I still get this kind of message all the time — there are ugly hordes of men (and some women) who make this flat declaration that they don’t like feminism, and they’re usually the kind of cretinous clown who doesn’t see anything wrong with Donald Trump’s behavior. So it’s good to see Sadiq Khan rebuking our jerk of a president with a short simple message.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to announce that feminism is cancer
, you get to fuck off and leave me alone now. I’ll have nothing to do with you.
If you had told me during Deep Rifts, or during gamergate, that the bellowing moron from The Apprentice would become the patron saint of entitled misogynist fuckbois and grow up to be President, I would’ve laughed in your face.
If you’d told me during Obama’s victory speech that in ten years I’d miss George W Bush’s humility and eloquence and concern for humanity – well, you would’ve been dead-arsed wrong. Still, of the last few Republican Presidents, W isn’t the current one.
The sentiment is good (though the music is irritating) but I do find myself getting frustrated with Brits getting up in arms about Alabama and Georgia (truly terrible though things are there) when Northern Ireland has just as repressive abortion laws and there’s narry a peep out of UK politicians.
Last month it was reported that the gender wage gap has barely changed since last year with a gap of almost 10% between men and women, this week a report calculated that there’s been 130,000 excess deaths due to austerity at the same time as our Chancellor is in an argument with the UN over their report highlighting the extreme levels of poverty in the country and today, at the beginning of Pride month, the Home Office has rejected an asylum claim of a gay man who will now be deported back to a country where homosexual sex is illegal. So while I have no problem with Khan speaking out against Trump, I have to take his comments about Britain being a country of diversity, equality and fairness with a rather large grain of salt.
@Hank_Says
Bush is responsible for the death of about 0.5-1.2 million Iraqis, so I don’t know what exactly “concern for humanity” is supposed to mean. But super cool that he lied to the world so eloquently, so he and his buddies could commit massive war crimes. His policies also caused the financial crisis of ’08. He should be send to the Hague, not to be missed or rememberd fondly just because Trump is superficially more vile.
@kurt1
I think you need to go back to @1 and read more carefully what Hank_Says actually says.
PZ, I sincerely hope feminism IS cancer………..for sexism and machoism and organized religion and ………..
my experience with women who say they don’t like feminism is that they are thinking of a particular type of feminist that they disagree with and haven’t realized that there are actually many types of feminism, some of which they actually do agree with. the men’s rights activist losers are a whole different batch, and it’s pointless to even discuss with them.
sarah00@2, Actually, the N.Ireland abortion laws are worse; e.g., it is possible to be imprisoned for life for having or performing an abortion (albeit there are a few exceptions). They are the most restrictive / extreme laws in Europe. Women have to travel to the rest of NKofE (teh “U”K, better known as teh N.Korea of Europe) — at their own expense — to get an abortion on the “N”HS. Even that used to at the lady’s own expense, but as part of backlash to the nasty party’s deal with the “D”UP to stay as the primary bribe-takers, “N”HS procedures are now at least free to N.Irish wimmen. In the meantime, N.Ireland continues to have no functioning government, despite Stormont (teh N.Irish “Parliament”) members drawing full salaries, despite no Stormont sessions for over two years.
@6,
Feminism is the principle that women should have political, economic, and social rights equal to those of men. It isn’t that complicated.
People who tell you that are just showing how crabby they are.
^ Pretty much this.
The movement against feminism requires building a straw man of ridiculous proportions. From what I’ve seen, I have no doubt there will be Americans leaving the theater after watching Godzilla honestly believing that feminism created the monsters.
By the actual definition of feminism, you are a feminist or you are a bad person.
Certainly an improvement on the last London Mayor. Speaking of Boris, apparently he turned down a one to one meeting with his orange doppelganger…. Could he think that Trump is toxic even to the Tory membership?
@Hank and brucegee1962
Whoops, sorry, my bad.
davidnangle @ 11;
The most deluded of the anti-feminists treat feminism not as a political movement for gender equality and social justice, but instead as an essentially supernatural force of what they consider to be ‘evil’ that hails from outside humanity altogether. They fixate on the notion that feminism is designed to destroy human civilisation and is simply malign for no reason other than for the sake of causing suffering. They really do treat it like one of the nastier Outer Gods from the Cthulu Mythos.
They are totally, wilfully blind to the social issues feminism seeks to address, and they lack the wit and self awareness to wonder why progressives see feminism as the single most important political movement in existence. They want an enemy to hate unconditionally, and so they create a malformed, monstrous version of what they think is feminism – you know the kind of thing, the claims that feminists want to create a technological means of achieving viable pregnancies without men and then will promptly initiate a gendered genocide against all penis owners, since they just hate men on a general point of principle because feminists and therefore evil dontchaknow – as an adversary they can set themselves against and thus claim that their hateful misogyny is righteous, even heroic. And of course there are always men like Trump willing and eager to tell these idiots what they want to hear so they can convert their paranoid delusions into political power.
So there you have it; anti feminists – just another flavour of useful idiot in the arsenal of the resurgent Far Right populist movements.
Agreed, Gregory. But they can have their silly new religion and STILL be actual feminists by the dictionary definition of feminist. Let them be treated the same as women… and they can still fight their over-arching, omnipotent enemy all they want!
@starfleetdude:
You’re a terrible messenger for that reasonable message.
@16,
One can be gender-critical and be a feminist. It’s not that complicated.
I didn’t say it was complicated. I said you’re a terrible messenger.
One cannot be “gender-critical” and not be a bigot and anti-science, however. For exactly the same reasons and in the same way one can’t be a “race realist” and not be an anti-science bigot. It’s just a friendly label for bad behavior.
Now all Loudon has to do is change it to:
“I ID as a lesbian and not a hetero” and presto-chango, he is a lesbian! Will wonders never cease?
See? Bigotry, and not even using his own words to do it. Thanks for the demonstration.
“Gender critical”? No. Gender creationist.
Own your shit.
Our story so far:
@starfleetdude:
Is this how you prove you’re a good messenger for literally anything at all? Because while I didn’t originally spell out my reasoning for why you’re a bad messenger for your first message, everything since seems pretty good evidence that you would be a bad messenger for any message ever. Your inability to stay on topic, understand what others are saying, and generally make any relevant points at all are making specific critiques entirely unnecessary.
PS: For all purposes other than starfleetdude’s incoherent ramblings, I spent my last $10 on birth control and beer is a much better execution of the same fundamental idea.