When Did The Liberal Left Turn Into a Woke Cult?

Indoctrination can be achieved in many different ways.  From the drip drip method that is barely even noticeable, to utter submersion.

When I was a child, I went to a religious primary school where the local vicar was a regular visitor.  I was told that I was a Christian before I even knew what or who a Christian was.  Religion was dripped into my forming mind with prayers three times a day and hymns at morning assembly.

At that age I just did what I was told, believing that that was just the way things were.  I was not old enough to realise that I choose to have a religion or not.  I could choose a different mindset, a different path.

Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

Religion and I collided a few years later and we went our separate ways.

Religion can be many things for many people. A hub to the local community, an enrichment to people's lives, or simply just a comfort or safety net that some need or want.  It can be part of who someone fundamentally is and can form the basis of their moral code, their bench mark for right and wrong.

But religion can also be escalated to cult level, making you condone things you never would before.  Do things that you would never do.  It is also the perfect excuse to control people and has been used in this way for centuries.  Blind faith can be dangerous.

Religion has been a very useful tool for the subjugation of women.  It is, to quote one example, what allowed, arranged and condoned thousands of young girls and women to be locked away in the Magadelene Laundries in Ireland for the crime of having a baby, for being presumed "promiscuous", or simply in some cases; being too pretty.

It is why women were told that their place was in the home and the man's place was head of the household, and her.  "It is written in the bible Susan, don't you want to obey the word of God?"

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. 

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the 

head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 

As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything 

to their husbands” (Eph. 5:22–24)."

Blind faith is how monsters are not only made, but how they can flourish in plain sight.

So where and why does this fit into what I wanted to talk about today?  Because blind faith is not just about religion.   It can be about any movement, group, shared belief system.

When I began to become interested in politics and feminism, the left side of politics seemed like the perfect fit for me.   The "morally right"  The good.  The just. There was a general assumption that the liberal position was the good and anything to the right was wrong.  There was only one choice for me, clearly.

So too with feminism.   I wanted rights and equality for women.  As I learned about feminism I also educated myself about intersectional feminism, named to include woman of all races, ethnicities, class, culture, age etc.  I wanted that.

So there I was, a left leaning intersectional feminist when one day, I saw a man winning a women's cycling competition. A man who identified as a woman but not only identified, said he was an actual, biological woman.

From there my fall down the rabbit hole was swift.  Suddenly, a man with a beard who wore skirts and had decided he was a lesbian, was a real woman.  One who went into schools for Stonewall teaching children they could be born in the wrong body.  Listen to Magdelen Burns about that one.

Lesbians who didn't accept "lady dick" were transphobic.

Talking about being pregnant and giving birth was transphobic because it didn't include transwomen.  Having a women only group on Facebook talking about menopause was transphobic.  Men's mental health groups were disbanded because they would not include transmen.  Women meeting to discuss women's rights were transphobic.  Refuges should accept transwomen, or they would lose their funding (again this year too).  I could go on and on and on and on.

Every FUCKING thing that did not place men identifying as women front and centre, became transphobic.

We were told that words were actual violence.  That we were killing people by saying the immutable fact that you cannot change sex.  A woman lost her job for saying this.  Told that her views were "not worthy of respect in a democratic society".

Children as young as FOUR being referred to a gender clinic.  Teenagers being prescribed puberty blockers like they were sweets.  4500% rise in referrals to Tavistock.  Three quarters of those being girls.

The rabbit hole is so deep you could drown in it.

The world went mad before our eyes.  Yet people, including myself, who questioned this idealogy, were called bigots.  That anything other than the ultra left view was right wing. We were not worthy of being called feminists.  We were TERFs.  What the ACTUAL FUCK???

Where did the left go so wrong, so fast?  Moreover, why the hell have so many fallen for the indoctrination?  Why are doctors now scared to question if a child is transgender?  Why have politicians fallen hook, line and sinker for this?  Lisa Nandy saying that transwomen who rape women belong in women's prisons because they identify as women.  This article goes a long way to explain that.

So where do liberal feminist women who have been thrown out of the left, thrown out of what is now called feminism do?  We fight.

We organise.  We educate.  We agitate.

Removing The Labels That Bind You

I took a long time to find my voice.  To become the having a thousand thoughts and opinions a day kind of person.  

Joining Twitter and starting to write my old blog were both an avenue and arena that I had never experienced before and were in part the catalyst for releasing my voice.  As a result, many thoughts and opinions began to form.  It took a bloody long while to get there, but one thing to know about me is that I can and never will be pushed.  I come to things in my own time.

When I finally found my voice, "the left" seemed to be a natural home for me.  I happily joined the camp of lefties and refused to listen to anyone with the slightest inclination of right leaning thought.  Feminism was another world where I felt at home.  Pro women, pro choice, an easy decision.

But what comes with finding your voice and having a thirst to learn more, is that you begin to question the worlds that you have chosen.  The boxes you have placed yourself in and the boxes that people have put you in.

If you had spoken to me in September last year, I would have described myself as a uber leftie.  An intersectional feminist.  Accepting of all.  The kool aid had been drunk and I was on the party message.

But then.   I began to question the rhetoric.  Ask questions.  Object.  Seeds of doubt about what I thought I believed were planted.

I wonder if Rachel McKinnon realises the amount of people that turned away from intersectionality as a result of them (yes I am being careful) winning that bike race.  The photograph of them standing on the top of the podium.  Clearly male bodied.  Clearly advantaged over the two women who came second and third.  That was the start.

From there, I was like Alice falling round the rabbit hole.  My fall was akin to falling off a cliff and while I grabbed at points of information along the way, by the time I found my feet again, I was a different person; again.

I became irritated by the left who seemed to be becoming more self righteous and controlling by the day.  As I have said in a previous blog post, the presumption of the public and the persona surrounding them has always been that the left are always on the moral side, the side of the people, the right side of history.  The right was always wrong.  So why did I become to feel so stifled?  So controlled?  Wasn't it the right that wanted to control us?

Feminism also began to irritate me.  Specifically the holier than thou way that some went about it.  I cared about women's safety, women's rights, not what a fucking sandwich was called or whether a man opened a door for me was a sign of the patriarchy.

I reached a point where I was no longer a leftie, I was a centrist.  I wasn't sure whether I was still a feminist.  I was gender critical.  That I was certain of.

So from last October when I first started to question everything to know, I was in a state of flux.  I became politically homeless as more and more parties swallowed and spouted out the line that trans women were women.  They are not.  They will never be.

I joined the club of being blocked by Owen Jones (we need a badge of pride I think at this point).

Whilst listening to and learning from many gender critical women, I was also told however that certain people within the movement were not to be listened to.  That they were extremists that would ally themselves to anyone.  But I wanted to listen and make up my own mind.

I was tired of the labels I had both chosen and had been given.  My voice was not being censored, but I was conscious that some of the things I thought were again, would not be acceptable.

I wanted so much to go to the Woman's Place meeting in London.  To see Sharron Davies who I think is fantastic and unafraid in what she says and thinks.  Unfortunately timing issues were not on my side.

But then I saw Make More Noise were holding an event in Manchester.  Talking about the elephant in the room of feminism.  What we did not talk about/enough.  Posie Parker was one of the speakers.  One of the people I had been told not to listen to.  But I wanted to make up my own damn mind.

I really enjoyed her speech.  I also loved the talk by Sarah Phillimore which I understood more from my line of work.

But I was scared to admit that I had attended a talk with Posie involved.  Then I got angry.  I am tired of limiting myself and my experiences.  Who I listen to.  What information I should take from people.

So today, I am removing my labels.  I am politically homeless. Not left, not right, not centrist.  I will viewpoints from all and discard what I don't agree with.  But only after I have listened.  Supporting women, their sex based rights and the rights to their own bodies will always be the line I will stand on.  But I'm taking off the word feminist too.

I am label free other than my biologically fact based description of being an adult human female.

I think I will end my (very long, sorry) blog post with a few things that I believe and all, are a hill I would stand up for and die on.

• Every person is entitled to the same human rights.  No person or group need or deserve more than that.  We don't (yet) live in the equivalent  of Animal Farm.
• Lesbians do not have penises.  
• Biological men do not belong in women's spaces.
• No one under the age of at least 18 should be on hormone altering medication or undergo gender altering surgery.  It is child abuse.
• The state should not be telling parents what sex their child is.
• If you think that you are circumgender trans, you need psychological help, not affirmation.
• If you believe that putting on a dress, having a beard and calling yourself a lesbian is right, again, you need psychological help, not affirmation.
• If you believe that a woman saying no is not allowed because it may hurt your chosen identity feelings, you can frankly, fuck off.

Think I had better stop here.  For now.  More posts to follow.  Thank you, if you got this far, for reading.