Election campaigns , distilled by stanza.

From the Tories –
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you really care about your kids you’ll submit to fear and allow us to strip you of your rights , your NHS.
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about Brexit then it must be a hard Brexit , if you care about the country you must allow it to become a tax haven .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS .
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about your kids you’ll ignore that we tripled the national debt and added half again to the deficit and anyway , that’s not bankrupting *at all* – that’s what labour does .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about your kids you’ll ignore that food banks have proliferated exponentially under the Tories .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about your kids you’ll ignore the thousands who’ve died – sometimes within 24hrs – of being declared fit for work , under the Tories
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about your kids you’ll ignore the exponential rise in hate crime and racism under our watch .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
.

If you care about your kids you’ll allow us to steal their inheritance that you prudently saved up , all to make the PM’s husbands company even richer , never mind all the taxes you paid , if you get dementia , never mind it’s a disease no different and avoidable than cancer
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

If you care about your kids you’ll ignore that we cut defence and police TO THE BONE and simultaneously facilitated and capitalised on the terrorism we now rely will scare you enough to allow us to rip up your rights .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .

How dare you point out we haven’t costed any part of our manifesto .
Look at my shoes .
DID YOU KNOW CORBYN TALKED TO TERRORISTS
I WILL PRESS THE BUTTON
I WILL RIP UP YOUR RIGHTS
STRONG AND STABLE .
TERRORISTS TERRORISTS TERRORISTS LOOK INTO MY EYES BE SCARED BE VERY SCARED TERRORISTS TERRORISSSSTTTTSSSS,…..

From Labour –
We’d like to build houses , nationalise the trains , save the NHS , feed kids , save education .
Yes our manifesto is costed and no , we will not indulge in character assassinations or terrifying people into petty minded isolationism and snooping – we think Britons are better than that .
Ah and that pressing the button thing ? Only a nutcase would do that happily , and we HAVE signed up to Trident because whilst we hate nukes, we do understand deterrence .
And it’s under the Tories the biggest defence cuts happen FYI .

#trufax

Cogito Ergo Sum

Humans are solipsistic , narcissistic .
Yet we “prove our individuality ” by joining tribes .

This is how the cult of individualism has colonised liberalism , allowed “identity” and “choice” politics to become tools of neoliberal capitalism , to mutate from liberalism to libertarianism .
It has allowed the political to become personal , rather than the other way round .

We “are”.
So much so that we will only join and vote for a political party if it’s leader most closely reflects our own tropes . We reject pluralist consensus as though we would be abandoning all our ethics – every principle we ever held dear – never mind the collateral damage .
We assert that such is “necessary ” for the greater good of all.
Yet we never stoop so low as to ponder what the “all” , might suffer – never giving focus to the contradiction we create , the totalitarianism.

We find it impossible to believe that our ethics or morals may not be appropriate to apply to others for a variety of – sociopolitical , socioeconomic , cultural ,environmental – reasons , yet justify our moral , ethical and cultural equivalences -as well as our moral relativism – by invoking the individual .

We recoil at the very idea that a woman’s choice to sell her body may be damaging all woman – inter alia – it’s her choice and therefore sacrosanct .
We never address the the impact of – or what drives – such .
We reject participating in herd immunity , using our western tech to deride anyone using the same as a hypocrite , should they mention the aforesaid .
Don’t use your choice to question mine , we say . How dare you choose to?
We render political alliances asunder – yet form new ones – all in the name of choosing “sovereignty “.
We never hold a mirror to our faces – lest it reflect the unseen driving hand of darkness – and the dark within.
Should anyone have the temerity to lift the looking glass , we rage at the traitor , their insurrection . Their very treason .

We react with wounded egos when we are informed that dietetic trends may be an indication – of or gateway to – eating disorders in the young female , rejecting the bigger picture and imagining a non existent attack on our sacred , dearly guarded ethics .
Our quinoa , biodiesel and soy must remain unexamined in their impact .

We say a person can change sex , simply because of a notion in their head .
We say A is A because A says it’s A . Never once allowing A to have a material , biological , scientific basis on which it can be defined – empirically – as A , rather than B.
It never occurs to us that in doing so , we render A and B nonsensical , and that in doing so it becomes impossible to identify as either .
Cui bono? Those of us for whom material reality is an inconvenience to acknowledge lest we are forced examine its part in the oppression of billions , and our participation thusly .

We are trapped in the tumbril of solipsism , unable to discern or apply nuance .
We are addicted to identity and in thrall to consumerism .
The only consensus we will suffer is that of the cipher.
And to a greater of lesser extent . It’s is “we” – all of us .
I think I think I think , the contradiction of our times .
The world has gone from revolving around – to revolving within – us .
We are all vulnerable to the seductive – chauvinistic – charms of cogito ergo sum.

Sisterhood not cisterhood , is women. And you don’t get to tell us it isn’t .

Right . The term “Cis”.

You’ll hear that it’s not reductive , you’ll hear that it just means “not trans ” , you’ll hear that it simply means “someone whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth”.

Let me unpack that , rat fans .

1 . We do not need a prefix to illustrate that female born women are women , we already have a prefix that differentiates us from those born male , and THAT, rat fans , is “trans ” .
Hence “transwomen” and “women “- NOT “cis-women” and “women ”
Going along with that shit semantically erases who the “actual ” women are .

2. Gender is a construct . Nobody is “assigned ” anything by the identification of their sex .
However , once sex is identified , a codified set of behaviours , preferences , personality traits , talents , abilities , and expectations , will be inculcated from day one .
In short , gender is the distillation of SEXism , it is a role that is assigned .
Forcibly and without mercy .
Now , tell me , what female – WHAT WOMAN – identifies or aligns with being assigned the role of not fully human , the lesser , the raped , the subordinate , the corseted , the genitally infibulated , birth forced , wretched set of low expectations and lower lives , the GENDER , forced upon them that transwomen so fetishise and covet ?
Indeed , explain to me how anyone can identify as a woman without being either gender essentialist and/or resort to sexist tropes ?
Cui bono from framing the narrative thus? Who’s trying to enforce it with hysteria , silencing , and obsessive , narcissistic victimhood ?
Not women.

So next time , dear sisters , dear brothers , as well as refraining from that crap , shut it down .

It’s sisterhood , not cisterhood .

Solidarity . Happy IWD .

Why objecting to the “Spousal Veto” , is nothing more than rape culture, and how it seeks to shame women for having boundaries.

Removing the rather mis named the spousal veto is a coercive measure , campaigned for by people who want their cake and eat it, and wish to force non compliant wives (for wives this overwhelmingly applies to) into courts to be labelled self declared TERFs and homophobes , in short, this is pre-emptive revenge on women* who wish to exercise their sexual boundaries .

If I marry a man, who is male, I do not wish to discover I married someone who has always been trans, (sorry “always been a woman” ..silly me) just as any straight man/woman , does not wish to discover they married someone who is gay, and has – presumably – lied during the whole marriage , and has ergo deceived them into marriage (something the Catholic Church, weirdly progressive for a change, considers renders a marriage nullified) .

Sexuality and orientation isn’t bigotry, and only people who don’t respect women’s boundaries or right to honesty would have you believe otherwise.

Should a so called “veto” be removed I can see the argument thus..

Transitioning spouse….”yur a homophobe and a TERF”

Woman ….”no, I’m not, I’m just not gay and you weren’t honest ”

TP.. ” what’s wrong with being gay?”

W … ” nothing, if I was gay I’d maybe be married to an actual woman now, already ”

TP “but you already were, have always been , since I was always ACTUALLY a woman..”

W…”so, you’re calling me what?”

TP “a lesbophobe TERF , and what’s more, if you wanna divorce , bitch, I’m gonna make you stand up in court and admit it”

After all, what wounds a male more than his dick be denied?

Which is of course a human rights infringement.

Calling women’s access to divorce a veto implies that this is a legal tool open to women who wish to prevent their spouse transitioning. It is not.
It simply allows women to access divorce quickly and fairly when it becomes clear that the original basis of the marriage was based in a a falsity….
And quite apart from anything, when was a man ever prevented from doing whatsoever he pleases , just because he spouse objects ?

Baroness Stowell (Con) , summed up opposition to this succinctly and effectively…thusly

Tina Stowell, Baroness Stowell of Beeston @tinastowell (UK)

*This of course would also include , more rarely , lesbians married to women transitioning , and even more rarely, straight men married to transitioning women , or gay men married to transitioning men, though the dynamic vis-a- vis assumed sexual access, especially where it’s females transitioning , may differ.

Remember, it’s still common belief amongst men that marriage infers tacit ongoing consent to , and availability of , sex upon demand, and that in the UK, marital rape was only recognised as actual rape in 1991.
In many countries it remains unrecognised as even “bad manners”.

Gingerbloodywigsdrunkardsleprechaunsguinnesbonocangettofuck

Ok . St Pat’s day…

Has the dust settled, are we over our hangovers? Then I’ll begin…..

Once upon a time , there was an Anglo Irish girl, a convent girl no less, who eschewed her roots, spent time being strenuously *not* Irish .

Why, well partly , St Patrick’s day, or more arguably, the buffoonery and racism , yes racism.
“Racism she says” and I hear ya ….We’re white . Very, very white. Usually the whitest person in the room, I won’t lie.
But yanno, we’ve only “just” joined “white club”* , still probationers, if you will.

We are not all ginger haired , belligerent , loquacious drunks
(Not all the time anyway, sometimes we’re at Mass)(or building things , or arresting people) , but on St “Pat’s” day any visiting alien would be forgiven for thinking otherwise ….
It’s a powerful stereotype I grant you.
And it’s one an impressionable girl swallowed and made her , I hate to report, subconsciously ashamed – who would want to belong to such a shower of hopeless , dipsomaniac , emotionally incontinent fighty half wits?
And let’s face it, as a suppression tool – one of many – the stereotype worked especially well as regards those of us of the left footer persuasion.

But look, I KNOW we parody ourselves thusly, too. Look at “Father Ted”, or “Mrs Brown’s Boy’s ” , you name it ..countless Irish taking the piss out of the Irish …

(Peter O’Toole bloody lived it)
But that’s Irish humour, not Irish jokes .

Tell me , if a Jewish person or POC were parodying themselves would you don “Black face” or a prayer shawl and join in?
So please , “green face” , really ? **

Now I guess you’re all celebrating St P’s out of solidarity , (and I did acknowledge one or two salutations) but , well, next time you feel like “getting your oirish on” , could you not instead invoke Yeats, Wilde, DeValera, Connolly, Collins, the bloody famine for the love of Pete …
Even Clannad , if you “must”.
No…not the anime…this lot …(do keep up)

It’s taken me most of my adult life to claim back an identity I’m entitled to, the physical roots of which are so much more recent than Michael bloody Flatley’s***(from which, unlike him, few of us this side of the Atlantic profit from) , and the reason I’m peeved about St Patric’s day, is the stereotype it trots out that made me ashamed of who I am .

*And unlike the immigrants Ignatiev invokes in “How The Irish Became White”, we did not gain that by crapping on POC, as those in the US did, because here , that was *us*(look at how Roma etc, for instance , now occupy that ground)
Even in the US , as Ignatiev’s subject source , this was not wholesale ..google “the lazy antisemitism of the liberal”

**also drag. AKA “ladyface”, It may well be that not all drag artistes are misogynist …I don’t think O’Grady or LaRue were, but the genre , and the stereotypes it relies on….

***and what IS it with his “brogue”, he’s from New York for Pete’s sake , I’ve a London accent cuz guess what……
(Dancing isn’t appropriation but national accents you didn’t grow up with might be ) (it’s summat not quite right anyway so if anyone can come up with a better , more fitting term , please, I’m all ears)

FOOTNOTE .
I’m not saying don’t celebrate St P’s , DO, do go down your local ale house, I hear they’ve laid in on really good Irish band… drink the black stuff (if you must ….can’t stand it me’self unless it’s mixed with champagne) , but please , please , don’t embarrass yourselves with silly accents and by all that’s holy , stay way from ginger bloody wigs and green face paint ….
The whole (“sexy”) leprechaun (can get to fek)shillelagh thing in fact……

No. No. No. OK?

FOOTNOTE TWO
Not comparable with what POC face daily , at all…but still , well come on…

I never entertain hangovers.
Or Bono.

Transphobia AKA the reified manifestation of projected homophobia. And how it unites men.

The reason the left and right have united under the transgender cause is because they don’t want gender non conforming men in “man club” .

Hence they’ve decided to make it women’s problem and have elegantly framed any opposition as “phobic” because that plays neatly to our socialised internal misogyny , nurturing behaviours and concomitant fear of offending.

In short, they’ve projected their homophobia onto us and renamed it transphobia .

And it’s a very good tactic, very useful.
Brilliant at silencing because should you deny this weak, irrational fear of something, you risk marking yourself as simply a bigot.
Like with many things , denial is proof of guilt.
So even denial is silenced and thusly , silence is also tacit admission of guilt .

So the next time you hear a person accused of transphobia , ask yourself , what does the accuser stand to to gain by shutting down dialogue?

I shall be clear, homophobia is a thing. People fear they might “catch the gay”, get propositioned or similar (very irrational since the most phobic are usually the least likely to get “hit on” or so I’ve observed ) , or genuinely fear that “the gay” will bring about “te rapture”.

I know of no radical feminist who hates or fears the gender non conforming, or have any interest in restricting anyone’s lawful pursuit of a peaceful life .

We do , however , rightly question the gender paradigms that lead to non conformity , and how non conformity is manifest and reacted to, especially in the “transgender milieu” , as perpetuating of the gender binary .

We do, and this is where PERFECTLY RATIONAL FEAR comes into play, rightly oppose any movement or legislation that would allow , and does allow, intact, disturbed , often violent men , (or just common-or-garden rapists) who may or may not believe they are “women” , to access females in vulnerable states , be they rest rooms, gymnasiums , hospitals, or prisons .

We are, rightly , angry at how men are using this so called transphobia , and relying on the internalised misogyny and yes ,also homophobia , of women and parents , to throw gender non conforming women, men, and even children into a category that makes them “not their problem” anymore, and frame any opposition as phobic or simple bigotry .

I invoke Hecate.

You think this sudden so called progressive agenda is happening in isolation?

How cute.

Just as we women thought we’d started to win, to own womanhood and the right to define it….

BINGO

Suddenly , as if by magic, we have a movement that tells women who don’t support the right of those NOT born female to be the ones defining and owning womanhood , that we are bigots , haters.

And we , socialised to be kind, to bend , to be SHIT SCARED LEST ANYONE “NOT LIKE” US, desperate to be “that cool girl” , do bend , to the point where we are weaponised against other women.
And we fall for it, duped by our own desperation to please .

Well not me.
I invoke Curie
I invoke Pankhurst
I invoke Hypatia .
I invoke Anne Bonny
I invoke Ching Shih
Mulan
Eva Duarte
Hecate
Lilith

Nice never got a girl anywhere .

My ode to joy.

I dunno. The world burns and meanwhile people, are nit picking that others didn’t show enough grief, and soon enough , or often enough , for enough.

Look, if you lose a member your family , your grief WILL be “different” from what I feel for me and mine and if I lose any part of them…
Does that mean you don’t care?

The same applies to “them” and “theirs”.

What if you didn’t know, because You were being kept ignorant by those with vested interests?
“Must” I infer you ignorance to be wilful, or indicative of prejudice?
“Must” I conclude your grief indicates you only care for you and yours?
Does this give anyone license to infer this in strangers or even friends? *

Compassion isn’t a zero sum game, and is quite different AND separate from the personal experience of pain, or expression therein ,or whither healers? Whither social progress? Whither justice?

So let’s STOP tearing ourselves apart with guilt and projected guilt.

As then , we now , are being manipulated by forces larger than ourselves, and it’s only by refusing to comply with them do we beat them, one and all – arm in arm – with one and all.

THIS , from the “Ode To Joy…Europe’s anthem

“Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Thy sanctuary.
Thy magic power re-unites
All that custom has divided,
All men become brothers
Under the sway of thy gentle wings”

Because we MUST remember the ideal of Europe**or we ALL fall.

Good night dear friends, and good luck.

*ok you might be right, but be careful , identify them, lest you preach to, and alienate , the choir.

**this isn’t “Eurocentric “, just a gentle reminder that so many in the world saw, and still see, Europe as the continent of stability , tolerance, and abundance…risen from terrible catastrophe and an example of what can be achieved with will enough…

You may think I paint idealised picture , but I say to you, it is only painted through the eyes of the masses feeing TO Europe , not FROM her..
Or else why would the forces of darkness seek to tear her apart?

And yes, we could and should parse on sins past visiting conflict present..but isn’t the best atonement , solidarity?

“Careful now” . On the difference between cultural humour from within, and “jokes” from without.

Irish jokes..can we just NOT.

“So if my friend who is Irish tells an Irish joke I can laugh and pass it on but if a non Irish person tells an Irish joke I shouldn’t laugh or pass it on – just asking? ”

Well dear inquisitor , I think you know the answer to that.
Even if the originator is of any group the joke is about ,your audience has only your word for that…

Would you pass on such if it were Jewish, for instance…
Now you could risk it, preceding it with “an Jewish friend told me this….”
But such friends are often the same apocryphal “friends” of the “I’m not racist, I have friends who are blah…”
And nobody would want to be seen that way, by a black, Jewish, Irish etc…person on the receiving end, just for telling a joke, would they…?

Now, if I were to post an Irish joke on Facebook, and you forwarded it, my identity as the original poster would be clear, do you’d be ok……
And that’s fair enough, because I’m clearly no apocrypha in the imagination….

It can be easy if one is ostensibly WASP, to be labelled, with no malign intent whatsoever, as a racist..and it’s so easy to avoid by applying the veracity test…

And you will notice the funniest Irish sitcoms for instance , like Jewish or Italian ones, are always made by those peoples themselves, showing their humour, not jokes based on external tropes.
They’re inviting the audience into THEIR OWN headspace, not labelling from without.
The difference between Irish* humour, (*substitute whoever), and Irish “jokes”, if you will.

Who, after all, benefits from labelling a race or people**- stupid, lazy, or criminal…..and what better vehicle for that than the seemingly amusing..?

And THAT, gentle reader, is the root of my point.

** now, I’ve encountered pedants who are at pains to point out “blah isn’t a race it’s a people”, or “blah isn’t a race it’s a faith” ….

You know what? It makes no difference. Unless you really ARE that obtuse you will know that race, faith, colour, whatever, if used to “other ” some other large group of humans, based on a common defining factor, may not technically “be” racism, but it sure has the same stench.

*** “but surely that applies both ways, to men and WASPs as well….”

Well, were there ever a power imbalance, globally, socially or sociopolitically, that favoured those whom men , and WASPs , otherwise preside over, I guess you’d have a point. But there isn’t. So you don’t, but thanks for asking.

So don’t even think of chiming either logical fallacy , unless you really do wish to be seen as obtuse, racist, or possibly both.

Womb transplants are bad for women. And this is why

“Aha”you’re thinking, “why would something that would bring such joy”…to some women be bad for all women?

..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34397794

Because it does nothing to liberate women that’s why

How?
This is just another tool in the entrenchment of women’s primary status under patriarchy as uteri for the design of men….the best and most effective way of controlling women is to exploit the mammalian urge to procreate by making us seem that that’s our defining purpose and frame how it traps us under patriarchy as somehow a privilege.

I’m no athlete , does that make me feel a failure as “a woman”, of course it doesn’t…
The corollary is that women who are infertile would not either, unless they’re made to feel otherwise , and cui bono?

Well, it has enough resemblance of reward (historically … though people keep failing to mention rape as genetic cleansing etc) via “romance” and compulsory heterosexuality (the former the prettifying of the latter which is the exploitation of the human habit of mating up) to make it look like a privilege, but tell me, if it truly were, would there *be* such effort in entrenching it and such conniption when women eschew it?
And there is conniption**, which does make the contrasting though mirage reward appear as privilege.

Would there be such expense and effort put into scientific ways of enabling it, if it really weren’t such a tool.
Really? Can you think of ANY other privilege , by its very definition, that society would spend so much money and effort to SHARE?

Where’s the talk of testicle transplants,..?
There’s scant mention I can find, because men aren’t defined by their reproductive capacity or controlled via it and it seems to me, ergo, there’s no profit for patriarchy in such avenues.

Like it or not, it can be argued that uterine transplant is profoundly ANTI women, on many levels, especially women’s liberation.
Only once women are freed from the expectation , without and within, that they “must”*** bear young, can they ever be truly liberated.

*As to lili Elbe, a transsexual who died of complications from such a transplant…. there weren’t anti rejection drugs then, not to mention Elbe’s age….so that experiment is not fit for discursive purpose, though I can see why it would arise.

**I reference as exemplar the current obsession with women’s uteri in the U.S. Republican Party.

***And that’s before we even parse that this is SO entrenched that it even transcends medical ethics, alongside surrogacy and egg donation , all of which place woman under immense medical strain, such as is that other NON life saving procedures would not be countenanced had they the same inherent dangers.