Stop knowing that

Mar 9th, 2021 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Graham did this:

He also posted the text.

Almost four years ago I saw that feminists were being bullied, harassed and silenced for standing up for their rights and their children’s rights. I decided to use my platform on Twitter to bring attention to what seemed to be an all-out assault on women, on their words, their dignity and their safety. Also, I saw that vulnerable children were being fast-tracked onto a medical pathway that carried severe long-term implications. My position is very simple. I believe everyone should be allowed to talk about these issues. In fact, I believe it is a moral imperative that we do so. 

I am talking about such matters as… the scandals at the Tavistock, the confusing and misleading advice that Stonewall has been providing to institutions all over the UK regarding the nature of the equalities act, the issue of men in women’s sports, in women’s prisons, their rape crisis centres, the destruction of basic safeguarding principles that has led to all this, and the silencing and abuse of feminists, doctors, teachers, academics and writers–anyone, in fact–who questions the fashionable American orthodoxy of gender identity ideology.  

Is it American? Probably, yes. I apologize.

Around three years ago, I was among the initial signatories of a letter to Stonewall asking them to help lower the toxicity of the conversation around sex and gender and acknowledge the plurality of views on the subject. The letter was composed by Jonny Best, a gay man and longtime LGBT activist, and the majority of these initial signatories were either gay, lesbian or trans.

We wanted to see an end to women receiving death and rape threats for standing up for their sex-based rights. To that end, we asked Stonewall to commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate, rather than demonising as transphobic those who wished to discuss or dissent from Stonewall’s current policies. Stonewall flatly refused this appeal within the day, and continued to dishonestly frame women standing up for their rights as an attack on trans rights. The petition has since been signed by over 11,000 people, many of them gay men and women in despair at what is being done in their name. 

“Stop trashing women in public? Oh hell no!”

This silencing of women was the main reason I entered this fight. I knew the subject of gender was fraught but I’m political by nature and I couldn’t remain quiet in the face of such vicious misogyny. I presumed that when others saw what was happening that they too would speak up and we would be able to force the debate our opponents were so desperate to avoid. 

I now realise that I was up against a much bigger beast than I thought. These platforms shape the debate and declare you untouchable when you refuse to play by their rules. The upshot is that many people presume that I am a bigot. These people also presume the same of JK Rowling and many other left-leaning, liberal and progressive women.

There’s even a special word for us.

Social media has created a through the looking glass world which is robbing everyone of their ability to think. My final statement on Twitter, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was simply “Men are not women.” A world where statements like “Men are not women” is hate speech is a world on the brink of chaos. Feminists are just the canary in the coalmine in this upside-down world where public discourse depends on the whims of a small group of men in Silicon Valley. Gender identity ideology began in American Universities, is uncritically disseminated by the popular media, but social media companies and their users are the enforcers.

Oh, American universities – Judith Butler and so on. Fair point. I reiterate my apology.

The reason you have not heard the things that I have heard is that the discourse is being shaped by trans rights activists. In place of reasoned arguments and democratic discussion, we have mantras like “No debate” and “Transwomen are women”, we have policies passing by stealth, we have bogus statistics about trans murder epidemics and we have the unconscionable weaponising of suicide for political ends.

The discourse is broken. Women’s rights are being stripped away, our children are not safe, and we are not allowed to talk about it. 

That plus we are being ordered, with menaces, to believe what we can’t believe, to believe an obvious lie, indeed an absurdity. We are being bullied and shouted at and called names for the sake of a ludicrous fantasy-based denial of reality. We are being pressured to stop knowing what we know and instead know what we can’t possibly know because it isn’t true. That becomes all the more insulting and outrageous when the thing we’re being told to stop knowing is that men are not women.

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