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

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Laura loves her boss, her MP and the teachers at her 30k a year school. Meet the new left everybody, a walking talking twittering void of smug obsequiousness.

LauriePenny said:
Right. My boss and my ex, both of whom I love, are scrapping painfully and publicly on Twitter. You will forgive me for backing away
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Notice how Laurie still hasn't written an article about Thatcher while the right-wing media is in overdrive trying to white wash her legacy, nor did she write anything about the demonisation of the welfare state over Phillpot until a BBC article said something vaguely nasty about polyandry and even then didn't comment at all on the class or social aspect of the case beyond the polyandry aspect. She still has plenty of time to congratulate herself on opposing the coalition, talk about herself as a columnist and party with millionaire artists and porn actresses in New York.

Reminds me of libertarians, really, not that bothered about opposing the government until her freedoms are threatened or an identity politics group that she is a member of is criticised. Everyone else can get fucked.
 
Lewis has deleted her account, so its not that easy to piece together. I did some digging at lunchtime so I think ive worked it out, but tbh its not that interesting. If no-one else has bothered ill post some when I get home.
 
A search for @helenlewis works. Shouldn't need a login for that.

Life may be too short though. :(
 
It seems the Lewis saga revolves around her refuses to pull a Storify she made *after* the person in question apologised and wanted it removed. Stavvers made one of several polite requests that went unanswered. I guess they have a history of arguing amongst each other on Twitter over intersectionality and being sensitive to language.

http://storify.com/helenlewis/how-privilege-checking-shuts-down-discussion
http://storify.com/stavvers/my-tweets-to-helen-lewis

Blog about it: notalwaysthequietone.tumblr.com/post/48039614767/a-long-blogpost-about-the-helen-lewis-twitterstorm

Why people took issue with Lewis' Tumblr post:


And that, to be blunt, is what I often feel when I talk about feminism online. Yesterday I saw someone mocked for not knowing that “WoC” was an acronym for “woman of colour”. (Why should they? It’s an American phrase. When did you last hear it on the Ten O’Clock News?)
Others might not know whether to use BME (black and minority ethnic) or “non-white”. There are people in Britain who are not remotely transphobic but have no idea that “tranny” is not acceptable to many trans people.
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and

One of the concepts that we find hardest as humans is the idea of a sliding scale. We feel, instinctively, there ought to be solid principles that you can hang your hat on. So: sexist, racist, homophobic language is bad. But who decides that? The affected groups themselves? What if two women have different opinions on whether something is sexist? Or, harder, what if one gay person finds a phrase homophobic and the vast majority of their non-gay friends don’t? If language is a consensus, who gets the casting vote?
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http://helenlewiswrites.tumblr.com/private/47859091039/tumblr_ml72547vSl1rpijql

Seems like a dramatic Suzanne Moore Twitter de-activation plan for maximum drama. Ensuring any legitimate criticism was simply referred to trolling and Lewis was "shouted off" Twitter. (Pretty sure Moran said that).
 
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For those who don't want to trawl though twitter looking up this controversy Helen Lewis wrote this http://helenlewiswrites.tumblr.com/private/47859091039/tumblr_ml72547vSl1rpijql about the culture of aggressive language policing and so forth that we've discussed on here before. A couple of people who are well into privilige checking objected to the article, presumably one of which is Laurie's ex although I don't actually care enough to look it up personally, which led to some in Lewis's journo mileu jumping on top of them accusing them of bullying her. She deactivates twitter account. Accusations of her bullying intensify. This take on it here is worth a read http://notalwaysthequietone.tumblr....g-blogpost-about-the-helen-lewis-twitterstorm Like with other shitstorms I'm left looking at it wanting both sides to lose. Which they do. The accusation of bullying is a bit OTT in my opinion, someone with Lewis's position in the professional media with pals to stick up for her is in a much stronger position to dish out the abuse than a few random twitter people fond of privilige checking. Bullying in this case is "not agreeing fully with my beliefs" which we've seen before too from journo's. And I say that as someone who's generally not very keen on privilige theory or owt, just basing that on how these twitter spats tend to work. http://chillercold.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/how-to-survive-being-wrong-on-the-internet/ This got linked up in the mileu, clearly well-intentioned but I think is an example of the problem. Really obtuse language, there's a problematic and an intersectionality and in the end it reads like a collection of buzzwords thrown together to say in 2,000 words something that could feasilbly be said in 500*, in language that's much easier to understand. I can't be the only person in the world who wants to claw his own eyeballs out at the prose. This is without making any indepth pronouncements about the validity of intersectionality or whatever.

Laurie Penny's backing out because she doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds, unlike most of the people angry at Helen Lewis she's been smart enough to build a career out of paying lipservice radical intersectionality and naturally doesn't want to fuck that up by attacking her own boss, but on the other hand doesn't want to lose what's left of her cred in those circles by publically sticking up for her. Remember, her career (for now) depends on her being "the voice of the new generation" they can't continue to spin that if even her own crowd don't like her. An undercurrent here is some don't like her because, like has been said on here before, some of 'em would bite your leg off to be a commentisfree hack just like Laurie. To go to Greece and live that life etc. And it's not like she hasn't deliberately built that audience up by writing what she does, so an article about Greece becomes a mini-story about herself and who got off with who with politics as a backdrop. Time to move on?

* edit to acknowledge Penny-esque levels of self-awareness
 
Not related, but Mary Beard got some right loathsome shit off AN Wilson (was it? they all meld into one) for daring to be an older woman on his telly.
 
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