Post-Christian Britain, and Eating on Tubes

Post-Christian Britain

Yay for the ex-Archbish! Rowan Williams talks some sense about the Church of the Tories!

Yes, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams is telling it like it is. His comments seem to be significantly more sensible than Cameron's or Grieve's. And he would be in a much better position than them to comment on such matters.

Of course Britain appears to be a post-Christian nation. That's not to say we don't have a small but vocal religious right. A dangerous group, who would have us regress back to a time of yesteryear when God was more important, and women's rights less so. Because God exists, but women, apparently, don't. Riiiight. 

"What we need to do is start using the Bible more, you know that book which tells you not to make "graven images" but seems to think rape is OK. The book where you can't wear mixed fabrics, but having slaves is just fine, as long as when you beat them they don't die straight away."

We don't have an exact equivalent of the dreaded Tea Party in the US. Although quite a few politicians with, you guessed it, UKIP connections seem to be trying to correct that recently. 


So, the religious right may be somewhat more diffuse in the UK, but that doesn’t make their core message any less dumb.

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Eating on Tubes

Tilly Jean has an excellent blog if you're interested in intersectional feminism. Which you should be. Thought I'd plug it. 


Here's a comment I put on a post regarding the debacle that is the "Women Who Eat on Trains" (WWEOT) Facebook page, and and my response to those man-warriors who like to complain about people complaining about it. Because of course, and I'm letting you in on a secret here, a REAL man has to flex his intellectual muscles picking on girls.

Here's my comment:

"There's something very worrying going on here. Here's my take.

Welcome to WWEOT, or as I call it "unsolicited anonymous sexist voyeur stalker food-porn" masking itself as "an observational celebration of women eating on tube trains". Yeah right.

From the comments posted it quickly becomes clear that the users are willing to go the minimum possible effort to present a veneer of respectability to their unwanted attentions. They use pretentious pseudo-poetry ("the glorious beams of sunlight cascading through the windows and casting a multitude of coloured reflections off her crisp packet!" they swoon) that makes even my writing look half decent. It's all fake. But you can't polish a turd. There are clear signs of misogyny here lurking under the surface. The users sure all look like "real men", whatever the hell that means.

There are a few women users there to be fair, but what I took away from it was that these people seem utterly unaware of their own slavish adherence to cultural and gender norms. So I guess they think why the hell should these poor women get a break either? 

The answer to "why they get to take and post unsolicited pictures" is basically "well other people do! We're not the only ones!" As if that matters. To them, a hint of anyone else's "hypocrisy" in taking photos without a signed affidavit from the subject is the only justification they need. 

To cap it all off, this page is a budding stalker's dream. I was shocked to see that the time, location and even trainline are all clearly stated, and all your average loony stalker needs to do is take note and turn up there the next day, and he's already on the line to...well you know. Apologies but this just makes me so mad! The posting of these details is utterly unacceptable.

Remind me again why we need MI5 and the NSA keeping tabs on people when the folks over at WWEOT seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, and all for free! If all they were doing was reading emails, that would be bad, but somehow I wouldn't care so much.

What a disgusting page."

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And my response to commenter Stephen:

It's pretty clear after those comments, that some people have made exactly zero effort to understand the issue, or the way other people think. Setting up strawmen is a rewarding exercise for people who like to try and pick holes in easy targets. The problem is that I don't think there are many people who think that misogyny is the ONLY thing wrong in society, or that WWEOT is anything special compared to what we've previously seen. You'd have to be very insulated to think that.

Some people  apparently come loaded with cynicism, sarcasm and sweary pre-suppositions of "hysterical feminists", and like to use all the cliched old tropes, as if they help at all. Such labels only serve to divide us.

It's churlish to compare regular advertising to the invasive exposure of WWEOT- I don't have an eating disorder myself but I'd imagine that it's the act of broadcasting the *study* of normal people - not just models or actors - eating that is the main problem. That and the thought that you could get snapped whenever you eat on the tube . Otherwise you'd be triggered every time you saw someone else eating.

Ultimately, it's irrelevant whether WWEOT is just a bunch of bad apples misbehaving, as Stephen would have us believe, or if it's indicative of a larger trend of misogyny. I don't know for sure. It's still unacceptable, and still worth calling it out for the bullshit that it is, in either case.

People like Stephen like to call themselves logical and think they have all the answers, but the truth is often a bit more complex.

 I wonder what other issues are important to him? Because he never elucidated. Presumably not social justice, judging by the way he cast around all those SJW labels. Maybe all those nasty immigrants stealing our British jobs? (Because jobs have nationalities now). 

"Don't worry, UKIP will sort it all out, and all those Pesky Feminists! Because they care about really unimportant things, things which only affect women like them, and that's why I like to spend the time to argue with them about those things, which I say again, no-one cares about! Onwards and upwards!"