Mick Hartley

On Sunday we heard from Labour's Baroness Hayter, who – after Labour MPs disgraced themselves in the debate on Scotland's gender bill -  said it was easier for Labour peers to speak out on the issue, because they don't have a constituency party to answer to. 

“I’m afraid I see this as being a bit like antisemitism when it was first called out in the party and people were saying it was all being exaggerated and overblown and with this issue it is the same thing,” she said. “They are trying to squash us and stop us from raising it. Jewish groups were told to be quiet about antisemitism and now women are being told to shut up too. But this is misogyny. This is men telling women to get back in their box.”

Hadley Freeman today in the Jewish Chronicle:

Baroness Hayter is not the first person to notice this parallel. I look back on who I was pre-2016 and feel almost nostalgic for that adorably naïve person, with a rock-solid faith in my political tribe and belief in their acceptance of a plurality of opinions.

This faith started to crack when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, which I could accept (hey, you won’t always like the guy in charge, right?). What I couldn’t accept was the insane defensiveness of his supporters.

Non-Jews on the left told me I was wrong to see anything antisemitic about Corbyn or his circle and soon after that, I was told that it wasn’t “appropriate” for me to write about antisemitism on the left. To criticise Corbyn, the argument went, was to support the Tories and therefore be on the wrong side of history.

This turned out to be a mere rehearsal for the rise of gender ideology, which argues that anyone can be a woman if they feel like one.

Many of the same non-Jews who screamed that they knew better than me about antisemitism were now insisting that they know what a woman was better than me, even though they were male. To have any doubts about gender ideology was – I was told – the same as being a fascist / child murderer / Donald Trump.

And again, I was told it was not “appropriate” for me to write anything critical about gender ideology.

All advice served with a strong side-order of misogyny, it seems.

In both cases, we have an ideology — Corbynism, gender — that influential people on the left decide is progressive. Never mind that both were always clearly unworkable, as well as deeply, deeply flawed with horrendously regressive overtones.

Too many people on the left have abandoned critical thought in favour of a frantic scramble to be on The Right Side of History, no matter how much they contort themselves and their values to get there. To silence the doubt in their own minds, they scream and shout at anyone who questions what the hell they’re doing.

Corbynism is long gone and I truly believe we are now — at long, long last — witnessing the death of gender insanity.

Will those who screamed and shouted ever admit their mistake? Of course not. They’ll just move onto another crazy cause. Communism, perhaps? Nudism? It doesn’t matter. The rest of us will know, and we won’t forget.