Owen Jones Watch: Dear Me

Owen frowning and looking concerned, pictured recently.

How tempting for the left to turn inwards, to suddenly feel like strangers in a foreign and hostile land, populated by shy Tories and rampant Ukippery. You can see how the already inward-looking left could become ever more insular, with leftwing meetings serving as group therapy rather than a means to win over the unconvinced or the unreached, and activists retreating into online “safe spaces” free of those who think differently. Our language often seems intended to exclude, full of rhetoric and terminology that only those who have associated with leftwing milieus could ever hope to digest. Social media abounds with activists attacking others on the left for failing to abide by the strict rules of communication.

Not speaking or writing in the correct way can be seen as suspicious at best, treacherous at worst. For millions of people who are not au fait with the latest queer theories, that means being written off. Being “leftwing” could become a cultural label, like being a hipster or an emo-kid, a way of standing out from the crowd and asserting difference in a Ukip-ised England.

How ironic that the right preaches rampant individualism but often displays great solidarity, while the left professes collectivism, but often operates in the most rampantly individualistic way. Voices on the left who achieve any prominence whatsoever are castigated for careerism or other ulterior motives, or for failing to use their platform to promote the correct form of politics. Rather than seeing different strategies as complementary, an advocate of a different approach risks being accused of not acting in good faith.

For those of us who want to transform society, rather than just noisily critique the way things are, we have to completely rethink our approach. This is not me castigating the failures of others, arrogantly assuming I have it all worked out. I don’t, and this is about my failure as much as anyone else’s...

Owen Jones, The Guardian.

Our Owen castigates those on the Left who are 'talking among themselves' by writing about himself.

All a bit rich for someone who holds the Twitter record for BLOCKING! anyone who says he may be wrong.

Poor lamb.

Stop it OJ!

PS Owen Jones is quite bonkers.

Queer: Class War

Tricia Tuttle, the BFI’s deputy director of festivals, said: “Queer filmmakers have delivered some of cinema’s most striking, vital, challenging, provocative and beautiful films and BFI Flare has been key in bringing these to UK audiences over the last 29 years...'

The Guardian online.

Why is it only the gay middle classes who now use the term 'queer'?

An empty signifier of pseudo-radicalism.

That name again... Tricia Tuttle!

Update: How can you be a 'queer' 'LGBT' woman exactly? Either your're a lesbian or not. Did George Carlin die in vain?

Letter To The Editor: Queer Theory

In his hilarious interview with Decca Aikenhead (22 December), Tory MP David Davies advances the "erasure" theory of homosexuality, akin to similar theories such as the "Sound of Music" and "Judy Garland'. This may be extended to a wider range of tastes than music. For example, when, a few years ago, I owned a large and aggressive poodle, I and my partner were often accosted – in a perfectly friendly way – by individuals who would regale us with jokes about poodles suggestive of effeminacy.

I had a less warm encounter with a gent in blazer and grey flannels in a newsagent's in a Suffolk village. When I wandered in (with dog) to buy a Sunday paper the gentleman recoiled, gasping, "Is that a homosexual dog?" By contrast, a theatre director friend told me how when he and his boyfriend were mincing (his word) down the street accompanied by their pitbull (or it might have been a staffie, I forget which), burly lorry drivers would lean out of their cabs, thumbs up, with a "Great dog, mate!". Clearly, in consumer society, we really are what we buy.
Elizabeth Wilson
London

I think this letter in The Guardian has been buggered by a sub after one too many Christmas sherries.
The correspondent surely meant "Erasure theory" - capital E, after the electropop group - and not the more high-falutin' and po-mo sounding "erasure theory".
Mr Davies was quoted as saying;

"Can I say something else as well?" he adds. "It may or may not be relevant." When Davies was 16, a popular school friend had announced he was gay. Davies ran into him again at 19, "And it turned out the guy had got engaged. To a woman! And he absolutely didn't want to talk about what had gone on between the age of 16 and 19. He'd started coming down to the pub at 16 with, you know, splits in his jeans, and started buying Erasure albums, and all the rest of it – and three years later he's suddenly horrified by the whole thing!"

Oh dear.
People like this are now running the country, guys and gals.
Oh, and this letter is presumably by the noted Marxist feminist queer academic, Elizabeth Wilson, whose partner is Angela Mason, of both Angry Brigade and Stonewall fame.
Respec'!