The Right needs to step up too

A wise comment from one of my subsribers

We all know how The Guardian, The Independent, and The Atlantic have treated women’s rights in the most disgraceful, careless manner (keep picking up those paychecks, Helen Lewis!). For example, this morning, I was sent some examples of the kind of comments The Guardian removes from their website. Apparently, these were both gone within half an hour of being posted.

Many left-wing feminists are painfully aware of the irony that it’s right-leaning newspapers like The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail who are treating as important issues the medicalisation and sterilisation of gender-nonconforming children and the silencing and harassment of feminists. But even those titles had their problems with the debate. A subscriber to this site had this to say:

I have been all over the Telegraph for the last few weeks posting comments like mad. They are getting traction and are being allowed to stay up… I have never believed the tide was turning before, but Maya's win plus The Telegraph actually posting gender-critical stuff and allowing comments stating men aren't women to remain up is giving me hope.

One of the things I mentioned today is my concern that the right-wing in every country are not actually anti woke at all. They are just keeping the door open to plausible deniability. Otherwise, why aren't they trumpeting the fact that men are already in women's prisons, political appointments, rape shelters, toilets, and so on and on and on? Trump and every other right-wing politician could win hands down if they had made it clear that Rambling Joe, or whomever their synthetic leftist is, plans to steal women's human rights and hand them to men.

Why aren't they doing that?

I think the right intend to suckle at the lucrative teat of transology as well, but they can't come out and say it as their flock are deeply resistant to wokeology and see it as leftist. Which, of course, it's not. It's just misogynistic and fuck all to do with being left-wing.”

The only thing I would say here is that it feels more likely that The Right are actually waiting for a good tactical moment to remind everyone of car crashes like this one.

I think the existence of this video means Lisa Nandy’s political career will only advance so far. Anyone who can be persuaded by her advisors to say such a gormless, harmful, reckless thing will never be Prime Minister. If the Conservatives haven’t got this in their Nandy File, well, why do they even HAVE a Nandy file?

But we cannot wait for the Right to start making hay with every politician who has pronouns in their bio. Women are being harassed and silenced now, children are being placed on a medical pathway by homophobic parents now.

My subscriber, Alison, believes we need to find a way to force the Right in every country to categorically state that they will defend women's sex-based rights, and I think that is an excellent idea. So even if you’re confident that your local Tory MP knows the difference between their Mum and Eddie Izzard, make sure they say it out loud. Ask them if they will defend women’s spaces. Ask them The Staniland Question. Get them on the record. The rights and safety of women and children are too important to be blown about in the winds of political expediency.