Comments by "Edward Lindon" (@EdwardLindon) on "Liz Truss flogs her "stupid f***ing book": Ten Years to Save the West" video.

  1.  @spindizzy64  No-one's asking any politician to refrain from ever offending anyone. What is being suggested is that generalized, ungrounded expressions of contempt should not be aimed at Black women in public, given that they represent two vulnerable demographics. Public figures should make their criticisms based on policy, words and actions, not mere likeability, because women and Black people consistently lose out in popularity contests.
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  2. That's not the point. The general view, which I find plausible, is that Philips was leveraging the widespread and vitriolic hatred suffered by Abbott to gain easy cred. In fact, I'm no Abbott fan, but the level of abuse and groundless attacks she has received constantly for decades is completely bananas. There is no doubt in my mind that a large proportion of it is racially motivated, which is why soft critics/near allies of Abbott should be much more circumspect. The intrinsic and historical failures of feminism vis-a-vis people of colour is very well documented.
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  3. As a POC, I feel that there's no need to jump on a bullying bandwagon for clout. Deriding Abbott for her many failings is perfectly fine. Showing off about a general, unsubstantiated contempt for her suggests Philips has no clue about how bad things can be for Black women in the UK, or perhaps that she just doesn't care. It's graceless and it's bullying.
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  4. Coco is dead right on the Philips-Abbott story. Personal insults should not be thrown against women of colour in public, precisely because they already get a raw deal from open and closet racists. Philips concludes by saying she didn't intentionally do so, and this is credible. Implicitly, she recognises that she stoked an already unfair situation, and this is why she should have apologised as soon as the story came out. She didn't commit a mortal sin, but her comment was graceless, unfair and ignorant.
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  5. Because they're incredibly rich and powerful and have been sabotaging efforts at both research and regulation for decades? In any case, you seem to be in favour of the goal, so why does this particular method get up your nose?
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  6. No, it's not about "treating all people equally" for the very obvious reason that people do not all start from the same position of advantage. Feminism, like any humanism, is about treating people *justly*, in order to correct historical inequalities. Diane Abbott has been a punching bag for racists for decades, and Philips should be mindful of this, restricting her public criticisms to substantive and specific disagreements, rather than popularising the idea that it's ok to be unpleasant and abusive to people just because you "don't like them". This "Mean Girls" model of civic discourse is intrinsically racist and sexist because in a society where racism and sexism still exist, POC and women will always be easy targets.
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  7. There's nothing absurd about challenging white feminists about their behaviour towards people of colour.
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  8. Expecting white feminists not to pile on in the bullying of Black women? Hardly.
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