Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[redsquirrel]

Badcock snigger

Sexist!

 

[rekil]

193,000 page views so far for this thread. I wonder how that compares with the New Statesman's circulation.

I'm sure it was around 160,000 on sunday morning. I hope the masses of lurkers piling in for red hot misogynist action aren't too disappointed with stuff like the SWP membership list stats discussion .

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Aren't all ravens black? It is a bit superfluous, like calling a snowman a white snowman.

I'd be having words with Stalin.

Yes, but that was their nickname. You'd be shitting it if they pulled up outside your block of flats, even if they were painted pink with yellow dots, and their passengers were dressed as cute squirrels.

 

[JimW]

... red 'hot misogynist' action...

My God, not another baseless slur on our bold comrades in the IWCA

 

[sihhi]

I legally changed my surname at the age of 16 to my mother's family name, rather than my father's. A feminist thing. Do you have some sort of problem with that?

I don't, but, do you?

The most successful female artists of our time have perfected the work of chameleon femininity. They are Cinderellas with a new dress for every ball, exchanging personae like lesser mortals change clothes. Nicki Minaj, Dita Von Teese, and — almost definitively — Lady Gaga, the great fierce fashion ship that launched a thousand faces, whose music has become almost secondary to her wardrobe of identities: the matinee idol, the robot, the bubblegum Harajuku pop princess, the speeded-out Italian-American boyfriend, Joe Calderone, who performed “instead” of Gaga at the 2011 MTV awards, incidentally and mercifully disturbing Justin Bieber for life.... Minaj-Beyoncé-VonTeese-Madonna-Gaga. None of these women artists, significantly, work under the names they were born with. Writing that down tugs a little at the hot, private place under the ribs because, of course, neither do I; last week, I had coffee with three highly successful women, an artist, a journalist, and an author and fashion blogger, and we looked at each other askance when we realized that all of us had changed our names for work. And we love our work. It is a part of who we are, and if we have changed ourselves to achieve the freedom to create, that does not make our work somehow less true, less our own.

 

[DotCommunist]

abukamov in a tutu is still smershin yer kneecaps

 

[Captain Hurrah]

red hot misogynist action

You badcock.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I don't get that quote at all - is she saying it's bad when lady gaga and others do it but when her and her wadical fwiends do it it's good in some way?

What point does she think she's making?

 

[free spirit]

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed
.@dieFALKENATOR you're right, the RT-reply system does make it unclear who that was directed at. My mistake, I apologise.@LoveDetective1

I couldn't see this quoted on here yet, and as many are blocked I thought I should post it.

Seems Laurie has apologised now, only mentioning LD by name mind though that probably wasn't deliberate.

 

[Firky]

I want a job as a fashion blogger.

(WTF point is she making htere? utterly confused me?)

 

[articul8]

I couldn't see this quoted on here yet, and as many are blocked I thought I should post it.

Seems Laurie has apologised now, only mentioning LD by name mind though that probably wasn't deliberate.

She's blaming spiney now

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Didn't she have a disabled friend that she looked after for a while? It may have been a boyfriend. There was some reference to this in one of her pieces. Where this friend has gone and who looks after him now I don't know. As for her voice she can hardly help that. She is young.

Oh right...so looking after someone 'for a while' is being a carer? If that's the case, does looking after an incontinent, immobile relative who has only a minimal ability to communicate constitute being a carer? Cos I've done that four times...only they used to call it being a parent.
And as for "She is young"....

a) I think you're in danger of being labelled misogynist, having lapsed inadvertently into the well-known patriarchal trope of painting a "strong forceful and informed woman' as a 'silly little girl'...not that you're wide of the mark.
b) if she is to be the media's new darling and choice as voice of the new left, then why have they picked one which sounds like it was scripted by PG Wodehouse? Other than an attempt to reduce the left to abject ridicule, why do they keep touting her as someone worth listening to?

 

[SpineyNorman]

I couldn't see this quoted on here yet, and as many are blocked I thought I should post it.

Seems Laurie has apologised now, only mentioning LD by name mind though that probably wasn't deliberate.

I most definitely was - take a look at the other tweets around the same time. I'm still a disgusting wacist.

 

[Firky]

I don't get that quote at all - is she saying it's bad when lady gaga and others do it but when her and her wadical fwiends do it it's good in some way?

What point does she think she's making?

Glad I am not the only one a bit perplexed.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Just got my response from twatter - they recommend that I block the user

 

[Captain Hurrah]

abukamov in a tutu is still smershin yer kneecaps

Nikolai Yezhov's predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda, collected women's underwear.

 

[FreddyB]

Just got my response from twatter - they recommend that I block the user

To be fair, what did you expect?

 

[not-bono-ever]

lauris is smart, very smart,I would not doubt that, but sometimes the turgid leaden prose on the tweets does give the impression of style over actual substance..

 

[sam goloden]

You wait till Lletsa sees that - more evidence of the decline of civilization.

Take it next week's feature will be on Penny/Spiney/IWCA/LD/Racism gate (need a name for it with gate at the end but think that one can probably be improved on)

The infantilisation of society, actually.

 

[Lo Siento.]

b) if she is to be the media's new darling and choice as voice of the new left, then why have they picked one which sounds like it was scripted by PG Wodehouse? Other than an attempt to reduce the left to abject ridicule, why do they keep touting her as someone worth listening to?

That's a big point for me. If she was a smart, articulate working class woman would they let here anywhere near a national newspaper? Of course they wouldn't, as it would interrupt the whole "only middle class bleeding hearts can be revolutionaries" schtick. She's there to play a role... (as are a number of other celebrity leftists, of both genders)

 

[Citizen66]

193,000 page views so far for this thread. I wonder how that compares with the New Statesman's circulation.

Yeah, but, tbf it could be 193 people have viewed it 1,000 times each.

 

[sihhi]

I don't get that quote at all - is she saying it's bad when lady gaga and others do it but when her and her wadical fwiends do it it's good in some way?

What point does she think she's making?

The full piece is from The New Inquiry, the magazine that does the Mao readings in luxury hotels.

It seems oddly Protestant to argue, as some feminists do, that somewhere under all that artifice are “real women,” that one can peel away the layers of clothing and makeup and weave and hair and skin and silicone and dig out a “genuine” person, untouched by culture and context. Smart girls know that “real beauty” is just a tag line to sell moisturizer. Walk in high heels for long enough and the bones in your feet really do change shape. Spend enough time living as an efficient office worker, an obedient wife, a high-street fashion knockout and eventually the contours of your personality do change. The idea of the self as something permanent, immutable, seems rather old-fashioned when anyone with an Internet connection can create a personal brand that works differently across multiple platforms, with different backdrops, favorite quotes and family snapshots, just as you might prepare one face to meet your friends and another to meet your father-in-law. Online or offline, this Prufrockian trick is one to which women are more accustomed than men, having been raised to the task since the very first time an adult caught us in ribbons, in feathers, in our mother’s lipstick and said, “Smile for the camera.” The 14-year-old schoolgirls who are ordered to dress in uniform knee skirts and bobby socks in the daytime know perfectly well what they are doing when they post pictures of themselves in underwear taken from above, pulling that face that works so well at a 45-degree angle.

Apparently Ru Paul is OK (watch out on that link a few images are borderline, an image refering to 'Harlot Globetrotters' might be deemed racist as well as sexist):

“May the best woman win.” That’s the tag line of RuPaul’s Drag Race, now in its fourth and most successful season — a manic send-up of everything stern and joyless about makeover-ritual television. It is self-consciously modelled on Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model, and features RuPaul doing Tyra Banks drag better than Tyra Banks does Tyra Banks in drag. The contestants come from the drag underground in all its rich, subversive history: They are all ages, all races, many of them people of color, many from inner-city backgrounds, some of them former felons. They are uninterested in escaping their class backgrounds; the emphasis is on creativity, pantomimery and fun. Participating, not winning, is the point. The show has become the super bowl for a queer America reminding itself that there was once a gay-rights movement that was not just about middle-class white soldiers and their middle-class white weddings, but about color and defiance and danger.

In an interview for Curve magazine, RuPaul tells us that drag is “dangerous because it, throughout the ages, has reminded our culture that we are not who we think we are … This is just a temporary package that you’ve put together on this planet and it’s not to be taken seriously. You’re supposed to have fun with it.” In a world where the makeover is a collective ritual and Tyra Banks and Gok Wan are its priests, RuPaul is the heretic preacher, reading culture back to itself in a funny voice. All performed femininity — like all performed masculinity — is a drag race. Cinderella was a drag queen. Margaret Thatcher was a drag queen. Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj and most especially Lady Gaga are drag queens, and doing drag well and self-consciously is always an exercise in queering, no matter what you’ve got between your legs. That kind of drag is what the beauty-industrial complex of advertising, magazines, makeover shows, and music videos are terrified by, and yes, it is queer, and yes, it is feminist.

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/model-behavior/

 

[Balbi]

Oh, it'll be on 'why we can't have nice things'

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

That's a big point for me. If she was a smart, articulate working class woman would they let here anywhere near a national newspaper? Of course they wouldn't, as it would interrupt the whole "only middle class bleeding hearts can be revolutionaries" schtick. She's there to play a role... (as are a number of other celebrity leftists, of both genders)

Yeah...spot on. But in the BBC's and broadsheet's Oxbridge middle-class closed shop there's a distinct element of "they may be lefties, but at least they're our lefties". The media knows that when push comes to shove they'll always know which side of the fence they're really on; the side where they keep the pension plans, the Tuscan villas, the Agas and the Lithuanian nannies.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not in red pepper though please.

Would an article about leftie class privilege even get looked at by a mag that inheres leftie class privilege, though?

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

You too

ok then

once, i remember being asked if i have a criminal record, and i know it was an insinuation on your part. i remember things sometimes.

 

[framed]

ok then

once, i remember being asked if i have a criminal record, and i know it was an insinuation on your part. i remember things sometimes.

Did someone mention criminal records?

 

[Hocus Eye.]

I think that Laurie Penny has a bit of a nerve comparing herself to Dita von Teese, and Lady Gaga - I don't know who the Nicki person is, but Von Teese and Gaga are both talented performers in show business. It is normal for show business people to adopt false names. Dita was originally in porn before she became a burlesque artist and adopted her name back then. Lady Gaga is extremely talented as a music writer and performer and to dismiss this as 'almost secondary' to her fashion imagery is to completely under estimate her talent.

I see that LP 'had coffee with three highly successful women' whom she describes by their jobs but does not mention their names. I had understood that she didn't like coffee and prefers tea. While I agree with her that changing their names does not make their work 'somehow less true', it is standard in writing and performing. How does she know what was going through the minds of these successful people in respect of realisations about each others name changes? Did they talk about it or is it just an imagining of Laurie Penny. Also If she has a hot place beneath her ribs then she should see her GP or a pharmacist for some Zantac or similar.

 

[Steel Icarus]

I couldn't see this quoted on here yet, and as many are blocked I thought I should post it.

Seems Laurie has apologised now, only mentioning LD by name mind though that probably wasn't deliberate.

Even in this she is caught in a lie.

LP: "But I didn't call [LD] a racist."
Some bloke: "But you did, Laurie" (Links to screengrab of now-deleted tweet that reads "Oh. Oh, I see. You're a racist. That makes this so much easier *blocks*")
LP: "Well, ok, to clarify, I've no idea whether [LD] is racist, but given his record it's safe to assume that he isn't."

 

[JimW]

Not just a bit of a nerve, she's from that strange (middle) class of people who are composed entirely of fucking cheek.