Proud to be a Man-Hating Lesbian: On Patriachal Approved Feminism

Technically, I'm not a lesbian but I'm a RadFem which, apparently, makes me a man-hating, anti-sex lesbian by default. You know, as opposed to those other feminists who have to go around telling people they aren't "that kind" of feminist: the lesbians who hate men and wear dungarees.

So, once and for all, if your feminism involves stereotyping other feminists, you need to work on knowledge of Feminism 101. I get that Andrew Verrijdt genuinely thought he was trying to help women and the feminist movement by proclaiming his support but what he's actually done is reinforce a fallacious dichotomy between "good" feminists and "bad" feminists: bad feminists being the man-hating lesbian variety. "Good" feminists are the ones that men want to fuck. "Bad" feminists are ugly, man-hating lesbians.

We need to loose this discourse between bad and good feminists and stop buying into the Patriarchy's definition of Acceptable Feminism, which is those feminists men still deem fuckable. I'm a feminist because I want nothing less than the liberation of all women from the capitalist-patriarchy. I do not need some middle class white guy telling me whether or not I count as a "good" feminist, even if the rest of his article is actually quite good.

Claiming that your feminism is different from those "man-hating, dungaree wearing lesbian feminists" just reinforces lies about feminism. Feminists need to stop stating stereotypes about other feminists and otherwise you might just be reinforcing a heteronormative construction of feminism which denigrates lesbian feminists.

Read More

What Leveson Didn't Address Properly: On Male Violence, Media Ethics and Personal Responsibility

Today, 27 families are grieving.  A community has been broken. They deserve a chance to grieve. There are numerous debates that we need to have tomorrow. Today, we need to let them grieve in peace; without an audience. 

Tomorrow, we need to restart the obvious debate on gun control. But, this debate will be meaningless unless we all start to discuss the issue of hyper-masculinity and male violence within the Patriarchy. We can't simply talk in general terms about who owns guns. We need to talk about who owns guns and who uses them to hurt and kill other people. We need to talk about male violence because it is mostly men who use guns to kill other people. It is mostly men who kill other men and women and children. We need to stop talking in gender neutral terms and start talking properly about male violence.

We need to talk about the military-industrial complex's financial interest in perpetrating our culture of hyper-masculinity.

We also need to restart the debate on media accountability and ethics. Because, today, instead of giving a community a chance to grieve, the media has swooped in and is, at least according to twitter, interviewing children from the school in Newton, Connecticut. They are printing images of terrified families looking for their children. They are printing images of terrified children being taken to safety by police officers. They are showing images of families being ripped apart. Now, we can blame the media for doing this. We can blame individual journalists and evil media empires for their intrusion. But, we won't look at our own behaviour.

Without an audience of people consuming these images, the media would have no financial incentive to doorstop grieving families. We need to stop blaming others for the failures within our culture and start looking at our own behaviour. If you are complaining about journalists interviewing children, ask yourself why you are watching it. Don't just complain. Turn it off. Stop being part of the problem.

Tomorrow, we need to have some serious debates about male violence and gun control. Today, we need to stop intruding in a grieving community.

There is no point in the Leveson Inquiry holding the media accountable for some truly despicable behaviour if we do not hold ourselves accountable too. After all, the media would not exist without an audience of consumers

Read More

Assange: The Quintessential Example of White Male Privilege and Their Silencing Techniques

I haven't blogged about the lying git that is Assange yet because it makes me both homicidally angry and thoroughly depressed at the number of people who are on the left of political spectrum but also seem to be clinically stupid. It is perfectly possible to have some good political policies whilst remaining a misogynist with a history of sexually abusive behaviour. Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy both being cases in point. Being critical of the Military-Industrial complexes isn't a get-out-of-jail free card for rapists. Anyone who claims it is is, simply, a rape apologist who is perpetuating and perpetrating rape culture. We shouldn't be allowing the existence of that kind of misogynistic bollox.

I haven't blogged about Assange because I don't want to add to his messiah complex. He is quite clearly an attention seeking whingefest of the most egregious sort. I didn't bother to watch his speech from the balcony either. I don't want to waste my time on someone who has their head jammed so far up their ass that they think they are The Second Coming. I genuinely think the media need to stop covering this case. That attention seeking arsehole doesn't need the publicity. After all, the official Wikileaks twitter feed published this a few weeks ago:

Despite not even being charged, Assange is the most rape-smeared man in modern history. 2x to 4x that of DSK, depending on how you measure.

He doesn't need the media feeding his messiah complex too. Assange supporters could join with Ched Evans supporters and form a supergroup of whiny-arsed, stupid nincompoops with serious delusions of grandeur. And, then decamp to some remote island somewhere so the rest of us don't have to listen to their shit.

As much as I hate the idea of giving this arsehole even more publicity, I think keeping silent whilst supposedly intelligent journalists, like, say, John Pilger, are spreading myths is immoral. We need to change the language we use to discuss this case. We need to stop confusing Assange the person with Wikileaks. We need to stop pretending that being right about one thing means that someone is right about everything. It is perfectly possible for Wikileaks to be an important political tool whilst recognising that Assange is a nincompoop. After all, he isn't the only person who works for Wikileaks AND it's not like Assange doesn't already have form for leaving Wikileaks supporters high and dry. We need to start challenging the myth that celebrities don't need to rape because they could get anyone woman they want. These are exactly the kinds of men who are rapists because they believe they are entitled to whatever they want whenever they want.

The only reason we should be talking about Assange is to support victims of rape; including the two women Assange sexually assaulted. We need to start taking real action in the face of rape myths to support women who have been raped. After all, we all know that one of the reasons many, many women refuse to report their rape is because they are afraid of being disbelieved. The woman Ched Evans raped has had her reputation and name smeared across Twitter by Ched Evans supporters. The two women in the Assange case, who deserve to have their anonymity protected, have had their real names trashed across the internet.

The only reason to be mentioning Assange's name is to ensure that rape victims know just how many people believe them and will support them.

We need to make our voices louder than the rapists, rape apologists and their handmaidens.

And, we need to get Assange to shut the fuck up.

Read More

I'm In The Market For a Nuclear Bunker.

The government is privatising our nuclear submarine bases. You know, cus privatising everything else has worked so well and stuff. The railways anyone? Water? Electricity? G4S and the Olympics? Never mind, the fact that government couldn't negotiate to buy a table cloth in a market let alone a multi-billion contract with private companies. If you don't believe me, google Edinburgh city council and their trams fiasco. All privatisation has done is prove just how corrupt, inefficient and incompetent our government really is.

Basically, a consortium of private companies will be running the Trident nuclear submarine bases at Faslane and Coulport. Even, more excitingly, the consortium already run the Atomic Weapons Establishment where the warheads are built. It's definitely a who's who of the military-industrial complex who are getting rich at the expense of lives of innocent people in the UK and elsewhere.

So, I'm in the market for a nuclear bunker. Because I don't trust a bunch of private companies in it for the profit not to fuck up so extensively that they don't end up "accidentally" flogging our nuclear warheads to terrorists to pay off the inevitable fine for "accidentally" blowing another one up. I don't trust a bunch of misogynistic private companies steeped in the discourse of hyper-masculinity not to hire unqualified staff with serious psychological problems who "accidentally" cause a nuclear war. I'm not exactly happy with our military having nuclear weapons [or the militaries in most countries] but I trust, only slightly more, our military than I trust the arsewipes at Lockheed Martin.

Read More