As Dutch provincial elections were the latest to show, people across the Western world are fed up with establishment politics. Because, on nearly every issue of substance, two-party systems have become a Tweedledum-Tweedledumber game of furious agreement with left-wing talking points.
Few more so than on the brutal, misogynist assault on women’s basic rights and safety calling itself “Trans Rights Activism”.
When a prominent feminist speaks publicly to assert women’s basic rights, the entire media-political class swings behind the violent TRAs spitting on, physically assaulting and screaming abuse at women.
Even so-called “conservatives”.
The only female Liberal MP in attendance was not hailed for defending hard-won gains in women’s rights but now is facing expulsion from her party.
This is the Clown World outcome of identity politics and the increasing detachment of the elite from anything approaching reality.
We’re no longer prepared to stand up for women who don’t want to have their safe spaces entered by “women with a penis” (a phrase used recently by a trans activist). It’s bizarre, but this is the reality of our contemporary public discourse. It’s not just women’s rights that are at risk but also their existence as – in deference to trans rights – “womanhood” has been diminished to a “person with a cervix”, a chest that feeds an infant or this nonsense of a “person who menstruates”. (So much for those on the left who love that climate catchcry, “respect the science”, because biological, chromosomal reality couldn’t be any clearer.)
The Big Lies of TRAs just keep concatenating: “You’re saying trans people don’t exist”. A silly, obvious lie: denying that a man who claims to be the king of France is indeed the king of France does not deny that such a person exists. “You don’t want trans people to have rights”. Another obvious lie.
Trans people should not be discriminated against. But that doesn’t mean that someone who has grown up male and self-identifies as a woman can therefore fairly compete in women’s sport or that biological males should be allowed in women’s spaces.
And no female politician should ever be sacked for nothing more than speaking up for women’s rights.
To damn Deeming for defending the right of women to their own spaces on the grounds that the rally organiser had merely been interviewed by people who’ve kept questionable company makes no sense. It creates an unworkable precedent for Liberal MPs, who can hardly control who speaks or turns up at events they attend. Neither was Deeming’s attendance a surprise; she told Pesutto two weeks ago via a speech in the chamber on International Women’s Day that she was attending the rally.
Right now, Pesutto looks like a leader spooked and he has created a lose-lose situation for himself here.
In other words, he’s a bog-standard “conservative” leader in 2023. A dripping wet shiver desperately looking for a spine to run up, driven bleating from one left-wing position to the next by the terror of actually having to stand for anything.
If his motion to expel Deeming succeeds next week, she will be out of the parliamentary party but still a Liberal because even her biggest critics acknowledge they would never win a vote to expel her from the wider party given her strong support among the Liberal base. Deeming wouldn’t be able to sit with the Liberals in parliament but would be able to attend Liberal events and, as a martyr to free speech and women’s rights, win a rock star reception.
If Deeming is not now expelled, it’s an effective repudiation of the leader. But if she is, it’s an effective repudiation of the women’s rights movement, even though there are millions of women – who don’t want to make themselves targets by going to rallies or by being vocal on social media – who are worried that decades of female gains are now at risk if a woman can be any bloke who says he is.
The Australian
It’s tempting to dismiss this as just another symptom of the “Victorian disease” if it weren’t being repeated by nearly every so-called “conservative” leader, from John Pesutto and Peter Dutton, to Christopher Luxon and Rishi Sunak.