Laurie Penny is actually a feminist!

[MyrtleLion]

Laurie Penny has finally realised she's actually a woman.

Feminists began raising the alarm about the manosphere decades ago – and we were ignored | Laurie Penny https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/13/gamergate-andrew-tate-manosphere-feminists

There's a bunch of them in exile. I suspect it's the MEK rather than the Tudeh, because the MEK have an impressive record of hiring western politicians to argue their talking points and not look too hard at what kind of an organisation the MEK is.

I was wondering what has happened to her. Pennyreds last guardian column before this was in 2020.

I note the comment about her surprise (heterosexual) pandemic zoom wedding and the fate of her US millennial feminist contemporary Lindy West (ugh, millennials. How OLD.🧓😂).

(Summary from Helen Lewis here https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/lindy-west-millennial-feminism/686488/)

The all encompassing Polyamory Discourse that her book Adult Braces has triggered has prompted Mx Penny to summarily ban "straight men" (cis men?) from it.

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/straight-men-are-now-banned-from

She was also sufficiently triggered by the Helen Lewis article on the whole miserable business as to take a pop at her as well. So still a true TRA bunny. And still simping for Michel Foucault after pretending she didn't know about his history of child sexual abuse.

And still simping for Michel Foucault after pretending she didn't know about his history of child sexual abuse.

Michel Foucault and Neil Gaiman? That's beginning to look a bit patterny.

"I'm certainly looking into it now"

19 November 2021

https://nitter.net/scarimor/status/2042653724615537098#m

"What Foucault got right"

25 November 2021

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/what-foucault-got-right

includes trigger warnings though .

Why does she keep calling herself a fuckboy?

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/extremely-important-writing-advice

Some people just dont seem to evolve past certain life stages, do they.

What cracks me up about the they/them pronouns and the assertions of boyishness (usually justified by mentioning that she reads sci-fi, which of course women and girls are banned from doing)... I find it hard to think of anyone less androgynous, never mind masculine, than Laurie. She's tiny, and her style and mannerisms are all extremely girly.

I think what she means is that she's not like the other, boring girls.

It's a bit cheeky, though, to insist that she's not a woman and then to write columns and books (well, collections of blog posts) setting herself up as an authority on feminism, and telling off women who know what a woman is for womaning wrong.

It's a bit like if Ta-Nehisi Coates went around claiming that he's not black, except when he's got a book out on the state of Black America.

Oh, God, no.
I like gardening.
Lauri Penny drives me up the bloody wall.

(Like your username, btw. I saw it in the wild the other day.)

Brendan is as always right on the money. I hope Laurie is “self googling” as she admits to in the thread I linked and reads it

So she’s not really talking about men and women at all. What a way to blow up your own thesis. Men have ruined everything, and only a progressive women’s politics can save us, but men can be women too if they want, so this progressive women’s politics will sometimes include men – that’s this book boiled down. I hate to mansplain, but I foresee a glitch in Penny’s glorious feministic uprising against white male ‘fascism’ if it includes within its number loads of those white males who have been culturally programmed to grab pussies with their sweaty hands but who now wear dresses and call themselves Tallulah.

Themsplaining.

I felt a bit bad for purloining it but it was too good not to

Oh I just read that article courtesy of an archive version

https://archive.ph/XMtoV

"..One early-spring evening I went to Mince, a performance night in aid of Five for Five, a crowdfunder for transgender causes. It was held at the Feminist Library in Peckham and “free for dolls” (trans women), cheaper for other trans people, and “about a tenner for cis people”. The walls were covered in women’s liberation literature and posters on resisting immigration raids; a pole-dancing class was taking place in the next room. The audience was nearly all young women. ..."

They'd be mortified that Mumsnet might be discussing them 😄