All entries by this author
May 13th, 2022 3:49 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Julie Bindel had a very horrible time at York University last week.
It was a sign of the times that the group that invited me to give a talk on feminism at York was the university’s Free Speech Society. It was scheduled for February but trouble immediately materialised and both the feminist and the LGBTQ societies got it cancelled. But my hosts did not back down and, pledging to guarantee the safety of both students and speaker, rescheduled the talk. It happened last week, in an atmosphere I found both deeply disturbing and profoundly distressing.
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I heard the noise before I saw the crowd. ‘Bindel, out!’ ‘Not welcome on our campus,’ ‘Decrim(inalise) sex work now’ and the like. I
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4 comments
May 13th, 2022 11:50 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Fresh Air on Tucker Carlson part 2.
DAVIES: One of the things you hear a lot on his show is him looking into the camera, as he does in his opening monologues, and speaks to his audience and says, they don’t like you. They don’t care about you. They want to control your lives. Who’s the they?
CONFESSORE: In Carlson’s telling, in his narrative, they is the ruling class. And the ruling class is pretty much anybody he wants it to be. It’s people who actually are in charge and have power and are elected to office – presidents, vice presidents, people in Congress. It’s pro athletes. It’s Chelsea Clinton. It’s comedians who make jokes about America. It’s pretty
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3 comments
May 13th, 2022 11:02 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Fresh Air did a conversation about Tucker Carlson of Fox “News” yesterday.
If you follow cable TV at all, you probably know that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is one of the most influential commentators in conservative media and one of the most provocative. He’s known for praising authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and warning his viewers about the dangers of foreign immigrants and elites who want to control their lives. Our guest, New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore, recently wrote a series of articles about Carlson drawing on an analysis of more than 1,100 episodes of his show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” conducted by Confessore and a team of Times reporters as well
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5 comments
May 13th, 2022 10:40 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The GB News piece behind Tatchell’s “there are two kinds of women” tweet:
Speaking on GB News, Mr Tatchell said: “What I do say is that I think the fuss about the definition protects us from the dignity, rights, welfare and safeguarding of all women, including trans women.”
I think he meant “prevents us from protecting” rather than “protects us from” – that’s just the fumble of commenting live, which is natural. But the claim is idiotic even if we correct the wording. How can we protect the rights of people we can’t define correctly? Suppose we want to campaign to protect the human rights of Uighurs – they certainly need it. Suppose we want to do that and … Read the rest
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1 Comment »
May 13th, 2022 8:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Tatchell preaches the gospel.
No there aren’t. Not in that sense.
It depends on what you mean by “kinds,” for a start. There are millions of “kinds” of women in the sense of human variety, but in the ridiculous sense Tatchell is using, there aren’t. He might as well say there are two different kinds of house, one a building made of wood or bricks or stone for humans to live … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
14 comments
May 13th, 2022 7:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Chase goes after infants, privileged little shits that they are.
What is that “discourse”?
Remember that? Boycott Nestlé? Because it markets formula as better than breast milk, thus promoting malnutrition and starvation in poor countries where most people can’t afford to … Read the rest
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3 comments
May 12th, 2022 4:45 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
But this is a very healthy, reasonable, compassionate movement.
Definitely. If you grew up with a violent father – if you were groped or raped by a man in childhood or adolescence – if you were raped in high school or at university – if you’ve been mocked and bullied by men at parties or in bars or on trains or on the street – … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
8 comments
May 12th, 2022 2:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
This is just maddening. White House Roundtable With Lesbian Leaders – and of course you know what’s coming next.
Yesterday [April 26], in celebration of Lesbian Day of Visibility, the White House hosted a roundtable conversation with trailblazing lesbian and LGBTQI+ senior leaders from the White House and the broader Biden-Harris Administration.
So make that with “trailblazing” men bullying their way into lesbians’ day of visibility, just as they bullied their way into Michfest and then pushed all the women out. Lesbian is one thing and T and Q and I and + are other things. Lesbian Day of Visibility should be for lesbians, not men playing games.
The roundtable included lesbian and queer advocates ,community leaders, leaders across
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May 12th, 2022 12:03 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Eliza Mondegreen has a brilliant piece on Chase Strangio at The Glinner Update:
We’re supposed to pretend everything we know about sex is wrong: that legislatures never knew just who they targeted when they denied women the vote. That pimps and johns never knew whose bodies they sold. That the reproductive potential of child brides is pure guesswork. That the burdens of human reproduction settle, if not evenly, then at least mysteriously across the population.
Can be interesting as a thought experiment. As an alternative reality, it’s a train crash. The tottering of Roe makes that all too obvious.
We can argue about whether it makes sense to reorganize society on the basis of individuals’ personal identification with gender
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May 12th, 2022 11:19 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Men telling women what they will allow us to think. Quite the spectacle.
That “provided.” He’ll allow it, provided we do what he tells us. He’ll allow us to be aware of reality, provided we obey him. All we have to do is ignore everything we know about men’s physical advantages over women and what some men do with those physical advantages.
Also in what world is anyone… Read the rest
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6 comments
May 12th, 2022 9:46 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A graduate student in philosophy has solved the problem of unfairness to women in sport:
The desire for a protected female sports category is a reasonable one. How could it not be? Males have an unfair physical advantage over females in sports, and we should want everyone – not just men and boys – to have inspiring athletes they can look up to and emulate.
But what follows from here? Should all trans women athletes be banned from female sports because of what their birth certificates say, as Florida’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act entails? I don’t think so.
Why not? He doesn’t say. Trans women are men, so why shouldn’t they be “banned from” (that is, simply by … Read the rest
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22 comments
May 12th, 2022 8:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Some replies to the ACLU’s calculated insult to women yesterday:
“You may as well just say you hate women at this point and that you are actively working to erase women as a political class. It would be way more honest.”
“Way of disappearing the one, coherent group of people that are solely affected by it: women and girls, female people. Patriarchy has always tried to separate women from one … Read the rest
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5 comments
May 11th, 2022 4:34 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
ACLU even worse if that’s possible.
It is possible, and this is worse, because it takes so much more effort to remove “women” from a list of this kind rather than a generic “this is bad for women people” blurt. They really took care over this one, rubbing our noses in it over and over again.
In reality abortion bans disproportionately harm Black, indigenous, and other women of color. They … Read the rest
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3 comments
May 11th, 2022 3:24 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
I was browsing Nina Lakhani’s tweets because of this Private Eye story:
Can you read it? Kath Viner told staff not to attack other staff on Twitter, and the next day Lakhani attacked Hadley Freeman on Twitter – over, of course, Sacred Transism.… Read the rest
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4 comments
May 11th, 2022 3:18 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Corrections.
The Guardian tweet says “Latin American feminists vow to protect abortion rights” and “Women’s movements have fought hard.” Guardian US reporter’s retweet says “Latin American reproductive rights activists.” Correct correct correct, erase erase erase.… Read the rest
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3 comments
May 11th, 2022 11:50 am |
By Ophelia Benson
God I despise Joe Manchin. Can we just fold West Virginia back into Virginia please?
The Democratic legislation to enshrine abortion rights into federal law looks set to fail in the Senate this afternoon by a vote of 49-51, after the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said he would cross the aisle and join Republicans to vote no.
Easy for him. Not his body taken over. It would fail anyway because filibuster blah blah blah, but Manchin is plant food.
Manchin, a moderate Democrat, has been speaking with reporters in the Senate hallway, saying he believes the legislation as presented “goes too far”.
Gotta keep those women down some.… Read the rest
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7 comments