Absolutely Blasted Mad July

There is a regular segment in the Speak Up For Women podcasts called “Absolutely Blasted Mad Moment of the Week”. Each podcast the speaker and the host discuss a recent event that is the most insane thing they have seen in the gender-critical space that week.

July 3: Ani O’Brien and Daphna Whitmore discussed what the hell is going on with the Left, how it impacts women’s rights, and what the upcoming New Zealand election could look like. Daphna chose Green MP Chloe Swarbrick referring to women as “people with uteruses” as the most insane thing that week.

Daphna:

We thought Chloe was one of the more sensible ones. Clearly she’s not. I’m going to give her top spot for craziness in New Zealand. Women are HALF the world. We want women’s liberation, we want to fight for things like equal pay, we need the word ‘woman’. We want women to have rights in sports, we want women to have abortion rights. You cannot start talking about us as Uterus Bearers or People With Uteruses. It also was crazy because this was at the same time as Men’s Health Week. Nobody was talking about Prostate-Havers, they weren’t being dehumanised, they were entitled to have a men’s health week without odd referencing of body parts.

Ani O’Brien chose the shutting down of the gender critical sub-Reddit on Reddit.

Ani:

The levels of authoritarian silencing being employed by tech giants have reached new heights. It’s quite scary. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have silenced people but people don’t mind so much when it’s the Steven Molyneauxs of the world but if we are going to start going down that route what will happen is what has happened today that the women’s rights movement has been shutdown on Reddit. It brings into harsh light how much the executives at Reddit hate women and our politics. They took down Gender Critical Feminists but here’s a list of some of the sub-Reddits which remain live on the site: Degraded Females, Snuff RP, Abused Slut, Misogyny Fetish, Put Her in Her Place, Abused Porn Too, Broken Fuck Toys, and kind of comically Gender Critical Guys.

On July 10 Ani O’Brien was joined by Beth Johnson to discuss the proposal from Statistics NZ to change standard data collection policy to “gender by default” rather than sex.  They discussed why the proposal is a complete “hot mess” and ran through the issues that Speak Up For Women will be raising in their submission.

Beth chose the actions of an author who had signed an open letter then promptly withdrew. Harpers Magazine published an open letter signed by 150 public figures criticising cancel culture. The signatories included JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, and feminist Gloria Steinem. Hilariously one of the lesser-known signatories, Jennifer Finney Boylan, the next day said, “I didn’t know who the other signatories were, I’m not going to endorse it.” So much for opposing cancel culture.

Ani O’Brien chose another J K Rowling topic.

Ani:

Here’s this beloved children’s author. She’s responding diligently to fan mail with children sending in their art. The trans activists [who are furious that she has taken a gender-critical stance] are posting dick pics and porn. Yet still, the media is saying that JK Rowling is harming trans people. The media treat the violent porn posters as the good guys.

If you have any Absolutely Blasted Mad moments you want to share please do in the comments section below.