Wednesday 18 November 2009

Careful! These Animals Bite!

Harry’s Place made the mistake a few days ago of poking one of the most venomous denizens of the blogosphere, the feminist horribilis.

Ignoring the warnings and the species' own particular threat display of shrill calls of 'Mysogynist!', they persisted in annoying the creature until the inevitable happened:
Harry’s Place readers may remember wannabe radical journalist Laurie Penny. She attacked Harry’s Place here and provoked a response from me which criticised her misunderstanding of the politics of the site. I also tweaked her tail by cheekily suggested her political inexperience and privileged background were at least partly to blame for her failure to distinguish between Islamists and people of the Muslim faith.
Oh, dear…
Perhaps that’s why the English are pre-eminent practitioners of the comedy of errors: there’s just so much opportunity to take linguistic offence it would be a crime not to laugh.

Take for example the term “silly cow”. Casually inserting the phrase (as reported speech) into a conversation at which a young lady of proletarian origin was an interlocutor - in, say Manchester, would almost certainly be met with a shrug, a smile, a pulled face or - much more likely - complete indifference: that’s because it’s an accepted (though hardly elegant) part of the rough and tumble of speech for the majority of the population.

How to explain Ms Penny’s incendiary response to the use of the phrase without conjuring up images of Violet Elizabeth Bott is a challenge, I can tell you.
*winces*
Brownie then attempted to explain that he wasn’t directing the term at Ms Penny at all, but all his efforts were in vain. The spunky young radical feminist’s dander has risen too far to be persuaded by mere logic and evidence. Not content with misogyny she decided to bring race into the equation too. And hate speech.
Really? How terrible! Didn’t she realise such weapons are only to be deployed against others, not against the Left?

Who does she think she is?
People like Laurie Penny are the reason a lot of ordinary people are completely turned off by politics. If she can’t tell the difference between an everyday phrase used without incident by literally millions of people on a daily basis (and one not even directed at her) on the one hand, and a vicious attack on her tender soul - her eternal and precious essence - her very personhood on the other, well then she’s not cut out for the big conversation that politics entails.
Heh..!

She’s your creation, Left. You made her. Enjoy her, won’t you..?

12 comments:

Edwin Greenwood said...

Cor! What spiffing entertainment!

I wonder if Laurie has the mandatory lesbo-feminist accent. I mean no disrepect to Clare Short, a decent and honest woman whatever her politics, but Ms Short's natural accent is precisely the archetype to which the ambitious misandrist lesbo-feminist aspires.

The Brummie vowels convey an indeterminate proletarian credibility, an earthy no-nonsense industrial grit, while the whining tone conveys the required undercurrent of aggressive, resentful victimhood.

In terms of whinefulness, it's a bit of a toss-up between the Scouse whine and the Brummie whine. I'd say the Scouse whine is more pugnacious while the Brummie is more persistent.

My first encounter with the phonological dungarees of the classic lesbo-feminist adopted accent was in the late 1970s, when I served on a trade union branch committee with such a person.

She was a recent Oxbridge graduate with a fully developed set of Militant Tendency attitudes and, like some of her contemporaries, eager to convert our staid trade union branch in to an agent of change, a cadre from which to foment the revolution.

She worked hard on her pseudo-Brummie accent, but unfortunately the Home Counties country-gel RP kept slipping through. In due course she left us to work for the BBC.

On the subject of silly kine, I suspect that this decidedly NSFW link just about sums the matter up.


WV: kabliali. I had a plate of that yesterday. It was disgusting!

woman on a raft said...

The Samosa has received sponsorship of £15K from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to support new writing and new voices in journalism.

Where's your £15k, then?

Ross said...

I've always vaguely assumed that Laurie Penny was a parody. Her name sounds fake and real people don't talk in cliches and slogans like she does. Plus in some ways she appears to be implausibly stupid.

Umbongo said...

Ross

It's invariably the use of the first name "Meg" in political circles which denotes right-on stupidity and chippiness

Mark Wadsworth said...

I did pop on over to Penny Red's 'blog and established two things:

1. Although she is still churning out leftie-crap-by-numbers, she still gets dozens and dozens of equally meaningless comments, mainly supportive.

2. She has changed her photograph, and she looks a lot less cute on the new photograph than on the old one.

Mark said...

'Didn’t she realise such weapons are only to be deployed against others, not against the Left?'

'She has changed her photograph, and she looks a lot less cute on the new photograph than on the old one.'

From these quotes I think we can deduce 2 things.
1. She's thick as shit
2. Her looks are going

If that is the case, she'll find in the coming years that she's reminded about item 1 above a lot more frequently than had been the case previously !

BTW Can I now claim my £10 as the current holder of the coveted title (awarded by Harperson herself)- 'Misogynist of the Week' ?

David Thompson said...

The precious Ms Penny can finally star in her own victimhood schtick. I suspect she’s been rehearsing for just such an opportunity.

http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2008/06/hyper-indeed.html

JuliaM said...

"Cor! What spiffing entertainment!"

It's a real 'Get the popcorn!' thread, to be sure...

"Where's your £15k, then?"

I suspect when they say 'new writing' they aren't using any definition of 'new' that human beings understand..

"I suspect she’s been rehearsing for just such an opportunity. "

Ahhh... I thought the name seemed vaguely familiar.

James Higham said...

Harry’s Place made the mistake a few days ago of poking one of the most venomous denizens of the blogosphere, the feminist horribilis.

I do it all the time - it's one of my sports.

Eckersalld said...

When I first paddled in the world of blog Penny Red was one of the blogs that indicated which side of political spectrum was more entertaining.

There are plenty of her views I can understand, but they're done in such a fucking shrill tone - much like many of the left-wing blogs.

So much whining, and when she starts going on about 'silly cow' being some huge sexually discriminative insult... Really, a facepalm moment.

My only worry is the shrill tone is down to the realization of how shit Labour are, in which case we'll probably have something similar from the Tory blogs once the oncoming disaster called Cameron gets settled in.

Stu said...

You think that's bad?

You should see what Ms Penny has been writing elsewhere. In fact, insert your own fisk here.

Apparently I've been going through 'a confusing and painful experience', and I can no longer pretend that I 'represent the standard for normal humanity'. As if that wasn't bad enough, I've finally recognised myself as the minority group I have always been. But if I'm lucky, and if feminists have 'a little imagination', I and my generation could learn 'the arts of listening, sharing and solidarity'.

I don't know about the other guys here, but I can't wait.

Leg-iron said...

I prefer Alf Garnett's 'silly old moo'.

Really, that's because any hint of Garnettism drives them all nuts.

Well, everyone should have a hobby.