Satire can be an effective tool of subversion. However, the technique has played a muted role in opposing governments and other powerful institutions over Covid lockdowns, climate alarmism and general wokery. The work of British artist Miriam Elia bucks this trend. Her current exhibition, The New Normal, evidences this.
Elia’s exhibition is at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw until June 11th.
Spiked has published an interview with Elia where she criticises the current state of satire and discusses her exhibition.
Spiked: Would you say that satire is especially important today?
Elia: Humour is the most powerful way of communicating something serious. If you can laugh at something, you can belittle it. I think all kinds of tyrannies and ideologies don’t like humour. Satire makes people uncomfortable, but that’s a good thing.
I realised very early that I couldn’t just stand up and say what I thought, because people would just cancel me or say that I was this-or-that-phobic. So through holding up a mirror, I’m able to make people laugh at themselves and that’s the most important thing.
As a satirist, you’re supposed to hold a mirror up to things. I’m not necessarily judging anyone or anything. I try to be as neutral as possible. I think the skill is to not moralise or talk down to people. You have to understand everyone’s point of view, but you also have to make them reassess their own logic. If you just say “I think you’re wrong”, people won’t respond well to that. Holding a mirror up to their behaviour is way more powerful.
Worth reading in full.
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Karma for PF. Made me chuckle too, mainly at the stupifying brass neck of the bloke shaving in the womens’ locker room.
So it’s OK for children to feel frightened and concerned and XX women to feel discomfort at having to share personal spaces with an XY ‘chick with a d*ck’ & with absolutely no redress other than banning the discomfited? Riiiight.
The ‘redress’ is operating in the loss of $400 million off PF’s share price. I would imagine Ms Silva (justifiably) curls up with a cocoa at night and fair purrs with satisfaction.
One cancelled US$400 subscription costs them US$400 million.
Seems fair.
If the notion of us all being sex-less floating gender identities is to gain any traction, these sex-based predfudices must obviously be overcome. A girl who’s uncomfortable when there’s a man shaving in the women’s locker room while she’s only dressed in a towel has been brainwashed into EvilStuff by the forces of darkness, doubtlessly loads of white people and even white men among them, and must work to liberate herself from it for her own salvation. Or join the ranks of the eternally damned who certainly don’t deserve compassion.
These people are convinced that they represent a higher moral good and that our evil ways must be changed. I mean, otherwise, what’s next? Men complaining about other men having sex dates with yet other men in Spoon’s toilets¹? Can’t have that in a liberal society!
¹ Tuesday, on the far end of Friar Street.
Glad to see people using the term “chick-with-a-dick”.
It resolves Keir Starmer’s ‘What is a woman’ problem by ensuring he can tell us how he can tell the difference with his eyes shut in his typical ‘Look no hands’ – ‘hands-off’ approach to problem-solving.
I have reservations about using “chick-with-a-dick” for those people who genuinely have this personal issue and want to get on with their lives but whilst the whole activist agenda is being pushed by people who spend their lives pushing agendas it is necessary.
Dick with a dick would describe it much better. Interpreted literally, “I’m LGB.” means “⅔ of the time, I want to have sex with women!”. That’s arguably a reason for invading a women’s locker room but certainly not a justification anyone should accept.
I understand your POV and want a way to respond to the zealotic activists whilst keeping in the back of my mind those people who genuinely feel a need to live their lives as the opposite gender.
So whilst professing to be, some may not be genuine – and may deserve your chosen term – others may be genuine.
The main category to address are the activists who demand for a fraction of a percent of the population a wholly unreasonable level of accommodation from the majority and particularly from real women and girls – ie. the “chicks-without” rather that the “chicks-with“.
Indeed, those might be more acceptable terms generally to use: “chicks-without” vs “chicks-with“?
yes it appears to be so the selfish magical beliefs of a few men are so much more important than the concerns and safety of little girls and women. I am surprised the Father or Mother didn’t get hold of the bloke I don’t know how I would have kept my hands off him if it had been my child.
But it seems society by that I mean our elites and the Police think that its open season on the female sex regardless of age.
“I mean our elites and the Police think that its open season on the female sex regardless of age.”
Nothing to do with that.
It has all to do with undermining long held social values and creating divisions in our world – to undermine Western values and democracy.
It is not about Wokism or DEI or any of that.
Those are just the means to the end.
Once you realise that then you can understand.
And that is why we all need to know the names of the people – every single one of them – who are behind it – from the lowest to the highest levels.
The longer they can get on with this with total anonymity the longer it will continue.
How about calling a spade a spade?
The guy is a tosser and the whole idea that men can be women whenever they chose and vice versa is dangerous, degenerate nonsense.
Which isn’t to say that we should be unkind to people who think they are a different sex to their actual sex. UNLESS, the person in question is being an asshole, as that guy clearly is, in which case he should be ceremoniously kicked out of the female toilet, told not to do it again and invited to see a therapist, urgently.
If he wants to parade himself in drag all day, that’s absolutely fine. But he should leave others alone.
And the sooner we all start dealing with this nonsense in those terms the better.
I don’t even think we should be kind we should tell them they are mentally ill and then tell them to jog on.
Bang on. All this BS relies on good people saying nothing.
“How about calling a spade a spade?”
Terminology?
This is why the term “chick-with-a-dick” works for me.
Is a transgender man a woman who wants to be and lives as if a man or is it a man who does that?
Is a transgender woman a man who wants to be and lives as if a woman or is it a man who does that?
As for women who live as if a man – no one seems much bothered so there seems much less of a concern to have a more meaningful term.
Sadly if a term is needed it is hard to find one that works – “Gash-Guy” does not work for me. So maybe just as well women who live as men does not create the same divisions and issues as men who live as women
Maybe those are the terms we need “women-who-live-as-men” and “men-who-live-as-women”?
Encouraging that the Mail at certain points puts the evil phrase “trans woman” in inverted commas.
I’m sick of this weird, mentally ill, gay issue. Trans women are not women. They are transexual men. That is the label they deserve. Men who are gay who want to dress in women’s clothes and act like a woman. And, disturbingly, seem to like to get their tackle out in front of ladies and young girls.
I do have a problem with gay men who like to do that.
It needs ALL women members to resign their membership. Let the Trannies have their space. And let the company go bust when only half a dozen or so men-in-a-dress sign up.
It is not so much about “men-in-a-dress” as in this case a man-in-undress in a women’s changing room.
“Are investors starting to become alert to the financial risks of wokery and keeping their money away from companies who may be targeted with boycotts? It seems so.”
Nope, Will.
Its the financial advantages.
They are jumping out fast before the share price drops so they can buy back in later when the price is a lot lower.
Of course then there are the dummies who sell when the price drops because they did not have their eyes on the main chance and got caught. But for them it is too late.
I wonder why Planet fitness supports the abuse of young girls by allowing men to be in the same changing room to observe a child in a state of undress. I wonder what Planet fitness or any other such company’s reaction will be on the day a female child or woman is attacked by a predatory male using the cover of Trans, will they blame the female and say its not possible for one female to R another?
Planet fitness is unfit in its ability to provide a duty of care, to provide protection to the female, perhaps they should just use a new advertisement strapline that they are a people with a P only gym and be trueful in their aims to be biological female free.
Either way they do not deserve to be in business,, and the male in the changing room with the little girl should be ashamed of his selfish behaviour.
XX = female
XY = male
…. as the meerkat said – ‘Simple’s!’
I really have no interest in whether a person wants to identify as a chicken, potato or other than their actual biological sex. People are perfectly free to get on with it as far as I’m concerned but I object to being lectured or labelled ‘phobic’ and required to validate this agenda.
“I really have no interest in whether a person wants to identify as a chicken, potato or other than their actual biological sex.”
You should have. The issue is not what they want to identify as. The issues are what logically follows from acquiescence:
– forcing on the rest of us a positive obligation to identify them as such
– restricting our freedom of speech in the process
– criminalising us if we try to use it
– cancelling us also for doing so
– restricting our freedom of belief
– criminalising us for holding those beliefs
– cancelling us also for expressing them
– indoctrinating a couple of generations of schoolchildren including our children
– abusing what we know and meaning to damage the words and our language beyond repair to push crazy lunatic values as if sound
Again, it is all about the destruction of Western values and beliefs and with that Western democracies.
I think my comment on having no personal interest in the lives of others may have given the impression that I have a casual attitude to all the issues on your list.
I do actually strongly agree with the points you make. My angle was that the agenda is more important than the facts and seems to require my ‘re-education’ to get in line.
I should have made it clearer.
When will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn?