The Other Heartbeat Isn’t Yours

I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.

In the video linked above, feminist “theorist” Sophie Lewis informs us that the foetus, a nascent human being, is “violent,” does violence to “gestators,” and that abortion is a corrective killing, an “unmaking,” a means of “going on strike against gestational work.” “We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins,” says she.

So far as I can tell, and despite Ms Lewis’ theorising, mothers-to-be don’t generally feel a need to parse their pregnancy in terms of “abolishing the private nuclear household” and “global regimes of colonial and commodity exploitation.” Or indeed to champion abortion, via drugs or dismemberment, as a form of “anti-violence.” But that’s probably because – to borrow a phrase from Joan - they haven’t been tugging on the intersectional crack pipe.

Ms Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. When not arguing for the destruction of the unborn, and the “abolition” of the family - which is to be replaced by comradeliness, apparently - she “participates in the Out Of The Woods anti-capitalist ecological writing collective.”

Update, via the comments:

In this laughably pretentious review of Ms Lewis’ laughably pretentious book, we learn that the author wishes us to embrace the disintegration of the family – our families, all families – “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.” As if the “best available care” would somehow be an obvious result of family disintegration, despite decades of real-world evidence to the contrary. Supposedly, we would learn to love the “plural womb,” “radical disinheritance,” and “a world beyond propertarian kinship and work alienation.” The children we have will no longer be ours, it seems, and this will apparently make us happy. It’s a “queer, communist, speculative future.” A narcissist’s experiment. And we are to be the guinea pigs.

Via Mr Muldoon. Somewhat related.

Comments

[Joan]

Depraved.

[David]

Depraved.

I can’t help thinking that the mannered, pseudo-technical language, the reference to the elderly and “dying well,” and the nervous grin, probably tell us something. But hey, perversity plus callousness equals “winning radically.”

[David]

Pregnancy is one of many subjects on which feminists tend to reveal themselves as head-turningly perverse. See, for instance, Zoe Williams. Or Polly Dunning. And, of course, the charming ladies featured here.

[Ian]

So foetuses do “unacceptable violence” to the mother, and can therefore justifiably be killed? I can’t help but think we are getting increasingly close to the point where all the other things people like her find unacceptably violent (certain types of speech, being male, white, etc.) will be punishable by death. I would have thought that possibility unthinkable just a few years ago, but now it seems like just a matter of time – if such calls for murder haven’t already been made. Thinking on it, I’ve been hearing people saying for a while now that some adults ought to be “aborted” for various reasons such as having unacceptable political views, which I assumed was a joke. Perhaps we ought to take them seriously.

“Chilling” is an over-used expression, but I did just get a chill thinking about this.

[Connor]

It sounds like she's been watching *Alien* too many times.

[Mike]

"I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist"
"We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins," says she.

Hmmm. I wonder why…

[David]

In other feminist news.

[prm]

@Ian

As Kurt Schlichter says: They want you dead

See also the incredulousness of Cathy Newman when JP compares the crazy intersectional leaders with revolutionary socialist murderers. It's a difference in degree, not in kind.

Hatred, othering, struggle sessions, purification, cleansing, ends justifying means - we've been here before, many times.

[Burnsie]

"Don't bore me with details. I want what I want, and fuck you."

[David]

Judging by her Twitter feed, Ms Lewis seems to spend a lot of time calling people racists and white supremacists, seemingly at random and without explanation. Imagine the surprise. She also says that “binary gender” is “violence.” Oh, and race and class, obviously.

[Rafi]

She's really challenging the stereotype of the screwed-up feminist.

[David]

She’s really challenging the stereotype of the screwed-up feminist.

Ain’t she just.

[David]

Twitter reply of note:

[Ian]

@prm,

I enjoyed Kurt Schlichter's People's Republic but tend to think him a bit OTT most of the time. This wave of leftism, however, does not seem to be about uniting one's country behind it in a democratic way but ostracizing and beating up those who disagree; and once violence is sanctioned even a little bit, the principle is gone and they are merely haggling about the price. Come to think of it I do recall some leftie, possibly quoted here, talking about a white genocide or something.

[WTP]

Communism for Kids By Bini Adamczak

Translated by Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis

Communism, capitalism, work, crisis, and the market, described in simple storybook terms and illustrated by drawings of adorable little revolutionaries.

Adorable little revolutionaries. This from MIT...and Ms. Sophie of course.

[Stevie of Sweden]

Her biography at versobooks.com:

"Sophie Lewis is a writer, translator and feminist geographer living in Philadelphia. Her translations include Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (MIT, 2016, with Jacob Blumenfeld)..." and "...a queer feminist committed to cyborg ecology and anti-fascism."

You Brits must be so sad that she left your country for the US.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Big Oil, Big Pharma, and now Big Baby™, Gestationoco™, the leader in the "commercial surrogacy industry", "Bringing You Tomorrow's Babies Today".

Rooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, "Full Surrogacy Now" is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for... it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property...Lewis asks the necessary questions, ‘Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively—in a comradely way?’

нет товарищ, I don't think even the Norks are this hard over about kids.

For another discussion about Big Baby™ another video of this charming young lady and some more authentic frontier feminist gibberish. Honestly, I think she just says whatever buzzword pops into her head bekieving that if she throws enough in it will be some sort of compelling argument.

[Lockers]

What struck me most is she doesn't even really look like she believes what she's saying. She might believe IN it. Whilst not actually believing it (if you see what I mean).

[Artur]

Come to think of it I do recall some leftie, possibly quoted here, talking about a white genocide or something.

https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2019/03/friday-ephemera-2.html?cid=6a00d83451675669e20240a44d1ccc200c#comment-6a00d83451675669e20240a44d1ccc200c

And so, the New York Times, a newspaper supposedly aimed at clever people, denounces fears of white minority status as a “racist, sexist doctrine” and a reprehensible “conspiracy theory,” while simultaneously publishing endless articles exulting in precisely that scenario and framed in overtly racist, anti-white terms, with “whiteness” disdained as a pathology, and with headlines that boast, “We can replace them.” (The rhetorical fig leaf here being that the term “them” supposedly refers only to white nationalists, but the implied definition is, shall we say, expansive and seems to include just about anyone who objects to white people being routinely demonised in academia, and throughout the leftist media, and, reliably, in the pages of the New York Times.)

[David]

You Brits must be so sad that she left your country for the US.

There’s no need to thank us.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Well that was fast.

Corporate Rollover !. A play in two acts.

Act I.

Act II

This is why we are happy to hear from our users, like the My Black Is Beautiful team, if they come across something that requires revision.

"Requires revision" ? Why, are they going to boycott you ? Threaten you with a non-existent law about using standard definitions ? What a bunch of cheesedicks.

[Pst314]

"I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist"

How would she feel if, in a spirit of “turnabout is fair play”, that attitude were applied to her?

[ComputerLabRat]

it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property...Lewis asks the necessary questions, ‘Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively—in a comradely way?’

wtf did I just read?

Is oddkin something new to add to the BLTQWERTYIAAGAS thingie?

How do you parent nonreproductively? The very existence of young of the species means reproduction has taken place.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

There’s no need to thank us.

Yeah, you also appear to have given us that Dr Pizza guy you linked above, so if you wouldn't take that, "Give me...The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." thing quite so enthusiastically, we'd appreciate it. Thank you very many in advance.

[pst314]

How do you parent nonreproductively? The very existence of young of the species means reproduction has taken place.

Some radfems are attracted to in vitro fertilization combined with the old science fiction idea of mechanical wombs. "Comradely", of course, means "raised in a creche by Good Maoists and Stalinists", with the children who resist Full Socialism being mercifully euthanized.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

wtf did I just read?

I think, "...reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property...", means having a kid through a surrogate, and then having no responsibility for little Logan 6 or THX 1138 whatsoever, but with these yoyos, who the hell knows.

[TDK]

Why did she go to the USA, one of the top 10 most dangerous countries on earth for women when she could have gone to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, who all scored much better

[jabrwok]

Corporate Rollover

I wonder if Dictionary dot com will be capitalizing "white" too.

Ok, not really.

[Daniel Ream]

"Comradely", of course, means "raised in a creche by Good Maoists and Stalinists"

I own a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game that was published in the early 1990's. In the section on different types of societies one might find on the Planet of the Week there's a discussion of family and child-rearing. One of the possibilities they describe is communal creche rearing, where children once born are handed over to an enclave to be raised by dedicated child-minders instead of their biological parents. Ha ha, I thought to myself, what a silly Roddenberryesque notion. No actual real human parent would relinquish control of their own child to some drone, that's outright violation of basic human nature.

In entirely unrelated news, my ex-wife worked at a daycare that had an entire room devoted to the 6-month-old infants. They wouldn't take them earlier than that, you see.

[David]

“Foetus fetishists.”

Judging by her reactions, Ms Lewis seems unaccustomed to pushback on her statements, even the more, shall we say, colourful ones. Presumably, she inhabits a social circle in which no-one points out, even politely, that her opinions are alternately cartoonish in their unrealism or veering towards the borderline sociopathic.

[Eagle]

When I find work unacceptable, I quit and find a new job.
My co-worker doesn't need to die.

Bad analogy?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

“Foetus fetishists.”

Her avocado has slipped off her toast:

Abortion is the withdrawal of gestational labor AND it is killing AND it is good AND the fetus is human (tho not a person).

I am reasonably sure from my embryology classes it is not a bandicoot, so that would make it a person, though developing.

No, it doesn't. There are plenty of "living beings" in a human body, none of them "on their own".

Wherein she doesn't understand basic biology and equates a fetus with bacteria, all of which are most certainly "on their own" as they live, die, and reproduce without being physically attached to the owner's circulatory and respiratory (via the circulation via the placenta) systems.

That long lunchtime seminar on gestational communism and "Life Itself" was so much fun!

Gestational communism - and she rails about "dehumanization" - Da, I am People's Uterus No. 17 "Glory of Stalin".

Sophie Lewis is a critical human geographer, film and literary editor, and queer feminist theorist...

Ah. That explains her profound expertise regarding human anatomy and physiology.

[aelfheld]

We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins.

So, by her 'logic', murder is now a question of when the murderer determines life has begun or not.

[Jamie MacMaster]

Just what the world needs: another *&^%$#g drip.

And I despair that my comment contributes, even though in the most tiny, insignificant way, to the attention this drip so desperately seeks.

[Jay Guevara]

Leftist ideology is like flypaper for lunatics.

[Pogonip]

She’s killing babies.

This gentleman’s killing heavily armed people who have the same idea about him.

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-vetran-david-bellavia-iraq-war-medal-of-honor

I think if it ever comes to shootin’ war, their side has more to worry about than ours.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...or veering towards the borderline sociopathic.

I think she has veered towards that border in much the same way the Wehrmacht veered towards the Polish border in 1939; I give you Cyborg uterine geography: Complicating 'care' and social reproduction.

You can read the whole thing if you want, and it it too long to fisk in toto, but if you really want I can provide some more snippets for you, because I am a caring giver.

Most geographers have sided with‘cyborgs’(technonatural subjects) against‘goddesses’(e.g.Mother Earth)on questions of embodiment. In itself this provides no justification for the relative dearth (in geography) of theorizing ‘with’ the uterus as a site of doing and undoing;what I propose to call uterine geography.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that "most geographers" would read this and ask WTF she is banging on about.

The theoretical biologist Suzanne Sadedin is adamant that normal human gestation is a site of considerable, species-exceptional violence. Unlike almost all other animals, humans die because of their pregnancies every year in their hundreds of thousands...

First, all humans, other primates, and rodents all have the same type of placentation, and animals routinely die because of pregnancy, so, no we are "not exceptional. Of the 300K women who do die annually, only 1% are in the developed world - that other factors thing mentioned yesterday.

Human mothers are thus technically ‘less generous’ than most non-human mothers, she explains. This is because human fetuses, ‘tunnelling towards the mother’s bloodstream’, fight and override her ‘no’ through-out...In short, the unborn routinely deploy all manner of ‘manipulation, blackmail and violence’ (Sadedin, 2014) as their contribution to being made.

Once again, demonstrating a bizarre notion of how pregnancy actually occurs, and, amazingly, all of a sudden that which is usually derided by this crowd as a "clump of cells", is also an evil mastermind, deliberately destroying the mother - sorry, gestator.

Those of us who are would-be critics of capitalist White-supremacist patriarchy perceive that mothers (particularly mothers of colour) are not primarily culprits of systemic evils but rather, primarily, victims.

Victims, but of course. Brought to you by the Department of Obligatory SJW Boilerplate.

Enough of the nonsense. The whole thing is an incredible mashup of poorly understood basic biology, Marxism, social justice Choctaw, and feminist boilerplate. How anyone can take this seriously staggers belief.

[Squires]

A fetus does violence, migrants don’t.

Abortion is a corrective killing, trapping wolves is evil.

All unborn are criminal, and for their crime they should pay.

Sophie (ha!) Lewis was once a fetus, but her past, of course, is forgiven.

[Squires]

It sounds like she's been watching *Alien* too many times.

A different sort of villain came to my mind:

https://youtu.be/P2EQ0FlVks4

[Governor Squid]

Corporate Rollover:

At Dictionary.com we take words very seriously. They are foundational to how individuals think about themselves, and they can influence the perceptions of others. When it comes to the language of identity, the words we use are especially important.

Thus begins their introduction to their essay on why it's so important that they keep the Newspeak dictionary up to date. It's not often that you see the battle lines drawn out quite so obviously! I'm hopeful that JeffG will pick up the case now that PW has returned, as this is his bread and butter, and a big reason why I started reading his work in the first place.

[A]

She is clearly mad.

I suspect she will top herself within five years.

[Sam]

Though I disagree, I understand the pro-choice position, and even sympathize. As a father I can very easily understand the unique existential dread that the prospect of having an actual real-life child brings. And the fear of what your life will be afterwards. So I totally understand it when people say they don't want kids or that killing their fetus is acceptable, even if I strongly dissent.

What I cannot understand, however, is how someone can dedicate their life to the killing of the unborn. Not only that, but to actively seek celebrity from such activism! Moreover, to fetishize the practice to the point that you depict human fetuses like the US Government depicted Japs in WW2 propaganda.

The Great Shit Test continues, with scant pushback detected.

[David]

It’s an odd thing to celebrate or use as a credential of righteousness. An odd thing to exult in.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

An odd thing to exult in.

There has to be something reasonable between "No way, no how" and "Let's make the kid comfortable while we decide what to do", but it is equally odd to make it your sole political concern. Unfortunately I know several otherwise very smart and accomplished people of both sexes (I can't say I know any of the other 847 political genders) who don't care about the economy, national defense, or anything else that affects the country, except abortion. "In the news today, all US cities over 500,000 have been nuked, but the Planned Parenthood in San Pedro is still open"; "Yay !".

From the link about Miss Marcotte:

Anti-choicers [are] pretending that they just discovered they oppose abortion because it violates men’s rights over their uterine property (established by the “poke it/own it” law laid down in beer commercials).

I guess I need to watch more network TV, I seem to have missed those.

[Pogonip]

David, did you change your e-mail? If so, what is it? When I used to send you things you would always reply with ‘Heh.” Then you stopped, so I don’t know if you changed your e-mail or if you got them and Britain is laboring under a Heh shortage caused by global warming.

[Pogonip]

Things to wonder about:

So, when Sam Gamgee’s kids say “ What did you do in the war, Dad?”
how long do you think it takes him to answer the question?

What about Luke Skywalker’s kids?

😄

[juliaeryn]

My favourite twitter comment by Ms Lewis, in response to , "Admitting that it's violence implicitly concedes that the fetus is a living being on its own." (MyselfAnonymous)

No, it doesn't. There are plenty of "living beings" in a human body, none of them "on their own". To be human is to be (in) a multispecies relationship, teeming. The fetus is a human entity AND part of another human entity's body. The latter is a person, the former isn't.

The term 'ad hoc hypothesis' springs to mind. It really sounds like this is all being made up as she goes along.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to commit genocide by showering all the bacteria out of my pits.

[Roscoe]

Sophie Lewis: "Blah blah blah blah word blah another word but quite unrelated blah blah grin like a frog who just farted blah interminable blah and finally, in closing, blah."

[Squires]

It really sounds like this is all being made up as she goes along.

It’s the rule of Righteous Abrogation.

[Spiny Norman]

I'm hopeful that JeffG will pick up the case now that PW has returned

Wait, what... {O.O}

[[+]]

the family - which is to be replaced by comradeliness, apparently...

Yeah, good luck with that.

[David]

When I used to send you things you would always reply with ‘Heh.” Then you stopped,

Apologies if I haven’t replied. I get quite a lot of mail and things sometimes get overlooked.

[David]

Yeah, good luck with that.

It does seem a tad ludicrous. It reminded me of a Guardian column in which Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett pined for the supposedly romantic squalor of squatting - sorry, “communal living” - in which small children would be looked after collectively, by whichever unemployable acquaintance happened to be around. As I said at the time,

Readers who as students shared a house and cleaning duties, in theory at least, will no doubt testify to the practicality of this approach and the lofty hygiene standards that invariably resulted. Now imagine those high standards applied to parenting and childcare… A “commune” is basically a recipe for freeloading and acrimony. But Ms Cosslett, whose fond memories are those of an undiscerning child, doesn’t seem overly interested in realism. It wouldn’t suit her purpose.

I suppose part of the problem is, you’re expected to forge a domestic, quasi-familial bond with strangers, or people with whom you wouldn’t otherwise spend so much time in such an intimate arrangement. But I wonder how many former squatters and commune enthusiasts are still in touch with their one-time housemates, the people they were expected to regard as practically family. And as Ms Cosslett would have it, raising their children.

Ms Lewis’ fantasies – of “comradeliness” and non-specific parenting - would seem to invite the same problems, among others.

[David]

Ha ha, I thought to myself, what a silly Roddenberryesque notion.

In this laughably pretentious review of Ms Lewis’ laughably pretentious book, we learn that the author wishes us to embrace the disintegration of the family – our families, all families – “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.” As if the “best available care” would somehow be an obvious result of family disintegration, despite decades of real-world evidence to the contrary. Supposedly, we would learn to love the “plural womb,” “radical disinheritance,” and “a world beyond propertarian kinship and work alienation.” The children we have will no longer be ours, it seems, and this will apparently make us happy.

It’s a “queer, communist, speculative future.” And we are to be the guinea pigs.

[Pogonip]

That’s OK, David, I just wanted to make sure you were getting the stuff. If you are, all is bibble-ee-doo.

[David]

Incidentally, the author of the laughably pretentious review, Madeline Lane-McKinley, describes herself as living “collectively with her kid, partner, friends, cats and dogs.” She is, of course, a “lecturer at UCSC,” where, in the guise of teaching “writing,” she blunts young minds with “Utopian Studies and Marxist Theory.”

[bgates]

Nothing captures the power dynamic the left wishes to exist between the State and the public better than pregnancy, with the State as the endlessly nourishing mother and us as the helpless yet safe fetuses. That makes their delirious abortion fetish even more unsettling.

[pst314]

"I don’t know if you changed your e-mail or if you got them and Britain is laboring under a Heh shortage caused by global warming."

I thought it was because, under the Berne Convention, David must pay Glenn Reynolds a royalty for each "heh".

[Ten]

we learn that the author wishes us to embrace the disintegration of the family – our families, all families – “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.” As if the “best available care” would somehow be an obvious result of family disintegration, despite decades of real-world evidence to the contrary. Supposedly, we would learn to love the “plural womb,” “radical disinheritance,” and “a world beyond propertarian kinship and work alienation.” The children we have will no longer be ours, it seems, and this will apparently make us happy. It’s a “queer, communist, speculative future.” A narcissist’s experiment. And we are to be the guinea pigs.

Indeed. And until normals learn that leftism is rampant, arbitrary, hostile force, it'll continue to argue relative merits instead of simply outlawing it.

Instead, if we're lucky we pass the occasional law cementing an original principle. It's astoundingly weak.

[David]

I thought it was because, under the Berne Convention, David must pay Glenn Reynolds a royalty for each “heh”.

Well, yes, there’s that. And also the fact that my inbox is increasingly cluttered with messages from desperate newspapers imploring me to subscribe, and unsolicited and wildly irrelevant crap from at least a dozen PR companies. You’d think that people employed in public relations might consider the impression they give, of themselves, by sending wildly irrelevant crap to a presumably extensive list of people, about whom they clearly know nothing whatsoever.

[WTP]

I've started to take greater advantage of the opportunity to create multiple email accounts for different purposes. I've always had a separate one for blogging (well, several now thanks to a certain snowflake conservative who keeps banning me), one for job searches, and one for friends and such. I've now added one for my homeowner's association responsibilities, one for any volunteer or charity work, one for health care stuff, one for financial stuff, one explicitly for restaurant loyalty programs and such, and one I call my "burner" for those things that require an email that I know I never will really care about. It makes wading through the spam a bit easier and depending on which email account, some don't get any spam at all. Not only that but with the HOA stuff, it's all in one place that I can deal with at one time without getting distracted by other BS.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...and now for something slightly different...

Are you a white person wanting to unpack the harmful ways white supremacy is embedded in your body, mind and heart?

Are you looking for an embodied approach to racial and social justice?

Are you craving a spiritual community where oppression and privilege can be addressed with compassion and honesty?

If so then join us for Undoing Whiteness Yoga ! This remarkable class is "taught" by a person of non-color, who evidently can understand "'...how racism manifests itself internally, including defensiveness, perfectionism and the “white savior complex...'" not that she isn't one herself, no sirree Bob.

I know you are wondering, "Muldoon, what is this yoga class all about ?"

This is not a class of physical yoga postures. The word yoga means union and wholeness. White supremacy gets in the way of finding union (both within ourselves and with each other). My awareness practices, including yoga, have deeply impacted my own interrogation of whiteness, and I offer the things that have helped me. I am forever a guest to Yoga and also understand that using a colonized practice to face whiteness is evidence of cultural appropriation*.

There are also, "...readings from “Witnessing Whiteness,” a book meant to help white people deal with discomfort around race-based conversations...", so you know you will be getting a real bargain.

In other news, Saturday Night Live turned me into a newt lesbian.

*(You knew that was coming...)

[David]

Undoing Whiteness Yoga

Maybe this is how people felt when Scientology first became a thing. Sort of, “Xenu? Really?”

[Ten]

my own interrogation of whiteness

Bound to a cheap steel chair in a bunker, under a single searing bulb and subject intermittently to streams of cold water and roundhouse wallops from her towering Bischness.

"Talk, you damn-ned Whiteness. The Resistance will fall without plans of your pressing, encircling eeville!"

Maybe my bisch needs an enigma machine. By now I do.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...taught" by a person of non-color...

I have just received a communique from the Director of Heuristics, Linguistics, Orthography, and Lexicology (DOHLOL) here at the Muldoon Institute and Plantations that "person of non-color" has been flagged as an NCT (non-cromulent term) as it does not make any account of what race the individual might identify as.

Hereinafter, "person of non-color" should be changed to "person of no color evident", or PONCE, e.g., "This remarkable class is "taught" by a PONCE..."

That is all, carry on.

[David]

That is all, carry on.

We really need to get you a hobby.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

We really need to get you a hobby.

Waiting on contractors for some remodeling estimates the last couple of days, already did the car PMCS and other fiddly chores, yes, I am bored...

[David]

Waiting on contractors for some remodeling estimates

Or you could invite the wife’s family to stay over for six weeks.

[David]

I believe this is called appealing to the fan base:

Apparently, Ms Lewis is “facing relentless… fascist abuse.”

[Daniel Ream]

also understand that using a colonized practice

Yoga is derived from the morning calisthenics performed by the occupying British army in the Raj.

It certainly is colonial and these people should stop performing it immediately.

[Burnsie]

^^She sounds like a fun date.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...gets dosed with acid..."

TBF, that might explain why her thinking (and I use the term loosely) seems merely to be random cerebral electrical activity.

[pst314]

"And also the fact that my inbox is increasingly cluttered with...unsolicited and wildly irrelevant crap from at least a dozen PR companies."

Their target market is people who are foolish enough to respond.Since it costs virtually nothing to send a million emails, even a few hundred replies are profit--especially since they are probably selling low quality or even fraudulent products and services. Sigh.

[Pogonip]

David, my spam beats your spam. I get bombarded with boner pill ads and stuff about my prostate, and, as you know, my first name is unambiguously female.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...my first name is unambiguously female.

As we have learned from these august pages, some women have prostates and johnsons.

[Spiny Norman]

The Feminine Penis mystique is not just a 4Chan meme?

[Squires]

Muldoon, what is this yoga class all about ?

Peace through submission.

That is their idea of peace.

And it is always your submission.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Meanwhile, in West Yorkshire, Miss Lewis finds an ally.

Those not volunteering to be the missing 4,000, please report to Sector R.

[Pogonip]

My anatomy is also unambiguously female. 😄

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

My anatomy is also unambiguously female.

That's as may be (not that a certain former Olympian doesn't think so too), but by being annoyed by ads that could benefit females with johnsons and prostates (FWJPs), you are being a transmisogynist non-ally to the trans community. Sad.

[David]

My anatomy is also unambiguously female.

If anyone scores a date on the premises, there will be a handling fee.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...there will be a handling fee.

Hold on there, buckaroo, a cover charge is one thing, but I think there is a term for charging for dates, last thing you want is the popo poking around - they might find an offensive tweet or something.

[Pogonip]

A date? At my age?

David’s finally cracked up, folks! Too much hump fat!

[David]

but I think there is a term for charging for dates,

It’s to cover wear and tear on the upholstery.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

It’s to cover wear and tear on the upholstery.

"Upholstery" ? Is that a Brit English term for the varnish on these wooden benches and stools ?

[Pogonip]

That stuff’s VARNISH?

[David]

“Upholstery”?

It also covers use of the pleasure harness. Over by the toilets.

Right, enough of this unspeakable beastliness. I’m off to watch an episode of Rome.

[Pogonip]

Just in time, too.

[lotocoti]

I'm reminded of the wonderful "all PIV is rape" world of my favourite RadFem.

[Daniel Ream]

there will be a handling fee.

Phrasing.

[Pogonip]

Hi Loticoti,

Is that parody? It’s getting harder and harder for us old folks to tell. 😳

[lotocoti]

Is that parody? It’s getting harder and harder for us old folks to tell.

Unfortunately no. Someone took a clump hammer to her hinge pins a long time ago. A 2015 film, No Men Beyond This Point, explores that brave new world.

[Pogonip]

Meet the new bar band:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc

Genghis, party of, oh, two million or so...

Maybe David should get the table extenders out.

[pst314]

my favourite RadFem

Illustrating why the term "feminazi" became necessary.

[Pogonip]

How many Mongols does it take to make a horde, anyway?

[jabrwok]

my favourite RadFem

Remove men from society and civilization collapses within two weeks.

Interestingly, the report on non-traditional occupations for women from the Department of Labor seems to have been disappeared. It showed, last I checked, that women were generally less (often far less) than 25% of the workforce in all the essential, but dirty, boring, and dangerous, jobs that keep the lights on, the water flowing, and the food coming to table.

But hey, who needs men? Gaia will provide!

Hmm, a DDG search turned up this: https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/Occupations.htm.

[pst314]

"women were generally less (often far less) than 25% of the workforce in all the essential, but dirty, boring, and dangerous, jobs"

I wonder about those lesbian separatist enclaves I hear about now and then: How do they survive? Do they actually manage to raise enough food to feed themselves? Or do they supplement inadequate farming with odd jobs and welfare checks? The latter was an important part of those sixties hippie communes, after all.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Remove men from society and civilization collapses within two weeks.

That brings to mind the Dutch version of survivor that featured a male island and a female island wherein the men made a rudimentary civilization and the wymxn, not so much. I believe Bear Grylls had much the same thing happen on his show.

Meet the new bar band

Tuvan throat singing meets metal. A great movie is "Ghengis Blues" which documents Paul Pena's* trip to Tuva to learn throat singing. There are great scenes where throat singing meets blues.

*(He was legally blind and diabetic, taught himself Mongolian, and set off on his trip. Typically, he was underappreciated as a musician, but Steve Miller did ruin Jet Airliner written by Pena)

[pst314]

That brings to mind the Dutch version of survivor that featured a male island and a female island

Good Lord.

[Pogonip]

And when a male island and a female island love each other very, very much...

...they have an archipelago.🏝🏝🏝