More Lies from the Labour Party

MP Debbonaire is saying Corbyn sacked her when she had cancer, and that she resigned to avoid making the party look bad.

So either;
Corbyn sacked an employee undergoing breast cancer treatment. Extremely uncharacteristic and awful if true. An MP is using her breast cancer to make another politician look bad. Extremely low and awful if true.

Neither of those scenarios are particularly edifying.

It is worth noting that the resignation is a matter of public record; she told her constituency that she was resigning to help block Article 50; and she also resigned during the mass resignations orchestrated by the Party coup. 

Interestingly there are three accounts of the LP meeting where Debbonaire announced her resignation and at which she later claimed to have been intimidated (a claim which helped certain members suspend all CLP meetings). 

This is a meeting that apparently that left writer Ruth Davies in tears. Oddly, the other two accounts of the meeting are overwhelmingly positive, and both writers stated that they had no idea why Davies felt the way she did.  

It may be important to point out that both writers were similar to Davies in age, one was a white male software developer, the other an Iranian female socialist.  

Sasha Sadjady points out that there were maybe 4 Momentum activists in the room, spread out amongst 300+ people, and she said that Debbonaire, the chair, breached party rules 7 times in order to not discuss Corbyn. Sadjady also said she felt as though she had been at a different meeting than the one described in Davies' blog post.

The other, Chris Esson, said that he heard two men being rude (out of 300 people) but that they were in a firm minority. He also stated that the meeting was in no way toxic or close to bullying.

Of course, none of that matters - because the 'pretty young white woman made to cry by evil Bolsheviks' trope trumps things like facts, accuracy, and eye witness accounts.

Just look at Johanna Baxter. I have worked in some extremely tough jobs with very unpleasant people. I confess there were times where I had to go for a walk, and cry. Once or twice I had a cry on the walk 

home.

You know what I didn't do? I didn't cry for over 4 hours on national television. 

Aggression in the workplace is utterly unacceptable. It is also not the only form of relational aggression. Tears can be just as manipulative and intimidating as yelling, and a lot harder to call a person on. 

It is simply a reality that some people will say, do and lie about the most awful things imaginable - if it gets them what they want. And worst of all, they will be mostly unaware that they are doing it. They will often sincerely believe that they are telling the truth, or that they have good reasons for their 'white lies'. That what they do and say is justifiable in the grand scheme of things. 

It might be argued that Baxter's reaction was the result of online harassment, which is entirely possible. Look at Zoe Quinn for example. She was doxxed, harassed, people spread naked pictures of her, created animated revenge porn of her, made death threats. Quinn had to involve the police and at one point the FBI.  

Baxter shared some of the 'vicious' comments made to her. One was a guy disagreeing with her. The other was a person telling her she was spineless. The other was unpleasant and sexist. 

None of them were threats. 

Asking Baxter and Channel 4 for proof of the threats saw people told that they should 'believe women' and 'wasn't C4's word enough'? Unfortunately; no, it is not enough. The media lie, all the time, with gleeful abandon and no accountability. I am not going to accept that Corbyn, a generally decent and amiable man by all appearances, is endorsing and encouraging bullying by voting for a transparent ballot, unless you actually have evidence to back that up.

Secret ballots are highly unusual, and I would argue, undemocratic when it comes to MPs and TU officials. These people are elected; knowing how they've voted is a key part of whether you are likely to elect them or not. 

Is it acceptable that being in public, especially as a woman, leads to vociferous abuse online? No.

Is the solution to subvert the democratic process, as Johanna Baxter wanted? Absolutely not.

I am deeply uncomfortable with how gendered this campaign has been. Eagle has a pink banner and keeps saying that she should be elected because she's a 'strong woman'. Debonnaire invokes the 'sexy cancer' and claims Corbyn sacked her for it, despite clear evidence to the contrary. 

NEC official Baxter and Labour Party member Ruth Davies break out the waterworks to support their claims of bullying and harassment. And because they are attractive, young, white women the public and media go gaga over it and accuse anyone who questions them, or asks for evidence, of being anti-woman and anti-feminist. 

I think they are my 'favourite' group; people who in other circumstances would use terms like 'feminazi' or 'sjw', who start using and abusing feminist rhetoric because it suits their agenda.Of course, none of this actually matters. Ruth Davies' op-ed of a Labour Meeting, where she expressed views not shared by anyone else attending the meeting, went viral because people want to believe that Momentum are a group akin to the blackshirts.

Eagle's baseless assertion that her office window was bricked by a Corbyn supporter - when she works in an area with an average of 3 acts of criminal damage a day - has been largely accepted because people want to see Corbyn supporters as thugs.

Baxter's tearful ramblings are unsubstantiated and affected, but people believe them because they want to portray Corbyn's Labour as a macho, 70s style misogynistic cave. After all, it's a handy way to try to alienate Corbyn from his younger, more radical supporters.

Funnily enough, left wing MP Diane Abbot's accounts of daily harassment - which unlike Baxter's accounts, came with evidence and incurred police involvement three times - didn't get a fraction of the sympathy or hand wringing. 

I am seriously starting to think that even a leader like Jeremy Corbyn cannot redeem the cesspool that is the Labour Party - and the British Media. 

Why Comparing Abortion to the Holocaust is Offensive

I don't know why this even needs explaining. But I will, if only to straighten out my own thoughts on it, and because I am baffled that anyone thinks this is ok. 

Abortion & The Holocaust

Abortion is a common, legal medical procedure that in over 90% of cases happens in the first trimester and involves 2 tablets to dislodge a cell growth.

The Holocaust was a violent genocide of over six billion living humans. It included forced labour, imprisonment, starvation, torture and murder. It also included sexual violence and inflicting forcible sterilisation and abortion on unwilling women. 

The Nazis Removed Bodily Autonomy

The Nazis banned abortions for Aryan women (making it a capital offence) and subjected women they disapproved of to forced sterilisations and abortion.

The thing that disturbs me most about pro-life rebuttals to this argument is that they don't see that forcing a woman to have a baby she does not want and forcing a woman to have an abortion are equally bad. 

Many women during the Holocaust lacked bodily autonomy. They were subject to sexual violence, medical abuses, forced sterilisation, forced abortion (note the forced bit). Pregnancy for a woman in the ghettos or camps meant death. 

Abortion Saved Lives During the Holocaust

Pregnancy in the ghettos or the camps meant selection and death. It was a truism during the war. It is referenced in Schindler's Ark, where they touch upon Schindler's purchase of 'gynaecological instruments' to save the life of one of his women workers.

A more historic and heroic example of this hideous situation is Gisella Perl. I do not believe human life begins at conception, but Perl did. Nevertheless, she performed thousands of abortions on women - because she knew the alternative was definitely death for mother and child, possibly preceded by cruel medical experimentation. 

There are some very strange people who see Perl as a butcher. 

This is a woman who violated her own personal beliefs in order to save literally thousands of lives. It would have been easier and safer for her to let those women go to vivisection and death. She would have been murdered had she been caught. But instead, she made the hard choice and risked her life to save theirs. 

Most importantly...

The Jewish Faith is Explicitly Pro Choice

The Jewish position is that the mother's life always takes precedence over that of the foetus. Abortion is also acceptable where the pregnancy is causing physical or mental distress. Unsurprisingly, Conservative Judaism is stricter than Reform Judaism, a movement which is explicitly pro-choice. 

Co-opting the genocide of a group of people who explicitly disagree with your beliefs in order to promote your beliefs is pretty unpleasant. 

So?

I am not saying that pro-lifers are Nazis for being anti-abortion, any more than I am saying that pet owners are Nazis because Hitler owned a dog. 

I am saying that the Nazis sought to restrict bodily autonomy for all women, in several different ways. 

I am saying that that was an explicit technique of the Holocaust. 

I am saying that comparing the right to abortion to a genocide that specifically sought to take bodily autonomy and choice away from women is ludicrous. 

Radical Choices and Myopia in Politics

By Hirsute2008 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Our society's attitude to body hair is really weird. It was really difficult to find a image of a woman's body hair that wasn't politicised, sexualised or an object of mockery.

Body hair is hot topic in both choice and radical feminism, where regular women who need an income are often caught in the middle between the irritating and unfair amount of money and time they are expected to spend on grooming for work, and unworldly rad fems who work in academia, or for non profits, and think intact body hair is the only correct or laudable choice. The latter seem to lack the ability to see that if you work in the non academic private sector, or in the retail / service industry, refusing to remove your body hair could actually cost you your job. It might be couched in terms of 'appropriate grooming' or 'dress code' or veiled feedback. But the pushback and consequences are real. And if the 'choice' is between employment or body hair, most women will shave their damn legs. 

Fair? No. But even less fair is the inability of supposedly clued up and intelligent women to recognise that the idea of choice can be a laughable concept in a world with a historical and current atmosphere of oppression.

The Problem With Radical Feminism

TDLR? Radical feminists decry the evils of choice feminism while making the same mistakes.

For example; one patronising and irritating rad fem article "It allows them to earn the benefits society gives women who don’t challenge male supremacy while comforting themselves with the idea that their behavior... is feminist." It doesn't explore or recognise the very real costs of challenging male supremacy, or why a woman might not want to fight every single battle she encounters. It fails to even examine situations where the choice is simply not there. In my experience, when I have engaged in even mild pushback on 'male supremacy' there have been real, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous consequences. 

Sometimes it's been worth it. Sometimes it was pointless. Sometimes it would have been better - for me - if I had I kept my head down and my mouth shut.

Every single radical feminist I have met has been white, immensely privileged and has criticised other women for working and participating in 'patriarchal structures'. They can inexplicably manage to work part time or not at all, which is usually the result of inherited wealth, government assistance or financial dependence on another person. Consequently, they have more freedom, time, energy and disposable income than most women who work for wages.

The Twin Pincers of Radical Feminism and Patriarchy

I grew up in a patriarchal, religious household and I work in a male dominated field. As a result, I hate being told what to do, or how to act. I hate conformity of all stripes, and hate the idea that there is one 'right' way of doing things. I hate people telling me what to do with my body, whether it's a teacher telling me to dress more modestly or a peer telling me to dress more sexily or a rad fem telling me that the makeup that sometimes makes me feel good - and that I have to wear to (in reality) keep my job makes me anti-feminist. I hate when people tell me how women should be. 

As a result, I can see why women are drawn to the seeming warmth and comfort of 'choice feminism'. Because guess what - if you are a rad fem, you aren't helping. You aren't going to provide me with an alternative skill set or job so I can pay my bills. You aren't doing anything practical to replace patriarchal structures. You apparently don't have to work for a living, or else you work in jobs where you can say or do or wear anything you like and think it's the same for everyone else. 

Radical feminism is no better, or even very different, from patriarchy or kyriarchy or organised religion or any other group attempting to impose their arbitrary and wearying views on me. You are nothing more than yet another person telling me how to live my life and patronisingly informing me why I'm not measuring up.
While choice feminism argues that every choice is feminist (not true), radical feminism fails to acknowledge that not all choices are possible.

And that's not good enough.