Trollhunter (2010)

My ★★★★ review of Trollhunter #FilmReview #MovieReview #Cinema

Trollhunter (2010) Synopsis – A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter – Trollhunter. Director – André Øvredal Starring – Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum, Glenn Erland Tosterud Genre – Drama, Fantasy,…

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Trollhunter - 2010

Otto Jesoersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck

Review: Trollhunter was a very interesting movie, that had a surprising amount of worldbuilding. The movie does start out a bit slow, and some segments here and there are a but of a drag to get through, but they never last long.

It follows a documentary team trying to make a video about a guy that has been poaching bear in the Norwegian wilderness. What they discovered is that it's a man actually hunting and killing trolls that seem to be displaying some kind of sickness.

The designs for the trolls are awesome, especially the last troll. They are very intimidating, and make you feel like the main characters are in serious danger. I like that it explains that there are different kinds of trolls, and they know what each type of troll is more sensitive too. It's cool that they had several scenes with trolls, so that we get to see different types of them.

I also like that this movie doesn't spoon feed as all the information we need about the trolls right at the beginning, we gradually learn about them as we go. It does come close to losing your attention in some places, because some scenes are very information heavy, and some scenes that it feels like nothing is really happening.

I really did like the movie though, and would absolutely recommend it.

7.1/10

Leketid for barneskuespillere

MATILDA Folketeateret, Oslo, søndag 9 oktober Jeg så produksjonen på norsk så prøver jeg å skrive anmeldelsen min på norsk også! Her går vi! Roald Dahls roman først dukket opp på scenen i den RSC produksjonen i 2010. Det bevegde fort fra Stratford Upon Avon til Londons West End hvor det fortsetter å spille. Nå har showet kommet til Oslo og jeg er gled å få muligheten til å se det…

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Over the past month, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump stirred controversy by saying that a second Trump administration might not protect allies that are falling short in their contributions to the NATO alliance. He recounted a conversation with an unidentified NATO member in which he said, “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”

Trump’s statement predictably drew widespread condemnation and caused many panicked Europeans to contemplate a world without U.S. protection.

The more constructive response to Trump’s comments, however, would be for NATO members to acknowledge that Trump has a point. For too long, many allies have failed to live up to their commitments, and they will need to step up and do much more if the free world is going to deter China, Russia, and other rivals and achieve peace and stability in Europe and Asia.

Trump’s criticisms are not entirely new. U.S. leaders have been protesting inadequate European contributions to NATO for many years. In 2011, then-President Barack Obama’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, gave a major speech in Brussels, warning of “NATO’s serious capability gaps … the military—and political—necessity of fixing these shortcomings if the transatlantic security alliance is going to be viable going forward; and more broadly, the growing difficulty for the U.S. to sustain current support for NATO if the American taxpayer continues to carry most of the burden in the alliance.”

Unfortunately, Gates’s warnings went largely unheeded. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, NATO members unanimously agreed to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense within a decade. Following Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that 2 percent is increasingly a “floor, not a ceiling.” Yet by the end of 2023, only 11 of 31 NATO members had met the 2 percent threshold. In 2024, that number is expected to rise to 18, but that still means that more than one-third of the alliance’s members are shirking their responsibilities.

This is not an abstract discussion. Defense spending translates into concrete capabilities needed for transatlantic defense. In 2023, NATO agreed to new “regional plans” under which all members were given specific capability targets, but inadequate spending is resulting in capability shortfalls. In other words, NATO’s supreme allied commander does not have what he needs to properly defend Europe.

Many were outraged by Trump’s comments, but it is outrageous for countries to neglect their obligations in NATO and still demand the full benefits of membership. If one stopped paying monthly gym fees, one would expect access to be cut off; European defense should be treated with at least as much seriousness as Zumba.

If, God forbid, Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked NATO’s European members, why should American soldiers be expected to die to save European countries that shirked their responsibilities, weakened the alliance, and thereby tempted Russian aggression? NATO’s Article 5 security guarantee is important, but so too is Article 3, in which members promise to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

The flip side of Trump’s statement is that NATO members that pay their bills will be protected. Instead of condemning Trump, therefore, the more constructive path forward would be for all NATO members to simply step up and meet their defense commitments.

Savvy European officials are already following this script. At the Munich Security Conference, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and British Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy were among those who publicly validated American concerns and affirmed that Europe must do much more. Pistorius, for example, said that 2 percent will “only be the start of it” and that Germany “might even hit 3.5 percent. It depends on what is happening in the world.” Lammy said he “understands” Washington’s calls “for more equitable burden sharing” and would welcome “tough conversations” on this topic with “seriousness and respect.” In private conversations at Munich, several senior European officials confided that Trump is right.

Indeed, NATO allies are getting a bargain. The United States spends 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense and thereby accounts for more than two-thirds of all NATO defense spending. It is estimated that to meet the capability targets called for in the new regional plans, allied defense spending will need to increase to up to 3 percent. During the Cold War, the United States and its allies frequently spent more than 3 percent, and we recommend that NATO looks to set a new, higher floor of 3 percent at a future summit.

This is not just a matter of fairness but about meeting requirements for an effective global deterrence and defense strategy. The United States and its allies are entering a new Cold War more dangerous than the first. There is an ongoing war in Europe that could spill over into a direct NATO-Russia conflict. Iran is waging a shadow war against U.S. and allied interests in the Middle East that could escalate. Meanwhile, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has threatened to use force if necessary to take Taiwan. A major conflict with China in Asia would likely spread to engulf the Korean Peninsula and draw North Korea into the fighting. The United States and its allies in the free world, therefore, need the ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in overlapping time frames.

The United States remains the world’s preeminent military power, but it cannot do it all on its own. Washington already lacks the defense industrial base, and possibly the political will, to simultaneously provide weapons to its allies in Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific.

The formula for an effective free-world deterrence and defense strategy, as one of us has argued in these pages, is threefold. First, the United States needs to increase defense spending and revitalize its defense industrial base. Second, like during the first Cold War, the United States needs to increase reliance on nuclear deterrence. And third, allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are going to have to step up big time.

Trump’s statements are scaring the free world straight. European countries now have at least three reasons to meet their defense spending commitments. First, it is the right thing to do. Second, they can tell a future President Trump that they are not freeloaders; they are doing their fair share and are worthy of protection. Third, in the highly unlikely event that the United States actually turns its back on NATO, they are better positioned to defend themselves.

Indeed, the largest recent increases in European defense spending occurred during Trump’s first term, and, given the energy generated by Trump’s recent statements, we would likely see another burst of European defense spending in a second Trump administration.

To be sure, the suggestion that the United States might “encourage” Russia to attack delinquent NATO members risks undermining deterrence, but Trump’s campaign advisors have said that this was an off-the-cuff remark that should not be taken as a literal statement of policy.

Salena Zito, a journalist at the Washington Examiner, famously wrote that we should take Trump “seriously, not literally.”

There is nothing more serious than deterring World War III. It is time to stop complaining about indelicate political rhetoric, and time to step up and defend the free world.

Today’s disabled character of the day is Piirka Kellivoite Kollonemi from Borettslaget, who is an alcoholic

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Photo of a Robert Stoltenberg playing Piirka. He has  light brown hair, stark blue eyes, yellow teeth, and a goatie. He's wearing a worn out brown leather jacket, a what appears to be a metal T-shirt, and black trousers. He is smiling and has his finger up. He's standing in front of a apartment building.]

Hell hath no fury like a Slovakia scorned

DW News

19 December 2023

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia – In light of the apparent utter disregard that the international community had displayed towards Slovakia following a Monday missile strike on Veľké Slemence, Slovakia has responded with diplomatic fire and fury towards all stakeholders involved in the Russia-Ukraine war.

In the early hours of the morning Tuesday, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico formally summoned the ambassadors of Ukraine, Russia, China, India, the United States, and the Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Slovakia – demanding answers as to the lack of accountability and attention that these governments have displayed towards the “blatant killing of civilians within Slovakian borders,” even as the UN Security Council meets in New York to discuss the conflict.

Fico then delivered a televised address from his Bratislavan office, deriding those that had not yet publicly responded to the fiasco as being “complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity.” He continued by accusing members of Slovakia’s NATO and EU alliances, of which Slovakia is a participant of a number of mutual defence pacts, of having been absent in its hour of need – instead continuing to discuss “irrelevant” issues like humanitarian corridors and the human rights of prisoners-of-war in the conflict.

“What is the use of allies,” Fico asked, “if these allies stand aside while innocent Slovaks die? What is the use of NATO and the EU?”

In related news, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has convened an emergency session of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels to discuss a potential invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty by Slovakia – in what political observers have called the “nuclear option” which could pull the West deeper in its participation in the war.

L'Ukraine va «capituler inconditionnellement»—Scott Ritter

«La Russie n'échange rien», a répondu (https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1694414467755331878?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1694414467755331878%7Ctwgr%5E6a12cd44f6d40ece86481fadf7954d2d89a7952b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fnews%2F581761-ukraines-president-volodymyr-zelensky-speaks%2F) l'ex-officier de renseignement de l'US Marine Corps à un Zelensky (https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1694366399227990308) encore convaincu que le régime de Kiev pouvait récupérer «ses» territoires, à commencer par la Crimée.

«Elle fait face à la réalité.»

«C'est l'OTAN qui a suggéré un échange», a encore précisé Scott Ritter, en référence aux propos (https://t.me/kompromatmedia/3885) de Stian Jensen, le chef d'état-major de Stoltenberg, qui avait évoqué une adhésion de l'Ukraine à l'Alliance si elle abandonnait ses revendications sur la péninsule.

«Pensez à la baie de Tokyo, le 2 septembre 1945. C'est votre avenir.»

Le régime de Kiev multiplie les déclarations publiques pour tenter de couvrir le concert de voix (https://t.me/kompromatmedia/3918) de plus en plus bruyant en Occident, prêt à reconnaître la réalité du conflit sur le terrain et donc l'inéluctable issue de la guerre.

Dernier en date le général Robert Brieger, président du Comité militaire de l'UE (https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/council-eu/preparatory-bodies/european-union-military-committee/), qui admet (https://www.lindecapant.fr/le-chef-militaire-de-lue-met-en-doute-la-contre-offensive-ukrainienne/) que la capacité de l'Ukraine à reprendre les territoires qu'elle considère comme siens «reste discutable».

LJUBLJANA, Slovénie (AP) – L'Union européenne et l'OTAN ont commencé à envoyer une aide d'urgence lundi à la Slovénie après de graves inondations au cours du week-end qui ont touché les deux tiers du petit pays européen, tué au moins six personnes et laissé des centaines de sans-abri. Le secrétaire général de l'OTAN, Jens Stoltenberg, s'est entretenu lundi par téléphone avec le Premier ministre slovène, Robert Golob, exprimant sa sympathie et la forte solidarité de l'OTAN avec la Slovénie, d'après une déclaration de l'OTAN. "J'exprime mes plus sincères condoléances au peuple slovène pour les pertes en vies humaines et la dévastation globale causées par les inondations de ce week-end", a affirmé Stoltenberg. Dimanche, la Slovénie et Chypre ont activé un outil de protection civile de l'Union européenne en raison des inondations en Slovénie et des incendies de forêt à Chypre qui ont touché ces États de l'Union européenne. L'Union européenne envoie à Chypre deux avions de lutte contre les incendies Canadair du pool de protection civile de l'Union européenne stationné en Grèce. La Grèce envoie aussi 20 tonnes de retardateur liquide via le outil de protection civile de l'Union européenne. Les inondations en Slovénie ont été les pires de l'histoire récente en Slovénie, un pays d'environ 2 millions d'habitants, d'après des responsables slovènes. La France envoie deux excavatrices avec des unités d'ingénierie en Slovénie, tandis que l'Allemagne envoie deux ponts temporaires préfabriqués et deux excavatrices avec le personnel d'accompagnement, a indiqué la Commission européenne. La Bulgarie et la Croatie ont aussi offert leur soutien, notamment des hélicoptères, des excavatrices, des ponts préfabriqués et des équipes d'ingénieurs. Les États-Unis ont aussi déployé du personnel à Ljubljana pour évaluer la situation et déterminer les besoins humanitaires urgents. Le ministère allemand de l'Intérieur a annoncé qu'il envoyait une équipe de l'Agence fédérale de secours technique en Slovénie. La première équipe, spécialisée dans le sauvetage, devait arriver lundi et des équipes supplémentaires devaient suivre. Les inondations ont été causées par des pluies torrentielles vendredi qui ont fait gonfler rapidement les rivières et ont fait irruption dans les maisons, les champs, les villages et les villes. Le service météorologique slovène a affirmé qu'un mois de pluie était tombé en moins d'une journée. Les chercheurs déclarent que les conditions météorologiques extrêmes sont en partie alimentées par le changement climatique. Certaines parties de l'UE ont connu une chaleur record et des incendies de forêt cet été. Des villages entiers sont encore sous les eaux en Slovénie. Les récoltes ont été détruites et les voitures coincées dans la boue. Les principales autoroutes de certaines parties de la Slovénie ont été fermées. De nombreux ponts se sont par ailleurs effondrés. Les autorités slovènes ont mis en garde contre le danger de potentielles coulées de boue et de rivières gonflées qui pourraient déborder à tout instant, dépassant les bancs de sacs de sable placés par les équipes d'urgence. Plusieurs violentes tempêtes dans la nation alpine au début de l'été ont soufflé des toits, abattu des milliers d'arbres et tué une personne en Slovénie et quatre autres ailleurs dans la région. Des crues soudaines ont aussi été signalées en Autriche et en Croatie voisines et de fortes pluies et tempêtes ont causé des dégâts importants plus à l'est en Serbie, qui se trouve en aval de la rivière Sava gonflée qui coule de la Slovénie et de la Croatie dans les Balkans.

NRK med historisk TV-sending fra prideparaden i Oslo

For første gang lager NRK en egen TV-sending fra prideparaden i Oslo. Silje Nordnes og Robert Stoltenberg leder sendingen, mens Pål Plassen kommenterer paraden som hyller skeiv kjærlighet og mangfold. Pandemi og terror har stoppet prideparaden i Oslo tre år på rad. 1. juli skal gatene igjen fylles med mennesker som skal delta og se på det regnbuefargede toget. NRK skal for første gang lage et…

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Film | Trollhunter - Review

My ★★★★ review of Trollhunter #FilmReview #MovieReview #Cinema

Trollhunter (2010) Synopsis – A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter – Trollhunter. Director – André Øvredal Starring – Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum, Glenn Erland Tosterud Genre – Drama, Fantasy,…

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[Image ID: A June 28, 2022 tweet by Robert Evans.

Robert Evans quote-retweeted a tweet by Amberin Zaman, which says “Sources: Biden Erdogan meeting will depend on the results of his meeting with Swedes and Finns today. If there’s a deal, then Erdogan withdraws veto threat and gets Biden. Also reports, though unconfirmed, that Jens Stoltenberg (NATO Secretary General) pressuring Swedes to extradite people ahead of Turkey, Finland, Sweden summit.”

Robert Evans’s tweet says, “So the deal is almost certainly that the U.S. throws Rojava under the bus, and allows turkey to commit massacres, in exchange for them not fighting NATO membership for Sweden / Finland.”

End ID.]

WATCHING

A handful of NATO countries are pushing to raise the alliance’s defense spending benchmark from 2 percent to 2.5 percent or even 3 percent of member countries’ GDP, according to six current and former European and U.S. officials familiar with the matter, a move that could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in new defense spending if approved.

The initiative, pushed in diplomatic circles by Poland and Estonia, is a long shot and may face significant pushback from Western European powers already struggling to meet the existing NATO defense spending benchmark of 2 percent of GDP. But it reflects a mounting concern among NATO members on the alliance’s eastern flank that Europe is ill-equipped for a long-term military showdown with Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine last year.

“We do expect that against the backdrop of everything that’s going on, the NATO commonly agreed level should be higher than 2 percent,” Estonia’s ambassador to the United States, Kristjan Prikk, told Foreign Policy in a message, noting that discussions were still ongoing as to what the proposed new benchmark should be.

Discussions around the proposal are still in the early stages and a concrete figure has yet to be agreed upon, according to an Estonian defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, adding that the matter is expected to be raised at the upcoming meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Feb. 14. Proponents of the plan are laying the groundwork to raise it as a policy proposal for NATO’s next major leaders summit, scheduled for July in Vilnius, Lithuania, according to four of the officials familiar with the matter.

While some NATO leaders have voiced support for making the 2 percent benchmark a floor and not a ceiling for NATO allies, this new initiative would mark the first concrete proposal to raise the floor of defense spending and add pressure to NATO countries that have let their own military and defense industrial spending atrophy for decades since the end of the Cold War.

“NATO needs strengthening, and since Poland is spending 4 percent of our GDP, we would expect other allies to increase their spending as well,” said Radoslaw Fogiel, chairman of the Polish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

U.S. defense spending is more than 3 percent of GDP, making the United States one of just nine out of the alliance’s 30 members to reach the NATO defense target in 2022, despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The discrepancy has been a long-standing source of frustration between Washington and European capitals.

The debate over defense spending became a flashpoint between the United States and its allies during the Trump administration, when President Donald Trump repeatedly bashed NATO allies for outsourcing their security from the U.S. military without properly investing in their own defense capabilities. But despite Trump’s harsh rhetoric that at times raised concerns about American commitment to the alliance, the warnings from U.S. officials that NATO spending is not commensurate with growing national security threats date back decades, including then-outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s famous 2011 parting shot to allies in Brussels that the bloc risked “collective military irrelevance” unless countries sharply increased their military budgets.

The 2 percent benchmark was agreed upon at the NATO summit in Wales in 2014, as Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine prompted a reexamination of Europe’s security architecture. At the time, three of the alliance’s members were already spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense.

The spending pledge made in 2014 was agreed upon for a decade. As its expiration date approaches next year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has spoken publicly about the need for a more ambitious target. “I expect that we will make a new pledge on defense spending when we meet in Vilnius at the NATO summit in July this year,” he said in an interview with Die Welt last month. “I cannot tell you exactly what allies will agree, but I expect there to be a more ambitious pledge because everyone sees that we need to invest more,” he said.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, over a dozen members of the alliance pledged to increase their defense spending, with several laggards, including Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, promising to meet the 2 percent goal, although none of the nations have hit the target so far. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to spend more than $100 billion to revamp Berlin’s under-armed military but has reportedly lagged on defense purchases and procurement programs to begin revamping the military and defense industrial output.

Other NATO nations have found it more challenging to move past the 2 percent mark. Despite being a prolific supporter of Ukraine and the home of one of the war-torn country’s largest diaspora communities, Canada’s defense spending has sunk since 2020, topping out at just under 1.5 percent of GDP. Belgium, the home of NATO’s headquarters, plans to get to 1.54 percent—by 2030.

Defense hawks in Europe are hoping that NATO’s upcoming summit in Vilnius will be a potential turning point. Nearly 10 years after NATO members agreed to meet the 2 percent benchmark within a decade, some of the top defense spenders within the alliance are using the anniversary to try to sustain the momentum on building military muscle.

But beyond the Baltic states, the paradigm shift is also being driven by some of NATO’s largest members. France, which has been hovering just below NATO’s 2 percent mark for years, is set to boost military spending by more than 7 percent in 2023 and has pledged to spend more than $400 billion to revamp its military over the next six years, boosting spending on nuclear weapons and adding a new aircraft carrier. The British government is in the midst of a defense spending review that is likely to put it well beyond the 2 percent mark for the long term, though London has delayed a planned spending boost that was likely to raise the target to 3 percent of GDP.

It was not immediately clear if calls for a renewed NATO spending pledge would be accompanied by other military goals. The 2014 Wales pledge came with a commitment from members to invest 20 percent of their budgets on research and development of new weapons. But former officials are worried that some NATO members may not follow through on their promises without a firm new pledge.

“The bottom line is that the water level is rising,” said Fabrice Pothier, a former NATO director of policy planning who is now CEO of the Rasmussen Global political consultancy. “I think there is still a debate on whether it should be 2.5 or 3 [percent]. The question in Vilnius is, will that be put in black and white or will that be put as more of an aspiration?” Pothier added that a clear target would help send a signal to arms manufacturers that NATO members will keep ramping up their military budgets for the long term, no small matter as Western countries struggle to restock their supplies, especially artillery tubes and shells and tanks.

“At the end, you need to have a black-and-white number, because if not, the secretary-general and the whole NATO machine cannot exert sharp enough pressure and keep allies’ feet to the fire,” he said. “We are in a brave new world, and in anticipation, the defense industry should scale up.”

Jim Townsend, who served for eight years as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration, said that the idea of raising the defense spending target beyond 2 percent was not entirely a nonstarter, noting that in the United States, 2 percent has increasingly come to be seen as the floor, not the ceiling, of defense spending commitments. One possibility, Townsend said, would be to include language about a boost in defense spending in the joint communique issued at the Vilnius summit to give governments something to sell to parliaments and publics back home, while couching it in non-binding terms to provide an “escape hatch” for countries that are unable to meet the new proposals.

Whether allies meet their 2 percent benchmark or not has become a proxy for the political debate of whether that country takes its commitment to NATO and collective defense seriously—though some security experts lament that the fixation on 2 percent clouds more important discussions of how each country is spending its defense budget and whether enough is being invested in research and development for new weapons systems.

“What I would certainly hope to see from the pledge is the sustainability of the effort,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general for defense investment and now a distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This is where we keep our edge, rather than simply, let’s have a bushfire of money spent and then discover that it was not spent that wisely: That we don’t have the money to support the new equipment, that we don’t have enough money to train the crews of the thousands of [new] tanks.”

The plans, which had long been in the works as Baltic nations redoubled their defense spending ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, have crystallized as a political push after a recent meeting of high-level Polish and Baltic officials in Riga. The Baltic countries will also be seeking progress reports on NATO plans to deploy a brigade-level presence to countries in the region, firmed up at the alliance’s summit in Madrid last summer, as well as changes to NATO’s defense planning and spending, as European countries have run through their ammunition stockpiles to help Ukraine, and the military industry hasn’t been moving quickly enough to keep up.

“It’s clear that, at this moment, 2 percent is not enough,” said Artis Pabriks, who was Latvia’s defense minister and deputy prime minister until December and now serves as director of the Northern Europe Policy Center, a Riga-based think tank. “I think all nations will support this 2.5 percent for everybody, because we are already there. We are the front-line countries and we see the danger, and we know the danger will persist for a decade. We see the problems with industry, we see the problems with supply.”

“With 2 percent, many European nations cannot manage what they have to manage to make the continent safer and resist the Russians,” he said.

hey, no offense but how exactly can you be a radfem but still be "trans inclusive"? doesn't that kinda.... beat the point? since 99% of radfeminism is just hating males and trans people altogether? like i don't want to sound rude but i'm just getting mixed signals since imo, no trans ally would genuinely call themselves a radfem in any way.

Since the 1970s, there has been a debate among radical feminists about transgender identities. In 1978, the Lesbian Organization of Toronto voted to become womyn-born womyn only and wrote:

A woman's voice was almost never heard as a woman's voice—it was always filtered through men's voices. So here a guy comes along saying, "I'm going to be a girl now and speak for girls." And we thought, "No you're not." A person cannot just join the oppressed by fiat.

Some radical feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, John Stoltenberg and Monique Wittig, have supported recognition of trans women as women, which they describe as trans-inclusive feminism, while others, such as Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer, Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, and Robert Jensen, have argued that the transgender movement perpetuates patriarchal gender norms and is incompatible with radical-feminist ideology.

Those who exclude trans women from womanhood or women's spaces refer to themselves as gender critical and are referred to by others as trans-exclusionary. Radical feminists in particular who exclude trans women are often referred to as "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" or "TERFs", an acronym to which they object, say is inaccurate (citing, for example, their inclusion of trans men as women), and argue is a slur or even hate speech.

These feminists argue that because trans women are assigned male at birth, they are accorded corresponding privileges in society, and even if they choose to present as women, the fact that they have a choice in this sets them apart from people assigned female. Gender-critical or trans-exclusionary radical feminists in particular say that the difference in behavior between men and women is the result of socialization. Lierre Keith describes femininity as "a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission", and hence, gender is not an identity but a caste position, and gender-identity politics are an obstacle to gender abolition.

Julie Bindel argued in 2008 that Iran carries out the highest number of sex-change operations in the world, because "surgery is an attempt to keep gender stereotypes intact", and that "it is precisely this idea that certain distinct behaviours are appropriate for males and females that underlies feminist criticism of the phenomenon of 'transgenderism'." According to the BBC in 2014, there are no reliable figures regarding gender-reassignment operations in Iran.

In The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979), the lesbian radical feminist Janice Raymond argued that "transsexuals ... reduce the female form to artefact, appropriating this body for themselves".

In The Whole Woman (1999), Germaine Greer wrote that largely male governments "recognise as women men who believe that they are women ... because [those governments] see women not as another sex but as a non-sex"; she continued that if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were a mandatory part of sex-change operations, the latter "would disappear overnight". Sheila Jeffreys argued in 1997 that "the vast majority of transsexuals still subscribe to the traditional stereotype of women" and that by transitioning they are "constructing a conservative fantasy of what women should be ... an essence of womanhood which is deeply insulting and restrictive."

 In Gender Hurts (2014), she referred to sex reassignment surgery as "self-mutilation", and used pronouns that refer to biological sex. Jeffreys argued that feminists need to know "the biological sex of those who claim to be women and promote prejudicial versions of what constitutes womanhood", and that the "use by men of feminine pronouns conceals the masculine privilege bestowed upon them by virtue of having been placed in and brought up in the male sex caste".

Then you have Trans-inclusive radical feminists who claim that a biology-based or sex-essentialist ideology itself upholds patriarchal constructions of womanhood. Andrea Dworkin argued as early as 1974 that transgender people and gender identity research have the potential to radically undermine patriarchal sex essentialism:

work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity. That is not to say that there is one sex, but that there are many. The evidence which is germane here is simple. The words "male" and "female," "man" and "woman," are used only because as yet there are no others.

In 2015, radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon said:

Male dominant society has defined women as a discrete biological group forever. If this was going to produce liberation, we'd be free ... To me, women is a political group. I never had much occasion to say that, or work with it, until the last few years when there has been a lot of discussion about whether trans women are women ... I always thought I don't care how someone becomes a woman or a man; it does not matter to me. It is just part of their specificity, their uniqueness, like everyone else's. Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I'm concerned, is a woman.

What's the difference between radical feminism and liberal or intersectional feminism? I'm confused ^.^"

What is the difference between liberal, radical and intersectional feminism, and what does this mean for transgender people?

Any attempt at reducing feminism to distinct, neat, types or categories will ultimately fail, as there is much diversity and feminism is in constant development. That being said, here is a very simplified presentation of various types of feminism, as they are often understood in an American and North European context. 

Note that these categories are overlapping, both in space and time.

FIRST WAVE -> Liberal Feminism

There has been a female liberation movement going as far back as the 18th century, but in the Anglo-Saxon context the first wave is considered the one that started in the 19th century with the suffragettes and the women’s right to vote movement.

Suffragettes, London.

Many of the ideas of first wave feminism is found in what these days is  referred to as liberal feminism. The idea is that you may gradually change the system from within, making people see that women are in no way inferior to men, and that they deserve the same rights as men, both as regards property, work, education, political influence and pay.

Liberal feminism does not challenge liberal, capitalist, democracy as such. These feminists want to improve it. They share the individualism of liberal democracy, and fight for women’s right to personal autonomy and freedom. 

In many ways this approach has been a success, as is seen in the increasing participation of women in working life, culture and politics.

The limitation of this kind of feminism is, as I see it, that these feminists tend to think of the social system as a rational system. The point is to make people understand that the current system is unfair and oppressive. When people do understand, they will change their behavior. 

As we have seen with the recent traditionalist backlash, many people – both men and women – do not care so much about facts or rational discussions. They see traditional gender roles as a part of their identity, reality be damned, and feel threatened by anything that may weaken their fragile view of the world.

These days most liberal feminists support the rights of transgender women. However, it should be pointed out that there was a time when  liberal feminists argued that even lesbians should be excluded, as their presence might undermine the legitimacy of the feminist movement. Betty Friedan did not want to allow what she called “the lavender menace” into the US National Organization for Women back in 1969. 

I have no idea what she thought about trans women at the time, but you will sometimes see the same kind of embarrassment among some liberal feminists today as regards the presence of trans women.

SECOND WAVE -> Radical Feminism

The second wave appeared in the 1960s. Radical feminists believe that the system that oppresses women, by them referred to as “The Patriarchy”, is a system created by men to control and exploit women. You cannot achieve victory within this system, they argue, as it permeates everything around us: laws, language, mythologies, art, entertainment. 

The Ladies’ Home Journal sit-in 1970

The system makes it hard to think differently, as the oppression is integrated within social institutions like marriage, the traditional nuclear family, and the health care system, as well as in the words we used (”woman” understood, for instance, as someone who is assigned female on the basis of genitalia). 

In the Patriarchy, being a man is the default. Women are “the Other”. The goal of radical feminism is a society where your genitals no longer define your role and influence in society. 

Radical feminists see pornography and prostitution both as signs of, and tools for, the oppression of women. Some lesbian radical feminists even see heterosexual sex as a tool of oppression. Lesbians have freed themselves from male domination by not having sex with men, they say.

Radical feminists have criticized the liberal feminists for wanting to become like men. The point is not to gain the right to do what men do, they argue, because that leads women to devalue what women do.

Influential radical feminists like Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, John Stoltenberg and Monique Wittig, recognize  trans women as women, which makes sense in a movement who is based in the idea that genitals should not define your worth, your role or your status.  

Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin viewed surgery as a right for transgender people.

There is another strand of radical feminism, however, known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERF), people who argue that trans women are men in disguise, and that they  perpetuate the ideals of the Patriarchy. The trans women want to take over “womyn’s spaces”, they say. 

In order to prove that trans women are men, the TERFs point to the fact that some trans women are sexually attractive (thus living up to the sexism of the Patriarchy). At the same time they use stories and photos of those that are not living up to the aesthetic standards of the fashion industry to prove that all trans women are men. 

The fact that many cis women try equally hard to please the male gaze is ignored. The diversity of transgender women is ignored. Nor do the TERFs consider that trans women who have been raised as men have been harrassed and bullied for their female identities and feminine expressions throughout their lives. In other words: That they are also victims of the Patriarchy. 

Recently much of the transphobic radical feminism has degenerated into biological determinism, as in “genitals or chromosomes determine whether you are a man or a woman”. Many of these “radical feminists” also deny the existence of gender, as in the cultural definition and expression of gender roles and gender identities. This is the exact opposite of what radical feminism was meant to be. These “gender critical” activists are, as I see it, not true radical feminists.

Among the transphobic radical feminists we find people like Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond,  Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, and Robert Jensen. They have very little support in the US, but have managed to gain some influence in the UK. The Norwegian organization for radical feminists, Kvinnefronten, welcomes transgender women.

THIRD WAVE -> Intersectional Feminism

The third wave of feminism began in the early 1990s (although you will find its roots back in the 1970s). It embraces individualism and diversity.

Both the first and the second waves of feminism have been dominated by white, cis, middle and upper class women from “Western” countries. Many of them are academics. They are not representative of women in general. 

Because of this they have  been criticised for generalizing about the female life experience on the basis of their own lives, ignoring the unique experiences of – for instance – women of color, women in developing countries and trans, nonbinary and queer women.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw.

The term intersectionality was introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, and it was soon adopted by third wave feminists. Intersectionality reflects  postmodern insights into the way the current social and cultural systems creates  hierarchies of oppression. 

This oppression is not only about men oppressing women (or the upper class exploiting the working class). In a world dominated by privileged white, straight, and “masculine” men, everyone who does not live up to their ideals are oppressed, whether their “otherness” is caused by sex, skin color, sexual orientation, homeland, religion or gender identity. 

The third wave has also been strongly be influenced by queer theory and gender theory, which look at  the social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity, sexualities and gender.

The third wave is often seen as sex positive. There are “girly”, “lipstick”, feminists who embrace feminine gender expressions and female sexuality and who argue that noone, not even feminists, have the right to to define or control how they should dress, act, or express themselves.

Needless to say you won’t find many transphobes among third wave feminists.

Some have also coined a fourth wave of feminism. It seems to me to be a continuation of third wave, intersectional, feminism, with a strong focus on the use of modern media. Some TERFs have tried to appropriate the term, joining right wing extremists in their attacks against queer gender theory, but do not be fooled by this. They are, at best, to be considered an offshoot of the second wave. They do not represent women. They do not represent feminists. They do not represent radical feminism.

Top illustration: iStock 

See also:

On lesbians,transgender people and feminism.

Transadvocate on transgender feminism.

The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained

Idol Worship: Julia Serano Talks To Autostraddle About Fixing Feminism

Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally

Maaarine: books posted on this blog in 2021

Stephen ASMA and Rami GABRIEL (2019): The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition

Simon BARON-COHEN (2020): The Pattern Seekers: A New Theory of Human Invention

Robert BRANDOM (2009): Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas

Robert BRANDOM (2019): A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology

Svend BRINKMANN (2017): Persons and their Minds: Towards an Integrative Theory of the Mediated Mind

Peter CARRUTHERS (2006): The Architecture of Mind

Ernst CASSIRER (1927): The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy

Mona CHOLLET (2018): Sorcières: La puissance invaincue des femmes

Mona CHOLLET (2021): Réinventer l'amour: Comment le patriarcat sabote les relations hétérosexuelles

Elinor CLEGHORN (2021) Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine And Myth in a Man-Made World

Ian DEARY (2001): Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction

Chad ENGELLAND (2020): Phenomenology

Lisa FELDMAN BARRETT (2020): Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Thomas FUCHS (2017): Ecology of the Brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind 

Françoise GILOT (1964): Life with Picasso

David GRAEBER and David WENGROW (2021): The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Joseph HEATH (2008): Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint

Walter ISAACSON (2021): The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

Walter ISAACSON (2017): Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography

Mark JOHNSON (2014): Morality for Humans – Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science

Peter KOSSO (1998): Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics

Zoltan KÖVECSES (2005): Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation

Gerald MAY (1982): Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology

Mariana MAZZUCATO (2021): Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

James MENSCH (2003): Ethics and Selfhood: Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation

Erich NEUMANN (1973): The Child: Structure and Dynamics of the Nascent Personality

Jenny ODELL (2019): How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Robert PLOMIN (2018): Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are

Laurence REES (2012): Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss

Sally ROONEY (2021): Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Michael SANDEL (2020): The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

Armin SCHULZ (2018): Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making

James SCOTT (2017): Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Robert SOKOLOWKI (2008): Phenomenology of the human person

Tim SPECTOR (2012): Identically Different: Why You Can Change Your Genes

Tim SPECTOR (2020): Spoon‑Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong

Amia SRINIVASAN (2021): The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

John STOLTENBERG (2000): Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Social Justice

Bessel VAN DER KOLK (2014): The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma

Alan WATTS (2017): Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek

Peter WOLFENDALE (2019): Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon's New Clothes

Malcolm X and Alex HALEY (1965): The Autobiography of Malcolm X

See also: bibliography of previous years