Author of Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women and Unkind: How Kindness Culture Punishes Women Agent: @LittleHardman Email: glosswatch @ https://xitter.cf/t.co/vHSPg1rFaj

Cheltenham
Joined March 2012
5th March is paperback publication day for Unkind - on how #BeKind might not, in fact, be making everyone more kind. Order it here! geni.us/UnkindOrder
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Victoria Smith retweeted
One of the most depressing thing about the Paris riots is seeing distressed women painted as the villains of the piece. This isn't the only woman who has been singled out.
YOU are gonna get this woman killed. The misinformation about her is astounding. It wasn’t her shop, she was seeing her local area destroyed and was distressed. In her moment of distress she was recorded (morally and legally dubious) and now she’s being photoshopped and touted
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Victoria Smith retweeted
The stubbornness will save her life.
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The massive amount of collective resource being wasted on dealing with bad legislation because of the failure of ministers in all parts of the UK to do their job is getting beyond depressing. This is not a time or place where we have such resources to waste.
1/ This article by the Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson is downright misleading. What is said about the law is unreliable, it confuses civil statutes for criminal ones and it completely ignores the principles of statutory constructions in crime. I explain why here:
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Victoria Smith retweeted
I think about this a lot.
It is very early days - but I am struck by the disconnect between the terror with which the world is greeting the Taliban takeover in Kabul with the pictures we are seeing, where the Taliban seem to be behaving with great restraint. The only chaos in the US controlled airport.
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This description now makes me want to see it
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11yo has a school project on the Victorians in Cheltenham. He has also recently watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure so we're trying to combine the two in a "hilarious" film using 19yo's cardboard tardis and all of us dressing up. It is proving less fun than it sounds.
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Victoria Smith retweeted
The Patriarchy: seriously impacting a thousand woman and girls rather than inconveniencing one man or boy.
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Victoria Smith retweeted
TV licence to be extended to particularly vivid dreams.
TV licence to be extended to catching your reflection in a shop window
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Victoria Smith retweeted
I hope this isn't yet another hit job. I'd love a BBC doc to explore *why* women saying very ordinary things found themselves called 'polarising' by a very loud minority of people. The 'how' of the gender wars also remains underexplored in mainstream broadcast media.
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Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this, and I'm quote tweeting so as to improve visibility so that other people can see it and understand. Basically it's because I had no idea how difficult it actually is to get a job when you have a disability as profound as mine. When I went to school, it was mainstream, but with a unit for disabled students, meaning I could attend normal lessons, but also be fully supported with things like physio and help with homework. This is relevant because all through my time there, I was never told that any ideas I had about potential employment were unrealistic, I thought about being a teacher, and even a politician at one stage, and nobody ever stopped to suggest that I might need to consider the actual practicalities. And so, having got my A-levels, I went to uni, which was difficult because, among other things, my transport was never fully reliable, and if my support worker was unavailable for whatever reason, I couldn't go because I needed them to carry out essential tasks, and couldn't manage on my own. Despite this, I did get through it and I'm very proud of that fact. However, I soon learned that the job market was going to be a completely different proposition. For example, I realised that in order to apply for the support I would need to do a job, such as transport, support worker, specialist equipment, you get the idea, I would first have to have a job. But, for someone in my position, knowing that the support is not optional, I couldn't apply for and obtain a job, without knowing whether I would get the fundamentally necessary support to do it. Even after I initially applied for and received benefits for not being able to work, I wanted to see what was out there is a possibility. So, through the DWP, I had a meeting with a lovely woman whose job it was to discuss possible employment opportunities with disabled people. And it became apparent very early on that I was going to be a particularly difficult case. I thought that an admin position might be the most realistic option, because I thought they were mainly computer-based. But she seemed to think that such a role wouldn't be particularly practical. Added to that, the prospect of any potential job falling apart because of a disability related issue, and then having to go through the whole benefit application process again from the beginning meant that mam and dad, my adviser, and I all mutually decided that it would be better for me not to proceed with finding employment. TL/DR: my life before uni did nothing to adequately prepare me for the scale of the difficulties I would have as a result of being a profoundly disabled adult.
Replying to @BlokeOnWheels
No hate but if you think you can never work what was the point of getting a degree?
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Victoria Smith retweeted
South Yorkshire Police are asking people not to share the footage of the young man being mauled. Hard to avoid the video, as it's all over social media, but should be easy not to share it. Young men who deliberately enter tiger or lion enclosures are often mentally unwell.
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Victoria Smith retweeted
Replying to @treesey
The polling @mbmpolicy did showed that those over 45 were more likely to understand that the terms 'transwoman' or 'transgender woman' refer to people who are male. We shared our findings with the BBC. Clearly the producer of Woman's Hour didn't see them. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org…
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Victoria Smith retweeted
The men who push trans ideology never fail to display their contempt for older women. Older women have been fighting misogyny the longest, so it's little wonder misogynists spend time trying to shut older women down.
Apparently @GussieGrips talking - over Zoom - about incontinence experienced by women in a fringe meeting at Green Party Conference was so awful, these men organised a display of their unhappiness with a big flag. Elaine can be heard at the end discussing urinary incontinence
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All the lads. Who knew that men were so keen on women not learning how to avoid pissing ourselves in old age?
Apparently @GussieGrips talking - over Zoom - about incontinence experienced by women in a fringe meeting at Green Party Conference was so awful, these men organised a display of their unhappiness with a big flag. Elaine can be heard at the end discussing urinary incontinence
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Victoria Smith retweeted
I wasn't going to write about the Cornell case but then I kept seeing so much on women needing to "take responsibility" I felt too angry not to glosswitch.substack.com/p/th…
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