Category: activism
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Sorry, we broke the revolution?

I have a great view of the pincers of sexism from here just now. When we talk about gender being oppression, we’re not just talking about different dress codes. There have been ructions recently within feminism over women working with right wing organisations – particularly when trans-Atlantic link-ups have blurred people’s view, and led to…
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2022: Sisters, the campaign starts here

“This is the year our collective righteous bloody-minded refusal to shut the fuck up finally broke the impenetrable wall of ‘no debate’” – Jane Clare Jones on Twitter, 31st Dec 2021 Click here to read the whole message. So we have won the right to have the debate. Now, we need to win the debate.…
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A note on pronouns that contradicts a previous post I did on pronouns

Like the vast majority of people, I used to politely use whatever pronouns people wanted me to use. That goes right back to my teens in the 1970s, when I knew gay people, and camp entertainers, who were male, but liked to be called ‘she’. Why would one not go along with it? As to…
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Spoonfuls

I am going to found a media corporation, just like all the others. I’m going to call it Spoonfuls. For every court case, dispute, scandal or other human flurry that gets noticed, I will pick a woman or sometimes, for variety, a slightly goofy beardy man, and put that person’s photo in the news every…
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If you were honest, what would you say?

Or Janice’s Goats ***Long Read *** I used to think I lived in a free country – born in the UK in the 1960s, it was a long time before I questioned the idea. Even when I discovered it wasn’t entirely true, I was still aware that as countries went, our country in the 20th…
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The gender-critical stance: a review of the basics

***Long read*** originally written for those thinking about Coming Out on the 19th The core principle: sex and gender There is ‘sex‘ – our species is naturally divided into male and female: not just us though. We are one type of the huge biological group called ‘mammals’. There has never been any doubt. Women and…
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What are prisons for?

When I was younger, most people who weren’t on the fairly far right politically thought prisons were a safe place to put people who were a danger to others. Knowing that there are very few women who are seriously a danger to others, I went along to a meeting about prisons recently and discovered that…
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Thirty Years Ago

***Long Read*** I’ve been reading a report called Blood Sweat and Tears, about a project in the 1990s, instigated to address rising racial tensions, crime and related problems on an estate in Bermondsey. I have this temptation to make a terrible joke first, and I think I’m going to give in to it, and say…
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Local politics – identity v solidarity

If there is anything like a progressive alliance in May, or at the next General Election, it’s going to have to be based on something better than party politics. Last week, I wrote a piece calling for independent candidates for next year’s council elections (well, any elections that happen next year really) because it seems…
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Make lousy politicians a minority

We could do this. Here’s how… There are millions of people in this country who, like me, have used the phrase ‘politically homeless’. They have been thrown out of, or lost faith in, their ‘natural’ choice of party. There are also increasing numbers of people who, like me, have realised there’s more to politics than…