It’s the old Lone Ranger joke for the millionth time – “Who’s ‘we,’ Kemosabe?” Charles Blow at the Times says “we” a lot but there is no such “we.”

As the L.G.B.T.Q. community celebrates Pride Month, we are besieged by a malicious, coordinated legislative attack.

But there is no such community, at least not without some cautions and stipulations. It’s a very lumpy unwieldy community if it is a community. What unites lesbians and trans women exactly? Especially, what unites them in an environment where all the solidarity is for the trans women and none of it is for the lesbians unless they pretend men can be lesbians every bit as much as women can?

There’s been a notable rise

Alison Phipps has a new paper [pdf] out, so I’ve read a little. It’s every bit as horrible as I expected, and more so. Page 3 –

In January 2019, at a joint panel with far-right think-tank the Heritage Foundation, Women’s Liberation Front board member Kara Dansky claimed that if the US Equality Act (designed to protect sexual orientation and gender identity) was passed, the following would happen:

Male rapists will go to women’s prisons and will likely assault female inmates as has already happened in the UK. Female survivors of rape will be unable to contest male presence in women’s shelters. Men will dominate women’s sports. Girls who would have taken first place will be denied scholastic opportunity. Women

After reading yesterday about Oxfam’s embrace of the fake feminism of Alison Phipps I thought I should see what she’s up to.

Fab talk. Didn’t fully realise before how exclusionary feminism has always been. Not just in terms of race but also class, economic status, etc.

“Mumsnet…reflects an exclusive, jealously guarded & blissfully resentful focus on the cis female reproductive body and its labours…” https://t.co/WALc31d4Iv

— Charley (@charleybarley74) June 3, 2023

Well there you go – same fake feminism – same fake feminism using fake feminism to trash feminism.

Happy Pride! Enjoy this FANTASTIC takedown of gender-critical feminism by @alisonphipps. https://t.co/ObZavg4RWd pic.twitter.com/ZncuWARUer

— Dr. Alexiana Fry (@alexianadlou) June 2, 2023

Yay! Enjoy this “takedown” of feminism that’s not about men … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on We know less about a person than before.

“LGBTQ+” is an example of a term that gives us less information than we had when the individual letters were broken out into separate attributes. And I suspect that’s a large part of LGBTQ+’s appeal.

LGBTQ+ basically just means “different in a sex and gender kind of way.” Which is deliberately more vague than “sexually attracted to persons of the same sex.”

Deliberately more vague is appealing to lazy journalists who don’t want to bother being specific.

Deliberately more vague is appealing to formerly-LGB-focused lobby groups who want to capture a broader demographic.

Deliberately more vague is appealing to straight people who aren’t actually sexually … Read the rest

The Telegraph article goes on to explain how Oxfam decided to abuse women in the name of Trans Solidarity Supremacy.

Learning About Trans Rights and Inclusion was drawn up in 2020, whilst Oxfam was still reeling from sexual exploitation scandals in Haiti and Chad. 

…

The training manual was written after the charity’s LGBT+ network wrote to the leadership team demanding that they publicly support trans people and suggested that any debate about rights was part of a “patriarchal and white supremacist narrative” used by the far right.  

The letter called for specific resources to be made available, adding: “To argue that trans-inclusivity would undermine the vital work we do for women and girls is not only transphobic, but also

Melanie Newman, Julie Bindel, and Hayley Dixon on Oxfam’s hatred of women:

An Oxfam staff training document says “privileged white women” are supporting the root causes of sexual violence by wanting “bad men” imprisoned.

Ah it’s the Karen card. Oxfam is playing the Karen card. Women are just bitches who complain about being raped instead of smiling stoically and pretending nothing happened.

In the wake of sex scandals that have rocked the charity, Oxfam has produced guidance which states that: “Mainstream feminism centres on privileged white women and demands that ‘bad men’ be fired or imprisoned”.

Accompanied by a cartoon of a crying white woman, it adds that this “legitimises criminal punishment, harming black and other marginalised people”.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on The pedantic version.

In my day job I work with information management and AI systems. A key goal we’re always striving for is improved information content within structured data sets. We only add new elements or classifiers to the language or lexicon structures if they are required to improve differentiation amongst a set of entities that are characterized by some combination of these classifiers. We meticulously avoid adding ambiguous classifiers as these do nothing but reduce the information content of data sets and reduce the precision of the operations that can be performed by the systems.

It seems to me this is similar to the gender/pronoun language problem. All these … Read the rest

Item 3 – Johns Hopkins has an LGBTQ Glossary.

Under “lesbian” we find

Lesbian [sexual orientation]: A non-man attracted to non-men. While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label.

So, we think to ourselves, they do the same with “gay man,” right?

Judge for yourself.

Gay Man: A man who is emotionally, romantically, sexually, affectionately, or relationally attracted to other men, or who identifies as a member of the gay community. At times, “gay” is used to refer to all people, regardless of gender, who have their primary sexual and or romantic attractions to

Next up: an abstract from Sage Publications from December 2020:

Specificity without identity: Articulating post-gender sexuality through the “non-binary lesbian”

That’s actually really easy. Non-binary doesn’t mean anything. A lesbian who calls herself non-binary is just being a bit precious. (This raises further questions – are there non-binary butch lesbians and non-binary femme lesbians? Or do they have to pick one? Can we ever ever ever escape the dreaded binary? Answers from a napkin from the last lesbian bar on the planet, if you can find it.)

This paper uses the paradigmatic pairing of non-binary and lesbian as identity labels to investigate changes in conceptualizations of sexual specificity as gender becomes divorced from its founding binaries. Contrary to the

I’m curious about this “it’s a misconception that lesbians are women attracted to women” thing, so I’m looking for tracks. Here’s an item from Planned Parenthood’s blog March 23:

Someone asked us: I’m non-binary but also a lesbian. Does this mean I’m straight or does my sexuality have nothing to do with my actual gender, which is a girl?

Uh…wut? And why are you asking Planned Parenthood? You’re not going to be needing contraception.

PP explains:

Gender identity — like nonbinary or girl — is what gender you feel like and identify with. And sexual orientation — like lesbian and straight — is about who you’re attracted to.

Wut?

Confusion confusion confusion. “Gender identity” is a fad. Ignore … Read the rest

Why the blacklist?

There’s nothing as coarse as an official blacklist at the BBC. Our national broadcaster doesn’t ban people, it doesn’t forbid words or phrases, and it doesn’t proscribe certain stories.

It’s just that some words and phrases are never used, some stories never see the light of day — and some people never, ever get the call. This is true for domestic coverage at least, which is what I know about.

This struck me when the BBC on a single day interviewed not one, but three men whose behaviour has ranged from dubious to deplorable — Philip Schofield, TikTok star Mizzy and the misogynist Andrew Tate. The activities and views of these men didn’t prevent them from getting 

The Times on Oxfam’s ostentatious hatred for women:

Oxfam has been branded “utterly shocking” for releasing an anti-trans cartoon character apparently based on JK Rowling.

The charity’s animated #ProtectThePride video was issued to mark Pride month. It said it could not “ignore the cruel backdrop” against which LGBT people marked the celebration.

And to illustrate the “cruel backdrop” it threw in a Cruella Rowling caricature.

The woman [in the caricature], with blood-red eyes and face contorted in hate, was wearing a green dress – similar to one worn by Rowling at a film premiere – and was looking at the Pride flag. As she appeared on screen, a caption said that LGBT people were “preyed on by hate groups

A letter to Oxfam staff today:

The character wearing the “terf badge” didn’t resemble JK Rowling, it was adapted from a photo of JK Rowling. It’s wearing the same damn top ffs. Of course it was the intention of the designers.

Oxfam may say it’s committed to becoming feminist, but I don’t believe it for a second.

Updating to add: or as Simon Myerson put it much more crisply:

From the Holocaust Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia:

Der ewige Jude

As part of its heightened wartime attack on Jews, the Ministry of Propaganda turned to motion pictures as a medium for antisemitic messages.

Fritz Hippler, the president of the Reich Film Chamber, directed the film Der ewige Jude, with input from German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. A pseudo-documentary, it included scenes of Jews shot in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos by propaganda company crews attached to the German military. This film was quite popular with audiences in Germany and throughout occupied Europe.

That image looks familiar somehow.

H/t Fred Sargeant… Read the rest

Oxfam’s unedited video:

“preyed on by hate groups online and offline”… Read the rest

Oxfam has issued a stupid resentful blamey OFFICIAL STATEMENT that says it’s transphobia’s fault.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: pic.twitter.com/NbYKspgIuS

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) June 6, 2023

One: there are no LGBTQIA+ communities. Those are different, sometimes competing things, and they can’t all be mashed into “communities” together.

Two, define transphobia.

But three, we know how you’ll define it, because of that vicious caricature of JKR. You mean feminists defending the rights of women and continuing to know that men are men even if they call themselves trans. You’re saying you want to stop women being feminists and defending our ability to enjoy our rights. You want men who claim to be trans to have the ability and the “right” to cancel … Read the rest

Have regained the use of speech somewhat. May still be slightly truncated and explosive.

The oh so clever Indy headline writer calls feminist women terrible people.

The propagandist who created the image goes for the gut.

The Indy scribbler, Ian O’Dell, pours on the verbal acid.

“Gender critical” activists – some of whom proudly brand themselves a ‘terf’ (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminist) in their Twitter bios – are now upset at the anti-poverty organisation Oxfam for an LGBT+ Pride advert painting ‘terfs’ as evil people.

Misogynist activists – some of whom purport to be journalists – have no qualms about displaying their own glaring throbbing misogyny.

[I]t was an illustration displayed as they spoke of “hate groups” which

Speechless.

Oxfam Pride advert branded ‘hateful’ for making ‘terfs’ look like terrible people https://t.co/81zPsezcDO

— The Independent (@Independent) June 6, 2023

… Read the rest

Oh come ON.

She actually says that – the damn fool in the clip.

“The misconception that lesbian means a woman who loves other women um and actually the definition is non-men who are attracted to and love other non-men.”

Is the definition of gay man non-non men who are attracted to and love other non-non men?

Second question: has it been officially ruled that the word “woman” is now 100% taboo?

“Throughout history there have always been gender-nonconforming lesbians? um and it’s interesting to see nowadays that there are folks who kind of try to gatekeep that identity? and only include folks who identify as women um and that’s not what being lesbian is all about, there are … Read the rest