Don't throw Foucault out with the Judith Butler bathwater

While I like Helen Pluckrose and agree with much of Critical Cynical Theories, here is an antithesis from the Genspect Bigger Picture Conference last month. 

Heather Brunskell-Evans, a Quaker and a philosopher, explains why we shouldn’t throw the Foucault baby out with the Judith Butler bathwater. The Confluence of Philosophy, Feminism & Queer Theory. 

Also at Genspect Bigger Picture Conference: Gender Ideology as a Religion with Colette Colfer.

Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting 1 July 2023

I attended today’s late ‘supplementary’ session of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) - www.quaker.org.uk/ym - which is effectively the AGM of Quakers in Britain. This year, BYM took place as usual in April but - unusually - there was an extra day added on, which was today.

2022 audited accounts still not ready

The main reason for holding today’s late supplementary meeting was because fully audited accounts were not ready by the scheduled BYM date in late April. With many apologies and a reassurance that nothing funny was going on, the BYM trustees announced today that the accounts were still not ready but they would be ready in time for the Charity Commission deadline on 31 October. The question arises, why wasn’t today’s supplementary meeting scheduled for a date when fully audited accounts would be ready?

Quakers and Mermaids and me

Quakers have been slow to realise the dangers of the transgender craze that has been gathering pace for about a decade now in the UK and the West generally. It is mutilating and sterilising physically healthy young people and putting them on cross-sex hormones for life. It is a phenomenon that is as wanton and inhumane as it is unexpected and generally ignored. 

Qwoke Youth and Wise Elders - the Quaker Gender War

This post starts with a long, negative criticism of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and, I’m glad to say, ends with a positive affirmation of where we could be heading.

The bad old news is that many Quaker Meetings have taken decisions over the last few years not to hire their meeting rooms to people who wish to discuss gender issues.

Quaker bookshop suppresses books by Quaker philosopher

Since 2018 the Quaker Centre Bookshop at Friends House in London has been suppressing gender-critical books by Heather Brunskell-Evans

Letter to The Friend about Mermaids

NB. The Friend is a Quaker weekly magazine. 

Congratulations to BYM staff for removing Mermaids from their list of ​'​useful organisations​' ​​"​supporting the families of children and young people who are experiencing gender identity issues​".

Bible quiz

In the King James Bible:
a) What kind of fruit did Adam and Eve eat in the Garden of Eden?
b) How many Kings travelled to see the baby Jesus in the manger?
c) What did Mary Magdalene do for a living?

Draw breath

"Draw breath" - poem by Geoffrey Weedon

Breathe in the quiet purpose of this place;
Through outward stillness, seek a calm within.
Here we can find forgiveness and forgive;
Here feel the healing miracle begin.

silent meeting

Reflections on a silent meeting for worship at Colchester,  November 2017, by Dave Stanbury

We sat in a circle
Listening for the echoes of grace within
For a while nothing seemed to be happening 

Accidental Anarchist film

Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government is a rare instance of TV putting anarchism in a favourable light. You can see the trailer at www.accidentalanarchist.net. Produced by BBC Scotland and shown on BBC4 Storyville on Sunday 23 July 2017 at 21:50, the one-hour film tells how:

Carne Ross was a career diplomat who believed western democracy could save us all. But after the Iraq war he became disillusioned and resigned. This film traces Carne's worldwide quest to find a better way of doing things - from a farming collective in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street to Rojava in war-torn Syria - as he makes the epic journey from government insider to anarchist.

Only Connect

“Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” E.M. Forster

Gerald Priestland The Future of Violence

Comments on Gerald Priestland's The Future of Violence, Hamish Hamilton, 1974.

My main problem with this book is that Priestland does not really consider ‘structural’ violence. He dismisses it as ‘injustice’ that does not count as violence because it is not ‘physical’ (page 10-11). On the contrary, economic and social forces can be just as effective as physical forces in perpetrating violence. This is for at least two reasons. Firstly, economic and social forces can starve people into submission or death just as effectively as physical violence. Secondly, they can be - and often are - backed, beneath a thin veneer of civilisation, by physical violence from the same powers as carry out the structural violence.

There are countless examples of structural violence:

• benefit sanctions and unemployment that starve people into submission;
• the soft cops of social services that remove people’s children (and will call in the police if the parents resist)
• schools that punish pupils in all sorts of ways short of coproral punishment. 

And so on.

Priestland is also mistaken about the role of the media in manufacturing consent. He thinks ‘the media have tried to cultivate sympathy for the Biafrans, the Bengalis, Uganda Asians, gipsies, Ulster Catholics and inner-city coloured people’ (page 12). But contrast this with the history of racism towards foreigners in the British media. In the 1930s there was the hatred towards migrants shown by the Daily Mail when it campaigned against allowing Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany into Britain. Most of the media had racist stereotypes of black people in the 1960s and 70s as muggers, druggies and sexual predators. The media today, especially the Daily Mail, are equally vitriolic about Muslims, asylum seekers and EU migrants. The targets may vary, but the racism of the media remains the same. Against that background it is hard to believe that there was a golden age of tolerance to foreigners in 1974 when Priestland wrote ‘The Future of Violence’.

equinox and solstice

Great resource by Greenwich Royal Observatory at equinoxes-and-solstices. A year on Earth can be split into four as we orbit the Sun. Each fourth is marked by an equinox or solstice.

Violence in the Bible

Violence in the Old Testament is mainly real and warlike physical aggression, consisting largely of Moses and others smiting their enemies, whereas violence in the New Testament is largely imaginary.

Jonathan Bartley, Green Party new co-leader

Jonathan Bartley – Quaker?

Jonathan Bartley, the Green Party’s new co-leader alongside Caroline Lucas, is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prisoner reformer.

Green Party peace policy

Strangely, there is no mention of peace, war or Trident in the Green Party MiniManifesto of 2015. 

Quaker Testimonies

My take on the Quaker Testimonies (or Quaker Values)

Pagan Sabbats

There are eight Sabbats that make up the Wheel of the Year. The Sabbats are solar, seasonal and represent the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. They are: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltain, Litha, Lughnasadh, and Mabon.

Rethinking Capitalism edited by Mariana Mazzucato

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, co-edited by Mariana Mazzucato and Michael Jacobs, (published by Wiley / Political Quarterly, 2016) is another recommendation from Friend RNP, reviewed here on marianamazzucato.com:

The Courageous State by Richard Murphy

In The Courageous State: Rethinking Economics, Society and the Role of Government Richard Murphy

argues that neoliberalism has bred weak governments led by weak politicians who believe implicitly in the supremacy of the market. It has created a cowardly state: a state that sees responsibility and then runs away from it. Worse, the weak politicians who run our cowardly state want power solely to ensure that as much tax revenue as possible is used to benefit the private sector that they idolise. But neoliberal theory is wrong – it has created the crises we’re suffering. And it has no solution to them.