Very Presidential
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David Tennant’s attack on women shows all that’s wrong with wokeness
It’s amazing what you can get away with when you call yourself a “trans ally”.
If a normal bloke were to get up on a stage and tell a woman to “shut up”, he’d be done for. He’d face death by a thousand columns. Right-thinking writers would denounce him as a sexist old goat. The threat of cancellation would dangle like Damocles’s sword over his head.
But a trans ally? A man who chants “Trans women are women” to prove his fealty to the religion of woke?
He can bark “Shut up” at a woman as he pleases and his audience won’t so much as bat an eyelid. In fact, they will clink their champagne glasses and rattle their jewellery in giddy approval of his sexist command to uppity women.
Consider the case of David Tennant, the Scottish actor, former Doctor Who and celebrated “trans ally”.
At the LGBT Awards in London at the end of last month, Tennant was crowned Celebrity Ally of the year. The awards organisers gushed over his tireless efforts on behalf of the LGBT community, including the fact that he “often does red-carpet interviews while wearing pins associated with the community”.
Wearing badges to swanky soirees? What unbounded bravery! Not all heroes wear capes – some wear pins.
As he collected his gong for – let’s be honest – virtue-signalling, Tennant had a message for Kemi Badenoch. She is Britain’s most prominent black female politician. She’s a bright young thing of the Conservative Party who served as the minister for women under Rishi Sunak. She is brilliant. She gets Brexit, bristles at wokeness, and abhors cancel culture.
So, naturally, she irks the right-on. She especially vexes trans activists with her repeated blasphemies against the trans faith. For instance, she thinks no biological male should be allowed into women-only spaces. And she has revolted against the teaching of lunatic ideas to schoolkids, including that there are 72 genders. Or whatever the number is now. I lose count.
A woman who believes in biological sex and women’s freedom of association? Quick, fetch the ducking stool!
At the LGBT Awards, Tennant had cross words for Badenoch. Clinging to his silly trophy, his face a mix of smugness and fury, he bellowed something truly shocking into the mic. He said he’s looking forward to a future in which “we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore”.
Yes, that’s right – a privileged white man was wishing for the disappearance of a pesky black woman. He continued: “I don’t wish ill of her … I just wish her to shut up.”
There it was: a bloke issuing a stern instruction to a woman. The way he said “Shut up” felt chilling. It was sharp, vindictive and with a pop on the “p” in “up” so that everyone would know exactly what he wants That Woman to do: “Shut UP”.
The audience reaction? They whooped and cheered. They delighted in Tennant’s vision of a post-Kemi world. It was a testament to the moral immunity enjoyed by “trans allies” and woke folk more broadly. Just imagine if a right-wing bloke used his public platform to tell Michelle Obama to put a sock in it. Or if he said he longs for the day when Michelle Obama no longer existed. All hell would break loose. He’d be branded a bigot, even a danger.
But a “trans ally” taking aim at a conservative woman? Knock yourself out. The kind of people who have the BLM fist in their social-media bios and who say things like “Lift up black women’s voices” will chortle into their sauvignon blanc at your tres amusing dream of the end of Kemi, whose only crime is to understand science.
And, amazingly, it got worse. On the red carpet at the ceremony, Tennant was asked what he thought of people who raise concerns about transgenderism. “(They’re) a tiny bunch of little whinging f..kers who are on the wrong side of history and they’ll all go away soon,” he barked.
He had called for more “human decency” in his acceptance speech and yet here he was damning those who disagree with him as “f..kers” who should “go away”. Seriously, Dave, what’s this obsession with making people disappear?
It took five days for Tennant’s comments to cause a media storm. That means everyone who attended the awards ceremony, and filmed it, and covered it for the LGBT press, thought it was fine that this man slammed Badenoch and other whingeing f..kers.
It was only when an eagle-eyed tweeter posted clips of Tennant’s meltdown that others could finally say: “This is bad.”
At last, Tennant got the pushback he richly deserved. Badenoch branded him a “rich, lefty, white male” who clearly doesn’t care much for “the safety of women and girls”.
Then JK Rowling, chief “TERF”, queen of the reality-based community, got involved. People like Tennant, she said, are allowed to say whatever they want about women because, as members of the “Gender Taliban”, they enjoy “special dispensation”. Truly they are a “holy caste”, she said.
As for his wild swipe at “whingeing f..kers”, Rowling said: “(He) is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care … girls and women losing sporting opportunities … female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders”.
She’s right. Those are the “whingers”. Those are the “f..kers”. Women who want their own spaces. Women who don’t want to be locked up with rapists. Women who – brace yourselves – demand privacy and dignity.
These women rile the trans lobby. Why? Because in reasonably requesting women-only zones, they prick the entire illusion that sex is changeable and that someone with a penis can be a woman, and that the feelings of men who identify as female should override the truth of biological sex and the sanctity of women’s spaces.
Their very existence is a fly in the ointment of the trans delusion. No wonder some people would prefer it if their existence ended.
The Tennant affair has shone an unforgiving light on what passes for “progressive” activism these days.
There’s a horrible misconception that those of us who criticise “political correctness” want to turn the clock back to a time when women were in the kitchen and black people were at the back of the bus.
Not a bit of it. What worries me most about wokeness is that it is reversing some of the great and truly progressive gains of the 20th century – including racial equality and women’s liberation.
Wokeness has rehabilitated racial thinking, with its constant instruction that we view all whites as “privileged” and all blacks as “oppressed”. And it has breathed life back into misogyny, leading to a situation where blokes can barge into women’s spaces and damn any woman who says “Get out” as a transphobe, a bigot, a witch.
That self-righteous activists and luvvies can gather at a plush do in London and laugh their heads off as a man tells a woman to pipe down is proof of how thoroughly the left has lost the plot.
It’s their regressive thinking that really needs to disappear.
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Tiny homes could go up, helping to ease the housing crisis — if zoning police would allow them
Tiny House Hand Up submitted plans in 2021 for a community of southern-style cottages. Each single-family unit would be 540 to 600 square feet — the perfect size for recent college graduates, lower-income individuals, or anyone looking to declutter their lives.
This is exactly what policy-makers say they want. Yet when the charity tried to break ground in Calhoun County, the zoning police shut down the project. The reason? Code enforcers insist that new houses in the area must have at least 1,200 square feet of living space.
As supporters of the rule testified during public hearings, the idea is to keep out the “riffraff.”
Tiny House Hand Up fought back with a lawsuit, and the case is pending. Our public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents the charity as part of our Zoning Justice Project.
Other clients have faced similar challenges nationwide.
Chasidy Decker tried to live in her tiny house on wheels, which she parked on her landlord’s property behind a fence in Meridian, Idaho. Amanda Root tried to live in a recreational vehicle on her trailer-park lot, which she owns without a mortgage in Sierra Vista, Ariz. And the Catherine H. Barber Memorial Shelter tried to relocate to a business district in North Carolina.
The zoning police opposed each project.
Elsewhere, cities and counties routinely deny permits for auxiliary dwelling units, sometimes called “granny flats” or “backyard cottages.” They impose parking restrictions, limit multifamily housing, and label entire neighborhoods as blighted — even when no blight exists — so they can clear out existing homes for commercial development.
Officials in Ocean Springs, Miss., applied the “blight” designation quietly in 2023, so residents in one neighborhood did not learn what was happening until after a vote occurred. Now, family homes that have been handed down for generations are at risk of demolition. The city even wants to tear down a renovated two-story house on the National Register of Historic Places.
Some states recognize the harm. Lawmakers in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Montana, and Utah have passed reforms in recent years to ease zoning burdens. Other jurisdictions get bogged down in the bureaucracy. New York mayor Eric Adams launched an initiative in 2023 to address “outdated, highly restrictive, and overly complicated” zoning laws. But all that has happened so far is talk.
Officials in Gainesville, Fla., eased restrictions on residential properties in 2022 but backtracked in 2023 before anyone could benefit. And Virginia lawmakers considered granting statewide permission for accessory dwelling units but tabled the measure in 2023.
Meanwhile, families are hurting. One recent survey shows half of U.S. homeowners and renters are struggling with skyrocketing housing costs. Young adults cannot afford starter homes. Renters cannot afford leases. Some people cannot afford anything. Families experiencing homelessness increased by 16 percent in 2023 compared with 2022.
“The cost of building housing is staggering, and there is a serious need for affordable housing,” says Cindy Tucker, former director of Tiny House Hand Up. “We are proposing 30 to 40 homes, but the government just will not let us build them.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/big-government-is-going-after-tiny-homes
*************************************************How the Grants Pass Decision Shapes Local Approaches to Homeless Encampments
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in The City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson will allow cities to enforce ordinances against sleeping in public spaces. This decision is a welcome victory in favor of local autonomy against federal overreach. Homelessness is a local problem that requires local solutions, and this decision will allow officials to address homeless encampments according to their city’s unique needs.
Homelessness is not a crime, but many people suffering from homelessness—particularly those suffering from mental illness or substance-abuse disorder—require intervention. Far from arresting and jailing people merely for sleeping on the street, law enforcement officers have helped many formerly homeless individuals receive the help they need, often through diversion programs that keep people out of prison while ushering them into treatment programs. The Grants Pass decision prevents the federal government from impeding such policies for cities that choose to pursue them.
City governments also have a delegated authority to protect public spaces for the safety of the housed and unhoused alike. Homeless encampments are frequent sources of open-air drug use, biohazard waste, public indecency, and fires, and their presence is detrimental to nearby businesses, homeowners, and other neighborhood residents. Local authorities could not meet their responsibility to the public in addressing these issues with their hands tied by federal judges living thousands of miles away.
The majority decision in the Grants Pass case does not mandate that cities or states adopt any specific policy regarding encampments, and this is precisely what makes the ruling so important. Federal judges, however wise, lack the knowledge of local conditions necessary to crafting city policy. As different localities take different approaches to homeless encampments, we will be able to judge better which policies produce the best outcomes for the unhoused population and the public at large.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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