22 Comments

Sigh...I'm just too weary of everything that happened this week to even be able to take in how awful this sounds, let alone try to say something intelligent. Thank you for sacrificing your time and peace of mind to sit through this and explain it so vividly for us. It's just all so demoralizing right now. I want to go live by myself on an island.

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Same

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An entertaining and eloquent review. Pity about the play x

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Hah!

Brilliant.

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Well Rowling would write a better play and it would make a fortune - it would be authentic

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Sounds like an utterly dreadful play but the review was quite interesting to read.

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In Edinburgh for fringe all quite depressing - trying hard to avoid misogynistic shows and to find feminist ones. Found two - hurrah! Last year I made the mistake of going to the ‘funny feminist’ one and had to walk out after 10mins, well done for enduring so you could write this review

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Feminists who raise concerns about men appropriating the voices of women who have been abused by men are labelled as privileged oppressors, while men, dressed as women, who abuse those feminists are labelled as oppressed?

This isn't a play by Josh Kaplan, it's a play by Lewis Carol (without the wit, insight, imagination or relevance).

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Spot on with your comment! Poor Susan had to sit through this vile avalanche of woman-hating!

JK Rowling is an amazing women's rights icon. Bravo JK! F**K THE PATRIARCHY!

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This: "Kaplan has said that he is “reclaiming” the insult... but he forgets that... “terf cunt” is not his phrase to reclaim. In the mouths of men who hate us... men who misunderstand and misrepresent us and distort or shut their ears to our arguments.... it is potentially deadly." Indeed. My estranged sons' rage with me is exactly described in this way, based as it centrally is on their refusal to listen to or at all consider the female, especially maternal, point of view, and a readiness instead to dismiss me/us altogether as 'mean'. The only way for males to mature into adults capable of having healthy relationships with women in their lives, is to listen to and at least in some degree respect their loving mothers and other older women in their lives who are trying to help them understand stuff from a female vantage point. Instead they seek out other young men for advice and approval, a brotherhood of ignorance about women that is so much larger, more ignorant and more readily available today than it was before the internet. It's pretty dire that the Fringe welcomes such a play. Good at least to see that there weren't as many punters as expected. Thanks for the review. It is excellent.

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Thank you so much for sitting through this tripe so we don't have to! I hope your review goes viral.

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Aug 10·edited Aug 10

Compliments to SCS, not just for a great review, but her restraint from psychoanalyzing Joshua Kaplan. Everything I need to know about Kaplan, his diseased mind and the women-hating Trans Replacement Cult can be found in the play itself, which - thanks to Susan - I will never need to see.

And I note with interest that Kaplan has renamed the play from "TERF Cunt" to just "TERF". Who'd of thought he had focus-grouped the name of the play to make it more marketable? As a man, that right there made my blood run cold.

Here's hoping Susan's review is read far and wide in America, so "Terf C**t" can die a deserved death in England. The American dollar has been squandered rather too much lately.

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Wouldn’t that “hug” have been horizontal?

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I thought that too, but maybe she meant the the hugger was above the huggee

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Thank you Susan for taking one for the team. It really was not worthy of your time and effort. The naked emperor cannot be unseen and that doesn’t make him any less distasteful.

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The play sounds tedious by contrast the review is in depth and reflective . I went to see mnemonic at the national last week : pointless nudity and a chaotic story / annoying . I’d love to read Julie’s review of that .

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Thanks Julie

So sorry you had to endure this tripe. Sounds horrific and without any redeeming features - such as the basics of good writing and acting. You have for sure done us all a great service in pointing this out with some wit! X

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Great review!

Glad for the news. Without having to see it.

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Sounds like you really took one for the team.

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Your review stuck a chord with me. I was married to a violent, controlling man for all of two years, and thought that over 3 decades I'd dealt with it all, and was no longer fearful. One evening, out with friends, a man entered the room and I panicked. In that moment I needed to run and my heart was pounding. It wasn't my ex; it was simply a man who looked like he did in his thirties, 30 years previously. My reaction was visceral, the physical signs of sheer terror were there for all to see. It shook me to my core; I would never have thought I would react in this way to someone who merely looked like a memory.

So yes, you're spot on in your view that the majority of abused women wouldn't sit chatting happily with their abuser. That appears to be the level of understanding of all the concepts in the play. I'm so pleased you took one for the team, so we didn't have to. Well endured!

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