Nails.
It’s not an obscene word
May 29th, 2023 11:24 am | By Ophelia BensonAnd again, not two years ago but today.
800 million WOMEN.
Womenwomenwomen
May 29th, 2023 11:02 am | By Ophelia BensonWomen. You mean women. Men don’t need menstrual products. Say the word. Women.
“The gendered language of pregnancy”
May 29th, 2023 10:32 am | By Ophelia BensonJanuary 2021: a male OB/GYN informs us on the Planned Parenthood blog that it’s not just ” ciswomen” who get abortions.
Abortion rights, reproductive rights, women’s rights, reproductive justice…these terms may seem synonymous to many, but in fact they represent an evolution and intersectionality of many struggles for individuals to choose when and how to be pregnant and/or parent. Language around abortion has always been fraught with controversy, imprecision, and rhetoric. The topic of ending a pregnancy in the United States is more than a medical procedure but also carries political, ethical, and moral weight. Pro-choice advocates may use sterile scientific language while anti-choice proponents use emotion-evoking language about life and personhood. While abortion has long been a language minefield, a new abortion language issue has arisen: the gendered language of pregnancy and abortion.
Gee, I wonder why the language around pregnancy and abortion would be “gendered” i.e. sexed.
In recent years, the visibility of the transgender community has increased significantly. With increased visibility, the transgender and non-binary community has also demanded more equitable and knowledgeable treatment by medical providers.
It’s not just the “visibility” of trans people that has increased, it’s also the number of them. Why? Because it’s an out of control social contagion. Also, how are we defining “more equitable treatment” here? It’s not particularly “equitable” to pretend that men can be women, much less to bully women into agreeing that men can be women.
In response, many family planning providers, like Planned Parenthood, have embraced the provision of transition-related care for transgender and non-binary individuals.
Good god. Why?
Indeed, the tenets of reproductive justice and self-determination have pushed these health care providers to extend beyond traditional family planning services as well as make their core services more inclusive.
It’s not reproductive justice to pretend that men can be women. Self-determination concerning pregnancy is not the same as self-determination concerning physical facts about the self. Self-determination doesn’t mean we can self-determine that we are cars or houses or Brazil or the space station. There’s a limit to what we can determine about ourselves.
While many changes were easy, abortion and pregnancy are highly gendered concepts, and the use of inclusive language remains challenging and problematic. While some can understand that a transgender man may need a Pap smear or experience a yeast infection, far fewer can think about anyone other than ciswomen becoming pregnant or needing an abortion.
Don’t. call. us. ciswomen. Don’t try to tell us we’re a subset of our own sex. Don’t find a new and trendy way to bully women.
Reflect on any experience you have had surrounding pregnancy. Do you imagine anyone besides cisgender women being pregnant? Many family planning providers similarly have had to struggle with their gendered roots in becoming more inclusive. Not all pregnant people identify as women, or have a feminine gender expression.
You reflect. You reflect on what “becoming more inclusive” means, and reflect on whether you really want to be telling the subordinated sex to become “more inclusive” of the dominant one. Then fuck off.
There is inherent tension in acknowledging an organizational history rooted in the women’s rights movement that lead to Roe v. Wade, but also left out many non-white, non-cis people.
Ohhh no you don’t. Apologize for PP’s failure to include non-white people all you like, but do not bring the absurd category “non-cis” into it. College kids who fancy themselves too special and unique to be just female or male are not comparable to brown and black people who’ve been pushed around and neglected.
While it may be challenging to use language like “people who become pregnant” as opposed to “pregnant women,” it is a minor discomfort that nowhere near exceeds the benefits.
Oh no it isn’t. Oh no it absolutely is not. Erasing women is not “a minor discomfort,” dude.
Ed Cojones
May 29th, 2023 8:56 am | By Ophelia BensonCute. Male host of newsy talk show won’t let Kathleen Stock finish a sentence. Why have her on the show only to talk over her?
Good Morning Britain viewers were less than impressed with presenter Ed Balls while he was interviewing Kathleen Stock. The professor appeared on the ITV show to speak about her upcoming Channel 4 documentary Gender Wars.
…
The Channel 4 special, titled Gender Wars, will delve into the meaning of sex and gender and feature the professor who has caused controversy in the past with her views on the subject.
Having quit her role at the University of Sussex two years ago after accusations of transphobia, Good Morning Britain’s Ed Balls decided to question her opinions.
Ouch. Translation: Stock left her job at the University of Sussex two years ago after accusations of transphobia, and today Good Morning Britain’s Ed Balls decided to question her opinions. Still clumsy but at least it doesn’t say Ed Balls left her job at Sussex.
He questioned: “Is it not possible, in your view, for somebody who was a man, to become as they would describe it, a woman?”
Kathleen replied: “No, you can’t change sex. It’s not biologically possible. Womanhood, I would say is entirely predicated on sex, there’s no other good way of doing it -“
And he interrupted, and went on interrupting, in a very rude and domineering way. You’d think men would try to be more subtle about it, but…no.
Playing doctor
May 29th, 2023 8:06 am | By Ophelia BensonKevin Lister does a brilliant job of cutting up the history of Susie Green’s horrifying activities into manageable slices. Each slice is more hair-raising than the last.
Imagine if children start turning up with a mental health condition that causes them to identify as cars or buildings or plants – will there be a Susie Green to step in and help them get the relevant medications and surgeries to match their “identities”?
Our bodies our selves
May 29th, 2023 7:25 am | By Ophelia BensonSusie Green is still in the spotlight, or on the hot seat, or both. Why? Because despite having no medical qualifications of any kind, she was able to refer children to the Tavistock when their GPs had refused to do so.
I guess she was allowed to do it because she had her own kid castrated before he hit puberty? That was medical qualification enough?
Magister
May 28th, 2023 5:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonOwen Jones explaining feminism again. What would we do without him.
I keep forgetting to ask him if I’m doing feminism right or not.
The fugitive (not that one)
May 28th, 2023 11:40 am | By Ophelia BensonMan is in jail for males. In other news cats have claws, rain is wet, fire burns, up is not down.
Non-binary former nuclear official Sam Brinton is to be placed in a men’s jail in Maryland while waiting to be sent to Virginia over suitcase theft charges.
A Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputy told The Post Tuesday that Brinton is in a “pre-placement” hold at the county jail and should be housed with the “general population” of the men’s jail sometime next week.
I guess the non-binary jail must be full.
Brinton, 35 — who uses they/them pronouns — was arrested at their home last week and is facing Grand Larceny charges over the alleged theft of a case belonging to a Tanzanian fashion designer from … National Airport.
The designer, Asya Khamsin, said she lost her luggage, which included her one-of-a-kind dresses created for a fashion show, at … National Airport back in March 2018.
…
The Biden appointee, who was fired after two different cases of stealing luggage were filed against
themin Minnesota and Las Vegas, is being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility untiltheyappear before a judge on June 14.Arrest records show Brinton was arrested on May 17 at the 700 block of College Parkway as a fugitive from justice, and is being held without bail.
The Post says the cases were settled and then Brinton was re-arrested last week, but doesn’t explain why. Maybe the authorities wanted to ask him about his gender some more.
When ‘Jolyons’ tell whoppers
May 28th, 2023 10:11 am | By Ophelia BensonNow that’s a remarkably stupid thing to say.
We “won’t make that case”??? We won’t make the case that rejection of trans ideology is not in any way comparable to racism or anti-semitism or homophobia? We make that case all the time. We point out that it’s false and evidence-free and stupid and bad.
Also notice that he didn’t include the branch of group-hatred that is about half of humanity. Notice that he doesn’t compare what he calls “transphobia” to misogyny. Women? Meh. Who cares.
That there leftwing stuff
May 28th, 2023 9:57 am | By Ophelia BensonIt would be nice if the climate change issue were just politics, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t think it’s a hoax that the Colorado River is drying up – there are too many people who could tell us so if it were. Same with those floods in India and Pakistan last year, and the massive wildfires in Australia, and the shrinking ice in Greenland and Antarctica, and other little blips like that.
Ron DeSantis has been accused of a “catastrophic” approach to the climate crisis after he launched his campaign for US president by saying he rejects the “politicization of the weather” and questioning whether hurricanes hitting his home state of Florida have been worsened by climate change.
DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor who announced his bid for the White House via a glitch-heavy Twitter stream on Wednesday, has previously dismissed concerns about global heating as “leftwing stuff” and he expanded upon this theme during a Fox News interview following his campaign launch.
How comforting that would be if true, but…
While governor, DeSantis has adopted bills banning Florida’s cities from adopting 100% clean energy goals and barred the state’s pension fund from making investment decisions that consider the climate crisis due to what he called a corporate attempt to “impose an ideological agenda on the American people”. He has also attacked the US military for being “woke” for warning about the national security risks posed by climate impacts.
“The cost of taking his anti-climate record to the national stage as president would be catastrophic,” said Pete Maysmith, senior vice-president of campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters. “DeSantis has already made clear he would unleash his war on climate science, clean energy jobs, and strong pollution safeguards against clean air and clean water.”
If only we could vote climate change out.
Inclusion
May 28th, 2023 8:03 am | By Ophelia BensonTwo out of five. A mere 40 percent! What are you women whining about?!
Oh look we found 300 pages
May 27th, 2023 5:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s always worse than we thought. Susie Green told the Tavistock how to “treat” kids who were questioning their gender.
Susie Green, then chairman of the charity Mermaids, was part of a task group reviewing services at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation trans clinic.
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The Tavistock claimed that it did not have emails or minutes of meetings with Ms Green but after the information regulator threatened court action, it released more than 300 pages.
They show that Ms Green had a direct line to Dr Polly Carmichael, Tavistock’s director, and demanded to be regarded as a professional so she could refer children for treatment when their GPs refused. Ms Green, who has no known formal medical training, held an advisory role on two of the studies that the clinic was involved in on the long-term effect of gender identity.
That’s pretty staggering. Green has no known medical training but she ordered the Tavistock to pretend she did so that she could make medical decisions about children, and the Tavistock complied.
They are the documents that the NHS Tavistock gender clinic claimed did not exist. More than 300 pages of emails and minutes that lay bare for the first time the extent of Mermaids’ involvement in England’s only clinic for transgender children.
The controversial transgender charity has long been named by some whistleblowers as one of the reasons why the Tavistock lost its way, with claims that activists pressured staff to prescribe potentially life-altering drugs.
Now The Telegraph can reveal how Susie Green, then chairman of Mermaids, had a direct line to the clinic’s director Dr Polly Carmichael and was able to make referrals even when a child’s GP repeatedly refused.
Stunning.
Proud to have written
May 27th, 2023 11:05 am | By Ophelia BensonAha, so we know who wrote that dopy crude letter saying Make Stock Go Away that some dopy Oxford academics signed. We know because he’s boasting of it.
He shouldn’t be proud. It’s a bad letter.
Doc Stock hints as much, but much more politely than I did.
Guest post: Women must not be permitted to say “no”
May 27th, 2023 10:20 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Cluecat on Calling themselves “Gold Command”.
It’s interesting, though isn’t it, that they have to do this each time.
They absolutely must go all out, every time, to attack, smear, dismiss any woman who dares to try to set a boundary. Any boundary. Particularly around a definition of female that excludes males – as with Sex being correctly defined as reality, not Vewy Speshul Identitay.
Women must not be permitted to say “no”. That’s the whole thing – it gives the game away entirely.
If women can say “No, males are not female”, then they will start getting the idea that they can say “no” to males under other circumstances, and that is totally unacceptable to these doodz (and the male-identified women supporting them – feeding the crocodile in the hope that he’ll be too full to eat them. It doesn’t work).
“Be Kind!” isn’t working any more, since a lot of women have spotted the pattern – it’s only ever us that will be expected to shut up and let the males trample all over us. Same as it ever was.
It’s why the attacks on women who say “no” to men are so vicious, why there are whole campaigns to destroy reputations and lives, and why these people will not stop. They can’t. Their whole worldview will come tumbling down, and they can’t admit that.
We cannot be allowed to say “no”. We cannot be permitted to be fully human, otherwise the attacks on us are unacceptable, and others would have to admit that they were wrong, that we do not deserve this.
We will not recant.
The precious right to silence the witch
May 27th, 2023 10:01 am | By Ophelia BensonThe BBC reports on the Stock Spiral:
A group of Oxford University academics have signed a letter supporting the right of transgender students to speak out against Kathleen Stock, a prominent gender-critical figure.
“They have every right to try to shut her up!”
Another group of Oxford academics have already said objections to her invite go against free speech.
But the new letter said it was not a free-speech issue as revoking an invite “is not preventing them from speaking”.
When did we decide “invite” is a noun? When did we decide it’s the better word for “invitation”? When did we decide “invitation” is just too long and formal to bother typing? Four whole extra letters!
Anyway, to the substance – yes, of course revoking an invitation is a free speech issue. Of course particular instances of speech-refusal are free speech issues. That’s not to say I think speech-refusal should never happen, it’s just to say it is an issue.
The open letter shared on Saturday by the university’s LGBTQI+ society, signed by 100 academics and seen by the BBC, said: “We believe that trans students should not be made to debate their existence.”
A hundred academics signed that? How embarrassing for them. The quoted sentence is childishly crude and stupid. Nobody is disputing anybody’s existence; the issue is self-description. If you tell me you’re Queen Elizabeth I and I decline to believe you, I’m not debating your existence, I’m disbelieving your claim about yourself. It would work the same way if you told me you were a snow leopard or an airplane or a bowl of rice pudding. If I didn’t believe you existed I wouldn’t bother to disbelieve your claims.
What the inarticulate students mean of course is that they think students who are trans shouldn’t have to be in the same town as a philosopher who has Disapproved views on what “trans” means. Calling it being made to debate their existence is 1000 times more melodramatic, so that’s what they go with.
“We also refute that this is a free speech issue – disinviting someone is not preventing them from speaking.”
Urgh. Rookie mistake. They didn’t refute anything. Refute does not mean disagree with or reject.
Also, of course, yes, disinviting someone is preventing her from speaking on a given occasion. It’s a calculated insult at best, so it’s not something to do lightly.
“Freedom of speech matters, but we shouldn’t forget the right to protest… debate is essential for a vibrant democracy and we champion it.”
Ahahahahahahaha that’s hilarious. No they don’t.
The word is “No”
May 27th, 2023 7:00 am | By Ophelia BensonHelen Webberley orders us all to submit or else.
Funny that she dehumanizes us in the process of telling us we’re hate criminals. The wording should be “This is a message to all those people who think” – not “that” think. She must think we’re subhuman, and here she is saying so in public. To the dungeons with her.
But more seriously – this shit has got to stop. Men are men, and medical doctors have no business trying to bully us into saying men are women. Helen Webberley should rethink her life.
Rainbow families and pretend lactation
May 27th, 2023 6:52 am | By Ophelia BensonIt seems Australia is making it illegal to say that inducing an imitation of lactation in men and then feeding the pseudo-milk to infants is dangerous to those infants. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with men’s fantasies.
Last week a notice was given to my friend and former breastfeeding counsellor Jasmine Sussex by Twitter, advising her of an Australian law infraction. I met Jasmine in person just over a year ago at a Brisbane radical feminist conference, but she first contacted me in 2021 when I wrote an article in The Spectator Oz titled On “Chestfeeding”.
At this time Jasmine’s long relationship with the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) was ending in some level of pain and bitterness. As I wrote in my article, the ABA was collaborating with an organisation called Rainbow Families. The result was the adoption by the ABA of some gender identity ideology-based practices that Jasmine found problematic and dangerous.
Jasmine raised concerns with the ABA, that the inclusion of men in their purview meant an alignment with very shoddy and experimental medicine, just to name one of the many red flags that she raised. Jasmine lost her position as a breastfeeding counsellor and has become entrenched in activism on the gender identity vs sex issue.
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Women like Jasmine speak up because they can’t turn from what they see. In the world of breastfeeding, the inclusion of gender identity ideology in women’s support infrastructure, is leading to the assumption that male people can produce milk suitable for an infant, and these males should be supported in the pursuit of feeding an infant from their body by the entirety of the medical profession, including birth and lactation specialists. Apart from the coercion that is required to implement such a practice, the process by which endocrinologists are getting human males to exude a substance from their nipples, seems to be ethically debased and scientifically unsupported.
It’s hard to read about this subject without nausea. “Yay we got some kind of stuff to come out of your manly tits, now go nurse that infant!”
Jasmine Sussex and a Brisbane women’s rights activist recently took to Twitter to highlight the disturbing promotion of males feeding infants through an untested chemically induced process. Both women have received notices that their tweets are in violation of Australian law, and the tweets are now hidden from Australian audiences.
So the wounded fee-fees of men who want to poison infants are more important than the health and safety of infants. Why is that, exactly?
Calling themselves “Gold Command”
May 26th, 2023 4:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonI saw this from Dennis so I hared off to find the details.
Calling themselves “Gold Command” ffs. Apparently it’s a police thing, and Gold is of course the top rank, so they’re like Eisenhower on D-Day. Not that they’re at all stuck on themselves.
So I quested and found the Telegraph:
An investigation into Baroness Falkner of Margravine’s work as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission chairman, which has been condemned by her allies as spurious, was suspended on Friday following a backlash from 54 peers and outcry across the political spectrum.
Officials had filed a dossier of 40 complaints alleging “bullying”, “discrimination”, “harassment” and a “lack of psychological safety”, targeted at both [Kishwer Falkner] and her board of 12 expert commissioners, who have powers in statute to make all its policy decisions on equality law.
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The complaints began when the EHRC pivoted to settle the transgender debate since Lady Falkner took charge, including by taking gender-critical views into account, which has infuriated trans activists.
Pivoted to settle the debate? It’s not clear to me what that means. The rest of the sentence is clear enough though.
Her allies said it was a “victory for Board over Blob” and called on Marcial Boo, the EHRC chief executive, to resign over the row.
A source close to the EHRC said…
“It’s just tragic. There was an elite group of EHRC people who got together to arrange how they would get rid of her and referred to themselves as ‘gold command’. They came to a consensus view that the only way forward was to get a silk to do an investigation and give the silk all the evidence he would need to find her guilty.”
The dossier, which was said to contain 40 allegedly vague allegations, bemoaned “a lack of psychological safety, i.e. the fear of who will be attacked next” and staff were “worried that the commission is becoming an unsafe place to work”. Another took issue with Baroness Falkner allegedly referring to a trans quiz show contestant as a “bloke in lipstick” in a board meeting, which her allies said was taken out of context.
It looks as if the adults have wrested the controls away from the drunk teenagers…for the moment. Mind how you go; don’t make any sudden moves.