Tag: racism

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:

Bette Midler on twitter

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.

Knives at Dawn: The Attack on the ECHR

By Daviemoo

Following the public emasculation of the much reviled “Rwanda plan”, a very neutral name for a plan to ship refugees thousands of miles away, the right wing and its dogs of war have immediately mounted an attack on the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights. The very fact that its name contains EUROPE seems to intrinsically link this organisation with the EU and has therefore drawn the well worn ire of brexiteers who cannot hear the word Europe without brimming with detestation. But what IS the ECHR, why was it formed and what is its purpose… and why is this attack from the right deeply troubling?

Origin

At the end of World War Two the world was reeling from endless atrocities, both well publicised and kept away from the mainstream for various reasons and Winston Churchill, along with several other states, realised that there must be an overarching accountability for human rights protections that extends beyond states. Though Churchill is rightly a controversial figure now, this need to create a council to protect human rights at a Europe-wide level was a master stroke in accountability for the protection of individual rights and, indeed, group rights. Thus was born the ‘Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’.

Since 1949, a scant few years after the end of the war, the ECHR has overseen judicial decisions to ensure that human beings in countries under its membership- not citizens, simply persons within these countries- are treated with dignity, humanity and that their individual rights are respected.

The ECHR has overseen many different fundamental rights, listed on its’ own site, but shortlisted here:

  • the right to life (Article 2)
  • freedom from torture (Article 3)
  • freedom from slavery (Article 4)
  • the right to liberty (Article 5)
  • the right to a fair trial (Article 6)
  • the right not to be punished for something that wasn’t against the law at the time (Article 7)
  • the right to respect for family and private life (Article 8)
  • freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 9)
  • freedom of expression (Article 10)
  • freedom of assembly (Article 11)
  • the right to marry and start a family (Article 12)
  • the right not to be discriminated against in respect of these rights (Article 14)
  • the right to protection of property (Protocol 1, Article 1)
  • the right to education (Protocol 1, Article 2)
  • the right to participate in free elections (Protocol 1, Article 3)
  • the abolition of the death penalty (Protocol 13)

As you can see from the list, the ECHR is not simply extant to meddle in country affairs; it exists to add a veil of accountability overarching that of government: something which, in normal times, the law does too- but we are not in normal times.

The prime minister himself has broken the law and, but for a £50 fine, escaped punishment. The government as an entity seeks to undermine the NI Protocol which could destabilise the uneasy peace in Ireland and has already led to huge issues across the length and breadth of the UK.
The reason this is so concerning? The law of the land won’t hold the conservatives back from their degradation- but the ECHR just has…

The “Rwanda Plan“

The plan to ship refugees off to Rwanda is sick, jingoistic and appeals only to those people who think that genuflecting the Union Jack is the essence of patriotic behaviour, rather than trying to improve the land on which it’s flying. Claims from the likes of Priti Patel that it will deal with traffickers are laughable: those desperate to flee to the UK are not going to be put off by threats of further deportation at tax payers expense- they are regularly fleeing war zones, atrocities, mass murder, truly authoritarian governments, rape, war…

Patel has shown herself to be reductive and appeal to the likes of the above before (we’ve all seen that interview where she defends the death penalty even for innocent people)- but I refuse to believe she does not understand how ridiculous a policy like this is. If you want to stop people crossing the channel unsafely: make safe passage.
Were it possible for refugees to apply for asylum from outside the UK, were it possible for them to travel here safely and be met safely to be processed, were the processing times quicker, the process more humane- this would completely depower traffickers at source. They rely on fear and lack of option. Offer options. Unfortunately, “make it easier” doesn’t read well with those who would read the Daily Mail or the Express with beady eye. They fear a tsunami of people suddenly deciding they don’t like where they are who would flood to the UK’s “easy” immigration system. It wouldn’t happen. Those desperate to flee would continue to flee, they just wouldn’t die on dinghies at sea any more.
But this is the essence of why Patel and her slowly marching army of gormless nationalists are so heinous- and why the “Rwanda plan” is so ineffectual. She knows this. And she does it anyway.

Additionally, as we spiral further into runaway cost of living the indescribable cost of the Rwanda plan boggles the mind. The UK taxpayer is footing the bill for an ineffective, inhumane and racist policy – and a worrying portion of the UK taxpayer wants it.
To those who believe this policy is in any way useful may I remind you that immigration is a complex topic that takes years to understand and glancing through the pages of 3 newspapers that are written simply enough for fourteen year olds to be adept in their verbiage may not actually give you the nuance and expertise you think.

Colin Yeo speaks eloquently on immigration regularly and has pointed out the ugliness of the UK’s immigration system including the fact that it is, in essence, designed to off-put people from staying in the UK, even with legitimate interests like work or family- so if the system works against the so called “legal” migrants, the people we want to attract to the UK like doctors and nurses, like those who will do the menial jobs so many here believe they’re above, imagine how poorly it treats those who we supposedly don’t want to come here.

The reason the Rwanda plan is so heinous is that at its core it carries the strong reminiscence of cattle trucks; packing up the meat to send it to the factory, knowing the whole time what its’ fate is and doing it anyway. Rwanda has faced criticism for its poor human rights record: Patel didn’t even bother to rebuke this but other tory ministers described Rwanda as a country that respects human rights.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people living in Rwanda face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents…No special legislative protections are afforded to LGBT citizens, and same-sex marriages are not recognized by the state, as the Constitution of Rwanda provides that “only civil monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is recognized”. LGBT Rwandans have reported being harassed, blackmailed, and even arrested by the police under various laws dealing with public order and morality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Rwanda

Brave Rwandans are working to overturn the attitude towards LGBT+ people in Rwanda but this, as we know, takes time and can turn on a dime- since author JK Rowling began her descent into anti trans rhetoric we have seen a huge and disturbing increase in anti LGBT+ hate crime in the UK, not wholly the fault of Rowling but, many consider, as a byproduct of her huge platform normalising hatred against those from the group.

The real plan?

One suspects that the government always knew that the ECHR would intervene in the deportation of these poor souls to Rwanda, and that they hoped for these events so they could mount an effective case for pulling the UK out of the ECHR. They haven’t been deterred from their assault on our human liberties so far, or that of those who come from abroad- but this government are determined to lessen the scrutiny they face and leaving the ECHR would do just this. In conjunction with Dominic Raab’s quest to water down the Human Rights Act to his own liking, it takes a few steps back to see an overarching picture of a government, fervent in its desire to leave the EU to avoid the scrutiny of Brussels, who has placed a blanket of silence on its own citizens ignoring poll after woeful poll about the prime minister’s standing, who have effectively strangled the right to protest and now who wish to leap straight for the throat of our own home grown human rights (protest, voting and voter ID), and those protected by the ECHR. That in conjunction with privatising channel 4 for the crime of speaking critically of them shows a worrying pattern of desperation to avoid oversight in any form.

I frequently find myself rolling my eyes at the endless comparisons to Nazi rhetoric bandied about by others who are deeply entrenched in political discourse, but once you do move back from the rapid heartbeat pulse of daily drudgery pushed by the conservatives through the media- but one cannot underestimate the simple fact that regular citizens under regimes past must have been raising increasing alarms as the swirling and nebulous tendrils of authoritarianism descended through the streets, taking their voices and binding their hands. It is far too easy to wonder as we look around right now, what the endgame for the conservatives is- whether they simply wish to rule on high, pockets fat with tax money from a pliant farmyard of poor folk beneath who cannot speak for fear of reprisals.

Remember this: you are not the government fat cats shirking laws with no recompense. You are not the prime minister dodging from crisis to crisis and refusing to step down out of vapidity or stupidity or some confection of both. Those refugees, strapped to boards and placed, terrified, on an airplane to be sent thousands of miles are you, and there, but for the grace of God and the ever evanescing morality of the tory party, goes you.

Your understanding of someone does not limit your ability to respect them

By Daviemoo

It seems almost farcical that in a world as complex, diverse and nuanced as ours, it needs to be said that people will live different lives than you will; that they will experience the world in a different way than you. It seems that too many people are stuck in a mindset of “people who aren’t like me are wrong/ defective”. This goes from horrific mindsets like white supremacy to casual homophobia- and it’s so easy to fix. But the question we need to ask as a society is- why are so many people unwilling to do the bare minimum of showing respect until they understand- and, in fact, even if they don’t.

I could be very far off base with this article, but I’ve noticed that political allegiance is akin to a protected characteristic in the heads of many folk these days- not specifically a right wing issue, but close to it. Speaking critically of someone because they hold conservative views is often compared to hate speech which, as someone who has been victim to literal hate speech before- is laughable.

Let’s start with two ideologies which, in my eyes, are closely linked if not always paralleled in people’s heads- gender critical thinking and right wing allegiance.

To a gender critical thinker, being called a TERF is often conflated with being slurred. I find it hard and almost comical to understand why people see this as hate speech- the essence of hate speech is as simple as, someone with higher societal standing than you insulting an immutable, unchangeable characteristic which many in society see as undesirable. I’m afraid, little gender critical readers, that being called a TERF isn’t hate speech and it’s this simple: You can change gender critical beliefs. You can’t change being trans. You are the societal outliers, but denigrating someone because of a characteristic they can’t control means you are engaging in hate speech- you can change, trans people can’t.

The same with right wingers. It seems that right wing thinkers believe their entire identity, their whole ideology, is under threat- that you “can’t say anything these days” without the WOKE CANCEL MOB coming for you.

a cardboard sign, with "we all bleed the same colour" written on it is held aloft by a woman's hand in front of beautiful stonework on a building.
Photo by Mathias P.R. Reding on Pexels.com

The people who think this must use the phrase “free speech” more times a day than I drink coffee- and that’s saying something. But it seems that no matter how many times you remind these people that free speech very much only applies to government censorship of individuals. But even in this case legislation exists to curtail speech that can encourage or embolden terrorism etc: sorry free speech warriors, you’re fighting for a cause that doesn’t exist. Free speech is the white whale of entitlement- an ironic statement considering it’s usually slavering racists desperate to throw around racial epithets without consequence who yell so loudly about it.

I also find the endless discourse around the gender binary itself quite comical at this point: there is no gender binary. Let me put that in simple, if reductive, terms: a binary means the answer is either 1 or 0, yes or no. There is no wiggle room, nothing in the middle, no outliers. It is light or dark, up or down- nothing betwixt.

Let’s pretend that the gender binary then, is a fact- if you made 3 rules for what a man is- Tall, beard, flannel shirt – but meet someone who is tall, bearded and is wearing a plain shirt- then that person can’t be counted as a “man”… but does that mean (we’re in a binary here) that he’s a woman? For a shirt? No. So he sits further down the “scale” of manhood, manliness… ah. So it’s not binary is it.

Gender exists in a huge, diverse and 3D spectrum, and again- in a world as massive and diverse as ours, gender can be experienced in different ways by every human being walking this earth with some commonalities. It is a unique experience for what I imagine is a huge amount of people, and it does not “belong” to a certain group, either cis or trans. It just is, and will continue to be no matter how humans, with their reductive writings on how YOU CAN’T BE A WOMAN IF YOU DONT X continue to try to wrestle this inexorable concept into a box.

And when it comes to the definition of existence under sex- well, intersex people exist and they’re just as valid as people who aren’t intersex…

Again though, when it comes more specifically to right wing ideology, there’s a certain conviction that you’re born right wing, grow right wing and die right wing and it’s as immutable as skin colour or sexuality.

It isn’t.

The reason right wingers seem to have been agitated so, is just how many younger people, brought up around right wing parents, in right wing fixtures are turning away from hypocrisy politics – let’s be honest, that’s what a significant portion of the ideology the more extreme right follow- rears it’s head.

I can give examples here- from Donald Trump decrying cancel culture for being removed from Twitter, only to create a social media platform that explicitly forbids negative comments around Trump himself or the platform, to Boris Johnson trying to disband or limit the efficacy of an investigative panel because he is about to be investigated by it (again…), or right wing pundits like Isabel Oakeshott defending Stanley Johnson by saying he does indeed feel people up, touch you inappropriately- but it’s not a police matter because SHE feels comfortable with it…

Conflating your choice of ideology or politics with something as bone deep as your actual identity is incorrect. If education on certain topical issues can change people’s political alignment, how is it comparable to something like my sexuality- even if I never touched another man again for the rest of my life I would still be gay, my friend would still be trans and feel trans regardless of her body or her hormones… these things are immutable.

This now leads me into the topic that made me write this piece: understanding.

A woman lays on a bench reading a book
Photo by John Ray Ebora on Pexels.com

Understanding is brilliant, and the saying “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” is a clever way of giving people an understanding of others’ lives, and a way of furthering equality and equity. If you look at half of modern media, messages encoded into our most classic films or our favourite TV shows give us tiny flavours of people’s lives and lifestyles, and often suggest to us that perhaps we don’t know what people are suffering, how their lives are or why they are the way they are- and from this message we gain a tiny particle of understanding, furthering the idea that perhaps we are not superior, perhaps we should try and accept, tolerate (a hated word but true in this context) other people and forge better relationships through understanding.

But I want to take that thought a little further; why do we need to understand someone to accept their legitimacy?

I don’t understand the mechanics of how a person with a certain disability negotiates their daily life- but I don’t need to, to understand that they deserve to do so. I don’t understand what it must be like to be a person of colour who cannot (and, it goes without saying, shouldn’t have to) hide their skin colour to avoid discrimination in the street- but I know they don’t deserve to face that. And I know that many cis women & trans men have biological processes going on inside that I will not experience- but I don’t need to directly experience everything that everyone goes through to know that they’re still, to coin a phrase that gender critical people do seem to enjoy so, “worthy of respect”.

Now, I can hear the right wingers/ gender critical folk who may stumble somehow across this piece asking me why we don’t flip that thinking- why we don’t imagine THEIR plight.

I do. I have. And I decided long ago that the frustration of being called bigoted, the difficulties of always being enraged about something being “cancelled” etc, and the endless thought shifting to avoid admitting to hypocrisy is a terrible fate to bear- but it’s not one brought on by “the other side”. And if you need to understand how I decided that I don’t need to respect you – your ideologues are the proof. I’m sure you feel the same about me.

If you can genuinely look at lacklustre politicians who clearly do not care about people at large unless they can enrich themselves from them, or if you can continuously denigrate minorities- if you can condemn behaviour like doxxing then cheerfully partake in it- you don’t deserve my sympathy, my understanding. You made your own bed.

Ultimately, the simple message from the piece is that acceptance shouldn’t hinge on understanding- so the next time you find yourself ready to rail against someone, ask yourself if that person is worthy of your respect whether you can comprehend their plight or not?

There’s no such f*cking thing as cancel culture you snowflakes!

By Daviemoo

Day after day, social media is suffused with angry knee jerking people, yelling to the high hills about how you can’t say or do anything these days without being cancelled. But people seem to fail to realise the irony of the platforms from which they speak. As John Cleese’s documentary on “cancel culture” arrives to cause more unnecessary culture war rehashing, I’m here to tell you the cold hard fact that cancel culture just isn’t a thing- you’re just not funny for being a prick.

One of my favourite examples of people who mysteriously believed they were “cancelled/censored/silenced”, was Rosie Duffield, MP, who endorsed transphobic views on twitter and has subsequently faced cancellation… by being in several national newspapers, talking about how silenced she is.

I’m not sure if Ms. Duffield is aware, but speaking from a double page spread is actually NOT what being silenced is.
I’ve spoken several times on transphobia and it’s clownery, but for an MP to speak on being “cancelled” because she espouses views contrary to the idea that she would seek to work with any of her voters- is highly ironic. She was platformed by those who voted for her, only to turn around and essentially endorse the idea that they do not deserve the rights they have- and feels aggrieved by being called out on this.

The cherry on top, is the idea of silence while being interviewed by national media is… comical at best. When is the last time an everyday trans person was interviewed to platform their views…

Instead, we see the same faces pushed to media- trans people who agree to toe the line of the gender critical or people who aren’t even accepted by the trans community for what could be considered radical views. And so the media giant turns the screw more- “we thought you wanted representation” they say, platforming trans people who agree it’s a sexual perversion – who never, oddly, stop to wonder if it’s just THEM who feel that way. Or gay people like Darren Grimes who decry “identity politics” and in the same breath refer to themselves as a working class gay man. Irony is lost on these people- specifically because their brains don’t have the acuity for it, clearly.

The irony of this whole farcical debate about cancel culture, is that many of those who proclaim to think it’s an attack on their freedom, their views, their lifestyles- themselves- often cheerfully propagate their own versions of it!
Take Cleese for example, who is cheerfully creating a TV show talking about how hard cancel culture is for folk of his ilk- forgetting, I’m sure, to mention that he sued a journalist for saying something Cleese didn’t like- is that cancel culture? Cancelling a person with an opinion? Or is that the good type of cancel culture that those who benefit from it overlook.

The crux of the argument seems to be is that many people these days seem to feel that they are cancelled for espousing their horrible views- but never before has this been such flagrant nonsense, with the four year tenure of a pussy grabbing mask denying gobshite like Trump, lauded for “telling people like it is” recently coming to a close- the man’s only selling point that his head was too empty to say anything with grace or just not speak when he could be megaphoning his own greatness to a feverish crowd, or a PM in the UK who has described Muslim women as letterboxes and criminals, gay men as tank topped bum boys, black people as having “watermelon smiles” and his only response? “Out of context”. Having read it- the context makes it worse. So never before has it been so clear that the people who decry cancel culture’s issues isn’t that they’re being punished for espousing disgusting views- its’ that they didn’t already have the insulation of a platform to say it from with safety.

Equally, looking at examples of people who did suffer “cancellation” seem to truly deserve it. Openly being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, ableist and that being your only schtick means you’re trying to profit from hatred- are we in a world where profiting off hatred is ok? If so, what a sad society we’ve become. But I can find scarce examples of people who have successfully been cancelled- Paris Hilton’s homophobic rant didn’t stop her from creating a TV show where she “interviewed” for her best friend. Rowling is still jogging along cheerfully throwing bigot baguettes out of her hamper for her slavering crowd of followers. But lets look at Janet Jackson- thrown under the bus by a co-worker and lost her jobs and footing… strange, I wonder what was different about Jackson compared to, I don’t know… white people being bigoted. It’s a mystery!

That’s the real message I get whenever I hear the bleating of “WoKe CaNcEl CuLtUrE”- I’m just angry that I’m not already famous enough to say this and survive it.

The fact is, racial, anti LGBTQIA humour, ridiculous sentiments like anti vaccination stances or similar, has been the safety net of many a waning star to gain a quick following from people who will blindly support you because they’re a one issue voter.

Those glibly hashtagging #IStandWithRosie or sharing Cleese’s documentary with unbridled glee that SOMEONE IS FINALLY SAYING IT couldn’t care less that Duffield drove two gay staff members to quit with her mindless rhetoric, or that Cleese thinks London “is not an English city any more” as long as they keep pushing the victim mentality that’s hilariously common with people in this regressive mindset.

Gaslighting is a term I don’t like to throw around but when you have vast portions of society on your side simply by dint of your gender or the fact you were a beloved comedian in your youth, accusing minorities of cancelling you because you don’t like being told your views are incorrect and damaging, or that your comedy relies on punching down on people’s existences.

The irony is that nobody in this crowd of oh so oppressed for their thoughts people, never stop to put themselves in the position of the people who suffer for their thoughts, their humour, their thoughtless words. Are people just moaning for the sake of it, or could it be that your endless rehashing of shit humour, your banal and frankly incorrect assumptions about someone because of what arouses them or their skin colour, is just tedious enough that we’re bored of smiling and nodding and privately deleting your number from our phones.

Your want the impunity to speak, but don’t have the stones to cope with the reaction to it. Clearly it’s better to wander the world shouting racial slurs because THATS WHAT MY GRANDMA DID than try and empathise or just, generally, not be a sack of cat sick.

It’s an irony. I have thoughts often about people that would surely hurt them should I speak them- so I just don’t. And if i do say something insensitive, even if my immediate reaction is to defend myself because I don’t like to be accused of doing cruel things with intent, I’d be seriously let down by myself if i didn’t apologise and try and understand what I’d said and why it was damaging.

Much like other ridiculous ideas (see “electing a silly haired right wing chittering gibbon as leader”), the cancel culture garbage has been imported from America. Over in America over 60 percent of polled citizens believe that cancel culture is an issue which is affecting mainstream society: to this I would politely ask these polled Americans, what views is it that you hold that you’re so worried you’ll be cancelled over?
With an ex president who won based on racial populism, desperate to build an ineffective wall between your neighbours, you can’t think it’s racism? And with a supreme court stacked with anti LGBTQIA bigots, and where literal members of the GOP refuse to publicly come out despite myriad statements from sex workers about their private proclivities, it cant be that you worry about being labelled a homophobe. I dread to think what it is that keeps you awake at night, wondering for whom the imaginary cancel bell is tolling today…

Ultimately, modern society is built on the promise that to co-exist humans have to put aside their petty nonsense and work together to further human interest, and many of us have to bury resentment about the snippy way we’re treated in service jobs or the outright aggression we face from strangers based on the bodies we were born in or what it is that arouses those bodies, but more and more it seems that a bunch of oversensitive folk, somehow on the more right and yet more wrong side of the spectrum, seem absolutely fervent that they should be able to say and do whatever they want without impunity – but when spoken back to, suddenly their free speech is being CANCELLED! What about our free speech to decry your bullshit, Karen?

People who refuse to change their thoughts, their actions to accommodate society are the reason it’s being cut to ribbons as it’s dragged along by those of us who want to make the world better. If you want to watch historical comedy series’ that make racial or homophobic jokes, no one is going to castigate you for it, but at some point maybe it’s better that we… move on as a society or at least share the stage with comedians from those minorities who get to make fun of the people who make careers out of stepping on our backs.

What “Context” Excuses Racism from the highest office of the country?

By Daviemoo

CW: I have copied highly offensive (but censored) wording of Johnson’s own writing- if you are a POC please take caution in reading this. If you’re a white person- read it and absorb that this is who we have in charge.

Boris Johnson’s refusal to acknowledge, condemn and apologise for his outright racism is yet another canker on the face of a country already under strain from several angles- begs the question, why won’t people who made mistakes just admit to them and condemn them? And further to that- is an apology enough to POC for us to be able to accept that we’re currently being ruled by racism?

I’m not a POC, and I worry all the time that being brought up in simple ignorance means I’ll say something offensive. I’m sure some people’s first reaction to that is a hearty eyeroll but I know exactly what it’s like for someone to say something really rude without even really meaning to and the internal “what the hell… do I say something? That might be awkward. Maybe I’ll just leave it. I’m pissed off now”. It’s exhausting and it must be worse for a person of colour, especially because their whole lives have been blighted by the conversation more and more people with less and less actual understanding are weighing in on- what is racism, what is acceptable and how do we stamp it out?

It’s only recently that the UK government commissioned a report that we were all glad to see be requested- an in depth look into institutional racism in society. Hopes were high that the report might be able to find where our society was landing against people of colour, and how this could be adjusted so that it was reduced to vanishing- hopes that quickly disappeared before the report was even disclosed when Munira Mirza was added to head the report up. Why, you ask?
Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian article, showing that Mirza believes her own personal experience is universal- rather than being borne by the privilege she has attained:

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/15/munira-mirza-pms-nonsense-detector-who-has-attacked-racism-claims

Mirza attended Oxford- that well known school for the elites- but somehow is able to believe that she is representative of all POC in the UK. I’ll leave you to search up her other quotes about racial divisiveness in the UK- there are plenty.

To defend the PM, rather than asking he show contrition, is something that’s confused me since I became aware of his divisive verbal diarrhoea- so many people leaping to his defence- including himself. I’d have some respect for someone who came forward and apologised for their actions, explained that they had hideous views once and condemn them now having learned how poisonous they are- but ultimately it’s not for me to forgive- it’s not a violation of my existence. People of colour have the ultimate say as to whether the comments he makes are forgivable. Perhaps this instance, then, was a simple slip of the tongue.

But Crime Sinister Johnson’s tongue is, if anything, very slippery:

These comments, he proudly published himself! Source: the prime minister’s own writing in the press

His response?

Source: politics for all on twitter

Please re-read his column, and tell me what context there could be for that?

Are we also going to forget this:

Source: Evolve Politics https://evolvepolitics.com/boris-johnson-called-black-traffic-wardens-nggers-and-said-black-man-was-stupid-because-he-was-a-cn/
Source: https://evolvepolitics.com/boris-johnson-called-black-traffic-wardens-nggers-and-said-black-man-was-stupid-because-he-was-a-cn/

I don’t know: can someone else tell me what context is needed to use that language, and to imply some kind of imaginary verisimilitude in damning the actions of a person doing their job, referring to the transgressor as “indigenous”.

Johnson wants to distance himself from a culture war, and yet so conveniently forgets his multiple bloody handed instigations of racial division. Unable even to condemn, decry or apologise for these words, he fails to see how his rhetoric started the battles he’s now begging to bow out of.

The instigation of a “culture war” (what culture- being a person of colour?) pre-dates our erstwhile PM though of course. But can a man who has pushed this divisive wording over and over whilst hiding behind the self assured illusory comforts of a person like Mirza or Priti Patel really claim ignorance? You need only look at the sentiments he uttered about kneeling for racial equality (he falsely attributed kneeling to the Black Lives Matter movement despite repeated clarification from the England football team that kneeling was apolitical and a simple but powerful act to show solidarity against racism), literally refusing to condemn racism on and off the pitch – then his speedy turnaround to “shocked and appalled” when said racism tore through the internet like a thunderbolt.

As several prominent people have said since- you don’t get to refuse to condemn people who boo an apolitical act to show solidarity with victims of racism and then act surprised when racism finds footing in the country you run- especially when you have a pathological incapability of apologising for your words.

Lies? Stupidity? Or Just Callous Indifference?

I’ve started to believe that Johnson is just blissfully unaware that every word he throws off the cuff has disastrous consequences- look at the evidence.

He made a speech recently where he confirmed that it “only makes sense” to wear masks in enclosed spaces during another building wave of the coronavirus pandemic- only to be photographed not wearing a mask in his chauffeur driven car with his security and driver- IN THE SAME DAY.

People have taken his words about “freedom day” and twisted them, there is no denying it- but how he can cast off the mask mandate and not realise the abuse he’s foisting on anyone who needs to enforce it for their own good… he is either very foolish or just as callous as his regular mistakes indicate. Perhaps both, but I refuse to believe neither. Anyone who claimed masks were “not necessary” after the 19th in the face of this building wave of infections must either be extremely incautious… or extremely devious.

Back on Johnson’s terminal indifference to his own racist remarks, we had another ridiculous and transparent attempt to silence POC in parliament today- because originally there were NO people of colour tabled to speak out against the recent events in the press and public! At the speaker of the houses’ insistence, MP Zarah Sultana was added to the roster- and when she, a POC speaking passionately about anti racism, was speaking- she was told to lower her tone (!) by a tory MP!

Led by a man whose flippancy with racist terms, can we truly be shocked that they feel so empowered to speak over someone who will have (not may have- will have) suffered racist abuse in her life.

Johnson’s insistence that his racist writings are taken out of context is beyond disingenuous- there is no context he could write the things he has written, that would lead to a belief that it’s anything other than the stoking of division and some form of self aggrandisement on the basis of his own lily white hide.

Let’s speak about another incident shall we?

No proof unfortunately, but MP Dawn Butler recounted a story where Natalie Rowe, writer of “Whipping up a Storm” was at a party and Johnson approached her, carrying a watermelon and making monkey noises- tell me I’m missing context, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Summing up

People like Patel and Mirza whose infamy amongst the country as apologists for the abuse heaped on persons just like them are unwittingly enabling Johnson to compound this behaviour. He’ll never learn his lesson whilst his enablers continue to whisper that he’s doing right, that people just don’t “get” him- and until he understands that his verbosity and generosity with racial gaslighting has real world consequences- like the events of the BLM protests, like the events of the football rioting, like deepening distrust of the establishment when a report written to help the existence of POC is bastardised and sold on lies to expunge the conscience of wilful racists like Johnson et. al- this will only continue and worsen. The only question is what the final blow to push POC and their allies over the boiling point will be, and if it’s close or far.

The Radicalisation of the Left

By Daviemoo

In a country utterly obsessed with woke cancel culture, with media outlets like the BBC and the guardian facing daily callouts on it’s factionalisation of the transphobia row, where racist events like the euro cup are fully expected by POC and their allies and where anti LGBTQIA sentiment is slowly burning backwards- can we really claim surprise that those pushing for tolerance are getting happier and happier to claim the weighty mantle of “radicalised” against the other side?

Here’s an excerpt from an email I’ve just sent my long time friend Pam: “People will literally twist themselves in knots to avoid actually confronting their implicit biases cos they cannot admit that we might be in the wrong and have work to do to make the world a better place; It’s up to everyone else to take the blame, it’s everyone else’s job to do the work to make the world better. The second you say hey so maybe our country is racist its IT IS NOT PEOPLE ARE JUST SENSITIVE CANCEL CULTURE WOKE SNOWFLAKE… it’s literally more work to cling to your rhetoric than just admit it and work on yourself.”

I often laugh when I read the endless epithets I’m gifted online by the supposed anti woke brigades: woke, weak, snowflake, SJW. What’s thrown at me as an insult, I wear with pride. If it’s woke to care about others, weak to be offended by hate speech, snowflakey to demand racists are held to account then I am the SJW you so angrily proclaim me to be, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I’m also not quite sure what a “radical leftist” is, and why they are apparently so dangerous. I hardly plan to break into the houses of parliament and force Boris Johnson to respect people’s pronouns at gunpoint. It just so happens that I’m very much frustrated by injustice and therefore, loud about it’s removal from a society that has the means but not the wherewithal.

Easy as it may be to rest in your ignorant shell, there comes a time where those with any moral fibre become embroiled in the fights that may not directly involve us and suddenly become aware of the impact we can have just by standing shoulder to shoulder with others.

I can’t tell you how many times a month I’m asked if I’m trans because I defend my trans brothers, sisters and enby folk. I’m not trans, and I can scarcely imagine their struggle- but imagine I have, to the best of my abilities. But you shouldn’t have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to empathise with their plight.

As a white (as fuck- I am roughly the colour of fresh milk) cis man, I will never understand even a corner of the struggle that POC face in a country with such blatant systemic racism oozing from every crack in it’s wall of ignorance- but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathise fully with those who suffer from it, and want to do what I can to chip away at that wall, to expedite the drainage of such disgusting pus that festers in the wounds of every heart it infects.

Today, as is par for the course, my insistence that a man who tweeted the N word, blaming the POC players for England’s loss at the Euros led to me being compared to Nazis. This comparison always confuses me: Nazi ideology was based on only the able bodied arian white folks being the cream of society, able to live on the backs and deaths of anyone who was other, on the subjugation of those seen as lesser- and the weakness of a mind who compares a demand for consequences to that is beyond the stupidity I can muster the energy to comprehend.

Nazism is the most abhorrent system of thinking that’s been widely accepted and known to humanity- so for internet weaklings to compare holding people to account for their own actions, to conflate holding people to account for refusing to absorb the simple truth that racism is appalling and only believed by fools and willing bigots- should be, but is not, laughable.

The invective that right-wing aligned people throw at the supposed “woke” always misses the fundamental hypocrisy that nazis were… far right politically.

As right wing populism grows underfoot, as it snakes into the houses of parliament, the left are further demonised by a press monopolised by right wing punditry: from Rupert Murdoch’s empire to what I can only equate to “tabloid-lite” papers like the daily mail, England in particular is beset by bigotry at every turn, and every word carefully selected by journalists to toe the line and maintain the fiction that England isn’t steeped in the blood of the people of colour who were dragged here to build it, manufacture for it and better it at their own expense, is another brick in the wall mentioned above- as one falls out, another journalist who believes the rhetoric that white people could ever truly understand daily racial abuse will simply slide another block in.

Is it any wonder…

That leads me to the whole point of this post: Is it any wonder that, as this system propagates itself even in the face of it’s own hypocrisy, as it grows and maintains itself even under growing calls for it’s examination, it’s dismantlement, it’s replacement with equity for all who share this land, that those who have patiently or impatiently watched it’s sinuous twisting of the truth for it’s own benefit, have grown tired and become, to use the descriptor the right so love- Radicalised.

I’m not quite sure what reaction right wingers expect from me when they call me a radical lefty. “Yep” is usually it. I am. They see the moniker of radical as a terrible thing, because of course they equate it to the oft-disparaged, even in their own rags, far-right.

Here is the difference.

On the far left we have people willing to fight for equality, equity and fairness in a system that’s always been kiltered to cater to the few instead of the many.

On the far right? Literally nazis.

The Myth of the “Tolerant Left”

It’s been said before many times but it bears repeating that the tolerant left is a myth.

Do we “tolerate” (a word anyone who follows my video posts will know I detest), or as I prefer to call it, accept people whose needs and wants are different to our own? Absolutely. Do we try to cater for those who need different requirements than us to exist with dignity and prosper in a world that caters to homogeny? We do, or we try.

What we don’t, won’t and can’t tolerate under our wide arching but moral beliefs, is bigotry.

If you think we should accept that people have a difference of opinion on whether tomato soup is the best soup, I can cope with that. Accepting that you think gay people are disgusting, that POC are lesser than you with your white skin etc, that’s quite another thing.

To tolerate the existence of beliefs that mean others should suffer for their existence when it harms no one and is as normal as any other is the cognitive dissonance I feel the right are well known for in leftist circles.

There are many right wing arguments I’ve gone to pains to debunk over the years, including:
Gayness is not a choice, but even if it was it’s still not unworthy of respect in a democratic society, hiring practices that prioritise people of colour are not “biased” in a country where POC are underrepresented in many workplaces and specialities, trans women are not comparable with cis men.

But as time goes on I’ve realised that all I’m doing is recycling talking points to shut right wing mouthpieces up when they begin their usual ignorant sermonising. You can not change the mind of someone who has willingly immersed themselves in bigotry, even if it’s more work to continue to cling to and push said bigotry- because the terrifying reality for these people is that they would have to question themselves, realise that the bias is with them, that they are in fact in the wrong, and they’d need to do work on themselves to improve- so the choice comes to continue to cling to bigotry over questioning their own internal bias and ask whether it’s worth keeping that ignorance alive, or letting it die and becoming something else.

The war on woke is essentially a bunch of people claiming that they’re fighting for their freedom – their freedom to remain ignorant in a world filling, daily, with information that proves their choice to stick to ignorance makes them part of the problem.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’m told that the fact I’m not willing to compromise and have calm discourse with racists and bigots and scumbags, oh my, is the reason for their continued ignorance- so let me spell this out for you:
We are not your mothers. We are not here to teach you. The resources exist in the world to help you- you need only stop knee jerk reacting with your fragile emotions towards the changes that keep happening, and listen to POC, listen to minorities, read the books that are written about these topics- and realise that when you simply start to address those inner biases you’re doing the same thing we did to become your most terrified title: woke.

So Many Causes, not Enough Time

One of the strangest things someone said to me recently is that they’re surprised I have enough time to work when I’m so busy being a “woke warrior”.

The short answer is: if you care about black oppression, trans rights disinformation or the other glaring issues you see daily – you’ll make time. I’m surprised people have all the time in the world to watch a 1 hour and 20 minute football match which includes kneeling for BLM, LGBTQIA representation and a hugely diverse set of players and still miss the point of the hilariously mistitled “gesture politics” that take place. Again as I’ve argued with someone recently, if you see these things as gesture politics you’re probably likely to not have ever needed to see that representation and therefore are incapable of understanding how much it means to those who do. If you think a rainbow armband or taking the knee are unnecessary then please tack on the words “for you”. Because for those it represents, many are thankful to feel like we’re cared for by others who may or may not be like us.

The mental gymnastics involved in decrying kneeling against racism, only to go on and leave so many racist comments a 19 year old player for your country’s team that he deletes his social media, or to give the usual tired bleating of “the gays forcing it in our faces!” but say nothing when a gay man walking down the street in liverpool is assaulted so badly he’s convinced he is about to die, is quite something to watch play out in real time.

It may be easier to simply start questioning why these things are being introduced to you, why they please those they’re for and why they annoy you so- simply because you’re suddenly made aware that the world does not cater to you exclusively, and that others deserve the same basic experience of existence without conflict that you have.

Wrapping up…

This blog was essentially a place for me to write down my thoughts as I grow more frustrated with the country I’ve been raised in, to get to grips with my own frustrations when it comes to politics. It’s become one of the few things I have that allows me to vent my anger at a world so screwed up that I willingly paid for it to be hosted. I don’t even really care if others read it. I just wanted a space that was mine, where I could write down my thoughts and explore my ideas out loud.

A few people have said they appreciate it and I’m very glad of that. It’s becoming more isolating to hold moral views- I’ve tried to reason with people I grew up with who refuse to let of of bigotry, I tried to gently explain that I’m allowed to exist as a gay man with people who think gay sex is worse than murder, I’ve tried to gently express hope that I’ll be accepted- no more.

It seems that as we’re accused more and more of being extreme, so we have to become that. The country takes drunken lurching step after step to the right, and as we dig in our heels, lean back and pull on the tautened rope we’ve thrown around it’s neck, we become more tired and less capable of patience.

Blamed constantly for “radicalisation”, I’d like the right wingers who throw the labels I’ve brought up in this blog post to ask the question: do you blame us? Do you take ownership for your own part in our radicalisation, as we have to become louder, more indignant, more insistent to work to counteract your hateful rhetoric? Or is it, as is always the right wing way, our own fault: no one is responsible, it’s a hum dinger, clearly people are just magically becoming radicalised by… I don’t know, society, music, drugs, instead of the appalling behaviours of our fellow man- otherwise known as you.