RedFem

We discuss new Vice documentary The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate, out now on BBCiplayer. Tate is revealed as a serial rapist as the documentary interviews three of his victims, the CPS revealed as incompetent and complicit as decided to not prosecute despite three women coming forward, and we give our thoughts on how sinister Tate's lair in Bucharest is (all staff look uncomfortable!) Our chat forays into the wider issues of porn, prostitution, and that wanting to taking people out into the woods away from civilisation tends to indicate cultishness. We also comment on how poor socially Tate seems and how his fake extrovert image is a cover for a closed, malignantly narcissistic personality.

The likely conclusive episode of a 3-part series analysing how the Left has been degraded into radical liberalism, postmodernism, and disorganisation. We discuss how the radlib Left purports to support women workers rights and yet wants a brothel in every office and trade union building. How the characteristics of being a socially and developmentally delayed 'loser', or embarrassment around being a 'normie', and other forms of cringe, have become central currents among the desiccated Left of the Global North. We also chat about the misogynist Left's justification of porn as 'sex work' and so by their own logic they should only want Andrew Tate to be a better boss to his 'workers'. 

In the absence of revolutionary or radical thinking, if the sexist Left's vision won, we would be left with a world not particularly different to the current one (and one arguably far worse for women). It is that fall from being able to envision a different set of social relations that really marks the once radical Left's drift to liberalism, capitulation to the status-quo, and ultimately an acceptance of the current social order. 

We discuss the disintegration of the UK Left from the 2010s onwards and how that decline led to space for postmodern ideas to take hold. The ensuing existential crisis over dwindling numbers led to an unwillingness to challenge postmodern ideas as they gained popularity. The Left began to liberalise as a reaction to its marginal status. It viewed Transgenderism opportunistically as a social struggle to reignite a civil rights 'fight' that could make them relevant again. Because of the Left's lack of genuinely emancipatory sexual politics - at least in the Global North - there still exists a strategic oversight that has ensured the Left continues to lose credibility: namely, that the working class is ever going to think men entering spaces with women and children is acceptable. By taking on the ideology of the PMC, of which gender identity is just one part, the Left has consigned itself to being attractive to either individuals from the middle-classes playing rebel, or oddballs who take part in politics to experience social contact. 

The so-called post-Left and post-socialist conclusions of American Marxists are increasingly shared by us here in the UK. Unless we revamp materialism and popularise a structural analysis, somehow, against all odds, we will only be left with nostalgia for better times past where class struggle was once possible. 

This understanding threads through out the discussion as we cover much more ground across a litany of feminist and Marxist questions, tell of our own experiences, argue political labels are almost useless today, that tribalism is anti-politics, and so on.

This episode recounts an unsettling weekend Jen experienced that features a character known as 'Peter the pedophile'. The discussion forays into the terrible things people often end up doing for money when young and poor, how hyper-sexual humour is a form of aggression, and how lesbians and gay men are not the same species. 

Some advice to apply when traveling abroad so that you, as a woman traveler, can avoid the things we've encountered. Male violence is an unfortunate global reality, one often demonstrated to women whilst traveling due to them being understood as an 'outsider' to that particular place, especially its male society. This discussion recounts several sexual assaults that took place to one of us whilst traveling abroad and the subsequent creation of some fairly strict travel rules based on those experiences. 

We discuss Prince Harrys' new book 'Spare' and comment on its post-modern twist, dub it a Freudian field day, and remark on his hypocrisy regarding the Royal Family. We read it so you don't have to!

We put forward that femininity cannot just be assessed at the symbolic level of aesthetics and beauty practices, but requires a social-relations analysis as the infantilisation of women in service of patriarchy. We also discuss in the final third of the episode how the far-Left has a tradition of working with the rightwing, taking every available platform, and that activists should be defined by their political work, rather than self-declared political identity.

We discuss the recent arrest of digital pimp Andrew Tate for sex trafficking and entrapment of women in Romania. We compare and contrast Tate with Jordan Peterson and put forward our analysis that Tate is a symptomatic figure of late capitalism and societal decay. Our discussion touches on multi-level marketing scams, financialisation, and a critique of contemporary heterosexual social relations. 

We review the final three episodes of Megan Markle and Prince Harry's Netflix docs-series and arrive at somewhat more sympathetic conclusions. Includes reference to Lacan's being or having the phallus! Freud's compulsion to repeat and some advice for the Royal duo: acknowledge your unearned wealth and find greater freedom in honesty... 

We discuss Catherine Liu's excellent book Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, but focus on the only chapter we have sharp criticism of entitled 'The PMC Has Sex'. Why? Because the chapter represents the failings many communists, Marxists, and socialists have when it comes to an analysis of sexual politics and unwillingness to engage with feminism.

On The Woman Question (our blog) will soon have a positive review of the overall book on the site.