Hold the Back Page

Wait a minute. Didn’t Bad Penny say she used to be a burlesque dancer? And isn’t she always banging on about sex workers’ rights? But she doesn’t think women should be able to earn a living by modeling topless in The Sun?

So the tits are OK, it’s the rest of the paper that should be banned. Gosh, so glad we banned the tits then.
Shows that for these bansturbators it’s only ever the process of bullying that matters, not the actual result. You and I are just objects for them to exercise their fetishes on, if you will.

Shows that for these bansturbators it’s only ever the process of bullying that matters,
Given the incoherence, double standards and general absurdity, I see no reason to assume that their stated motives bear much relation to the actual motives in play. As Eric Raymond recently put it,

The problem is, [an attempt at rational discussion] requires the feminists and social-justice warriors… to fundamentally be about justice and inclusion, enough so that it is possible to change their behaviour by appealing to those values. But that’s not what I see when I look at those people. What I see are thin rationalisations over bullying, dominance games, and an endless scream of monkey rage.

Which is to say, it’s more about role-play, personal demons and habitual bad faith.

Varoomshka
Heh. I had no idea.

I’m not anti boobs. I’m against boobs being used to push a right-wing ideology masquerading as news.
Can’t wait for the catfight between Penny Dreadful and all the models who just got made redundant.

It’s a punishment for the Sun’s apostasy.
For Laurie and quite a few of her admirers, it seems it isn’t really about boobs after all.

Laurie seems to imagine some dastardly Pavlovian response, whereby proletarian views on the economy, immigration, etc., are cunningly imprinted with a blinding set of knockers.
I’m laughing in the office and people are looking.

In other news The Morning Star has decided to start showing Page 3 topless boob models. Starting today.
Yes! There will always be an England!

‘Didn’t Bad Penny say she used to be a burlesque dancer?’
Well, she did. Although whether that’s actually the truth or not is another matter:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2011/07/when-radicals-collide.html
Note the following at the end of the thread.
‘As a general fan of feminist journalists and writers, I would like to support Laurie; unfortunately I cannot because I know that she is indeed dishonest and immoral in her journalism.
She appears to have no qualms in lying about about (sic) anything to rise up the journo ladder even if it means dishonestly tainting the lives of those around her as a result.
The article she wrote early on in her ‘career’ about burlesque is a case in point in effectively ruining other people’s reputations through deceit – and is how I personally know that she will lie to get ahead. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/15/burlesque-feminism-proud-galleries).
Laurie got involved briefly in a cabaret group at Oxford University that i was also part of. Unlike many male and female students involved Penny chose to strip down to nipple tassels while performing in the show.
However in this article, which she ironically wrote at a time when she still had naked frontal pictures of her upper torso on Facebook (which she has subsequently chosen to remove) she wrote that she was forced to strip and forced to smile (“until your face hurts”) through her misery.
The ‘Guardian’ webpage indeed now has a number of corrective notes at the bottom including: “Changes were made to the second paragraph to make clear that the author was not persuaded by the managers of a local burlesque troupe to get into stripping, but did so voluntarily.”
However the horrible implications made on our directors/producers (both rather camp male burlesque performers themselves) by the original article cannot really be removed.
She also made the bizarre comment that while at the Edinburgh fringe “it was a rare day indeed when a shy, bewildered girl wasn’t crying in the toilets backstage because she thought her costume made her look fat”. I was on that tour, and am still friends with most of the girls who were on that tour. They were all flabbergasted (and would have been amused had not the implications of this line from the article been so insulting to them) by this as they did not feel fat (thank you very much), did not ever cry on that trip, were not bewildered, and did not feel like victims in any way while in the show… And of course the majority hadn’t wanted to show off all their body parts (on stage or on Facebook) as Penny was so keen to do anyway!
After Edinburgh, the directors decided to be less generous in letting almost anyone who wanted to to (sic) perform in the show in some way do so. Hence Penny – who was not a natural performer – was no longer asked to be in the show. Perhaps this is where her bitterness lies. Therefore her article also mourns the demise of certain acts, claiming the show “ditched our most subversive acts”. It certainly did not as anyone who saw the later shows can attest to. But yes it had ditched the less talented ones involved!
In all, she attempted to smear the really rather gentle directors/producers of the show by saying they forced her to strip, made girls cry and made them smile through the misery. Essentially she painted them up to be horrors, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. She also painted the girls (oddly enough not boys – i guess boys have no feelings or body issues to contend with in her mind) as being insecure victims when they were performers, singers, comedians and dancers who still feel very proud to have been involved in the show’.
Posted by: Alex Levi-Smith | April 29, 2012 at 18:32

The deafening shrieks – sorry, “increasingly bold demands” – of said mob are a downside to the generally amazing and positive advent of mass communication technology. Not too long ago these fuckers would have been limited to handing out pamphlets on street corners.
And still they don’t like capitalism. Misanthropes and morons to boot.

Remember, it’s all about the newspapers.
Humphrey: “The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers’ prejudices.”
Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press, I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

“In other news, watching American football is a “violent way” to spend time. And racist, obviously.”
Odd it is racist, as the majority of NFL players are black (and they are drawn from the colleges who play gridiron and reportedly adapt their course to accommodate black students/sportsmen who, er, might not be academic material) and can command huge contracts as a reward, however brutal the game on the field. Those who may watch American Football can be hard pressed at times to see, say, a white Wide Receiver or a Defensive Back in the game. Even the Quarterback, who in the past was almost entirely likely to be White, is now just as likely to be Afro-American or mixed race.
Like most sports fans, seeing their team win tends to obliterate any racism. No one cares if their team is 90 per cent non-white if the wins keep coming.
Despite this huge volume of black players — watched by a great number of white fans in stadiums and on TV — there are issues. No, it is not all plain sailing on the good ship black sports power, sometimes amid allegations that some players are ‘just not black enough.’ This has been covered by such blogs as Zman (e.g. http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=3093)

Serena: the game is violent, true enough. But it is a strange accusation because the blacks who picked to play are (mostly) selected because they are fast. In many sports, speed counts the most of all, and in the NFL (and college) the black players can outrun the whites. So… they get the job in positions where speed can make the biggest difference.

“He was watching television violently, m’lud.”
Well, we’ve been told that everything from reducing the national debt to offering extended credit to students is “violence.” We’ve even been told that “debate is violence.” So I suppose it was inevitable that sitting on a sofa watching TV would also be classed as an act of terrifying aggression.

Eep.

In other news, watching American football is a “violent way” to spend time.
The critics would rather we return to actual war games, wherein one kingdom raids its neighbor, loots the villages, violates the women, and kills a few spare men for good measure?
American football channels the human desire for combat and conquest into something that generates resources rather than destroys them.
Do the football stands erupt in violence during or after games? Nope. Only after winning a national championship do fans take to the streets to celebrate, and MAYBE a few thugs overturn cars, but usually it’s no more violent than Mardi Gras.
Contact sports are good for those souls who like to see (or inflict) a little controlled carnage now and then. American football, wrestling, boxing, MMA: good clean fun, all of it.
Me, I like to turn on a good football game and take a nap in front of the TV. And that’s as violent as I get.

Contact sports are good for those souls who like to see (or inflict) a little controlled carnage now and then.
In the not too distant future, wars will no longer exist.

So, I’m confused. Is it “Vagina, good; Boobs bad” now?

So boobs are now haram in modern feminism? Has anyone told Femen?

Attempting to find coherence in Laurie’s pronouncements will only lead to drink and ruin.
I didn’t get where I am today without drink and ruin.

Tim, I struggled with that question myself for a while. I finally boiled it down to “everything a woman does is good, but men enjoying it is sinful.”

“Has anyone told Femen?”
Haven’t those in the Middle East been locked up already?

Speaking of an insatiable need to purge impurity…

Hal, I was totes aware of the violence of soccer hooligans, . . . .
Hmmm. Clearly then you need to take up watching golf. The immense violence of sometimes hammered players and always hammered golf balls always occurs, and there also is always a score. Sometimes with the occasional errant shot, even the crowd gets served a high velocity golf ball.

If la Penny only wishes to rid us of pages 1-39 does this mean she’s admitting to a liking for football of the association variety?
Is Joey Barton a favourite?