(Christopher Furlong/Getty)
Louise Distras was once a darling of the anti-establishment Left. An underground punk singer whose hits include “Dreams From the Factory Floor”, this working-class woman is unafraid to speak her mind. Five years ago, she was being invited onstage by Billy Bragg, the folk singer and progressive activist — but since then, a lot has changed. Recently, Bragg has publicly and repeatedly condemned Distras, because she had done what she has always done: speak out against misogyny. This time, though, she was criticising the backlash against women who refuse to recite the “trans women are women” mantra.
Distras has been expressing concern about gender ideology in private since late 2021, but the first time she went public with her opinions was in May of this year. “I’m a woman, and a woman is an adult human female,” she said in an interview with Louder than War, a music website. “I’m a woman that’s experienced domestic abuse.” She later made comments, on Twitter, about how women are silenced for questioning gender ideology: “No amount of rainbows and ‘kindness’ can hide the authoritarianism and misogyny and homophobia that’s on display here, especially in the arts.”
Born in Wakefield in 1987, Distras ran away from home in her teens and, she told me, “stayed with a lot of dangerous people who took advantage of me”. She turned to song writing as a form of escape. Her bravery is remarkable. But as soon as her straightforward resistance to gender ideology became known, she was met with horrendous abuse. Distras has been called every name under the sun, including anti-trans, Nazi, scum, prostitute, grifter, child serial killer, and witch. She soon realised that she had been “marked for life” as a “disgusting terf” — that no redemption would ever be possible. She was told she deserves to be chucked out of the music industry. Her booking agency has said that her attitude towards transwomen could “have detrimental effects on [her] musical career”. Radio stations have stopped playing her songs and venues cancelled her gigs. “If I go back to the industry as it stands,” she says, “if someone had the balls to book me for a gig, I would likely be physically attacked. It’s not safe.”
Having been rejected by the majority of her contacts in the music industry, Distras decided she might as well use her voice to speak out. Alongside five other women, her testimony featured in the Daily Mail about the experience of being ostracised for daring to question gender ideology. One of the first derogatory reactions was from Bragg. “What??”, he tweeted, linking to the feature, which included a photograph of Distras — who usually wears black and leather on stage — wearing a formal dress. “Louise Distras hates trans people so much that she’s willing to dress in a style acceptable to Daily Mail readers in order to have a go at them. What does this have to do with feminism Louise? Or punk rock?”
Bragg fancies himself a bit of a trans ally. And prides himself on being an all-round anti-sexist bloke. In 2014, he posed with a sign, “I pledge never to commit, condone, or remain silent about men’s violence against women in all its forms,” as part of the White Ribbon campaign.
Back in the early days of her career, Bragg championed Distras as one of a “new breed” of singers, tweeting in 2013 that her song Love Me The Way I Am should be our next Eurovision entry. Another of her songs, The Hand You Hold, is about how what women say and do should matter more than how we look, and she tells me that “Billy for some reason loved that song and that’s why he invited me to go play on his stage” — which she did that year, at Glastonbury, and again in 2017. “So for him to now take a pop at me and start criticising what I look like instead of actually listening to what I have to say means he is the biggest hypocrite.”
But it is not only men who have gone after Distras. In a recent interview with Kerrang!, Phoebe Lunny of the Lambrini Girls reacted to Distras speaking out against trans ideology and the silencing of women: “I will scrap any Terf, any day, in person, with my fists.” In a tweet, Distras pointed to the hypocrisy of claiming to be progressive while “inciting violence against women”. She also condemned Kerrang! for publishing the remarks, saying she is “ashamed my face was printed on its pages. Vile!”
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SubscribeI don’t know if Bragg has a “woman” problem, per se, I think his biggest issue is that he’s not awfully bright. He takes up the fashionable causes from his side of the political aisle but has neither the knowledge or the nous to defend them.
Every so often Bragg lifts his head above the battlements of his Dorset manor house to reprise his “Orfentic voice a’the peeple” schtick. He’s the man for whom the expression “Champagne Socialist” might have been coined.
The Guardian, believing the Barking Bard to be relevant, occasionally invite him to pen an article. Billy’s biggest problem is that he REALLY doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so the whole thing is peppered with a load of right-on sounding pish, that cannot withstand the merest scrutiny.
This effort, – ‘Cancel culture’ doesn’t stifle debate, but it does challenge the old order | Billy Bragg | The Guardian – was a classic of the genre, as Billy tried and failed to make an argument in support of cancel culture – under the guise of not criticising it. This had been prompted by JK Rowling’s troubles, and the caring, sharing Peoples’ Tribune Billy Bragg was all for her being thrown under the bus for daring to venture an unapproved opinion.
Billy doesn’t know much, but he knows a George Orwell quote will be catnip to the Guardian faithful. In the article he made the very strange leap from quoting Orwell’s
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”
to then question that with
“Surely the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four would understand that people don’t want to hear that 2+2=5?”
I struggle to see how anyone who looks at this situation with their eyes (and minds) open would fail to recognise that most of the people who have been cancelled, or branded as heretics, were the ones insisting that 2+2 =4.
It was those who were doing the cancelling that were insisting we should all agree that the sum added up to 5.
If mathematical truth is his model, one of scientific and measurable correctness, as opposed to the perceived political correctness of our time, then was Mr Bragg seriously suggesting JKR was scientifically and measurably wrong when she suggested that biological sex was a thing, and that mere self-identification doesn’t alter ones chromosomes?
Because it doesn’t, Billy, it REALLY AND FACTUALLY doesn’t.
I would ask him, “Which is more important to you, being able to voice uncomfortable truths, or protecting those who wish to only hear consoling half-truths or believe in absolute untruths?” I think we know where he stands and, weirdly, all in the name of protecting free speech.
Later in the piece, Billy wrote of, “The ability of middle-aged gatekeepers to control the agenda has been usurped by a new generation of activists who can spread information through their own networks, allowing them to challenge narratives promoted by the status quo”, yet these new activist gatekeepers of acceptable speech and thought have a far narrower definition of what is acceptable than their predecessors. Obviously, as anyone who has fallen foul of these new blasphemy laws can attest. Yet Billy calls it progress.
There are many media and social media outlets that stand behind mission statements full of praise for free-speech and sharing ideas across the world yet seem determined to become the online world’s Thought-Police.
What is perhaps most extraordinary is Billy refers to this woke orthodoxy as “The Liberal Consensus” – When there’s no “consensus” and it is, surely, the very antithesis of “liberal” thought. What could possibly be more authoritarian than promoting a narrow worldview and punishing and shaming anyone who dares to think outside it?
Dare I say it but Mr Bragg is pretty dim if he can’t recognise the gaping flaws in his argument. He has always talked like an anarchist, yet lives like an aristocrat.
Bragg: bonus hole.
Bragg is a useful idiot to the lonely, nasty, fearful psychopaths at the top of the pyramid, who want to control everyone. He riles up people on both sides of the various false dichotomies that they themselves have created. Divide, confuse, demoralise, scare, and conquer.
The solution? Ignore him and ignore them. Literally ignore them out of their squalid, meaningless, spiritless, pointless, cowardly existences. And don’t be afraid of any of them.
Andrew,
I’d agree with you, were it not for the fact that “the lonely, nasty, fearful psychopaths” have a reach quite out of proportion to their numbers. I’ve said it before but I honestly believe that the Guardian is, by a margin, the most dangerous publication in the UK. Its circulation is paltry, yet its influence is pervasive and pernicious. The Guardian has an “on-air” wing in the shape of the BBC. It is also required reading for most of the civil service and the legions of metropolitan fauxialists who manage practically every quango and institution in the country. Not to mention that it is the go-to news source for the vast majority of the teaching profession.
So although circulation figures are ever dwindling, it informs the worldview of a great many people who influence the agenda and shape the country’s – and our children’s – future. The Britain hating, race-baiting, class-envy, history-revisionist, woke, pc leftist clap-trap that we all complain about across these pages, is in large part down to the Guardian dripping its poison every day, thirstily imbibed by readers who influence and skew the national discourse.
We might both choose to ignore such voices, but we cannot silence them – and that jaundiced, self-loathing view of society almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He does. He tweets posts on how the progress of women in the workplace has been at the expense of men. So many men on the left think that fighting racism gives them a free pass to be nasty to anyone who disagrees with them.
Not to mince words: he’s an arrogant ass. We have so very many of them. Especially in progressive circles.
LOL – sounds like a fine bit of arrogant assery right there!
Link to tweets please.
If this article in itself hadn’t convinced me that Bragg is a virtue-signalling dimwit, your comment certainly would have. Entertaining and illuminating.
Sure – but the article isn’t accusing him of being a dimwit. It’s accusing him of hating women because he disagrees with the author on the trans issue.
Fantastic comment – a worthy article on its own!
Absolutely brilliant assessment of the vile Bragg.
This comment ought to be published as an article on its own. Brilliant analysis and writing.
Billy Bragg is just a militant conformist to gender ideology rather than a misogynist in the sense that he would no doubt decry a male musician that steps out of line. He doesn’t actively hate women – as his previous championing of Distras shows – he just hates anyone that doesn’t conform with his ideology. Of course he is indifferent to women’s actual interests despite his self proclaimed feminist credentials but hypocrisy is not misogyny. Stupidity and hypocrisy aren’t necessarily misogyny.
No doubt this view will be downvoted by those who cleave to the Julie Bindel view that trans support is per se misogyny but I do think the word should be confined to those who actively dislike women rather than those unthinking conformists who mistakenly think they are supporting kindness and inclusion like Bragg.
Well said.
The reasons, I believe TERF’s get it in the neck (I, who never felt like getting up to demonstrate anything, would be more than happy to wear a badge that said “TERF, and PROUD of it”, a badge of PRIDE, rather than shame) is because they are seen as betrayers of the cause, fellow travellers who have renounced the ‘unthinking’ conformity of, so called ‘progressive’ neo-Marxists. It is very much NOT because they are women, per say, but because they are seen to have sold out the ‘feminist’ cause (Oh, the irony !), and traitors are always seen as the worst of the worst, even the slur ‘Nar-see’s’ probably doesn’t sum up the hatred and contempt, former allies, might have for them. It really demonstrates the true colours of ‘many’, who claim to be ‘progressive’, and their ‘vile’ despotic nature, hidden behind, in todays virtuous world, smiles, rainbow badges and slogans like “Be kind”, when at heart they are anything but. Unless, of course, you goose step in line with the ‘right side of history’. They are bully’s, pure and simple, who claim to abhor bullying.
The reason why TERFs get it in the neck: because they’re WOMEN who DARE to disagree with the diktats issued by the party.
Does ‘hypocrisy’ really capture the entire story, though? If Bragg says he universally supports women’s rights, then contradicts himself by saying he doesn’t support women’s sex-based rights or that he excludes some women from his universal support because he doesn’t like their views, then he’s a hypocrite.
Is that what he is saying, though? I’m not really sure what his overall moral claim is.
With Distras, it might be better to say that he has changed his opinion of her, which people are entitled to do. Does that mean he supported her in the first place because he universally supports women’s rights?
Bragg operates on a changed definition of ‘woman’, one that now includes men. For him, the conflict has now transformed into a struggle within the (expanded) class of women. This would fit with his class-based political outlook.
Maybe I am crediting him with too much, but I think he would be better characterised as possibly making the overall claim that he universally supports women’s rights, where women include transwomen, and ‘women’ are defined by gender, not sex.
Female terfs, then, are simply members of that group that are behaving badly and deserve censure. An analogy would be ‘gammons’ who are members of the class standing up for worker’s rights but are behaving badly (according to Bragg, anyway). Neither group of his deplorables is being kind or inclusive in his moral worldview.
I think of it as something more than simple hypocrisy or simple misogyny, but what others have given a new qualifier to, ‘progressive misogyny’, We see a close analogue with ‘progressive homophobia’. Neither is inclusive; they both exclude groups with biology-based wrongthink.
That may well be where he is coming from in his own head, so that he can tell himself that he’s a supporter of women.
But if it’s based on the premise that ‘transwomen are women’ (which it no doubt is) then he’s already straight-up misogynist from the start because ‘trans’ women are men.
You can disagree with Mr Bragg but I cannot see why believing that that ‘transwomen are women’ would make him a misogynist
Because once you allow men to reclassify themselves as women, women have immediately lost every sex-based right they ever fought for.
But it does make him a fool
No one actually believes that “transwomen are women’. The people that claim they do are either lying or have serious cognitive issues.
It’s a funny old world. I top posted below that he’s a progressive misogynist, and at the time of writing, it has 29 likes. Here, I explain what I think his reasoning is and why he is still a misogynist and not simply a hypocrite, as Jeremy characterises him, and it gets downvoted.
He’s not simply a hypocrite, nor simply a misogynist, the latter because he doesn’t hate women per se, but women who don’t agree with him. You might argue that because he thinks women include men, that means he is an old-fashioned misogynist, but I put it to you that before the days of gender ideology when there were just a few, largely invisible, unfortunates with severe gender dysphoria and a few AGPs, you probably didn’t feel quite so militantly that anybody who was sympathetic towards them was a misogynist, because at that point everybody accepted that they were, in fact, men. Then Stonewall came along, and the rest is history.
Trans women are indeed men, as you say, and his recent behaviour is appalling, but I still think that he is a special type of misogynist that I (and others) term a ‘progressive misogynist’.
This is directly analogous to the return of homophobia. It is a special sort of homophobia where queers, who may or not be gay, hate gay people who say that they are not queer or are only same-sex attracted. That is not the same as 70s homophobia. It is a different sort of homophobia, ‘progressive homophobia’.
He disagrees with women who disagree with him. Which is fair enough. What evidence is there that he actually hates them?
I’ll concede that you have a point there. It’s an inference. I think I can still make my case that his behaviour indicates a special class of misogyny, without my careless wording
Far from hating women, Bragg is almost certainly a feminist of some stripe or other. He’s a classic student politics style leftie.
I think we can safely assume that a man who lectures women on the correct way to do feminism is probably not as deeply committed to the cause as he might claim to be. That he claims to be a feminist is no guarantor that he’s not a misogynist.
It rather depends on whether he thinks the particular women are right or wrong. And lecture is a loaded term. He disagrees with some women (and feminists) on this issue but agrees with others. Newsflash: women aren’t mindless clones who all think the same. Just like men their beliefs vary enormously.
Thank you, David, for questioning heavily laden words such as “misogyny” and “hate” (although I must thank several others, too, for similar comments). This very widespread phenomenon, expanding definitions beyond recognition for rhetorical and ideological purposes is what I call “linguistic inflation.” Others call it “concept creep.” This modus operandi, “reimagining” or “transforming” the words or institutions that we truly want to abolish, has long been used to promote ideologies.
Both misogyny and misandry, let alone antisemitism and other forms of racism, are real phenomena. They exist. And some leaders are doing everything that they can to make them prevail, as they often have, in the public square. But they all have one common feature, and that’s hatred.
This word, in itself, has succumbed to linguistic inflation. Common parlance notwithstanding, there’s much more to hatred than many of its alleged symptoms, in our time, such as dislike, ignorance, stupidity, snobbery, indifference or even prejudice.
At the core of hatred is malice–that is, the urge to harm or destroy as an end in itself, not as the means to other ends such as increased wealth or status. Moreover, this malice is an enduring worldview, not a transient emotion that emerges from personal experience. In my lexicon, hatred always has a distinctly moral connotation, not merely a psychological one.
Quibble with me if you like about the word, per se. I’m not married to it. Find a better one if you can. But we desperately need some word to make the moral distinction between, say, Germans who passively stayed out of trouble during the Third Reich (which most of us would try to do) and Germans who actually found joy and almost transcendent meaning by participating in the bureaucratic or physical machinery of mass murder (which few of us, we fervently hope, would do). Without some word of this kind, we are helpless in the face of those who manipulate public opinion by diluting the power of words and thus serving their own nefarious goals.
Linguistic inflation occurs in many contexts, not only sex, gender and race (which are related, distantly, to older notions such as class and religion). But the topic of this article is misogyny, so I’ll confine my concluding paragraph to that. Misogyny doesn’t (or shouldn’t) refer to people–including both male and female people–who disagree with this or that feature of feminist ideology or even with feminist ideology in general. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) refer even to people who don’t like women in general. It refers (or should refer) to people who go out of their way to persecute or assault women and derive satisfaction from doing so and thus fulfilling what amounts to their secular vocation.
Totally agree. It’s a way of arguing dishonestly, so it needs to be called out. And it needs to be called out even when it is used by people “on your side” in a debate. Because truth and honesty matter. And untruth and dishonesty have consequences.
[Moved to another location.]
Maybe there’s a bit of semantic confusion going on here. And maybe I’m misusing the word misogynist. I really don’t know any more. Whatever this jumped up little man thinks (if you can call it that) he’s playing to his particular gallery, and yes, there’s no doubt that it does include some women. So maybe ‘misogynist’ is the wrong word. Whatever the word is, he has aligned himself with a faction that self-styles as a ‘minority’ (which they are in numbers, if not in influence) and standing up for minorities is a ‘good thing’, no matter how tenuous their hold on reality. Maybe it makes him feel big and virtuous and ever so socialist and humanitarian to take this banner-waving position. Who knows? So let’s call him a hypocrite then, although I think that’s far too lenient a term.
Ultimately what he really seems to be is confused. He’s nailed his colours to the ‘correct’ socialist mast and ‘gender ideology’ is the latest flag that’s been run up it. He’s the kind of bloke that always wants to have two fingers ready to stick up to the ‘establishment’, even though he and his life have become the epitome of the smug middle class elite that he always used to decry in his ‘music’. And now from his lovely country pile in Dorset.
Aha! So yes – it is ‘hypocrite’ after all…
Although I prefer ‘arsehole’.
A bit? We are awash in a tsunami of semantic confusion across the board. Especially when it comes to gender ideology. At some point in the last twenty years we went from ‘sex is biology, gender is culture’–a very sensible, easy to explain, and reasonable take on the issue–to ‘biology isn’t real, but men can really become women and if you disagree we will cancel you and come after your family’.
Even this is conceptual sleight of hand and involves circular argument. It implicitly rules out the possibility that culture, behaviour and personality may, to some degree, be outcomes of biological differences. It’s question begging pure and simple.
And it’s one of the key ways in which feminism left the door open to trans ideology.
[Moved from an earlier comment.] Again, David, that’s a very useful comment. Categories such as “nature” and “culture” are created by people for practical purposes; otherwise, we’d be unable to understand the world, let alone to cope with chaos.
Reality is more complicated, of course, than either nature or culture. We live in both dimensions, not one or the other. In fact, we’re programmed by nature to produce culture. So, culture is always an interpretation of nature. It doesn’t abolish the givens of nature (such as sex). Rather, it elaborates on them and sometimes bypasses them. (Consider gravity. We can’t fly through the air like birds, but can fly nonetheless in airplanes.)
It’s much easier for culture to work with nature, of course, than to work against it. For many reasons, however, we sometimes need to avoid natural impulses in the interest of collective survival.
For example, every society needs sex–that is, some effective way of organizing sexual activity–and therefore need a culture that works at least partially with nature. But not always or to the same degree. Although some anthropologists have questioned the accuracy of what Margaret Mead discovered about sexual mores in Samoa (reports from informants of very few cultural restrictions on sexual behavior), not many anthropologists even now would question the vast range of sexual practices from one society to another and even from one period to another in the same society.
Other examples would include violence (which happens everywhere, now and then, but is always culturally avoided or “managed” as well as possible) and war (which happens almost everywhere but never without cultural constraints).
To argue that masculinity never and nowhere has anything to do with maleness–or femininity with femaleness–is, as you say, not only false but self-evidently false and therefore dishonest.
“No doubt this view will be downvoted by those who cleave to the Julie Bindel view that trans support is per se misogyny”
Another man that doesn’t understand the issue.
The vast majority of ‘TERFs’ don’t have an issue with trans people or their acceptance in society. Their concerns are all around maintaining womens hard won rights and the protection of children from this incredibly dangerous ideology.
In every area – personal safety, sports, rape and domestic violence services maternity services and even same sex relationships, women are told they must make way for men (that’s what trans women are). They must include these men and they must not complain. Even in situations where trans advocates know that abusers are using this as cover they still support the abusers over the women.
Children are being pushed into this ideology at school and taught that they can change their sex. If they show any interest they are put on a conveyor belt of affirmation, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery. Most of these kids would grow up to be gay/lesbian if left alone. Read the Cass report or Time to Think by Hannah Barnes for details. Oddly enough, adult men who claim to be women are not required to do any of these things.
The trans movement portray objectors as ‘anti trans’ and much of the media promotes that, but you can never get them to engage on the impact on women’s rights. This is women defending women and children. That’s why it’s clear that Bragg and his ilk are just plain old misogynists hiding behind progressivism.
I seem to understand the issue in the sense that I agree with your criticism of the trans ideology but it doesn’t seem to me that the ideology is one fostered and supported predominantly by women hating men. Much of the support for this ideology comes from women who presumably are not women hating; stupid, confused, gullible perhaps but surely not misogynistic. None of the men I know support the ideology except a few self-proclaimed feminists wanting to line up with the right-on sisterhood. It is for this reason I believe labelling trans ideology as misogynistic misses the mark. I would agree that the ideology is profoundly anti-women but that does not seem to be why it is supported so vigorously by many women and some men – although there will be, of course, some men who support it for misogynistic reasons.
You are still missing the point.
Louise Distras, Julie Bindel and so many others are campaigning to defend womens rights and to protect children from abuse. They are commenting on the misogyny which is clearly on display from Bragg and many like him who use trans activism as an excuse to abuse women.
As an aside, your description of Bragg “He doesn’t actively hate women – as his previous championing of Distras shows – he just hates anyone that doesn’t conform with his ideology.” illustrates typical abuser behaviour. You get rewarded for doing what you are told, ostracised if you step out of line.
That’s not the behaviour of someone who “mistakenly think they are supporting kindness and inclusion”
So are you now saying that Bragg is an actual abuser. In fact, one who is so set in his ways that you can even detect a “typical” pattern to his behaviour? Do you know Mr Bragg personally? Are you his therapist by any chance? Or the worlds fist telepathic psychiatrist?
Nope. I just pointed out the language he used.
Drop mic…
Clearly you can’t spot fallacious reasoning when you see it. Try reading the original comment again. Clue: it’s a variant on ad hominem.
Yes, but I think that you should correct what looks to me like a typo. To support your argument, he third line, “that the [trans] ideology is one fostered and supported predominantly by women hating men” should read “that the ideology is one fostered and supported predominantly by men hating women.”
“he just hates anyone that doesn’t conform with his ideology. Of course he is indifferent to women’s actual interests despite his self proclaimed feminist credentials”
The amusing thing is, the above is so, so true for most female feminists as well. Both those we see in public and anecdotally, senior women working alongside.
The whole concept of men being some kind of hostile group towards women is strange when you think of it a little bit. And I can’t think of any non feminist man being on board with this whole trans fiasco – mainly because unlike women and male feminists, ordinary men do in fact care about the well of our daughters and other young girls we know, and would be aghast at the thought of some weirdo entering her bathroom or sports event
The amusing thing is, you claim that the idea of men being hostile towards women is strange. Clearly, you have no capacity to comprehend the world around you. No wonder you’re so confused.
Facts? Argument? Reasons even? More ad hominem. Raise your game.
Never mind the ideological rants and rebukes, Samir, because cynicism will prevail otherwise (and already has in some quarters to judge by some of the comments). You don’t have to be a professional psychologist, anthropologist or historian to know that disagreement is a universal feature of human existence. Hatred is not.
For the record, I oppose trans ideology (because it harms women and distorts truth), but I’m not a feminist.
Chemistry seems to be able to change genders. Many are having problems with this because they thought God made them .
Chemistry absolutely cannot ‘change genders’. In fact, even if you were talking not about gender but about sex – which would make rather more sense, given that sex is an objective biological trait, whereas gender is a subjective psychosocial construct – you would be equally wrong.
No, he really has an unpleasant attitude to women.
Ever notice how women’s comments tend to be succinct and to the point?
Where yours are concerned, I have to say no.
What’s amazing is not that Bragg says these things – lacking musical talent he has always based his career on this sort of attention-seeking grift – but that anyone takes any notice.
First (see my other posts) he probably doesn’t say these things (not when you look at context)
Second – I’m not a fan, but A New England is a great song. He clearly does have talent. You can be wrong (or misrepresented) on an issue, and still have talent.
.
Perhaps; but Kirsty MacColl’s version is much better and the rest of his oeuvre is utter pish.
That’s true – but the strength of the song is that you could have dozens of strong covers of it, all different. Otherwise he’s just too worthy for my taste I’m afraid. Though the idea of him being a misogynist in any real sense is laughable.
For me, the quality of his music is beside the point in this discussion. I don’t like any music of this kind, but that has nothing to do with the musical ability of composers. Richard Wagner was arrogant and vain. Not many people (apart from Ludwig II of Bavaria) liked him at all. Moreover, he was opposed the “Jewish” influence on music. Many years after he died, Wagner became one of Hitler’s favorite composers. His wife and daughter-in-law became Nazis (although we can’t know if he himself would have done so). Nonetheless, I think that his music was and remains a magnificent achievement. And I’m a Jew. Moreover, I’d use the same argument to defend the works of countless composers, painters, sculptors, writers and scientists–who were, like all of us, deeply flawed and inconsistent as people. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, art and morality are not synonymous.
I agree. To be honest, the article reads like a piece of score settling.
Yeah, not exactly a musical genius.
The root problem here is that “Bragg fancies himself”.
Spot on. Bragg epitomises progressive misogyny.
There is another wicked article by Julie Burchill on Bragg (whom Julie Bindel was famously confused with in a Nottingham car park) in The Spectator.
Sadly, Bragg narcissisticly laps up the attention.
Yes,
Never wise to incur the wrath of the Juiliae.
If he craved the attention, he might survive being attacked by one of them, but if they team-up they’ll eviscerate you!
Billy Bragg
The Trans-xist hag
A leash on his neck
A ball and a gag
His contemptible peers
A bedsit of sanctimonious queers
Ready to expurgate and eject
Those who will not genuflect
Yet again men on here who know better than women, why men like Billy Bragg behave the way they do… If a person feels they have been bullied snd harassed because of their sex snd can prove it as Distras can, then the rest of us should believe her about how she feels. Billy Bragg calls himself a feminist, which is misogynistic in itself. The man is s misogynist. Have a look at his X account. No males are ever criticised only women. He even criticises his wife while pretending to elevate her feminism. There are many toxic people out there and they should be named and shamed. Why? Because they do it to us when we haven’t done anything wrong. All we have done is say biology is real and women have been fighting for our rights for 100 + years and we are not giving thrm up to biological men.
I’ve no idea if BB is a feminist, but clearly men can be feminists. All they have to do is believe in that particular ideology. Or is that now a woman only space? Equally a woman can be non/anti feminist. Indeed, many are. None of this involves misogyny.
How dare they claim insight into their own gender. That’s pure misogyny. As is claiming insight into the opposite gender. As is having any opinion whatever.
Sorry MJ – I don’t know what you’re on about – do you?
Three points I’d like to make here.
The first is that I fully support women’s rights to same-sex spaces for legitimate purposes such as safety, fairness, privacy, dignity, same-sex attraction etc.
The second is that I don’t hate any group. I really don’t care if some people want to live as if they are the other sex, just as a don’t care if some people want to live as Catholics or Muslims or Buddhists. They should be able to live in safety and dignity just like anyone else. What I object to is everyone else being forced to affirm and validate their life-choices as if they are sacrosanct.
Not even religions behave like that any more (in most Western countries anyway). Catholics don’t insist we all affirm transubstantiation as the literal changing of bread into the body and blood of Christ. Or demand the right to perform their mass in the temples of other religions.
So fine, wear a dress, refer to yourself as “they” or whatever. Just don’t foist it on the rest of us and in particular don’t insist that just because you want to, you have the automatic right to enter women’s spaces which they have had to fight for decades to carve out.
My third point is about this quote from Louise Distras above:
I remember a few decades back when a member of the then Conservative government turned up to hand out a prize at the Brits (or some similar award show) and was roundly booed by the music industry audience. It caused a bit of a stink at the time. It was around this time that Gary Numan’s admission he voted for Margaret Thatcher caused near universal meltdown among the music industry. Something he still gets asked about decades later.
In the years since Tories haven’t become any more welcome have they. “Never Kiss A Tory!” has essentially become a loudly declared article of faith among progressive artistic types who dominate the creative industries. (In reality I suspect there are lots of people in music who would and do “kiss Tories”, but they typically keep their heads down unless they are of pensionable age and no longer care about being “relevant”.)
So here’s my point. Once the music industry decided that it was ok to shout down people with the “wrong” opinions – even if all that person was doing was handing out an award – then inevitably the music industry would some day get round to shouting down people with the “right” opinions (at least “right” as far as Louise Distras, Julie Bindel and I are concerned).
Just to be clear, this is not about policies. I’m not asking Louise Distras or Julie Bindel to support any politicians or policies they disagree with. Its about principles. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression – within the law – can’t just apply to people we agree with. They have to apply to the “wrong” people as well or they are worthless and the chances are that sooner or later we will find ourselves to be the “wrong” people in the eyes of others.
of course that is now Never Kiss A Tory without prior consent.
After the next election you’ll be doing well to even find one, I reckon.
Good one Julie
68 comments on the topic of women and their position in society and only one possibly from a woman. Some of you men seem to have some vague understanding of how terrifying the “trans women are women” movement is to women but most are completely clueless. Yes, the trans women idea is completely misogynistic. As it stands at the moment it has compelled society to use the terms birthing person instead of mother and chest feeding instead of breast feeding. Women with beards who are also pregnant are proudly paraded as men giving birth. These are attempts to erase women by devaluing their physical function of reproduction. Once trans women have claimed this, the defining function of women, as their own, then women can be kicked to the curb. No need for women any longer when men can do it so much better. If that isn’t the definition of misogyny, I have no idea what is.
One comment asking if anyone really hates women caught my attention. I guess the commentator has never bothered to research the statistics on crime. Women are primarily the victims of violence, whether domestic or casual. This arises from a deep seam of hatred of women in some of the male population. “Men are afraid of women laughing at them. Women are afraid of men killing them” – Margaret Atwood. Atwood is not always right in her social criticism but this time she hit it. It is dangerous to be a woman and allowing men disguised as women into our private spaces makes
our lives more dangerous.
I am female – no cis please – not lesbian, although I stand with Julie Bindell and a proud TERF. As for Billy Bragg, he is a hypocritical virtue signaller, so his views are worthless.
“Women are primarily the victims of violence, whether domestic or casual.”
How about the victims of violence in the streets? Most, by far, are men. As for domestic violence, most are women, but a substantial number are men. And the numbers of men and women who initiate domestic violence are approximately equal. Even so, resources for male victims are far less available than those for women.
Will one of you down-voters please show me statistics on the victims of violence (other than rape) that would correct the ones on which I rely? I wouldn’t try Statistics Canada.
He is also responsible for writing and performing the least sexy song in the history of recorded music: Sexuality.
That would be where he ‘Braggs’ about his sexual conquests with the opening lines:
“I’ve had relations with girls from many nations
I”ve made passes at women of all classes”
Oh dear! What appalling toxic masculinity; and referring to the lucky ladies you’ve pumped as ‘girls’ indeed. Time for a cancellation, surely?
Wonder if that includes any trans women? I think not.
I’ve made plans, with girls and some are trans
Can’t help but imagine Billy checking his rhyming dictionary, then crossing out Asians and asses.
I had almost forgotten that one. The lyrics – oh my days…
I really hate the term ‘TERF’, because it makes it pushes female opponents of trans-ideology into the margins, thereby delegitimizing their concerns about men in women’s spaces. The radicals are those who say men can be women and should be called out publicly for their nonsense beliefs.
Transgenderism is a hate group as the following image and others like it make it clear:
https://twitter.com/Dataracer117/status/1273863688357924865/photo/1
These are the kind of people clamoring to be allowed into girls’ changing rooms.
Stick to singing songs that I don’t listen to, Billy.
This is exactly what happened to ‘ex-gay’ Tom Robinson when he decided to get married (to a gurl).
Hell hath no fury like that of your erstwhile fellow revolutionaries.
He’s a leftist, why is this a surprise?
The British Labour Party has never had an elected female leader, while the current political fashion is to attack ‘hags’ who criticise the gender religion.
They couldn’t afford the transfer fee for Liz Truss.
Bragg supports all the trendiest, on-message Lefty causes and wants to be seen as their principal cheerleader. The actual message is irrelevant.
Bragg always seemed to believe in freedom of expression and freedom of speech – FOR HIMSELF. “Some are more equal than others”, comrades.
This got out of hand years ago, when we allowed the Left to define any disagreement with them as “hate” and simply speaking that disagreement as literal “violence.”
Bragg is nothing more than a leaper on to bandwagons. Never had an original thought in his life and as to claims he’s a musician? Ha bloody ha.
Are we not falling into the Celebrity trap again? Billy Bragg’s views are no more nor less profound or important than those of the driver of the number 22 bus. In fact those of the bus driver will probably be much better grounded and far less hubristic. Do we do ourselves ( and these minor celebrities) an injustice by taking them too seriously and then giving them the oxygen of the publicity which they crave?
Thanks, JB. Good to see Bragg getting it both barrels within 24 hours from The Two Julies (a classy 1970s act if ever there was one).
One thing that is particularly disgusting is Bragg’s comment: “Think before you post”. This was a private group Murphy posted to. So you should “think before you post” privately even among people you think are your friends? Welcome to the Soviet Union, comrades.
Actually good advice to anyone, myself included!
Maybe you should now try putting it into practice instead of running around making a prat of yourself?
LOL – or calling out obvious prats. At least I show some self awareness. You might try that. In case you do – bye and nice knowing you 🙂
Off you scuttle!
Somewhat over-analysed. Bragg is neither the first nor the last person to fall victim to the trans cult. No need for all the ad hominem pettiness, frankly. Lots of people have bought, and are peddling the trans drivel.
Bragg, who had some cracking songs, is now just another trans zealot.
Slightly disappointing, but hardly worth getting worked up about. I don’t pick who I read or listen to according to their personal life or political viewpoints (as befits someone who’s a fan of Handke and Heidegger), or there’d be v few left lol. But I’ll always have time for “Levi Stubbs Tears:
“She ran away from home on her mother’s best coat
She was married before she was even entitled to vote
And her husband was one of those blokes
The sort that only laughs at his own jokes …”
And, of course, “A13, Trunk Road to The Sea”.
Bragg is no intellectual, and of course he can’t sing. You’re obviously not old enough to remember punk. Even if you could sing, you hid that, for fear of being dubbed a “muso”.
I had never heard of Distras, but it’s so encouraging to read about young women standing up against the trans nonsense. She’s the real hero here.
My continuing appreciation to Julie Bindel for her long, hard important work in the resistence to gender ideology, and to women like Louise Distras, who speak for truth, on principle, despite such appallingly high costs. You are women of honor and courage, supported by many.
Conversely, so many transactivists seem simply monstrous as human beings, happy to publicly shred/ruin/threaten any person — especially female — who dissents from their views, which of course advance mostly males.
Orwell said writers have about fifteen years of creative ability. Even Shakespeare retired in his early fifties. How much of the comments by Bragg and other entertainers is an attempt to to keep themselves in the limelight long after their creative juices have dried up. Portraying oneself as a rebel in one’s fourties and older is absurd.
“How the purity spiral came for me too.”
Billy Bragg has always struck me as someone with a much higher opinion of himself than is deserved. He knows how to play the crowd, and that’s what matters to him. He practically defines virtue-signalling.
Trans activists and thair”allies”have proven themselves time after time to be vicious, unstable, violent misogynist. They are gargoyles who wear grotesque woman face to parody women and so many women don’t seem to get it because of our innate desire to be kind. It doesn’t work with trans lobby. You’re either with them body and soul.or you’re agin’ ’em. And when your agin em there is no limit to the orchestrated vitriol that will rain down on you. They inspire violence against women over and over and yet we are supposed to believe that they are the vulnerable ones.
Left wing = misogyny. Always has.
Andrew Tate and Laurence Fox are not, to the best of my knowledge, considered to be left wing, dearie.
Need to work on your logic there, dearie.
The original statement used an equality, not an implication. If the intention was to state that left wing implies misogynistic then I would have to agree that Champagne Socialist was committing the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
What part of equals don’t you lads understand?
I know you right wingers are pretty dim by definition but this is getting ridiculous!
Sorry, which bit of my analysis do you find in error?
CS. You’ve even been told which fallacy you have used. For gods sake google it instead of calling people dim. You’re making yourself look stupid.
You could easily have demolished the original argument by pointing to left wingers who are not misogynistic. Lots of them.
Well spotted. But on this particular topic fallacious reasoning seems to be the name of the game.
Reason of any kind seems to have flown out of the window
It’s this topic, and perhaps this author, that seems to bring out the stupid in people. Even more embarrassing is people patting themselves on the back for their own stupidity.
You’re a plonker.
Billy Bragg’s policy preferences are not my policy preferences–understatement–but can we lay off the cheap-and-easy appeals to “misogyny”?
Is “misogynist” this week’s “Nazi”? Are cheap-and-easy appeals to misogyny just misandry dressed up in the language of misogyny?
Besides people who are not women who are desperately trying to convince themselves that they are women, who actually hates women?
Well I do not know whether Bragg has a woman problem but certainly Ms Bindel has a man problem
Exactly!
I’d describe BB as fairly hard left; never noted for showing respect to anybody.
I like Billy Bragg. I think he’s wrong a lot of the time, but I’d prefer him to wear his heart on his sleeve and have his say. Speech is good. Understanding both why he holds the views he does, and working out where he misses the bigger picture is important. But he plays too much side-ism, often unable to see or grasp counter-opinions. Too much “Which side are you on?” and being the party lackey over nuanced judgements on complex issues.
However, I’d love to see him singing “Rotting on remand” for Julian Assange outside Belmarsh prison – but I think he might have his feet to far under the establishment table by now.
First, the link for this is to Stylist magazine!! Not the worlds most credible source.
Second, what the article claims is that men asking women to “give us a smile” is sexual harassment in itself.
I don’t want to change the world
I’m not looking for a new England
I’m just looking for another girl
This is just silly paranoid nonsense. The majority of those supporting the trans movement will also have supported feminism, and will generally continue to do so. The idea that all these people were pretending to support feminism, but just waiting for a chance to drop the mask and start bullying women is patent nonsense. Disturbing, deranged nonsense even.
What, did you think the ranks of trans activists were filled with reactionary anti feminists of a conservative stripe desperate to get back to a pre feminist era when women dressed like ladies (and now men can too)?
The whole essay sounds anti-human. You get the feeling that such essays are the result of too big of guns and not enough targets and armour.
The actual quote from Bragg:
So clearly he is responding to an argument (on X) around genital incompatibility, already presented. In other words this may not be his opinion at all. His argument is of the form “if you believe x then are you not committed to believing y”. That’s not at all the same as saying “I believe y”.
Sorry to labour this but this is dishonest writing and needs to be called out.
Looks like we’ve all been taken in a bit here. Looks like this is just a piece of score settling after a spat that took place earlier in the year:
https://twitter.com/billybragg/status/1635654166537465856?lang=en
So, reading the piece it’s basically one man (who is a male feminist), and multiple women who have gone after her.
Invariably, it’s those two groups (male feminists, college educated “progressive” women) who support trans and are responsible for its disproportionate reach.
Which shows why feminism, women and their persistent whining about “misogyny” and “he hates wimmen” have just become an unfunny, sick joke.
Men crrated those female only spaces – sports, jails, toilets, community centres.
Women responded by attacking men’s spaces, denying male victims of domestic violence even exist (as this article itself repeatedly implies, only women DV victims exist or matter) or mocking male suicide victims.
And its women – not the patriarchy, misogyny or those evil men, women – who undermined their own special spaces (which only they enjoy, no such equivalents for men) with their narcissistic envy and hatred of men, their insistence that there are no biological differences between men and women. Which in turn fed this insane trans ideology which merely uses their own arguments and tactics (“called every name under the sun” or denied employment if you go against trans ideology).
Take, for instance, this lady in Distras. (sorry!) No remorse or acceptance that her peers and sisters are the ones actually responsible, no accountability. I can also bet that if you told her that men are physically stronger and biologically better in certain professions, she would forget all she said here and venomously attack you for being a sexist misogynist. With no trace of self awareness or honesty.
Please explain to the rest of us what a male feminist is?
Same as a female feminist, only male.
Someone who believes that it’s some kind of war between men and women (with noble feminist men like him on the right side, if course), any difference in outcomes between gender (when unfavorable to women) some evil male plot….and cares little for the actual well being of women, only for his ideological crusade and fake virtue signalling .
Isn’t it amazing how all attacks and abuse targeted at women turns out to be their fault?
“Look what you made me do” as every abuser would say…
On the contrary, isn’t it amazing how nothing is women’s fault?
After men created women’s spaces, and women argued for decades that considering biological differences between men and women is sexist, and after women turn out to be the main supporters of trans…..
It’s still men responsible, as accountability is not possible for women….
I think you’ve just invented a new fallacy: the argument from “what every abuser would do/say”.
A man who thinks being an ‘ally’ will get him laid.
Upvote from me. If someone who has always hated on men starts to specialise for a while in hating on men in frocks, I’m afraid I’m unconvinced.
Similarly, if someone who has consistently believed in daft ideas, starts railing against similarly daft ideas, I’m not really convinced that they are no longer – well, daft!
As I said in another recent thread, radical lesbian feminists are equal opportunities misandrists.
I think it’s the tone of Distras anti-trans that BB, and others, have criticised her for. It’s unnecessarily incendiary. And language has consequences.
You can stand up for women’s rights without being virulently anti-trans. Trans is not a new thing at all of course. It may be that we are seeing a marginal increase as younger people feel they don’t have to hide it in the way previous generations might have. And maybe there’s some confusion too that some may go through as a phase.
But we can be kind on both sides of this and just dial it down a bit and listen.
Rule for this topic: read from the bottom, as that is where the best, the most reasonable, the best argued comments will be.