14 Jan 2013

Attack of the feminist journalists...on women

Feminism:the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. You'd think this would equate to some form of solidarity. Not according to the national press it doesn't. 

In the RED corner, self professed militant feminist Julie Burchill aggressively attacked transsexual women, apparently in defence of her friend Suzanne Moore. Moore's crime was to say that one of the idealised body images for women was that of a Brazillian transsexual. The twitter community got cross (they do that) and Moore left twitter. Now, rather than commenting on how twitterstorms can reduce us to a baying mob, or elevate us in unity over a subject, Burchill decided to attack female transsexuals as an aberration. According to Burchill's article (which you can read in full over here), transsexuals PLAGUE her friends. Not only this, but they label 'born women' as CIS, which sounds like CYST or SYPH.Cis is derived from Latin meaning 'on the same side', rather than cyst, which means bag or syph which is merely a short form of syphillis and of no etymological note. Being cisgendered or cissexual means that your genitals match up to your self-perception It's not a perjorative term. However, she liked this as akin to calling transsexuals 'shims', which most definitely IS perjorative. After insulting transsexual women (women only, whether Burchill's never heard of female to male transsexuality or if she simply thinks they don't count, who can tell?) she goes on to say, and for this I think we need the full quote
Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we've experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. 
That's right. All women - all of us - are menopausal and terrified of transsexuals. One would think that Burchill, as a bisexual feminist with a torrid personal life, would show a little more empathy.

In the BLUE corner sits another self-proclaimed feminist, the poisonous Liz Jones of the Daily Fail. Last year, Liz Jones attracted some ire after ripping into Holly Willoughby for daring to post a makeup-free picture. The bitter spiel (which you can read here, but be warned, it's the Daily Mail) claimed that Holly, at the time aged 31, could not possibly be a real woman because Jones - a rather older 52 - looked shit when she got out of bed in the morning. She went on to say that women who don't wear makeup are not *real* women. As a woman who has never worn makeup and has amazing skin, I can say that maybe if Jones had worn less, she wouldn't look quite as rough as she does now. Anyway, that aside, this week Jones has decided to attack Clare Balding. Ostensibly, this is because Balding, whose father is a racehorse trainer, likes horse racing. Jones thinks horse racing is barbaric. However, instead of just saying "I don't like Clare Balding because horseracing is vile.", which would be a fair statement, she tells us that her dislike of Balding has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to with her CHEAP OUTFITS and LESBIANISM. On further reading (again, be warned, it's the DM), it becomes clear that the real reason Liz Jones (who identifies with some mythical reading public of women who can afford facelifts and Prada) hates Clare Balding is because Clare Balding refused to be interviewed by her. Otherwise, I daresay it would have been an article of gushing praise. Liz Jones has essentially made a living by saying "Oooh, I'm such a mess me! I hate men, but I need them, even though I am RICH and I can afford a FACELIFT so I can be beautiful, unlike you PLEBS" under the thin guise of speaking up for WIMMINZ EVERYWHERE. Vile woman.

There are not enough female journalists in the mainstream media. Maybe, in trying to make a point, those that have achieved a column in a national feel they have to be as outrageous as possible to keep a hold of their place - especially for Liz Jones, who manages to score a massive hit rate from the Ms Angrys of Twitter. All they do is spew hatred and bile for women all over the press, in the name of feminism. It is they who give feminists a bad name. Feminism simply means that women want the same opportunities as men, rather than being treated as inferior. However, in Burchill's case, this means finding transsexual women inferior because they aren't 'born women', and in Jones' case it means finding ANYONE WHO ISN'T LIZ JONES inferior, because she is apparently a paragon of womanhood.

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