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Soph0571

Soph0571's Journal
Soph0571's Journal
February 24, 2019

Thank a Democratic President for.....



.... and so much more.
February 24, 2019

How to play Patriarchy Chicken: why I refuse to move out of the way for men

If you don’t move out of the way for men, your commute changes. For one thing – I’m not going to lie about this – you do collide with a lot of men. This is where the name of the game comes from. You need to really commit to Patriarchy Chicken: don’t let your social instinct to step to the side kick in. Men are going to walk into you: that isn’t your fault.

Some men don’t walk straight into you, of course. Some men find their brains overridden by the unfamiliar experience of a woman refusing to give way. Last week, on a busy train platform, a man was so confused by my trajectory towards him that he stopped dead in front of me, holding eye contact, and flapped his mouth like a fish. You will find that a lot of men just… stop. It is up to you to decide how to react to this.

It’s also important to note that Patriarchy Chicken isn’t about anger. Of course, you can put your head down, square your shoulders, glower, and power through. But in my opinion, the best way to play the game is cheerfully. Smile! Make eye contact! But never, ever give way.

The point of Patriarchy Chicken is not just that you get where you’re going marginally faster (although you do) or that you irritate a number of men (which you also do). The point is that men have been socialised, for their entire lives, to take up space. Men who would never express these thoughts out loud have nevertheless been brought up to believe that their right to occupy space takes precedent over anyone else’s right to be there. They spread their legs on tubes and trains, they bellow across coffee shops and guffaw in pubs, and they never, ever give way.

Women have not been socialised to take up space. Women have been socialised to give way, to alleviate, to conciliate, and to step to the side.


[link:https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/02/how-play-patriarchy-chicken-why-i-refuse-move-out-way-men|

Genius. Maybe a group of us should try it for a day and report back?!?!

February 24, 2019

The End is Near....When We Find Out....



On day one



We be like....



Hehe
February 24, 2019

Donald Trump Jr hints he could run for president in 2024

Donald Trump Jr has hinted he could run for president in 2024.

The incumbent US leader’s eldest son posted an Instagram story showing another user mentioning his name in answer to a question about potential Republican candidates in five years’ time.

Mr Trump made no additional comment indicating his opinion, but it follows increasing speculation that he is planning to follow in his father's footsteps by entering US politics.


[link:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-jr-us-president-2024-election-republican-candidate-instagram-story-a8793886.html|

Hell no

But Relax - God is on it

https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1099466704835489793

GOD: "I just told Donald Trump, Jr. that I want him to be President."

ME: "Whaaaaaaaat?"

GOD: "Oh, trust Me, Betty. It's going to be HILARIOUS!"


Bet Ivanka is pissy about it though! Do you think Junior knows you cannot run for President from a prison cell?

February 24, 2019

It Is Official. The Unicorn Is Shitting Itself.



[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/feb/24/the-brexit-unicorn-still-evades-capture-but-the-choice-is-clear#img-1|

There needs to be a second reformation. Did anyone see that new Sky 1 programme about a dystopian world where people race to get out? We were watching it on catch up last night and our natural assumption was that this was a post Brexit world.... Unicorns should be shitting themselves.
February 23, 2019

In the 70's women had to bounce on a bench & wince to prove rape. 21st C digital version...

... we will not pursue a prosecution unless you had over your phone and everything on it to the police.

In the 1970's they would not believe a woman had been raped unless she passed their wince test of her bouncing hard on her vagina on a hard wooden bench and they would determine how 'sensitive' her vagina was... presumably the more chaste her vagina the more likely she was to have been a victim of sexual assault.

Today - in the independent - this:

After giving three interviews, a specialist officer said she had to hand in her mobile phone.

“She said there was a new rule that with all rape cases, the victim has to hand their phone to the police so that all the detail on it can be downloaded – social media messages, photos everything – to make sure nothing comes out as a surprise in the investigation that would bring down the case,” Sarah added.

When she asked what would happen if she did not hand over her phone, the officer “just said that the case couldn’t go ahead”.


[link:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rape-victim-mobile-phone-police-england-wales-sex-attack-crime-disclosure-a8790606.html|

The 21st digital version of having to bounce on a bench.... different century, same fucking patriarchy.

February 23, 2019

Causation? Correlation? Both?

February 23, 2019

Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?

In the 2016 primary, Democratic voters were presented with a choice: Sanders, who represented the potential of redistributive policy, and Clinton, who represented the possibility of shattering, as she put it, the last, highest glass ceiling. She dismissed his ideas as impractical; his supporters attacked her with a virulent misogyny that belied their nominal commitments to equality. For leftist women, to express enthusiasm for Sanders’ policy proposals was seen as condoning the sexist attacks on Clinton. To defend Clinton from sexism meant that we would be accused of condoning the worst choices of her history. This choice, between Sanders and Clinton, redistribution and representation, has been the central conflict of American progressive politics in the years since. You can have either redistribution or representation, the thinking goes, but not both.
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Why would Democratic voters choose Sanders when Warren is running? The two are not ideologically identical, but the differences between their major policy stances, on regulation of financial services and the need to extend the welfare state, are relatively minor, especially compared to the rest of the field. Warren calls herself a capitalist, the Sanders partisans point out, while Sanders is unafraid of the label “socialist”. That’s one thing. But this point has the quality of a post-hoc rationalization. It is cited by those seeking a politically acceptable reason to vote for a man and not for a woman – those who would vote for this man, and perhaps not any woman, no matter what.
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But Warren’s primary virtue over Sanders is that she seems to understand the inextricable binds between racial and gender discrimination and the economic injustice that both candidates abhor. She has made statements about the reality of racial discrimination, how it compounds with economic injustice to keep people of color from entering and staying in the middle class.

Sanders, meanwhile, speaks about the struggles of the working class in reductionist and retro ways; he seems to hold an anachronistic understanding of the American worker as white and male, oppressed only by his bosses and not at the same time by the structures of racism and sexism.


[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/20/sanders-elizabeth-warren-feminism-identity|

This is my number one frustration with old white male socialists - they have no understanding of and do not wish to understand that identity politics has a place if progressive agendas' are ever going to be successful. They come from a position of white male privilege, and however much they want to see change they will always see change through that prism. It is what it is. But in 2019 there are other, better choices.
February 23, 2019

White evangelicals rationalizing Trump be like

https://twitter.com/TalbertSwan/status/1099048847395950592

White evangelicals rationalizing Trump:

“God used...
Saul, who persecuted Christians
David, who was an adulterer Rahab, who was a prostitute
Moses, who was a murderer
Noah, who was a drunkard...
... so God can use Trump”

Same white evangelicals on Obama:

“He’s the antichrist”


Heh
February 23, 2019

Have you ever noticed?



Heh. Good point. Well made.

Profile Information

Gender: Female
Hometown: UK
Home country: UK
Current location: UK
Member since: Fri Oct 13, 2017, 06:59 PM
Number of posts: 9,685

About Soph0571

I am a Brit. I am a working class child of the troubles in Belfast who now lives a life of privilege. I am an anti-racist, progressive monster for truth. If I fail in being that monster, call me out....
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