This, I would argue, is a product of plain old sexism and misogyny.
Ms Bindel’s complaint is:
A number of lesbians I know who are on the butch side have been asked when they are transitioning. Being openly and proudly butch has now, as DeLaria says, become something that many in the lesbian community look down on.
At the same time, within gay male culture, being camp or in any way “feminine” is derided, whereas hyper masculinity is celebrated.
Kittens gambolling in the sunshine is evidence of misogyny to Our Jules I sometimes think.
So the lesbians world has decided that the butch look is no longer fashionable. So instead of just accepting the fact that fashions change and that it was just a fad, Julie has decided to blame men for it.
I suppose that that it is a bit like a pensionable punk complaining that techno and rap is responsible for killing real honest angry music.
Right, okay, let me get this right.
Lesbians in general being rude to butch lesbians is somehow the fault of the patriarchy?
Oh well. File under mad old bint.
Reminds me of the time actress Ashley Judd wrote a long, angry open letter about how “the Patriarchy” was hypersexualising and assaulting and minimising and muting women’s bodies… all at the same time.
(BTW, ever noticed that The Patriarchy is malevolent, ancient, worldwide and practically all-powerful in its muscular misogyny, yet nobody – not even a washed-up C-list celebrity – is afraid of criticising it? We Patriarchs really need to pull our man-socks up.)
And for why did she type this lengthy feminist tract?
Because the media was talking about her big puffy face.
In the world according to Judd, there’s an insidious Patriarchal conspiracy behind such notoriously testosterone-drenched media outlets as Heat magazine.
We know, and she knows, better. Men don’t care about Ashley Judd’s big puffy middle aged face. Men are much more cruel than that: we don’t much think of her at all.
It’s women who demand and consume celebrity gossip. Women who are interested in the style tips and fashion crimes and diets and romantic disappointments and cosmetic surgeries of even has-been minor actresses.
But unlike The Patriarchy and its phallicy appendages, if you criticise women you’re in hot water.
However, when it comes to victimhood top trumps, playing the Patriarchy card doesn’t guarantee you’ll win.
There was a recent spat on Twatter between large-bottomed black multimillionaire pop star Nicki Minaj and skinny-bottomed white multimillionaire pop star Taylor Swift.
The large-bottomed black singer complained that she hadn’t been nominated for “video of the year”, implying it’s because the music industry hates fat-bottomed and/or black girls. (The racist klansmen at MTV only nominated her for three other awards)
The skinny white one, who was nominated for “video of the year”, tried to change the conversation by implying that “men” were to blame for this latest infamy.
Sadly for Miss Swift, the Race card beats the Patriarchy card every time, so after the ritual denunciations and vag-wringing about “appropriation of black culture”, the skinny white girl apologised.
TL;DR: of course grizzled old bulldyke lezzer Bindel isn’t going to blame the unpopularity of grizzled old bulldyke lezzers within the lezzing community on other lezzers. Marxist-Leninism is scientifically infallible. If there are any flaws in its application, capitalist spies and saboteurs must be to blame.
I feel almost sorry for Ms Bindel and the rest of the radicals, as they drown in the latest Proggie wave, of “trans” issues. Having enthusiastically deconstructed the rest of us, they now find themselves being deconstructed. I am somewhat reminded of all those loyal communists who found themselves purged under Stalin.
Ugly lezzer contends that ugly lezzers denigrated by less ugly lezzers is somehow the fault of us blokes who pay them no mind at all.
I think I’m starting to get the hang of this gender politics malarkey – the starting point being everything is my fault because I’m a bloke. It’s just like being married.
It’s the fault of men because men have never tried to ‘convert’ ugly butch lezzers and now those flibbertigibbet pretty fem lezzers have also decided not to fancy them.
“…the series, “Orange is the New Black” – so is orange banned now?
The comments are bewildering. Maybe it’s because I haven’t embraced the concept of social constructionism and resolved my internal conflict around dress signalling to accept the stereotype imposed on me by significant others.
Who is Julie Bindel?
I was reading some time ago an article on the Guardian site about cycling. I remember one female who held both of the following opinions simultaneously:
If a man rides behind you, he is staring at your arse and is a sexist pig.
If a man overtakes you it’s because you are a woman and, being sexist pigs, men cannot bear women being faster than them.
To believe both of those requires quite an ego, to believe that everything which happens around you happens because of you. This is the foundation of identity politics, though that adds a large measure of fanaticism and paranoia into the mix.
Oh yes, it’s absolutely narcissist. Narcissistic. Whatever.
“sexism and misogyny”
She says it as she would say “racist,” implying that everyone knows sexism and misogyny is bad, REAL BAD.
She assumes facts not in evidence.
Julie has written a book about me.
It’s entitled “Things that aren’t John Miller’s fault” .
It didn’t take long to write because it comprises only one page, and that’s blank.
We now just need the other Julie to write about the new butterfly effect: A man farts and beltches in a pub in Newcastle and this causes a woman in Christchurch to be sexually harassed.
Let’s face it, it is only a matter of time….
To be fair, if there’s a fit girl on a bike I will happily cycle behind her for hours, even going miles out of my way if the weather’s nice.
I once cycled 17 miles behind Beatrix Campbell.
Are you out of trauma therapy yet?
Lesbians just aren’t gentlemen.
Big enders, little enders.
Tried reading La B’s article but it was too dreary, predictable and lacking in self-insight. But the tropes are all there, “Butch lezza has spoken out…” etc.
Thank goodness for those brave enough to speak out.
But anyway, if even Swift’s satire didn’t work* – and it didn’t, not with these people, and not with anyone else – we have to appreciate satire will not work, that it ends up as nothing more than a cold comfort to those of us who watch and marvel as it becomes a roadmap. So I think we have to understand that the basic trick with this kind of agitprop is its appeal to our susceptability to moral blackmail: hear my pain, listen to me endlessly, beg forgiveness, and if you don’t you’re a brute.
It takes a certain kind if person to resist that and in my experience you can be halfway to your knees before you realise that you’re entitled and quite right to resist it.
Narcissistic, yes absolutely – but also deeply cynical. Those are the two reasons deserve neither sympathy nor the time of day and I think one can render a signal service to the young by teaching them, by teaching them not to feed these narcissists or to indulge them.
* in the sense of preventing the lunacy it lampoons
We know, and she knows, better. Men don’t care about Ashley Judd’s big puffy middle aged face. Men are much more cruel than that: we don’t much think of her at all.
I did when she was younger. Plenty.
“I did when she was younger. Plenty.”
That’s what makes horse races.
IMO, the single sexiest female turn on screen was Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. Oh, my Lord [starts drooling, curled up, foetally]…
Mind you, Lisa Ann has her charms.
At the same time, within gay male culture, being camp or in any way “feminine” is derided, whereas hyper masculinity is celebrated.
Thank fuck for that. I find the over-the-top, utterly false campness that some gays exhibit to be annoying in the extreme. I appreciate some men can be camp, but most of the time it’s like listening to somebody fake an accent.
Gays aren’t allowed to be camp any more? When did this happen?
Paging Ernst Rohm…
Is indifference to any of this crap (they’ll all be slaughtered by ISIS regardless) yet a criminal offence?
Oh come on,,,,she’s just looking for love with a woman who has knuckles shaped like Jodie Forsters!
I wonder what sort of derangement in the fabric of the universe it would take for me to start giving a shit what Julie Bindel thinks. It would have to be an absolute corker, I know that much.
It would be interesting to know her definition of “hyper-masculinity”. Spending all day in the gym and growing a bushy beard isn’t particularly significant, really.