Helen Dale has an interesting CAPX piece on Tory problems with gender issues.
Earlier this week the philosopher Kathleen Stock waded into the national press to talk about Tories and our troubled relationship with transgender issues, using Penny Mordaunt’s tilt for the top job as commentary fuel.
For Stock, the Tories’ flapping around on gender issues demonstrates ‘a special kind of indifference to half the population’, which she ascribes to a ‘hidden ideological commitment’ to individualism. She also suggests that the many Tory MPs who do oppose self-ID are motivated by ‘opportunism and cultural warmongering’, rather than concern about women...
Contrary to Stock’s argument, it is emphatically not because Tories are indifferent to women or planned to use trans as an issue with which we can wedge Labour (although we’ll take the latter as a present). It is because most Tories think both gender self-identification and feminism are nonsense.
Probably so because it has been obvious for years that there are problems with the conventionally uncritical view of men and women in politics and the workplace. It isn't going smoothly and the reasons are too fundamental to be avoided forever.
Women are female homo sapiens. The notion that women have no statistically significant, systemic character flaws is nonsense.
Two of the biggest problems when it comes to forming decent, functional, social orders are male violence and male sexual incontinence. The victims, and even more the perpetrators of violence, are overwhelmingly male. A Swedish study found that 1% of adults generated 63% of all violent offences. But that 1% was itself almost 90% male. Males also overwhelmingly dominate sexual offenders, with a similar skewed pattern. Violent crime is a sex-based power-law on steroids.
Thanks to the movement of women into the professions, into creation of culture (women have always been important in its transmission), into management, politics, and media, we are now confronted with a new problem for sustaining functional social orders. Female emotional incontinence, what one old Tory friend calls ‘the blubbering woman problem’.
Women are systematically more hostile to freedom of speech than are men. As institutions, including universities, have become more feminised, they have become more hostile to freedom of expression and thought.
7 comments:
I'm perfectly happy with feminism as encompassed by the 1919 Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Disqualification_(Removal)_Act_1919
The wiki writer complains that "the act was rarely invoked by the courts" but thereby misses the point that the population must have happily accepted the new law.
As for the trannies I hope I am suitably sympathetic to people suffering insane delusions. I am, however, firmly of the view that women should be protected from fake females if that's what women want.
Thanks for that perceptive and thought-provoking essay from Dale. What it suggests to me is that cognitive dimorphism should be taken seriously. And also that we have been historically concerned almost exclusively with "male problems" of aggression and recklessness, but that the female traits of clique-forming, suppression of free speech, and hypocrisy around aggression should be carefully examined. They may not be as dangerous to individuals, but the danger consists in collective sclerosis.
All these issues have surfaced due to Social Media.
Before the info age, there were undoubtedly just as many people struggling with their own identities, but we never heard from them. Now they can shout loudly, many assume it's a growing proportion of the populace, but it isn't, it's just the power of Twitter etc.
Live and let live is the maxim I follow. I hope these (possibly confused) individuals get help to resolve their issues, but most of all, I hope they SHUT UP!
Sweden gets a mention, but no mention of what Sweden's real problem is.
Tories don't care about ordinary women, true. They don't care about ordinary men either. Nor do the other parties. All they care about is politics.
The mostly confected outrage about Trans is just the latest opportunity for politicians to seek political advantage. Activists seek to advance their agenda (often including damn fool aspirations) by leveraging the political interest.
It helps me to remain calm by reflecting that previous 'victimhood' group issues have also been taken up by politicians only to be cast aside when all the political juice has been extracted.
Elements in all the above comments I agree with (particularly with Sam, as usual), but I would like to add as someone wrestling with this identification problem as a child in the 1950s and 60s, that such traits are quite natural and nothing to do with insanity. The problem (before the modern times of novel social media) for such people, was that they didn't conform in certain ways to cultural norms and outlooks. Some males have a strong what used to be called effeminate streak in their nature, also often to be found in homosexuals. Such was the incomprehension, hostility and sometimes violence, such individuals met in current society that life could present quite serious difficulties ref: Quentin Crisp 'The naked civil servant'. I have learnt that most of us have misconceptions about what constitutes 'masculinity and femininity' which are quite literally stereotypes. Women can be violent, unfeeling selfish, (don't I just know it) and a boy of 14 could wish to have shoulder length hair and go to school in a dress and velvet shoes. Out of the question in the 1950s! Liking for certain aspects of the feminine, should, I have found, not blind one to the fact that gender and sexual orientation is really not the most important aspect of an individual. Individual talents and personality are really far more important.
My own life, in many respects has been one of a certain kind of deception and has at times been rather 'rocky' but it has meant that I understand the current woke trans feminist, male/female issues rather better than most people. Also I believe I have better analytical abilities than most of the current 'actors' on the scene who make their opinions known in the media etc.
In conclusion, I am a great admirer of Helen Dale whom I listen to being interviewed on Talk Radio by Mike Graham once a week. She and I would be kindred spirits if we met.
dearieme - I find it hard to tell how many are suffering insane delusions and how many are swayed by political fashions.
Sam - yes the danger does consist in collective sclerosis and it seems to have been a problem for some time. It's politically ingrained too, so not easy to tackle until discussed openly, but the nature of the problem is that it is not discussed openly.
Ed - I agree and maybe we'll learn to screen out the shouting.
Doonhamer - yes, there aren't many references to Sweden's problem. I wonder why?
DJ - I agree, they will be cast aside when all the political juice has been extracted. Funding matters too, if that dries up then so will the political juice.
Tammly - interesting and yes, some males do have a strong what used to be called effeminate streak in their nature. We've always known about it, but from what I see making it loudly political hasn't helped. It confuses young people at a point in their lives when they do not need to be confused, although politics tends to do that anyway.
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