One of the things about incel culture that I find so weird is that it;s predicated on an idea of how women think which is just totally unrealistic and outlandish.
For instance, this idea that women rank men into some kind of imagined hierarchy of high status, or below average...
as if we've got an Excel spreadsheet in our heads and we're categorising every man we meet by comparing them with everyone else.
It just smacks of having learned everything you know about women from men who want you to feel shit about yourself.
The fact is that we all know women (and many of us have been women!) in relationships with guys who don't bring much to the table in terms of personality, kindness, looks, or money, and it's totally baffling to people on the outside why they're putting up with a load of crap.
It's not like the guys who are unkind, or cold, or disloyal are always good looking or successful. Some of them are bums!
We haven't got an algorithm which sorts men for us. Women are just as bamboozled by the fear of loneliness, or the fear of being unloved, as anyone else.
There's a lot in our culture which is really fucked up about dating, and its role in making us feel like less than we are. The experience of womanhood isn't feeling uniquely empowered when it comes to sex and romance - quite the opposite, a lot of the time.
The difference is that there isn't the same pipeline channelling women's self-loathing into violence against men.
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Personally, I don't think minority rights should be contingent on majority opinion. But it's the case that the majority of cisgender women *do* accept that transgender women are women, and transgender men are men.
The polling becomes more complicated when breaking it down by issues like self identification, gender confirmation surgery, and single sex spaces, and varies a lot by age. Like I said, I don't think minority rights should be contingent on majority opinion.
Sure, I don’t think there as many people in Labour HQ who take us seriously as there were 2015-2019.
But Novara Media experienced our best growth period after Corbyn. Why? Because the pandemic made clear the need for quality analysis which was sceptical of the Tory line.
When establishment journos were claiming “the science has changed” and backing herd immunity, @michaeljswalker was going through the data and excoriating government complacency. I’m proud of the leadership he’s shown over the pandemic - both politically, and for the organisation.
I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that Jess Phillips doesn't like what we do. She's not our target audience lol.
But what I think the sneering speaks to is a sense that many Labour politicians don't think young people are a legitimate political constituency.
I'm not going to share that Beverley Turner video, but it seems to me that an awful lot of celeb anti-vaxxer and anti-lockdown stuff is driven by a completely boneheaded denial that, in a pandemic, your actions have implications for people who aren't just you.
Sure, it's 'your choice' as an adult to decide whether or not you want to have a vaccine. But not having one has an impact on everyone else, from those who you could potentially infect to a population who'd really like to fully unlock as soon as safely possible.
It's not just about whether you're personally ok with the idea of getting coronavirus (though even that is often shaped by a kind of callous naivety). It's about how seriously you take the effect on other people - not just getting them sick, but the hoopla of self-isolation.
Many journalists still hold to an idea that their job is solely to convey information between places where things happen, and the public; that criticism or analysis on their part would undermine their role in being a neutral means of transmitting information to ordinary people.
But that's not true any more: media has expanded exponentially, reporters are no longer the lone ferryman carrying news across the waters. Anyone with a smartphone has a direct line to the public sphere - and that has huge implications for the newsgathering role of journalists.
I've never been sure where the line falls between what Piers Morgan really believes, and what he's just saying for attention. But it's instructive to look at how he behaved towards Lady Gaga back in 2016...
... spitting bile on Twitter when she first opened up about her PTSD, then turning contrite after she agreed to an interview with him (the interview ended up not happening). radiotimes.com/tv/documentari…
The only way I can make sense of this pattern of behaviour is that Piers himself doesn't want to be a total outsider, railing at woke celeb culture from the other side of the bubble. The flipside of the aggression is a latent promise to play nice *if* you grant him access.