title of this meeting is sigas Alas and Trad Wives has sexism changed and the speaker will be Sophia Beach who's a member of the Socialist working Party Central Committee and author of white should be a socialist thanks Sophie uh and thank you everyone for coming to this final session of Marxism it's been an absolutely fantastic day and hopefully we'll have some fun talking about these three tropes in society and why we think they're wrong well I think firstly it's obviously important for us to start with why we're having this meeting um but it might be worth saying that I'm sure many of you in this room may have come to this meeting maybe if you're um under a certain age cut off point thinking what the hell is a sign look don't worry you are not going to be diagnosed or find out that you are one in this meeting or at least I hope not anyway and to be honest whilst I am going to tell you what a sigma mail is um I cannot tell you where the [ __ ] this man is AA that will not be that will not be in the in the meeting at all yeah I probably should say my my language in this meeting but I think 7: p.m. is sort of Marxism water shed that's we'll be all right with that but look I mean all jokes aside this is a really important meeting for us because hateful content about towards women is still being turned out online as we speak every single minute um and I think we've seen a rise in popularity of sort of so-called lifestyle gurus who teach people both how to get rich um but also how to be misogynist at the same time and as well as a spike in people like that we've also seen a spike in popularity of right-wing prolife women um who teach you all manners of things and as the chap I'll get on to them a little bit later but just so people might want to know uh these are genuine YouTube videos that you can find by a trap by a quite a Infamous chap that I'm going to speak about a little bit later but she's got three videos one how to turn your apartment from a turn off to a turn on uh if I had if I had an apartment I probably have to watch that video uh how to look modest and attractive with a bigger chest these are kind of things the TR to say and my ultimate favorite how to go from gold boss to the perfect Homemaker and transition that I'm sure you know we all really want to try and achieve in this room but look obviously I think over the years there has been a rise in the popularity of sexus ideas you know in reference to this the feminist fist Susan fui said in the New York Times recently that there is more roal misogyny now than there has been in decades and actually the content of the kind of videos that we're seeing online right the sexism is overt it's not submissive it's not something we have to explain these people are sexist and they're proud of it they say it all the time um and actually I think across all of the political Spectrum but particularly on the well across the Spectrum on the right it is clear that actually what the expectation of women is how we should should act how we should behave and how we should be treated and I think it's worth saying that on the flip side there is a lot about what men are expected to be in society as well actually many men claim that there's a crisis in masculinity um you know they say that actually the degradation of the alpha male or the toxic man is something that some men have to try and reclaim and actually lots of right-wing people like Andrew T like Ben Shapiro like Joe Rogan uh Milo yapis the list goes on they say that is the fault of women uh no surprise there is the fault of things like hash me2 movement or the LGBT plus movement and so on that is to blame for the so-called decline in traditional masculinity that they think needs saving um and look the content that is created online gets billions of views but I think an important point that I want to make today is that this is not disconnected from the material world it's not as though this is just happening online and has no real effect on people's experiences people will have heard at Marxism Festival about how sound in the alarm of the rise in the far right across Europe and actually just I've just listed a load of internet celebrities right who have these backwards ideas but the same arguments are made by Donald Trump by Victor Orban by Maloney by Le Pen and by farage and what else have we seen we've seen attacks on women's bodily auton autonomy from Road versus Wade to attacks on trans rights in this country too so really in this meeting I'd like to look at sexism and the role of women's oppression really in This Global context because I think by situating it as a part of the world that we live in as fundamental to the system of capitalism not only can we understand where it comes from how maybe sexism has changed but fundamentally we can also understand how we can get rid of it and it's worth noting that we've seen a deep polarization in society and I think a shift to the right about what our expected gender roles are but it's important to know that these ideas don't just pop out of nowhere they stem from the structures of society that we live in and I think with capitalism it throws us into crisis time and time again economic crisis these are fundamental to the system and whether we're in a boom period or a crisis a vaster recession like the one that we're in now the needs and the ideas of the system can change and morph along with it in order to try and save some of the systems and the structures however the role of women's oppression the Reliance on women's labor within the family and the structures from which sexism arises in society I'm going to argue in this meeting have stayed the same but well first firstly let's get on to the point that I'm sure everybody wants to know what is a sigma and what are alphas so I'm sure that alphas and sigmas well definitely an alpha is a term that everybody has heard um about alphas and sigmas along with words like beta inel Omega gamma and every other Greek alphabet in between um is a terms used online predominantly to Des to describe different categories of men and of course like an alpha male is something that's pretty straightforward actually this has sort of been a mainstream discourse for decades you know this idea that people always talk that us as humans we sort of live in our Social Circles in these natural hierarchies right and that are supposed to that we're always trying to supposed to place ourselves within um and much of this nonsense believe it or not was actually based off of studies of wolf packs in the 1940s um this is where the the idea of the alpha male comes from right a man who is the dominant group that all the women look to that looks after the children and so on and people said oh well if wolves do it then surely that's how humans must organize as well I mean that the science was pretty flimsy then but it's obviously utterly discredited now and actually what's quite interesting is that this isn't even true of wolves in the wild this isn't how wolves operate actually the study that was taking place in the 1940s was of a wolf pack Helen captivity so look take from that what you will about the kind of natural hierarchies that we supposedly meant to fit ourselves within in capitalism but despite this the metaphor of the wol pack still has some purchase and whilst Alphas sit on the top with everyone underneath there's also the addition of the lone War Sigma um that like the alpha men sigas are confident they are successful with women they are financially secure but they sit outsides of this hierarchy you know they don't really care what people think of them unlike the alpha mes they're unconcerned with the social climbing and the pressures that all of us you know have to deal with uh they don't care what people think of them and they don't try to be any of these things but somehow they're successful with women anyway um I think it's quite funny isn't it so this it's wild with some of the stuff that you find online when you Google this right there are millions of people out there that think if you put some words in a pyramid it makes it science so many of them but so this is it right this is how we can explain the social sexual hierarchy that men Place themselves within um it's quite ironic really because sigmas are meant to not care what we think about they're meant to stand outside of society but there are thousands of people Googling how can I become a sigma so clearly they must care in some sort of respects but I think what makes sigas unique is not that they just have backwards ideas about women or what men or masculinity should be but rather the sigma male and this ideology presents not just these backward IDE ideas but a whole way to live your life uh this is known as the sigma grind set right it's a mindset for people who didn't get in the room a mind said that is about grinding it's about working hard whether you're in the office or working hard whether you're sat uh in your in your laptop when your in your gaming chair most likely investing in crypto or working out working hard in the gym um actually they teach people how to fit 21 days into a week I'm sure people would have seen to be honest I could earn the with probably get a lot more done but it's this idea right this concept of of making the most of your time getting rich quick standing outside the secret males can get 21 days in a week because they don't care about Society or socializing because they don't like to stand in that sort of hierarchy right so this is the kind of thing that they do but like I say they also have an emphasis on cryptocurrency uh looks maxing people may have heard about something called meing don't know who knows what muing is in yeah for those of you don't meing is when you hold your tongue to the roof of your mouth and apparently accentuates your jawline so you know Elie I think we've got till half past April we might all leave the room like better looking if we do that for the next hour and a half or something look so look this is a lifestyle that makes the most out of capitalist accumulation it's this get rich or die trying attitude the myth of meritocracy you know the idea that actually being like a lone ruding wolf with a Rolex on your wrists is the answer to all the life's problems and it's really ironic because the sigma males and this sort of subculture online they've got quite a lot of figureheads uh Idols that look that they look up to not a single one of these Idols is real right they're all fictional characters that tells you something but even more so and by the way I'm going to list three very influential films so there's going to be some spoiler alerts but I'd argue that you should have most people probably seen them already but some of these people not only they not real in society they're not even real in the films that they right even who they are so this is Tyler dman from Fight Club a figment of the main character's imagination he is your ideal Sigma male he's somebody that they look up to um he's also a violent sexist another person Travis ble fantastic film but if I met a man who said Travis ble was my hero and I want to be like him I run a mile um a stalker and a mass murderer and finally the one that's probably most popular Mr Patrick B this is who they love the YY from the80s who's also a serial killer and hates women I mean these other people's Idols which is absolutely wild and actually the idea of Sigma mindset or Sigma grinds set and the ideology is deeply rooted within sexism um it has a massive amount of misogyny Within alongside rampant individualism homophobia and racism so look the term was actually first used in a blog post in 2010 by someone called Vox day uh his real name is Theodore Robert Beal he's a American sci-fi well science fiction writer as if any of us needed any more of them in the world and he said he said that sigmas are quote and this was the original sort of part of it in 2010 he said sigas are Outsiders who don't who don't play the social game but manage to win it anyhow and who often like women but tend to be contemptuous of them which is one way of putting it if you think about Patrick B it's worth saying that uh Theodore Robert Beal himself is certainly contentious of women who in 2015 said that women shouldn't have the right to vote as quote they are significantly inclined to vote for whomever they would rather [ __ ] so when I saw that vote I thought do you know what Robert Beal might actually have a point because that must be the reason why I didn't want to vote for either of these two no way it could have been their [ __ ] politics I been that politics it just must me because I'm just not naturally attracted to them but obviously there's no surprise then that the sigma male goes hand in hand with sexism it is a lifestyle that not only promotes the system of capitalist accumulation but that system that it promotes relies on sexism and ideas about women to make its profits and just so people know the term Sigma has 15 billion views on the Tik Tok platform alone but of course it's not just all men on the flip side you have the Chad wives as well if sigmas have a grind set then Chad wives have mastered the hustle of the anti- hustle I would say um your typical chap wife is somebody who looks like this by the way obviously these are the same women that is not a stock image right this is like actually the photo [ __ ] that she did but your typical TR TR wife is a woman who lives a kind of idealized 1950 Life as a homemaker she stays home Cooks cleans raises lots and lots of children I should say and also looks after her husband um in quite a lot of instances it's quite rooted in Christian theology uh their favorite and often po part of the Bible is proverbs 31 which describes a wife who can weave Flats make linen garments and provide food for her family um and it's this sort of Ultra Pure hardworking image of like per perfected Domesticity that the ch wives try um and and promote um and actually it's quite worth saying that they' sort of found Freedom they say in intentionally choosing to live a slower life you know freedom in the ideals of not having to work in the hard outside world of capitalism um and look the Trap life subculture ranges from Instagram accounts with millions of followers to bloggers who speculate about whether baking the perfect so sour d can solve mental health um issues so you know that's kind of whole range of their ideas is CH that Hannah neilan this is Hannah neilan's Instagram she's got 9.1 million Instagram followers I unfollowed that person by the way after I took that screenshot hang on a minute um yeah she's got millions of followers she's also runs her own Farm ballerina Farm she's got eight children um and she does all sorts of things from turning butter milking her cows to selling her flower which we'll get back to this woman here is Elina Kate pet uh she's arguably the the original she's the OG tradwife actually and people might think she's American but she actually Heralds from The Humble uh conservative or it might be live them now aases of chelam so this is where elen is from and she's appeared on things like GB news and so on but these two women they've argued that the tradwife movement isn't political this is just women choosing to live their lives saying actually we're told as women that it's wrong to just want to be a homemaker there's nothing political this is just about an individual choice but actually how could promoting a traditionally conservative living pushing the idea that A Woman's Place is in the home be anything other than political and what's more actually many of the incredibly successful or high-profile chap wives are political this is Abby Roth people might know who Abby Roth is she's Ben Shapiro's sister apparently she's not political right so clearly this is Abby Roth and it doesn't take very long you just go in her Twitter having horrible uh words about saying that abortion is murder and here is a tweet that she says that obviously we can't believe we women because isn't bre havar such a great di so clearly actually the Trap wise have got quite a clear route I think into uh the for far right and the altright politics I think as well there's a deep cont contradiction in what many of the Trap wives say because despite them lecturing about it all the time they are in fact working right they actually they working pretty hard all the time uh just as many other women do in society the only difference is is they're making a lot of money off of it from book deals to Amazon sponsorships in one instance a 5,900 $5,900 set of courses on how to be a TRD wife which is ironic because actually this is we're taught how to be one from the day we bloody born as women's in society and Hannah neilan back again who runs this Farm she sells three bags of her ballerina Farm flow for $39 along with you guessed it a St a Sourdough star it um so yeah that's that's what these people do so you know many of these women actually have crafted a living off of the attractiveness of not earning a living or working at all that's rubbish quality but you get the idea so what to do about all of this and how sexism actually changed but it's worth saying that whilst this is hugely popular online not everyone takes it seriously uh for as much genuine Sigma content there is heaps of it ridiculing it and the same with Trad wives but what really does the traction that they get on tell us about sexism today well firstly it is not the chap wives the sigmas the alphas the incels or even the entire internet and its algorithms that is the cause of these ideas within Society um actually if you think about how what I say they're not the ca of the ideas in society but the roles that they play in disseminating those ideas they help to reinforce and also reflect a system that has sexism rooted within it and actually if you think about the chope of the the Trap wife and the alpha male these things can tell us quite a lot about what traditional gender roles and what we're expected to be in society and under capitalism you know I think it would be fair to say though whilst these traditional gender RS haven't changed I think how we sort of view these gender expectations within the media and within popular culture has changed somewhat and I think the ideas about what a man and what a woman should be have changed to be honest if I was doing this meeting 10 years ago I would not be doing a meeting on Chad wives I'd be doing a meeting on rch culture I'd be saying that actually we're seeing the over sexualization of women Often by women the myth that the sexual Liberation movement has won and therefore at universities we should be going on pole dancing clubs and going and women should be going to strip clubs on a for a good night out you know they were the kind of politics of the movement and what we were discussing about sexism 10 years ago another 10 years before that we would have been talking about you know the Bridget Jones effect or the sexualization of the career career woman in her black pencil skir who sort of peers over glasses at you from the office reception you know they're the kind of ideas and the roles of women that we would have been discussing 10 years ago so clearly I think the ideas about women um and what women are encouraged to be changes in order to reflect the needs of society and this can explain the popularity of the CH wives Fame because we live in a time of economic crisis of which there are extremes both to the left and the right on the political Spectrum but our popular culture what we see online also reflects the crisis that we live in and I'm not arguing then that the Chad wives the sigmas and then all of the politicians and the ruling class are sort of huddled in some dingy basement discussing how we can get women into the home or discussing how we can disseminate these sex as ideas it's not a directly intentional process of these people but rather the ideas that we have in Society come from the system that we live in we are utterly products of the world around us and we are shaped by the structures and the ideology of capitalism and look there isn't really anything new about these kinds of Lifestyles that the sigmas and the and the trb wives promote you know they're actually hearken back to age-old ideas about men and women the only difference I think is that the justification for those kind of Lifestyles has changed 100 or even just 50 years ago it would be a Reliance on the church or on moralism to say that's why women should be in the home whereas now people like Jordan Peterson or the incels or even some women on the right they use the arguments of biological determinism right that actually it's not religion that's not why women and men are different but because there's something biologically different our psyches are different it's women's natural place to be in the home you know some even heart to sort of ridiculous Neuroscience around the gender brain and so on to explain these things much of which has been disproven but you know really it's not that women are in the home now because God wishes it but because Men Are from Mars and women are from Venus and Venus is where the house and the kitchen and and are clearly but obviously we have to try and reject some of these ideas because we don't think that sexism is natural in society people are not born with these ideas uh there is nothing determined about backwards ideas or any kind of repressive idea um in in under capitalism we argue that the sexist ideas that people have have to come from somewhere and actually they are rooted in the system and it is within the institution of the family this sort of nuclear family that we're told to live in it is this kind of in institution under capitalism that is where our sexist ideas stem from because Society is structured around the nuclear family you know we are told that this is the natural way to live uh that there and they use methods to sort of enforce this framework don't they from mortgages rent prices Universal Credit and so on but also the ruling class use ideology to enforce it on us as well from Family Values to the kind of toys that little girls are given to play with so these ideas are taught to us and actually like we say they don't come from nowhere and when KL Marx writes that it is not Consciousness that determines being but be about social being that determines Consciousness this is what he means the way in which we are educated organized socialized under capitalism influences all of the ideas that we have about the world but also the kind of ideas that we have for ourselves so then well how is the structure of the family the pause of ideas about women and therefore the the basis for the popularity of trap wives or male dominance hierarchy well firstly it's because the family is essential to capitalism because of the economic role it plays capitalism doesn't need everybody out plowing a field or working in the factory floor rather it needs kids to be healthy to be educated and socialized and by and large women do all of this work within the institution of the family for absolutely free apart from when they're child wives then they get paid for it or people like Margaret fer this sorry I should have check this before this is fer washing up the dishes probably the only time that that she that she ever did it but even this idea right is for on us all the time even The Iron Lady washes the dishes after she's uh cook dinner for her husband no doubt but you know this unpaid labor that women do in producing and raising the next layer of the workforce is fundamental to the workings of capitalism but the family also plays an incredibly ideological role too this role helps to underpin justify and mask the economic function of the family it is within the family where a women's role is laid out and about how idea and and how ideas about us are formed it is within the family where children are first socialized and talk about what is expected of them and how to engage and actually I think this is a big role of where the internet comes in as well because after the family after the school actually where are the next young where is the next place that children are being socialize is online and whilst they may think that they're connecting with people they're doing it alone um I think this is something that has a lot to say about the rise of radical ideas because it is much easier to post something sexist or something racist on Twitter when people say it in society you would hope that it gets called out but online when you're on your own you can say what you like and it goes unmediated and unchallenged and I think this has got a lot you know to answer for in some of the kind of the prolific ideas and backwards ideas that we're seeing quite a lot but I also want to say that it's not just online right because these ideas are pumped out everywhere a big part of the sigma and Alpha ideology is that women only care about money um or settle good looks and that you know the sexual freedoms that women have W have had disastrous effects on masculinity like I mentioned at the beginning but we see these kind of things all the time in the mainstream you know it's still the narrative that women are objects of sexual desire that it's every little girl's dream to go up and find Mr Right you know when it comes to finding a sexual partner we are overloaded with green flags red flags do and don't how to be a good girlfriend I mean these things are clear to us all of the time you don't need to go on the all right online for somebody to tell you have to be a good girlfriend in society you just need to go onto PUO or any kind of other website so I think as well though when you look at some of the traditional wives and some of the things they post they say things like nice nice girls finish first right this is a tradwife blog post um we've heard that phrase before but it's not about women it's nice guys finish last right you can see that there's a flip side of actually how these ideas have awful effects on men and how they should be held and how they should be acting in society and it's not just that these ideas are confined to Tik Tok or online forums they absolutely permeate Society so then when we go back to the kind of content that the sigma grind set or trap guyses produce we we can see that is upholding A system that has the structure of the family at its heart and these aren't just about dictating to women what their place should be um it should be no surprise to people that a large proportion of CH wise followers are men um and actually I think a lot of them are probably just pining or simping to use their expression um or over the TR wise but this is what they're told they should aspire to aain in society you know if you want to be a proper man be an alpha be a sigma and then you can get a lovely traditional wife you know these things are entirely interconnected but I also think the attractiveness of these Lifestyles presents says something more about the ideology and the state of capitalism because they are able to explain away the alienation or the pressures of capitalism without actually addressing it yes one part of the sigma grind set is about making money whilst also being a misogynist but another aspect allows you to think that the loneliness that you feel in society the fact that men live in a world where they can't express emotions the fact that there is isolation a mental health crisis now if you're a sigma that can be a personality tra not something that is a product of a system that you live within actually this is a genuine quote um from a magazine they say that the sigma ideology is quote a mindset that offers a way through the dilemas of modern capitalism that is not a quote from socialist worker it's a quote from TQ magazine so even the mainstream can see that and for women I think you can see how in many ways Triad wife life could be an answer to your problems you know if only to find Financial Security in a man and spend all the days doing the chores that you normally would have to do when you get home from working anyway and actually in the last 10 years or so probably a bit more life has got incredibly hard for people much much harder for people particularly women if you think about the bustle of working the stress of energy bills and rent prices going up the cost of living crisis but for women then I think it means that some of them have perceived perceived our home lives our private lives the time you get to yourself away from the demands of capitalism as some sort of sanctuary you know a little piece of your own world that you can have control over and it's the Trap lives that tell you how to manage it right and I think therefore when the family is actually for women and experience you know the family is where oppression is rooted within the system it is a sight of conflict therefore it's no surprise that for many women they feel like they resisting that system by making the family their own but in this way they are able to paint the family as something removed from politics when it never was everything in our lives from our ideas how we organize and the so-called private sphere of the home are shaped by the social relations of capitalism and look so whil sexism is not new nor the roots and I am just about to finish Sophie don't you worry while sexism is not R nor the roots of women's oppression um or the function it plays in society has changed something has changed um and that's the world that we live in actually if you think about the kind of world of the 1950s where the ideas of trab wiise of alpha males wouldn't have been as controversial or the ideas of the 2000s the birth of a new millennium along with the internet and Limitless possibilities we now live in a world of deep crisis our economic prospects or opportunities of owning a house are very slim marriage rates in Britain are at an alltime low which it's not bad news for us it's bad news for the ring class we don't mind those sorts of things but we're no longer living in the economic boom of Patrick baitman or the so-called career woman but rather we're living in the time of these sorts of political dominance and figures you know I said at the start that I wanted to situate this trend of sigas and chap wives had to be understood in the context of the of the political Spectrum all over the world the rise of the far right is happening in our governments as well as our screens Leen Maloney Trump farage farage and so one and much of their politics is about the return to tradition and emphasis on gender roles many of us you know may be taking back for the number of votes that reformed UK eight of their candidates in the runup to the election were found to have said awful sexist things online things that not only I don't have the time to repeat but I don't have to will because they're not very nice things that they said about women anyway so look just to finish then this can seem like an incredibly B picture to paint right um and that's not what I was intending on I'm sure many of you in this room thought if I wanted to be depressed I would have gone to the meeting on the rise of fascism that's going on now I wanted to have you know chilled out laugh at these kind of people but actually I think what offers us hope is that we can understand why these ideas have a purchase in society and where they come from and that means we can challenge them and get rid of them too you know I also mentioned at the start of the rise of the about the rise of the manosphere and this being a reaction you know these sort of ideas being a reaction to the gains that we've won in mean to um because actually we have won a tremendous of Rights amount of rights in the last 10 years you know not only is the world incredibly different to the 50s about the gender RS it's different to the 50s in a good way too right we have won some things but Ro versus Wade the limitations of liberal equality we know that those rights can be rolled back winning So-Cal equality in law is not the kind of Liberation that we need for women to be freed from the the RS of the home and actually free from the sexist ideas and as socialists we have a route to winning that real Liberation you know to a world where people aren't confined by rigid gender roles where men don't have to be a stoic bread winner and women they're adoring Angelic wives um and it's not the internet that we have to rile against here but a system that is structured around depression and actually people are doing this all the time the outside world and the internet is not just solely a flurry of right-wing ideas the left has an incredibly big voice too just look at the independent votes that they got and the people like Jeremy Corbin and Andrew Feinstein in the election you know no one no these people are voting for Palestine but I i' be pretty convinced to say the majority of people who voted for jery corgin listening to North do not also buy into these ideas right of the sigma grinds set or of the Chad wise if you think about the rise of the Palestine movement that has been led by women if you think about the trans rights movement and so on we understand that it is these kind of struggles that challenge the structures of the system that we want to be a part of and when we say that as well what who really benefits from the sexist ideas in society who really benefits from this institution of the of the family it's not men workingclass men don't benefit when the when women have to you know work two jobs in order whe they or ifone has or everyone has to work for jobs in order to pay for rent or when their wives get paid less so then you know no working class men benefit from these things but rather the ruling class do because it reinforces A system that allows them to oppress over 52% of the population while was exploiting 99% of us and that is a system that tries to fit us into these boxes and there's a reason why actually they have to work so hard to shove these ideas down our throats that's because despite what they say this isn't the natural way for us to live I mean if it's not how wolves live for [ __ ] sake then why should it be how humans should live in society too we think that I think that the majority of people don't want to be hemmed into these rigid G roles that we see in society and I think when we struggle we can begin to break down these ideas and I think the final thing to say then is that we'll hear all sorts of examples of Revolution but for me when it comes to women's Liberation we have to finish on the question of the Russian Revolution of 1917 because when you talk about traditional gender roles when you talk about the role of the family there were few places in the world a that were more where the family was more institutionalized than zarus Russia in 1917 a family where it was legal or a requirement for men to have a whip above the marriage bed in order to keep his women in line but what happened in the Russian Revolution not only did women and men rise up and tear down that 400y old Roman of Dynasty but women won the right to abortion for the first time anywhere in the world they won the right to divorce homosexuality was legalized there were communal cens communal launder that is the kind of vision of society that we want to see that that frees women from the home in Russia in 1917 women were not Chad wives they were revolutionary Fighters and men were not lonely they were our comrades and they fought alongside us and that is the kind of need and the kind of struggle that we need to fight and that is the struggle that happens on our streets not unfortunately in the comments sections on Twitter posts and so on and we need a system to build and to be more radical that challenges the sexist ideas the racism and the trans transphobia spearing from the but also challenges the system at its roots to free women from the tra role of the traditional wife but also to free all of us from the grind set of [Music] capitalism thanks Sophia that was um really brilliant and while you were talking I was kind of reminded about um how the ranch culture that you referenced from the nadis was kind of um you know the system's response to I think second wave feminism and sort of the sexual Li a movements of the 60s and 70s and kind of capitalism's way of commodifying and profiting from the sexual Liberation that women um had had won really and that's like the pole dancing clubs Sex in the City you know this idea that you know you can have great sex you can have a great career and you can also you know um have a family and so on and I think that this whole tradwives um and sigma thing really adds to this it's like oh you can also um be a domestic goddess um and you know be submissive in the home as well my oppression is my choice so it's not oppression anymore but I think also what you said that's really important is that actually for most women this is not possible you know most women actually have to leave their home to go to work um we saw this actually in the impact of the pandemic and you know how how difficult so many women found it and while I think you know actually a lot of these ideas don't actually resonate with um the vast majority of women we have to be very clear that they are toxic and they have a very big impact on broader society and how women feel about themselves they make us feel like even if I don't believe in this tradwife stuff oh I better keep my house really clean um and do everything else as well and it increases uh violence against women as well and the only other thing I wanted to talk about is um actually going a hundred years or more back in history to the Russian Revolution don't have a lot of time but sexist ideas were R in the Russian Revol before the Russian Revolution peasant men used to have a whip above their bed ready to whip their wife and they said they more the whipped her the more that they loved her um and actually through the revolutionary struggle of workingclass women and peasant women fighting back um alongside workingclass men they transformed um their society and they began to build a socialist society based on you know having communal Services communal laundries communal Child Care women involved in politics part of society run of society this has to be our vision working itself and leaving the house isn't an end it's a beginning we're strong in the workplace we're strong outside of the home where we can collectively organize and fight back but that's only the start we're fighting for socialism and that means a radical vision of of what what society looks like I wanted to really elaborate on a number of the things that Sophia mentioned because I think we have to contextualize what's happening and the changes of of the attacks on feminism in the present economic circumstances and neoliberalism is in crisis and what that means is the kind of services that used to support women being mothers like nurseries like uh access to GPS like hospitals like care for their elderly parents has all been swept away in the last 30 years and the reason why I think they are now bringing in a version of kind of Trad wise there's always been that but you have those on the right and I want to add to your Trad wife um Sophia MP I hope she isn't an MP now I haven't checked a woman called Miriam Gates who has really been leading for the for the uh extreme right in the Tory party on this issue she wants women back in the home though she's on an 83,000 Sal in the house of Comm she's she's presently as we speak meeting with uh people who want to reduce our access to abortion she's against children going to Nursery Schools she's against equal pay why are they doing it now because they want us to be the reserve Army of Labor they want to to have to leave work in order to look after children and it's a crisis it's a penalty of motherhood at the moment thousands of women the pregnant then screwed estimate that a quarter of a million women mothers every year uh in the last 5 years are having to leave work or go part time time in order to provide the family care to do all that unpaid labor looking after their immediate families and their extended families and that's what's behind us there's always we can laugh at these women in their lur Ashley flow dresses and uh Wonder at the ability to have eight children to be honest but actually there's something deeply deeply uh threatening about it and it's part of the agenda of the popular rights who want us to to be that that to do more of that kind of work because they're not prepared capitalism is prepared to pay for the services we need to beet both workers and mothers when we choose I think for me TR lives and the AL sign s two sides at the same point so I'm just love it together in terms of what I'm referencing um I think we need be quite conscious of The Not So subtle but subtle undertones that are apparent in these ideologies which is extremely anti-lgbt plus um I don't think there's many sort of like lesbian TR wives um nor like trans people gender performing people bisexual people like and I think the way that the up there said earlier about you know if you make your oppression your choice it's no normal oppression in the same sense that this isn't passive this isn't actively being homophobic outwardly like the Andre types it's quite passively but quite aggressively anti LGBT plus and I think that's a really important element that we don't forget because watching this like as a lesbian I find incredbly threatening because it's my assist has no place in any of these people's minds and I worry for um yeah anyone s of absorbing this ideology thank you I just wanted to talk a little bit about the idea of the Trad life um because we see it as something that comes from the 1950s but if you actually go back to them it wasn't a real thing then either the majority of working class women at the time were not these kind of perfect housewife ideals um and in fact they had to sell that idea at the time um like I'm glad you brought up the example of maret there's people like Mary White House who was this evangelist campaigner um finished LLY in in the US campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment all of these women were selling this idea of the child wife at the time that it actually you know came into existence and um I'm also glad that you mentioned the the RO culture because I think this is the other side of the same point uh both of these groups of people are trying to sell our Liberation back to us at the same time as our oppression is being s back to us yeah I mean I think it was important uh to talk about the the far right because whilst this meeting you know we take the piss out of all these people um I think there's very scary sort of political anchoring um to these ideas um and I think that when we're talking about the far right I think it's also wrong to assume um that it's only old people who are voting for figures like Trump and Maloney um and farage um actually there is a huge surge of young men also voting for them as well I think it was around 6 months ago uh there's an ft article that came out that did these grasps of Divergence in the way that young men and young women vote um and it showed in places like Germany and South Korea um the voting intention around young men was drifting far to the right um and whereas women it was sort of remain the same all all was going to the left um and I think that we uh need to have a sort of analysis about this and that's why I think meetings like this are obviously um incredibly important um because whilst Tik Tok and social media in general um sort of there's a sense that social media is like a contested site um well actually I think that social media is not this sort of hyper sort of democratized Realm but instead it sort of drip feeds us the ideas of the ruling class which is prevailing sort of ideology um of society um and this is obviously incredibly harmful you can see it sort of reflected um in the way in the way that people people are voting um and also it's all about getting buying isn't it you can tell that this is sort of this arises out of aort of Crisis that we're in because it's about getting buying from everyone into the capitalist system so young men if you new enough um or if you sort of you know go to the gym enough you too can become a billionaire you know all it takes is a bit of grinding do you know what I mean um and so obviously I think you know I think is right that we have to look at of the economic foundations of this as well um like we we're facing a cost of living crisis um like where millions are going uh to driven into food banks even if they're in full-time work um there's a huge amount of attacks on the working class um and I think that the idea that people could like potentially young men could transcend this sort of world of Crisis is obviously pretty sort of appealing towards them I also just really quickly want to return to like what the situation is now like the political situation we just had the general election we've got labor in power um will conditions get better for women no they won't get better for women you'll have the same old austerity um just because you've got Rachel Reeves and the like who sort of you know dress in this sort of faite manner um just because we've got you know women in charge doesn't mean that life is going to be improved uh for for women in this country um like her sort of big notion of secure nomics the only people that's going to be secure for are big business not women um it's yeah as someone else said it's women that are the sort of main victims um of austerity and the life and finally I think it's really important that you brought up Russ Revolution because it's true that we in struggle um people sort of you know people L up in struggle and canot overcome oppression that's why sort of like Mark said you know revolution of the festivals of thepress exploited and whilst that might seem sort of like quite a often recited phrase I think I think it's true a couple people have talked about I think it's really true the thing about the there's a a real campaign by both of far and also their right in the context of neoliberalism to push wom into the family but I think there's a reality that there's always been that's always been a subset of of capitalism there's always been ring figures ring figures in Parliament figures on the far right who just argued kind of the most backwards 1950s stuff I think part of the reality today is that those ideas can be broadly appearing to people who are not already part of the farra because of the reality of just how awful life is when you look at the people who watch like a lot of especially the tri wi stuff like s is really right to point out a lot of it like there's this big section of like men who watch it but actually there's a lot of women who watch it who when they ask like why do you watch it they don't watch it because they're aspiring to be Trad wives they're watching it because it's like lifestyle porn it's because Society is so awful and for most women you have to go to work uh people's working hours are longer but also people's commuting hours are longer if you are a woman with children obviously child care costs have become more and more prohibitively expensive while your salary has stagnated people's lives are worse and worse worse you have to spend more and more of your time working or getting to work for less and less money and then you have to go home and whether you live by yourself whether you have a partner whether you you do or do not have children you have this tiny amount of time to do all of the domestic work even just for yourself you know to C your own house to make your own food to wash your own clothing you know people talk about how they organize their weekends and they're like oh I work all week and then Saturday I have to do all of my life tours and I'll try and see a friend on Sunday like it's just like this dreary disal lifestyle that people live and when you are have the the the framework seems like it's just the options that capitalism puts forward there could be a logic to think oh wouldn't it be fantastic if someone could stay home and do all of that wouldn't it be fantastic If I Only Had To Do 50% of the things I do now and I at least didn't have to go to work you know wouldn't that be a better way of organizing things I think that reflects in such a fundamental way how women's Liberation has to be bound up the liberation of humanity how women's oppress is totally bound up with the reality of capitalism because we have to say no the options are not figuring out how to like reorganize the de chairs on the Titanic the are not figuring out you know how it is that like you and your one partner or your friend or your whatever who you live with are you reorganize your lives best to deal with a [ __ ] system the option has to be the say we have to totally transform things there it's not logical that human beings have to be in their own house looking after all of their own needs making their own food these are all things that can be organized Collective way but that cuts against a logic of a system which itemizes and atomizes people in the pursuit of profit and so if we're serious about transforming things yes we have to get rid of all of these repulsive stereotypes but to totally transform things we have to get rid of the system that under all that when we had this meeting last year sphere or the year before we started to talk about Andrew tap and um I think I think really what this you know the kind of title we not trying to you know equate it is saying there's something going on here but there's something going on um in attempts to kind of like popularize kind of like reactionary quite reactionary and backwards kind of sexist ideas there a phenomenon going on and I think it's you know it's useful for us to try and to try and pick through that I remember the I think it was the first time I saw like a TR Video was on Tik Tok in the last year and I was just just bewildered to be honest I was like this very like you know not idealized kind of like even mad manque kind of like is that kind of you know makes everything from scratch what she called and she has that she's like 23 she has about five she has like 10 kids or something like um she's like you know and uh it's just it's just kind of interesting how popular these ideas becoming actually I I think it's you know she's part of Mor church and you know there's you know links to the Christian right and other things that are going on here I think there is a bit of a bit of a problem and I think what we're experiencing actually is a kind of a a conscious effort to R Mark some of the games of our movement some of the games that we made and it's like oh didn't we get rid of like the 1950s idealized House Fight decades ago you know didn't we win the war for abortion rights decades ago and they're all under attack again and I think I think the kind of like realization that that that that that that this is what's going on is important for us to try and build a movement that can take that on and I think um in terms of how do we challenge it CU I think it's right what um what some of the com were saying we're in we're in a dangerous situation where actually lots of young men have being drawn to rightwing idea ideas and actually you know the Reform Party is like immensely popular with like Teenage men uh you know farage and other people and I think you know it's right to talk about you know this mass disillusionment in society there's a big crisis there there's a big crisis what is our response to that you know I think our response is that we have to try and struggle to transform that society and bring people with us you know I think it's right around you know labor is not going to trans you know not going to deliver the changes that means we have to fight to deliver the changes draw more people of you know experienc you know experiencing this alienated you know um you know existence that we all experience you know where we where yeah you know where we're forced to have you know intimate interactions on like an appway swiping left or right you know like you know capitalist thing so I think it's you know I think we have to fight for Unity and struggle because we have a bigger enemy we're fighting together to take on people at the top who are making all of our Lives worse and worse look I just firstly want to say thank you for an amazing discussion um I really really enjoyed that you might think that as the speakers with that's in the script markson Festival but I'm not lying um I genuinely did and look if I don't manage to come back on everyone's questions and so on uh I would definitely be in The Institute bar so you can come and you come over you can have buy me a drink card byy you one we can help to try and get the uh spend up so I firstly kind of want to come a bit to the question of of really the first contribution about the how racism and our experience of sexism are entirely intertwined and I think it also links with the contribution made directly behind you right about you know homophobia and also the way in which you know this is also you know I should have probably stressed it even more in the introduction that you know this is not only sexist but a heteronormative way of living and one that promotes you know um like racism as well but why is it that these things are interl why are women's experiences in society um whether or not it's interl with how they experience sexism or racism or homophobia why do we feel these things so strongly well I think that whatever race you are whatever sexuality you are uh whatever gender you are um the way in which women are perceived in society is that we are solely reduced to our sexual and our reproductive capacity is right we are actually just seen as by from the ruling class as empty vessels that can make babies um and you see this time and time again and then on top of that um what comes from next after our ability to have children is the fact that we're there to uh be really the the givers of pleasure you know to men it's never really about the agency of women and I think that's why it kind of ties into you know your experience of racism and then what you know what you were saying about racism stereotypes about who you are and why you might be a good homaker you know and these things we see all the time I mean I don't have time to get into the kind of racist stereotypes that you see on pornography websites but it's a pretty common argument I think people will know what I'm talking about but these things are enforc from the top um all the time and I think it kind of links a little bit really to the sort of question that you were asking about equal pay and the arguments about well is it is it women that you know because we're all in the workforce actually wages are being driven down we have to say absolutely not the ideology of the family and capitalism are the reason why women are paid less than men we are paid less than men because we are told our labor is not worth as much as men's uh we are told that actually and if you think about it not only is it in you know the same job that women have um a Pay Act but actually by and large women do the most underpaid jobs in society cleaners nurses um uh carers as well you know if teachers as well if you think about those sorts of things so women by large do actually the work that is paid less um as well and I think we also have to say when we talk about the pay Gap and who is responsible it is the bosses and the system because you know there isn't just a pay Gap there's a there's a there isn't just a gender pay Gap there's a race pay Gap as well and you know by by saying oh now that women have entered the workforce um that is why women are paid less we wouldn't say that about races about um refugees we wouldn't say that about people who aren't white and that's the reason why there's a race Gap right is because now these people are working of course not actually we have to say that that happens because the system will do whatever it can to save and to and to do these sorts of things and also the fact that people are paid less or more in society this helps with the division and the exploitation of the working class because it helps fuse tensions amongst the working class because when women are paid less than men in the same job naturally women might think well who's the enemy here well it's my male coworker who's getting paid more than me so it helps to reinforce these ideas of division and ideology as well we also have to say that in the system there is more than enough money for all of us to be paid a lot lot more in the BBC they have got enough money to pay the women the same as men although both should probably have pay cuts when you look at the amount that some of the lead uh anchors and so on are getting on the BBC and maybe give to some of the people who are working and all of the uh Runners and stuff working actually on the TV programs to produce them but I think it's quite important for us to go through these sorts of things and also what people mention then when you talk about the roll backs of our rights and what we've seen in a system too because I think when you talk a little bit about the sigma grind set or the ideology very much you can understand where oh how these ideas have so much purchase because as we've said capitalism is in a deep deep CR crisis and people feel an incredible amount of despair of loneliness and of alienation I mean this is Central to capitalism the fact that you have to go out and sell your labor in order to survive in society and somebody else makes a profit off of you is an alienating experience it attachs you from what makes you human Your Capacity to go out and work and be creative and capitalism strips that from you so you can understand why people feel Despair and then on top of that if you're worrying about your rent or your energy bill it's it's incredibly difficult times for people and I think when we think about some of the like purchase that people like Tate or people like the sigma mindset have they say that yes you're angry and it's okay to be angry and actually I would agree with that I think people should be angry in society but then they say your anger has to be turned on your fellow person or it's okay because wom are meant to be angry aren't they and meant to be violent we're meant to be you know a bit ruding and outside of that sort of thing so they try and flip it they take that anger and they challenge it right back into the system we have to say as well when you think about some of the people at the top who push these ideas Andrew Tate Nigel farage so on they're not sigmas they're not Outsiders or outliers they're part of the establishment they're part of the class that benefits off of the oppression that women face and I think it's important as well then when you think about what people were saying about why men some young men are voting rightwards and I think it links to the question about dating apps right you are told that as a man you have a right to certain things in society and that you deserve them and capitalism doesn't deliver for any of us in the working class none of us get what we deserve what do we deserve you know free health care free education a roof over our heads we deserve not to have to worry about heating our homes or not having hot meals none of us get what the system promises us that we're meant to get and this is why I think these people Channel their anger back into the system I think then as well the final thing to say is about the question of ideas and ideology because you know somebody talked about the red pill and the fact that it's incredibly infuriating that this right-wing movement has actually taken something that was meant to be about trans rights but there is always a battle for ideas going on on the University campuses whether it's about Palestine uh when you or on the University campuses whether it's about trans rights we always have to fight for the in the realm of ideas people are always debating what is right what is wrong what is about what what women are expected to be in society but actually what we know is that we can locate and understand where those ideas come from and it's not as though the ideas in society just sit at the top and don't affect us at all actually they have a very material effect on society so look the final final thing I'm going to be longer than eight minutes I'm sorry final thing then that I want to well kind of come to is the question of mandry and the patriarchy because I think it's quite important it is right that mandre is not a thing in the sense that men are not oppressed in society men are not oppressed by that institution of the family women are we are systematically oppressed by capitalism but just because men are not oppressed by it does not mean that they are not affected by gender roles nor does it mean that they benefit from the sexism that we live under that is not what we have actually we have to say that when you look at the institution of the family it is capitalism that has to save it time and time again in the industrial revolution the the family nearly broke down because everybody was in the factory floor women children the average age of someone in Beth green during the Industrial Revolution which in East London was 16 years old the average age of somebody in Manchester during the Industrial Revolution was 17 years old everyone was on the factory floor people were dying too young and the capitalists thought oh [ __ ] we don't have enough people to work in 10 years time or to work on our Factory floor so we can exploit them so women were pushed out of the workforce men were a supposed family wage which was never a family wage where we still had to work in the industrial revolution and it was the system that did that it was not men both working class and ruling class who got together and colluded and said wouldn't it be good for all of us if we push women out of work it was the men at the top of society who benefited and I think it's important to say that because I don't use terms like patriarchy I just talk about capitalism because that is what it is I don't think we have an economic system that runs on one hand that exploits people people and then a system of patriarchy that oppresses women and they run parallel as though they're working together no it is capitalism that exploits us and oppresses us as women and of all the other reasons that it oppresses us too so that then I think leads you on to who are The Real Enemy who are we actually fighting and what do we want our movement to look like because it's not then men who benefit from sexism but the ruling class and therefore the only people I don't want part of the movement who are going to fight against sexism are those people of the ru class richy suak Rachel Reeves Angela Raina Jess Phillips I don't want them as part of my movement uh Jess uh Theresa May whatever you want to say she's bit irrelevant now really isn't she but it's really only the people of the Ring class that I say you're not going to come and fight fight with us because you benefit from the system of Oppression and in the same way when people talk about Andrew Tay you know saying that he's a Muslim and he says that he's from the Palestine movement Andrew Tate has no place in the Palestine movement Andre take his friends with people like Tommy Robinson they're both from Luton right so you can see this discrimination there actually who do I want in our movement and what do I want our movement to look like I want people like Samara from the opening rally yesterday the teacher who was out on strike that is the kind of movement that we are trying to build women who are fighting in their workplace and fighting against the system actually I want the people in this room to be part of the movement you know people who can laugh about the Ridiculousness of some of these ideas but actually understand that is an incredibly serious thing that is happening it's not just women who are under attack it is trans people it is refugees it is all of us and we are under attack because the system is in crisis and it is trying to save itself therefore we know we have a fight on our hands and that is why we ask people to join the Socialist welfare party at Marxism you would have been asked before is because we want to be bigger so that we can have a bigger impact on the movement and so that we can finally bring down the system that oppresses lots of us the majority of us and exploits all all of us so if you agree with that and you want to be part of that kind of fight against the system i' ask you to join Socialist Workers Party [Music]