Left wing feminists opposed to right wing creep in the gender critical movement. No to the far & religious Right, to white supremacists, MAGA, neo Nazis, QAnon.
Joined September 2020
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Open Your Eyes retweeted
I think like a lot of women - and a lot of men as well - I’ve found the last week pretty emotional.
Famous and powerful men - who abused that fame and power - finally not getting away with it. And behaviour and culture that we were all supposed to just laugh along with - well now we can actually say - this is not ok. It was never ok.
It felt like a watershed moment.
But what is a watershed moment? It’s a moment that is critical turning point or decisive event that permanently changes things.
So what IS actually going to change?
Well - there is one thing I would suggest could change - and it would be controversial - not everyone would agree with it.
Right now - if you’re a 16 year old girl having sex with another 16 year old - or the boy from the year above at school - that’s treated exactly the same as if you have sex with a 45 year old not in a position of trust.
Should it be?
Here's the thing - there’s a cliff edge on how you’re treated when you turn 16 - but not the other way round.
In England and Wales, if you’re a child, and someone has sex with you - the law treats you completely differently if you’re under 13 or if you’re between 13 and 16.
If you’re under 13 - it’s rape - consent is legally impossible. But if you’re 14 or 15 - it can be prosecuted as “sexual activity with a child” rather than rape which of course carries a lower sentence.
This was a massive issue during the grooming gang scandal - and the Gvt is looking to change it.
But right now - the law staggers the age of consent the wrong way.
It tapers the cliff edge for people who have sex with children - people that you and I would call rapists, but the law doesn’t treat as such.
But it DOESN’T taper the cliff edge when you turn 16. And maybe it should.
How about a staggered law of consent the other way instead - so you can have sex with a 16 year old - but only if you’re under 18 yourself?
Then the events of the last week really WOULD be a watershed.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
even if their ages, genders, net worths, and social capital wasn’t enough to convince you that depp had complete power over amber, i’d hope that him saying “don’t try to be fucking authoritative over me. you don’t exist” would do it
Open Your Eyes retweeted
having a life outside of the internet really makes you realize that some of you people are unnecessarily weird and cruel. i am begging you to go out and talk to real people.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
👏 HAMILTON: “YARDIMLARIN ENGELLENMEMESİ İÇİN İSRAİL’E BASKI YAPMALIYIZ.”
👀 Lewis Hamilton: “Bugün Mısır Kızılayı ile birlikteyim. Gazze’ye gönderilmek üzere hazırladıkları insani yardım kolilerini yüklüyorlar. Bugün, harika gönüllüleri eşliğinde Refah Sınır Kapısı’na gittiler.
Mısır genelinde 70.000’den fazla gönüllüleri var ve burada her gün 2.000’den fazla kişi, bu kolilerin mümkün olan en iyi şekilde hazırlanıp paketlenmesini sağlamak için gönüllü olarak çalışıyor. Yardımların gönderilmesi için her şey hazır.
Bu nedenle İsrail’e, Filistin tarafındaki sınır kapısını yeniden açması için gerçekten baskı yapmalıyız. Çünkü her gün yeterli sayıda yardım tırı geçiş yapamıyor.
Gazze ve Filistin’deki insanlar o kadar acil bir ihtiyaç içerisindeler ki, şu anda bu yardımlara duydukları ihtiyaç daha fazla olamaz. Bu yüzden gerçekten baskı kurmalı ve bu yardımların oraya ulaşmasını sağlamak için birlikte hareket etmeliyiz.
Burada çok büyük miktarda yardım bulunuyor. Üstelik bu merkez, Filistin’deki bireylerin ve ailelerin ihtiyaç duyduğu gıda, ilaç ve diğer temel malzemelerle dolu olan harika yardım merkezlerinden yalnızca biri.”
Open Your Eyes retweeted
500 Athlete Signatures 🤩⭐️🏅
We’ve had so much interest since our initial athlete letter to the Prime Minister that we’ve now sent a second letter, this time with 500 athletes backing my call to meet with me and fund ME properly (prev 360).
Huge names including David Moyes (we know Andy’s an Everton fan 👀), Millie Bright & so many stars from a variety of sports 🙏🏼 I can’t tell you how grateful I am to every single one of you!!
Please @andyburnham , take an illness that’s been neglected more than almost anything else seriously 🙏🏼 1.35m people in the country estimated to be impacted, that’s a lot of the vote share!! @UKLabour
I know I owe lots of people replies and thanks, please bear with me and thank you so much again ❤️❤️❤️
Open Your Eyes retweeted
"The real danger is, of course, long Covid. And we just don't know. It's so unpredictable who's going to get it."
Dr Amir Khan on ITV's Lorraine talking about #LongCovid and the importance of prevention.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
BREAKING: Anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas - also known as Danny Tommo - has pleaded guilty to criminal damage after a video showed him slashing a migrant boat with a knife in the English Channel.
trib.al/4tT3zNp
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
Open Your Eyes retweeted
I might believe the reckoning faced by Russell Brand and David Walliams and whoever is next -because rumours are already aplenty- represent a watershed moment in holding celeb men to account for abuse of women & girls if we haven't had so many so-called watershed moments before.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
If you genuinely want to protect people from flu and COVID-19, start by making one thing crystal clear: THESE VIRUSES ARE AIRBORNE.
People have a right to know how they spread so they can protect themselves and others.
Stop obscuring the science. Start communicating it clearly.
Feeling under the weather with a cough, sore throat or temperature?🤧🌡️
Tell us how you're feeling in our FluSurvey and help build a clearer picture of illnesses across the UK: flusurvey.net
ALT A person is coughing with their hand on their chest. Text reads, "Help us protect your community from flu and COVID-19 infections,". The UK Health Security Agency and FluSurvey logos are present. Text at the bottom says, "Join FluSurvey.net today." Red circles are scattered around the image.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
There is a dangerous misconception about child sexual abuse and grooming. We need to talk about it.
In light of the allegations surrounding David Walliams, and his statement that he is not a sexual predator, we need to understand what grooming means.
Deliberately grooming a child for sexual exploitation is predatory behaviour. That is a safeguarding principle, not a conclusion about anyone facing allegations.
A child doesn’t have to recognise they’re being groomed for grooming to be taking place.
ITV News reports allegations from women who say they experienced grooming, including accounts of contact beginning at just 15. One describes how attention from a celebrity made her feel special.
Walliams denies the allegations. That must be acknowledged. But the wider safeguarding conversation matters.
I talk regularly about the 90-10 statistic. The vast majority of children who experience sexual abuse know the person responsible. Abuse is often hidden in plain sight, behind trust, admiration and power.
As a child, you don’t necessarily have the vocabulary or understanding to recognise manipulation or exploitation.
You may feel special. Chosen. Important.
A child can feel special and still be exploited. A child can trust someone and still be abused.
Sometimes it takes adulthood to recognise how frightening or abusive childhood experiences were.
We must stop asking why children didn’t speak out, maintained contact or took years to understand what happened.
We need to stop judging childhood experiences through adult understanding.
Safeguarding means educating adults about warning signs, manipulation and power imbalances, while empowering children without making them responsible for preventing abuse.
Children should never have to recognise abuse before adults recognise their responsibility to protect them.
This is why I campaign. Until we understand grooming, we will keep having these conversations.
And I am not here for another conversation.
I am here for change.
@Project9010
#Project9010 #NotMyShame #HiddenInPlainSight #ChildSafeguarding
Open Your Eyes retweeted
Not for the first time I am amazed at what a pathetically low bar men have set themselves with 'legal consent' & 'she was 16'. A fat, oily, middle aged man used his workplace to meet teenage girls, slapping on NDAs? 'It's not crime' chorus the fellas. This is the standard is it?
Open Your Eyes retweeted
IS THIS FINALLY BRITAIN'S METOO MOMENT? by @RosamundUrwin
Russell Brand's behaviour had been an open secret in the British TV industry and the comedy circuit since about 2018. When I began approaching potential sources in January 2019, I rarely named him in my initial emails or messages, saying only that I was investigating a Me Too story in comedy. I was shocked by how many senior figures in TV would, once on a call, say “oh, of course”, when I mentioned Brand’s name. This casual acceptance made me furious. Those executives now appear to be suffering from a collective amnesia about what they knew back then.
Brand was not exposed during the Me Too movement, although there was a growing jitteriness about having him on television shows from that point onwards, perhaps a sense that his time would soon come. His retreat from the mainstream media – he even once guest-edited this very publication – into the world of online cranks began soon after. In his early videos, he dabbled with different genres – relationship advice; therapy gobbledegook – before settling in the haven for sexual predators online: the hard right.
At trial, Brand’s defence barrister, Ian Winter KC, sought to use the Me Too movement against the complainants. He questioned why they had not come forward in late 2017, when, in his charming formulation, “every woman in the world was examining whether they’d been sexually assaulted by a famous person”. But there is a simple explanation: although some brave women and men did speak out that year, in Britain Me Too was only ever half-baked.
Cover art by Nate Kitch
Open Your Eyes retweeted
🚨🇬🇧 Russell Brand r*ped one woman and s*xually assaulted three others. A jury convicted him. A judge sentenced him to 10.5 years. He denied all the charges and told police the encounters were consensual.
His defenders have settled on six lines. Hearsay. No DNA. He said, she said. No CCTV. No witnesses. No evidence. These posts are all over Twitter.
Put together, they set one standard: unless a r*pe is filmed, it didn’t happen.
Almost no r*pe meets that standard. Most happen in private, by a man the woman knows. There’s no camera and no one else in the room. English law stopped requiring corroboration in sexual offence cases in 1994.
Her testimony is evidence. It was tested under cross-examination. The jury weighed each count separately and acquitted him on three. A stitch-up doesn’t end in three acquittals.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says victims need the confidence to come forward. Fewer than one in six women who are r*ped report it to police. Among victims who told someone but not the police, a quarter said they didn’t expect to be believed.
These ghoulish posts reinforcing r*pe myths, mainly from far-right accounts, tell them they were right.
Open Your Eyes retweeted
I'm posting this beautiful exchange again not only because it not has English subtitles, but because it's so beautiful. Love always triumphs.
