#2 How to argue with a rainbow

It's not easy to argue with a rainbow, as I found out recently when I attended Posie Parker's 'Let Women Speak' rally in Auckland on the 25th of March with the hope of hearing her speak about the dangers of trans ideology for women and children and, if I could, to argue my own case for discussing, in civilised terms, how the claims of TQ+ activists, who now run the rainbow, might be fairly reconciled with the the rights claims of biological women that are being thrown under the bus by the TQ+. 

Protesters against the 'Let Women Speak' rally,
Auckland 25 March, 2023

But the rainbow did not want me or any other woman to speak that day, and ensured we didn't speak by making so much noise with blow horns, piercing whistles and mass chanting, then by breaking down the barriers separating them - more than a thousand angry and righteously energised, mostly young women and men - and us - barely one hundred brave, mostly older, not so energised, females. 

'NAZI' is one of the signs they held against us:

Marriage equality in Australia Nov 2017: Celebrated as
'The best thing that happened today' here as: 'The right to love' 

N for 'Nasty'

A for 'Angry' 

Z for 'Zealot'

I for 'Idiot'

Though they were the ones chanting hateful slogans at women just wanting to speak.

All the while they menaced and threatened us, shouting and shoving, while we waited for Posie to speak, then broke down the barriers and stormed her in their many hundreds, pushing forward to where she was in the rotunda until she and her security decided her safety was at risk and did their best, risking their lives, to get her out of the mob that were openly baying for her blood. The police stood by and did nothing. This image is of Kellie-Jay after she survived the baying mob, but only just. The police only turning up at the last minute. 

The rainbow that I heartily celebrated here in late 2017 with the above and other joyous images, after the Aussies finally granted their gay community the right to marry, is not the rainbow of today. No woman got punched in the eye by a man on that occasion, as one 70-year-old woman was punched, fracturing her eye socket, in Auckland 2023. Nor did any woman get tomato soup tipped on her head the second she arrived to speak about women's rights, or be made to feel genuine fear for her life for presuming to speak against trans extremism, as Kellie-Jay did in Auckland that day, as this image clearly shows. 

This new rainbow appropriates all the good will and gay pride of the old one to bash women, feminists in the main, and children's rights advocates, many of them lesbians, over the head with it, to weaponize the rainbow in what can only be called now, with 'trans women' (men) being the loudest, angriest leaders of the movement, a men's rights movement. It's a rainbow of rage, with a humongous pot of gold for the makers of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones at the end of it. It and they must be stopped, or all our rights will be washed away in the rain that that bow brings.  

Trans women are men

 

Sugar and Spite #1: Cake and estrangement

This is my new blog, 'Sugar and Spite'. I could change the url for this site too or start a new site, but for now I am keeping the old site and name. 

I have not run an active blog for years. But I used to be very blog active. For about seven years I regularly 'blogged', usually at some length. I guess I honed my craft that way. But I let the habit slide. 

Everything changes, however, and with all the 'gender' trans v. women politics taking off at the moment and me kind of right in the middle of it as a proud and out 'Terf', which really just means a real feminist, I just feel I must start talking about things with you again, and by 'talking' I mean of course writing, one of the old 'legacy media' forms.

I don't Twitter much but I Facebook probably too much. But I prefer the longer form of a blog if I can find the time.

The sugar is the fun, the memoir highlights, the gossip and the food, not least cake, that I will be discussing with you. Especially the food, as I have just submitted a 100,000+ words on diet and related challenges to Bloomsbury Books health imprint in the UK. Food and me go way back. I will reveal details of this project as we go along. I will probably have to self-publish. Perhaps I can do that here.

The spite of the title is all the less sweet bits of life, from the Terfery and politics more generally, to the spite that too many women have shown me over the years, to the spite my two sons (29 and 24) are currently showing me and their father by estranging from us more than four years ago now, without a word or even an image of communication from either of them since, neither of them being active on social media. 

It is also the spite I feel for them some of the time. I want to hurt them as they have hurt their father, who entirely doesn't deserve this treatment from his sons (I am a slightly different matter, which we will come to). 

Or perhaps 'spite' is not what I feel. Perhaps it is closer to resentment that I feel, mixed with anger, the most common of the emotions, for ripping our otherwise functional and even happy family apart. I have the photos to prove the happiness. 

They are much more angry than me but they got their anger from me, who got it from my father. I never expressed my anger physically, and my older son's anger against me was far louder and more spiteful. I never wanted to hurt either of them but it definitely felt that they wanted to hurt me. Of course they felt I had hurt them, and feel still. And I know I did. Just that it wasn't intentional and I was trying to help them, even if it didn't seem that way. 

I also love them of course, and I think I always will. But those other, less sweet emotions are there too and if they keep it up for many more years I think they will sour.

But for now that will have to do for my first Sugar and Spite. It's late-ish (8.15) and I need to do my after-dinner sprint walk before it gets too dark. It's part of my battle plan. 

Ciao, SJ