As the US elections get near I see stacks of posts here along the lines of ‘you have to vote Dem. If you don’t and they win it’s your fault’. And ‘it’s not cool to opt out - it’s selfish/childish/ridiculous’

Those arguments are to fundamentally miss the point about why folks won’t vote for the mainstream parties. And they appear idiotic to those whose basic decency standards include just not being able to vote for genocide. 4eg.

We understand your voting. You could try to understand ours

Wind is getting up; folks are hunkering down; weather warnings have been heeded; fire is lit; pasta sauce is cooking; bottle of red is open.

Storm #Austen is coming now and it feels good to be snuggly and warm tonight - thinking as always of those who are not.

#IslandLife

Interesting to see that Andy Burnham hasn't learned anything about UK politics from the total failures of his predecessors.

He can never make the right wing like him. Nothing he can do there. On principle they won't vote for him.

There are vanishingly few centrists for him to appeal to and those who are there have the Lib Dems.

And the left won't vote for him if he fails fundamental tests like new oil fields and genocide...

So again a total losing formula I think, all round.

Reading background on Theodore Herzl, ‘Father of Zionism’. His motivations are understandable: a solution to the constant persecution of Jews.

His solutions were despicable: mass migration to already populated places, with an explicit requirement to displace existing populations.

Zionism has been fascist since inception.

Chatting with a friend this week who is a director at the Royal Literary Fund, and it occurred to me that potentially there are #writers here who might benefit from knowing about it.

From their front page

"We believe writers matter because writing matters.

Professional writers should be able to sustain themselves and thrive, even when times are hard. The Royal Literary Fund offers financial support, advice and earning opportunities across the UK, enabling writers to keep writing and to share their skills with others."

They offer grants and a range of support for (I assume UK based?) writers and they are pretty well heeled, being the owners of the IP around Winnie the Pooh - of centenary status this week.

https://www.rlf.org.uk/

Please do boost for coverage

“Because I guarantee, if you walked into a women’s sorority or hall of residence intoxicated, seven women would get you a blanket and make you a cup of tea or call you a cab. None of us would call our friends and say: “Free dick – come get some.” And if someone did that, we’d stop her. We’d report her. We’d protect you. “

Great article (as always) on The Nerve about Cornell.

https://www.thenerve.news/p/deborah-frances-white-column-cornell-7-university-chi-phi-fraternity-rape?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=facebook-s-whistleblower-on-the-film-she-inspired-tuesday-edition&_bhlid=bc9847a6d579895a07982abdf822430155d1a012

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I can’t write about this any more: but hey fellas - do NOT be that #NotAllMen reply guy. Just be quiet. For once.

And fellas who do have this is their history, so ok: it’s a bit tough coz now your experience seems lower than that of women.

But it isn’t. But everything we discuss about our own histories (if we have any ability to do so 😃) sits in the context of every woman - every fucking woman - and her experience. So our constricted space is a problem. But maybe we can understand that? And maybe we can find spaces to be open (good luck!) that do not compromise women and their experiences?

So this is not so easy to write about now. But (particularly straight / CIS) fellas have no idea what it’s like to have that constant horrendous environment that women live with and if you don’t know about that or believe it then you have some work to do.

If sexual assault is not in your personal history: be grateful and never, really never, feel free to question any woman ever when she talks about this subject

Because her experience is real. Your ‘opinions’ are BS and offensive

So I don’t know the answers here for either female or male victims. And I really do want spaces for men to able to explore their - often childhood - sexual traumas. We do actually need these because we

A) are almost completely incapable of talking about it; &

B) don’t have spaces where it’s possible

But whether that’s you or not fellas, when women talk about their experiences, just don’t be that reply guy

Women’s lived experience is men diverting attention away. We must stop

And this is not to trivialise sexual assault on boys and men. And - here’s a thing: in this world of overwhelmingly male on female sexual assault, those who care about male on female sexual assault can find that they have no place to discuss what has happened to them

And that’s not ok either

However, our own trauma cannot ever be used or elevated to diminish the (massively) greater issue

I only know 1 woman who - when discussing - has not been assaulted by a man

That’s reality

So what can you do?

This is difficult because it goes against absolutely everything we’ve learned and is deep ingrained in us.

But what we can do is make it uncomfortable for those who normalise it. I know it isn’t easy. But it can be done and after the 1st time it gets easier.

We can of course, we could just not assault women. Shouldn’t need saying and yet, here we are…

I think the biggest thing we can do - happy to hear otherwise - is to just be outraged at every incident

Effectively we are *all* dangerous. There is no way to know the difference

And here’s a thing: those protesting their personal innocence

A) look guilty. ‘The lady doth protest too much’

B) are just diverting attention away from the real big issue which is male on female sexual assault - & as ever - making this about men. Again

So when you see the issue being discussed my suggestion is - radical I know & massively difficult given our from-birth conditioning: don’t comment.

I’m going to try to write about sexual assault. I’ve read multiple threads on this here today. They’re all about women.l

Now: that’s not to say only women suffer this. However, fellas, it is overwhelmingly us

So this is to address the reply guy thing of outrage that we all seem to be implicated

Here’s a thing: women know clearly that we aren’t *all* dangerous. We don’t need to tell them.They know. But sufficiently large numbers of us are that the difference is irrelevant.

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*Allies

If our reaction there is ‘fuck you, you should have known’ I suspect there are big double standards being applied. Do we demand the same for other groups? All the ways the British are offensive and ignorant towards the Irish for eg?

There is a very clear Zionist playbook which includes making accusations of antisemitism against many people for inadvertent breaches of a code which is so wide no one could ever observe completely. I think we should be very careful of being their policemen

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Going to be controversial here. Being keen to be even handed there are plenty of Allie’s who are ultra keen to jump on displays of #antisemitism. However the antisemitism gate is enormous. And we do not expect people to know all of the ways which certain phrases or symbols are offensive to other groups nor do we police them as hard. Greta holding an octopus plushy? Antisemitic. For eg. When someone apologises and says ‘I didn’t know: I’ll avoid in the future’ I think we might accept that 1/n

I have a tonne of guests staying next weekend so did a bit of gardening tidying yesterday. One thing led to another (this really is the entire story of my life) and the hazel shoots I cleared back became a thing. Not supposed to be spiral but it probably makes it more stable. I’m rubbish at it but making stuff is such a joy. I’ll grow beans up it next year or something. (I know we have actual basket weavers here and the missus suggested I might want to book onto a course with you!) #gardening

On the day of 9/11 I was on a bus in W London. My memory is somewhat confused but I do remember somehow hearing the figure of 30k dead and thinking how terrible that was (it was 10% of that in the end). But then returning to the epidemiologist report we’d just received from our mortality study in E Congo.

It concluded that 2.4m people had died above the expected death rate in the past 5 years. And no one had noticed. And I think they still haven’t.