"If you don’t care to think of girls and women as persons with agency, then think of them as resources"

[noblegiraffe]

I saw this on twitter a couple of weeks ago, posted by a right-wing account with over a million followers and retweeted by Tommy Robinson who also has over a million followers. And it is still bugging me.

"If you don’t care to think of girls and women as persons with agency, then think of them as resources—incredibly valuable resources that you, as a resource-oriented male, would be foolish not to protect. In fact, they are the most valuable resource. Without women, you cannot have offspring to perpetuate the survival of your clan."

2025 and this is where we are at. Not persons with agency, merely resources for 'patriots' to protect because we can produce babies.

https://x.com/stillgray/status/1960410136935325716?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

Sounds like The Handmaid’s Tale territory.

Tommy Robinson is an enemy to women.

I looked, I shouldn't have. It reads like irony but it looks like this is what some people genuinely believe.

Certainly the protestors outside hotels seem to have a high number of convictions for domestic violence. It seems that protecting women and girls from migrants doesn't mean you shouldn't abuse them yourself. They're your resource after all.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/26/two-in-five-arrested-for-last-summers-uk-riots-had-been-reported-for-domestic-abuse

If you were minded to be generous to him you could say that he is telling men to care for the women in their lives so it's a form of "benevolent sexism" rather than outright misogyny.

It's still sexism (objectifying women) and not something I'd want the men in my life to consider when thinking about me.

Ah, if you read the full thing it is a call to war against migrants. Those are who women and girls need protecting against. Not the abusers among your own countrymen, or indeed yourself, as the stats show.

ETA by 'yourself' I mean the sort of 'patriot' who heeds the call for war and goes rioting against immigrants.

It is like some men's brains evolved as far as proto-hominids and then stopped.

I mean, arseholes acting like arseholes are going to justify it in whatever way they can to paint themselves in the best light.

It so happens that it suits arseholes protesting the immigrants to reframe it so that they are protecting their own rather than just being given an opportunity to expose their own bigotry.

I see it all the time in my area of work where people who have done horrible things justify it to themselves and engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to make themselves out to be reasonable when they aren't.

I've certainly seen women, even on MN, defending Tommy Robinson type patriots as being 'the only ones who seem to care about women and girls'.

But if that's only because of our use to them and not as persons of agency, that is definitely something women should be wary of promoting.

Deffo - it's a slippery slope towards making decisions for us.

You never hear of any of these right wing cock wombles setting up self defence classes for women or doing anything useful. They seem to busy putting up flags and looking at cartoons of knights.