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.

Up the hill across the long lawn, dark patches in the snow showed melt of a warm day ending. Spotted among them I could see the arc of my own footprints, that morning’s escape plan executed through a particular space between the trees chosen for its darkness.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I had no idea what separatism was.

Doing some long-overdue digging, I learned it’s at the root of the weed that’s choking modern politics.

Research Is Safe And Fun!

I quickly found myself lost in a dense, dry old bramble. Kathy Rudy’s tale of joining a ‘radical feminist’ group is littered with breadcrumbs along the trail into the political wilderness.

She describes the lesbian community she joined in North Carolina in 1980. They put separatism first, theorizing among themselves about an ‘essential female nature’ that inevitably reflected their own experience.

Even the sex industry is hurting from COVID.

You’d think an influx of qualified applicants might be a good thing but, according to The Independent, “Niki Adams, a spokesperson for the English Collective of Prostitutes, said, ‘…The pandemic has been devastating for sex workers.‘”

“Women’s income has dropped off completely. We have helped hundreds of sex workers in need of emergency food with vouchers and also helped them with benefits.’“

The article describes how the world is closing in on them, arguing the UK government should decriminalize their chosen field so they can get official help: “We are disadvantaged because we have been locked out from the government’s support packages. Most sex workers are mothers but people don’t know that.“

What does ‘liberal’ mean to you?

In my recent post on the horrendous housing in Hong Kong, I couldn’t help but remark on the irony of the living conditions of millions in the so-called “Freest Economy in the World.”

Free for whom, exactly? To do what? Certainly not free from pain and anxiety for the average citizen, crammed into living spaces smaller than an American parking space. They are not even free to sleep in peace, to meditate, to masturbate, to avoid petty conflict and pest infestations. They are not free to raise their children in a healthy environment.

What do words like ‘freedom’ and ‘liberal’ actually mean?

Hong Kong has been in the news for a while now. Many of us will have at least a passing familiarity with the fact that the Chinese government is experimenting with various methods of running them into the ground.

But a more long-standing problem – in the country deemed 2020’s Freest Economy by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal – is the spiraling price of real estate.

Vox recently published a video addressing the issue. Land scarcity, the obvious suspect in an island nation of millions, is not the problem. Only about 3% of Hong Kong is zoned for urban housing.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is currently hearing a case of a little girl whose teacher told her little girls don’t exist.

After a few rounds of this, the 6-year-old told her parents she needed to “go to the doctor” because she “had to do something” about being a girl.

“If everyone has a gender identity,” said Ontario public defender Lisa Bildy, “and [they] are protected under the Code, then her identity as a girl should be protected.”

But they are not stopping there. The complaint goes on to allege that the teacher’s conduct undermined the girl’s foundational concept of herself. And that it contradicted biological reality.

Yesterday evening in Toronto, the irrepressible Meghan Murphy spoke for about 30 minutes at the public library.

Her program, Gender Identity – Society, the Law and Women, follows in a string of appearances in Canada and Britain. These events are increasingly controversial, and the Toronto library was the scene of vehement protest.

Meghan is a Feminist freelance writer. She has become more and more high-profile since Gender ID became law in Canada.

(Seriously, they even record crime statistics according to the offender’s “expressed gender” rather than sex. Get ready for a spike in “female” crime in Canada….)