Laurie Penny

Author, journalist, narrative designer, screenwriter. Geek, gender goblin, feminist killjoy, force of culture. Writer for hire, weirdo for free. They/them.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

So.

I wrote a book about modern fascism as a backlash to LGBTQ rights and women’s liberation.

It breaks down why this happened, how we fight the new misogyny, and how we win. 

You might find it useful. 

https://t.co/Mwj5UjgC8D

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

this was already true before LLMs but at this point you really should not think of social media as a place where individual people go to express their opinions. the algorithm defines an optimization target (engagement) and people and LLMs work together to optimize it. we have built a machine for inferring what the audiences of different platforms want to see and hear and extruding textslop and imageslop and videoslop conforming to the shape of that desire as quickly and efficiently as possible

when you read a viral post you think you are reading the thoughts of a person. you are reading the thoughts of the algorithm. out of the churning mass of nonsense constantly being posted, that specific post was selected to ascend to virality by an evolutionary process, and that process is the actual agent in the situation. the individual author barely matters, we are simply approximating the infinite monkey theorem here. at this point it barely even matters whether the author was technically human or an LLM, LLMs are just an additional source of monkeys

[Gillian Branstetter @GBBranstetter]

Seems important to remember she disowned him, not the other way around. She gave up perhaps the largest inheritance in human history because that's how important it is to be yourself

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

To judge every member of a community on the basis of a crime committed by one member of that community is, of course, the very definition of prejudice.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@elsamys Oh, are they? That’s really good news. I hope they get started on it soon…

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

After the #Arsenal victory parade, the hundreds of thousands of fans have trashed our neighborhood. Streets full of rubbish, urine and vomit.
Genuinely glad everyone had a good time- and now Arsenal FC needs to organise and fund the cleanup. It’s the right thing to do. RT pls.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@GallTalksD Do you really think so? Why?
Thanks for answering, genuinely.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

But what *is* the ‘woke intellectual tradition’? What do you think ‘woke people’ mean by ‘equality’?

[Hunter Ash @ArtemisConsort]

The problem with “woke” and its intellectual tradition is the belief that equality is intrinsically good. Drop that and we can talk. Until then, no peace.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@BobbyPolzer See, I disagree but this is at least an answer. Thank you.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

If someone makes up a term to describe you and attacks you on that basis, surely you’re allowed to ask what they mean by it?

[Pedantic_Person @PedanticPerson]

@PennyRed You're doing the meme, which is part of said tradition...

The question is, what do you get out of playing at being obtuse?

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@PedanticPerson I’m not playing. Nobody on the ‘woke’ side calls themselves that, or sees it as a coherent ideology. If your opponents make up a term to describe you, and attack you on the basis, you are entitled to ask what they mean by it.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@JocastaMoney You can read the review and find out

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

A love letter to #theboys, a show which never rose above, always went too far and left nothing on the table. RIP to the greatest TV adaptation this tv writer has ever seen.

https://t.co/dOCDSOizvI

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

In other countries, like Spain, they do not have an obsessive national conversation about trans people, a tiny marginalised minority.

Instead, they focus on dealing with the primary sources of male violence against women and girls - male partners, male relatives, and so on.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

The anti-trans movement are never going to be satisfied.

They’ve succeeded in turning the UK into a hostile environment for trans people.

That’s not enough, because nothing will ever be enough.

Here they’re seeking to public humiliate - and turn into a target - an employee doing his job.

The complaint?

That there are self-enclosed changing rooms.

She claims that this forces women and girls to change in front of men, which is an insane lie.

Eventually this insanity will fall apart, because it is insanity.

But a cult has been given impunity by our media and political elites, and it will continue to spiral out of control like this.

[Eric Kripke @therealKripke]

HAHAHAHAH. He's posting. MULTIPLE TIMES. Also I have notes on his joke writing. #TheBoys @TheBoysTV

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

Women don’t owe the world children.

They don’t owe men babies.

And they don’t owe you an explanation.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

A cause for national shame.

This is the Rainbow Map for LGBTI+ rights across Europe.

Until 2015, the UK was top.

We've now collapsed down the rankings - and are the worst in Western Europe.

We're now near Albania.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@Madz_Grant @al42696 Transphobes certainly don’t speak for all - or even most- left-wing feminists.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

@akabeth10 How exactly did ‘we’ declare this war?

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

May I take this opportunity to congratulate all the anti-wokers for winning their precious little culture war. Well done, guys, hope the liberal tears were worth it.

[Laurie Penny @PennyRed]

‘It was apparentlyinconceivable that violence against women could constitute a crisis – unless, of course, the violence was blamed on immigrants or on transgender people, at which point women’s safety suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda.’

https://t.co/B8ZTvKvCSk