Well done Ralph Fiennes.

Ralph Fiennes has mounted a vocal defence of Harry Potter author JK Rowling, saying that the “abuse directed at her is disgusting”.

In an interview with the New York Times, Fiennes discussed his role as Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films and reportedly “bristled” at the controversy surrounding the writer. Fiennes said: “JK Rowling has written these great books about empowerment, about young children finding themselves as human beings. It’s about how you become a better, stronger, more morally centred human being. The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting, it’s appalling.”

He added: “I mean, I can understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. But it’s

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Feminism requires saying “This is not for you.”

I think the problem there, Bjarte, is that Capitalism and Socialism are both “dominator” structures. According to Riane Eisler, the ideal to strive for is the “partnership” model. So the struggle is framed as Left v Right, when it really should be framed as trust v demand, or order v mutual respect. I realize that what Eisler is referring to is an ideal form of society, and I’m not sure that we are capable of reaching for it as we are presently driven towards power.

When we talk about politics, we tend to fight each other based on the notion that either “right” is good … Read the rest

Speaking of Dylan Mulvaney…a woman takes exception to his insulting parody of women:

Despite not actually being a woman and even only “identifying” as such for less than a year, Mulvaney has somehow become the woman du jour.

Mulvaney is a TikTok influencer with over 8 million followers and a viral series he calls, “Days of Girlhood”. His portrayal of his “transition” in the series is littered with cartoonish portrayals of womanhood — take Day One, where Mulvaney insists he cried several times for no apparent reason because, obviously, women are constantly PMSing and thus incapable of controlling their emotions. Later in his journey, Mulvaney describes planning the perfect slumber party, despite most women I know leaving

Now this crap:

A number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced and enacted on the state level in recent months, with many aimed at attacking transgender rights by outlawing gender affirming health care and prohibiting trans kids from playing in youth sports that align with their identity.

One: the bills are not in any way anti-LGB.

Two: they’re also not anti-TQ except in the sense that they don’t promote the novel, dangerous, stupid doctrine that people can be literally trapped in “the wrong body.” Bills that outlaw surgery and/or drugs that alter children’s bodies for the sake of a delusion are not anti the children being protected. Bills that forbid males to compete in female sport are not anti-T, … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Wielding their imagined marginalization as a weapon.

Those who have been marginalized want to leave their enforced marginalization behind; those who marginalize themselves (or who falsely claim to have been marginalized, like white males, claiming the plight of Black trans prostitutes in Brazil as their own), wield their imagined marginalization as a weapon, using it as leverage to gain special status and privilege on a permanent, continuing basis.

Yet those who falsely claim to have been marginalized may not be aware that their claim is false. I suspect the group of trans-identified males is a philosophically mixed lot, divided between those who come at their transness from the postmodernist Queer Theory break-the-boundaries perspective … Read the rest

It seems the NHS really has made a serious shift:

Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.

NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.

The services, which will replace the controversial Tavistock clinic, will be led by medical doctors rather than therapists and will consider the impact of other conditions such as autism and mental health issues.

Hoo-boy – what an improvement.

NHS England says that the interim Cass Report

Owen Jones has another correction for us.

Anti-trans activists are accusing me of ageism with this tweet.

No, I’m saying the LGB Alliance is laughably unrepresentative of LGBTQ people and this picture underlines that obvious fact.

Keep grasping for those straws! https://t.co/XdZO6tlIbw

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 23, 2022

Unrepresentative how? Well for one thing where are the yoof???! But he’s not ageist.

So anyway. For one thing most of the people in the photo are in shadow, so he can’t actually tell what they look like, so he can’t even judge how “representative” they are because he can’t see them. For a second thing why does he think he can tell how “representative” they are just by looking at … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Queering queer.

Queerness, he argues, is a fashion and a political statement that not all gay people subscribe to. “Queerness is also self-consciously and purposefully marginal,” he told me. “Whereas the arc of the gay rights movement, and the individual lives of most gay people, has been a struggle against marginality. We want to be welcomed. We want to have equal rights. We want a place in our institutions.”

So he’s saying that there’s a difference between being marginalized (by others) and pursuing marginalization (yourself). That makes sense. The former group would want access to the legal rights they are being denied (housing, voting, health, etc.; what we think of … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Because Feminism is Hated.

The philosophy professor said that she will now speak from outside the academy so [that] she is not being constantly watched for a mistake.

It might be more accurately called a misstep than a mistake. The latter implies, as in logically implies, fault. The former allows for mere transgression.

Feminism is so disliked that apparently a large percentage of girls and young women refuse to wear the label. I suspect this’s primarily because they want to be cool, not the uptight fun police. Feminists are harpies, witches, bitches. They want to say yes, to be inclusive, to be liked. They don’t want to be “boomers”. Unfortunately, the … Read the rest

Chase Strangio is mad at the Times.

At this point I am just embarrassed for the NYT.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) October 23, 2022

Oh no, how will they go on?

A truly terrible column from PP on the word “queer”

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) October 23, 2022

Who tf is PP? Besides Posie Parker, who isn’t a Times columnist. So I had to go to all the trouble of Googling. It’s a column by Pamela Paul on Queering the LanGuage. Is Pamela Paul generally known as PP? Is she a household name? Not that I know of.

So anyway.

Last month, the new president of the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, posted a six-and-a-half-minute video to

Speaking of hating feminism…

#LetWomenSpeak #LetWomenSpeakUSA pic.twitter.com/zNKW0b4hI4

— Let Women Speak Official (@StandingforXX) October 23, 2022

“We do not permit events etc that promote hate” and we’ve decided you promote hate.

But Standing for Women doesn’t “promote hate” of trans people, it promotes clarity on who is a woman and who is not. That’s not hate and it’s not promotion of hate…but It Has Been Decided that yes it is. How are these decisions made, exactly?

Consider the endless ongoing struggle against racism. Does opposing racism equal hatred of white people? Does opposing homophobia equal hatred of straight people? Does union organizing equal hatred of owners and bosses? Does pacifism equal hatred of the military and/or political leaders who trigger … Read the rest

The Telegraph reports on a conversation at the LGB Alliance conference yesterday:

Kathleen Stock said that academic institutions treat students like customers and the “grown-ups” no longer tell anxious young people that someone saying something that they disagree with is not actually harming them.  

The philosophy professor said that she will now speak from outside the academy so [that] she is not being constantly watched for a mistake. 

Or rather a “mistake,” i.e. a reasoned claim that some bile-infused teenager takes a dislike to.

She was joined by campaigner Julie Bindel who warned that the bitter debate is “about misogyny” which allows men to try [to] silence feminists.

“The reason why so many people have latched on to this,

The Guardian talks to Maggie Haberman:

The 45th president lived down to her expectations. She was on the receiving end of both his insatiable desire for attention and his poison-pen responses to critical coverage. A month after taking office, Trump, while developing a symbiotic relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, branded the New York Times and other outlets “the enemy of the American people”.

Haberman comments: “He has endangered journalists with that language and that language has been used by authoritarians in other countries to legitimise anti-press crackdowns. I don’t think Donald Trump has any sense of what the role of the free press is in a democracy. None.”

Naturally not. It’s not the kind of … Read the rest

There’s finally news on the damage to Salman Rushdie and it’s bad. He’s lost the use of one eye and one hand.

[I]n an interview with Spain’s El País, Andrew Wylie explained how serious and life-changing the attack had been.

“[His wounds] were profound, but he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye,” said Wylie. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack.”

Allah is wise, merciful.… Read the rest

Maya Forstater tells us:

Last night, after the LGB Alliance Conference, Helen Joyce and I went to the Westminster Arms pub around the corner from the conference centre for a quiet drink. Helen had a glass of wine and I had a gin and tonic.

Before long around 20 protesters turned up, having broken away from the main protest outside of the QEII Conference Centre. We were told they were there because Helen was inside.

Ah well yes of course, two women in a pub talking – we can’t have that. Women must get permission from angry adolescents before they go somewhere, or talk, or think.

They stood facing the entrance to the pub chanting slogans for around

Attendees of the ‘LGB Alliance’ conference, shared without comment pic.twitter.com/jfUTBlwH1u

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 22, 2022

Owen Jones, hinting that people who attend LGB Alliance conferences are…what, not sexually attractive enough for his taste? Too ugly, too old, too informally dressed, too female? It’s hard to be sure, but “without comment” is definitely a juvenile sneer of some kind. Maybe we’re meant to take it as a juvenile sneer of every kind, for our own convenience.

Also, “without comment” makes it not without comment, so there’s that.… Read the rest

People need to stop dumping fishing gear in the ocean.

These guys get most of the lines off but the last bit is the riskiest, because they’re that much closer to the whale. In this instance the whale throws his head back (at 40 seconds) and sinks, thus escaping the snare.… Read the rest

You cannot just take off your master and senior tutor hats when sending a message to the college. You remain in post. This implies a corporate view on sex and gender from the institution.

This messaging produces a hostile environment for gender critical staff and students. https://t.co/hjGkS1vAB5

— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) October 19, 2022

How about if you take off your hats and sign the letter with your first names? Will that do it?… Read the rest

Helen Joyce replies to Pipps and Andy:

Dear Pippa and Andrew (if I may),

Well they did say their poison letter was from Pippa and Andrew, so I think we all may, and especially Helen may, being as how she is the target of their venom.

I’m writing to respond to your ignorant and insulting characterisation of me to Caius students and academics, which you must have known would be shared more widely and then become public. [The text of that email is appended to this post.]

I am of course sadly used to people who should know better—people with high-profile posts in great academic institutions—making a show of defending free speech, open debate and academic standards out of

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph takes a cold hard look at that letter from “Pippa and Andrew”:

A Cambridge college master is engulfed in a transgender row with professors after boycotting a “hateful” gender-critical speaker.

It’s about the letter rather than the boycott. No one would have cared if Pipps and Andy had just stayed away.

Gonville and Caius College, the university’s fourth oldest, is hosting a talk on Tuesday by Helen Joyce, an author and former journalist at The Economist, about cancel culture.

And as we all know, her views are Unacceptable, Unapproved, Unendorsed. Her views are, in short, evil, the most evil views anyone has ever had, views that make Hitler and Putin look like … Read the rest