Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

"i achieved exactly the correct level of anti-racism and anti-sexism in 1985"

measured in units of 80's pc'ness known as ben-eltons - and piss off Outspan!

bit of politics

The inevitable sense that history's passing you by, and the inevitable refusal to admit it

"you can't call me a bigot... I once shared a stage with lenny henry"

there's a handful of centrist ultra-dads who i've always been on perfectly affable professional terms with (bcz FITING ONLINE is not really my thing) who i honestly permanently now want to say this to: "in 20 years your children will absolutely despise you and YOU WILL HAVE EARNED THIS"

and i'm right and as a so-called friend i probably should actually find a way to say this out loud bcz they shd be thinking abt it (maybe less abruptly, meaning if i shd work out a way that's actually effective lol)

but it also feels like energies diverted to a pointless mini-arena -- they are all ppl who if the tide genuinely turned (whatever this means) wd brainlessly swing along with it so. so maybe im not really friends with them in any way any more. this is a debilitating thing to process: i come from a generation which built itself several quite bad vehicles for solidarity at a time when solidarity was under attack and i think my instinct since the 90s has been to hunt for better vehicles* rather than seize the wheel and fruitlessly attempt to steer the old bad vehicle in a better direction

*dril-standom and channer meme repurposing

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/623/463/d90.jpg

I was listening to archBlairite and professional bigot Trevor Phillips talking about his 80s lefty friends and he described Piers Corbyn as a "one of the most intelligent people I ever met at college"!

Lol Boris has a piece still out there in the Telegraph where he consulted Piers Corbyn about climate change (!)

does Piers think that's a made-up conspiracy too?

lol i saw an extract on twitter recently of a high-end maths paper that cited one t.kaczynski and there was a footnote that simply said: "better known subsequently for other work"

in conclusion intelligence is a trap

xxp https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/24/piers-corbyn-other-rebel-in-the-family-jeremy-corbyn-climate-change

oh, Pierspaws

How old are their kids, Mark, are we sure they don't already despise them?

SM’s kids are full Corbynistas.

the ones i have in mind are still infants i think, or tweens at most

From a distance it really seems like the TERFy bullshit is so much more a prevailing thing in the UK than elsewhere, so many more journos/public figures weirdly making it central to their identities. Why?!?

https://theoutline.com/post/6536/british-feminists-media-transphobic

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/terf-trans-women-britain.html

Thanks for the links.

I had no idea of the links back to homoeopathy skepticism. Seems a weird path to some fucked up conclusions.

The UK Skeptic movement was always much broader than homeopathy iirc and links back to the roots of a lot of the militant Centrist stuff you see now.

it seemed to include a lot of ex-leftists starting to embrace centrist and to some extent far right politics (without necessarily recognising it at such, or as politics at all)

maybe that’s just 90s/00s liberalism in general

It's interesting how easily you (well, me) could be dragged into a community of that easy logical scientific language in a group that considered itself full of rational sceptics but somehow ended up campaigning to inspect people's genitals in swimming pools.

this is about a previous incident but aside from a few specifics is relevant to more recent stuff too

https://newsocialist.org.uk/on-the-guardians-transphobic-centrism/

liberal UK media’s deafening silence over the US right wing funding of UK transphobia as an anti-gay, anti-feminist wedge issue needs to be thrown in their faces at every opportunity

also touched on is the deep connection between trans issues and the issues around sex work, policing, prison, borders, capitalism, that these people (guardian & fellow travellers, plus a lot of the ‘actual’ left) do not want to address in any serious way

all of these articles get at part of the picture but the best explanation and analysis of this whole phenomenon probably (hopefully) yet to come

xp

when so much of what binds the community is “we’re so much better than these idiots who don’t understand science” it’s not surprising that so many went on to target people who troubled their junior school understanding of sex/gender. the men mostly targeted feminists at first- at the time many seemed to think trans issues were just another part of the whole feminist ideology that they wanted to debunk. some later changed their tune on feminism when they realised how they could use it

xps to onimo, I have always been deeply suspicious of the sceptic movement due to their attitude towards women and Muslims, so it’s not as much as a leap for me. But a lot of these groups out there will cloak their intentions in reasonable sounding language, or dogwhistles, so you sound insane pointing it out.

that nytimes piece was v good, i've never heard of sophie lewis before but it did manage to wrangle in a very good overview of the rise of terfism in the uk while resisting being drawn into terfisms frames of reference

the nyt one is good. i was wary of the other one, which didn’t really stack up for me but i haven’t got time or energy today to really understand why.

it seems very reductive tbh

I have the NS in my rss feed and so this is the first time I've seen the page itself, text is pretty unreadable!

yeah that layout was yuck but i think it can be adjusted?

That their own heinous rhetoric does not, in fact, match the scientific data they purport to draw upon has not occurred to these enlightened folks, it seems.

And yeah, that NYT piece was an excellent summary.

Another normal one.

There is literally no UK newspaper that stands up for trans people and especially kids. Here are the liberal lions of the Observer - an editorial, so the view of the paper itself - spouting fringe talking points and anti-science garbage. https://t.co/h6KfWCHPWU

— James Mackenzie (@mrjamesmack) December 6, 2020

i guess they'll keep doing this as long as people keep clicking its depressing

I don't see it as click-bait. The people who wrote it would hold onto that view regardless.

i guess i meant more that as much as i'd like to buycott the guardian (and for us all to buycott it, and for them to come begging us to read their stupid weekend guide section on outdoor swimming) and think its an awful pile of shit i end up reading it all the time (with adblocker on ha!)

puff piece on MLC today is it

Oh look, it's Sunday again.

freedlands smug fucking face pushing the standard concern trolling liberal wankers party line over the phrase 'defund the police'. all the right people are just terrified of these words

FWIW in Australia the local version of the Guardian is one of the best outlets around, which is partly because it's not as fucked as the UK version, and partly because all the competition is Murdoch sewage.

No newspaper is going to run an editorial opposing that high court judgement, get real.

Because?

Who or what is MLC?

mlc is marie le conte, a writer many dislike or distrust

She's a dangerous right-wing politician, President of the National Rally political party (previously named National Front) since 2011, with a brief interruption in 2017. She has been the member of the National Assembly for Pas-de-Calais's 11th constituency since 18 June 2017.

that's marine le pen, she's also bad

in fairness probably slightly worse than maire le conte

No, I'm pretty sure she's better

only one way to find out...