Just feel a bit despairing today

[Mallowmazing]

• Incel shootings dismissed as “not terrorism”
• Women campaigning for women’s rights taken to court
• Crimes against women not being counted as hate crimes

Why won’t they listen to us? Why can’t they see these things are part of a pattern?

Feeling hopeless. How would you go about explaining systemic sexism to someone who just doesn’t see it?

I am too. Everything seems dark at the moment, in particular regarding the awful situation in Scotland, where those who should know better are doubling down to keep the fox inside the henhouse, despite the fox demonstrating over and over why he shouldn’t be anywhere near, amongst other Scottish horrors, such as one woman’s repeated court case delays.

Hope there’s some positive news soon.

Apologies, didn’t notice your question. Are we talking someone adult and male, or a naive teenager or…?

Yesterday I spotted a plethora of white, green, violet ribbons in my local park with lovely little labels attached. Today, I walked again. Some had gone, but some were still there. I can't tell you how it lifted me up. Ribboning wimmin - it is an easy thing to do. When things are dark, the only thing to do is to lift others up. Little gestures make a difference. But I am not dismissing your concerns on these things. Little by little women will get heard, but only en masse I feel.

Me too OP. I'm normally quite resilient but the knowledge that a government has actually told adults in schools to keep children's secrets about something so fundamental as believing they can change sex has floored me. I know that trans activists don't give a toss about safeguarding children but for a government to promote the modus operandi of every child predator going is unbelievable.

Feeling hopeless.

I'm not one for the sunny side of anything. There was a temperature check here on how we felt after the Forstater ruling and whether it was an indication of a turning tide. I was 4/10 at best. My deepest apprehension for some years has been how far all of this deeply illiberal policing of speech and ideas is a proxy for progress towards a future that history tells us would be akin to some aspects of totalitarianism.

That said - setting aside the meat of the sermon, I've long admired passages from CS Lewis' Learning in War-Time

The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.
…
Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never come. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumable they have their reward. Men are different.They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffold, discuss, the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

ontheruinofbritain.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/excerpts-from-cs-lewiss-sermon-learning-in-war-time/

(I was tempted to dig this out by the discussion of the love of shiny things and combs discussed in the MN thread about the DNA testing of the non binary Finnish warrior.)

Ribboning is a lovely suggestion for keeping spirits up. It does all just feel so dark and heavy.

By talking to someone, I mean in general. If you had a soapbox and an audience that were a total blank slate, what would you say?

It's all feeling very hopeless, when things are so glaringly wrong and they are still glossed over, with mainstream media barely noticing.

When scandals are exposed we all ask each other how no one at the time noticed/ said anything. I'm only seeing now that people are not as blind as I believed previously, truth tellers are silenced, shamed, dismissed. Nothing to see here.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions wow - that’s very powerful. Will read the whole thing.

@Anotheruser02 So true. Exactly how I’m feeling.

Sort of reassuringly depressing, Embarrassing!

I'm with you, OP. Feeling dark this week. My DP has just gently reminded me to close the 'world news' section, which is probably a good idea.

and to you all.

I’ve been very upset all day in the back of the Scottish schools guidance and I don’t even know why given that we all knew it was due to be published and knew what it was going to say!!!!

I think it’s the sheer futility of it all, knowing that it doesn’t matter what information and evidence you send to politicians, they just don’t give a fuck and are happy pandering to lobby groups. With the exception of one current MSP (and a small number of female former MSPs), none of the opposition have uttered a peep of concern.about this over the last two years.

I truly believe people are waking up to the insanity. The more people find out about what’s going on, and the more it’s exposed, the weaker those bullies become.
Sisterly good wishes, Mallow, xx

rogdmum, "I think it’s the sheer futility of it all, knowing that it doesn’t matter what information and evidence you send to politicians, they just don’t give a fuck and are happy pandering to lobby groups"

The strangest thing being that the group they can't see, the one they're tossing overboard, is half of all their voters.

Me too. The Scottish stuff especially.

And reading some guff by Benjamin Boyce who I thought was ok. (See Clare Jones on twitter.)

@WarriorN

Me too. The Scottish stuff especially.

And reading some guff by Benjamin Boyce who I thought was ok. (See Clare Jones on twitter.)

Boyce's comment:

Let’s compromise: men won’t call women “frigid” for saying no, and women won’t call men “creepy” for asking

twitter.com/BenjaminABoyce/status/1426315134901755905

JCJ's thread addressing it: archive.is/YvHj7

Just looked at the Boyce tweets. FFS.

Men are scared of being called “creepy”, women are scared of being attacked and raped.

And women are generally the ones who want relationships - whilst men accuse us of wanting too much and shy away from commitment.

(Not always of course, but thinking of Love Island type scenarios…)

They really do want us to be walking sex vending machines - utterly available but with no commitment.

Sometimes I wonder if religion was right about purity / marriage / general shit they put women through. Locking women up for our safety makes more and more sense when you start looking at what some men want...

I am deeply atheist and of course am not serious, but honestly it does slightly make sense to me.

** Just to clarify, by “religion” I think I actually mean traditional/ historical morals - of the type in Europe that would have been underpinned by Christianity, but which have somehow been imposed on women all around the world since the dawn of time.

Dennis Kavanagh has also put up a robust and thoughtful response to Boyce:

There’s no simple verbal equality to these terms as is implies. Nuance is required. A simple request met with a polite declination is not often described as creepy. Frigid, by contrast is an ironically searing judgment on sexual proclivities. I think these are different Ben.

mate I mean this in the nicest possible way but I would never send a tweet like this about gay blokes who don’t wanna respond to my advances. I have no right to do that. Boundaries are boundaries. They don’t need to be negotiated or discussed. [cont.]

archived for readability: archive.is/bJsnP

The Left particularly seem intent on embedding this in our culture whatever the collateral damage because the Left in the USA are captured and see it as their ideological destiny. They are intent on pushing it through via lobbying and legislation without majority acceptance.
Regan’s ‘War on drugs’ comes to mind, it was ideological, cost millions, went against all reason and scientific evidence of outcomes and the poorest suffered the worst consequences.

That is a good response.

I also have to remember that sometimes BB makes statements for people to dissect; though I know he had some disagreements with CJ around this.

The whole lot has to come crumbling down soon surely. How is this happening. How?

I’m with you, feeling utterly depressed today about what’s happening to women, and would add the abhorrent comments from that person who runs the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre. It shows how far we have to go when that person is still in their job and being defended. Plus the horror which happened in Plymouth being called a. “Domestic”

I’m fucked off and scared.

I'm the same, OP. What is frightening is that on the one hand you have a real-life example of a hate crime - a man driven by his loathing of women to go on a killing spree.

And then on the other hand you have the criminal law being used against women who say things that men don't like - Marion Millar, for example. And in Scottish law hate speech against trans women (including cross-dressing men) is criminalised, but hate speech against women isn't.

So you have this massive disparity where everything is loaded against us: men can say whatever they want about us, do whatever they want to us, and face no consequences, but if we show any signs of wanting to fight back (by, say, tweeting a picture of a ribbon) we can face up to two years in jail. It feels as if there is nowhere for us to turn.

@RoyalCorgi that is chilling.

@RoyalCorgi

I'm the same, OP. What is frightening is that on the one hand you have a real-life example of a hate crime - a man driven by his loathing of women to go on a killing spree.

And then on the other hand you have the criminal law being used against women who say things that men don't like - Marion Millar, for example. And in Scottish law hate speech against trans women (including cross-dressing men) is criminalised, but hate speech against women isn't.

So you have this massive disparity where everything is loaded against us: men can say whatever they want about us, do whatever they want to us, and face no consequences, but if we show any signs of wanting to fight back (by, say, tweeting a picture of a ribbon) we can face up to two years in jail. It feels as if there is nowhere for us to turn.

Yeah this. frightening.