I am still here

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I would like to write to comfort you and provide solace, and wisdom and yes, hope. This doesn’t come easily to me as my brain’s neurons are trained to misfire in cognitive distortions such as black and white thinking and catastrophizing and that is when I am low, never mind when I have been ‘high’ and I have been reckless, impulsive and yes, deluded… hurt and traumatized too. My diagnosed illness as such does not entirely make sense to me. I will come back to that. But there are times when I am in a good mood, sensibly so, and I am light and make jokes and just warm up around people.

 I can find joy in tramping around fields and forest paths, soaking in the fresh air, the birds singing to each other, the immense verdancy of my surroundings and my attempts to identify the flowers… ‘Are they bluebells.. or not?’ I ask myself, leaning in and photographing them, hoping to get the depth of field just right.

 I want to celebrate existence, the fact that any of us exist at all is so incredibly low and that meaning-making is always worth pursuing, elusive as it can appear to be on times, you know those times when you feel as low as the depths of this earth of ours in the pitch blackness of another almost sleepless night. And I know that what I am describing are experiences that millions of us share, even the manic highs where you are convinced you are made of rare earth material and your fame travels continents…. Even THAT – the very definition of madness – or some variation of such delusions of grandeur – are known to something near 3% of people, give or take. We genetic curiosities are human too, trying our best to navigate ourselves in a bewildering traffic of emotional turmoil on overlapping motorways of experience, hoping against hope not to be written off as simply the ‘severely mentally ill’ by those we wish would befriend us instead.

I would like to write free of self-pity and with dignity and grace. Be able to say ‘I am free of depression … the dull melancholy …. The thoughts that I am alone and trapped’ gone, with the YouTube therapy videos having successfully done their work on me.  I want to remember myself laughing and joking, vivacious and gregarious, making other people feel good, with a strong sense of my own value, a strong sense of self-worth, ready to live life and embrace it and at peace with the fact that sadness and pain are inevitable features of our existence but not all of it, no not at all. I like to remind myself that I am loveable and worthy of love, respect and appreciation. Believe that I can heal and that aging actually has benefits and that turning forty is something to welcome and embrace with my still young-ooking features and greater skills and experience.

I believe that one day, one day I’m going to find a way to write about my experiences in a positive, constructive way; see the light coming through the cracks with all of Rumi’s wisdom and yes, have the courage to be disliked by some whilst feeling nurtured by those who encourage me and believe in me, despite the fracturing of my mind, the malfunctioning of my brain. I am going to find the ability to focus on the positive, on those people who care and filter out the rest. I’ve always had courage and I am now courageous to assert that I exist, I have value and the one day – one day soon – it will be enough for me to know this in myself, for myself and that your validation – whilst welcome – is no longer essential. I will relish that day.

Do women exist?  – the science of sex, the politics of gender, and the materialist and dialectical thinking needed to distinguish the two

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This is an outstanding essay.

A worker at large

With law changes pending in the UK, New Zealand and other places that will make it simpler for people to change the sex marker on their birth certificates (and moves in the opposite direction apparently being discussed in the US government circles), scientists have waded into the debate on transgender ideology. They are not shy about waving about their scientific credentials as they attempt to answer what is fundamentally a political rather than a scientific question. And in doing so, they are not only joining an assault on women’s rights, but also doing a great disservice to scientific thinking. You don’t have to be a scientific expert to see this.

Dr Siouxsie Wiles

Siouxsie Wiles is an Associate Professor in Molecular Medicine and Pathology at Auckland University, who popularises scientific ideas in various media including Radio New Zealand and Stuff. She published an article  on Stuff 26 November is headed

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resist.street protest photography highlights 2018. #radicalfeminism #femalerights #socialistfeminism #adulthumanfemale #womynpower #lesbianrights #pussypower #radfemme #fourthwavenow #internationalism #antiracism #radfemart #radfem #abortionrights #femaleliberation

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Green Party must accept failings in its dealings with David Challenor

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This is an exceptionally disturbing case of the most unspeakable paedophila and misogyny imaginable. The Green Party in Coventry knowingly had this gross abuser as a prominent activist despite his arrest. ‘Amy’s judgment was at best profoundly flawed and demonstrates a lack of any basic safeguarding knowledge and gross irresponsibility towards the rights of girls and women. Perhaps also a victim of this despicable man, ‘Amy’ is clearly vulnerable and unfit to be a policy advisor on equality or anything else for that matter. But my heart goes out to David Challenor’s young female victim. The traumas she has endured as a  result of this pervert and his complicit local party members is completely beyond the pale.  The Green Party’s attempt to cover up these profoundly disturbing events is unfortunately part of a common pattern of organisational misogyny and rampant male predators in ‘leadership’ party positions across the soft and hard left r.e.  the Socialist Worker’s Party rape cover up scandal and The Socialist Party’s protection of male sex predators and public victimisation of the female survivors including my own case with the latter party.

The growing evidence of left wing parties from the mainstream (Labour and The Greens, for example) and the hard left (Trots and anarchists) consistently prioritising men’s so called sex rights (no one has the right to sex) and silencing women in their groups / parties is now overwhelming; this is why Radical and Socialist Feminism is reviving, new and older women activists are organising and drawing conclusions from the commonality of our experiences of being victimised, labelled (‘mad’, ‘man-hater’, ‘liar’, ‘SWERF’ and ‘TERF’ – I’ve been called all these and a lot worse), witch-hunted and ostracised and no platformed by so called ‘comrades’. We are reaching the most serious crisis of purpose, integrity and vision on the left which only weakens our class struggle to the sole benefit of our ruling class masters.  No more male violence and abuse against girls and women. We get a grip now or never.

Green Party must accept failings in its dealings with David Challenor

Female XX solidarity, organisation and unity are vital forms of self-defence against the cruel male left indifference & failures

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Female solidarity and organisation is essential to empower us and end our isolation; male pseudo-leftists who can recite Lenin or Propotkin out of their anuses in a series of pompous brain farts fear this the most, hence their intense hatred of ‘TERFs’ (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’) and apparent total incapacity (actually it’s unwillingness) to acknowledge women’s rights to sex segregated safe spaces (refuges, prisons, changing rooms and toilets, female-only healthcare professionals and services) and our right to sexual autonomy and reject heterosexual men if we so wish, including, above all, the lesbian (adult female homosexual) community.

These are just some of the conclusions that I have reached at this point in historic time, summer 2018 (at the time of writing) and after an incredible 18 years of socialist feminist activity on my part – Am I really this old, already? Yes, yes I am. And naturally I ask myself what is ahead for me as an independent socialist feminist? What joys yet around the corner?

For the corporate, misogynistic anti-feminist backlash is ferocious, perverse and mind-bending in it’s Orwellian ‘post-modern distortions’ of language and concepts where material  reality is denied and women cease to exist. The compulsory double-think these modern-day Witch-hunters demand from us on pain of public denunciations, ostracism and even violence if we do not comply is all perfectly permissible for a patriarchal left which is in favour of a ‘feminism’ which is suitably submissive to male so called sex rights – in other words – the pro trans and pro–sex work schools of liberal, third wave feminism – which represents the capitalist, patriarchal co-option, infiltration and privatization of feminism, stripping it of all actual feminist content in a mind-frying mix of corporate-funded indoctrination, deception and mass psychological manipulation via its access to states, funding and blanket promotion in most of the mass media of our day. Like Facebook, for example, censoring gender critical feminists.

The only form of feminism that the male- dominated leadership of the socialist / anarchist / labour movement bureaucracy accepts is the convenient acquiescence of third-wave feminism, even if it is liberal and completely un-marxian in reality – your classic male RoboTrot will still prefer the version of feminism where they get to remain porn addicts and get moral kudos and the badge of libertarianism whilst, despite all their fine words to the contrary (for claiming to be a feminist is a well-known male tactic to get young feminists to have sex with them), they in reality get to keep all their male priviledges, treat women as sex objects and yes, mistreat us, whilst staying in power with their selected handmaiden female co-leaders to do their dirty work and cover-up for them.

There are so many state recognized / funded feminist organisations which have unfortunately swallowed the corporate, hierarchical logic of capitalist realism and therefore neutered themselves to the point where they have almost all capitulated to the trans lobby and are therefore giving up women’s legal right to sex segregated safe spaces – the whole point of these organisations in the first place!

This same anti-feminism disguised as ‘intersectional feminism’ is the safe feminism of female handmaidens, aspiring managers and middle-class snowflakes and opportunistic social climbers (working class and middle-class ones  -student unions and the trade unions primary function these days is to provide careers for bureaucrats who will do anything to avoid getting an actual job outside the sheltered, closed world of the professional Social Justice Warrior, so derided and lampooned by the Alt-Right). Corporate-friendly ‘Diversity’ training of the alphabet soap kind is actually a good ‘career move’ in the former public sector (like Further Education in Wales, as an example) – if you have the personality of a opportunist, calculating, power-hungry, company man / woman -and there’s no shortage of this personality type in just about any workplace you can think of.

However, I recognize the risk that my depression distorts my cognitive interpretations of the world with the cursed negative filter of a life unwilling lived with an inbuilt negative cognitive basis stemming from early childhood. So to remedy the anger I know that I legitimately feel after a lifetime of sexist discrimination and shit, I want to finish on an optimistic note. The growing and heroic resistance of radical and socialist feminists and, most importantly of all, previously not necessarily political ‘ordinary’ women (Aren’t we all just ordinary women?), many mothers who are waking up to the threats to our female sex based rights which the transgender lobby cult is currently posing to the welfare, safety and free speech rights of girls and women and boys who are not gender conforming. I recently attended a gender critical feminist organising meeting in Cardiff (secretly held because of the oppressive shutting down of our meetings otherwise). We are organising in Wales and we are ready to help make herstory. More to follow….