Cancel culture

“Acceptable humans”- the modern fascist movement and the UK’s role.

By Daviemoo

Today I read the first few chapters of Judith Butler’s “Notes Toward a Performative Theory Of Assembly”. This book was written by Butler in 2015 and served as a stark warning to those listening that the removal of the lens of humanity was all too easy under the state & in the public sphere, using the dual tools of governmental discourse and the media.
One sentence which grasped my consciousness was the idea of the dehumanisation of humans, and served as a splinter of cognisance of what would transpire and lead to the events of the myriad moral panics of 2023 Britain and the US- and from this paragraph I felt the need to expand on the collective dangers of the UK government’s quest to enforce a hierarchy of humanity.

Think about the people in your life.
Are you better than them, or worse? Do you deserve more rights than them? Is it acceptable that, due to their gender, sex, age, race, sexuality, they need different rights in order to exist in parity with you in our society? Would it be fair if we all had the same basic rights and nothing more, or is equity a cornerstone of a society which has fostered the type of inclusion which gives everyone a fair chance at betterment?

These should not be difficult questions, and yet our existence is currently limited to a society which seeks to obfuscate that simplicity, smokescreening the neon bright answers behind the idea that “just asking questions” about basic rights and equity is not a dangerous path down which to tread.

Some look at rights like specific anti discrimination legislation or protection from misogyny as entitlement and not a grim indictment of modern British society- because in a truly equal society one would not need anti discrimination legislation as protection from bodily harm, workplace harassment or mental duress.

The ECHR was established on the 4th November 1950, in response to the atrocities of World War 2- a solemn promise to the countries involved that the very fundamentals of human rights would, should and must be upheld- that it is anathema to human existence to allow these rights to fall into question. The UK government’s narrative that the ECHR meddles in its decisions should be a death knell for their leadership- for if a court dedicated to protecting and enshrining the basics of human rights protections is interfering in your decisions, this follows that your decisions run counter to the respect of human rights.
There is no “hierarchy of human rights”. If you are human, your rights as a human should be respected. These do not give favour, they do not elevate you above others. They are rights universally agreed upon- and opening questions on whether all humans should have access to these rights is the first, and most troubling sign of danger- but one could argue that it is not a step but a slippery slope.

Once you begin questioning human rights and who deserves them, it is a simple matter to widen the discourse.
Only the most heinous, unforgivable human beings do not deserve to lose their human rights: But who decides what is heinous and unforgivable- we live in a world where Daesh believe that grooming and raping girls is part of a holy mission, where women and girls in Afghanistan are beaten with sticks if they go outside without men or boys as guardians, where in America the right to bear arms is sacrosanct and yet if I saw a person with a gun on their belt in my city I would flee and call the police for fear of the danger they could bring with them. The reason human rights are iron clad and unquestionable is that the very act of questioning them, weakens them. All and sundry, no matter how evil, deserve human rights and if we decide a threshold, we begin the process of collapse.

Additionally, are we not inhuman if we then wreak horrors upon a human who we have decided is not deserving of these rights? Another question for another time, but an eye for an eye is a wise proverb in a sea of theological nonsense.

The government’s determination to demonise certain minorities is a key substrate in a wider movement towards enforcing “acceptable humans”. By placing terms and conditions on what a “good” human is and even moving towards rhetoric that removes humanity entirely, the government is eminently capable of disenfranchising individuals amongst the collectives.

Look at Shamima Begum. A fifteen year old girl was groomed on the internet by Daesh, because of failures of state security- meaning the state let her down and could possibly let down others. Rather than face blame for their poor handling of Begum’s radicalisation, the state designated her the root issue. Begum’s behaviour was objectively bad- and happened to a British born citizen, indicating that it was not merely the groomers nor Begum who had the issue- the state under which she was raised contained fundamental lapses of protection. She was a product of a state not equipped to prevent her radicalisation- not only should the state face censure for their failures to safeguard her and others, but she is a product of a flawed UK state and therefore our problem, and should have been brought here to face questions over it. By the government refusing to allow this & making her stateless this is a visible refusal to accept blame for their failures- but also serves a troubling double purpose of driving home a message that compliance with good, state endorsed behaviour brings the reward of citizenship. This also raises the idea of citizenship as supremacy- those who have it are superior to those who do not. You don’t have to like Begum or her actions to understand that there are lines of questioning that must be verboten, about when and if we lose basic rights.

The most troubling and yet overlooked aspect of Begum’s treatment by the state and media, is that it begins the process mentioned above. There is now a threshold, a precedent set at which you can act which will prompt the state to remove your innate right to citizenship. Something which we have always declared a sovereign, basic right is no longer- and a worrying proportion of the UK’s population celebrate this as a win, whilst others hesitate to point out that those rights are rights we also hold- and the question now falls from “will it happen” to “how low is the bar for the enforcement”: Will people like I who openly question the state and its methodology one day be stripped of citizenship for querying their implementation of this legislation? Who knows- we have far to fall, but are moving at disturbing speed.

One must also note the involvement of the British (and American) media in the enabling of this discourse. Academics warned repeatedly that the British press’ foray into open, daily transphobia would lead to danger- why even Judith Butler wrote a piece for the Guardian which laid bare the links between the far right and the TERF movement across the U.K., and the piece was surreptitiously edited to strip this paragraph despite its objective basis in truth- and if journalists strip out truth to protect the feelings of fascists one should find grave concern in its operation- and if someone like Butler warns of fascism, one does not stop up their ears.

To return, though, to the “small boat” moral panic that has swept the UK, one must find it almost comical to watch the UK subsumed again by a government narrative. The Conservatives are almost comedically unpopular, reviled by everyone from the supposed libertarian sect of political adversaries we hear regularly espousing their views from behind England flag shirts, to those who call ourselves true patriots because we question the country and ask for it’s improvement rather than accepting it’s gathering descent into mediocrity. Yes, the number of small boat crossings has ramped up in recent years. Has the government explained to the peoples of the UK why? Have they admitted to their own roles in destabilising countries which people are fleeing from by leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, by working to arm anti government forces in other countries to enable cheaper sales of fossil fuels? Have they worked to re-stabilise countries blighted by damaging regimes or demagogues? And can they truly fall behind the “not our job” defence whilst we arm Ukraine- a noble, important requirement which brings the question of when the state should intervene into sharp relief. The UK should be cautioned on its intervention in some places -for it is our dark past of western imperialism that has caused a dizzying number of the issues for which the world is paying now.
The key language of Sunak and Braverman is “stop the boats” where they refer to “small boats crossings”, completely failing at any point to acknowledge the people involved, the humans within those vessels. The people arriving here in small boats are people. People with fears, wants, goals, dreams, biases- fully, achingly human. Are all of them good? Of course not. When large numbers of people are in a group, the likelihood that they are all good people is not going to be high- unless you group them by your very subjective definition of good. There are those who would fail to line me up in the “good people” group simply because I am a gay man, would refuse to add women who believe in feminism. Good, bad- these are abstract and personal and the U.K. has fallen victim to allowing the subjective morals of objectively bad politicians (who hide lies by prime ministers, funnel money from the public to private individuals, who strip back rights like protest, like striking, like voting) to be used as a public yardstick for lawmaking.

Just because bad people may exist amongst a demographic of people does not mean that all of them should be treated like the worst. To hate, fear and punish an entire group of people for their membership of a group is to give in to bigotry and that is an iron strong fact. If British citizens allow all migrants to be punished for the worst amongst them, British citizens are the group sprinting fastest towards inhuman behaviour- not those being punished.
Look at it this way: as a gay man I am painfully aware that bad persons exist amongst my demographic- those who do not respect bodily autonomy, those who are misogynist, even those who are cruel to others based on their subjective appearance. Does the existence of these bad elements mean that all of my demographic should be subject to censure?

Worse still is an insistence that the government’s methods are “tough but fair” and will “break the funding model of smugglers”. This sort of thinking is both cognitively dissonant (tough, yes, fair to deport those who have arrived via supposedly illegal methods because there does not exist a legal method? No.)

Break the funding model of people smugglers by allowing them to smuggle people then punishing the people they smuggle? It is equivalent to arresting the victim of a mugging to disincentivise the mugger because less people are on the street to mug!

Braverman, Sunak et al are firmly entrenched in fascist behaviours. The UK believes fascism to be waving swastikas daubed on big red flags- and part of the danger is that people do not see the obvious. Fascism and Nazism are different- Fascism can strip the clothes of Nazism and dress itself up as something else- Christian Nationalism, small statehood, the silencing of any dissent towards your thinking. When you see a government draped in Union Jacks enforcing laws which rip away your right to protest, your right to strike, your right to vote, when they dress up their failure to hold the NHS together or their manipulation of contract tendering to enrich their friends and family, when you watch them mock and revile transgender people, migrants, “lefty lawyers”- you are looking at fascism under a new dress code. And so many British people fail to acknowledge the hypocrisy this government condones. Sunak and Braverman speak with open hatred of the “lawbreakers” arriving in small boats yet Sunak has broken the law twice, Braverman supported breaking the law in a “limited and specific” way… the lawbreaking is only a problem when it isn’t the conservatives doing it.

The dehumanising rhetoric will continue, and more will fall prey to its fervour. I have no doubt that corners will turn in future, that down the line, should I be lucky enough to make it to my later years I will watch documentaries of people tearfully apologising for being radicalised into the demagogues of TERF beliefs or believing that migrants on boats are the root cause of their poverty. But right now, as we live and breathe this slow immersion into rhetoric that becomes more deadly by the day one must wonder how far the British public is willing to go in ignoring the construction of a hierarchy of behaviour to which we are all subject- and when the thumbscrews we’re all forced to wear are tightened, how long until the bulk of us cry out in the pain we’re forced into… and will it be too late to extricate ourselves from being subject to the question: are you an acceptable human?

If I’m wrong, you’re embarrassed. If you’re wrong, we might die

By Daviemoo

The rise and rise of polarisation has been a theme of everything I’ve been speaking about for a great many years now. From politics to consumption to the increase of moral panics, and then into the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, humans are being confronted by issues that pose great danger to us. So why are huge proportions of the human race determined to go with outlooks that may damage- or quite literally destroy- us?

There are two main arguments that absolutely flummox me every time they come up- and they do come up, every day. Climate change, and coronavirus.

Studies going back decades show that climate change is a huge threat. Sea levels could rise, the earth could heat up enough to disrupt sea currents which would cause mass death of marine life, the weather could be so destructive that we’d see mass death as crops wither in the fields.
The main contributors to this emerging disaster are big businesses who refuse to do anything that may damage their profits- the main enablers are governments, who accept what we can probably call “legal bribes” to legislate protections into law for these businesses to continue. But behind the scenes, those businesses have also sunk money they could have used to change their models for something more green, to flood the internet with disinformation about climate change- and for some reason, a huge subsection of human beings- not big business owners or the politicians they pay for, but just everyday people have taken this information and fashioned it into a fight.

Climate change is not something you can deny if you believe in science. It’s happening. You might not be able to see it every day, but it is happening. It’s like denying the existence of the sea floor- you may have only seen it on documentaries but it is there…
Yet these individuals are convinced that it’s all a scam, designed to tell us how to live!
The core thinking that seems to revolve around this type of mindset is, as I’ll lay out here, rooted to the idea that essentially these people are extremist libertarians who don’t want to be told how to live. Oddly they’re fine with the laws that say they can’t be gunned down or robbed, that they legally own their own home and so on- just the suggestions they could throw paper and plastic in different bags are the ones they don’t like.

We see the exact same mindset with the coronavirus deniers- because yes, in 2023 people still exist who think coronavirus is a scam, made up. Having caught it in November and still having lung problems now, I can assure you it’s quite real and though my second brush with COVID-19 didn’t kill me, having lung problems 3 months later and having been forced to lie in bed for a solid week, death isn’t the only way viral illness can affect your life. But still, if they don’t deny covid they refuse to imagine a world where we’d continued on as normal and likely almost a billion people would have died.
A survival rate of 97% sounds good until you realise that that means if everyone on earth was infected once, 240,000,000 deaths would have occurred just from viral infection. I, though, have been infected twice, some people multiple times. Three and a half United Kingdom’s worth of people would have died just from COVID, then those who needed healthcare outside of viral infection would have died due to overwhelmed hospitals. Supply chains would have completely fractured, goods would have ceased production. Famine, death en masse, long term health issues. All a worthy price to the people who think covid is a scam though!

The prevalence of these mindsets seem to revolve intimately around one thing- a cocksure attitude that you’re so right that it doesn’t matter about the possibility of being wrong because you aren’t, so these heinous scenarios could never occur.

Frustration buds from two main points here: if I’m wrong about climate change, we sink a lot of money into new energy solutions that hasten technological development and we harshly tax businesses for refusing to update their business model. I’ve no doubt a harsh pursuit of green solutions would cause societal change that would cause issues to the populace but we already have issues causing the populace problems -floods in Pakistan that wipe out whole villages, days so hot in the UK that asphalt melts, crop failures in vast patches of eastern Europe due to abrupt weather changes. Complaining about problems when there are problems is reminiscent of those who took pictures of empty shelves during early 2020 and posted them to social media saying “this is what Corbyn’s England would have looked like”, failing to see the irony of posting photos of Johnson’s England looking like their apparent idea of a worst case scenario. No, there is no easy way to pursue green solutions- but when the cost of not doing so is a smouldering crater for a planet perhaps it’s worth doing so.

You, when raising this, will predictably be met with people who will scoff: It won’t happen at all, it won’t happen for a long time or it won’t be that bad.
The same absolutist confidence that I see as one of the main reasons humankind is doomed.

The world doesn’t have to follow the worst case scenarios for it to be a disaster. We don’t have to face ecological wipeout for climate change to ruin millions, tens of millions of peoples lives. If the seas currents do change it will affect those whose living relies on the sea not doing so. If the sea levels rise it will affect coastal living. If the climate stays the same as now the horrific flooding and storms and weather irregularities will continue- and that is a disaster already occurring. But the possibility of worse to come is still not enough- because the people who push the oppositional thinking aren’t directly affected; or are, but are not invested enough to care.

Looking at covid- this is not a virus that is simply going to vanish. Thousands of people a week are still dying. “What would you have us do” they will reply, “another lockdown that ruins peoples mental health and does nothing”.
I don’t actually know how we could ever tackle coronavirus, but the issue is- there’s a gulf between “doing nothing” and “zero covid” and people refuse to budge one inch, refuse to wear a mask because “they aren’t effective” (I just finished reading my third study that shows they are). I asked an anti masker once, why do they bother you so much and after cornering her enough she confessed the truth. “I just don’t like being told what to do”.
The terror I feel, being surrounded by a not insignificant number of people who will risk becoming a vector for a virus that’s ruined my lung capacity because they get offended at not being asked politely if they don’t mind very much to cover their face for five minutes is immeasurable. I can’t not go into this without mentioning how ridiculously obvious it is that these people are wrong. I keep seeing people posting about “adverse reactions to vaccines”. Yes, there were always going to be adverse reactions to vaccines; it’s been a known side effect since vaccines were created, and when you scale that up to billions of doses, shockingly those side effects that we already knew about- happen. You know what didn’t happen? The explosion of severely autistic people you were all talking about 5 years ago. If vaccines caused autism I suspect giving out over 16 billion vaccines might have caused a spike in people with autism… and yet here we are.

When it comes to covid and our thinking- if we’re wrong, you look a bit stupid because you’re wearing a mask when you don’t need to. Masks don’t cause any of the nonsensical rubbish people talk about, if they did, doctors and cleaners and builders would all be sick constantly. The worst that happens if we’re wrong is that you look weird in public. If you’re wrong, you are spreading a disease that can be as bad as a nasty cold and having had a few it’s rude and gross to spread that anyway, it can cause illness severe enough to take a 34 year old off his feet for a week and give him long term health issues, or it can mean someone ends up choking to death as their lungs fill up with pleural fluid. Is it worth that risk? Still, for many of these people, yes- hence my semi withdrawal from a society I was, until now, unaware was absolutely filled with people ranging from deluded to frighteningly callous.

The reason we’re told masks cause disease is because they can’t just rely on “I don’t want to” as an argument on an international scale. The reason we’re told that green solutions would decimate industry is because they think those industries won’t be decimated by an earth that becomes close to uninhabitable. And when it comes to other arguments- about marginalised groups etc, you will often find that it’s not enough to simply dislike others, no- people of colour are causing a “white genocide” just by existing, gay people are corrupting your children with drag, trans people are trying to sneak into spaces not for them… I often wonder if the people who fall into these utterly ridiculous ways of thinking genuinely believe them or they know that “I just don’t like them and I don’t want to change my mind because being wrong equals losing” is a stupid mindset.

Being wrong is not a sin

People seem determined to conflate incorrectness with losing. Being corrected on something you’re wrong about is not losing. Rejecting correct information and clinging to bias, bigotry or abject nonsense because you cant possibly be seen to be wrong is.
Being wrong is usually a huge part of how we learn. We study at school and we write our sentences out and the teacher corrects our spelling and grammar and we learn. We make errors in our calculations and we’re shown where we make a mistake and we do better. Why does the idea of being corrected suddenly go from par for the course to equivalent to “losing” as soon as we leave mandated education.

The reason culture wars are such lucrative social currency is that the world has decided collectively that it’s better to fall into a tunnel of disinformation that backs up a lie than to bend to the acknowledgement of the objective truth. And many people without morals exist who are all too happy to partake- from Tucker Carlson whose show is so wildly unreliable that he has had to declare that he does not tell news but is a fictional show, to pundits in the UK like Jeremy Clarkson who is so blithely unaware of his radical hatred of women he writes columns about flogging and sexually assaulting women he doesn’t like.

Hartley-Brewer, Oakeshott, Coren, Johnson- these people’s careers are built on spinning the idea that the objective truth- of good relations with the EU, of climate change, of viral mitigations- are all bad. That we should be able to do exactly what we want, where and when we want because it is our right- and yet when your rights conflict with others physical safety, when your simple wish to display your face to the world consists of an unbalanced risk of viral disease, why is it suddenly feeling over fact, for the people whose moniker has always been, fact over feeling?
Fact, climate change is real, you can see it happen in real time. Fact, masks work, vaccines work and covid kills. But we live now in the world of alternative facts, of fake news, a whole deep pool of comforting mistruths that people can dive into if simple reality is too much.

Ultimately, I wish I could say I didn’t care. I wish it was as simple as letting people get on with it. If you want to end up choking to death because of covid or going hungry because you set the world alight, I wish I could let you get on with it.
But you’re dragging us down with you. The stupidest most selfish humans in existence are using the rest of us as collateral. And I am sick of it.
If you want to die- die. I won’t stop you. But stop wrapping the noose around my neck too, and telling me to stop complaining about it.

Eyeshadow and gunpowder: the imaginary war on cishet society

By Daviemoo

LGBTQ+ existence has long been pitted as a culture war where the bejewelled combatants assail everyday ways of life, hurling gay grenades down the halls of institutions like American congress or men in leather pants and harnesses are kicking in the doors of middle England to convert your children.
There is no war, and it’s time to quite literally put down your guns.

I had an argument today which I’ve screencapped for your perusal.
As an Englishman I find American obsession around guns and gun laws to be absolutely gauche. But most of all, when men crow about their love of carrying guns I look at people like that with a mix of utter suspicion and- frankly- derision.

I find this type of delusional thinking objectively fascinating. The lack of nuance never fails to amaze me: if I walked into a kitchen and saw a man brandishing a knife I wouldn’t bat an eye- contextually it’s normal even if a knife is a deadly weapon- but if I saw a man brandishing a knife walking down the street I’d be pretty within my rights to think “well… that’s not good”.
Same with a gun. In the right context, guns don’t scare me: I’ve been on shooting ranges and guns in that context are normal- I’ve also walked past the mint in Leeds where money is created, and had police with P90s stand looking at me warily. It’s intimidating, and it’s done for one of two reasons: to avert danger, or to threaten it.

Men with guns aren’t out stretching their firearm’s legs, there is a reason behind why they carry weaponry and walking out of my favourite gay bar after a show to find a line of men dressed up like marines rejects fingering the trigger of an AK47 is, understandably, nerve wracking- and yet honestly mystifying.

To act like fear is not the motivator for carrying guns- why else has anyone ever carried a weapon in history- either to do harm, or protect themselves from it- so which scenario do these anti drag folks envision- protecting themselves from drag queens or wreak harm on them. Ironic too, for people used to carry sidearms back in Shakespeare’s day… when this newfangled “men in dresses” thing started, because there were no women in Shakespeare’s plays, only men in drag.

Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps it’s rage. Either way it’s misplaced. If it’s rage, be reminded that drag queens aren’t trying to convert your children: it’s impossible to do that and a huge swath of the LGBT+ will tell you so. If it was possible to convert, how many of us would have chosen the path of least resistance in our youth to avoid this ridiculous argument we’re forced into. If conversion was possible, conversion therapy would work: it doesn’t, it leaves most of its victims psychologically scarred enough that they don’t act on their urges, but it doesn’t remove them. I’d also hasten to point out that the existence of conversion therapy speaks to who is trying to “groom” whom into being like the other.

If it’s fear that necessitates dragging firearms around, which I suspect, I fail to see what’s so scary about a man in a dress and fake nails, other than the possibility of a catty comment or being accidentally blinded by flying sequins. But can we be surprised that so many are radicalised into thinking LGBT+ people are creating a WAR on normativity? Look at the messages pumped out by conservative media outlets.

Each of these things has been described by Fox News as having a “WAR” against it

If there was a war; we wouldn’t stand a chance.
3.5% of Americans identify as gay or lesbian. 0.3% identify as transgender. If 3.8% of the population waged war it’s not exactly going to go well- is it.
But conservative types are desperate to push this narrative that anyone outside of their normative model is assailing it, coming for your way of life, trying to FORCE you to be like them.

Making small concessions towards a tiny fragment of the population isn’t war. Not asking people personal questions that you don’t want the answer to any more than we want to give it is not war. If you ask if I have a wife and I say no, and you tell me I should be married at my age and I just smile and say nothing you’re being intrusive- why not leave it instead of prying further then being offended when I tell you I’m gay? It’s like purchasing a rod, waiting for it to arrive, taking it out of the box then handing it to someone and asking them to hit you with it.

It may come as a shock: I don’t want there to be more gay people in the world: I want the people who are to be able to come out and be happy if they so wish, I want the people who are trans to get their healthcare and get on with their lives, and especially, I want people so brainwashed by the endless shouts of WAR, WAR, WAR against them to let go of the rhetoric and realise they’re not being threatened by gay people- but by their perception of us: you’re fighting ghosts.
Yes, you might get fired if you call me a slur. I might get fired if I call someone a slur… it’s not a right I have that you don’t, simply that there are no slurs to describe you and even if there were I wouldn’t use them- but of course, normative culture has a morose obsession with trying to make normal words slurs.
TikTokers like Nicholasvanj call heterosexual people “upsetterosexuals” or “straggots” and then face deluges of “HETEROPHOBIA” in their comments. People constantly decry the use of the word cis when it’s literally a descriptor like “tall”, “athletic” or “interesting”. If you don’t want to be called cis I won’t call you cis- but I’m sure going to be confused about how you’ll wring insult out of a factual descriptive word with no negative connotations, and I’ll make extra sure that you don’t use any offensive lingo either- you’d be fascinated by how many people offended by a biological descriptor like cis throw around anti trans or homophobic words with what they believe is impunity.

The saddest part is that most virulently anti LGBT+ people seem miserable, obsessed with something that isn’t their concern. I cannot imagine spending my life wrapped so intimately around something I find disgusting. But they cannot simply disengage because there almost seems to be a need to create a dark shibboleth of the community, to make us the enemy that worsens their lives, poisons their water and steals their precious children into depravity. I don’t just want them to stop because they endanger my life with their increasingly provocative rhetoric: I want them to stop because I don’t like seeing miserable people yelling about my private life 24/7 and I think they must have better things to do with their time: Imagine how much happier you’d be if you stopped worrying about imaginary genitals or whether I’m a top or a bottom. So much free time to knit, to go to the gym, read, drink beer, I don’t care- just stop obsessing over people who, frankly, want nothing to do with you.

Heteronormative men in particular are desperate for there to be some sort of attack against them- constantly pushing the rhetoric that they are having their way of life dismantled, their freedoms taken away, their free speech censored. Unfortunately this is what parity looks like: when you finally get held to the same standards as others it’s not because we’re taking your rights away, it’s that we’re applying societal norms to you that your predecessors did not face.
Let’s imagine there is this fabled war though, and when they win, when they finally take over… then what?
I don’t understand the world that the men who espouse such toxic nonsense actually want, and frankly I don’t think they do either. If you rid the world of the LGBT+ and the feminists and the feminine men, how long do you think it would be until the less masculine men were up next, charged with feminising the real alphas… and which group would you be in? If every man suddenly became a super masculine paragon of manliness it would be a flash before they turned against themselves- they have to have an enemy to survive, because the whole ethos of the “alpha” male is victimhood garbed as strength, and if nobody is there to pick on them.. what then? It’s an ideology that folds in on itself like poorly done origami the moment it’s subjected to critical scrutiny, and one too many men fall into to expunge blame for their own failings when they are often the arbiters of their own misery against each other.

The fallacious thinking of the meninist crowd is made complex by people debating the grossly vapid talking points of empty fools like Andrew Tate, who likes to spend his time failing to antagonise 19 year old women on the internet or by lionising the actions of those cosplaying Navy SEALs outside drag bars when it’s really very simple: Men have spent years being lied to by media, shown movies where masculinity is control, manliness is anger, where if you just keep pestering, eventually she’ll say yes- from James Bond movies to every other action movie dross, negative masculinity is at the forefront of most of our historical media. Men grow up being told if you’re rude and dismissive to women they’ll do what you want because all women secretly want bad men- but wait, no, feminism is ruining it, making women think they have equal status? You have to put effort into dating? To men who think like this, I have to ask: do you even like women? I saw an interview with a meninist recently who argued his girlfriend should not be allowed to go on holiday without him because other men looking at her is disrespectful to him.
Security with a partner comes from trust, and if you cannot trust you are deeply damaged. Forcing someone into fidelity by simply refusing to allow them to go anywhere and do anything is not a paragon of masculinity, it exemplifies true fragility- and if you disagree, reverse the roles and ask yourself how you would feel about a woman averse to allowing her partner to go on holiday without her…? Control freak? Crazy?… Insecure.
It’s no different in the inverse.
A partner is just that: someone on equal standing who supports you as you support them, and if you’re too weak and fragile to be in a relationship with an equal I want to heartily assure you- it’s not women who have the problem in that scenario. Strength seeks strength, so if you hope to find a weak willed woman who will do what you say it’s because of your own inherent weakness, not because of your strength.

Further, LGBT+ people aren’t coming for your way of life. Many LGBT+ people call for integration into cishet society and whilst I understand it, the older I get the more I want some form of base separatism. I want to be left alone to live my gay life in a gay subculture that barely bumps against straight culture. I don’t want to have to mask my irritation at insensitive questions about my sex life, or feign patience when I listen to someone say “I’m fine with it, I just wish they’d leave kids out of it” when I have always known I was gay and was suicidal as a child and into my mid teens because nobody could or would help me understand it, and despite this endless patient explanation still being told “but some people might take advantage”- again, creating imaginary “what if” scenarios proves to me only that you’re more interested in living in an imaginary world than the physical one.
If you want to have a realistic conversation about indoctrination lets talk about forcing children to say the pledge of alliegance, or splashing water on their forehead so they don’t go to purgatory forever or relentlessly pestering your young children about if they have a girlfriend or a boyfriend… or is is that there’s good and bad types of grooming and indoctrination?

Society is crowded with bigots riled up by media pundits whose mission is to make you think everyone who isn’t a carbon copy of you- skin colour, political affiliation, sexual proclivities- is coming to destroy your life. Ironic, then, that they so readily destroy lives that they see as apart from their own.
If your existence is maintained via the dismantlement of other peoples’ normal, perhaps your normal is the aberration.

When it comes to masculinity, the very idea of feeling so threatened by a drag artist that you hover outside their work with a loaded gun is not masculine: The essence of masculinity is security, displayed by being so unbothered by gun toting yahoos that you cooly stroll into work unbothered by the threat of their presence.
If you want to shame people for dressing up to be that which they are not, might I suggest you take off your store bought army garb, holster your unused firearm and realise you’re just as much- if not more than- a cosplayer as those you hope vainly to threaten.

The Great Normalisation of Stupidity

By Daviemoo

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it: I’m not even just talking about Kanye West’s latest deluge of verbal offal to human heart gristle Alex Jones. Stupidity is everywhere, and it’s getting worse. As humanity continues to wend its way through the universe on the only planet we have, I shouldn’t be shocked that the lowest, dumbest conspiracy theory nonsense is being banded about by idiots- and yet I am considering the only planet we have will be a flaming ball of iron and there’ll still be some crispy climate change denier gasping out “M-my…op…opinion” before bursting into flame. So my question is, and I’m not even being rhetorical- why are people so okay with mainstreaming stupidity under the guise of “opinions”?

I’ve seen so many people trot out the usual, tired lines about the Kanye West debacle this week. “It’s freedom of speech, everyone is allowed an opinion”. And for the longest time I was stymied about how to put my feelings into words against this sentiment. Our language is limited in this area: because, yes, if you want to go with the most base, un-nuanced version, the things Kanye West has said are opinions. But please tell me how we’re so low as a society that “I think pineapple is the best fruit” can be categorised in the same hall of descriptor as antisemitic conspiracy theories and full throated support for one of the most despicable figures in all of human history. And what’s happening to internet searches of his name in the wake of Kanye West’s latest episode of “when dickheads have money” you ask?

Internet search aggregators showing that West's idiocy increased name searches for Hitler by 6 times the amount.

Tell me this, defenders of FrEe SpEeCh: why is it that so many of you will throw yourselves out of your chairs to defend Kanye West’s rotted opinions like he’s paid you to, but you’re suddenly of the opinion that free speech ends there: that nobody has the right to reply, debunk, discuss or point out that if someone’s opinion comes with a body count perhaps it’s more important to protect human life and liberty than someone’s right to talk shit? If you care so much about free speech you’d listen to peoples responses, but it seems people just want to shut down any replies under the guise of protecting the original speech… I don’t understand how the free speech protection coalition never seems to understand that this leads to circular discussion: one side yelling at another, the other responding, the original one yelling again… we need to come to resolution, and resolution happens when we debunk falsitudes- and we only debunk falsitudes if we’re allowed to cut the original lie off from being repeated or it spreads.

Hate speech is like a virus: it has a patient zero, and it spreads virulently- the vaccine is widely available: education. people seem to misconstrue being corrected on a stupid opinion as some sort of invasion of bodily autonomy, but being corrected on wrong information isn’t a “winners and losers” game, it’s collectively good for society if you stop espousing nonsense… and if nothing else it stops you looking like an absolute arse.
As we’ve seen, there has been a precipitous rise in violence worldwide, but in the UK in particular the continuously contentious anti trans row has meant a 56% increase on the already not insignificant hate crimes faced by trans people and even the home office, run by cartoon transphobic villain Suella Braverman has admitted that “transgender issues have been heavily discussed on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in related hate crimes”.
Meanwhile in America, the vile meninists who blame women for issues caused by their own reluctance to accept their distinct mediocrity, and therefore unattractiveness as a partner, have been working in lockstep with regressive right wing policy makers which has culminated in attempts to entirely strip abortion rights from the US- and if you think this row is staying abroad, the one thing Jacob Rees-Mogg has learnt to do between sucking cold teabags, is import culture wars: regardless of Brexit. He was heard describing the right to abortion in the case of rape as a “cult of death” recently- Rees-Mogg by the way, earns some of his inconceivably vast fortune via a company which… manufactures abortion pills. Nothing like clinging to those morals unless there’s some paper with the royals on it, is there?

We’ve had this nonsense running faster and faster for years, and I want people to remember- anti vaccine demonstrators were SURE 10 years ago that vaccines cause autism and now billions of covid vaccines have been given out and autism cases are…’nt, suddenly it’s something else: heart problems or dizziness or a sudden dislike of cheese… Sudden Adult Death Syndrome has existed for years, and is now converted into a shibboleth for the anti vaccine mess to explain that uncle Brian died and we don’t know why. Now anti vax groups are blaming SAD cases on vaccines without evidence. And we let them! Media outlets who could disseminate easy, factual truth like “every vaccine has adverse side effects but that is hugely smaller than the millions of covid deaths”- but do they? Unfortunately, factual truth doesn’t really seem to move the news cycle, but giving an incel 10 minutes to rail against women sure brings in the viewers, doesn’t it: heedless of the damage it does. You don’t NEED to present a man who hates women to argue against his viewpoints because all he cares about is saying his nonsense.

Reason doesn’t work on unreasonable people, so don’t GIVE the unreasonable people the airwaves!

We have to refine the discourse around what constitutes opinions, because the phraseology is hopelessly limited- but further to this, we have to discuss why, WHY as a supposedly intelligent species, we’re happy to push stupid, incorrect information, dressed up in a cheap wig and fake moustache with “my opinion” scrawled on it.
If my opinion was that people called Ben were all evil, I’m fairly certain there’d be dissent, that I’d be told I was wrong, weird, stupid, making it up, purposely being dense- is that not totally normal, expected even? Or should I be allowed to walk around spouting anti Ben rhetoric…?
When an opinion causes harm to the innocent, when an opinion is patently false-when an opinion comes with a body count, maybe your right to hold it isn’t as inalienable as others’ right to safety.

Because here is the other problem, the awkward point that nobody discusses in these swirling debates of never-ending ignorance: opinions don’t just float in a void. Starting with an inert opinion, if it’s my opinion that tacos are the best food on earth you can bet I’m going to eat tacos at some point… make sense?
Opinions lead to action, especially when those opinions are contentious. When you constantly demonise and fear monger over a minority, you have no right to cling to the defence of its inertia as an opinion when others who share that opinion take it as permission to use that “opinion” as justification for murder. It does happen: the US right wing media and right wing nee’rdowells like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert who is in charge of the district in which a mass shooting of the gay people she’s condemned and called “supremacists”- and even disgraced and disgraceful ex president Donald Trump continue to fearmonger that the LGBT+ community are somehow “grooming” children by existing.
Pushing the idea that a whole community are paedophiles looking to hurt children will inevitably lead to radicalised people with these apparently oh so protected opinions swirling in their heads, walking blithely into an LGBT+ space- one of those places we make so we’re not ‘shoving it down your throat’- and mowing us down with guns. You can’t spread rhetoric like that, knowing you’re stoking this type of hatred, then shirk any and all responsibility for it.

This is the other contentious point: people want their access to what they think is “free speech” (it is here that I tiredly remind you that free speech is your protection from speaking out against THE GOVERNMENT without repercussions), and yet they want absolutely none of the responsibility that comes with it.
When you say things, people listen. When people listen, they decide how they will act based on that information. When they act on that information, their actions are of course their own, but if your wilful spread of harmful rhetoric led them to that action- the inescapable false conclusion that jewish people are bad, that black women should accept racist lines of questioning, that LGBT+ people are dangerous, that abortions which save lives all over the world are not healthcare- then you should, you must accept your role in spreading it.

I always, at this point in this discussion I’ve had hundreds of times, have people approach me to say- usually in some lofty tone as if they’re about to teach me something I haven’t thought about before, “erm, you are aware that discussing this stuff is how we know that it’s bad and that discussing it is important”. To you I say simply- why do I need to enter into a long “both sides” discussion about war crimes to know war crimes are bad? Why do I need to listen to straight men talk about how people like me make them uncomfortable and thats why I don’t deserve to live, and have to defend my right to walk the earth or not be imprisoned for the crime of “you can’t stop yourself thinking about me having sex”- this has happened twice this week…
Is there proof you can give me now that my mere existence as a gay man, that my community existing, makes the world worse? Because if there isn’t, please let me know why you think I should debate this pretty obvious thing with you. And why do you also discount my expert opinion as someone who is literally IN THIS COMMUNITY, LIVING THIS LIFE?

RichardLongur6 on twitter explaining that because gay and trans people make him feel personally uncomfortable we should all be imprisoned.

Not everything needs to be discourse needs to be blown up to size 100,000 and written in the sky by planes to remind people that just because YOU want to discuss gay people as if we’re a theoretic that doesn’t exist to do anything but annoy you by showing diversity on TV, doesn’t mean I do.

It’s not just that we’re collectively accepting that stupidity is the price of “opinions” and “free speech” when we don’t have to- it’s not, because the least we can do is call it out and ostracise those who promote and cling to disgusting ideologies; it’s that we’re also allowing people to do this, then act confused when the trail- from corpse to gun, gun to wielder, wielder to manifesto, and manifesto to interview after interview about the dangers that random minorities pose, leads right back to them.
You do not have the right to wield a hateful opinion without also wielding the responsibility of it: if what you say leads to harm and death, perhaps you shouldn’t have said it in the first place, perhaps it IS our place, societally, to delineate that its actually NOT OK to praise one of the most notorious warmongering evil humans in history, mayhaps decisions about healthcare should be decided on by the people who need to access that healthcare with minimal interference from outsiders, however well intentioned?

Let’s be frank. Society is failing at the moment. We’re letting people like Elon Musk, billionaire right wing jerk merchant, pretend twitter is a “marketplace of ideas”. I’ve said it before but a microblogging site is not the place for intelligent conversation. The reason that anti trans and pro trans people clash is that clear ideas like “women regardless of gender should feel safe” are being pared down to the bone and tiny flecks of rhetoric are spit back at “opposing sides” when both sides are pushing the same fucking obvious idea- that women should feel safe. But trying to inject nuance into a platform that runs off controversy and is character limited and run by a ham sandwich with a face is never going to work. And there are some ideas that we don’t need to discuss. What is there about Hitler, drug fuelled hate wielding maniac, mass killer, pure evil, that committed horrifying crimes we should all hope never to see again, that you could possibly ever love if you’re a decent person?

People also fall to “mental health” to defend indefensible remarks, and it’s possible to accept that someone is mentally unwell and still not let those remarks fly. Britney Spears shaved her head and ended up in such a restrictive conservatorship that she’s spoken about being mentally broken by it- odd how she wasn’t touted as a champion of free speech then, isn’t it. Mental health contributes to- and yet does not excuse- antisemitism or hideous rhetoric like that of people like Lily Cade who called for “parents of trans children to be lynched”. Mental health is vital and those who suffer should be treated for it- but it doesn’t give you carte blanche to do everything but grow a curly villain moustache and start saying evil things casually.

The time is passed now where we can simply sit back and allow the “marketplace of ideas” that is society to be polluted by such “if you don’t agree with this you need to wonder why you don’t fit into society” issues- but at the very least, if we must continue to sink into the dystopic horror of discussing these topics, it’s at the very least fair that the people pushing these ideas start accepting the responsibility, start acknowledging the blood that stains their hands and start to grasp the concept that “free speech” covers our right to call them evil just as thoroughly as it covers their right to be evil.
Overall, the question we need to ask is as simple as this: why are people so desperate cling on to, to defend, to discuss “opinions” that are so clearly wrong and why can’t they approach unpicking these “opinions” and asking themselves if they’re wrong with the same zeal they have for clinging, white knuckled, to rhetoric that gets people killed.

Is it ‘cancellation’ not to laugh at something you don’t find funny?

By Daviemoo

I cannot understand how people genuinely delude themselves into believing cancel culture is real. Even saying it makes me roll my eyes.
Even in the very genuine cases of a raft of public outcry we see a temporary flame and then the natural fizzle which, short term, affects people- but never teaches them a lesson and then burns away to allow them to carry on being just as much of an anal fistula as they were before.
Look at some examples from pop culture: Chris Brown almost murdered his then girlfriend and after a couple of years he’s throwing out music, with stars like Lizzo (why Lizzo- how is CHRIS BROWN one of your favourite people…) still singing his praises, Piers Morgan’s cel-shaded pork face gurns from every bus that goes past despite his association with phone-hacking scandals and even today I had a short lived internet beef with John Cleese who swears blind he’d be cancelled by the BBC in a matter of days with his new diatribe, which he’s taking to… GB news! The BBC on which he appeared to swear that the BBC would cancel him. Yes, Cleese somehow managed to tell a BBC presenter on a BBC radio show that the BBC would never allow him to put his show on the BBC that he was on, because he would be cancelled-and not simply because it’s likely just not that funny.

In a way I feel sorry for the people who think they’re victims of cancel culture, or that people are sat at home waiting for them to cross some invisible line, at which point the hoards of social justice will descend to silence them! It must be weird, to think the problem is with a society that’s just too soft to cope with what you have to say, that people are oversensitive and weak and can’t handle your wit and risible pastiching of society. These are the thoughts of people in that group. Lawrence Fox spends his life wanking out what he thinks, no doubt, are provocative statements on twitter. The fact is, people like Fox just want to upset people because he likes to think he’s making other people a tenth as miserable as he is, when honestly I have no urge to correct or dispel any of the utter horse cum he regularly explodes onto social media: it’s the faint embarrassment of noticing your grandad quietly pissing himself in the corner I feel when I see another desperate attempt to get under our skin.

Perhaps it’d be a kindness to sit these people collectively down and explain that they’re pining for days long gone: we don’t laugh much at jokes about disabled people because we’ve seen disabled people speak about why it pisses them off. We don’t guffaw openly about homophobic or racist jokes because we understand how much splash damage they can do- are we soft, or just more empathetic- or, lets be honest, are we just bored of the same jokes that were told 30 years ago still being wheeled out today with a wink wink nudge nudge?

I don’t agree with what everyone keeps saying, necessarily. I do love comedy that walks close to an edge. But the art is in walking up to that line and staying on the side of it, not blundering over it, then getting angry when people don’t like what you say: you’re not cancelled and silenced if people tell you your comedy is shit, you’re just not funny…
I myself was a total edgelord at university- because I was immature, not because those things were actually funny. I’ve grown up, and so to those who still find jokes about people who exist around them and who aren’t as able to mount a defence all I can say is, I dunno, grow up? Or at the very least accept that you can find it funny if you do, but not everyone else has to agree?

The irony is, I have no real interest in policing what people do and don’t find funny: I wouldn’t have given a single fuck about where Cleese practices his showmanship even if it is on the ever sinking barge of GBEEBIES- it’s the simple temerity of whingeing about being denied a platform on the BBC, on the BBC. If you find anti trans or racist or homophobic jokes funny, all I have for you is a dismissive half frown: it’s not for me to tell you you’re right or wrong, but if you stand in the street screaming “I AM BEING SILENCED FOR MY VIEWS”, I don’t see how it’s a terrible transgression to ask you to shut the fuck up. And at what point do we turn to the infamous example of GB news letting one of their reporters go because he knelt on air whilst talking about BLM… So much for free speech.

The broader ridiculousness is that there is ALWAYS a line of speech people will stop at. It might not be saying something bigoted, but there is always a point where someone will say “yes we shouldn’t allow that”, but at least people like me are forthright about where our line is, unlike the crowd on the “other” side who pretend there is no line, that any speech is fair game and then- just like today- spend hours collectively writing column after column decrying, for example, Nicola Sturgeon for stating she doesn’t like tories. Do you want free speech or do you want people to only speak when they say what you agree with you? Because that’s how these things come across. You can’t tell people they’re too soft for not liking what you say then spend three solid days clutching your nanny’s pearls over the first minister of Scotland answering a question frankly. And the biggest, pant splitting, testicular torsion inducing irony of it is that this comes from the crowd who have spent years calling us snowflakes, remoaners, weak, fragile, nancies and this of course is when they’re not just flat calling us slurs like the guy who was referring to people like me as “benders” on twitter last night. God forbid we bite back at them rather than huddling on a street corner for them to spit on unimpeded, how dare we give as good as we get!
Of course, you’ll then meet that hilarious subset of “being nasty to nasty people doesn’t get you anywhere” types: you sure are right “Dan27834928” that being a dick to someone who was a dick to you doesn’t fix the problem, but there’s only so many times I can “live, laugh, love” homophobic slurs away before I simply want to tell these people exactly how much I’d like to flip them inside out rectum first…

It’s so consternating that we have these same folks fulsomely screaming the same lines about political correctness, the dreaded “w” word, how everyone is too sensitive these days when the fact is it isn’t even about sensitivity, it’s about emotional intelligence. It’s not up to everyone else to just let you blunder around being stupid because you think you have the right, and we could do that but there will come a day where someone won’t simply just disagree with you but will give you a cheerful lamping and you’ll get even more upset then, I’ve no doubt.

I genuinely want to see these people in a world without this fabled cancel culture, otherwise known as being told they’re not funny/ wrong. In a world without it, people like Cleese wouldn’t be chewed out by netizens over his ill thought out move to a channel he recently called KGB news and whose ethical model he questioned.

Folk like this would have nothing to do if nobody is offended because cancel culture doesn’t exist: why would anyone go to see the show of a provocative comedian if nothing is provocative? What’s funny when nothing is off the table, nothing is too far and nothing is risqué? And even if that wasn’t the case, what excuse would they find for the increasingly empty seats every show as they stride across the stage, screaming racial epithets to the fewer and fewer people who equate offence level with brilliance like Kanye fans cheering on his increasingly petulant stunts.

Culture has changed, and it hasn’t changed entirely- plenty of people still find comedians like Cleese funny, plenty still watch ridiculous “news” channels like GB news- but it’s not enough. The people staffing these channels have a desperate need to prove that their views are the most popular: but why? I wear my remainership on my sleeve because even if it wasn’t the most popular choice I stand by it, and I’m fairly certain actual fact has lionised that opinion.
I wear my sexuality openly, not because I’m forcing it down your throat but because it’s a part of who I am and has made me the way I am and I’m not ashamed of it, even though you’re more likely now than in the past decade to get hate crimed. I don’t need to be on the winning and popular side, because I believe in what I say without the need of a mob behind me agreeing from behind anonymous profiles- and it seems to me that those on the other side fight endlessly for validation because there’s a gnawing sense of fear at the bottom of that well- that if they’re not popular, if people don’t secretly agree with them… maybe they’re wrong.

The finest hilarity with the type of person who associates themselves with these views is to point out that their divisive nonsense would be useless in a world without the thing they so hate. What would they spend days and hours booing about if they did exist in their anti politically-correct utopia? I invite you, and them, to imagine exactly how shite a world without the sort of thing they speak out against would be. Guarantee they’d be pinning for their precious cancel culture inside of a week.

I guess all I have to say is, I’m not even trying to be cruel with this piece, I just don’t understand how people can bitch about cancel culture and political correctness gone mad when, without it, they would be nothing.
The contrarians at GBEEBIES make their existence central to going “against the grain” because they genuinely believe their views are the right ones. I’m not the one to tell them whether that’s true or not, but I won’t lose sleep over whether I am because I don’t need the glib, seal clapping validation of a bunch of people who wait for me to tell them what they think- right or wrong, I’d rather just let people live their lives as they see fit without complaining about it, then railing against the resultant tide of people disagreeing with me as ‘cancel culture’ and not the missteps of someone with their finger far off the pulse of modern culture and discourse. Rather than be cruel, I just want to exhort people to think simplistically- is there any chance at all that the problem doesn’t lie with us, the people who don’t find you funny, entertaining or whatever, and it’s actually with you- the people who do nothing but denigrate us for not falling in line with you… food for thought.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

The War of Friendly Fire – or ‘why would I blame a trans woman for the crimes of cis men’?

By Daviemoo

As I grew up, I assumed that the world would only continue its steady plod onwards re: progress, inclusion and justice. But it hasn’t: it’s been stalled- why? by an ageing generation who want permission to be awful under the guise of free speech, who want to blame the next generation for ruining the world they fostered and worse still- we’re letting them. Powerful men sit in mountain-high towers waving gold wrapped fingers to strike down rights they enjoy themselves- and all the time, as these men continue their oligarchical stranglehold on society, we’re all too busy biting each other’s backs to fight the real enemies.

It’s such a strange time to be alive. A virus that, in 2020, terrorised the globe now isn’t even a consideration: people cough and splutter openly in public (a woman just coughed near me in the cafe I’m in and my immediate thought was “great”) without masks or without even a hint of contrition. Minorities like disabled people, people of colour or LGBT+ people and all those who exist in-between those minorities are still fighting the same harmful battles we’ve been struggling against for generations, as ministers like Kemi Badenoch swell the ranks of a government whose race report was absolutely condemned by experts on racial disparity; and we’re called misogynists because we think trans people deserve to live in peace, because apparently misogyny is when you don’t hate trans people. Poor people line the streets to vote rich people into power, who spend their terms consolidating their wealth to unfathomable heights whilst telling poor people they just need to work harder. And all the time, everyone’s ire is aimed at each other, at cross purpose, never at those in charge.

At times it’s hard to picture better, but my good friend Dr Maria Norris said just that to me recently: it starts with the imagining of better. The world seems to be, less slipping and more lurching to the right politically, and the essence of right wing politics is the self. People are only invested in themselves and their own happiness- but this isn’t the fault of the individual. It’s right, fair even that people who are disadvantaged are only interested in themselves- their very survival. This is the essence of the trouble we’re in. So many people are economically deprived, two paycheques away from poverty in most cases, that we don’t have the mental space to imagine better for ourselves. How can we care that other people suffer more, when we suffer so ourselves? But care we must, or this cycle spins again.
The question I ask myself many times a day is- is this an accident? Are those in charge just so serially inept that they cannot come up with broad solutions to this? Of course not. There are ways, means to go about fixing these problems. But nobody with a scintilla of power will lever attempt it for reasons I understand but revile- but that is an article for another day: let’s stick with the material: the fact that society is fractured in a million ways.

The irony is how easy it is to point out the hypocrisy.
Lets take someone that I was always warm towards until recently as a perfect example of societal hypocrisy, an unexpected source no doubt: Bette Midler.

Recently in the US, the Supreme Court overturned Roe Vs. Wade which has upended the bodily autonomy and therefore safety and equality of roughly 50% of US citizens. The outcry was heard around the world and this terrible travesty has shaken any decent person’s faith in the idea that choice is sacrosanct when it comes to forcing a person to carry an unwanted child to term, and has even legitimised death from disturbingly common conditions like ectopic pregnancy as “god’s will”.
Midler was on fire, sharing stories about how Donald Trump’s wife allegedly sought an abortion previously, pointing out the logical fallacies around preserving life at the expense of those whose lives are fed to the baby making business, making memes that both twisted your guts and resonated in their truth.

Then Midler tweeted this:

There was immediate shock: anybody who knows the battle for trans equality knows those talking points. Trans people are often accused of erasing women, erasing the word woman, taking women’s rights away, appropriating women’s battles… so, was Bette Midler revealing transphobia writ large to the world?

As it turns out, no. Midler has since clarified that she was clumsily talking about the intersectional battle all women face. Let’s just break the talking points down and debunk them. The word woman is not being erased at all, there are simply alternatives on offer for medical journals to allow more inclusivity to trans people- women can still call themselves women, trans women call themselves trans women, and chest feeding and breast feeding are interchangeable as you see fit- nobody is forcing anyone to use gender inclusive language for themselves but when referencing society- if you want to fight a battle for people, consider that not acknowledging a significant part of those affected doesn’t exactly engender the fight in it’s totality. Trans men are capable of having children and will of course fight for abortion rights, but not acknowledging that they face that oppression is unfair on them and in tandem, lessens the true horror of just how many people this affects.

As for “people with vaginas”- are women not people who have vaginas or did I miss something? That tweet seemed to blame gender inclusive language for the removal of womens rights. but is it gender inclusive language that stripped back access to abortion or was it a bunch of rich right wing people?
The answer is obvious- and as I cover further down, blaming people whose very happiness and existence relies on bodily autonomy being a basic right for the rolling back of bodily autonomy is utterly wrong.

But Midler also tweeted this:

Another minority who shouldn’t be there in Midler’s very famous crosshairs.

Muslim people had nothing to do with this decision: not a single person who made the decision is muslim. But Midler tweeted this image, swivelling the cannon to face muslim people again, America’s favourite scapegoat. Amazing how many devisions in America made by Christians end up being blamed on muslims.

Please bear in mind as I write this some very simple facts: I do not hate religious people- if religion brings you comfort, happiness, security, answers then I wish you that joy in totality. But I hate religion. All religion. I don’t need a god, a book, a set of yellowed scriptures to tell me murder is wrong, women should be equal to men and that I’m not a disgusting degenerate because I think other men are attractive. If the only thing stopping you from shooting someone is fear of punishment then you’re scum. What’s stopping me from doing it? It’s wrong.
I’d love the same sort of respect and response from religious people. Your religion says I’m disgusting and immoral for being gay? Well I’m sure it also says only god can judge me so button your mouth and let god tell me when I die, but until then I pay the same tax you do, I have the same bad hair days you do and I struggle to get out of bed some days just like you do. Let god tell me why I’m wrong for existing in this skin and just let me be.

Back to the problem at hand.
Transgender people are a tiny part of the population. They had no say about the overturning of Roe V Wade, though trans people who do support the overturn are, frankly- stupid.
The very essence of trans existence revolves around bodily autonomy being a base sacrosanct right. If cis women can’t decide they are not ready physically, emotionally, monetarily for a child, why would trans people be able to decide to undergo hormone therapy or surgery? The battles are linked: anyone who separates the two lacks the zoom-out vision required to understand intersectional existential battles.
Muslim people are also not to blame: Midler tweeted a jibe at six very much christian people who, in their christian conviction, made the christian decision to christianly remove the right to abortion for the US. What do muslim people have to do with it: under the Taliban women are allowed to seek abortion so let’s congratulate the US Supreme Court for giving women less reproductive choice than the literal Taliban.

Aiming our ire at the wrong place is a life time mistake: those foreigners who come here and steal our jobs and endanger our families are fleeing the wars our governments paid into for oil or to reap economic benefit. They, like us, are just people seeking the best for their families and themselves, and the best doesn’t exist in a country ravaged by inequality.
Gay people aren’t forcing our agenda down your throat, you’re just bothered you have to acknowledge we exist: the problem is yours. If you get angry because a woman kisses another woman in a children’s movie then you’re insane: Throwing accusations of sexualisation at two women kissing belies the fact that YOU think it’s sexual. Children see two adults kiss. If it confuses them, it’s as simple as “sometimes ladies like other ladies”. Did society end or are you just being histrionic over nothing…?

When it comes to coronavirus, people will still flatly deny the virus was ever a problem, never mind that it is now. They’ll accuse scientists and doctors of being on the payroll of a government who openly scorned and reviled them through the whole pandemic, then turn around and critique the government too, heedless of the fact that we should all be united together in protection and against a government who used our ever higher corpse piles as tinder to alight the economy- and not even well!
If we had let coronavirus persist unabated the death toll would easily have exceeded a million in the UK alone, not just from coronavirus itself but from hospitals crawling with patients, unable to provide care for anything.
Zoom out, people.
Were you unhappy you had to sit indoors for a year? If we’d all done what we needed to, if we’d sacrificed for each other and listened to people who made their entire raison d’être fighting back against these once in a lifetime events we wouldn’t have had to play the Hokey Cokey with lockdowns. But did we? Or were we too busy concocting conspiracy theories about Wuhan labs, about spike proteins and 5G chips and the like? And why? Occams razor says the simplest answer is most often right. So was Bill Gates putting gay semen into vaccines to control your brain into accepting a new world order helmed by Jewish trans women- or did a virus start infecting humans and make a lot of people very sick, a lot of people die and did we need to try our best to prevent that from spreading?

Humanity is so angry at itself- why? Don’t we all have to exist together? Why would I be angry at someone who wears a face veil or a face mask – it doesn’t affect me? I don’t care what someone else does with their body as long as it doesn’t endanger me!
Coronavirus was and is such a problem because in this economy even a couple of weeks off work would decimate my finances- I could lose my home. But I’m a snowflake for popping on a thin bit of cotton occasionally, not taking my sickness like a MAN.
I once had garden variety flu and I wet myself in bed because I was too physically weak to get to the bathroom so even if coronavirus was “just the flu” it’s a flu I could certainly do without thanks.

And as for the other existential battles, isn’t it weird that transphobic people will scream at these “male impostors” IE trans people whilst almost completely ignoring the very real actual 100% garden variety cis men who are actively working against women’s rights?
If you’re more bothered about being able to call yourself a mother, or a trans person having a quick pee next to you in a cubicle in a gym toilet than you are about rich groups of men chortling into expensive whisky as they sign paper that means your healthcare options are limited, may I glibly suggest that your privilege overextends your awareness.

I don’t think we can win battles against these groups who work so hard against us until we stop aiming our ire at each other.

I’m not a misogynist because I want trans people to be able to live how they want to- and if you think I am then that’s your very different definition of misogyny that you’re free to apply to my very unconcerned self. I’m not a woke snowflake because I choose to listen to people of colour who tell me their experiences of both casual and out and out galling racism, of how tiring it is to still be having the same discussions about racial disparity, or because I plop a face mask on both because coronavirus floored me and because if I have it I’d hate to accidentally kill someone I share a crowded coffee shop with- or even mildly inconvenience them by making them unwell if I could avoid that…

If your ethos is “if it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care” then how very sad for you. You can’t expect the world to do better by you if you won’t do better by other people. And if you don’t expect the world to do better by you and you’re comfortable both being miserable and pushing that misery just know that you and those like you are the axis of the problem, the enablers of those faceless rich men who laugh at their continued control of the miserable status quo, the men who get away time and again, generation on generation with betrayal of the masses because the masses have decided it’s each other’s fault and not the very purveyors of our misery.

Elliot Page, in his coming out speech a few years ago, said something I say to myself at least once a day: “The world would be a much better place if we could all stop being so horrible to each other for five minutes”. So start your five minutes now, lets all start our five minutes collectively and stop blaming the minorities and the other, and start blaming the same people who have been in charge for hundreds, almost thousands of years. Lets blame the decision makers who have pushed us, always pushed us, down the path of division. If we have to hate- lets hate the right people. And if we have to fight- let’s stop fighting each other and start fighting the people handing out the weapons.

The Stupidification of Brits

By Daviemoo

As the Conservatives push hard to renationalise imperial measures, something we’ve always had on our food packaging my entire life as an ostensible “brexit benefit” that doesn’t directly revolve around-but will likely contribute to – a poorer economy, one must wonder how it is not obvious that the party is trying to contribute to an overall shift away from the rest of the world: Little Britain will be unable to sell goods to a market that doesn’t understand the measures, or that has to do extra work to do so. But this isn’t the only way the tories are working to Break down Brits…

Imperial Measurements- an exercise in futility- Boris Johnson

Imperial units seem like some kitschy reach back into the not so distant past- some little move towards showing the world we don’t need them because we have our own way of weighing corn and meat… not one person who isn’t desperate to return to the smoky pubs and “it’s ‘ow we’ve always done it” rhetoric of the past is particularly interested in starting to use imperial measurements again, because it is of no benefit to anyone who doesn’t regularly start sentences with “back in my day…”

Imperial measurements will make it more difficult to:
-Sell to other countries
-Cook
-Purchase necessary products and ingredients

It was also never “banned” by the EU, but to fit their standardisation model it was vital that we all used the same measurements- products in the UK have always been allowed to display imperial, just not as prominently as the other units.

So why would we do it? Because as always it pleases that tiny base who will thoughtlessly back the tories specifically because of nonsensical moves like this. Looking at the outlook of those who approve of this, they don’t care about the realistic damage and annoyance this move will cause now- but you can guarantee that they will be the loudest to decry it as soon as they experience issues resulting from it.
As we fall into measuring things here, we will lose step with the rest of the world- the pointlessness of making our coexistence harder rankles, but also fits perfectly well with the desired outcome of those in charge of implementing brexit: what seemed like a silly little brag fits in with the theme of isolationism behind brexit. Measures, money… what next?

The curtailing of university entry- Nadhim Zahawi

Recently it was announced that if you do not score certain fundamental grades, student loans will not be on offer, effectively curtailing university for those who fail to achieve in the earlier exams. This is a disaster both in terms of the hangover from coronavirus which adversely affected hundreds of thousands of peoples’ education, but is also- and there is no sensitive way to write this- a stupid idea.
I’ve written extensively about the myriad different learning styles for human beings, whether that’s an ability to absorb through physical action, reading, listening, watching demos and more- denying someone access to higher education simply because they cannot conform to the archaic system of listen, repeat in a slightly different way on a written exam is a disastrous response to the educational future of the UK. People can excel at university when given access to the right learning resources, teachers and allowed to study a passion subject instead the usual proscriptions of subjects given at a young age- and even if someone goes on to work in a completely different field, the ability to obtain a degree, masters or PHD is a vital skill that should be exercised for those who can – and want to.

Zahawi’s zest for preventing students who don’t excel at exams from reaching new chances of education is a transparent attempt to gatekeep knowledge from those who need it most desperately- and he should be looked upon with shame for this transparently reductive action.

Additionally, the spectre of “left wing censorship” and deeply worrying authoritarian moves to combat this nebulous nonsense has always been touted over university: searching student forums shows right wing students asking whether they will fit in- rather than simply acknowledging that their views, as all views are, will be questioned, it’s an immediate self censorship and a lack of understanding that an exposure to a wide range of people around you is likely to change your narrow views to wider ones: university isn’t a factory for spitting out left wing Leninists, they are buildings filled with knowledge, and intersected by tens of thousands of people you may not have met and learnt from before: you are not being converted, you’re learning other people’s lifestyles and exposure to this is the antithesis of reductive rhetoric.

Other tory ministers state that children should be asked to sing unsettlin g nationalistic anthems in schools– we truly are allowing steps towards childhood indoctrination to nationalism.

Throttling the media- Nadine Dorries

Despite 96% of respondents saying they wanted channel 4’s funding model to remain the same and a wealth of evidence presented that C4 is doing well in it’s monetary goals, Dorries has stated that the government will take steps towards its’ privatisation. Dorries has repeatedly demonstrated that she doesn’t know or understand- nor despite time and prompts, care to learn, how channels in the UK are funded (she has also wrongly stated information about the BBC, ITV and channel 4’s several messups). Dorries has stated channel 4 hasn’t “helped its case” against privatisation when “one of its lead presenters is shouting fuck the tories at a concert”. That would be a sentence in and of itself enough to sink any other culture ministers as blatantly taking revenge on a channel for a presenter not slavishly worshipping the government but Dorries is too busy making raps on tiktok to feel the shame she would if she viewed herself as a huge majority of the UK view her.

But the media also does the tories job for them- all of the big newspapers lean right, from the Daily Mail and its endless campaign to blame “lefty do gooder lawyers” for everything, the Express and its attempts to copy headlines that sound similar to those written in North Korea about their own “dear leader”. Other papers are too busy trying to scratch at culture war to make sales by punching down on minorities or both sides-ing debates which are patently pointless or a nonissue. Those media that do speak truth to power are often small or sat on, or- as we saw recently with Cummings’ admissions about the Johnson administration “throwing bungs” to right wing media whilst ignoring left wing or smaller media outlets, underfunded into oblivion.

Social media has seen an uptick in the amount of people desperate to speak truth to power there- its how I have come to what little prominence I have because the only place you can speak about the disgusting state of the country with little intervention (though lots of hate mail, the odd death threat and a sprinkle of doxxing) is social media.

The only way through this mire is a multi pronged attack. Social media is hugely influential when it comes to allowing the voices of ordinary people to be uplifted above the proscripted dross of the mainstream media- a phrase I hate but will indulge in here, but large scale organisation and a flat refusal to allow the government to pass damaging legislation must also start to take place. Fighting back against tory policy must take place both in cyberspace and in the real world – lobbying the government is ineffective right now, but we cannot stop and must in fact increase our efforts to battle them in the real world including against the frightening anti protest legislation they have inducted.

They will not stop us. We are many- and there are more of us than we think. Though decades of tory policy have enforced a miasma of glibly disenfranchised brits, people can be reached with the right message -we must find this message and galvanise those who would not normally move to counter this fight. We must- for without the voices of the discontented rising in concert, the zombie moans of a nation whose freedom is dead will only grow to silence us all.

We need to talk about the men who say “not all men”

By Daviemoo

We know. We know it isn’t all men. But after yet another woman speaks out about her experience of discomfort when receiving unsolicited, perverted DMs and the conversation is immediately co-opted by the “yeah but, it’s not all men is it” crowd one must begin to ask whether those who are more interested in being delineated as not creepy are more interested in protecting their egos, or hiding their deeds than the very real pain, discomfort and fear of women.

A small note- I will be talking about MEN in this article. If the lack of the word some bothers you- you’re the target audience.

Rosie Holt, the comedienne and political satirist posted a very disturbing DM on twitter today, which reads as follows:

I found myself amazed that a man could type this, thinking “yes, yes this is a polite and funny message where I proposition a woman about her body, it will definitely go down a treat”. So many people seem not to understand that politely harassing someone is still harassing someone- something I discovered a while back when I shared an anonymised grindr message of someone asking me to let them, and I quote, “smell your bum through your trousers”. My comments lit up with people disgraced that somebody could absolutely disregard someone’s boundaries and, without so much as a hello, send such a creepy message- but between those spots of consensus were the odd “erm, why are you sharing his private message?” “He said please, what more do you want”, “it’s a hookup app- what do you expect?” (is a hello too much, really?)

So it was with much trepidation that on Rosie’s post, I headed to the comments, hopeful of some light hearted discourse to cheer Rosie up (which was there)-and yet…

There it is. As always.

It’s not all men, its SOME men, it’s a FEW men, its just some random, unknowable, unquantifiable men who do these things. No DECENT men do these things and we simply must CLEARLY STATE THIS, lest the conversation about women’s safety and comfort online devolve into discourse around how distressed women receiving DMs that range from mildly disturbing to pornographically obscene to horrifically violent, must cater to men’s feelings around discussing the topic. Every single time the word “men” is used without the demanded prefix of SOME men, in flood the people determined to prove that it’s not them, they’re not predatory and creepy and how dare you lump them in with the baddies?! They’re feminist, they have wives and sisters and daughters and they’d NEVER do such things! And of course, we all know you can take the words of strangers on the internet to heart because nobody has ever lied on there… right?

They are right of course- it’s absolutely not all men- but does that need stating in discourse where frustrated, angry and frightened women are talking about inappropriate behaviour? Why must men appear and center themselves over the women? Why are some men’s feelings more important than a group of women’s shared experiences of harassment and the urgent need to discuss and forestall it?

It isn’t all men: but how do you know which men it is?

“I never thought he would kill her,” Loney said. “I never thought that would happen in a million years.”
https://nypost.com/2015/07/26/man-arrested-in-slaughterhouse-style-killing-spree/

The first defence is always “I never knew he was like that”.

“I never knew he hit his wife”

“He seemed like such a lovely man”

“I never knew he was abusive”

Here is something I bet you didn’t know: Stanford Rapist, Brock Turner’s parents are now campaigning for the sex offenders register to be scrapped to protect their rapist son. So knowledge, we learn, is not power and even if it is, it still doesn’t lend itself to the protection of victims. Turner’s mother is actively involved in the Facebook group for scrapping the sex offenders register- so sometimes knowledge, intimate knowledge isn’t as important as the strange urge to protect a disgusting degenerate just because you birthed them.

John Wayne Gacey was a clown as part of his career: he also stacked the corpses of his victims under his house in a crawlspace. He was active in the church and by all accounts a polite and convivial neighbour. He’s also one of America’s most prolific serial killers: gay he was, but the threat still stands.

I am, of course, reaching for two extreme examples there- so how about a home grown one: during lockdown one I was walking to work one morning and stopped to scream abuse at a man who was taking unsolicited pictures of a woman in her gym gear whilst they were waiting for a bus. The man first called me a queer- it’s gay, thanks- then ran away when the rest of the bus stop ganged up on him.

What would he have done with those pictures- hell, he didn’t delete them, he sprinted off with phone in hand. He was also dressed in a fairly nice suit, tie and was carrying a little bag that clearly held a laptop. This wasn’t some “oh they’re just like that” stereotype of a brickie or some other parodyish manlet- this was a businessman. So how does one know which men to reference, and why is the addition of SOME so necessary?

It’s funny because women have often said they feel safe around me because I’m a gay man – I can understand feeling safer as a woman, but my experiences of being a man who likes men and being around men has given me a pretty in depth look into the world of men who say “not all”- but are part of the some.

As a gay man I’ve experienced a shocking amount of unsolicited rude pictures and messages and whilst I’m no shrinking violet (I have cheerfully referred to myself as a man whore at least twice this week), the worrying thread that runs between womens experiences and my own is that men assume. They assume I want pictures of their flaccid willies before they ask, assume I want them to tell me what they’d do to me if I was in a room with them alone, and prioritise the pleasure they get from sending those messages over my comfort in receiving them. It’s at best selfish and at its worst deeply indicative of people who don’t care about the root of the word consent.

Back to the topic at hand, Rosie’s sharing of the DM is a snapshot into an extensive world that heterosexual men in particular don’t seem to understand. I genuinely believe a lot of heterosexual men wish their DMs were flooded with women telling them what they’d do to them if they could and sending myriad photos of themselves, and the reason I think this is that straight men who arent homophobic have genuinely expressed jealousy when I explain how transactional you can be on apps like grindr.

The most disturbing conversation that came around consent and comfort happened when I shared my experience of being sexually assaulted; a disturbing amount of men (sexuality irrespective) responded with “I’d love to be woken up with sex”… It seems there is an innate disconnect between the way men think about sexual pleasure and the involvement of the other. I get no pleasure from sending nudes I haven’t been asked for, but apparently some men do. I get no pleasure from being, as I described to the man who assaulted me “used like a fucking fleshlight”, but some men do- and they are more than happy to center their feelings over the other, just as men in this discussion do.

Men will take a discussion around women feeling violated and unsafe on the internet and center themselves in it as readily as some men will center themselves above someone else’s consent to a sexual act: and its this correlation that makes women right to be afraid of men.

If you are more interested in being pandered to in a conversation around appropriate behaviours than around listening to those who are being made to feel vulnerable then that, however minor it may seem to you, is the top of the tipping point to being more bothered about your own feelings than the feelings of those who are trying desperately to have a discussion. It is also wildly disturbing to see men who are so desperate to be marked as “one of the good ones” when most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim and therefore likely to be someone the victim feels safe around- and that is an underreported statistic.

As a man, of course I understand that sometimes you may frown because you know you’re not one of the horrendous perpetrators of these crimes: but if you know that the statement doesn’t apply to you, it’s probably important that you ask yourself then, why it offends you so? It’s not being directed at you but is a blanket statement and does not apply to you- your perception of you isn’t changed by the statement so why be offended by it? Ultimately, if you know you haven’t exhibited any of this problematic behaviour you should be completely unphased by statements around those who have done so: because it’s not about you.

Women who experience abuse, harassment, threats and disgusting imagery should-MUST- be listened to, and ultimately if being listened to is at the expense of some male ego… well, we have more than enough of that: were it an energy source the UK would be lit up like a firework. Your feelings are important and valid- but not as important nor as valid as women who fear opening their messages in the event that they are being dehumanised by men- whether they know said man or not. Next time someone comments something about men, rather than leaping in to make ABSOLUTELY SURE they know it’s not you, I advise you to sit down, shut up, and ask yourself why your discomfort at a label is weightier than the bodies of women who have been objectified their whole lives.

What would a world without “woke” culture be like?

By Daviemoo

Many of us who are labelled “woke” already live in a world suffused with anti minority sentiment- a cursory scroll of someone like Katy Montgomerie’s twitter shows the relentless onward rumble of abuse that she faces from those who are mildly uncomfortable with transgender women, to those who outwardly call for the arrest and forced de-transitioning of anyone transgender; conversely, many of the most outspoken critics of “cancel culture” live in a world where they can and do say whatever they want to and face absolutely no consequence for it. But what if those who rage against cancel culture win? What would that world look like? And could we really stomach a “so what” society?

Society at it’s core is huge, vast and varied and unfortunately it’s a simple fact that society must function by making allowances for divergence from what could be termed as the norm. If every person who did not fit the norm was ostracised from society, human civilisation would be laughably small and far away from where we are now. Human acceptance has been perilous ever since the first human emerged from their cave, saw another human and wondered why their hair was a different colour.

The benefit of intellect is that we can discuss how we can co-exist and make each other’s lives easier- but humans are still in some strange phase of our existence where we’d rather exhaust debate on why we shouldn’t, than why we should.

Let’s say the anti woke brigade won: how would life be for anyone outside of the lucky few who aren’t affected now by, and would continue not to be affected by the implementation of a “so what” culture?

People of colour

“Woke” sentiment is closely linked to anti racist sentiment- so scrap any and all discourse around racial inequality. It doesn’t mean racial inequality doesn’t exist- merely that it is not discussed. Any person of colour who faced inequality- be that micro aggressions or outright hatred- would be met with indifference in the “so what” society. Racist hiring practices could continue unabated with employers merely shrugging when called out on their inability to hire people of colour. Tests on blind CV’s have highlighted a worrying disparity on conversions of people with ethnic names to employees at organisations- and the backlash to organisations offering roles to people of colour has been thunderous- even when those roles are either best filled by people of colour due to the nature of the job or are specifically designed to wall over a shortfall in representation when it comes to broader society.

In the “so what” society, systemic racism would be glossed over with reports from the government that would reference experts who were not consulted to contribute. The inequalities faced by people of colour in the UK would be explained away with “agency” rather than a deep look into how the continuation of ostracising behaviour propagated by the government and a systematically racist society has contributed to worse living conditions, worse mental health outcomes and worse treatment by institutions like hospitals and police.

When nation wide protests are sparked about racial inequality and how to deal with it, including the glorification of slave traders, a “so what” society would likely spend more time focusing on the damage to a public statue and the four white people who did it than the feelings of people of colour who had to walk past a statue of a man who may have enslaved their ancestors.

LGBT+ people

Often when we speak out about the abuses we face, whether again micro aggressions like being asked invasive questions about who puts what genitals where, who has what genitals, or disgusting comments about STIs – we’re told that it “could be worse” and to be “thankful” for how we’re treated or spoken to or about.

We’re treated to regular sermonising about how we’re perverted or seen as unseemly because we have different sexualities.

Gay men are often accused of paedophilia as a pejorative, never so much as recently with the stoking of anti trans sentiment- if you publicly defend transgender people on the internet you will, it is a solemn promise, be labelled a paedophile.

In a “so what” culture, one could expect that hate crimes would rise precipitously because anti minority sentiment would be allowed to go unchecked to the point that organisations would step away from legislation designed to protect minorities from discrimination- and in fact, aid it.

In the microcosm of anti LGBT sentiment in the “so what” society, the BBC would knowingly allow a lesbian rapist like Lily Cade to contribute to an article about fear of rape, and use widely questioned figures- like a survey run by a transphobic group to indicate societal findings about fear of trans women.

In this “so what” society, discrimination like my own, where I was called “faggot” in front of everyone at work would be allowed to happen with no punishment: I was slurred in front of half the office, some of whom were my literal employees and in response my boss- the company owner- did nothing to protect me, to punish my aggressor- I would suggest that this fits in quite well with what would happen in a “so what” society.

Of course as an already polarised person I’m looking at this through my lens- but it’s the lens of those who don’t follow the flow of society on dint of who we are that need some social consciousness in public or we’re the ones who suffer.

Women

Need I say it?

When women can be murdered in the street by policemen and the police response is to wear the right shoes or that you should flag down a bus and not to look at serious police reforms, one starts to wonder whether this is exactly what a “so what” culture would do.

When women’s reproductive rights are restricted or debated, and women are overruled on their own healthcare regularly, and when medical problems are under-diagnosed even though they are common, you could surely say that this is indicative of a so what society- or when women speak out about their genuine fears in a society that is pervaded by men who don’t respect bodily autonomy or boundaries, and “not all men” is the immediate response rather than any attempt to work with women to allay their fears or deal with the causal root of the issue one could say that’s very typical of a “so what” society.

When violence against women is met with questions like “but what was she wearing“, or when society sexualises young women like schoolgirls and thinks this is normal- the infantilisation of women for sexual pleasure- one must truly question whether society works for women, or whether it’s already the common case that when women speak about women’s issues they’re met with “so what”.

The disabled

What would likely typify the behaviour of a “so what” society when referring to disabled people? Say, in the midst of a pandemic, throwing off all restrictions to mitigate spread and ensure people were kept safe? Or perhaps not giving full living wage allowance to those forced to care for relatives who either cant afford or just don’t want to house their loved one in a care facility?

In a “so what” society, giving space and air time to disabled people would be a rarity because it would underscore the lack of support for disabled people in a country that barely tolerates the audacity of someone to be disabled, and those who do speak against the government struggle to be heard.

And when, at the height of death in the pandemic, the government legislates enforced Do Not Resuscitate orders for disabled people you have the true measure of whether a society does, or does not feel “woke” about disabled people’s issues.

You have what you want

Society has long been about asking people to at the very least control their voicing of their inner thoughts- think what you want, but don’t say it. Even this has become too much for the polemic group of anti woke nonsense pushing. Simply being asked to think whatever you want, no matter how heinous but keep it in your head is a travail they cannot endure. And yet when it is our comfort, our autonomy, our names, our pronouns, our liberties we ask to be respected -they cannot do so. How strange that we must return the favour which is never employed for us?

When you look closely at our society, you begin to understand that the issue that the anti woke crowd have is simply that they aren’t able to thoughtlessly speak with impunity – but none of us are barred from doing just that, we just elect to be decent people. What we have is a crowd of people desperate to have society foster their desire to say bad things without being made to feel guilty for them.

I’m afraid, dear anti wokers- you have the society you desperately crave and you’re wasting time asking for it to be more closed. Imagine what society would be like without allowances for difference, without consideration for other people; a deep, dark and horribly unhappy place where even the discussion of inequality cannot be stomached because it may make people feel bad.

If you really want to know what the society of your dreams looks like, perhaps it’s time to realise that it’s actually your worst nightmare.

Oh just shut the fck up about “free speech” and start defending your sht takes if you believe them…

By Daviemoo

And so begins another week in the UK where another entitled person – shocking no one, a cisgender straight white man – rails against the terrors of the cancel culture machine, a machine that literally stops nobody who decries it.

The ex member of Mumford & Sons, Winston Marshall unleashed his full potential as a spewer of nonsense today on GB news, or as I like to call it, “Gammon Blithering news”. Railing against the horrific, life ending effects of a cancel culture that’s claimed literally not one person who has spoken out against it, he explained his ire with people “cancelling” Joe Rogan’s podcast and stating that he sees this as trying to censor free speech.

Ultimately, adopting phraseology which allows you to attack people who are more adept at navigating the human experience than you is the ultimate weapon of people utterly ill suited to sharing the planet with others. If someone told me my behaviour was offensive to them and rather than even hearing them out I declared them woke, I’d probably be ashamed- and therein seems to be the crux- those anti woke amongst us are desperate to be allowed to continue verbally shitting their pants in public without being called out on the stench of their ridiculous words.

Listen reader, you and I are as bored as each other with this absolutely bottom drawer argument about cancel culture, wokeness and free speech so, dearest reader- lets do some debunking.

Not one person that complains about cancel culture has ever been a victim of it. Let’s look at some examples.
JK Rowling- constantly stirring up transphobia, still rakes in millions, lives in a castle.

Donald Trump – he wasn’t cancelled, he lost an election because he was about as good at being a president as I am at being a blue whale

Joe Rogan – his podcast is one of the widely disseminated pieces of media that exists today even with episodes removed

Kathleen Stock – Regularly making the rounds on British media, stepped down voluntarily from her teaching role and her university protected her, immediately obtained another job

Yes some people have been wrongly accused of x and y and people have jumped on them, and this isn’t cancel culture. Its mob mentality. Normally these people are successful and people are quick to attack them because people love to see the fall of a star. It’s now par for the course for these so called “cancel culture victims” to actually be seen and heard wider from the front pages of our unquestionably right leaning media. In a way it’s become a lucrative side gig to claim cancellation and lap up money and accolades from your blind defenders. At worst cancel culture means a change of status, of employer or something else- but never for these people does it mean CANCELLATION.

“Wokeness”

Woke comes from slang to mean that someone is awakened to the existence of racial injustice. It’s now regularly thrown at people like myself as an insult, a pejorative term to indicate that I’m offended by everything and yet I have sound solid reasoning for my stances for and against certain things, whereas it’s all too easy to throw out the “oh that’s woke” flare that means that you can 1 attract your fellow thoughtless to defend whatever you’re saying and 2 immediately insulate yourself from the critique- after all, why SHOULD you have to moderate how you speak to people if theyre offended by everything? Is it because humans have been doing that since literally the beginning of time.

I’ve no doubt that if everyone walked around saying what they thought the world would look something akin to the middle of a disaster movie, riots in the street every day. It’s not woke to ask someone not to say something stupid or offensive, it’s common sense- and if you immediately declare something woke without even listening to reasoning then you’re hardly a brainbox- in fact, it takes a stupefying dearth of independent thought to simply disregard everything you don’t understand as just another thing you don’t need to learn or account for in your own behaviour. If children learn not to urinate in their pants by age 4 it’s eminently possible for an adult to learn that something they do or say is rude and adapt their behaviour.

Free speech

Ah free speech. I’ve said this literally hundreds of times: free speech actually doesn’t exist. If you walked down the street exclaiming how much you wanted to fucking murder every bastard who got in your way, you’d be in the back of a police van fairly quickly- not as quickly as before the conservatives gutted police numbers, but still. If you walked into my office as a new employee and called me a fag, I’d rightly complain and if justice prevailed you would lose your job.

Of course you’re able to say whatever you want. But should you? Free speech has been used as license for utter, mind boggling stupidity for years in online discourse. Racist people will use the N word and then cry FREE SPEECH when they lose their liveliehoods over it, shocked that they’re being punished for using hate speech- because you see, free speech is often in an intimate tango with hate speech. It’s never someone like me talking about how terrible the state of the world is decrying my lack of free speech, because what I’m saying shouldn’t be offensive to you – I’m looking out for your interests. So we see this neat intersection between free speech and hate speech, and these two things are distinct. Saying something discriminatory isn’t something to be proud of and even if you were absolutely able to do it, you exercising that right means you’re… well, an asshole. It’s that simple. You can think it all you want, but it’s possible to have thoughts and believe them deeply and not say them- I believe I want to mount some of the more muscular guys at the gym but I fully expect they’d probably be pretty offended if I sashayed over and gave them the laundry list of tawdry acts I’d perform on them. It’s common sense to keep your thoughts in your head- and the free speech bayers often lack common sense in place of the ability to censor or hold in their thoughts.

Additionally, let’s go further with all these things.

Many of the Cancel Woke Free Speech shouters claim they want people to be able to say whatever they want. Recently in Germany a far right politician ran on the platform of “you should be able to say whatever you want!” and when a political commentator said “yeah, listen to the Nazi bitch” she… sued him.

So it’s never, ever about being able to say whatever you want. And if someone from Isis was online spouting off about the west being decadent and disgusting I guarantee they’d raise their hackles- it’s exclusively about right wing bigotry being allowed. Let’s put it this way- if they really believed in free speech they wouldn’t get so pissed off when we called them out on their disgusting words and actions.

Joe Rogan has the ability to say the N word. He shouldn’t. Society dictates that- if he wants to do it, society is allowed to call him out. He’s absolutely able to platform anti vaccine propogandists- should he? It’s easy enough to find well reviewed peer confirmed data that shows vaccines are safe and effective. So he’s being called out for doing shitty things, and for being WRONG… and if it’s now become “cancel culture” to tell someone they’re wrong then the problem isn’t political correctness gone mad- it’s stupid people becoming far too confident in being able to create verbal diarrhoea without being told they are being stupid.

If you don’t want to be called stupid, either be smart, or be quiet.

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Being wrong is not a sin

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Imperial Measurements- an exercise in futility- Boris Johnson

The curtailing of university entry- Nadhim Zahawi

Throttling the media- Nadine Dorries

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People of colour

LGBT+ people

Women

The disabled

You have what you want

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Cancel culture

“Wokeness”

Free speech

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