Wis[s]e Words

“Get over it and go pee”

Published on June 20, 2020Leave a comment

Alison Bechdel already knew the score in 1995:

Dykes to Watch Out For comic from 1995 on transphobia

The titular Dykes to Watch Out Fo are walking out of a bad movie, when Jillian has to pee. Mo, who has to do the same, doesn’t want to enter the loo because Jillian, though cool, is a trans woman. Lois tells her off, saying she’s not going to wait around all night just because Mo has a transphobia attack. So Mo enters the toilets, only to be challenged by a woman on whether she is in the right bathroom. (Mo looks rather butch after all.) Jillian defends her, telling the stranger to take a closer look. After this, Mo thanks Jillian and says she would do the same for her. This is however no longer necessary now her “nobody knows I’m a transsexual” t-shirt has worn out.

So there you have it, the absurdity of the bathroom panic laid bare in a twentyfive year old comic. Trans women are no danger, the idea that you can tell who is and is not a woman at a glance is deeply homophobic and barring people from pissing in the toilets they feel most comfortable in is ludicrous.

Remember Ed Milliband?

Published on June 19, 2020Leave a comment

Remember how when he was Labour leader, during the 2015 election, he was treated as basically illegitamite for wanting to take power? How he, a Jewish man, was made endless fun off for eating a bacon sarnie a bit awkwardly? And that his father was accused of being a foreign agitator?

Speaking of Ed Milliband, curiously how antisemitism in the Labour party stopped being an issue the day Starmer was elected as leader, eh?

Daily Telegraph headline: Man who broke the Bank of England backing secret plot to thwart Brexit

That same rightwing press, having had oodles of fun with that picture of Ed eating that sarnie, suddenly found itself Very Concerned about antisemitism in the Labour Party, didn’t they? The Blackshirt supporting Daily Mail, the notoriously antimigrant Sun, the Spectator, praising the Wehrmach one issue and Greek neonazis the next, the Daily Telegraph busy using Soros conspiracy theories straight out of the Protocols of the Elders as headlines, all suddenly Very Concerned about this issue. And all very, very confident that it’s the fault of one lifelong antiracist activist and not something that’s a structural problem in UK society also manifesting itself in Labour. Of course they were the most convinced that this issue was an isolated case and we need not worry about its equivalent in the Tories, or warnings from inside of the party itself that islamophobia is rampant in it.

Antisemitism in the party is of course something Labour, as a leftwing party needs to get its house in order on. Just as it needs to do with the lingering strains of antiblackness, transphobia and islamphobia also present in it..

Labour 2005 election poster showing Oliver Letwin and Michael Howard as flying pigs

But when you have Alistair Campbell, notorious for using antisemitic election posters against Michael Howard as your spokesperson on driving out antisemitism in the party, when you have his mates sabotaging efforts to get Ken Livingstone ejected for his antisemitism, you wonder how much of the anxiety about it last year was genuine. Especially when you have the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world about to to cease publication because of the policies of its hardline rightwing editor, as he used it as a vehicle to slander Labour and other leftwing activists. The Jewish Chronicle, published since 1841, destroyed to get the Tories re-elected.

That whole deluge of mostly false or half true accussations, that unprecedent weaponisation of antisemitism concerns, is perhaps the most cynical part of the whole campaign to keep Corbyn out of number ten. It and everything around is why, suddenly, as Flying Rodent put it:

the public organically decided they wanted a highly exotic and destructive trade/political restructure and they also decided – all by themselves – that the leader of the opposition hated white people and Britain.

You’re hard pressed to find anything about that in Labour Together’s election review. All of that just spontaneously materialised and nobody in the press has to ask themselves any awkward questions.

And yet: remember Ed Milliband?

Steek aan die lont!

Published on June 18, 2020Leave a comment

Een puik stukkie jeugdsentiment, dit:

From January 1987, the very first episode of Vara’s Vuurwerk, a seminal Dutch heavy metal radio show. Hosted by pop icon Henk Westbroek, always a bit tongue in cheek, outraging the real metalheads. Yet this show introduced me to so many metal acts: Metallica, Queensryche, Alice Cooper, Vengeance, Testament, Sodom, Annihilator nevertheless. A rarity in a time when there were only a dozen or so radio channels and metal was never played on them. It was either this, or the slightly elder metal fans at high school to introduce you to new bands. Especially influential were the annual listeners Top Fifty shows, one of which I turned into a Spotify playlist. It really gives an impression of what metal was like back then. Or at least what the listeners thought was great.

Seriously? These losers?

Published on June 17, 2020Leave a comment

The final panel of Nate Powell’s excellent About Face, “death and surrender to power in the clothing of men” has a warning:

These are the future fascist paramilitary participants and their ushers -- take them seriously

But I just cannot take them seriously. Those overgrown man children, with their penis substitutes and nerd sense of what is cool are made to be mocked and bullied. Just look at them. Gargling bleach to own the libs, deliberately running their cars badly to “roll coal” and own the libs, shooting themselves in the cock (literally) because they have the gun discipline of a drunk elephant. Any asshole can look tough in black sunglasses and holding an M-16, but take away these toys and they fold like a cheap suit. Yes, be aware that they’re dangerous, but for heaven’s sake don’t take them seriously. Fascist bully boys always need mocking.

What I’ve been watching — Spring 2020

Published on June 14, 2020Leave a comment

With the spring season of anime on its last legs, let’s take a look at what I’ve been watching each week. It’s not a lot. Thanks to our friend Covid-19 a fair few series were postponed and while I theoretically had more time to watch stuff, what with being stuck at home all day every day, in practise I more often than not lacked the energy to do so. You will therefore notice a bit of a trend in the series I did keep watching week by week. Presented in order of which I’d watch the first,

Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei Shiteshimatta…
Bakarina meets heroine
I’d been looking forward to this, having read both the manga and the original light novels. The animation itself is a bit underwhelming, but as an adaptation it has been great. The essential idiocy of Bakarina shone through and seeing her effortlessly and inadvertently built up her bisexual harem week by week has been great. I really like Bakarina’s character design; you could see she could’ve made a really imposing villainess if she wasn’t such a cinnamon roll. Every week it has been a delight to hang out with Bakarina and her crew, even when the plot kicked in. It’s cozy, funny and occassionally even touching.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai? Tensai-tachi no Ren’ai Zunousen
Kaguya-sama is very cute
The second season of two idiots too prideful to admit to the other they are in love with them is just as good as the first one. I like the super serious morality committee member addition to the cast, altering the dynamics somewhat. Most of the stories still end with Kaguya-sama self destroying, which is always fun, or the president’s paranoia getting the worst of him. What I’m most impressed by this season though is the animation, which has only improved from the first season. There’s a real playfulness to it, a willingness to experiment that make similar stories stand out from each other.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive
Princess Connect episode ten: our heroes are turned into pudding except for Pecorine
Take yet another wildly popular Cygames mobile game, create an anime of it. Then make the usual male audience stand-in protagonist so amnesiac he’s barely functions and focus on what would’ve been his harem in another series instead. Crazy isn’t it? There are some hints of dreaded plot here and there, but for the most part these are low stakes adventures in one of the nicer fantasylands. I love each of the three main girls. Pecorine is a cheerful glutton who befriends everybody she meets. Kokkoro is a sweet cinnamon roll, happy to take care of the protagonist hero. Finally Kyaru, the resident cat girl, is there to add a little bit of cynicism to the crew. the latest episode saw them all turned to puddings by a ghost with a lust for this particular dessert. That’s basically all you need to know.

Nami yo Kiitekure
Minare emoting
One night after being dumped by her boyfriend, whom she also had lent a considerable sum of money to, Koda Minare spills her troubles to a cool older dude in a bar. Who turns out to be a radio producer who had recorded the whole thing and broadcast it on local radio. That’s the start of Minare’s brilliant radio career as she gets involved in stranger and stranger circumstances made worse by her personality, then makes shows out of it. Frankly, this series lives by the voice work of Sugiyama Riho, who does a very good job as Minare. Everything else is so-so, but her acting is what keeps me coming back each week. I can’t imagine watching this dubbed.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T

I’ve always liked Railgun more than Index. Railgun is more grounded, less likely to go off on absurd tangents and Misaka Mikoto is just more likeable than Touma. The current series has suffered a bit from Covid-19 delays, with episode 16 delayed until the end of July, but so far I’ve enjoyed it. Separating Mikoto from her usual friends and having her depend on Kongou Mitsuko was brilliant. I like Kongou; there’s a good friend hiding behind that ojosama laugh of hers. The series isn’t perfect, with Mikoto too often a victim rather than the hero and the villains are not very interesting. But on the whole this is again a fun series.