The Cult of ‘Persynality’

My present relationship with the feminist movement is akin to one’s begrudging love for their loud old aunt Mildred who has too many cats and a nasty habit of getting drunk and telling offensive jokes at family reunions – she’s often a pain in the ass; but she’s your dear old pain in the ass. So, I’m at once cognizant of the fact that most self-described feminists are middle-class white people with gross, reformist politics and that my own ideological roots are in the feminist community – this is why I’m still willing to defend feminism from attacks by whiny outsiders¹, in much the same way that you might feel OK mentioning the fact that Aunt Mildred kinda smells like mothballs & Dr. Scholl’s foot pads; but hearing random strangers who aren’t family members laugh about it sets your blood to boiling. Yes, she’s weird and rude and smells like the bottom of her bedroom closet; but she’s my weird, smelly aunt and I love her despite her flaws, so back off.

Upon meeting large numbers of feminists in meatspace during my mid to late teens and onward, I encountered a likable enough community. Yes, there was no shortage of smug, middle-class white liberals and infighting about irrelevant crap; but generally, even online discourse was what I’ll call ‘outwardly-focused’ – talking about and/or planning on-the-ground activism, heated debates on how certain business practices and government policies impact different women, anecdotes from our daily lives, and so on.

..and then, like a careless chef dropping a head of lettuce behind the fridge and promptly forgetting about it, I was completely uninvolved with the feminist community for a couple of years. Upon my return, I encountered a big old rotting mess.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…

…the most pointless superhero ever?

To be clear, it’s the delivery I’m objecting to here, not the message – circumcision is a medically unjustifiable procedure most often performed solely to satisfy the parents’ aesthetic or religious preferences. It’s not something to which I’d ever subject my sweet little (hypothetical) baby, and I wish more parents would follow suit.

That aside, the comic is just fucking weird – using artistic media to protest circumcision is great; it’s the idea of a superhero whose existence revolves around babies’ crotches that I find lol-worthy.

I initially kept my mind open upon hearing about it, thinking that the comic was more tongue-in-cheek than cheesy, overwrought melodrama. I thought wrong.:

(Don’t) Fuck the Police.

According to the Guardian: "Mark Kennedy had sexual relationships with several women while serving as an undercover policeman and infiltrating a ring of environmental activists"

From the Guardian; emphases mine:

Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of “promiscuity” with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.

The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.

Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists.