Allison 🟥

Kindness without honesty is not being kind.

[Karen Ingala Smith @DrK_IngalaSmith]

In awe of and grateful to @ForWomenScot.
Yes, lots of us are in and have contributed to this fight, many we don’t know the names of. We are a movement of women who said no.
But Susan, Marion and Trina, thank you so much.

[Annemarie Ward 💜 @Annemarieward]

29 years ago today, I stopped using all mind altering substances.
I’ve never been terribly interested in presenting recovery as a heroic achievement. I know too many people who didn’t make it, too many people who desperately wanted what I was fortunate enough to find, and too many people still fighting for their lives. Gratitude seems a much more appropriate response than self-congratulation.

But I do think there is something worth saying about the way of life that recovery has given me.
Not self-harming and not self-destructing in a world that increasingly encourages both is quite a thing.

And I don’t only mean drugs.

We live in an age extraordinarily good at helping us escape ourselves. Alcohol and drugs are the obvious ones, but there is also gambling, pornography, food, shopping, work, screens, social media, rage, endless scrolling, validation, attention, even grievance. There is an anaesthetic for almost every uncomfortable human feeling, and usually somebody making money from supplying it.
Against that backdrop, there is something almost radical about choosing to remain awake.
For 29 years I have lived without alcohol or drugs, but recovery has required much more than simply not picking something up. It has meant learning to recognise the other doors marked escape when they appear. The substances may go, but the human appetite for avoidance can be remarkably inventive.

So you learn to watch yourself. Where am I disappearing? What am I using to change how I feel? What am I becoming dependent upon? What am I doing repeatedly despite knowing it diminishes me?
That kind of vigilance isn't grim. Quite the opposite. It has given me an astonishingly full life.

Being fully present has its bonuses and its downfalls. Joy arrives undiluted, but so does grief. Love is glorious and occasionally excruciating. You get disappointment without sedation, loss without oblivion, fear without an emergency exit. Sometimes you have to sit in your own skin when you'd much rather be anywhere else.
But you also get your life.

You actually get to be there for it. Fully present - all the time.

In a culture constantly inviting us to consume, distract, numb, medicate, scroll or escape our way out of being human, I have come to think that remaining conscious, connected and present is a quietly radical & revolutionary act.

Twenty-nine years later, I don't celebrate because I think I have mastered any of this. Recovery has taught me enough humility to know better than that.
I celebrate because this way of living is still possible and to be visible to those looking for a way out.

One day at a time, adds up to quite an extraordinary life.

[Allison 🟥 @AllisMcD]

@NoahAndKaisMum That is a cool ambition xx

[Audrey Ludwig MBE @AudreySuffolk]

Where is the intellectual honesty? There has been no erosion; just a recognition of what the Equality Act ( and the Sex Discrimination Act before it) actually has meant since coming into force. What @NadiaWhittomeMP is advocating for is a significant diminution of women’s rights

[Angie-Lee 🇿🇦🇦🇺 @BadIngram]

That is an astonishingly lazy guilt-by-association argument.

“Some dictators and alleged war criminals challenged Amnesty International, therefore anyone who challenges Amnesty belongs in the same moral category” is not reasoning, it is a smear dressed up as a list.

Amnesty International is an influential organisation, not an infallible authority. Its statements, reports and conduct are open to scrutiny like anyone else’s. Threatening legal action over a specific claim does not make a person morally comparable to Habré, Gaddafi, Milošević or Charles Taylor.

Judge the dispute on the evidence: what Amnesty said, whether it was accurate, and whether it was defamatory. Simply placing J.K. Rowling beneath a list of dictators is emotional manipulation for people who cannot argue the actual facts.

“Bad people have sued Amnesty” does not mean “everyone who sues Amnesty is bad.” That is guilt by association at its most intellectually bankrupt!

[Audrey Ludwig MBE @AudreySuffolk]

This is a commentator who clearly know nothing about the Equality Act, biology nor feminism

[Allison 🟥 @AllisMcD]

@NoahAndKaisMum Wow wow wow! What would he like to do? Xx

[Allison 🟥 @AllisMcD]

@NoahAndKaisMum Exciting! Hope you all have a great summer xx

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

We’ve all had a few days to sit with @JuliaGillard’s declaration of whoops and as the minutes go by, the angrier I get. Not just at the admission that, basically, it was a “regret” to open up the legal category of women to men, but at the reluctance to admit it was wrong.

And the fact that it’s only now, after amazing UK women & men are putting on pressure by turning up to her events to remind of her of the whooosy, that she dares to say anything.

Not when @jk_rowling was getting countless r*pe & d*ath threat from the very men these kind of laws were changed to include.

Not when a man in his 50s took a pregnant woman (🙋‍♀️) to federal court, using that very specific Australian law change & institutional capture to his advantage.

Not when @ActiveLesbians were told by the Australian Human Rights Commission that heterosexual men who claim to be lesbians must be included in lesbian events.

Not when @martina came under attack for defending women’s sport, years after already battling for LGB rights.

Not when @KirralieS was dragged through courts for bringing attention to MEN who claim to be women in womens sport.

Not when that very league told the women in that sport if they so much as walk off the field because men are on it *they* will be punished.

Not when media started reporting on school girls not drinking WATER at school because boys were in the only unisex bathroom available to them & no adults would help them.

Not when women prisoners finally got word to the outside that they were in cells with MALE SEX OFFENDERS, locked up with them only because the Gillard amendments to the sex discrimination act (arguably) allowed it.

Not when Jasmine Sussex’s life was turned upside down for stating the fact that men cannot breastfeed infants, and because men can be women in law suddenly she’s the bad guy.

Not when the sex discrimination commissioner told senate estimates that men who claim to be women can have pregnancy protections in law but women can’t have single sex spaces, thereby interpreting the Gillard amendments to give men protections they don’t need while taking away women’s protections we do need.

Not when countless women in Australia and around the world were and are being punished for saying NO to this absolute bullsh-t that men can be women in law.

She said nothing until it started to interrupt her day in the mildest of ways. It’s pathetic.

[Carilyn Johnson @CarilynJohnson]

Then you fail to understand how sports, or life, work. At every level athletes are required to prove eligibility. At school age, it can be a birth certificate, vaccine status, proof of living within the district, and/or physical health status. Most sports programs require a complete physical before an athlete is allowed to participate.

At the elite level, drug testing is standard, and significantly more invasive. We were required to urinate in front of a witness - randomly, and after competing. In many sports, blood is also drawn. We agreed to that as terms of participation.

What you are “protesting” against is a one-time cheek swab, not dissimilar from the Covid tests we’ve all endured multiple times. Athletes at all levels are still regularly given Covid tests to ensure they are not ill before traveling, and competing, with their teammates.

Why do you believe that a “special” group of athletes should be exempt from standard medical evaluations that every other athlete undergoes? Do you really believe that someone’s feelings should undermine valid medical practice? Science? Fairness?

The reality of life is that we ALL make choices. Playing sports is a choice, and with that choice comes demands on the athletes to ensure their safety, and the safety of the other athletes. There are also demands of participants that they comply with the rules to ensure fairness.

Each of us is free to live our lives as we choose, but only to the extent that our choices do not harm others. You are advocating from a position that elevates a singular group’s personal interests above the fairness, safety, and sporting integrity of every other athlete involved.

[Andy Wightman @andywightman]

John Swinney is wilfully mis-representing what Andy Burnham was saying. We don’t have much detail but his point was that political and fiscal power has become too centralised in Edinburgh and London. He is correct. Scotland is one of the most centralised countries in Europe with very weak (non-existant in practice) *local* government. Scottish Parliament has removed many competencies that local authorities enjoyed back in 1999.

John Swinney had been actively engaged is this centralisation over the past 25 years from his threats to take away education from local authorities to his years of enforcing a council tax freeze and the creation of national police snd fire services.

It is actually John Swinney who is in no position to lecture anyone on these matters.

[Allison @LetAlbaFlourish]

@HannahKBardell @MarieMacklin @ScotParl @scotgov Being right isn’t “far right”. Speaking to people you disagree with to win arguments & change minds is what grown ups (are supposed to) do. Name calling, hyperbole and refusing to engage is destructive - fuelling division - not building bridges to consensus.

In summary: grow up.

[Allison @LetAlbaFlourish]

@JohnSwinney @ScotlandNT I am just sorry you don’t understand why. It’s called accountability and it is the responsibility of those who seek positions of leadership.

I also wish Steve Clarke well for the future and fully respect him for putting the future for his team & country before his personal gain.

[Carol Bartle @c_bartle]

Trust - the easiest thing in the world to lose. And it's not 'just' the BBC. "...the longer the BBC remains equivocal about something as fundamental as sex, its audience is unlikely to trust it on much else."

[Lucy Hunter Blackburn @LucyHunterB]

We're learning a lot about the feeling of Mr Swinney and Ms Sturgeon today.

If only the feelings of women in prison had ever been even a small fraction as important to them.

[For Women Scotland @ForWomenScot]

Scottish Government will not appeal Lady Ross's ruling on prisons.

[Allison 🟥 @AllisMcD]

@ForWomenScot At last! Thank you for forcing the SNP/SPS to move back towards more sane and humane policy

[For Women Scotland @ForWomenScot]

Male prisoners will be moved from the female estate today.
https://t.co/KldcV5h5gl

[Lucy Hunter Blackburn @LucyHunterB]

@lazyjoolz @kathmurray1 @lnmackenzie1 It's been work at every level and every bit of it has mattered - FWS, other grassroots campaigners including @WWWheesht , @WRNScotland, @NoXYinXXprisons and others. I hope there's now a massive class action from all the women used as lab rats for civic Scotland.