The hunger for effective gay liberation movement is real. It would seem at least Mr.Thorstad is tired of rearranging the gender-identity deckchairs on the good-ship “Oppression Titanic”.
“By the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall in 1994, I regarded the gay movement as already mostly dead, although the commemorations did include some radical venues, such as the large “Spirit of Stonewall” alternate march. By then the gay movement had been taken over by marketing and corporate interests. Repeal of sodomy laws—the movement’s most important demand—had long been put on a back burner because it focused—uncomfortably for some—on sex acts instead of identity and liberal “rights” and because it challenged religious superstition and the oppressive Judeo-Christian tradition that underpinned the laws. Instead, the “LGBT movement” was pushing for marriage, hate-crimes laws, and the right of gays to serve openly in the imperialist military. The Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling throwing out sodomy laws was the most important victory for the gay and lesbian movement. Since then, the other demands have also been won, none of which advance the cause of sexual liberation. The former liberation movement is now mired in genderism and assimilationism.
By 1994, the hateful, antigay word “queer” was increasingly being used to describe same-sex love. Things have only gotten worse since then, with “queer” widely used, even by the straight media, despite its being a vile, self-hating term that threatens violence. The struggle for sexual liberation has been diluted by a focus on dozens of fanciful and questionable genders and has resulted in a virtual erasure of gay males and lesbians. Sex is not even part of the alphabet-soup vocabulary. Highlighting victimhood is in. Instead of fighting social injustice, the LGBT goal is to assimilate into a heterodominant capitalist system, aping its failed institution of marriage, promoting monogamy (a bit player in the mammalian heritage), and espousing patriotism, militarism, and conventionality. Gay Inc. has swallowed up the original “liberation day” marches and turned them into billboards for the profit motive. Even the main U.S. spy agency, the NSA, commemorates “pride” by lighting up its headquarters in the rainbow flag colors. The LGBT movement has jettisoned the goal of liberating the repressed sexuality of everyone, including heterosexuals, in favor of seeking mere “equality.” Equality is a low common denominator that does not challenge heterosupremacy. It is the goal of a movement that has been tamed and lost its spirit of radical struggle.
In the 1970s, one could hear a gay youth contingent in a gay pride march chant this playful provocation: “2, 4, 6, 8, How do you know your husband’s straight? 3, 5, 7, 9, Hey, lady, your husband’s mine!” Today, such a chant would be unimaginable.
This degeneration is widely recognized by older activists, less so by the younger set. As a result, this year another alternative march is planned for New York City to the official Heritage of Pride corporate sponsor. The Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), organizer of the alternate event, condemns the inclusion of floats and is marching “against the exploitation of our communities for profit and against corporate and state pinkwashing,” and in “resistance against police, state, and societal oppression.” OK so far.
But RPC has a serious flaw: astonishingly, it is calling its “alternative” event a “queer liberation march.” That’s an insult to gay men especially and belies its claim to inclusivity. Nothing could drag me to a march that bills itself as “queer.” That is antithetical to the “spirit of Stonewall” and to gay pride. It is viscerally offensive.
RPC criticizes HOP for not addressing the “urgent continuing needs” not of gay men and lesbians, but, in a reordering of myriad oppressed categories, presumably by order of importance, of the “Trans, Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Queer, Intersex, Two-Spirit, Asexual, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming and related communities.” What a mouthful!
And it promotes a mind-numbing collection of politically correct causes: “We March in opposition to transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry based on religious affiliation, classism, ableism, audism, ageism, all other forms of oppression, and the violence that accompanies them in the U.S. and globally.”
“New Delhi — Millions of people in the South Indian city of Chennai, the country’s sixth largest metropolis, are facing an acute water shortage as the main reservoirs have dried up after a poor monsoon season. Some schools in the city have cut working hours and dozens of hotels and some restaurants have reportedly shut down due to the shortage.
The city of more than 4.5 million has been left to rely on wells and water brought in by truck. Thousands of wells dug across the city are leading to a rapid drop in the ground water level, and raising even further the concerns of environmentalists.
New wells are being dug as deep as 1,000 feet. Much of the water they produce isn’t even fit to drink.”
I cannot even imagine what it would be like not having water on demand in my home. What is happening in India seems quite alien to me, having never been through a drought or even a severe period of water rationing. Living in Canada I have access to what will become one of the most sought after resources in the late 21st century, potable water. Oil and gas are soooooo… 20th century.
I imagine my insular situation is being replicated in segments of Indian society as those who have the political and economic power are not feeling the water stress that the poor in Chennai are experiencing. Given some of human nature, I would not be surprised if certain enterprising individuals were making a profit off of the shortage of water, selling a life sustaining resource to their fellow citizens…
“But the government trucks are only able to meet part of the demand, leaving the rest of the population at the mercy of private vendors, who appear to be making a killing off the crisis. A private truck carrying about 3,200 gallons of water would have cost around 1,500 Rupees (about $22) in April. Now such a delivery is going for about $85.
A man uses a hand-pump to fill up a container with drinking water as others wait in a queue on a street in Chennai, India, June 17, 2019. REUTERS
Reghu Ram, a filmmaker who has lived in the city for eight years, told CBS News the cost of such a private water supply “would mean about 50% of the monthly income of a significant part of the population.”
Ah, my faith in capitalism remains unshaken. God bless (and may they go well) those pioneering water entrepreneurs for helping fulfilling a basic need of Chennai’s citizenry (and procuring an earnest profit of course).
One can expect reckless profiteering and exploitation of the poorest members of society during any crisis. Heady libertarians and advocates for a denuded state take note, this is endgame that you seem to be constantly striving toward. It is neither just, nor humane.
“Water needs to be treated as a highly limited resource,” Vencatesan said. “There is a gap between government policy and the implementation.”
An alarming report last year by the Indian government’s own research institute, NITI Aayog, warned that 21 Indian cities, including New Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, would run out of groundwater by 2020.
The report also said 40% of India’s 1.34 billion people would have no access to drinking water by 2030. More than 600 million Indians are facing “acute water shortage” already, according to the report.
And there it is folks. First sentence. “There is a gap between [(water conservation/management)] government policy and implementation.” The Indian state has been ineffective in managing the water situation. Lax regulations, corruption, and general malaise from the leadership within have allowed this crisis to boil over.
The simple point is this: Those at the top of the hierarchy are not in jeopardy. The water crisis situation has not been realized for them, and like me in Canada, they cannot really fathom the problem, and thus, even less the solution to the water crisis. Therefore the machinery of state is not being effectively mobilized because those in charge do not feel the dire threat to their existence unlike those of the lower classes of society. This is the disconnect that is being played out the world over, our hierarchies are unresponsive to the latent threats climate change brings. This makes effective, coordinated responses difficult if not impossible to orchestrate.
Hierarchies activate when the threat level becomes serious enough that the perceived social and economic insularity suddenly falls away. The elite’s inevitable “oh shit” moment though comes entirely too late to remedy the situation. Then, of course, people die.
Let’s hope our elites here in North America are watching the situation closely in India, as their crisis will soon be our crisis.
It’s ironic because ideology is exactly what it is and a bonkers, batshit ideology at that.
Butler of course, can be considered the grand dame of current gender ideology and is an enthusiastic proponent of the frankly ludicrous idea that biology is a social construct.
In Butler’s Orwellian world, where up most certainly is down, and wrong is right, it’s radical feminists that have got things backwards, since gender, is you know, innate.
Yes that’s right, Jude thinks we’re all born with a predestined gender, which is inherent, and cannot be questioned. One is a man or woman merely if one says so. And in her idiotic diatribe in the New Statesman, she even managed to bastardize Simone De Beauvoir’s famous quote “One is not born a woman but one becomes one” in order to prove that you know, sex is assigned at birth not empirically observed.
Using Butler’s rationale, it’s easy to see why all this batshit gender bonkers is causing so much mayhem in political parties, schools, universities, and women’s groups up and down the country.
In fact it’s not just the UK that’s affected by Butler mania and the queer as fuckery ideas she and her ilk birthed. Queer Theory, and it’s bastard child, trans activism is now the dominant ideology among progressives in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and much, much further afield.
Is it fair to place all the blame on Butler?
Not all of it certainly, but consider this. Back in the 90’s where actual feminism was still trying to batter down the patriarchy’s door, Butler’s texts such as Gender Trouble were hugely influential.
Her Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory post at the University of California, Berkely meant her work picked up an enthusiastic following among the progressive crowd, and her ideas spread like wildfire through the academy, slowly eating away at the hard work Second Wave feminists had done like a virus.
Back then of course, it was hard to imagine it would come to this, a world where, men are considered more woman than women.
It wasn’t just Butler. In fact, she didn’t even start it, Michael Foucault did back in the Seventies, with his “progressive” lectures at Berkley that formed the basis of much of Butler and her crew’s “Queer Theory.”
Eve Sedgwick, the original fag hag, also deserves a fair portion of blame, with her lesbian omitting “seminal” tome Epistemology Of the Closet lauded by Gay men everywhere.
There are others too, but Butler’s unique position, privileged platform, and the fact she’s still writing shit articles in the New Statesmen complaining about actual feminists, make her particularly loathsome.
I don’t typically loathe women, but I might have to make a special exception for Butler. Or, at least I would, if I didn’t feel a tiny bit sorry for her.
Did I just say I felt sorry for Judith Butler?
Well, yeah I do, and here’s why.
I know she’s gender non-conforming but Butler’s always struggled with a rather hefty dose of internalised misogyny. Being of the female SEX she’s also probably aware she’s been palmed a raw deal, under patriarchy.
One’s personal issues tend to inform one’s work, and poor ole Judy’s clearly spent her whole life trying to get away from her biology.
What better way than doing away with sex altogether? Brilliant right?
Err, no.
Because as much as it would genuinely be great if we treated female people with as much respect as male people, much as it would be wonderful if we had always given female people the freedom we have always given male people the fact is, women, the XX kind have been stigmatized for centuries because of their biology.
And that still continues. If you’ve got XX chromosomes, people just look at you, and assign you second class status. Here’s news, Judy, they do it to you too!
The only way you might, might escape it is by going trans but then you’d have to volunteer your body as a veritable guinea pig for all those cross sex hormones and surgeries.
And even then, don’t imagine for one minute that trans guys AS A GROUP get treated with the same respect trans women do. Oh sure, one or two trans “guys”, who’ve been through the magical gender machine completely might be able to fool enough people into escaping second class status, but for the most part, trans guys are treated by much of the progressive left as if they’re merely there to cheer on the main attraction, trans women.
Oh I wonder why…
Clue, it begins with P and ends in atriarchy.
To be honest, Judy must know her little project is completely unworkable. But just in case her senses have taken leave of her, I’ll spell out why.
Self Id assumes that people aren’t going to see sex. And it also assumes that when they do, they aren’t going to assign any kind of meaning to it.
This is obviously bogus.
In fact it’s worse than bogus because in our still patriarchal society, when people see sex, they don’t just assign it meaning, they also assign it bullshit gender roles, and they negatively discriminate against the female sex to boot.
JUDITH BUTLER DID YOU HEAR THAT?
If Butler really wants the kind of world where anyone can express anyway they want without being negatively judged, if she really wants the kind of world where “trans” women don’t cause actual women in rape shelters to be traumatized all over again, and so fear those with male bodied entering their spaces, well Butlerface better start doing something right now to tackle the very REAL issues the female sex has to face.
The progressive woke brigade like to sling insults like bigot and terf at radical feminists who are working hard to dismantle the pillars of patriarchy that keep that gender caste system rolling on.
Butler and her crew like to call us biological essentialists and genitally obsessed.
Look, the female sex, you know, the class we’re fighting to liberate, didn’t ask for all this bloody emphasis on biology. We didn’t ask to be disbarred from education and the professions for centuries, we didn’t ask to be disproportionately sexually assualted, prostituted, beaten, trafficked, misogynised, forced into marriage, raped, groped, catcalled, body shamed, mutilated, and exploited in dehumanising, abusive, violent porn.
We didn’t ask for it. Men didn’t do a survey when this whole patriarchy jig started up asking the female sex if we wanted all that. And all that is what the patriarchy has deemed perfectly okay for the female “gender” role and that bullshit role has been handed out to the female sex for centuries, whether we wanted it or not.
And I don’t think too many of us wanted it did we? But we never got the choice.
So Butler and co can fuck right off with telling women they are cis. The label (insult) Cis woman means that you are a female with XX chromosomes and that you identify with the female gender role, that you are comfortable and totally hunky dory with second class status.
No, no we’re bloody not.
Yes, only this week a TRA on Twitter claimed that because “trans” women had to work to become a women, and “cis” women never had to think about their gender, “trans” women were more “real” than real women.
The female sex aka “cis women” have apparently never had to think about rape, about male violence, about being forced to perform hyper-femininity, about being groped, harrassment etc…etc…ad nauseum.
Fuck. Right. Off.
I quote gender resister Andreas Sofocleous’s succinctly sarcastic Twitter response to that lunatic claim;
“Males are the real women now folks.”
Straight out of Monty Python isn’t it?
And St Judy and her merry band of Genderists, inured from the downright damaging effects of all this lunacy, continue to push gender ideology on all of us.
So yes, Butler’s to blame for quite a bit. But it didn’t start with Butler and it won’t stop with her either, because the ideas gender ideology posits are hugely attractive to some, particularly some rather malignant groups.
Like misogynists who’ve been itching for years to strike back at all those nasty feminists who dared to posit the idea that you know, women are people and should be treated as such. In the workplace, in society, and in the home.
I’ve lost count of the number of Men’s Rights Activists I’ve met who enthusiastically support the idea that trans women ARE women, except of course when it comes to matters sexual.
Ah yes, that’s right, the sickos still remember who real women are when they want to abuse or exploit.
Speaking of which, where are all the woke heterosexual dudes screaming for more trans women to be included in the porn the porn sick little dears all watch. Intact trans women with penises that is.
Don’t want to watch them spreading their “womanly thighs” and waggling their lady sticks in your face wokey bro?
No? Thought not… It’s funny because lesbians feel that way about penis too.
Other groups/ orgs/ bodies that are balls deep (literally) in gender ideology are the paedophile lobby, who are rubbing their hands with glee as they watch child safeguarding policy go to hell in a handcart with the current rush to usher kids into gender clinics, child catcher style.
On the internet, tiny “packers” are being sold to kids as young as 2, that are the basic equivalent of putting a sex toy (dildo?) in a child’’s underwear.
Yeah. Think about that.
And let’s not forget in the rush to embrace all things gender fabulous, the swathe of child drag queens we’re expected to cheer on as great symbols of progress. As they pose caked in make-up and sexualised, right next to adult drag queens wearing next to nothing.
Oh yes, that actually happened. Look up Lactactia the child drag queen. On second thoughts, please don’t.
Capitalist industry’s another major beneficiary of transgender activism and ideology, from the hormones and blockers the clinics peddle, to the costly cosmetic surgeries so many trans people shell out for.
The pornographers, in their unceasing quest to create fresh categories of porn they can spin a profit from, benefit massively from gender ideology too.
Transgender porn has been steadily growing for years, and several fairly high profile “trans” women such as Paris Lee’s are or have been involved in the pornography industry and/ or the sex trade. Like Lees, many are enthusiastic proponents of both.
Coincidence?
As for Butler, will she ever get it? Despite having XX chromosomes she seems to think she can escape the caste system through writing reams of tosh about how biology is irrelevant. Yeah Judy? Really?
Biology shouldn’t come with a stigma eh?
Well at least I can agree with Butler on that. Pity her ideology enshrines the stigma that actual women, of the cunty kind, must face.
So I call on Butler to make it so then. I want to see this world that doesn’t look at someone with XX chromosomes and treat them like less than those with XY.
You’ve done the damage Judy. Under the banner of progressiveness you and your posse of Queer theorist nutjobs have done a real hatchet job on radical feminism.
Do you hate women Judith Butler? Even though you are one? Or are you just so privileged you don’t get how this is playing out in the very real world. The world where other gender non-conforming women aren’t as lucky as you in your ivory tower.
I’m talking about a world where lesbians are attacked, hated and bullied for being same sex attracted. Is that the kind of expression that causes you to get so enraged it makes you want to sit down and pen another pretentious article in the New Statesmen?
I’m talking about a world where masculine women are still hated, where many on the so-called progressive left would rather a girl became a boy than let her run about a football pitch with short hair, as a girl.
I implore you Judith Butler, woman up if you have a conscience.
You want a world where anyone can “express” themselves anyway they like without stigma?
Radical Feminists beat you to it. We’ve wanted that forever.
So stand with radical feminists while we actually make a world where biology really doesn’t matter, at least, not in a negative way.
But you won’t will you Butler. The patriarchy has taught you well. And just like all the misogynists, you hate women too.
When Vivaldi died in 1741 his music was in the most complete darkness. It was the scholars of Bach in the nineteenth century who first heard of Vivaldi, thanks to the ancient manuscripts where Bach had transcribed the concerts of someone called Vivaldi. It was known who Bach was, but who was Vivaldi? Fortunately, a search was conducted, which resulted in the rescue of Vivaldi from oblivion.
274
“Yet the corporate use of the word democracy has no relation to the word’s philosophical definition. It is merely a portmanteau for all manner of plunder, the techniques of which include first evicting the wayward socialist in power, by sanction or sabotage or shotgun, then implanting a pliable stooge in power, implementing economic austerity, and selling off state-owned assets (held in the name of the people) to U.S. multinationals. Meanwhile the population stews in a cauldron of social and economic chaos. The pundits then clamor to administer more of the same, calling it a cure, but knowing it isn’t.
The wreckage entrained by this turn of events is nearly wholly hidden by the corporate press. But the events occur nonetheless. The ‘pliable stooges’ are referred to in Communist lore as ‘comprador elite’. Effectively, Washington buys off an elitist in the target country–there are always plenty, most of them educated in some American re-education camp disguised as an Ivy League Elysium–and supplies him or her with a prefabricated policy playbook drawn up inside the beltway by congeries of Chicago School fantasists. Then our obtuse organs of capitalist oligarchy will provide military aid in the form of weapons and training that will almost certainly be necessary to put down the social unrest caused by the austerity policies. Austerity means slashing social spending, which depletes economic demand, which shrinks the economy, which causes international lenders (read Washington-directed banks) to step in, wringing their hands in brotherly concern for their Latin lessers, and hold out a dollar-based loan package stippled with conditionalities.
These conditions include budget caps, the violation of which will trigger punitive measures, and the dropping of tariff regimes that protect domestic industry in favor of “FDI” or Foreign Direct Investment, a pseudo-economic term for a firesale of national resources at deep discounts to foreign corporations. This is also referred to as ‘privatization’ which is said to be necessary in order to raise funds for the government to pay back the onerous loan, which was naturally signed off on by the comprador elite in charge, a traitor who betrays his own population, impoverishes them, and fences their own wealth for what amounts to a transaction fee, which he then pockets before absconding to foreign climes. (Think of the Shah of Iran being granted admission to the United States for medical treatment after being chased from the country by the revolution). This makes the loan odious as well as onerous, but this is disregarded by the debt collectors.
Additional costs come in the form of ‘externalities’, the second best trick of capitalist exploitation. The first is when capital captures the surplus value from labor (which means you will never be paid your true worth in a capitalist system). The second is when capital socializes the steep costs of production. Here the costs often materialize in the form of ecological depredations, as when corporations strip mine mountaintops (see West Virginia or Jharkhand, India, where slag and sulfur wreck native habitats). These actions often proceed protected by the infamous ‘MOU’ or Memorandum of Understanding that permits domestic and foreign corporations to mine under the aegis of the federal state. Yet how much of this is shared in the tepid correspondence between the monolithic institutions of corporate media and their million minor outlets?”
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