Brendan O'Neill - Spiked

[TonTonMacoute]

Another article here

I know!! Finally using those powers of contrarianism for good.

See also Ella Whelan, owner of a truly epic eye roll !

...clearly has spent time putting the work in to acquire a genuinely difficult physical skill has somehow landed up playing, to quote Germaine Greer, a ‘ghastly parody’, getting invasive surgery for likes,

Or as Charlie Brooker would put it, wanking for coins.

Ach, none so blind as those who will not see.

Spiked is the RCP as was. The RCP's strategy - ironically, a bit like Queer Theory's today, and Trump's - was that any transgression/disruption of current social structures - whether 'good' or 'bad' - was to be desired, because it was the quickest way to break society down. That was both their primary tactic and what stood in for a set of political or social values. O'Neill (no beef, I don't know him personally) is steeped in that history and those values, though unsurprisingly he doesn't like it to be discussed.

I've said that it's a good piece - he has a good brain.

Indeed Arabella.

"..O’Neill is the furthest thing from a feminist I can think of. He’s jumped on this because he’s a cynical grifter, and he’s taking people that believe him like mugs. God I hate how easily people are duped."

I find "hot takes" such as this embarrassing for the person posting if that's the best they can do as an argument - "a bad man wrote something and stoopid wimmin read it and are now brain dead zombie followers of the writer and every other opinion he's ever had and this must be pointed out to them so they know they are stoopid"

Tedious in its regularity on here.

I agree with whoever said upthread that Dylan hasn't had as much surgery as he's claiming. I think we would have been looking at a tip-tilted WASP-y nose and a very different jawline if that were the case. He's very much hedging his bets on the gradual detransition front.
As is anyone who goes for 'titty skittles' and hormones but not genital surgery.

And tap-dancing is the very worst of all the dancings so don't go wobbling chaps. Stand firm. 😁

I've read Spiked for years. I can pretty much predict what a Spiked piece will say on any given subject but you do get some good, well-thought out pieces.

I still read the Guardian even though it's massively captured. But I don't give the fuckers a penny.

He doesn't look different at all to me, apart from longer hair, a frock, make-up, falsies. He doesn't even sound different.

It's either a massive spoof or a hustle.

I like Brendan’s writing because I find him funny - I enjoy his bitchy sourness, especially when directed at chaps-who-say-they-are-ladies, eg Eddie Izzard.

Weird to think that somehow must mean I trust him… … trust him enough to do what?

Promise him my first born if I can’t guess his name/how much involvement he had in a political movement that was pretty much already dead by the time he was old enough to find it?

I have seen the error of my ways, Brendan O’Neill is the ContrarianCommunist Rumpelstilskin everybody! Don’t even look at him! You’ll catch cooties!

Plus, some random poster on Mumsnet just doesn’t like the cut of his jib.

🙃

Brendan O'Neill has been consistently excellent on this topic for some time now. I'm not going to clutch my pearls that he's not a feminist or that he has opinions I strongly disagree with. It's good that he's using his writing and interviewing skills to call out the bullshit of genderwoo.

See in that tap dancing video without the extra ott crap, you can see some natural talent. Not sure what happened to the musical theatre career.

The rest of it is a car crash. That ridiculous behaviour on the game show is someone utterly desperate to be famous.
A bloody adult rolling on the floor squealing!
Dylan is an attention seeker who now has a massive audience.

Yep.

I watched this a while back, it’s about how a big social media audience influences the ‘influencer’ themselves resulting in ever increasing extreme behaviour without an exit ramp.

He’ll probably chase ‘likes’ until he ends up looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein.

Besides, there are lots of good pieces (by, for eg, actual feminists who aren't going to throw women under a bus if that's what 'counterintuitive and disruptive' looks like tomorrow) that we could be celebrating; this feels like the kind of gratitude for a bit of male critical attention which characterises some corners of the GC landscape.

And this feels like a pointless purity spiral.

Yeah. Dylan can also be quite funny, sometimes, and knows how to produce short videos. This is great, except when it's using grossly offensive stereotypes of women to get cheap laughs.

I don't expect he has the first glimmer of why or how his parodies of 'girlhood' are offensive, though. Because he has no real understanding of what it is to be a woman, obviously.

I just need to state for the record that it was not the communism of the RCP that was the problem - it was the lack of it. That and the scary cultiness - the not allowing people to leave the cult, and the turning up at their homes if they tried, and basically holding them hostage and breaking them down until they changed their minds.

Thems were the days.

The days when O’Neill was a child?

It’s so depressingly un self aware!

It’s so depressingly un self aware!

You might disagree, but what is un-self-aware about it?

The days when O’Neill was a child?
I don't think he was a child in the 90s? I don't know when he joined, but by then their reputation definitely preceded them.

You are indulging in the exact same behaviours on this board, in this thread, as you are criticising on the Mermaids thread.

What you are doing here, now, Is how the purity spiral that destroys community groups and small charities begins.

Thankfully, lots of us have now had shitloads of practice at resisting it.

I think you misread my post on the Mermaids thread - I wasn't criticising the purity spiral (although I dislike it intensely), I was saying that the middle classes have to some degree brought it upon themselves; that we shouldn't be blind to how much privilege does play a role in for eg founder-CEO charities and 'social enterprises', and that very often those people who lead those organisations have absolutely no understanding - to an almost comedy degree - of the realities of people who do not look like them.

It's really not a purity spiral to ask why we give someone with a questionable history of support for feminism this much attention. I understand that it might be question that makes you uncomfortable, though.

Oh don't be so bloody patronising @WinterDeWinter. No one is giving him undue attention. He wrote an article that I read and enjoyed. Beyond that I know nothing about him and don't care.

It's really not a purity spiral to ask why we give someone with a questionable history of support for feminism this much attention. I understand that it might be question that makes you uncomfortable, though.

You are right, it’s not a purity spiral. It’s ad hominem.