Gotta keep the women out somehow.

The disqualification of five ski jumpers at the Winter Olympics because of the suits they wore didn’t just result in an unexpected podium for the inaugural mixed team event. The abrupt ouster of those participants — all women — also resulted in howls of protest and outrage directed at the International Ski Federation (FIS).

Oh I don’t know, howls of protest and outrage sound awfully manly. I expect it was more whining.

“They destroyed women’s ski jumping,” said Germany’s Katharina Althaus.

Althaus, who helped Germany win the mixed team event three times at the ski jumping world championships, was among the women disqualified on Monday when FIS ruled that their suits were “too big and offered an aerodynamic advantage.” Bigger suits could increase the time ski jumpers are able to stay aloft, given the possibility of increased wind resistance.

Are we sure they looked this closely at the men’s suits?

None of the disqualified athletes’ teams made the medals podium, despite the fact that Germany, Austria, Norway and Japan entered Monday as the favorites, along with Slovenia, which took gold.

…

“I have been checked so many times in 11 years of ski jumping, and I have never been disqualified once, I know my suit was compliant,” the German star [Althaus] said, via Agence France-Presse.

…

Adding a layer to the expressions of disappointment and anger Monday was the history of sexism in ski jumping. The sport is among the eight that go back to the original Winter Olympics program in 1924, but women weren’t allowed to participate until 2014, after a group of athletes filed a lawsuit in 2009, ahead of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Ok so it totally makes sense that women have to be intensely monitored and checked up on and wherever possible disqualified.

At this year’s Games in Beijing, the Nordic combined event remains the lone men-only holdout, mixing ski jumping with cross-country skiing. Male ski jumpers also have two medal events not available to women: large hill and a single-gender team competition. The mixed team event reflected an effort by Olympic organizers to be more inclusive, but its debut was marred by the disqualifications.

Hey, they’re being more inclusive, ok? Cut them some slack. More inclusive doesn’t mean totally inclusive. Women just aren’t good enough for that.

NPR adds an interesting detail:

As several of the athletes and coaches acknowledged, this is far from the first time women’s jumpsuits have been at the center of controversy.

“For years, every female ski jumper around the world was required to have extra panels sewn in around her hips,” Emily Russell of North Country Public Radio reported last week. “The International Ski Federation (FIS), which sets competition standards for the sport, said the additional hip panels were meant to fit a woman’s body better.”

But some athletes said the extra panels mainly seemed to emphasize the curves of women’s bodies. The FIS changed the rules about those panels in its 2020 specifications — but now women’s suits are again making headlines, on winter sports’ biggest stage.

Why would extra panels make women’s suits fit better but not men’s suits?

It sounds all too much like the “rules” that make it necessary for women who compete in beach volleyball to wear tiny bikini underpants and bras while the men…don’t.

H/t Sackbut

A letter from Amnesty UK:

It’s funny, in a way, that Nscribble first says that AmnestyUK stands against “those spreading hate” and then immediately mentions misleading and confusing people as a common tactic against their human rights campaigns. Poor befuddled Nscribble doesn’t seem to grasp that accusing gender critical feminists of “spreading hate” is itself misleading and confusing, or to put it more crisply, a lie.

Then Nscribble accuses the gender critical feminist side of “spreading vitriol or misinformation,” which is also misleading and confusing, not to mention vituperative and unfair. Then Nscribble brushes aside the very idea that labeling us vitriolic liars might be part of an attempt to remove or weaken our political representation.

And yet, of course, that kind of abusive rhetoric is removing and weakening our political representation, day in and day out. It’s what’s been happening these past ten years or so: calling us names, lying about what we think and what we’re campaigning for, summoning troops to amplify the names and the lies. It’s been working brilliantly from their point of view – we’ve lost jobs, lost friends, lost networks, and even been arrested and interrogated. Yes, oddly enough, that does have an impact on our political voice.

And then, insanely, Nscribble tells us there’s no such thing as a female body.

We’re standing on a tiny island and chunks of it are falling into the sea every hour. Sharks are circling.

The ACLU yesterday, UN Women today.

Laverne Cox is a man who calls himself a woman. Marsha Johnson was a drag queen who did not call himself a woman. Here’s a list of 15 women that includes 2 men; enjoy!

An ACLU promo on Facebook did what it’s supposed to do and got me to click the ACLU link and read and then to look for more. The second item is Ban Forced Pregnancy.

As the Supreme Court appears prepared to gut or overturn Roe v. Wade, the threat to our abortion rights has never been closer to becoming reality. Already, roughly half of all states are poised to ban abortion, and politicians could even push to ban abortion nationwide if they have the opportunity. As a result, people across the country could be forced to remain pregnant against their will, losing control over their own bodies and futures.

People! Actual people! I used to think it was just women, so meh, but now that I know it’s people, I see that this really matters.

Laws that prevent people from making their own decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion amount to forced pregnancy. … Long-term consequences include…Increased levels of poverty for people turned away from the abortion care they need and an inability to cover basic needs like food, housing, and transportation… Policies that force people to remain pregnant and give birth are unconscionable, cruel, and dangerous. Lives and futures are at stake.

Actual lives – the lives of people.

How are People Already Being Forced to Remain Pregnant?

Shortly after Roe established the right to abortion, politicians rushed to undercut the landmark decision by passing increasingly cruel abortion restrictions — including laws preventing people from using their insurance to cover abortion care, mandating care be delayed for a certain amount of time, requiring parental consent for young people

Etc etc etc in the same vein, scrupulously excluding the word “women.”

Fuck the ACLU.

How much bigger than a cat is a large football player?

Kurt Zouma is 6’3″ and 209 lbs/94.8 kg. An average cat is 8 to 10 lb, and only a few inches high. Not exactly a fair fight.

Police have opened inquiries into a video that shows West Ham’s Kurt Zouma kicking and slapping a cat. They are planning a joint investigation with the RSPCA, which has described the footage as “very upsetting”.

Zouma has now apologized. Because what, he thought it was ok to kick and smack an animal a small fraction of his size until people got mad at him?

Originally a comment by Freemage on Even dangerous ideas.

Above and beyond the offensiveness of the position, it’s a crap job of philosophy. I read the article in Daily Nous, and it contained a fairly extensive breakdown of Kershnar’s position, which while more nuanced than the clips being touted by the right wing social media ring, are still utter shite.

He has two prongs to his discussion–he says that sex with minors should be illegal if it is harmful or against their will, but then posits that since it isn’t always harmful or against the minor’s will, there might be cases where it shouldn’t be illegal.

This, frankly, shows a grotesque ignorance of both human psychological development AND legal theory.

First off, there’s an entire body of law that exists not because of the certitude of harm, but because of the extended probability of harm–every OSHA regulation in existence, most driving laws, etc, are all based on the idea that when a particular course of action has a heightened chance of harm (even to oneself–see seat belt laws for adults), it is reasonable for the government to enact regulations and prohibitions when necessary. The fact that some 14-year-old might’ve had sex with an adult and turned out okay despite that does nothing to mitigate the fact that there is a very great risk of harm to the child, which the adult is completely and recklessly ignoring in order to sate their own desires.

As for “against their will”, it’s like the man never heard of age-of-consent laws outside of the context of sex. The fact is, adolescents are not fully formed psychologically, and therefore cannot consent to a great number of things, including signing contracts. Therefore, to talk about ‘against the will’ of the child in this context is absurd–under the law, minors have no ‘will’ to speak of, and duty of care is bestowed on their parents for that reason.

So, fine, he has a free speech right to make these arguments, but by doing so he is demonstrating his complete incompetence as a man who is paid to think things through.

Eric Alterman in the Nation on Todd Gitlin:

Todd was no less devoted to activism and organizing than he was to scholarship. This was harder than it looks. To be an honest intellectual, as I once heard Susan Sontag—another friend and fan of Todd’s—say, is to make distinctions. To be a successful activist, however, requires the elision of such distinctions in the name of movement unity. By the time he died in early February at 79, Todd was the veteran of more movements than most of us can remember hearing of. He spoke at rallies, in classrooms, at dinners, and cocktail parties, just as he published in scholarly sociological publications, on op-ed pages and obscure political websites, in underground zines, student newspapers, and, on occasion, these pages. (During presidential elections, he would auction off private meals to raise money for whoever was the least worst Democratic candidate.) He also wrote books of sociology, history, current events, advice to young activists, as well as poetry and fiction. Todd had something to say about almost everything, and, as Kazin told The New York Times, he sometimes made his points rather testily. But in all these venues, he said the same things. He did not bastardize his views depending on the audience. He did not oversimplify. He made critical distinctions at rallies and spoke personally, from his heart, in graduate seminars. Whether the cause was to revive the 1930s’ labor/intellectual alliance, working to pressure his alma mater, Harvard, to divest from fossil fuels, or voicing his opposition to the academic boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement aimed at Israel, Todd told his complicated truth everywhere he went.

…

Todd’s legacy is larger than can be documented here. He deserves to be remembered not only for his writings about the ’60s but also for his pioneering media criticism and his early critique of academic and left-wing identity politics. It was way back in his 1995 book, The Twilight of Common Dreams, that he observed, “While the right has been busy taking the White House, the left has been marching on the English department.” But I would argue that his primary legacy rests in his ability to combine intellectual complexity and honesty with a lifelong commitment to liberal humanist values, applying all of these simultaneously to whatever collective malady we faced at that time.

Quite a good legacy.

No sooner do I upbraid one collection of strategically vague claims than I find myself reading another.

Louis Theroux has compared pornography to junk food and argued that sex work is a valid occupation in the modern world.

The film-maker returns to BBC2 on Sunday with Forbidden America, a three-part series that explores the adult entertainment industry as it grapples with its own MeToo movement.

Sigh. “Sex work” is feelgood for selling access to one’s body to strangers. “The adult entertainment industry” is feelgood for porn, including violent porn. If you’re going to talk about it, talk about it; don’t pretty it up.

Theroux, 51, told Radio Times that he has watched pornography for the sake of expediency. He admitted: “I’ve been a user of porn. I sort of see it as a bit like . . . maybe this sounds harsh, but it’s a bit like junk food, right?”

Wrong. It’s the opposite of harsh. It’s mollifying. It’s self-excusing. The “junk” in his junk food metaphor here is women – damaged exploited women.

“I genuinely see sex work as work, and valid work, and I know that’s controversial in some quarters,” he said. “These stories are hard to tell, because enlightened, thoughtful, intelligent people can disagree passionately about what it means to be paid to have sex.”

Fun fact: the word “women” doesn’t appear in the piece. Not once. You’d never know there was any power imbalance or exploitation at stake – in fact there’s nothing even indicating why his view is controversial.

Another cancellation?

Philosopher Stephen Kershnar of the State University of New York at Fredonia is barred from campus and teaching, pending an investigation into his recent comments about whether “adult-child sex” is always wrong.

A number of philosophers and free speech advocates have jumped to Kershnar’s defense, arguing that his words have been taken out of context and that academic freedom means nothing if it doesn’t protect even dangerous ideas. Yet other academics believe Kershnar’s comments are troubling enough to make his more than an open-and-shut academic freedom case.

What about this idea that “academic freedom means nothing if it doesn’t protect even dangerous ideas”? All dangerous ideas? No matter how dangerous? What about the “idea” that genocide is good? What about the “idea” that all the Xs should be killed? What about the “idea” that women deserve to be beaten up for disobedience? What about the “idea” that Trump should be forcibly reinstalled in the White House with elections suspended and Princess Ivanka named as his successor? What about the “idea” that the pandemic is a myth?

I’m not convinced that academic freedom is that absolute. Academics aren’t free to be incompetent or fraudulent, and I’m not sure they’re free to be dangerous either.

Fredonia’s University Senate, for instance, is today considering a resolution condemning Kershnar’s “straightforward but factually erroneous oration” as “troublesome, offensive and dangerous, with the potential to normalize attitudes and behaviors that cause great, emotional, psychological and cognitive damage to survivors of child sexual abuse.”

News of the Senate resolution was first reported by philosopher Justin Weinberg, editor of the philosophy blog Daily Nous, who condemned the proposal itself. “One hopes that Prof. Kershnar’s colleagues will not be among those who have fallen for the manipulatively edited video interview footage whose viral spread was initiated by a right-wing social media account known for hit jobs,” Weinberg wrote. “One hopes that these professors will take a moment to actually acquaint themselves with his views or understand the nature of his inquiries before rushing to condemn their colleague.”

Which is interesting, because Weinberg and Daily Nous aren’t generally quite so sympathetic toward “terfs.”

In its own letter to Fredonia, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said that “Kershnar’s statements are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits SUNY Fredonia from taking adverse action against faculty members for protected speech, however provocative or offensive it may be to others.”

Yes but “provocative” and “offensive” aren’t the only possibilities. There’s also harm. It’s easy to say that provocative and offensive speech should be free, but not so easy to say that speech that does harm should be free.

I don’t actually know what I think about whether Kershnar should be forbidden or allowed to argue that sex with minors is permissible, but I do think people arguing either way should be clear about what they’re defending.

Turns out Trump stole a bunch of federal property when he skulked back to Mar a Lago.

The National Archives and Records Administration last month retrieved 15 boxes of documents and other items from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence because the material should have been turned over to the agency when he left the White House, Archives officials said Monday.

That is, because the material wasn’t his to take, that is, he stole it.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents.

Interesting but does not touch the point that it was all government property. Those people weren’t writing to him because they like him, they were writing to the office.

Two former advisers described a frenzied packing process in the final days of the administration because Trump did not want to pack or accept defeat for much of the transition.

Which being translated means Trump is so stupid he thought he could just yell “I don’t want to!” and stay there indefinitely.

The National Archives and Records Administration said in a statement that “these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021,” and that Trump representatives are “continuing to search” for additional records.

“The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said in the statement. “Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”

Especially records of a criminal pretending to be president.

“I don’t think he did this out of malicious intent to avoid complying with the Presidential Records Act,” one former Trump White House official said. “As long as he’s been in business, he’s been very transactional and it was probably his longtime practice and I don’t think his habits changed when he got to the White House.”

See that’s a pretty pathetic defense. It’s not that he meant to steal them, it’s just that he’s so stupid he can’t grasp that being president is not the same as being a real estate tycoon.

A rebuke:

The Today programme presenter Justin Webb has been partially rebuked by the BBC after he suggested students were lying when they accused a university professor of transphobia.

Introducing Radio 4’s newspaper review last October, Webb said: “And quite a lot of coverage still of Kathleen Stock, the academic from Sussex University who’s been abused by students who accuse her, falsely, of transphobia. She says her union has now effectively ended her career. It’s published a statement of support, not for her but for those who are abusing her.”

Four listeners complained to the BBC that Webb’s use of “falsely” was inaccurate and betrayed a personal opinion. Three also complained of inaccuracy and apparent bias in describing the students who had been protesting against Stock as “abusing her”.

But here’s the problem: saying “students who accuse her of transphobia” would also be inaccurate, in the sense that “transphobia” is a highly loaded and slippery and contentious label. It’s a newish word, and it’s a very convenient weapon against anyone who resists any item in the List of Trans Ideology Rules, no matter how politely and minimally. The word itself reeks of malice and dishonesty, so a good presenter can’t just use it as if it were normal vocabulary.

The BBC’s editorial complaints unit ruled that Webb was not sufficiently accurate when he suggested the accusation of transphobia against Stock had been disproved. This was because the “validity or otherwise of the accusation of transphobia are the heart of the controversy”.

Yes, but so is the validity and meaning of “transphobia.” What is called transphobia is almost always not hatred of trans people at all, but skepticism of the wild truth claims of trans ideology. It’s not phobia to say that Gwyneth Paltrow markets woo, and for the same reasons it’s not phobia to say that trans ideology is yet more woo.

It’s all about the dress. Literally all.

“Science News” is kidding about the “Science” part.

The coronavirus is a danger to babies and pregnant people, and the vaccines are safe, data show

Good science communication is as clear and unambiguous as possible. Pregnancy is not a universal human experience.

We get a story about a pregnant she who got the vax and then

Others who’ve been pregnant during the pandemic haven’t been so sure. Cumulatively, only 42.6 percent of pregnant people ages 18 to 49 have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States as of January 15, before or during their pregnancies.

The campaign to erase women from public discourse continues even in science journalism.

Yet unlike when Yohay rolled up her sleeve almost a year ago, there is now a great deal of data attesting to the safety of COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant individuals and their newborns.

Elegant variation – in one paragraph it’s “people,” in the next it’s “individuals.” There are many ways to avoid saying “women.”

But there’s a slip-up.

The risks from developing COVID-19 when pregnant and unvaccinated were demonstrated again in a recent study from Scotland. From December 2020 until the end of October 2021, a period when vaccines were available, there were 4,950 confirmed coronavirus infections among pregnant women.

Ooops ooops ooops!

All of the babies who died over the course of the study were born to women who weren’t vaccinated when they got COVID-19, the researchers found.

Could the writer be a secret agent?

The highest numbers of U.S. deaths for pregnant individuals, 40 in August and 35 in September, occurred during the delta surge.

There aren’t details yet on how pregnant people fare after becoming ill with the now-dominant omicron variant.

Following orders again, whew.

5 more people, individuals, or those, followed by 5 women. 5 women!! It’s outright rebellion.

There are 21 “women” total in the piece, 19 “people,” and 11 “individuals.” 21 v 30 (and I didn’t count instances of “those” or “others”) so the Correct Term clearly dominated but the Incorrect one put up a fierce struggle. Go wims.

H/t Jim Baerg

Trump may have put himself in worse jeopardy.

Donald Trump’s incendiary call at a Texas rally for his backers to ready massive protests against “radical, vicious, racist prosecutors” could constitute obstruction of justice or other crimes and backfire legally on Trump, say former federal prosecutors.

…

Trump’s rant that his followers should launch the “biggest protests” ever in three cities should prosecutors “do anything wrong or illegal” by criminally charging him for his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, or for business tax fraud, came at a 30 January rally in Texas where he repeated falsehoods that the election was rigged.

Legal experts were astonished at Trump’s strong hints that if he runs and wins a second term in 2024, he would pardon many of those charged for attacking the Capitol on 6 January last year in hopes of thwarting Biden’s certification by Congress.

John Dean said it was the stuff of dictators, which of course applies to a lot of what Trump has said and done, in and out of office.

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor who is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, told the Guardian Trump “may have shot himself in the foot” with the comments. “Criminal intent can be hard to prove, but when a potential defendant says something easily seen as intimidating or threatening to those investigating the case it becomes easier,” Aftergut said.

Aftergut added that having proclaimed “his support for the insurrectionists, Trump added evidence of his corrupt intent on January 6 should the DOJ prosecute him for aiding the seditious conspiracy, or for impeding an official proceeding of Congress”.

Other than that he should be ok.

Ex-prosecutors say that Trump’s Texas comments are dangerous and could legally boomerang as the prosecutors appear to have new momentum.

“Our criminal laws seek to hold people accountable for their purposeful actions,” Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DOJ, said. “Trump’s history of inciting people to violence demonstrates that his recent remarks are likely to cause a disruption of the pending investigations against him and family members.”

Pelletier added: “Should his conduct actually impede any of these investigations, federal and state obstruction statutes could easily compound Mr Trump’s criminal exposure.”

Also, he’s pissing off the prosecutors, which is probably not a brilliant idea either.

Trump’s remarks resonated especially in Georgia, where former prosecutors say he may now face new legal problems. Former prosecutor Aftergut noted that [Georgia DA Fani] Willis understood the threat when she quickly asked the FBI to provide protection at the courthouse, and he predicted that the immediate effect on the deputy DAs working on the case would be “to energize them in pursuing the case”.

“You’re threatening us, Goldilocks? Ok, game on.”

In a similar vein, ex-ambassador Norm Eisen and States United Democracy Center co-chair said Trump’s call for protests in Atlanta, New York and Washington if prosecutors there charge him “certainly sounds like a barely veiled call for violence. That’s particularly true when you combine it with his other statements at the Texas rally about how the last crowd of insurrectionists are being mistreated and did no wrong”.

In other words he’s openly calling for a repeat of January 6 only worse. Let’s hope that backfires on him as opposed to succeeding.

This garbage again. Boys are to be ambitious and strong, girls are to be humble and kind. It might as well be shirts marketed to slave-owners and slaves respectively.

A bestselling author has criticised Primark over a “sexist” children’s clothing line that encourages girls to be “grateful”, “humble” and “always perfect” while telling boys to be more assertive.

Kate Long, a teacher and novelist, condemned the “hugely sexist messaging” she found emblazoned on many of the retailer’s clothes for children. On a visit to a Primark in Chester, Long found tops for girls that had printed on them phrases such as: “Be kind”, “Kindness always wins”, “Grateful, humble and optimistic” and “Be good, do good”.

The messages displayed on boys’ clothing encouraged them to be more ambitious and self-assured. One read: “Change the game. Rewrite the rules. Go for it. Born to win.” Another read: “Explore. Nothing holding you back,” and a third said: “You are limitless.”

It could hardly be more unabashedly sexist if it sat down and worked out a plan.

No doubt the people who design this shit and the people who sell it will say it’s what parents want, but I don’t believe that. It’s not written in the stars that shirts have to have Messages written on them in the first place, and if you’re going to insist on putting Messages on shirts there are surely plenty of exhortations that are gender-neutral. Boys should be kind too after all, and girls should reach for the stars.

This is good.

The discussion is lively.

Yes, and when Woman’s Hour discusses rape do they make sure to include plenty of rapists? When Woman’s Hour looks at harassment and abuse of women do they invite enough abusers for balance?

This should be interesting.

I’ll listen later. The first thought that occurs to me is that the consequences aren’t all that unintended. Some of the intention may not be fully conscious – we’re good at lying to ourselves about why we’re being shits – but some of it has to be, especially now, when the consequences have been so thoroughly and emphatically explained.

Because men are the real people while women are the afterthought.

The language game – tricks all the way down.

One, “minority.” Montgomerie is a white man, but he’s pretending to be part of an oppressed minority (which is what “minority” is shorthand for in these contexts). White men as such are not an oppressed minority. It could be that he’s homeless or disabled or an immigrant but I don’t think he is any of those things.

Two, “healthcare.” The medical experimentation done on trans people isn’t healthcare; it’s more like malpractice.

Rachel Cooke reviews Laurie Penny’s new “feminist” book:

If the tone of this book is almost comically relentless – if Penny, whose pronouns are they/them, says something once, they say it 54 times – it’s also oddly reminiscent of a superannuated self-help manual, its assumptions seemingly based mostly on the experiences of its author and their friends, a focus group to whom every possible Bad Thing has happened at least once (so handy).

…

For the reader, especially the reader who has never read a book or a newspaper, never watched any television or seen a film, Penny has all sorts of revelations.

Ouch! That does sound so exactly like LP – forever pointing out the obvious as if she’d only just noticed it.

But don’t be disheartened. Penny has good news, too. Like them, we may eventually be able to overcome our addiction to “predators with pretty eyes and a vacancy for a secret side-piece”. We may even wind up loving ourselves instead of just waiting around “for a man” to find us lovable (for someone who identifies as gender-queer, and who therefore has some trouble with the word woman, which does not reflect her “lived experience”, Penny uses “man” with an abandon that is quite dizzying).

Well you see men don’t have cis privilege, so it’s fine to talk about them, but women oppress trans women just by existing, so they have to be deleted from the discourse at all times.

Most crucially of all, something is now – out in the world, I mean – fighting to break out, as if from a shell: something “wet and angry”, with “claws”. By this, I think Penny is referring to the ongoing activism that was stirred by #MeToo, but I suppose it is possible – I’m troubled by the word “wet” – that I’ve got this entirely wrong.

If only Laurie Penny could write as well as Rachel Cooke.

(For a second I thought “But she would still be Laurie Penny,” but then I realized no, she wouldn’t. You have to be able to think well in order to write well, and a Laurie Penny who could think well would be a very different Laurie Penny indeed.)

But the reader waits in vain for Penny to offer solutions to the injustice she describes, for serious analysis of any kind. The best they can do is to suggest that affordable childcare might be of help. No shit, Sherlock.

The chapter devoted to sex work is utterly enraging, and not only because Penny clearly knows so little about it (where are the interviews, the statistics, the thoughts of experts in this field?). Having painstakingly explained that many women enjoy sex – that they do not, contrary to the old myths, only endure it, the better to keep their men happy – Penny then accuses those women, feminists and others, who are critical of the sex industry of, yes, a sort of twisted envy, because why should some women get paid for what others have to do for free? I’m afraid I clutched my own pearls (inherited, I should say, from a grandmother who left school at 13) at this point.

Having spent half of my life hoping for feminism’s revival – for it to be, if not fashionable, then proudly worn and meaningfully directed – it is lowering beyond words to see a serious publisher describe this ill-edited, ill-considered drivel as a manifesto for the cause. This isn’t feminism. This is a swizz.

But if it identifies as feminism…?