘ground zero for British transphobia’, the users of Britain’s most popular parenting messaging board have had their suspicions about the charity for some time and have been doing their own detective work behind the scenes, as part of grassroots resistance to the radical ambitions of the trans activist movement. This has been a war fought over the earthiest kind of material reality – toilets, penises and the amputated breasts of unhappy teenage girls. But it’s also been a war fought almost entirely online. The trans movement sprang from the internet, and its opposing movement sprang from the same.

Mumsnetters, as the name suggests, are overwhelmingly mothers, the most natural and instinctive defenders of children. And here is the second tech-enabled factor in the rightward shift of feminism. ‘The trouble with socialism,’ as Oscar Wilde put it, ‘is that it takes up too many evenings.’ So does feminism – at least it did until quite recently. The second wave of the 1970s and 1980s was conceived of and led by a small cadre of young women who spent intensive amounts of time with one another, including sometimes living under the same roof, thinking and writing and working towards their utopian vision. Not coincidentally, they mostly didn’t have children, since being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen was hardly compatible with a movement that demanded so much time and energy of its activists.

But how about pregnant and barefoot with a smartphone? The early battles of the Great British Terf War were fought by left-wing feminists, many of them affiliated with the trade union movement. But the popularity of platforms like Mumsnet meant that these people were joined by a much larger and formerly much quieter group of women: mothers from a wide range of backgrounds who feel the same fear for their children that the anxious constituent described, and who were newly able to participate in the public debate via the internet.

Given that they have been drawn in from outside of the usual activist circles, and given that having children is known to make people more conservative, we should not be surprised to discover that these new additions to the feminist movement are not necessarily of the left – a fact that has created a good deal of conflict within the gender critical ranks. Because of course it was the left who looked on cheerfully as male sex offenders were housed in women’s prisons, and the left who tried to set about dismantling women’s sports and women’s spaces. This fact is not lost on left-wing gender-critical feminists. But they interpret the past behaviour of their political allies as a moment of madness, remedied through a much-needed return to ‘proper’ leftist politics.

Other feminists view the matter quite differently. Towards the right of the gender-critical movement is the campaigner and mother of three Kellie Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, who is both an extraordinarily charismatic campaigner and a divisive figure: ‘a legend’ or ‘a Poundshop Marine Le Pen’, depending on your perspective.

Keen is able to speak to a Middle England that would never previously have identified as feminist in any way (a majority of British women do not define themselves as such), and she attracts what one critic describes as a ‘mass, populist’ energy – a description she would probably take as a compliment. More than anybody else, Keen is emblematic of British feminism’s current direction of travel away from the academic left.

And she is a queen of political display. Public events hosted by Keen and her allies invariably attract the attention of trans activists, and footage of confrontations between the groups are widely shared online, further energising her base. In one such video, we see Keen’s calm response to a male figure in a balaclava who looms over her, furious. Dressed in a viper-green jumpsuit, with platinum hair in her signature Marilyn Monroe set, she wags a scolding finger at the protestor (‘He’s not a woman, he’s a very naughty boy’?) – and then turns beaming to the camera.

Some feminists have taken to calling the black-clad activists ‘the Black Pampers’, which just about sums up the phenomenon. What we’re really seeing here, both online and offline, is teenage boys screaming in the faces of women their mums’ age. Mothers – and the hatred of them – are at the centre of the action.

To say that this new right-leaning feminist movement is maternal is not to say that it is cuddly. Keen is maternal in the way that a bear is maternal – that is, without mercy. Fearless aggression in the face of a threat to one’s young is an adaptive response that we share with all female mammals. It’s a powerful instinct, and now all mothers can join in, even if they’re housebound or with a baby cradled in one arm.

There is a prissy middle-aged character in The Simpsons whose catchphrase is: ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?’ The character is meant to poke fun at the kind of womanly concerns that show’s writers think over the top and histrionic. But the question is now a very serious one. That female constituent who approached her MP, desperate to know how to protect her kids, was only asking what women across the country are beginning to ask. Any party that thinks itself fit for power will need to have an answer.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/radical-tradition/

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Why 60 years of feminism has not made women any happier

In February, we will mark the 60th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique.” But given the state of modern feminism, it’s hard to imagine there will be much celebration.

Friedan’s work, which revealed women’s lack of fulfillment as homemakers, laid out the goals of second-wave feminism. Now that women had achieved the right to vote, own property and get an education (the first wave), Friedan and her cohorts argued that women should pursue higher education and careers as a way of achieving personal satisfaction. Others, like Germaine Greer, wrote that the sexual repression of women prevented them from becoming personally fulfilled. But thanks to the pill and changing mores about sex outside of marriage, women could finally achieve the freedom and happiness that had been available to men for millennia.

So how’s that working out now? The American Family Survey recently asked: “All things considered, has feminism benefited American families?”

Only a little more than half (58.6%) of respondents said yes. What’s interesting, though, is the people who said yes also tend to be among the least happy and fulfilled. In survey after survey, it turns out that people who espouse a secular worldview, people who identify as liberals, and people who never attend religious services report the lowest levels of personal satisfaction, but they also report the highest levels of support for feminist ideals. Indeed, as feminism’s influence has grown over the past half century, women have become less happy.

If feminism promised personal satisfaction, it doesn’t seem to be delivering it.

In order to understand this failure, it’s probably best to look at how feminist leaders wanted to achieve personal fulfillment. Primarily they believed that if men took over more domestic responsibility — housework and child care — women would have more time and energy to achieve what they wanted in the workplace.

But frankly, given the whole patriarchal structure of the nuclear family, many feminists would have been happy to dispense with traditional marriage altogether. If that happened, and women still did want to bear children (something many feminists did not encourage), well, someone was still going to have to support them. And so feminist leaders also demanded more government support for women.

As political commentator Ellie Mae O’Hagan wrote for The Guardian a few years ago, “Only by diminishing the power of the boss class, and giving female workers more access to collectively owned social goods, can we ensure that no woman is forced to choose between sexual and economic exploitation, and poverty.”

But even feminists who don’t wear their socialism on their sleeves believe that women should have more access to government-funded childcare and paid family leave in order to fulfill their dreams. Books like “Overwhelmed” by Brigid Schulte and “Opting Back In” by Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy or most recently “Ambitious Like a Mother” by Lara Bazelon all end with similar admonitions that in order for women to get what they want out of work and life, the US should become more like Sweden or Norway.

And yet, just as men have been contributing more to housework and child care since the early days of feminism, the government has also been doing a lot more to support mothers. It’s true we don’t have universal day care but we do subsidize the income of working class and poor single mothers to a much greater extent than we used to.

So why hasn’t this help contributed to women being happier? Why, if anything, do women seem less happy and more “overwhelmed” than they were in the 1960s?

In 1963, Betty Friedan was writing about “the problem that had no name.” But women’s problems in the 21st century can absolutely be named. More often, they are trying to raise children on their own, which can be exhausting even with financial resources. They are sexually liberated, but that often means they are going from one relationship to another without any sense of financial security or emotional stability. And while many are no doubt fulfilled in their careers, a lot of them actually enjoy raising children, but they can’t spend the bulk of their time doing this, thanks to financial exigencies and society’s expectations.

Friedan noticed in her day that some housewives were being prescribed “happy pills” to get them through the day. But according to the most recent statistics, one in five women between 40 and 59 are taking antidepressants. They are more than twice as likely to be on these drugs than men. Maybe feminism has lost its mystique.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/29/why-60-years-of-feminism-has-not-made-women-any-happier/

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Democrats defecting

Would you switch parties to become a Democrat? I doubt it.
Perhaps a more intriguing question is, “Would you trade places with a Democrat?” Again, I doubt it. That’s like asking a black Leftist if he would trade places with an African. While black Leftists decry America, make no mistake about it: they would NEVER trade with a real African.

Such is the hypocrisy of Democrats. These days, all Americans indirectly ask themselves, “Which party would you rather be part of?!”

I know the answer for most Americans, including Democrats. Trust me when I tell you that Democrats don’t want to be Democrats. But they stay Democrats out of necessity. Because Democrats fear leaving their party. Clearly, that takes balls the size of Alaska.

They know that the Democratic Party is a cult. Hotel California is a Shangri-La compared to leaving the Democratic Party. Leaving the Democratic Party is like trying to leave “the firm”.

To leave the Democrats, you either leave in secret, or wait for all the other closeted Republicans to move en masse.
Another reason Democrats don’t leave is because being a Democrat is the easy way out; at least for the soulless. Cushy union jobs or welfare. Either way you get something for nothing. That’s a specialty of Democrats.

Some stay hoping to achieve that hallowed ground of “untouchable”; like Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden. Both of whom should be in prison, yet they received special “white privilege” handling.

Regardless, most Democrats still want out. They are like the gangbangers in the streets of major cities across America. They know their work is evil, but as the gangs say, “blood in, blood out”. So while Democrats will do their dirty work, they look longingly at Conservatives. They hate that we stand on principle and can speak our minds freely.

Democrats are like Jeffrey Dahmer
I watched the mini-series on Jeffrey Dahmer. And I can safely say that Dahmer provides the perfect metaphor for being a Democrat.

For example, Dahmer knew his actions were crazy. Worse, he told the people around him who ignored his crazy. They didn’t want to hear it. So they passed Dahmer along.

Ironically, Dahmer should have been caught many times. But like Democrats, people kept making excuses for him. In one instance, Dahmer sodomized a kid and was caught. When in court, the judge actually gave him a break, saying that he knows that Dahmer needed a second chance.

Dahmer had already killed multiple men by this time. Even Dahmer was floored at what the judge did.

As you consider that story or perhaps saw the episode of the Dahmer show, understand that Democrats are exactly like Dahmer. They can’t believe they are being allowed to get away with their crimes.

Let’s review some of the craziness of Leftism.

Saving babies versus saving death-row criminals. Guess which one Democrats want to save and which they fight to kill.

Conservatives want law and order versus while Democrats usher in a record crime wave in every major city in the country, save none.

Democrats hate to win, especially when it comes to the economy. They just throw “free money” at every problem and pretend inflation isn’t happening. Conservatives seek to solve problems, including inflation, and love to see our economy boom.

Is it any wonder that Democrat had a major defection in Tulsi Gabbard?

During the 2020 election cycle, Tulsi Gabbard was considered a rising star among Democrats. In fact, at one point she even threw her hat into the presidential ring. But as we already know, that was the year of countless Democrat nominees. And with a choice like Gabbard, one has to further see the lunacy of putting Biden in the driver seat.

Now, we have to wonder. Is there a new sun rising in the Republican ranks?

Perhaps…

Breitbart adds:

Democrat defector Tulsi Gabbard has endorsed Republican Tudor Dixon in her race to unseat Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

In a tweet on Thursday, Tudor Dixon gleefully accepted Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement, announcing that she will be campaigning with her in Michigan next week.

“[Tulsi] has been a voice of reason across party lines. She is courageously speaking her mind and showing us all what it means to be a leading independent thinker. I am honored to have her support and cannot wait to welcome her to Michigan next week!” announced Dixon.

It will be interesting to see if Gabbard’s support will have the Trump effect on Dixon’s campaign. I predict it will be exactly what Dixon needs to pull ahead on election day. Further, it might cement Gabbard’s front-row seat among conservatives.

Though Tulsi Gabbard has long been a favorite among Trump supporters for her unwillingness to toe the Democrat Party line, she upgraded her status to legendary this month when she formally defected from the party she previously called home.

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism,” Gabbard said on an episode of The Tulsi Gabbard Show.

“Who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution. Who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality. Who demonize the police, but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans. Who believes in open borders,” she added.

I’d say that just about sums up the lunacy of the left.

https://theblacksphere.net/2022/10/democrats-leaving-party-in-massive-numbers/

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Many NYC Democrats are voting for a Republican governor now

A Democratic candidate for New York state governor cannot be elected without the backing of New York City’s huge number of Democratic voters. But looking around Gotham, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single political sign supporting Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic candidate in next week’s election.

Meanwhile, signs for Republican candidate Lee Zeldin are popping up across the city — even in the Democratic stronghold of Queens.

In fact, when a reporter from The Post knocked on the front doors of the homes where “Zeldin for Governor” signs are displayed, many of the people inside said they consider themselves Democrats — but nonetheless plan to vote Republican on Nov. 8.

“I feel the Democratic Party has left me, I didn’t leave the party,” said Phil Wong, 56, a longtime former Democrat who has planted a Zeldin sign outside the Elmhurst home he shares with his wife, kids and elderly mother. “They left me with all these extreme progressive policies that hurt New York City and hurt Asians.”

Wong, an immigrant from Hong Kong, is the president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and the former chair of the Community Education Council 24 in Elmhurst. He has actively campaigned to preserve NYC’s gifted-and-talented programs and the SHSAT, the admissions test used by the city’s most selective high schools. He said the changing policies at city public schools is what’s spurring him to vote for Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island.

“Now it doesn’t matter how well you do in school because it’s no longer based on merit, it’s based on a lottery,” said Wong.

“So suddenly, kids don’t even want to work hard anymore, because the chance of going into any school with a 95 average will be the same as the kid that’s about to fail. That is not right, that just tells kids that they can just goof off and hang out or hang around and still get into the good schools.”

Wong said he also believes that the spike in serious crime — which, according to NYPD statistics, has increased nearly 36% over last year from January to September — is why he’s seeing more of his neighbors and friends in Queens declaring their support for Zeldin.

“I see more and more moderate Democrats coming out every day and saying they are going to vote for Zeldin,” Wong told The Post. “We had a great city under Giuliani and Bloomberg, but when De Blasio came on, it went downhill. I used to feel safe, my mom felt safe and my kids felt safe. I felt that they could go out, play in the park, go to school on their own and come back. And now I don’t feel that anymore.”

Not far from Wong’s home in Elmhurst lives John Schaffer, a computer engineer, and his wife, Luz, who works in catering. Luz is Hispanic and a longtime Democrat; her husband is a white, registered Democrat who simultaneously considers himself conservative. Despite casting their votes for Democrats in the past, the couple is displaying a Zeldin sign in their Halloween-themed front yard.

“Kathy Hochul, just in the debate alone, you could see that crime was not important to her,” said John, who did not give his age. “What she actually said was, why is it important?”

John said he drives his wife to and from work if she has to go very early or return home late because they both fear rampant subway crime.

“It’s just not safe,” he said. “We’ve seen the videos. For that reason alone I’m voting for Zeldin. But there’s so much more. The Democratic Party has become so corrupt in every way.”

“You can see how the city is going down,” added Luz, who also didn’t give her age. “You see so many homeless, so many dangerous people. Everyone is scared and we wish the city would go back to the way it was before.”

In the nearby Queens neighborhood of Woodside, one-time Democrat Lucy Hensley, 51, who was born in Venezuela, is displaying a Zeldin sign outside the modest, two-story home she shares with her husband, Luis Vielma.

“We came here with nothing,” Hensley said. “We had zero and we now have a nice life without ever having had to depend on the government. But what we’ve been seeing in the US thanks to Democratic policies is a disaster. Being Venezuelan, we understand more than maybe many others what is happening. We saw this happen in Venezuela. We know how they start. We really hope Zeldin wins.”

Most of the Zeldin signs spotted by The Post in Queens can be found in Richmond Hill, facilitated in part by retired veteran prosecutor James Quinn, who lives on 112th Street. Quinn, a Republican, said he put out a lot of Zeldin signs in his front yard and a number of his Democratic neighbors came by to pick up a few for their own lawns.

A registered Republican, James Quinn said a lot of his Democratic neighbors have taken some of his Zeldin for Governor signs to display on their own lawns.

“I get the sense that there’s a lot more people who have always voted Democrat but will vote Republican this year,” Quinn said. “I hear them say that they feel there is really no hope that Democratic politicians are going to reverse any of these crazy policies or do anything to help solve all the problems we’re seeing in the city.”

One of Quinn’s neighbors is a longtime city cop who has always voted Democrat. He did not want to be identified publicly but he said he took a Zeldin sign from Quinn to hang outside his home and he plans to vote Republican from now on.

“All the violence that we’re seeing and all the inflation and corruption is too much for me and my family,” he told The Post. “We no longer identify with the Democrats. They are out of touch with the middle class and the people in the community. They all have agendas, thinking that it’s all about just being like, liberal. They think everybody’s liberal like that but we aren’t. Our values align much more now with what conservatives want.”

https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/why-nyc-democrats-are-backing-republican-lee-zeldin-for-governor/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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