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Feminism

Did she have a family though?

When Eleanor Turner had her first child 20 years ago she never imagined that the cost of a family and a career would leave her £30,000 in debt.

Not only did the freelance musician have to rely on loans and overdrafts to pay for spiralling childcare costs, it has also affected her credit score and so her ability to borrow.

Turner, who is a single parent, is now trying to remortgage, but her adverse credit history means that the bank will only agree additional lending if her adult son is named as a joint borrower.

We’ve known for some millions of years that it takes two to raise a family. We can see it in our bodies – concealed ovulation, tits, face to face sex, pair bonding and all the rest. We’re descended from those who did this, not descended from those who did not.

So, an interesting question – did this woman actually have a family?

And folk say men and women aren’t different, eh?

Sunsarae, who uses he/they pronouns, also added that starting hormone therapy “changed [his] life for the better.” “From my very first injection of testosterone levels, my confidence, assertiveness, and a greater sense of self-worth skyrocketed,” they said.

That’s what balls do for you…..

What, there are two of them?

Award-winning author and Guardian columnist Naomi Klein is to publish a book about conspiracy theories, which she has described as a departure and “more personal, more experimental” than her previous books.

Doppelganger, out in September, uses the fact that Klein has often been mistaken for author Naomi Wolf as a jumping-off point to explore conspiracy theories and what Klein calls the “Mirror World”, our destabilised present rife with doubles and confusion.

Really?

Umm, yes

An IT worker sued for sexual harassment after her “rich and powerful” male boss marked parts of an email where he wanted more information with “xx”, which she thought were kisses.

Karina Gasparova, a project manager, also claimed Aleksander Goulandris’s use of question marks in the same message were code for asking her when she would be “ready to engage in sexual acts”.

‌In a number of other innocent work-related incidents where she would find a “sinister motive”, Ms Gasparova thought his renaming a file with his initials AJG was an acronym for A Jumbo Genital.

‌Ms Gasparova took her employer, the paperless documents firm essDOCS, to the tribunal claiming sexual harassment.

That’s some powerful fantasy there. Or gross stupidity.

If this were actually in Russia (at least the one of old) then I could imagine the boss hitting on the young woman, no problem. In fact, among many companies I knew back then young ladies were employed for just such hitting upon. Although, to be fair to the sexist bastards, the job description was explained before hiring – it wasn’t a surprise sprung upon them in the, ahem, training period.

Whut? Women aren’t allowed to change their minds?

Imagine campaigning for a Democratic politician—a thankless, low-paying job, especially at the state level—because you believe in what they stand for. The candidate gives powerful speeches about abortion rights that make you proud. You’re in a purple state, where every single seat in the legislature is critical to protecting abortion access. So you join the fight, help them win, and continue working for them in the legislature. Then inexplicably, in the middle of their term, that politician does an about-face, switches parties, and votes in favor of an extreme abortion ban, delivering Republicans the one vote they needed to override a veto and actually shutter clinics in the state.

Two (now former) aides to North Carolina State Rep. Tricia Cotham found themselves in that position earlier this month. Cotham, a Democrat until recently who was endorsed by EMILY’s List, had given speeches for years about abortion rights, sworn over and over to defend them, and even talked about her own medically necessary abortion. “My womb and my uterus is not up for your political grab,” she said in one particularly passionate 2015 speech.

But here’s the important bit:

Autumn Alston, a Democratic activist who canvassed for Cotham’s two most recent campaigns and advised her often

You see, a woman isn’t allowed to change her mind if it pisses off a political activist. Oh no.

Fact checking the body positivity movement

So, if Big Birds (note the s, there, puppets are different) are just as sexually desirable as every other type of bird then this would be the theme song of the body positivity movement:

The lyrics to which are:

Wanna tell you story
About woman I know
When it comes to lovin’
She steals the show
She ain’t exactly pretty
Ain’t exactly small
Fourt’two thirt’ninefiftysix
You could say she’s got it all
Never had a woman
Never had a woman like you
Doin’ all the things
Doin’ all the things you do
Ain’t no fairy story
Ain’t no skin and bones
But you give it all you got
Weighin’ in at nineteen stone
You’re a whole lotta woman
A whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
And you’re a whole lotta woman
Honey you can do it
Do it to me all night long
Only one who turn me
Only one who turn me on
All through the night time
Right around the clock
To my surprise
Rosie never stops
She was a whole lotta woman
Whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
A whole lotta woman
Whole lotta woman
Whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta woman-man-man yeah
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta woman
Whole lotta woman

19 Stone is 266 lbs.

It ain’t, is it? The theme song – therefore, well, revealed preferences and all that, eh?

Seems like a self-solving problem

More divorces than weddings for first time

If everyone gets divorced then there are no marriages that can end in divorce, right?

Covid closures meant the lowest number of marriages since 1838

They do mean number as well, despite the rise in population:

There were 85,770 weddings in England and Wales, a record 61 per cent fall from the year before and the lowest number since 1838, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). There were 103,592 divorces.

The average age of marriage for opposite-sex couples rose by about a year for both sexes, to 35.3 for men and 33.2 for women. Marriage rates, which the ONS sees as a better indication of changing trends, fell to their lowest since 1862, with 7.4 per 1,000 unmarried men tying the knot and 7 per 1,000 unmarried women.

Fuckwit

that would ban abortions after 12 weeks – effectively a ban on all abortions.

Bit of a surprise to Europeans:

In most European countries, as illustrated in the map and in the country-by-country table below, abortion is generally permitted within a term limit below fetal viability (e.g. 12 weeks in Germany and Italy, or 14 weeks in France and Spain). The longest term limits – in terms of gestation – are in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands, both at 24 weeks of gestation.

Tosser.

Weird that a journalist would say this

….the associated fall of the UK in the Rainbow Rankings has barely been covered at all: one short piece in the Metro and one (anti-trans, of course) piece in moonhowler pamphlet The Critic.

The thing is that Carrie knows all of this.

Rainbow Rankings are so well known that the standard result from Google is:

What Are Rainbow Six Ranks?
Copper V, IV, III, II, I.
Bronze V, IV, III, II, I.
Silver V, IV, III, II, I.
Gold V, IV, III, II, I.
Platinum V, IV, III, II, I.
Emerald V, IV, III, II, I.
Diamond V, IV, III, II, I.
Champions.

R6 Ranks | Rainbow Six Siege Rank System Explained

Oh.

Carrie means this. Carrie’s mates judging how well everyone accords with Carrie’s ideas.

Oh.

Carrie’s a journalist. She knows all this stuff.

As I’ve said before Carrie has a lightness with words that I don’t have. I envy that. Mumble, mumble, annoyance. I’ve also done propaganda myself. I object to greater talent being used that way.

To get all Bathonian on this. You’re better than tha’ moi luvver. Live up to your talents. Up.

If you want a possibly objectionable example. Yes, the song’s good. The bass player has fun later on, the piano is excellent.

What makes Edwin Hawkins a genius is what happens at 1.19. What I object to is Carrie having been gifted with a talent – OK, maybe not Hawkins level but better than mine – and using it to whine.

Honey Love

I have to say, I find it pretty enviable that De Niro has lived a life blissfully free of having to field questions about his biological clock, and him having a newborn he planned at 79 certainly throws into stark relief all the gendered double standards surrounding parenting, pregnancy, and timing. As a woman, my pregnancy would literally be medically labeled “geriatric” after the age of 35. Women start getting told to freeze our eggs in our 20s if we want to have any kind of career, and we suffer through unsubtle shaming about having children later than we’re expected to. I can hardly conceive of anything more “geriatric” than having a child at 79, yet I doubt De Niro’s doctors said a damn word to him about that.

They’re not gendered standards. They’re facts about gender.

Define sex first

Then harrassment:

Almost two-thirds of young women have been sexually harassed at work, says TUC

Given that we are a sexual species then there is going to be talk, activity and proposals about sex while people are at work. Sex is simply part of being human.

There indeed should and even must be some delineation of what is allowable and what is not. But an idea – just something to put forward for discussion, you know – possibly the line is drawn too far? What is in fact just a normal and even reasonable part of being human is now described as harrassment?

Well, I think this is important to learn even if no one else does

Children need more and better sex and relationship education in England’s schools, to help them navigate the issues they are likely to face as they get older, experts have told MPs.

The Commons women and equalities committee heard that too few teachers in England have received training in how to deliver lessons in relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) since it became a compulsory topic in 2019.

Lucy Emmerson, chief executive of the Sex Education Forum, told MPs that young people reported that important issues such as power imbalances in relationships between boys and girls were often not being tackled in RSHE lessons.

That girls get to lead the boys around by the cock – without ever having to put out – is part and parcel of the huamn experience. Sure I think children should learn that.

That is what they mean, isn’t it?

Proof of the existence of the ladypenis

A transgender woman who raped her friend in an “especially shocking” attack will be jailed at a men’s prison.

Lexi-Rose Crawford, 24, was jailed for nine years on Wednesday after raping and sexually assaulting the victim inside her own home.

In our legal system the crime of rape can only be committed with a penis. Sure, there are all sorts of other sexual assaulkts that can be committed with other items but rape requires that dick.

And there we have that proof of the existence of that ladypenis. For that’s clearly and obviously a woman and she’s just been found guilty of rape. Therefore women can have a penis, QED.

Well, there’s your problem then

All things considered, I should be a Tigger, bouncing around with excitement and driving everybody around me up the wall. But I’m not. Instead, every day feels like a slog and it’s getting harder and harder to stay positive. And that’s because every single day since I came out as trans, I’ve been subject to a war of attrition waged against trans people by bigots and their friends in the press.

That’s over six years now. Six years of the same old slurs, the same old “just asking questions”, the same long-debunked statistics and long-debunked talking points. And yet it never stops. Just yesterday, The Observer let Sonia Sodha write her weekly column about how anything bad in the news – in this case, the police arresting republican protesters at the Coronation – is all the fault of trans people. It’d be funny if it weren’t a weekly occurrence not just in the Observer but in pretty much every other paper too.

Just to remind Carrie what Ms. Sodha actually said about trans:

Take, for example, the egregious way the police have clamped down on the free speech of those who express the “gender critical” belief, protected in equalities law, that sex is binary, immutable and relevant in society. The police should be scrupulously neutral on this. Yet in recent years they have adopted the controversial position of campaigners who believe that gender identity can replace sex altogether – that being a woman is not a biological reality but instead about conforming to feminine stereotypes or a matter of inner identity, and that it is somehow “hateful” to deviate from this view.

That has led them to warn off citizens from making lawful political statements. Former policeman Harry Miller was visited by a police officer as a result of his tweets – mostly “opaque, profane or unsophisticated”, according to a judge, but well within his rights to post. There are plenty of other examples: one woman recorded herself being berated by a police community support officer for having a sticker “trans ideology erases women” in her window. A feminist activist was arrested and detained in custody for 12 hours by Gwent police on suspicion of displaying “threatening or abusive writing” after reports she had put up stickers including slogans such as “no men in women’s prisons” and “humans never change sex”. Police raided her home and, extraordinarily, confiscated a gender critical book, presumably as evidence of “wrongthink”. There are also cases of the police taking to social media to berate people for their gender critical perspectives, such as when Sussex police reprimanded someone on Twitter for saying that a convicted paedophile who identifies as a woman is biologically male, declaring: “Sussex Police do not tolerate any hateful comments towards their gender identity.”

This is not OK. Miller taking the police to court has given judges the opportunity to make this clear. “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or Stasi,” the high court warned in relation to his case. The courts ruled in 2021 that both the specific police action against Miller and the College of Policing guidance used to justify it were unlawful.

This guidance tells police forces to record as non-crime hate incidents anything – including social media posts – reported to the police that is perceived by the person reporting to be motivated by hostility, including “unfriendliness”. It is wide open to manipulation by those looking to threaten people they disagree with into silence, and by police officers who wrongly believe it is transphobic to think that sex is real and immutable.

Back to Carrie:

I’ve written many times that the line between anti-trans and anti-semite is often very blurry; some of the highest profile members of the anti-trans movement, and some of the highest profile anti-trans books, claim that “transgenderism” is a Jewish conspiracy. So it’s worth reminding ourselves of Sartre’s comments about anti-semites

Ms Sodha:

Two years ago, half of police forces paid the charity Stonewall – whose chief executive has outrageously compared gender-critical belief to antisemitism – for diversity training. Yet freedom of information requests reveal that many police forces are not properly training their officers on the law on free speech, and there are many examples of the police stating the law incorrectly to the public.

You know, it might not be what the newspapers are printing, or journalists writing. It could be the way Carrie’s reading it all.

How, umm, amusing

Before apps were invented, doing celebrity profiles was how I dated. I didn’t drink or take drugs, so I wasn’t going to meet anyone at bars or clubs. And who’s going to make a pass at someone who spends her time alone listening to Leonard Cohen? For me, the only one who tried was Leonard Cohen himself, backstage at the Royal Albert Hall. Almost Famous has a very different tone if the precocious teenage writer is female.

The one man I married was also the only one who wasn’t intimidated by my list of exes. When it did emerge, and I awaited his disapprobation, still haunted by the judgment of previous men, he merely shrugged and said: “I take it as a compliment. You’ve got great taste in cock, girl.”

That’s Me Too isn’t it?

If we recast the language here he’s right of course

An unrepentant Donald Trump has insisted stars have been “grabbing women by the p—y” for a million years.

Giving his taped deposition in the case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of rape, the former president refused to back down from his infamous remarks caught on an Access Hollywood tape and published during the 2016 election campaign.

“If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true, not always, but largely true – unfortunately.”

Asked if he considered himself a star, Mr Trump replied: “I think you can say that.”

Men of high social status have been getting laid a lot this past million years, yes, that’s true.

This is pathetic, seriously, pathetic

Is this yoga’s #MeToo time? Women speak out about abusive healers
Many women have fallen for the charismatic gurus who run wellbeing retreats. Now some are going public about the teachers who prey on vulnerable followers

Tsk.

Last year Tania Rose Willis, 32, met the man she thought she was going to have a family with. He was a thirtysomething British shaman, and such were his healing powers, he was considered royalty within the local spirituality community on a Spanish island. This community was united in its shared spiritual beliefs, beliefs that were rooted in shamanism, ie the practice of interacting with the spirit world for healing and guidance. To her delight, he wanted her.

“He was like, ‘I just want to be around you. I want to connect with you.’” (“Connect” is spiritual speak for getting it on.)

“I was like, ‘Oh wow, he’s chosen me. I’m so lucky,’” says Willis, a female embodiment coach from Hertfordshire, who helps women to nurture their sensuality, sexuality and body confidence.

So, he shagged her and shagged other acolytes.

Tsk.

The whole thing revolving around the fact that within the culture she was immersed in he had status. Therefore, as happens, that bloke with status gets the shags in that culture. That’s how humans work.

The King gets his pick of the aristo birds, the premiership footballer the nightclub Sharons and the Guru of the acolytes.

Shrug.

Now, the thing here is that near all previous generations of women have known this. That’s why inter-female competition is so vicious. And sure, we can say that if a bloke does this to some 12 or 13 year old then that’s very bad indeed and off to jail with you – and we do say that, even do that.

But this woman is 32. She’s had what, 10 or 15 years experience of men? She is that strong, vibrant and independent adult who gets to make her own choices, even advises other on their.

And she’s complaining that she didn’t know enough to work out that socially dominant men will go for the totty?

We might have to rethink this vote thing you know. Possibly even the letting them out of the seraglio.

A patriarchal society

In a landmark prosecution, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56, and middleman Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty of modern slavery charges in March.

They were convicted of bringing a poverty stricken street trader from Lagos to London in the hope of providing a kidney for their 25-year-old daughter Sonia, who was in need of a transplant.

At a sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday, Mr Justice Johnson jailed Ekweremadu for nine years and eight months, while his wife received four years and six months and Obeta got 10 years.

Of course the bloke gets the higher sentence – he was clearly the person in charge, right?

This would not be my – limited – experience of employment, no

Selfish male bosses are to blame for bad business performance while their female counterparts are perceived to be just victims of bad luck, according to a new academic study of gender stereotypes.

A joint study by the University of East Anglia, University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia found that “benevolent sexism” – where women are seen as “affectionate and delicate individuals who need to be protected” – was widespread in the workplace.

It’s back to that old cliche. A patriarchist one no doubt but my observation all the same. Once men have sorted out the hierarchy then it’s sorted. The fighting about it is intense but time limited. Among women it’s an ever ongoing nightmare.

Which means that working for women can be an ongoing nightmare of hierarchical imposition and maintenance. Entirely, in fact, the opposite of the usual thoughts on this point. Pettiness and argument purely for the point of emphasising superiority is rife and continual among female managers.

Purely personal observation. The lads quickly work out who is boss (which, of course, does not nee to be the one with the title) and that largely gets set in stone. With women it’s a continual fight.