Kate Witney

Singer and singing teacher, keen gardener and greedy cook. Left wing, remainer. There is such a thing as material reality and we reject that at our peril.

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

Body positivity used to mean helping people feel comfortable in their bodies - including rejecting rigid stereotypes about what women are supposed to look like.

Somewhere along the way, it became helping people feel comfortable changing them.

Including, apparently, the removal of healthy body parts.

That's a remarkable shift.

We seem to have moved from "your body is fine as it is" to "your body should be altered to match how you feel about it".

And we're somehow expected to accept that shift without asking questions.

In fact, questioning it is often treated as the real offence.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@cervixen I am in awe of your eloquence.

[Cervixen of the Clitorians @cervixen]

Equality is not sameness.

Many confuse the feminist demand for equality with the idea that feminists must believe men and women are the same as, or interchangeable with one another.

But equality has never meant sameness or interchangeability.

Two things can be equal in value without being identical in form. 2 + 2 = 4. So does 1 + 3. So does 3.99 + 0.01. So does 7 - 3. So does the square root of 16. And on and on with near infinite variation in the number of combinations that can be used to generate "4". They arrive at the same value through different structures. Equal value does not mean identical equation.

Men and women are equal because they are equally human. They have the same moral worth, the same claim to dignity, and the same right to freedom, safety, opportunity, privacy, political representation, bodily integrity, and legal protection as any other human being.

But like all humans are not the same in every respect just because they are human, men and women are not the same in every respect. Human female and human male bodies are organized differently. Those differences are not proof of superiority or inferiority. They are not defects. They are not destiny. Sex is not a pathology, a disease or a medical condition. But it is also not imaginary or irrelevant. Sex is an innate, inherent, immutable human condition and difference. There is no default sex in humans. There is no alternative sex. There is only sex, and there are two.

The feminist project, properly understood, is not to deny the reality of sex. It is to reject the hierarchy of power and control socially constructed as a layer of meaning or stereotypes attached to sex, treated as evidence that women are not of equal human value to men, and commonly referred to as 'gender.'

Women are not oppressed because people noticed that women and men are physically different. Women are oppressed because those differences are treated as evidence that women are not of equal worth to men, and therefore inferior: less capable, more fragile, less intelligent, more emotional, less suited for public life, more suited for a support role, less entitled to property, more like property, less entitled to political power, more suited to prostitution and/or motherhood, and less entitled to self-determination or the same choices men are entitled to make. The problem is not noticing women are a different sex, the problem is treating women as inferior on the basis of their sex.

A similar moral error appears in race discrimjnation. The problem is not merely that people noticed visible differences such as skin colour. The problem was that those differences were turned into a hierarchy of human worth based on skin colour. Skin colour, like sex, was treated as evidence that some people were less intelligent, less civilized, less capable, less authoritative, and therefore less entitled to freedom, property, voting, leadership, safety, and self-determination.

That is the distinction: noticing or recognizing difference is not the same thing as mistreating or dehumanzing people because of that difference.

Those are the histroical and present day errors feminism and civil rights movements exist to correct.

The answer to “women are different from men” is not “no, they aren’t.” The answer is: “so what?” Difference is not inferiority. Difference is not subhumanity. Difference is not a license to dominate, exclude, exploit, patronize, or erase.

[Diana Briggs @DianaBr95650186]

It's all very well saying revisit this bill, but what's the point when their aim is not good legislation and listening to those at the coal face, but just ramming it through for political point-scoring.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@grace_hawthorn @ThelmaBettyy @mary_pezzulo Just realised that that sounded a bit up myself and want you to know that I’m more than happy with Bought Salad Cream.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@grace_hawthorn @ThelmaBettyy @mary_pezzulo I agree completely. I love salad so much I make my own!

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

Dear Lush (cc Chelmsford City Council),

As a woman who had half a breast removed last year due to cancer, I am writing to raise my concerns about your “Proud of My Stripes” window display.

I am also, on behalf of other women who have experienced breast cancer, respectfully requesting its removal.

Because mastectomies are not a fashion statement, an identity marker or something to be celebrated.

They are something women undergo because they are ill, because they are frightened, because they are trying to stay alive.

Around 59,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK every year. Many will undergo surgery - a mastectomy, lumpectomy or other procedure.

Others choose preventive mastectomies because they carry a high-risk BRCA gene mutation.

If a woman chooses to have her breasts removed to affirm a gender identity, that is her personal choice.

I honestly don’t know the number of women who have elective mastectomies for this reason.

What I do know is that it is a tiny number compared with those for whom breast surgery is medically necessary and not something to be celebrated.

I think I speak for many women who have experienced breast cancer - and for their families - when I say this:

Breast removal surgery is not something I regard as cute, playful or empowering.

Nor is it something I believe retailers should be celebrating.

For that reason, I am requesting that the display be removed and that @ChelmsCouncil apologise for promoting it on social media.

Yours sincerely,

Janet Murray

[Cervixen of the Clitorians @cervixen]

I agree that materialism can become problematic when it is reduced to “biology is destiny.”

That is not the materialist argument I'm making, but I understand how people attach essentialism or determinism to materialist analysis, and I think that is the danger you are pointing to. That is why I try to be precise.

The problem with queer theory is that it treats language, identity, and social recognition as if they should override material reality. It treats “social construction as destiny,” and that gender essentialist framing is as bad as biodeterminism. Defining women as female human beings is philosophically neutral. Defining women as the entity socially constructed from millennia of dehumanizing sexism directed at female humans is epistemologically hostile.

By materialism, I mean an analysis that starts from material conditions rather than ideology in a vacuum. Sex, embodiment, reproduction, labour, food, shelter, disability, poverty, violence, vulnerability, class, physical power, and technology all shape human existence whether we want them to or not. No amount of thinking can make those realities disappear.

A materialist analysis does not mean women are reducible to reproductive function, that social meaning is irrelevant, that socially constructed femininity is essential to the nature of women, or that male and female people are destined for particular biodetermined roles. That is the essentialism and determinism I oppose.

It means feminist politics cannot be built on denial of the material conditions under which female people live: menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, infertility, DSDs, menopause, domestic labour, care burdens, economic dependence, the wealth gap, bodily autonomy, personal agency, and vulnerability to male violence. These are human realities that must be accounted for in human rights law.

The physical world exists. The meanings we attach to it are socially constructed. That distinction matters. Reality exists whether we consent to it or not. Social constructions are only as fair as the society constructing them, and human society has not historically been fair to women and girls.

The social construction of sexism used to control women and girls cannot be used to define women and girls. It is obscene misogyny to define women by the stereotypes imposed on female human beings.

Sex is real. Gender is the social system built around sex. Feminism is not the denial of sex; it is opposition to the hierarchy, stereotypes, constraints, and exploitation imposed on female people because of sex.

And yes, I hate that women need protection from male violence. That should be a male problem to solve, not a female burden to manage. But hating that reality does not make it disappear.

Female-only spaces are not an endorsement of male violence. They are a defensive response, like a lock on the door. Locking your door does not mean you think every person is a thief or murderer. It means you recognise risk and take reasonable precautions.

The goal is not a world where women are permanently managed as a vulnerable population.

The goal is a world where women are free: free to participate fully in public, political, economic, artistic, intellectual, and private life without being threatened, intimidated, exploited, or constrained by male violence, sexism, oppression, male physical power, or men’s capacity to force pregnancy, disease, childbirth, and domestic servitude on women and girls against their consent and interests.

Acknowledging female vulnerability to male physicality does not mean the ability to create and nurture new human life. It means recognising a physical power imbalance that has shaped human law, culture, economics, sexuality, and women’s liberty. That power imbalance is precisely what feminism exists to oppose and correct.

Pretending sex does not matter does not liberate women. It removes the language needed to explain why sex-based protections exist and why they remain necessary.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@JournalistJill That’s really impressive.

[Frank Cottrell-Boyce @frankcottrell_b]

I lost my wallet. Which would be nothing. Except. It had a lock of mum's hair in it. It turned an impossibly beautiful lunar grey just before she died. The fact that I can't replace is painful. If you find my wallet (Bold St) hand it into Co-Op bank please. Keep the money.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@babybeginner The comments on ‘Hannah’s’ post are heartening, though.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@khanmkzb You stole this post and passed it off as your own. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@babybeginner I tried to report this, but plagiarism isn’t an option, I’m afraid, which isn’t helpful.

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

1. Scouts is not about who you shag
2. Not all gay men are fun camp zoo animals for straights
3. This is a kids organisation can we just bloody stop with this let the young gay lads maybe just be lads and forget the gay thing with their mates
4. Im so tired of this

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@arthistorynews The Eagle Has Landed or Went The Day Well

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@ThatAussieWoman @blackbirdpeeja 😂

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@cervixen I love your posts for expressing the issue with searing clarity and scalpel sharp intelligence and insight. I am bookmarking them to read to others when weariness (or too much wine…!) render me even less articulate than usual.

[Cervixen of the Clitorians @cervixen]

Women and girls are individual female human beings, not anyone’s performance of femininity.

“Femininity” does not define women or girls. The social expectations, projections, aesthetics, and behavioral codes imposed on female people do not define women or girls. These expectations are subjective, culturally unstable, heavily commercialized, and always shaped by sexism.

A human performance is not a human being. Defining any individual or class of human beings as a performance interpreted by others is profoundly dehumanizing. The conceit that any man, or any class of men, possesses such special insight into the inner reality of female human beings that his imitation or performance can reveal the essence of women is not merely absurd; it is offensive.

To define women by “feminine expression” or role is to reduce female human beings to costume, mannerism, or stereotype, while reinforcing narrow ideas about what is definitively “feminine” and expected of women and girls. That is dehumanizing. It treats women as products of perception rather than as actual people. Women are not characters performed by others. They are not social scripts. They are not roles available for adoption.

Women are not constructed by society. Sexist societies construct stereotypes about women. The more sexist the society, the more aggressively women are reduced to those stereotypes, as if they are innate to her essential humanity, and deservedly punished for noncompliance.

Widespread stereotypes do not become morally meaningful, academically definitive, or universally true just because they are common. Sexism is common. A woman in a patriarchal society is not a different kind of human being from a woman in a freer society. The difference is not her nature, but the degree of oppression imposed: the discrimination, humiliation, coercion, and loss of opportunity inflicted on human beings for being female.

Being female is a human condition. A woman’s humanity is not conditional on her acceptable performance of femininity. The real moral test of a society is whether women and girls are recognized as fully human and equal in dignity to men and boys, while also recognizing their distinct sex as an innate and immutable human condition.

Human beings come before human beliefs about human beings.
Female comes before feminine.
Sex comes before gender.
Women and girls come before society.

There is no femininity, gender, or society that precedes the existence of human females. It is all derivative. Sex is essentially human. Being female is one way of being human.

The human being comes first. Social narratives come later. Male and female are human conditions, not identities conferred by stereotypical associations and fallible perception. “Femininity,” “womanhood,” “girlhood,” and similar abstractions are interpretations, prescriptions, and expectations imposed on people; they are not the people themselves. They are projections about what women and girls are expected to do in male-dominated societies, not descriptions of what women and girls are: human beings equal to men and boys, distinguished by sex.

Women are not a set of instructions predicated on pre-approved socially constructed traits. We are not a sex object, appearance, affect, clothing style, marketing category, LARPing option, or human performance. We are human beings of the female sex. As individuals, we are as varied in personality, interests, conduct, and capacity as men and boys.

A woman is an adult female human being. A girl is a juvenile female human being.

Everything else is stereotype, ideology, marketing, or submission to sexist framing.

[Ani O'Brien @aniobrien]

As a lesbian, I am so tired of this nonsense. I am tired of corporate Pride and activist Pride.

This week HelloFresh decided that the best way to celebrate Pride Month was to post jokes about preparing for anal sex and offering high-fibre recipes to help people "prep". They then doubled down with a discount code called BOTTOMSUP.

Inclusion! WOO! 🙄

The thing that frustrates me is that people like me have spent years defending gay rights against accusations that we are hypersexual, inappropriate, and incapable of ordinary family life.

That was one of the central prejudices gay people faced. For decades, opponents portrayed gay men in particular as sexually obsessed and depraved. They argued that homosexuality was all about sex rather than love, commitment, relationships and family. The fight for equal rights was partly a fight against exactly that caricature.

And now here we are. A major multinational company has decided the best way to celebrate Pride is to publicly discuss anal sex. What an achievement.

The same-sex marriage movement wasn't about sex. It was about love, commitment, and the ability to build a life with the person you love. It was about family and equality before the law.

Most gay people are not what the weirdos in the HelloFresh marketing department think we are. We go to work, pay bills, walk the dog, argue about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher, and try to build a decent life together.

You know... Normal things.

The overwhelming majority of gay people just want to be accepted and left alone. We want the same freedoms, responsibilities and opportunities as everyone else. We don't need multinational corporations making dirty jokes about us to feel "included".

What makes this even more ridiculous is that HelloFresh's core market is clearly not radical "queer" activists with blue hair and septum rings.

Their customers are overwhelmingly middle-class couples and families. Busy parents. Professionals. People with disposable income who want convenient meals after work.

How hard would it have been to make a genuinely wholesome Pride advertisement?

Two mums cooking dinner with their kids or two husbands hosting friends. A same-sex couple just making dinner together or flipping a coin to see who has to cook. A simple message acknowledging families and love. Instead they went with rectum jokes.

Somewhere along the way after the TQ+ hijacked our movement, Pride stopped being about acceptance and started being about performance. A small but influential group of activists have convinced themselves that being as shocking, vulgar and sexually explicit as possible is somehow brave and intrinsically "queer". They think boundaries of any kind are oppression including standards and decorum. They think manners are censorship.

The result is campaigns like this one and somehow people are shocked when there is backlash against us all.

I actually feel really sorry for gay men in particular because one of the oldest stigmas they have faced is the idea that they are dirty, promiscuous and defined entirely by sex. This campaign reinforces that stereotype.

If you wanted to design an advertisement that would make ordinary people roll their eyes and think Pride is ridiculous, or shield their children's eyes in horror, you would struggle to do better than this.

The irony is that HelloFresh's marketing department thinks this is progressive. It's regressive and distasteful. It takes decades of work by ordinary gay people who want to be seen as neighbours, colleagues, parents, partners and family members and reduces all of it to a crude sexual punchline.

The people who fought for our rights wanted dignity, but the people most enthusiastic about Pride today seem determined to turn it into a fetish convention with corporate sponsors.

[Kate Witney @KIWitney]

@BettsCaro @akuareindorf Blimey - that’s bonkers!