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The forced birth brigade has won a major victory against women and their rights with the repeal of Roe vs Wade. Surprisingly much of the woke world has magically remembered what a woman is and how sex based oppression works in our society. Please also note identifying as a man and demanding your reproductive healthcare isn’t a viable strategy because, as based feminist women have been saying since the beginning, it is impossible to ‘identify’ into or out of your sex class.
Of course, when it comes to making the rules, progressive men think that it is completely okay to put male sex offenders in female prisons because of male gender feelings. It is heartbreaking, yet unsurprising, to see how little male politicians and their progressive allies value women and their safety.
It all comes down to the safety of women in society. Women will get abortions regardless of their legality – now the accessible safe options will be removed for many women in the US. Women will die because of lack of access to reproductive healthcare.
What will the progressive side do about this tragedy? Probably close to fuck all because they cannot even define what a woman is. The mainstream Left dropped the ball, embracing divisively specious gender ideology instead of defending the rights, boundaries, and spaces of females in society. So instead of fighting against the reactionary Right we had to fight viscous internecine battles over intrinsically stupid issues like gender self identification. Way to go our team!
Perhaps it is a clarifying moment though where women can plainly see the issues that face them and choose to fight for and defend their place in society. Those who want to embrace the post modern queer theory bullshite can go off to their woolly debates and whinge-circles of who is in the most oppressed. With the idiot chaff intersectionally faffing about, the adult women and men in the room can get down to the real work of restoring female autonomy and boundaries in our society.
The entire article can be found here.
“The truth is, there was no ‘work’ involved in what was done to us in prostitution. Prostitution is neither sex nor work. Sex does not just involve mutuality; it necessitates it. The sex of prostitution is devoid of mutuality, and cash is introduced to fill the breach. In prostitution, the cash is the coercive force, the evidence of the coercion, and the great silencer all at the same time. What right to complaint is a woman seen to have when she’s been compensated for her own violation?
How is it that so many people fool themselves into believing the bodies of prostituted women function differently to everyone else’s?
During my last 10 years campaigning, I have sometimes been asked by women what prostitution ‘feels like’. I hit on a way of explaining this some years ago, and have repeated it a few times since. I invite them, the next time they are in a café or a bar, to take a look around at the male patrons. Old, young, fat, thin, tall, short, handsome, ugly, beautiful, repulsive – and imagine that they are obliged to have sex with them. All of them. The women’s faces turn to horror because they don’t need to imagine; they know full well that they’d have no interest in sleeping with whoever happens to walk through the door.
At the most basic level, having our personal space breached by a stranger causes a stress reaction. Given that everybody knows this, and everyone who experiences it reacts to it on an instinctive level, how is it that so many people fool themselves into believing the bodies of prostituted women function differently to everyone else’s? Why is it that there is a subset of women who are thought to behave like nonhumans, who have no sense of personal boundaries, no anxiety reaction, no disgust response? I sometimes wonder whether, because prostitution is understood as alien behaviour, the prostituted have alien attributes assigned to them – a nonhuman propensity not to think, sense, feel and experience.
Much of what we know about humans is dispensed with in conversations about prostitution. Why is it that money’s peculiar power of transmutation operates only when sexual access is for sale? Cash is not seen to have this magical quality in the sweatshops of the developing world or the makeshift operating theatres where kidneys are removed. Sweatshops are not considered viable workplaces, although clothing manufacture is not in question as viable employment. It is the treatment of people in sweatshops that renders clothing manufacture unviable employment. We understand, in all areas but one, that money can’t buy permission or a pass on human rights.
This fiction ignores how incongruent prostitution is when measured against any profession one can think of.
The treatment of women in prostitution is not comparable with the treatment of people in sweatshops in one very important respect – because prostitution is not comparable with clothing manufacture. Sweatshops constitute a deviation in the general area of clothing production; a mode of manufacture so lacking in basic workers’ rights as to constitute human rights violations. Prostitution, in contrast, strips the individual of dignity, and does so in all of its manifestations, because it does so at its core. This is because, in prostitution, the site of violation is the body itself.”
I’m thinking that activities that celebrate regressive stereotypes of female behaviour are not particularly progressive or useful in society. I fully support practitioners of Drag who want to practice their rituals in the appropriate societal context. However, there is a trend put Drag into contexts that are most definitely not appropriate for instance, elementary schools. Children are not equipped intellectually or emotionally to properly understand what is going on during “Drag story book hour” or “dance celebration. Nor should they have to be.
Ostensibly the purpose – “Drag Queen Story Hour, Drag Queen Storytime, and Drag Story Time are children’s events first started in 2015 by author and activist Michelle Tea in San Francisco with the goals to “inspire a love of reading, while teaching deeper lessons on diversity, self-love and an appreciation of others.” The events, usually geared for children aged 3–11, are hosted by drag queens who read children’s books, and engage in other learning activities in public libraries.“.
Sure.
But then we run up against this:
A 44-page search warrant filed Friday by a Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) special agent said investigators found Blomme, using the name “dommasterbb,” uploaded 27 videos and images containing child pornography. Two of the files were uploaded at a Milwaukee County government building, the search warrant said,” a summary notes.
Blomme formerly served as the President of the Cream City Foundation from 2017 to 2020, which describes itself as “mobilizing philanthropic resources by harnessing the pride, passion, and commitment of LGBTQ+.”
The foundation also runs a Drag Queen Story Hour program, an event that “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”
“In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real” a description adds.”
Children do not need gender fluidity or queer role models that destabilize their identity and worldview. More pertinently, they should not be exposed to grooming by pedophiles who happily take the queer label in exchange for access to their child victims.
Let’s keep what Queer Theory is front and centre in our minds – https://youtu.be/n-NseFg2kno
Counterpunch is a alternative news site that I’ve followed for many years. I have often picked up on an essay that I found there and added my critique or opinion on the matter. Recently I critiqued a piece that was – ideologically speaking – over the top and I had to give it the Red Pen of Justice treatment. The lambasting was due as the claims made could only hold up in a proper collectivist utopia. When I saw that one of their hardcore left ideologues, Paul Street had mentioned the ‘woke politic’ I was expecting more fodder for the mill of insane leftist politics to criticize.
They’ve set the bar for what passes as journalism pretty low as of late so I was prepared for the worst. And… was pleasantly surprised. Apparently there are limits for some people as to how much cringe-woke insanity they can stomach. The title of the subsection jarred my consciousness :
“Erasing Women and Girls with “Woke” Idiocy”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Strap in folks, this is going to be a ride.
“And then there’s the hyper- and fake-“woke” identitarian idiocy that pervades and cripples US social movements on the ground. I will never forget the time (in the summer of 2014) I politely corrected a Black Lives speaker who said that the killing of a Black person by “could even happen here in Iowa City” by pointing out that Iowa City had been the site of an incident in which a white police officer had murdered a Black man – the killing of John Deng by a Johnson County Sheriff in July of 2009. A white female graduate student lectured me on how “white men have nothing to say at racial justice rallies.” Six years later on the South Side of Chicago, Black Lives activists would not listen to information I had on the potential to powerfully link up two separate racial justice marches (both protesting Kentucky’s decision not to prosecute the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor) because of my race and gender.”
Paul Street at least aware of what can happen when the what your group looks like is more important the the content of your character. It’s a really quite a shit way to view the world and it bites even most rabid proponents when they do not follow the rules.
“(Idiotic standpoint identititarianism is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Recently I participated with some other white folks in the stoppage of traffic on a major thoroughfare and on behalf of women’s abortions rights in Chicago. Two Black men got out of their cars and attacked us claiming that we would not be stopping traffic for Black people. I informed these gentlemen that we had all been in the streets for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Justin Blake and, before that, for Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Chicago’s own Laquan McDonald. After hearing this, one of the two assailants asked me, “so are you saying that you have experienced all the same micro-aggressions and prejudice that I have and go through every day of my life”? I said, “no I don’t think that. I’m not an idiot and I’d have to be an idiot to think that.” He went back to his car before I could tell him that the repeal of abortion rights will inflict special and disproportionate harm on the Black community and Black women.)”
If Paul Street can see the bullshit that is is standpoint epistemology/identitiarianism you know it has to be a problem. For the uninitiated: “standpoint epistemology (and related identity-based epistemologies) are a complicated and widely discredited way to create and justify a kind of gnosticism around critical conceptions of identity and the relevant power dynamics in society. In practice, this typically means it is yet another justification within Theory for only people who agree with Theory to be considered knowledgeable authorities […].”
It’s being used in the leftist activist all the time and it contributes to the inefficiency and infighting that mars all identitarian movements.
“I have recently been confronted by destructive uber-“woke” folly in the form of the loony yet cocksure charge that it is “trans-exclusive” and transphobic to specify females as the target of the war on abortion rights. As a friend writes me, some transgender activists “really believe it’s exclusionary and reactionary to dare to talk about ‘forced motherhood’ and ‘women’s oppression.’ Such madness actually happens.”
This is sheer village idiocy. The Christian fascist war on abortion rights is quintessentially about the patriarchal control and oppression of women and girls. The Republifascist enemy is not remotely thinking about transgender folks when it goes after abortion. Calling activists “trans-phobic” and anti-trans for defending “women’s abortion rights” is reactionary madness. The demand that activist language be changed to “people’s abortion rights” is to erase women in the name of “inclusion.” This is like calling for Black Lives Matter to be changed to “All Lives Matter.”
Wow, you know you’ve gone to far when Street calls you out (rightly) on your bullshit. Of course transgender queer activism has no limits and no sanity. Everything – absolutely everything – is about their oppression and their plight. Those damn females talking about their rights in society are oppressors using their privilege to further marginalize queer trans voices who are *obviously* way more oppressed than those women fighting for their rights to basis reproductive healthcare in society.
“Such hyper-identitarian irrationality has worked its way all the way up to Planned Parenthood (PP). Eager to mess with radical abortions rights activism in accord with its shameful advance surrender to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, PP is down with the preposterous claim that the call for women’s right to an abortion is repressively “gendered” language that oppresses trans people. See this shamelessly stupid PP post on how activists should replace “women” with “people” abortion rights discourse.
In a shameless and transparent hit-job on the radical anti-fascist feminist group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights’ (RU4AR) recent successful actions at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Dodgers’ Stadium in Los Angeles, and Joel Osteen’s right-wing megachurch in Houston, the liberal zine Jezebel displays extreme identitarian wokeness to rationalize its advance capitulation to the Supreme Court assault on Roe. Jezebel’s Emily Leibert childishly claims that RU4AR’s use of the phrase “female enslavement” is “inappropriate given that the leaders of this group are not Black” (has Emily Leibert ever heard of the great abolitionist leader John Brown?). Leibert says that RU4AR’s “repeated usage of gendered terms …excludes trans and nonbinary pregnant people who need abortion access and care.”
And what are those “gendered” terms, specifically? Answer: “women” and “girls,” half of humanity (!), and “patriarchy,” a supremely significant (to say the least) and longstanding oppression system defense and advance of which is at the very heart of the war on abortion rights.”
Street is quite done with the fuckery on display, but is it too late for him to preserve the brand of activism he supports? Because this sort of identity politics nonsense is what rules the roost in leftist circles. It cares not for the reality of any situation, but rather the power dynamic and the relationship to power to which best interpolate the amount of oppression a group experiences and thus how much ‘authenticity’ said group has when speaking on the issue.
Apparently women (adult human females) do not have enough ‘authenticity’ to speak on the issue of abortion and reproductive healthcare.
“Some anarchists fall for this women-erasing tripe. See this depressing It’s Going Down post, which glories in the replacement of the RU4AR slogan “Not the Church, Not the State, Women Must Decide Our Fate” with “Fuck the Church, Fuck the State, Only We Decide Our Fate.” Reflecting on this article, whose anarchist author digs how his/her/their allies chided a “Maoist” for using the bourgeois word “women,” Chris C of the Communist Workers Group (CWG) writes the following: “I don’t know how any ‘Leftist’ can write an article on abortion and reproductive rights and only mention ‘women’ once. Kind of difficult to organize and mobilize for women’s liberation if one cannot even use the term.”
Well Mr.Street, by saying these words you’ve joined the “far-right” TERF crew who believe that women are adult human females and inhabit a category of human beings that are distinct from men and have their own unique set of issues and concerns when it comes to society.
Welcome. Let’s hope now that you will apply some of your revolutionary zeal to combat the rise of woke identity politics and the cancer that it represents for society.
The gun culture in the United States is certainly a artifact to behold. Schools and communities are scenes of violent murderous shootings. The requisite furor about gun violence rises and falls with each new bloody occurrence.
The theatre of caring about children and their safety played out in the aftermath of Sandy Hook.
“The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals for making the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition.[242]
Within hours of the shooting, a We the People petition was started asking the White House to “immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress,”[243][244] and the gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reported that an avalanche of donations in the hours after the shooting caused its website to crash.[245] Five days later, President Obama announced that he would make gun control a “central issue” of his second term,[246] and he created a gun violence task force, to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden.[247] On January 16, 2013, Obama signed 23 executive orders and proposed 12 congressional actions regarding gun control.[248] His proposals included universal background checks on firearms purchases, an assault weapons ban, and a high-capacity magazine ban limiting capacity to 10 cartridges.[249][250]
On December 21, 2012, the National Rifle Association‘s Wayne LaPierre said gun-free school zones attract killers and that another gun ban would not protect Americans. He called on Congress to appropriate funds to hire armed police officers for every American school and announced that the NRA would create the National School Shield Emergency Response Program to help.[251] After LaPierre’s press conference, the Brady Campaign asked for donations to support its gun control advocacy and asked NRA members “who believe like we do, that we are better than this” to join its campaign.[252] On January 8, 2013, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot and injured in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, launched the gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, with a specific aim of matching or exceeding the fundraising capabilities of the NRA and similar groups.[253]
On January 16, 2013, New York became the first U.S. state to act after the shooting when it enacted the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act.[254] On April 3, 2013, Connecticut General Assembly passed a 139-page[255] major gun-control bill with broad bipartisan support.[255] Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed the bill on the same day.[256] The bill requires universal background checks (background checks for all firearm purchases),[257] a high-capacity magazine ban banning the sale or purchase of ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition like those used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting,[258] created the first registry in the United States for dangerous-weapon offenders, and added over 100 types of guns to the state’s assault weapons ban.[255] Pro-gun groups had rallied outside the Capitol to protest prior to the signing[255] and challenged it in court. Federal judge Alfred Covello ruled to uphold the law in January 2014.[259]
On April 4, 2013, Maryland also enacted new restrictions to their existing gun laws.[260][261] However, ten other states passed laws that relaxed gun restrictions.[262]
Legislation introduced in the first session of 113th Congress included the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013[263][264] and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases.[265][266] Both were defeated in the Senate on April 17, 2013.[267]
Phase one in purple text. Phase two in red text.
So, right now we’re in the first phase when outraged people demand action. We will hear less about the second phase when the measures that were tentative enacted are walked back.
What is apparent is that the amount of gun violence in America is at a level that American’s find acceptable in their society. We can look to the media to watch people say how horrible it is and what measures to need to be put in place to stop gun violence but those voices and will to change fade. The fade continues until the next violent incident.
Just to be clear, there is no upper limit to the number of casualties needed to “wake people up”. If that was the case, the Sandy Hook mass shooting should have been enough. Or maybe the Pulse Night Club shooting, or the Las Vegas shooting or…
I hope the conversation amongst the competing interests in the US swings toward the notion of more responsible gun ownership and more supports for individuals who are isolated from society.
This article is written by Nicky Reid who in her first sentence declares their identity as a “Queer pro-lie anarchist”. I think that if you happen to be writing an piece to be published, wouldn’t it be better to let your thoughts and ideas carry your message rather than stating which camp you happen to belong to?
I’m surprised/not-surprised that Counterpunch would publish this person’s work, but there was a time when CP was about giving a voice to intelligent authors who had serious arguments that added breadth and depth to many an important topic. Instead what we are presented with is scattered unhinged whinging about how terrible everything is and that the only solution is burning it all down. A small sample:
“Me too. I say that Queer people and our allies on the left start putting our priorities into challenging these scumbags to put up or shut up by thinking big, acting small, and weaponizing our own communities against their institutions.
The best revenge against judicial tyranny is secession and we’ve seen this theory wielded with fantastic results in the form of sanctuary states and sanctuary cities. Local governments who simply refuse to comply with the feds on issues as far-ranging as gun rights and marijuana have exposed their powers for the hopped-up illusions that they really are and rendered them totally impotent in the face of communities who quite simply resist being governed by any authority figure they didn’t vote for.
Let’s take this ethic to the next level by organizing intentional communities across the map around shared ideals like communes and gayborhoods and turning them into sanctuaries from any power that exists outside them. Let’s create a quilt work of Queer autonomous zones and feminist autonomous zones and Black Power autonomous zones and Boogaloo autonomous zones and polygamist autonomous zones and tweaker autonomous zones.”
Really? Because the public good is well served by the destruction of the institutions that maintain the public good? Because creating ‘autonomous zones’ isn’t a recipe for chaos and lawlessness that will hurt everyone not ready to go all in on the “bloody tooth and nail” routine?
Tearing all of society down because *you* inside your bullshit queerness are having an ‘unhappy’ is insanity. Calm the fuck down.
The same goes for you Counterpunch, calm down and stop printing such aggressively stupid articles.
bleatmop
Mystro
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