Scholarship to the resue:

The British Library has limited replies. I guess only fish can respond.… Read the rest

You don’t get to decide.

The Patreon is here.

H/t G.… Read the rest

The Peter Tatchell Foundation tells us that Peter Tatchell is determined to tell damaging hostile lies about Kathleen Stock.

Veteran LGBT+ human rights defender, Peter Tatchell, has pulled out of tonight’s Oxford Union Pride debate over its hosting of Kathleen Stock on 30 May, without a speaker to challenge her trans-exclusion policies.

Misogynist creep. She has no “trans-exclusion policies.” None. Famous male gay rights activist libels lesbian, boasts about it via his “foundation.”

Writing to the Oxford Union today, Mr Tatchell said:

“I have decided, somewhat reluctantly, to withdraw from the debate.

“I strongly disagree with the Oxford Union giving Kathleen Stock a solo platform, without having a trans speaker to counter her viewpoint.”

Does Pater Tatchell insist on having … Read the rest

Don was recorded:

US prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of Donald Trump in which he acknowledges keeping a classified document after leaving the White House.

…

The audio recording is said to be from a meeting at Mr Trump’s New Jersey golf club in July 2021, which is around six months after he left office.

Two people familiar with the matter told CBS that Mr Trump can be heard acknowledging there are national security restrictions on a military memo because it details a potential attack on Iran.

He says it is still classified and should have been declassified before leaving the White House, one person said.

No, Don, it should not have left the White House at all. … Read the rest

Again with the confusion between existence and self-description.

A woman who pretends to be a man gets pregnant.

So far so unsurprising.

(It would be surprising if she’d been trapped alone on a desert island for the past 10 months or so. Or if she’d been locked in a room alone ditto or some other such scenario in which it would have been physically impossible to be impregnated. Barring that – no surprise.)

The woman says she’s “a pregnant trans man” and that no matter what anyone says, she’s “living proof.”

Of what?

She’s living proof that a woman can say she’s a trans man, I suppose, but we already knew women can do that, so why it’s on … Read the rest

Yet again I wonder…how do adults let themselves get to this point?

What KS and her supporters claim is that trans people can of course have rights, but they can’t have the right to be the thing they say they are.

But that is saying they can’t exist, as what they are. Because you refuse to believe what they are is real. https://t.co/3ZoIPCmYch

— David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress) June 1, 2023

But there is no such “right.” That has never been a right. For blindingly obvious reasons. Everybody could have claimed to be the local landowner, and then what? Everybody could have claimed to be the king, the pope, the admiral, the owner of the bank, your sister, your daughter, your … Read the rest

Narcissistic bossy guy who pretends to be a woman tells a woman what she can say about women.

Please, on behalf of all women, stop hiding behind the ‘women’ word. In no way do you represent all women. The opposite in fact. You represent the Gender Critical movement /Terfs. Completely different. Says a lot that you don’t have the confidence to admit that.

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) June 1, 2023

Jonathan Willoughby thinks he gets to tell JK Rowling to stop “hiding behind” the word “women.” Jonathan Willoughby is the one pretending to be a woman here, while Rowling is the actual woman talking about the way women are bullied and punished for speaking up. Willoughby’s way of persuading us … Read the rest

Oh ffs. If you don’t understand something that basic go do something else. Leave women alone. Go shout at magpies or the man on the telly or the sky. Leave us alone.

But the issue here is not objects, it's feelings. If Dr Stock says she feels she is a lesbian we believe her. Why then do we not believe a trans woman when she says she feels like a woman? Both are responding to a sensibility at odds with their biological reality

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) May 31, 2023

Because saying you’re a lesbian (or a gay man) is not an extraordinary claim. Same-sex attraction and love has been known about for literally thousands of years. and it … Read the rest

Reminder, or new information if you didn’t know it: if you want to joke or gossip about something entirely irrelevant to a serious post, the place for that is not the serious post but the Miscellany Room.… Read the rest

Madeline Grant at the Times on Ed Balls trying to patronize Kathleen Stock:

Given the crisis unfolding in UK daytime TV, I shouldn’t have been surprised to turn on Good Morning Britain and be confronted with a bona fide monster. To her detractors on social media, Prof Kathleen Stock is the ultimate bogeywoman.

One of them. Let’s not forget JKR, and Maya, and Julie, and Allison, and – they are many.

You’ll be shocked – I repeat, shocked – to hear that Twitter doesn’t reflect reality. Instead, what GMB viewers saw was a clear thinker and lucid speaker with a dry and understated wit. Perhaps all those years of harassment and intimidation by maniacs have afforded Stock a certain gallows

The Times on That Debate:

The choice of Nancy Sinatra’s song These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ was a crude threat. It blasted out of speakers deployed by extremist members of the trans lobby as Kathleen Stock entered the Oxford Union to take part in a debate yesterday. As admirers of the 1966 hit will recall, it promises: “And one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”

On the one hand they’re the most persecuted fragile vulnerable tragic people who’ve ever lived, on the other hand they’re going to walk all over feminist women. I’m not sure those two claims can be made compatible.

Dr Stock was backed by the prime minister before her appearance

The UK’s National Education Union aka NEU issued a statement yesterday, no doubt as a hex against the danger of all those witches running around talking about women and our rights. It’s a breathtaking piece of writing, especially coming from an organization that links itself to education.

The statement is a statement on transphobia. The statement states that it is

A clear expression of the union’s commitment to protecting trans members from harassment and offensive conduct.

Then it defines transpobia.

Transphobia is the fear or dislike of someone based on the fact that they are or are perceived of [sic] as trans or trans allies. It can take place through words or actions, expressing itself as harassment or

But they perceive everything as offensive. They perceive reality as offensive.

Also there’s the hur hur she’s a man approach.

I note the best some on the other side can come up with is "lol prof stock looks like a bloke"

You really do our work for us sometimes.

Lesbians, actual real lesbians you understand, hear this sort of abuse all the time.

In my community we call that "classic homophobia"

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) May 31, 2023

K Stock is a woman, you utter melt. https://t.co/MtDeqFVrlx

— Gaye UltraLesbian Not Queer Chapman ⚢ (@my_real_name) May 31, 2023

https://twitter.com/sueveneer/status/1663794281193119744

Accidentally sat with my thighs apart in the car.

Must try womanning harder.

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 31, 2023

… Read the rest

Cath Leng points out that actually the Channel 4 program took a very trans activist-friendly view of the core issue.

I’m sure the #GenderWars producers consider themselves brave and impartial, but the programme was predicated on the same failure of judgment I’ve come across in so many BBC meetings: the refusal to distinguish between fact and opinion. That’s entirely a trans advocate position.

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) May 31, 2023

It’s not an opinion that men are not women, it’s a fact. That matters.

The first line told us what to expect: ‘a toxic culture war has been raging’ and later my personal teeth grinder – ‘toxic war of words.

It swiftly cites unquestioningly the contested concept of ‘gender

That letter, the one signed by Stephen Whittle and Finn McKay among others – it’s remarkably bad. Couldn’t they find someone to write a literate and coherent few hundred words? If they could, why didn’t they?

On Tuesday 30 May 2023, C4 is screening a documentary with the title ‘Gender Wars’.

We, the undersigned transgender and non-binary (TNB)people are featured in the documentary,

·   DID NOT AGREE to take part in the documentary viewers will see, and

·   would NOT HAVE AGREED to take part in any documentary focused on Kathleen Stock.

Either omit “are” before “featured in the documentary” or add “and” after it. For cryin’ out loud.

We wish to clarify to our peers within the

Lucy Mangan at the Guardian on “Gender Wars”:

Channel 4 has bitten the bullet and is the first, I think, to produce a programme giving voice to both sides of what is usually called “the trans issue”. However, the first problem it faces is that “the trans issue” is actually about 400 issues packed into one, which has partly contributed to the endless difficulties in approaching, let alone resolving, it.

What are some of them? The incompatibility with women’s rights of course. The fact that it’s not true. The damage people do to their bodies trying to make it true. The entitlement that seems to go with it for so many. The maudlin hyperbolic rhetoric. The unwarranted belligerence. The … Read the rest

We were talking earlier about existential cuteness and puppy videos.

Channel 4 (UK)’s Gender Wars aired a couple of hours ago and was apparently very good, and not one long rant about terfs.

Those who rail at Kathleen Stock have ensured more people want to hear her talk. Those who’ve already denounced “Gender Wars” – on C4 at 10 pm this evening – will boost its viewing figures. And since KS is a moderate & a brilliant speaker, she will peak the nation.
Well done all!

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) May 30, 2023

Just watched a preview of @Channel4’s Gender Wars doc that’s on tonight. Thought it was v fair & balanced – both sides got to put their points forward in a way that was humanising & sympathetic.