UPDATE
Minutes after I posted this article, the ludicrous Jess Phillips published an article in the Guardian which could not have been better designed to prove my thesis. A number of people have posted comments on the Guardian article pointing this out, and they have all been immediately deleted by the Guardian. I just tried it myself and was also deleted. I should be grateful if readers could now also try posting comments there, in order to make a point about censorship on the Guardian.
Catching up on a fortnight’s news, I have spent five hours searching in vain for criticism of Simon Danczuk from prominent or even just declared feminists. The Guardian was the obvious place to start, but while they had two articles by feminist writers condemning Chris Gayle’s clumsy attempt to chat up a presenter, their legion of feminist columnists were entirely silent on Danczuk. The only opinion piece was strongly defending him.
This is very peculiar. The allegation against Danczuk which is under police investigation – of initiating sex with a sleeping woman – is identical to the worst interpretation of the worst accusation against Julian Assange. The Assange allegation brought literally hundreds, probably thousands of condemnatory articles from feminist writers across the entire range of the mainstream media. I have dug up 57 in the Guardian alone with a simple and far from exhaustive search. In the case of Danczuk I can find nothing, zilch, nada. Not a single feminist peep.
The Assange case is not isolated. Tommy Sheridan has been pursuing a lone legal battle against the Murdoch empire for a decade, some of it in prison when the judicial system decided his “perjury” was imprisonable but Andy Coulson’s admitted perjury on the Murdoch side in the same case was not. I personally witnessed in court in Edinburgh last month Tommy Sheridan, with no lawyer (he has no money) arguing against a seven man Murdoch legal team including three QCs, that a letter from the husband of Jackie Bird of BBC Scotland should be admitted in evidence. Bird was working for Murdoch and suggested in his letter that a witness should be “got out of the country” to avoid giving evidence. The bias exhibited by the leading judge I found astonishing beyond belief. I was the only media in the court.
Yet even though the Murdoch allegations against Sheridan were of consensual sexual conduct, Sheridan’s fight against Murdoch has been undermined from the start by the massive and concerted attack he has faced from the forces of feminism. Just as the vital messages WikiLeaks and Assange have put out about war crimes, corruption and the relentless state attack on civil liberties have been undermined by the concerted feminist campaign promoting the self-evidently ludicrous claims of sexual offence against Assange.
As soon as the radical left pose the slightest threat to the neo-con establishment, an army of feminists can be relied upon to run a concerted campaign to undermine any progress the left wing might make. The attack on Jeremy Corbyn over the makeup of his shadow cabinet was a classic example. It is the first ever gender equal shadow cabinet, but the entire media for a 96 hour period last September ran headline news that the lack of women in the “top” posts was anti-feminist. Every feminist commentator in the UK piled in.
Among the obvious dishonesties of this campaign was the fact that Defence, Chancellor, Foreign Affairs and Home Secretary have always been considered the “great offices of State” and the argument only could be made by simply ignoring Defence. The other great irony was the “feminist” attack was led by Blairites like Harman and Cooper, and failed to address the fact that Blair had NO women in any of these posts for a full ten years as Prime Minister.
But facts did not matter in deploying the organised feminist lobby against Corbyn.
Which is why it is an important test to see what the feminists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, would do when the leading anti-Corbyn rent-a-gob, Simon Danczuk, was alleged to have some attitudes to women that seem very dubious indeed, including forcing an ex-wife into non-consensual s&m and that rape allegation.
And the answer is …nothing. Feminists who criticised Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn in droves were utterly silent on the subject of Danczuk. Because the purpose of established and paid feminism is to undermine the left in the service of the neo-cons, not to attack neo-cons like Danczuk.
Identity politics has been used to shatter any attempt to campaign for broader social justice for everybody. Instead it becomes about the rights of particular groups, and that is soon morphed into the neo-con language of opportunity. What is needed, modern feminism argues, is not a reduction of the vast gap between rich and poor, but a chance for some women to become Michelle Mone or Ann Gloag. It is not about good conditions for all, but the removal of glass ceilings for high paid feminist journalists or political hacks.
Feminism has become the main attack tool in the neo-con ideological arsenal. I am sceptical the concept can be redeemed from this.
I had a comment deleted yesterday under the Phillpis article, nothing offense, rude and on topic.
All sorts of outrageous shit is thrown at Corbyn btl on the Guardian , he’s conducting Stalinist purges, his supporters are Brown Shirts! Trots,are a cult, childish, children. I even saw one comment saying supporters were ”marxist jihadists ”! It was for real. Had to laugh at that.
Of course, Corybn is a threat to the establishment.
“Oh, yes those other humans, the male ones, did a LOT of fighting for women’s human rights before feminism existed, didn’t they. That’s why women didn’t have the right to education, their own children, right to abortion, and to control their own earnings until feminism came into existence.”
Sorry love, you’ll find that they did, and many of them lie on Europe’s battlefields and military graveyards, and to this day fly in through the Wootton Basset Funeral Home.
Not many proto-Spice Girls going through there eh?
“neo lib” is the economics.
“neo con” is the methodology of its implementation and control. Bombing, threatening etc.
I’m sure most of these media feminists argued that we should bomb such and such a country because it would free women from their enslavement.
Samantha Power, Condi Rice, Susan Rice, R2P etc.
Few people are aware, but the US has now developed bombs that injure and kill only patriarchal men, leaving their countries free to enjoy a Dworkin heaven.
And no one notices that the most patriarchal of muslim societies (Saudi Arabia and its friends) aren’t bombed.
Only the much less patriarchal secular ones.
Such contradictions never even enter a pretty overpaid feminist’s head.
Oooooh err…
LOL @ Herbie.
Meanwhile, ensuring that no-one is even slightly offended by anything any more….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3389995/H-M-sparks-fury-striped-scarf-looks-similar-Jewish-prayer-shawl-Twitter-brands-offensive.html
I’ll have to forget about my proposed line of Siberian squirrel-worshipper – style hats, then. Shame. The Shanghai sweatshop really needed the business.
“Sorry love…” Wow, how patronising.
As a feminist (yes, I believe in equality for women) with left leanings I find this thread so insulting. Lots of men jumping on what they see as an opportunity to have a go at feminism. A few right wing commentators in the press and it’s a great excuse to attack the whole movement. Don’t you believe in equality for women? Shame on you, you should be trying to reclaim feminism as a tool of equality, not trying to discredit it.
Always a topic to boost your views and comments.
I used to try and defend feminism or a version of it, until I too realised in the previous decade that it is actually a very effective tool that helps governments, corporations and charities push through specific agendas.
I also saw how dumb the younger generation was becoming, and how all the 18-year-olds professing to this ism quickly morphed into knee-jerk lynch-mobs.
I can see the uses of more intelligent forms of gender analysis, but I think if you identify with feminism, well, either you are paid to do this or you just haven’t grown up.
Admittedly, I grew up quite late in life too, but at least I grew up, and realised how divisive feminism was, how immoral, sexist and violent it is with its preaching and accusations, and how it gets in the way of more sophisticated understanding of things.
The apology that feminism has simply been corrupted is in part true, but it is also just a form of playground excuse-making. I hear it all the time. You know that a movement has had its day, but also become lethal to the survival of human decency, when the likes of Hilary Clinton use the term.
One suspects that media operators ( male or female, feminist or not)) are drawn to topics that will pay. Julian Assange was riding a wave of publicity that many media hacks were surely tempted to capitalise on.
Danczuk seem just so much less newsworthy, so much more dull, so much less glamourous, than Julian Assange.
JA seems like a ‘story’ much more than SD-who has come over as something much more ordinary – a sex raddled mid-life ‘ criser ‘-something much more squalid and ordinary, than the JA story which was riddled with intrigue, double dealing and rumour.
Does it say says more about our relentlessly cash driven, cut throat media. and personality cult popular culture than it does about feminism.
I suspect that any political persuasion within the current political culture will use any tool at their disposal.
Consistency or logic or integrity are much reduced in the current climate.
ClanDonald,
My hope is to cause many self-described feminists to have a good hard look at themselves and indeed reclaim feminism as a tool of equality – and disown self-proclaimed feminists whose role is to attack the left. The whole pint of this blog, as I repeatedly state, is not to make people agree with me, but to provoke thought.
What is very sad to me is that the feminist reaction so far is not to say you are wrong because ……, but simply to say “how dare you say that”. In particular nobody has yet engaged with the damage caused the left by the disproportionate attacks on Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn.
Don’t you believe in equality for women?
Good question. Like “do you believe in equality for men?”
Shame on you
Sure. Males get used to that.
…you should be trying to reclaim feminism as a tool of equality, not trying to discredit it.
But is it “a tool of” any kind of general equality? Mightn’t we just as well ignore feminism (/masculinism/people with strange earsism) and just go with the concept that while inequality of one sort or another will always be with us, the inequalities of income and opportunity experienced by both genders are obscene, and that the current system not only perpetuates them but depends on them for its survival? See those trees? That’s a wood, actually.
Thank you Kempe for answering my question about non cons I now understand what it means
Craig; ” nobody has yet engaged with the damage caused the left by the disproportionate attacks on Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn.”
Or indeed on the Left in general by faux-feminists; it was one of the reasons that the Editors of MediaLens gave for closing down its useful MessageBoard;
“we were repeatedly targeted with the accusation that the board is ‘anti-women’, which meant we were ‘tolerating’ misogyny.”
Faux-Feminists are like the “Humanitarian Bombing Left”, pretending to be something they are not, to advance another agenda, and normally are very easy to spot.
Blair Paterson
“Thank you Kempe for answering my question about neo cons I now understand what it means”
Kempe’s answer was:
“On this blog it’s anyone to the right of Trotsky.”
Yet.
The fact is that the major proponents of neoconservatism are themselves former Trotskyists.
The Kristols in the USA for example. In the UK, Aarononovich and Hitchens amongst others.
So, untroubled by facts and contradictions, like the feminists you’ve understood nothing!
Can habbabreak be modified to alycone (villager) break?
Yes indeed. If you have still got Habbabreak Options at the top of the page. Just ‘add person’ If you haven’t, unfortunately Greasemonkey deleted the script and some hacking is required. If enough demand appears in these comments I’ll see if I can’t put the relevant files somewhere downloadable. And you’ll still need to load Greasemonkey to make them work.
Reb
08/01/2016 3:56pm
I do not like quoting from Wikipedia, but I think it is quite appropriate in this instance as a definition of “feminism”: “Feminism is a range of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.”
One would think that this would be uncontroversial in the 21st century. If a new term has to be found for this set of commitments, because the old term has been taken over by people who do not actually share these commitments and therefore the term has come to have ugly connotations for people who do share them, then so be it. Perhaps that might even be a better approach than to try to “reclaim” it from people who presumably will always use it no matter how much their values do not reflect its original establishment. I do not think that it is my place to decide that, although I think it is still an honourable term, and worth fighting for. But surely there is a distinction between the term itself and the original values that it represents: surely all decent people who believe that human beings are entitled to – perhaps not the same rights, because rights may have to vary according to gender, race, sexuality, religious belief, etc – but the same result – equal valuing of human beings irrespective of these divisions – are feminists no matter what their gender. And no matter what their label.
Kind regards,
John
Is Laura Kuenssberg another feminist too?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35258182
If you want someone to look away your make yourself repellant. If you want the public to treat someone as lacking in credibility you make them appear repellant. Sex or mental illness or disease or criminal conduct should do, but techniques can be tapered to the mores and sensitivities of the day. If we are a healthy educated public we will not be so easily deceived, but if we give into our herding instinct then we follow the herd and the voices of those crying in the wilderness are not heard. Feminism and avoidance of any any statutory discrimination are sensitive areas and so it will be easy to play about in these areas.
Solutions: 1) independent free media with balls; 2) teaching those in education to question things and not accept what they are told (rather than using associative thinking as a short hand for thought *); 3) remember love thy neighbour and that your enemy is also your neighbour.
(*although to some extent perhaps all thinking is associative)
“Equality for women”
There’s an app for that.
It’s called economics.
Western feminism is little more than patriarchy for elite women.
That’s where it started and that’s where it still is today.
And there’s a reason for that. See if you can work out what it is.
Solutions: 1) independent free media with balls….
Errrr. Um. Given the context, and that the current MSM is staffed largely by c**ts…….well….you know?
Forget I spoke.
No comment! I have already had Node saying I am Villager. Forget I spoke too.
Neocons (neoconservatives) are those who exert influence over any political party in power usually by means of the chequebook. Very often they are Zionists pushing for a New World Order (NWO) with the Neocon/Zionists owning the economic means of production and commerce.
Best I can do off the top of my head.
Well the leader of the Labour branch office Kezia Dugdale has no qualms regarding equality.
Last October Miss Dugdale claimed that if Labour comes to power in Scotland, in May, she’d scrap (APD) air passenger duty. By the end of the year Miss Dugdale said Labour would spend APD on education. Last week Miss Dugdale said she’d use APD to give first time house buyers £3000 pounds.
APD, seems to be a Labour panacea.
I’m beginning to wonder if Miss Dugdale is aiming to be first among equals.
“This is very peculiar. The allegation against Danczuk which is under police investigation – of initiating sex with a sleeping woman”
___________________
As you said Craig they didn’t hold back on Julian Assange, nor did they hold back on George Galloway.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/aug/24/george-galloway-todd-akin-rape-comments
Foreign Secretary refuses to condemn Saudi mass execution:
O/T but rather interesting.
The British government is facing calls to launch an investigation after between 72 and 81 Iraqi’s are thought to have been killed by a British airstrike in Iraq.
The British military have already confirmed that they deployed strikes in Mosul and Ramadi at the times the citizens were killed.
The director of Airwars Chris Woods is calling for an immediate inquiry into the actiins of the British airforce.
Western feminism is little more than patriarchy for elite women.
Good point Herbie- the obsession with the ‘glass ceiling’ typical of feminists of the Jess Phillips persuasion obscures the fact that there is also a glass floor, in that the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the labour market are still overwhelmingly performed by men, as the disproprortionate number of of industrial injuries and workplace fatalities suffered by men clearly demonstrates. The Jess Phillips’s of this world are all in favour of closing the ‘gender gap’ that is apparent at the top of the payscale, but they have no interest in eliminating an analogous gender gap that applies at the lower end of the labour market. The ‘gap’ in the former case is an outrageous example of patriarchal discrimination, but the latter ‘gap’ is ho-hum, sorry, just one of those things we can’t change.
‘The question (Old Mark) is why have these reports taken so long to come into the news’
Johnstone- it is indeed, although, when compared to the grooming scandals in northern mill towns that in some cases took nearly a decade to get the attention they warranted, the MSM hasn’t been quite as dilatory in reporting these multiple incidents across northern Europe at the New Year, or in noticing the similarities between them.
guess what, he doesn’t care about people like you, and neither do I;
Macky- DILLIGAF ?
Interesting piece in Private Eye about Simon Danczuk, his earnings from writing for the Mail and the Sun were well over £40,000. Smearing Corbyn is a profitable business for him.
If he’d back Corbyn that would have been an end of that nice little earner.
Craig,
That at least is a better question than the one in the article, which seemed to conflate all shades of feminism with the faux-Left commentariat. It is good that several folks here have now made that point.
So, why do you believe that media feminists are silent? Is it that people are promoted for having the right opinions and that several modes of filtering are built into the business model of news dissemination (the Chomskyian analysis) or are they paid disinformation agents of the state?
As I indicated earlier, I am willing to believe the latter, but it requires a high burden of proof, and I’d expect that at least some prominent journalists would blow the whistle. I would assume that if “feminist writers” have been infiltrated then the analysis would also include all left-of-centre writers at, say, the Guardian and the Indie. Which would include George Monbiot, Laurie Penny, Robert Fisk and Gary Younge.
I am a feminist, but unfortunately not (yet) a ‘leading’ one. On 21st August 2012 I posted this response to a Guardian piece entitled ‘George Galloway must not fall into the trap of rape denial’ by Julie Bindel, both of whom I admire very much.
“It’s all so predictable and just what the US powers intended: divide and rule the liberals using feminism.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/21/julian-assange-rape-denial#comments
Of course this is true. The real question is who funds modern feminism. That’d be interesting to know.