Kathleen Stock on that day out in Oxford, including some details from a previous day out in Cambridge:

Life as a gender-critical feminist can be quite strange. The first time I ever entered the Oxford Union, I was a 19-year-old fresher. All I really remember is getting very drunk on peach schnapps, crashing into a trestle table, and being asked to leave.

Fast forward 31 years, and I’m walking in there again, surrounded by security and being chased by photographers, accidentally dressed like a cut-price Kendall Roy from Succession. The image will make national front pages the next day.

It’s a very droll image.

Cambridge also provided a stunning bit of theatre: an undercover non-binary student called

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A substantial cohort of self-identified feminists.

For the first time in over thirty years, it makes sense to me to reconsider what feminism means.

Well, that says more about you and what you think “makes sense” than it does about feminism.

Trans people have been illuminating sex and gender in new and insightful ways.

And right here, we have something that makes no sense. Trans people (can we have a definition, please?) are mostly saying that the physical, material, biological basis for the oppression of women means fuck all, and can be “identified” into and out of willy nilly. Men can become women, and women can become men. While certainly … Read the rest

Catharine MacKinnon Exploring Transgender Law and Politics:

For the first time in over thirty years, it makes sense to me to reconsider what feminism means. Trans people have been illuminating sex and gender in new and insightful ways.

She must have watched a different movie from the one I’ve seen.

And for some time, escalating since 2004 with the proposed revisions in the UK Gender Recognition Act,[1] a substantial cohort of self-identified feminists have opposed trans peoples’ existence as trans.

No, not existence as trans. What we oppose is the insistence – backed up with every form of punishment available – that men who are trans are literally women in every sense. We oppose the intrusions and thefts … Read the rest

Oh come on BBC.

Pride 2023 on BBC Three

I Kissed A Boy: The Reunion

Ahead of the final of BBC Three’s ground-breaking dating series, I Kissed A Boy, this one-off studio special will see Dannii Minogue getting the latest goss from the boys (their love lives, their newfound fame, any lingering chemistry…)…

This is Gay

As part of a batch of brand new BBC Comedy Short Films, This is Gay – written and created by Kirk Flash – makes it’s linear debut on BBC Three. They’re called ‘gays’ – but what are they? Who are they? And why? Part mockumentary, part sketch show, This is Gay attempts to answer these important questions…

Keeping up with Krystal Versace

Keeping Up

Well that’s the best headline I’ve seen in a while.

Utah primary schools ban Bible for ‘vulgarity and violence’

Right on! The vulgarity is off the charts.

Utah’s Republican government passed a law in 2022 banning “pornographic or indecent” books from schools.

In other words they made a noose for their own necks. The Bible is hella indecent.

The Utah decision was made this week by the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City after a complaint filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible they had on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.

The committee did not elaborate on its reasoning or

How do people get themselves here? People old enough to vote and drive and enlist?

What is a Woman?

Up until 5 years ago I would have admittedly said "a woman is someone with a vagina."

But time, education and an openness to try and understand other people's perspectives has changed my views.

If you were to ask me "What is a woman" today, I, like a lot of… pic.twitter.com/6bd4ucmc4o

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) June 2, 2023

If you were to ask me “What is a woman” today, I, like a lot of people would struggle to give an answer. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a belief. What it comes down to is that what a woman is to

And a new nation is born…

If Trump’s friends or family loved him, rather than just loving his money, they would have had him involuntarily committed by now. MAGADONIANS, seriously? pic.twitter.com/76rymgkpdJ

— Sgt Joker (@TheSGTJoker) June 2, 2023

The followup one is the best, because it demonstrates how anarchic his “thinking” and “writing” are. “I’ll call them smart no make that brilliant but don’t change the word just say the first one and then the second one and keep going because momentum is all and coherence is what even is that?”… Read the rest

Oh puhleeze. A man doesn’t magically become a not-man just because he calls himself “non-binary.”

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

The “non-binary shopper” is a man. That’s why he was refused entry to a room where women change their clothes. Capeesh?

Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing men’s clothing but I had two

Reduxx reports:

A lesbian bar that has operated in Rennes, France for nearly a decade has been forced to close its doors following a disturbing swell of vandalism and death threats by trans activists. Orane Guéneau, the owner and manager of lesbian bar La Part des Anges, was publicly denounced as “transphobic” and accused of “misgendering” by critics.

Speaking with Ouest France, Guéneau said she made the decision to shut down the venue to protect her employees in response to increased aggression, both online and at her storefront. On April 14, four unnamed trans activists spray painted the menacing message “Fuck TERFs,” accompanied by a trans symbol, on the front door of the venue during activities that were

Brilliant.

Oxford is – this is the way it’s always going to go, I mean, this is a large number of students doing this – it’s a small number of students with a strong social media presence who have seized upon this as their Hero’s Journey while they’re at Oxford before they go on to management consultancy or law.

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