Baby Eggman

[caption: “middle- and upper-class white feminists have not received the pummelling from black and indigenous feminists that their American counterparts have]

This is so accurate it’s unreal. British feminism is generally 20 years behind, not just on trans rights but on many things. It’s not a coincidence that the “feminists” writing transphobic nonsense in the Guardian and New Statesman have also made sneering comments about intersectional feminism.

Here’s Helen Lewis in the New Statesman complaining that intersectional ideals demand too much of feminists. And here’s Hadley Freeman in the Guardian complaining that intersectionality leads to too much “feminist infighting.” Julie Bindel deliberately conflates intersectional feminism with liberal feminism, so she can sneer at both. We know Caitlin Moran rightly got pilloried for saying she “doesn’t do race.” Same shit from Zoe Williams.

There’s a lot of good work done by feminist women of colour in the UK - you can read much of it on Media Diversified or gal-dem. You could also follow Guilaine Kinouani or Judith Wanga or Sara Ahmed on Twitter. But these voices are not the predominant voices in British feminism. They’re not getting regular columns in the Guardian or giving takes on BBC news.

Who gets the columns? Helen Lewis. Caitlin Moran. Julie Bindel. Hadley Freeman. Zoe Williams. This post is already too long, so I won’t get into the history of these women when it comes to writing about race, sexuality, disability and religion. I could list pages and pages of shitty things they’ve said. The point is, these are the women who speak for British feminism. These are the women who get top billing.

It’s not good enough. We deserve better. We deserve more working class voices, more diverse LGBTQ voices, disabled voices and women of colour’s voices. We need to amplify them wherever we can, because these white middle class assholes in our newspapers are trying to claim that they’re doing this bullshit for us.

gordon ramsay: *holds neville between two slices of bread* what are you

Imagine that this is Gordon Ramsay a la Masterchef Junior

Neville: *messes up the potion, realizes it, starts crying quietly*

GR: What’s going on?

Neville: *explains how he messed up*

GR: Oh gosh okay…we can fix this, don’t cry, see, it’s fine now? Just be more careful when you’re adding the Newt’s eyes, all right? Drop them in gently. There we go. No more tears.

Ramsay: All you had to do was treat it with a fucking Beozar! 

Slughorn: It was a stressfu-

Ramsay: How long have you been teaching potions?!

or

Ramsay: So you’re going to raise this boy SPECIFICALLY so he can die as part of your twisted little scheme? 

Dumbledore: It’s for the greater good, professor. 

Ramsay: The greater fucking good?! *holds two slices of bread either side of dumbledoor’s face* What are you? 

Dumbledore: Am I, per chance, an idiot sandwich? 

Gordon had run in to help a group of struggling kids with a team challenge and one of the older kids, a 12 year old boy, wasn’t passing attention while taking a pan out of the oven and not only spilled all the food but scalded Gordon.

It’s clear Gordon’s leg is in pain. He’s been badly burned without warning. But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t yell, not even in pain, and he doesn’t go off on the child who is now frozen in fear. He calmly tells the child to set the pan down and to close the oven, safety first. Then tells him to go restart the food he was making, calm instructions.

My husband and I grew up in abusive homes where any mistake meant parents getting angry (my husband is terrified of spills or broken glasses because that meant beatings growing up, for me, anything going wrong, that could upset my mother, even if it wasn’t my fault meant screaming and emotional abuse).

I didn’t know someone could be so calm. That someone could not get angry, and put aside what they’re feeling (in this case a lot of physical pain) and not take it out on those around them, even when someone around them had messed up, because that person is a child.

Umbitch: a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get them through their examinations…

yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

FUCKIN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

no BULLSHIT I KID YOU NOT! Look what I found while walking Home…..

OH MY GOD

OH MY F*CKIN GOD

THIS POST FUCKIN WORKS?!?!?! THIS IS PAST A COINCIDENCE NO WAY!??! NO FRIGGIN WAY!!! 

That the goal of liberal LGBT identity politics is to present four (or 5, 6, 7, depending on the acronym) clearly defined LGBT identities with an easily digestable narrative to them to so that LGBT people may be understood, incorporated into societies notions of normalcy and turned into respectable citizens under capitalism. 

While the goal of revolutionary queer politics is to complicate identity, to defy definition, to disrupt clear narratives, to continue to be confusing and paradoxical, so that queer people can not be incorporated or turned into respectable citizens and can continue on their struggle to destroy normalcy and respectability, which is a struggle that connects us to all struggles against oppression. 

Our story absolutely includes people that are mentally ill and we need to acknowledge that as queer people we are also disproportionately struggling with mental health because of how violent the world treats us and as people labelled mad we are disproportionately queer because it makes no sense to many of us to follow societies messed up ideas about sex and gender.

Our focus should never be “we were labelled mentally ill and freaks when we’re actually sane and normal”. No no no no. We may look back with horror to times when we were forcibly locked up in institutions for being gay and bi and trans, but we should look with the same horror at the now where we are forcibly locked up in institutions for experiencing the world in a ‘mad’ way. It’s the same violence.

It should be “we were labelled mentally ill and freaks and abnormal and regardless of whether that was true, that made us the target of violence. Fuck that. We’ll be freaks and mad and queer all we want. We’ll be whatever the fuck we are and we want the violence to stop”.

Indeed, many queer neurodiverse people are told ‘oh, you can’t be gay/lesbian/bi/trans/etc, clearly this is just part of your autism/bpd/did, etc’.

Where words like ‘freak’ are used, words like ‘pervert’ are always just around the corner, as is the intense violence and dehumanization that comes with them.

All these groups have had their sexual autonomy limited by society. All these groups have been the target of fetishisation. All these groups have disproportionately experienced sexual violence, especially within institutions. As the ‘transphobes trying to see trans peoples genitals’ illustrates, we’re often sexually assaulted by the exact people that claim that we are predators. 

A bioluminescent ghost mushroom found in Australia. The species is Omphalotus Nidiformis. It was found along the Box Vale Mine walking track in Mittagong, New South Wales.

Luke: *falls backward into the abyss*