IV

Christmastime brought everyone together in the upstairs drawing room.

“Be sure to stick it through the centre,” Mother pinched a large, dull needle and a kernel of popcorn just above her knees, before the eyes of little Lulu. Piercing it firmly, she pulled the puffed kernel along the string to meet its brothers. “Your turn,” she handed the needle to Lulu before standing from the settee and crossing toward the window, the Christmas tree, and me.

Things have been rough-going for a while. I have mentioned before how I often feel overwhelmed by personal responsibilities, let alone maintaining any kind of online presence.

I’m trying to keep the blog and YT channel alive until at least Summer, the little guy starts school this Fall so I will suddenly have whole chunks of time to fill. I will miss him, of course, it’s sad to see him leaving such a simple time of life. I do miss my babies, but I also miss my hobbies.

Recently, the Gender Critical community was rocked by the sudden removal of a prominent voice from a prominent platform.

“I do plan to keep making this content, because it’s more important now than ever to keep speaking out.” 

The Case Against The Case Against CAIS

Exulansic made her well-considered views known regarding whether individuals born with the anomaly of sexual development known as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome should be counted as women. There was some passionate disagreement, but she stood her ground and even won over a few people.

Two very interesting creators sat down to have a conversation. Well over an hour long, I was prepared to settle in for a while.

But 20 minutes in, one of them takes a tangent from their discussion of male and female archetypes, “The girl who wrote ‘Sex and the City’ is now like 50, and she’s alone. And she writes that she actually regrets being alone and not having kids.”

Naturally, I had to go find out if this were true. Reading while listening to Jungian theory being too much for me, I had to dip out of the video before it really got going.

“I just don’t want men in women’s spaces, and I don’t care how those men identify.”

The clip is Kellie-Jay Keen (AKA Posie Parker) attempting to converse with someone called James Max, “It’s up to everybody however they want to live their life, but when it impinges on my life – ” 

“How does it impinge on your life?” Jim is cavalier in his home field advantage.

“Being a girl and hitting puberty is so traumatic.”

An anonymous Tumblr post expressed a common shame in simple words. It rippled through Gender Critical social media in the form of screenshots after the original post was quickly deleted.

Her spurt of stifled frustration struck a chord, breathlessly relating a firsthand account of female suppression: “You go from being a genderless little free thing to being hit with shaving and makeup and growing breasts and skincare and menstruation and suddenly being sexualized, 

“Among the ‘strong-minded women’ who met to attend the convention was Amelia Bloomer – The lady who goes in for breeches and buncomb.”

Dress historian Abby Cox quotes a catty article from 1853, describing feminists as women who subscribe to pants and nonsense – You know, that crazy stuff about women being full people who deserve rights.

“I didn’t actually wanna bring it up, because of some personal biases towards it. It gets brought up a lot when people talk about feminism and clothing in the 19th century, so [it was] kinda me being like, ‘Ugh!’ 

The new Daily Show is pretty bad.

Jon Stewart recently rejoined the conversation on his own non-network show, a little grayer but with his signature energy intact. He’s back to his consciousness-raising schtick, covering topics like gun violence and economic inequality with the deft balance we came to expect during his 16-year tenure in the Daily Show anchor chair.

Your Replacement Is Here

Around the world, the spread of the pandemic has illustrated the existing social patterns in real time.

Here in Tennessee, we are almost last in line. West Virginia was recently declared the 50th state to see an official case.

Watching it take over Reddit, Twitter, and finally YouTube, was like studying a bowling ball from the POV of a pin.

I got to learn which of my friends pay attention to the outside world. Which of my friends, whether on purpose or not, had been absorbing right-wing talking points.

The Washington Post spilled a lot of digital ink recently to pose a simple question:

What does it mean when left-wing feminists and conservatives work together?

“Tensions between the TERFs and transgender activists erupted at the Seattle Public Library as hundreds of women -“

Stop right there. Please enjoy this photo of those hundreds of “women.”

Hot stuff, no?