Guardian article here

A 16-year-old girl in Cornwall was repeatedly called a “slapper” because she had a large bust; she eventually had a breast reduction in the hope that the bullying would stop. A 14-year-old girl in Essex endured months of being called a “slag” and a “skank” and contemplated suicide; one day about 30 teenagers set on her, pulling her top down and exposing her breasts. She was beaten up so badly she was in hospital for three days. A 16-year-old schoolboy was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, and another was charged for filming the attack and distributing the pictures on his mobile phone.

…

Sarah, 17, was bullied by a group of boys as soon as she started secondary school. “I was called names like ’slut’ and ‘whore’ - those were terms most boys used against girls,” she says. “I was shy and I wore clothes that covered me up, and a group of boys would always ask me to take off my jumper, open up my shirt a bit, or tell me I should be wearing skirts so they could see my legs. A group of boys would grab me in corridors - it was embarrassing and I felt disgusting, but I couldn’t do anything back. I just froze until they left. There were other girls they would touch too.”

More to say about this later.

and called my last post a “stew of insanity”.

This is my blog.  On it I collect bits of news, I link to other articles that interest me, I do the occasional bit of analysis, I ask questions, I talk a very little about myself, I post photos of  sexism that I see around me.  I also on occasion use my blog as a space to ditch the heap of thoughts rambling through my brain, that stop me from sleeping, that make my head throb and make it difficult for me to concentrate.  I am bipolar, and i’m in the middle of a particularly horrible crash, and so I unloaded.  I’m not a “psycho”, i’m a manic depressive.

You can learn more about bipolar disorder here and here.

Support for meritocracy allows racists to continue being racist, sexists to continue being sexist, almost everyone to continue attacking the “purpose” of those with disabilities or disorders, etc.  And yet I see an overwhelming amount of support for meritocracy and individualist centred brands of politics among so called progressives all over the place.  Class politics in the UK were already complicated enough for me to understand when they said you supposedly either had it, or you didnt, but the reality of who fell into either category was more complex than anyone wanted to admit, and what people were telling me never seemed to tie up with what I have actually witnessed and experienced.  Add meritocracy and the American Dream into the mix and the whole thing just spins so far out that noone makes sense anymore.

I’m confused.  I’m fed up.  Too many individualist leftists indulging in victim blaming and meritocracy worshipping, alleged anarchists and socialists indulging the evolutionary psychologists (thank you Dr Socks for introducing me to a whole new set of weirdos, but they do keep popping up everywhere don’t they) by accepting it as a “science” rather than as only slightly different explanations (excuses) for the same old entitlement and the same old oppressions.  Women are women because we have women’s brains, men are men because they have men’s brains, and men’s brains and women’s brains are fundamentally different except when that man is really a woman or that woman is really a man, but regardless - men’s brains whether in a man or a woman are superior and women’s brains whether in a woman or a man are inferior.

The left is too far right, women are still for sale but somehow capitalism becomes empowering when it’s us being commodified, and nothing makes sense.  Everything is backwards, contradiction is hailed as truth and truth is trashed as the rantings of crazy people who allegedly enjoy being victims, who are “probably” turned on by the victimisation of their sisters, that victimisation which they spend their time tirelessly trying to make public.  Somehow screaming NO! is really a sign that in secret, we like it, we desire it, we protest only because we find it sexually stimulating - now where have I heard all that before?  Are people really so desperate to fit in that they will overlook this stuff as if it doesn’t matter, as if this sort of blatant doublespeak and victim blaming language is compatible with liberation struggles?

Was I completely deluded to think that it was the people on the right who only cared about the lives and fates of their own selfish selves, and that those on the left were more inclined to care about the lives and fates of us all, collectively, as people all under the same sun?  When did the left start parroting Thatcher, who they claim to hate, but even so I’m really having difficulty seeing where the line is, between them and her.  “There is no such thing as society”.  Indeed.  Or maybe I’m too young to have understood until now that that was always the way, and only now am I beginning to see that no matter how much some people might say anti racism, no matter how much they might say feminism, no matter how much they might try to claim these positions and actions, i do not think it means what they think it means.

What an utterly cryptic and useless post I gave you.   I’m working it through, bear with me.  Too much going on, not a great enough handle on my own language to express what I need to.

Blog is back online.  But there is nothing new to see here, yet.