Activists From England

"Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being ‘unnatural’: homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from a prejudice that a person’s stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their ‘natural’ role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women’s reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong."

"The simple moral case for resisting transphobia as a form of cruelty should be enough for anyone who has been similarly victimized by society (as cisgender lesbians, gay men and bisexual people have all been in one way or another) to stand with us in solidarity. Yet it should also be a matter of self-interest. The world in which trans people’s rights are restricted relies on narratives of dehumanization and myths of sexual predation. Restricting trans people’s rights relies on policing other people’s gendered appearance in toilets and changing rooms by arbitrating on who looks male or female enough, and by punishing deviation from rigid norms with intimidation and violence. It involves kids following the examples of adults and harassing their peers in the playground for being different. It relies on parents either beating into submission the child asserting their identity, or psychologically breaking them with conversion therapy. These traumatic experiences affect all ‘queers’, whether trans or cis. Advocating for them in any form for any letter will inevitably normalize their use against everyone judged queer. Politically, it is a gift to fascists at a time of growing far-right sentiment in Europe and North America alike."

"Patriarchy is based on three key ideas: that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are a natural, immutable and exhaustive binary; that all males should be masculine, and all females should be feminine; that masculinity is incompatible with and superior to femininity."

"Misogyny, as we’ve seen, is multifaceted and polices different people and different kinds of bodies in different ways: all must be resisted in order for feminism to truly challenge patriarchy."

"Trans women have received much more coverage, both good and bad. But it is wrong to equate the mainstream media with the LGBTQ+ movement or, more specifically, the trans movement. The idea that greater visibility automatically leads to greater political power is a misapprehension, particularly when some of the most celebrated trans women in media are actresses, models and writers – industries in which all women are sexualized and obsessed over."

"The reality is that transition is an act most trans women and girls see as lifesaving, and one for which they can be punished severely: with violence, with community and familial rejection, with poverty, with mental illness, with sexual abuse, with domestic violence and, yes, with murder. That we can be both highly at risk of rape by men and blamed for rape by feminists is made possible because the media constructs trans women simultaneously as deviant men and as dangerous women."

"Trans people deserve social dignity and personal respect, regardless of whether or not they wish to immerse themselves in feminist politics. At a time of growing populist authoritarianism, which seems determined to entrench sexism, misogyny and transphobia across the globe, one may even wonder why a theoretical framework for understanding trans people should be the prime concern for any feminist."

"Theory is important: it shapes our society, whether or not we engage with it intellectually. [...] But theory should only ever play second fiddle to the practical work of movement-building, resource-allocation, care and solidarity. Political coalitions rarely achieve full mutual understanding of every facet of one another’s reality. Rather, they are practical collaborations based on shared goals."

"Being trans, of course, is not a consciously adopted political position, just as claiming a trans identity is not, usually, an expression of a consciously held ideology. A trans person is just a person. We see our daily lives through the same everyday lens as most human beings; after all, we are simply trying to live. However, as with all stigmatized social identities, the very ability to articulate being trans, or to work, seek healthcare, or participate in civic life while trans, is political."

"Labour itself is innocent of transphobia, both within its membership and from some of its key figures, who have failed to show full and public solidarity with trans communities. Anti-trans discourse is very much alive on the left in Britain, in trade unions and in local party branches."

"‘Trans’ [...] is an umbrella term that describes people whose (their personal sense of their own gender) varies from, does not sit comfortably with, or is different from, the biological sex recorded on their birth certificate based on the appearance of their external . The standard view of how sex and gender manifest in the world is as follows. Babies born with observable penises are recorded as male, referred to and raised as boys, and as adults are men; babies born with observable vulvas are recorded as female, referred to and raised as girls, and as adults are women. To be trans is, on some level, to feel that this standardized relationship between one’s genitalia at birth and the assignment of one of two fixed gender identities that are supposed to accurately reflect your feelings about your own body has been interrupted. How the person who experiences this interruption reacts to it can vary hugely – which is why ‘trans’ is a catch-all word for a diverse range of identities and experiences."

"In all this, it cannot be emphasized enough that the political demands of trans people align with those of disabled people, migrants, people with mental illnesses, LGB people and ethnic minorities (and, needless to say, trans people can be found within all of these groups). This overlap between the needs of different marginalized people must be stressed because the illusion that trans people’s concerns are niche and highly complex is often a way to disempower them. The emphasis on the ‘minority’ status of minorities keeps them focused on explaining their difference in public discourse, so that they can be continuously batted away as an aberration or minor concern. In the specific case of trans people, this disempowerment begins at the most fundamental level: with our bodies and our right to exercise autonomy over them without interference by society. If we are to liberate all trans people socially, we must begin with the liberation of the physical trans body."

"Human beings rely on familiarity to understand and empathize with others, and we find it easier to extend compassion to those we can relate to. Given that, like any minority, trans people are unfamiliar to the average person, we rely more heavily on media representation, on political solidarity from people who aren’t trans and vocal, and ongoing support from public institutions to create the right conditions for understanding and compassion from the rest of society. By the same token, we’re especially vulnerable to the spread of misinformation, harmful stereotypes and repeated prejudicial tropes. And the latter, unfortunately, are widespread in public culture, just as they have been throughout history. Trans people are discriminated against, harassed and subjected to violence around the world because of deep prejudices that have been embedded into the fabric of our culture, poisoning our capacity to empathize, and even to accept trans people as fully human."

"Everyone has a right to set sexual boundaries for any reason and to not feel pressured sexually on an individual basis."

"Trans people are emblematic of wider, conceptual concerns about the autonomy of the individual in society. Their rejection of dominant, ancient and deep-seated ideas about the connection between biological characteristics and identity causes a dilemma for the nation state: whether to acknowledge and give credence to the individual’s assertion of their own identity in law and in culture; or to mandate that it, the state, is the final authority on identity, and to assert its power over the individual – by force if necessary. Attacking the very concept of trans people by imposing rigid and immutable definitions of sex and gender, as Orbán’s party has done, is the latest iteration of the way national governments embrace totalitarian ideology. After all, attacking trans people has been a part of fascist practice since the destruction of ’s Berlin back in 1933 by Nazi youth brigades."

"The twenty-first century has seen wider acknowledgment of the fact that human sexuality is much more complex than the rigid and unchanging categories of heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual can express; the experiences of trans people are just one part of this increased sexual diversity. In the case of non-binary people – whose gender identities and expressions may sit outside of the categories of man and woman, or move between the two – the nineteenth-century categories of human sexuality make little sense – which is why the term ‘queer’ has risen in popularity."

"By the end of the 2010s, trans people weren’t the occasional freak show in the pages of a red-top tabloid. Rather, we were in the headlines of almost every major newspaper every single day. We were no longer portrayed as the ridiculous but unthreatening provincial mechanic who was having a ‘sex swap’; now, we were depicted as the proponents of a powerful new ‘ideology’ that was capturing institutions and dominating public life. No longer something to be jeered at, we were instead something to be feared. Soon after the Lucy Meadows inquest, that fleeting opportunity to shed light on the bullying of trans people evaporated. In the intervening years, the press flipped the narrative: it was trans people who were the bullies."

"First, one of the most important – and, for many, confusing – questions: why do some trans people need medical intervention at all? Dysphoria, the antonym of ‘euphoria’, is the clinical term now used to describe the intense feeling of anxiety, distress or unhappiness some trans people feel in relation to their primary sex characteristics (genitals), their secondary sex characteristics (breasts, facial hair, menstruation, face shape, voice) or how these physical traits cause society to interact with them, by perceiving them as a male or female. Previously called ‘gender identity disorder’ and, before that, ‘transsexualism’, gender dysphoria is the name given to an experience many trans people struggle with, which can be helped by medical intervention. Although the term is widely used within the community, different trans people can experience dysphoria in very different ways, and so might have different clinical needs."

"The reality of trans life today is often hidden from public view."

"Suicide attempts occur at a higher rate among trans people than the general population. Indeed, the statistics are truly alarming: research by the UK charity Stonewall published in 2017 found that 45 per cent of trans young people had attempted suicide at least once. Yet, behind the statistics are individuals, suffering in private and leading complex human lives: there is rarely one simple explanation for such a tragedy."

"I immersed myself at an early age in the history of centuries of Jewish suffering. Expulsion from England in 1290, from Spain in 1492 alongside the Muslims. On and on until the ultimate destruction, before, finally, sanctuary arrived with the 1947 UN decision to partition Palestine and create a refuge for Holocaust survivors."

"In the 1960s, the left backed Israel. Aged 10 in 1967, I cut out news stories each day of the six-day war. In 1973, Israel, caught off guard by Egyptian and Syrian forces in the Yom Kippur war, was again the underdog, supported in Britain by the Labour opposition but not by the Heath government."

"Whilst there are of course plenty of dissident Jews in Britain, my observation is that neither the vast majority of individual members of JVL nor the organisation itself can really be said to be part of the Jewish community since the organisation was set up to oppose the conclusion that I'm afraid that every significant Jewish community organisation has arrived at about the Labour Party. I do think it is possible to eradicate antisemitism in the Labour Party and to defend the Labour Left's project but not by denial of the problem within the Labour Party."

"I do accept that there were antisemitic left activists around the country, and undoubtedly, they were there in Riverside and Liverpool. I wish we'd never had Momentum branches. It was never our decision to set them up – they set themselves up. We didn't have the resources for a compliance unit."

"JVL behaves as if it speaks for Jewish socialists. It does not. And too many of its members self-define as 'Jews' only to attack other Jews."

"Growing foreign perils were perceived and promptly and fully reported, first to London and then to ministers. Some permanent officials, such as Crowe in his time and later Vansittart, struggled hard to convince governments of the need for a strong foreign policy, and to puncture the prevailing euphoria with a bodkin of realism. They failed. They failed because there was another, competing influence on politicians, a more congenial and therefore in the end a more effective influence: a constellation of moralising internationalist cliques, each with its ideas-peddlers, its contact-men in high places, and its tame press. These busy romantics – from Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) and Lord Robert Cecil on the Right, through liberals like Smuts and Gilbert Murray in the middle to Kingsley Martin and Clifford Allen on the Left – not only believed, admirably enough, that morality rather than power ought to govern relations between states but acted as though it did... The internationalists successfully imposed on governments their pretension to speak for the inarticulate and unsounded body of the British nation; that is, to represent public opinion at large."

"One key fact about contemporary antisemitism is that it must not be mentioned. Antiracists are educated to assume that talk about antisemitism is an indicator of a Zionist attempt to silence the oppressed Palestinians; it is mis­recognized as the mobilisation of Jewish victim­power, the playing of the Holocaust card. The left is not hostile to Jews when they are powerless and stateless; but it finds it hard to shake the idea that Jews are untrustworthy and are connected to money. The image today is that the Jews have managed to strike a bargain with the American and capitalist devil; instead of playing their role as the symbol of the oppressed, they are conceived of as having saved themselves at the expense of everybody else."

"The object of the Socialist movement is not material but spiritual; it lies in the discovery of methods of reducing to a minimum the attention of man to the material things of life in order that he may have more time to develop personality and make what use he will of a splendid leisure."

"Corbyn himself was imbued in antisemitic politics, and defended antisemites against Jews. Antisemitism, like other racisms, is about what you do, it's not about who you think you are. Apologists are now saying that Corbyn didn't do enough to tackle antisemitism. That gets things the wrong way round. Corbyn was the antisemitism."

"Germany has said that British democracy is degenerate. Well, I for one was never more proud of British democracy than when Professor Freud, that great scientist, aged and infirm, became an exile from his country and was welcomed within our shores. There was taken to him as an invalid the register of the Royal Society in order that he might inscribe his name therein, an act which I believe has never been carried through in this country except for members of our Royal Family; and thus degenerate democracy linked an exiled and distinguished Jewish scientist with members of our own Royal Family. That seemed to me a cause of pride, and not a sign of degeneracy."

"The Labour Party breached the Equality Act by committing unlawful harassment against Jews by employing antisemitic tropes and by characterising complaints of antisemitism as fake smears. The cases adjudicated, says the EHRC report, were "the tip of the iceberg"."

"He believed that Christianity stood for the bettering of their fellow men, and the raising of their condition. Were not these the very tenets of Socialism?"

"In Britain, however, such anti-Israel attitudes have moved from the radical fringe closer to the mainstream and have even begun significantly to infiltrate the Labor party. Tony Greenstein, chairman of the Labor Committee on Palestine, has for instance been one of the more persistent advocates of the "Zionism is Fascism" myth as well as the thesis of Nazi-Zionist collaboration. Interestingly enough, one of Greenstein's discussion documents on Zionism (entitled "Anti-Semitism's Twin in Jewish Garb") was hailed by an organ of the neo-Nazi National Front as "excellent." Such strange convergences between the Left and the Right are by no means new in modern history, though there is something peculiarly grotesque in the spectacle of self-confessed Nazis expressing their approval of Jewish left-wingers who equate Zionism with fascism!"

"The author was only recently held by a British Court to be a "notorious antisemite". In my opinion this book is antisemitic rubbish."

"The depressing reality is that this book will be read and admired by people who don’t like Jews. It may well provide them with a vehicle to spread their hatred. ... In this book, in 2023, we have the myth that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis and consigned Jews to death. To my mind, this is a fabrication which Greenstein has created by stitching together quotes from Holocaust historians who wouldn’t recognise his work as having anything to do with their own."

"Labour is now mounting an inquiry into accusations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club. I chaired the club way back in 1984, and recall that it invited one Tony Greenstein to speak on behalf of a group called the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine. Greenstein caused bewilderment and outrage in defending terrorist violence against Israel. When a resolution was put to affiliate the club to his organisation, only two votes were cast in favour with dozens opposed. Greenstein recalls this and has more recently lambasted me and my university comrades as "the biggest collection of dimwits I recall". For good measure, he defended the IRA's attempted murder of Margaret Thatcher as a "military target"."

"[T]his guy has problems - he thinks he's me - put this Zio out of his misery otherwise he might self harm."

"For students of anti-Zionism and borderline antisemitism (and sometimes worse) there has been much to ponder in the past couple of years. Even someone as extreme as Tony Greenstein — expelled from Labour recently — has been called a Jewish tribalist by that Judaeophobic jazz musician Gilad Atzmon whom Greenstein in return calls an antisemite and a Holocaust denier. Atzmon for his part has been lionised by George Galloway who claimed to have read chapters of one of Atzmon’s appalling anti-Jewish books to his wife in bed. The other week, Greenstein was on Galloway’s Russian government funded TV show, Sputnik and no one mentioned Atzmon. Pals for now in battling the witch-hunt."

"[Greenstein is] probably the rudest person I know in politics. He says many offensive things, most of the time."

"Done so and voted – in favour of course. Please try to make sure that people on BIN [Boycott Israel Network] vote and to vote yes. It will be quite good for us that a JC [Jewish Chronicle] poll comes out in favour of working with the EDL [English Defence League]!!!"

"Nazi Germany in a sense built the state of Israel at a crucial time and you can actually say that the state of Israel today is Hitler’s bastard offspring because the ideology, the ideology that permeates Israel, Jewish racial supremacy, originated in the fascist states of Europe."

"What did I dream about at Boots? Well, the big ambition was to get onto the cosmetics, but I never made it...""

"This fierce, impatient feminism needs to be recognised. I call it the new feminism because it looks very different from the feminism of previous generations. For a start, it can no longer be confined to any kind of ghetto. It is everywhere. In the Seventies, feminism could be identified with a clearly defined women’s liberation movement. It has since fragmented and splintered; but splinters of it are lodged in the hearts and minds of almost every woman in Britain. We should not be diverted by the fact that few women call themselves feminists into believing that feminist beliefs appeal only to a minority of women. In survey after survey the vast majority of women, especially young women, say that they would like to see more equality between the sexes at home and at work. I would also argue that feminism today is not just a middle-class movement. It is often taken for granted that modern feminism appeals only to middle-class professional women. As I researched my book and set up interviews with women from all kinds of backgrounds and in all kinds of occupations, I was struck by the fact that real anger at inequality, real desire for change, and a real sense of women’s growing potential, were being articulated by all the women I spoke to. I heard those ideas just as strongly, if not more strongly, from women who worked as cleaners in south London or as members of community groups in Glasgow as from lawyers or journalists or MPs. My sense that feminism cannot be seen as appealing only to middle-class women is backed up by survey information. For instance, one recent MORI poll showed that women in social groups D and E are more likely than AB women to say that feminism has been good for women."

"I fear that we are being set a trap and falling into it, by playing this role in a farce that we didn’t script. As many have said, there is a spiralling craziness about this government’s approach, where the actual aim is not to achieve any of the stated objectives but to ratchet up the sense of crisis. We know, and they know, and they know that we know, that one key aim of the Rwanda policy is not to solve any potential challenges caused by arrivals on small boats but to create a distraction from the government’s real challenges. The more polarised and furious the debate gets, the more successful is the distraction. And yet many of us continue to play our role. But we cannot do otherwise. Because, while this performative cruelty may be in part a game to the politicians who put it into practice, for the people who are actually affected by the policy, it is far from a game. The narrative that the Rwanda policy is just a dead cat, thrown on to the table to distract from Partygate and the cost of living crisis, ignores the real harm that the policy is doing and the worse harm that it would do if people stopped opposing it. Let’s not forget that the deportations last week were halted only because people continued to dig in their heels. Dogged individuals at charities supported refugees threatened with deportation day and night and lawyers worked tirelessly on their legal challenges. They all knew that this is no time to give up, because what may look like a farce to some is in fact a tragedy in the making. Nobody who has heard or read any of the interviews with the refugees threatened by removal to Rwanda can be left in any doubt that the cruelty is real."

"[In an article on Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman (1999).] Greer's fundamental conclusion is that the pursuit of equality is now doomed. Instead, women must pursue liberation. "Equality must be seen to be a poor substitute for liberation," she says. Is this a valid distinction? I believe that the pursuit of liberation - the peculiar, individual, often contradictory journey to find freedom from the lies and conventions around us - is something that each individual woman can take on for herself. And yet I believe that it is only possible to pursue that liberation if you are not ground down by an economic and political system that systematically discriminates against you. Inequality in Britain is not a side issue. Inequality locks women out of power, and condemns women to poverty. Inequality prevents women from being fairly rewarded for their work, from being able to speak out and be heard, from being able to bring up their children in dignity, from bringing those who rape and beat them to justice. The struggle for equality is not the struggle to reshape women in the pattern of men, since men's lives too must be revolutionised if equality is to be grasped. Feminism must transform society so that women feel that they can have an equal stake in it, at work and at home. Then indeed we will see the rise of the liberated woman."

"[On the promise of prominent women in the New Labour government elected in 1997.] I really felt that we were on an irresistible journey. There was still this big gap to close, but I felt that we wanted to close it, and it was possible to close it, and therefore we would. We were in a virtuous ­circle. And what I feel now is that policy changes are not enough, ­because the culture is still very resistant to change. The book's subtitle is The Return of Sexism, and while I don't really think sexism ever went away, it's stronger than it was. It's as though something crept in by the backdoor – and we turned around and it's everywhere, and you just think, 'OK, we've got to deal with this again."

"We can’t sit back and wait for someone else to do the work that is needed, we each have to get on and do what we can ourselves."

"It’s vital to speak up for humanism and rationalism in a world in which more and more people are falling into misinformation and prejudice. Obviously we can’t dismiss the positive role that religion plays in many people’s lives, but I am concerned that so often people are just picking up on lazy prejudices rather than trying to build consensus around ways forward. Humanism has a role to play in helping to ground debates in truth and pragmatism."

"I have been so struck by the number of women who have come up to me in the last few years saying that Living Dolls was the first feminist book they read and wanting to talk about it with me. It’s very good for a writer to hear that! But it’s also sad, because they always go on to say that they feel that little has changed. In fact, the rise of social media and online misogyny often makes life harder for young women, and there is worryingly a growing divide in attitudes between young women and young men. My new book, which I’m working on at the moment, explores the current backlash to women’s rights and how we need to rebuild feminism in the face of these growing threats."

"Honesty. I think all religions involve an element of self-delusion, and that’s no way to live your life. And freedom: the great thing about living in a secular society is that people have the ability to pursue their own religious or non-religious beliefs in their own ways, but not to compel others to follow them."