Laurie Penny's Mirror World

[ArcheryAnnie]

Apparently gender-crit women are a cult who don't tolerate dissent.

Laurie, come over here and have a quick look through the threads. Then have a look at your own lot.

Then tell me again who is "cult-like".

[nauticant]

Imagine the shame of being an Owen Jones wannabe and falling behind as he storms on to great success.

[53rdWay]

oh, Laurie. No matter how many times you try, throwing other feminists under the bus will never make the world believe you’re One Of The Good Ones. They’ll still hate you for being any kind of feminist at all.

[LangCleg]

In the world of narcissists, accusations are always admissions.

[OrchidInTheSun]

Poor Laurie. She's going to look back on her 20s self and cringe when she's older. Self-righteous idiot, hanging on Lil OJ's coat tails, hoping for a crumb of acknowledgement

[JoanSummers]

Laurie Penny is a cartoon. A pseudo left wing posh kid propagandist spewing wannabe intellectual guff while hanging out with her over privileged (and occasionally neo nazi) chums. Noone really takes her seriously anymore do they?

[DisturblinglyOrangeScrambleEgg]

Sorry - we have leaders now? I've missed that memo, can someone let me know who they are so I can pledge fealty?

[AngryAttackKittens]

Laurie "Milo and I are good mates" Penny doesn't approve? Well that's me convinced!

[JoanSummers]

Laurie Penny - putting the Socialite into Socialism and the Faux into Fauxminism!

[AncientLights]

It's one of the strengths and can also be a weakness of feminism in general that it isn't an organisation with leaders, membership etc.That's how men tend to organise and they don't get it when confronted with a different animal. Someone like the eejit in the OP's post has been taught to view life through this male prism. Which is incorrect as we know. Isn't it interesting how they accuse us of what they do? I often read things and can't figure out which 'side' the write is on because of that.

[NobodyToVoteForNow]

Why are we listening to these idiots anyway. Ignore and continue life in the real world where everyone knows the difference between men and women.

[AngryAttackKittens]

I mean people noticed when Datun wasn't around for a few days, for example, but that doesn't mean she's our leader, it was just kind of hey, I wonder what's going on, is she OK? It's a fundamentally different way of relating to people that authoritarians (mostly male but some female too) seem to find baffling. They assume someone must be pulling the strings.

[LangCleg]

They assume someone must be pulling the strings.

It's the difference between inauthentic astroturf and authentic grassroots. I think members of the mediating class such as LP, who have always had social capital/connections to fall back on and make use of, don't understand this.

[AngryAttackKittens]

If you've ever been involved in a grasroots movement before you recognize another when you see one. Trans activism isn't one. Gender critical is. There is nobody behind the scenes, it's just us.

What's interesting about this is that it shows so starkly that Penny, Jones etc have never been involved in grassroots politics in their lives. Champagne socialists baffled and alarmed by the proles and finding it difficult to understand why we won't just do what we're told.

[LangCleg]

They're top down and we're bottom up - but they have a total inability to perceive this!

[JoanSummers]

You made me look at LP's twitter feed OP.

"Sisters, time for some real talk"
and
“This is what happens when we fetishize the romance of rebellion while making actual social change impossible.”

She has actually managed to become a parody of herself.

[AngryAttackKittens]

She managed that a while ago, nothing new to see there.

Also, "sisters"? Doesn't Penny claim some sort of non-woman trans identity? "Siblings" surely, then.

[CharlieParley]

I don't understand where that person is coming from. Like at all. What fear of repercussions? I mean repercussions in this debate come from being the least bit gender critical not from supporting gender ideology.

And most people aren't even GC, they just run up against a particular issue, like boys in the Girl Guides sharing showers/tents and going hang on a minute, I chose GG coz it's single-sex now what is this? And if they raise this with the wrong people they find out that they're considered to be transphobic and it goes from there. That's the repercussions.

And who are our leaders? I sure as hell would like to know coz this seems totally piecemeal to me, all of us just crabbing around on our own, trying to figure out what to do individually which has got to be highly ineffective.

And which orthodoxies? We have people here who have no problem with TW=W but who simply want women protected, some who differentiate between transsexuals and transgenders, and some who won't even concede the use of woman in transwoman. I sure don't know what we're all supposed to believe let alone believing the same thing that is never to be questioned or discussed.

The OP is right, this person is living in a mirror world...

[JoanSummers]

That she did AAK, that she did.

As for sisters.. LP isn't a sister, she is a male-identified collaborator. E.g. recent tweet:
"Equating lesbian sex with trans women with rape is madly bigoted and factually untrue. Believe me, I speak from experience. "

Translated: lesbians are mad bigots and you should trust me on that because I'm a Cool Girl who has Sex with Men!

[DisturblinglyOrangeScrambleEgg]

repercussions

Someone might show me a biscuit.. or say something mean to me.

yeah.. as formidable as I'm sure you all are in real life I'm sure, I can't say that I find you scary, and if I were to have the jammy dodger of dismissal, I wouldn't run snivelling to my settee and hide under a blanket in fear.

[AngryAttackKittens]

So, in what passes for logic in Penny's universe, if she willingly had sex with a trans woman that means that lesbians can't possible have been raped by trans women, or feel that the pressure being put on them to do do is corrective rape by a new name, because Laurie enjoyed it therefore it is enjoyable?

Most people have managed to wrap their heads around that whole difference between self and others thing by the age of, what, 8? 10?

[JoanSummers]

She has no empathy for other people. Led to believe she was "the smartest kid in a smart school" and "the voice of a generation", she just circles back over and over to this one idea that other people's (often feminist's) ethics and choices are getting in the way of her having "nice things".

She doesn't even have genuine empathy for the men she white knights for (a fetish feeding reversal of roles there). It's just grandstanding.

[LaSqrrl]

LOL, LP has been annoying for a very long time! She used to come over to a few RF blogs in the day, prattling on about how 'prostitutes' just needed better unions and pay, because some slob sticking their dick in would then be totes empowering. Or some such shit. Rah rah marxism.

But, at some point, she said something that was deemed by TRAs that was "oh noes", and basically she went into some kind of weird hyper-penance mode. She's never stopped!

I sort of figured she would have learned from that, and grown up. But no. Seems that you cannot save all the cult followers.

With that, I must now report back to my invisible but oh-so-hairy radfem leader. We address her as Her Radliness. I am Minion #586732004

[LaSqrrl]

Awww Joan
Laurie Penny - putting the Socialite into Socialism and the Faux into Fauxminism!

I may actually have accidentally piddled my granny-knickers a little after reading that!

[53rdWay]

I still hold out hope for Laurie Penny. She writes off all previous generations of feminists and all other schools of feminism as badly-educated reactionary witches, but then she’ll come up with the exact points those other feminists have made in her own writing like it’s a brand new idea. One day, maybe something will click and she’ll have a “hey now WAIT a minute...” realisation about what all the ‘bad’ feminists have been saying all along. You never know....

[hackmum]

"maybe something will click". It usually happens when women have children. That's when they realise how much the odds are stacked against them. She may not have any plans on that front, though.