In the past feminism was generally understood to be aligned with the Left, although socialist parties only paid, at best, lip-service to women's interests. The glass ceiling and the unacceptable fact that the jobs predominantly carried out by women pay less and that women also earn less in the same job were never at the top of the left-wing agenda.
Right-wing politics and Capitalism itself favour a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest that places brute strength (economic or otherwise) above all other considerations. Our times have shown in crude terms how money purchases power (Citizens United, in the US, bought elections in general, bought judges...) and how late-stage Capitalism brings out shocking levels of inequality.
Jeff Bezos is, as I write, worth a whopping $200 billion. There is no doubt that his work, as such - paid however you like -, cannot be worth this sum. He is interesting in that he is responsible for producing almost nothing tangible. The possible exception, the Alexa and Kindle devices, are a very mixed blessing; their downside being control over what you see or read - your understanding of the world, if you like. They also bring us mass-surveillance and military AI that, together with climate change and nuclear arms, are THE threat to humankind, imminent, so immense and so hidden from us behind the noise of unimportant trivia that fills up our screens that we are individually and collectively incapable of even thinking about it.
The Left used to fight for collective, rather than individual, solutions, solidarity and compassion towards others. Now, the Left has disassociated itself from seeing women's rights as a class issue. In these neo-liberal and individualistic times, women are merely viewed as individuals with a uterus, with no need for specific consideration. In fact the very words 'man' and 'woman' are about to become meaningless. Yet, as so many studies and experiences have shown, words are important and, in a male-dominated world, excluding the word 'woman' excludes many real women from real consideration.
The trans movement is totally in line with our times, tremendously individualistic and a sort of I'm-worth-it badge for a culture that that failed to understand the difference between sex and gender, and has misunderstood form for content. We had decades of misguided women (and a few men) who paid good money to have silicon (and other poisons) pumped into their body, in some instances paid for by the NHS, which had confused true wellbeing with a sort of phycological aspiration created by propaganda and social programming. (Not talking here about beneficial cosmetic procedures due to accident and illness). A man who wears high heels is still a man.
We have a society that re-enforces mind-numbing conformity and only permits those differences that are extremely superficial. Whether Democrat or Republican, they are both pathological lying, warmongering factions of the Corporate Class. Try to explain that ETA in Spain never killed anything like as many people as the illegal invasion(s) of Iraq, in 2003 backed by the right-wing Spanish PP party, and you'll be met by hysterical shrieks of being a terrorist. A culture that confuses the symptom with the disease.
Our binary vision is essentially a reflection of our masculine, patriarchal world. The threat to the neo-liberal, ever-expanding, Capitalistic state is feminist and collective.
The trans movement is a reaction to this hyper-masculine culture, seeking a spectrum of personal experiences and modes of being - but it is the wrong one! Of course, gender should be viewed as a spectrum, and it is high-time that women ditched foot-deforming high heels, time-wasting make-up and feminine wiles. Why any man would want to go down this path is beyond me.
It is a reflection of how artificial our culture is that in our Western society it is the female that decks itself out in fine colours in order to attract a mate, and not the other way round.
And, of course, we need safe places for all, which really means safe places for women and gender non-conforming people, from those men that are predatory or violent.
And, now we are talking about this, we need less children, because there ARE an awful lot of us, so an increase in the percent of gay people might be a good thing too for the planet.
But from there to the idea that it is a good idea to medicate people, to artificially delay puberty, to operate on them in order to give them artificial body parts or take others out, to give them hormones for their entire life, simply because those people seem to demand it, is bad thinking, superficial and harmful. People are extremely malleable, which is why the advertising industry is worth $560 billion in the US alone. If you normalise something and propagandise it, it will be wanted. Think of back-deforming, body-poisoning breast implants, trout pouts, botox, or indeed smartphones (changed every 2 years, or every year in some countries). Anyone who has had holiday time in a rural area without phone coverage finds that in a couple of days you do not miss it at all.
The incursion of males into female competitive sports is unpleasant and unfair, but probably we would be a lot better off if all remunerative, competitive sports were to go. Just think of how every major male sport (football, cycling, even tennis for God's sake!) has been plagued by doping and corruption scandals over the last decades. The cases of violent men who have been allowed into female-only hospital wards or prisons is also indicative of the fact that most violence, and virtually all rape, is carried out by men. But, once again, the problem is deeper down: prisons are not fit for purpose and hospitals are so underfunded that privacy and security cannot be guaranteed.
The problem of the disappearance of safe places for women points to a wider problem: ALL places should be vigorously made safe for all.
However, these non-representative instances of abuses, tiny in number, show a real aspect of the trans movement - the invasiveness of men in female areas of life. I say men because the focus of current trans laws benefits men, both trans and non-trans, not women. In this sense the trans movement is behaving exactly how men collectively have typically behaved in our society.
But to go back to the Trans Laws. The fact is that everyone should be able to be as they want to be (without harming others) and call themselves any name they want. But you cannot choose the sex with which you are conceived, and should not confuse the way you want to dress and act with your body's sex. Women and men ARE generally different, they have different hormones, and different biological responses to many situations. Ask a man to close the car window a bit and he'll close it entirely - men are far more binary, which is a good thing in many situations and a bad thing in others. In general women are biologically more careful of life than men and the vast majority of vegetarians and vegans are women for a reason. If a woman wants a female midwife, for example, there are good reasons for this. Perhaps we need a third and fourth gender for trans people, but a man in a skirt with heels, operated on or not, is still a man and should not be legally designated a woman. Desire should not be confused with fact. I may wish to be a millionaire but that does not, and should not, make me one.
The Trans movement is not addressing the underlying sickness in our society (Patriarchy), limiting itself to treating the symptom (pretending to be a woman, instead of being able to be a man and dress and be as you want - and vice versa). With its demand that children be allowed to take puberty-blocking hormones, or undergo surgery, is is serving trans-identified people very badly and children, many autistic, disgracefully. There will be a huge wave of depression from those people who regret their decisions, irreparable later on, and their bad health.
The Trans movement is additionally acting in an intolerant way, implementing what is called the cancel culture, under the guise of not allowing 'intolerance'. This is reminiscent of the political correctness that so enthralled the likes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It was not what you did, but how you spoke about it, that was the problem. Women who voice doubts about trans laws and about the wisdom of society sanctioning harmful surgical interventions or "chest-feeding" for babies are simply shouted down or cancelled, in a way that is identical to how traditionally women's voices have been silenced by louder male ones.
Trans-identified people are not the problem - this should not need saying -, but our patriarchal system, by hiding the full spectrum of gender and reducing our lives to binary options within a tiny spectrum of possible life experiences, has misled people into thinking that aggressive surgery and drugs are the solution to a problem that is in fact psychological. The problem of society rejecting one's non-pathological personality is not solved by changing one's body, but by changing society.
Feminism, instead of demanding parity of economic entitlement, parity of salaries and jobs in medium to large companies, parity in public employment and government, stays distracted with the question of equal maternity and paternity leave. Of course fathers should get paternity leave, and the opportunity to spend time with their babies and children. But much more urgent is ensuring that all women who give birth can stay with their babies until the latter are at least a year and a half; without this breastfeeding, the baby's most basic right, is almost impossible for working mothers. Feminism remains distracted with identity politics, distracted with anything but taking on the root of all these problems - the economic system.
Patriarchy, the enemy of all but the elite, and especially the enemy of women as a class and trans-identified people, has defanged the Feminist movement, and the Left is once again divided, actually excluding many women (even expelling many feminists), and offering us, yet again, individualism rather than collectivism.
