|
The latest in the long list of people to be silenced for pointing out the obvious (e.g. a woman is an adult female human) is Irish writer and director Graham Linehan (writer for The IT Crowd). His Twitter account, under the handle @glinner, was permanently suspended this weekend. Linehan had been locked out of Twitter before but was allowed back in after deleting tweets. This weekend’s suspension followed this tweet: “men aren’t women tho.” In a statement published by Linehan he says that Twitter has provided no reason for the ban from this social media platform. Given that the same thing happened to me ten days ago—I still have not received an explanation for being locked out of my account and it became restricted within days of my being locked out—this is easy to believe. Before Linehan many, many feminists had been deplatformed. In 2019 British feminist activist Kelly-Jay Keen (a.k.a. Posie Parker) was banned from Twitter and her Facebook account was disabled without her consent. Keen stands for women and girls and fights the erosion of their rights—as does Linehan. Her views, which would have been considered innocuous a few years ago—she believes that, for example, rapists don’t belong in women’s prisons and men don’t belong in women’s changing rooms—are now considered controversial, in this age when quoting the dictionary definition of the word woman leads to accusations of being transphobic and bigoted. Also in 2019 Canadian feminist and editor of Feminist Current, Meghan Murphy, was banned from Twitter. In a BBC article about her she is quoted as saying, “Women’s rights exist because women are born female, not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear makeup. There is an understanding in law that women face oppression and discrimination because they are born female.”[1] Keen and Murphy are far from isolated cases. Many women who are now active on Spinster were banned from Twitter for expressing feminist views. Linehan stated this weekend: “For many people social media is their only way of getting their message to the public. Twitter should make clear to its users how it applies its rules. Because certain rights do not go away simply because Twitter refuses to respect them. I have the right to say that a biological man is not a woman. I have the right to express views on this subject that I share with JK Rowling and 95% of the world's population. We can and should respect people with body dysphoria, and support their rights as equal members of society, while opposing the harmful reality-denying ideology and actions of many trans rights activists. Feminists have the right to draw attention to the relentless harassment women are receiving online from these same activists. This includes telling JK Rowling to die in extremely graphic and sexual detail underneath Twitter posts where she’s praising children's artwork. Lesbians have the right to say that biological men are not lesbians, and that they don’t want to have sex with men who say they are lesbians. The coercion and gaslighting young lesbians are suffering at the moment is one of the scandals of our age.” I highly recommend reading Linehan’s full statement, which can be found here: https://glinner.co.uk/statement-from-graham-linehan/ It shouldn’t be controversial to quote the dictionary. It shouldn’t be considered hateful to say that women and girls have the right to complain about men in their spaces. Linehan, Keen, Murphy and countless others should not be silenced for telling the truth. The insanity must stop. [1] BBC New, Twitter-ban feminist defends transgender views ahead of Holyrood meeting, May 22, 2019 © 2020 Alline Cormier  Graham Linehan Photo credit: The Guardian
0 Comments
The proofs for my little coffee table book, What is a Woman?, arrived in the mail today! I made some small changes (the 20 X 25cm format was too big), and it is now available on Blurb.ca: https://www.blurb.ca/b/10181217-what-is-a-woman. What is a Woman? is a response to a discussion that has become absurd and aims to lift women’s spirits. Fifty percent of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, which lost its city funding due to its woman-only policy. © 2020 Alline Cormier FedEx got my hopes up, promising the proofs for my little coffee table book would arrive today before 8 p.m., but they didn't. So I'm posting picture four: four more sleeps until my book is available. Of course, secretly I'm hoping that they will arrive first thing tomorrow, and I can share my book with everyone tomorrow afternoon. Maybe the best thing to do at this point is redirect my lack of patience in the garden. God knows it could use more attention. The peas are growing every which way because I haven't given them anything to climb. Hopefully tomorrow I will have more to report and do a better job of keeping my grumpiness to myself. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  There are just five more sleeps until my coffee table book about women in support of Joanne K. Rowling and women becomes available! Fifty percent of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. It is Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, and it lost its city funding earlier this year due to its woman-only policy. As I mentioned the other day I have been discovering many wonderful women working hard for women and girls. Today I would like to present Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker). She is an English feminist activist who fights against the erasure of women. Her YouTube channel, Woman by Definition, has over 31,000 subscribers. You can read about her campaigns on her website: www.standingforwomen.com. Her entertaining videos are balm to women. It looks like the proofs for my book will arrive tomorrow! At least, that’s what I gather from the tracking number I was given. So my little coffee table book may be available earlier than I originally thought. Still locked out of Twitter without an explanation. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  There are just six more sleeps until my coffee table book about women in support of Joanne K. Rowling and women is available! Fifty percent of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. It is Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, and it lost its city funding earlier this year due to its woman-only policy. As I mentioned the other day I have been discovering many wonderful women working hard for women and girls. Today I would like to present Magdalen Berns. She was a British lesbian vlogger and feminist activist whose witty common sense videos about womanhood are balm to women. Sadly, Magdalen passed away last year, due to a brain tumour. You can still watch her videos on YouTube (search Magdalen Berns). She has over 33,000 subscribers. I highly recommend listening to what Magdalen had to say about lesbians, the LGBT movement, men and women. Very enlightening and uplifting. Last night I dreamt that I was no longer locked out of Twitter. Unfortunately, it was just a dream, and I am still locked out without an explanation. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  There are just seven more sleeps until my coffee table book about women in support of Joanne K. Rowling and women becomes available! Fifty percent of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. It is Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, and it lost its city funding earlier this year due to its woman-only policy. As I mentioned here the other day I have been discovering many wonderful women working hard for women and girls. Today I would like to present Giselle Portenier. She is an award-winning Canadian journalist and filmmaker who is dedicated to the rights of women and children. Her latest documentary, In the Name of Your Daughter (2018), focuses on FGM and child marriage. You can find her on Twitter: @GisellePortenie and her website: giselleportenier.com. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  For the second time since I began tweeting my support for Joanne K. Rowling I have been locked out of Twitter without any explanation as to why this happened. On Twitter I am always polite, and I never use profanity. My pictures are always innocuous. Today I posted a picture of a pile of books (as seen below). Before these instances I don't think I had ever been locked out of Twitter. I guess someone doesn't appreciate a woman standing up for women. Because that's all I'm doing. What Twitter is doing is silencing. I knew that other feminists have be deplatformed (e.g. Posie Parker, Meghan Murphy, etc.). I guess I just thought it wouldn't happen to me (the very small fish). It's especially annoying because I was in the middle of conversations with people. Hopefully my account will be unlocked tomorrow, and I will get a chance to resume my big, bad, scary conversations about standing up for women's rights. The silver lining in all this is that due to Twitter's actions I discovered Spinster.xyz and now have an account there. © 2020 Alline Cormier  There are just eight more sleeps until my coffee table book about women in support of Joanne K. Rowling and women becomes available! Fifty percent of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. It is Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, and it lost its city funding earlier this year due to its woman-only policy. As I mentioned here yesterday I have been discovering many wonderful women working hard for women and girls. Today I would like to present one of these women: Hibo Wardere. She is from Somalia, now based in London, and is a survivor of FGM. She speaks publicly about the harms of FGM, and she wrote Cut: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today. You can find her on Twitter: @HiboWardere. In 2015 the United Nations reported that there were an estimated 100 million to 140 million girls and women who had suffered some form of FGM. Canada is not spared by this terrible practice, and I highly recommend listening to what Ms. Wardere has to say about FGM. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  There are just nine more sleeps until my coffee table book about women in support of Joanne K. Rowling and women becomes available! Honestly, it feels like an eternity to me because I wanted to share it the moment I finished it, but in publishing this is very fast. Anyhow, soon I won't have to keep it under wraps, and I'll be able to start posting pictures. As I have tweeted extensively, 50% of my profits will be donated to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. It is Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, and it lost its city funding earlier this year due to its woman-only policy. Pictured below are nine of my Harry Potter books (not my entire collection), some in English, some in French. I also have one in Spanish (Chamber of Secrets), which I bought at Munro's in Victoria (such a lovely bookstore!). I would like to thank everyone who has been retweeting about my coffee table book. Together we will raise money for an organization that has served tens of thousands of women since 1973, an organization that is deeply committed to women's safety. The other thing I am really grateful for is all the women reaching out to me with support and encouragement. I have met some remarkable women who work very hard to improve things for women and girls. Thanks to these women I feel much more hopeful than I did a week ago, when I was disheartened because so many people were treating Joanne Rowling horribly and few people were standing up for her. She deserves much better. And it was truly dispiriting to see how little people care about women. At the end of the day it could be that for me the best part of this little project was getting to know these women better. Thank you for reading! © 2020 Alline Cormier  My coffee table book about women, in support of women and Joanne K. Rowling, will be available later this month, somewhere around June 26th. Fifty percent of my profits from the sale of this book will go to Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, Canada’s longest standing rape crisis centre, which lost its city funding earlier this year due to its refusal to change its woman-only policy. More details coming soon. Thank you for your interest! (Don't let the blokes get you down!) Also, if you believe it is especially important now to speak up for women and girls please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you. © 2020 Alline Cormier  |
Categories |
RSS Feed