Gaby Hinsliff reviews Time to Think for the Guardian, very very cautiously and queasily, and laced with questionable assumptions.

BBC journalist Hannah Barnes’s densely reported account of events inside the Tavistock Centre’s Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) in London, the country’s only specialist clinic for transgender children…

The book traces Gids’s evolution from its foundation in 1989 – offering a non-judgmental therapeutic approach to exploring gender identity…

The first two paragraphs and already we can see the assumptions doing their work – there definitely is such a thing as “transgender children” and there also definitely is such a thing as “gender identity” and we all know what they are and that they are definitely real. It’s called reification, and it’s very deceptive. It deceives the people who use it as well as the people who hear or read it.

Last summer, a review commissioned by NHS England recommended Gids should close, with patients seen instead by regional units taking a holistic approach to mental and physical health.

Barnes sidesteps the broader social and political context to this, yet the two seem hard to disentangle. Some trans people saw attacks on Gids as attempts to stop children transitioning at all; some gender-critical campaigners treated its closure as vindication of wider arguments. Once being “for” or “against” the Gids treatment model was deemed synonymous with supporting or attacking trans rights generally, analysis of its clinical practices became incredibly difficult.

But what are “trans people” and how does anyone know? What are trans rights and how does anyone know and what do we do when they violate other people’s rights? How do we know “trans” is not iatrogenic? How do we know it’s not a phantasm created by people talking about it endlessly? How do we know it’s not a deceptively definite word for a particularly acute discomfort with being oneself?

Karen Ingala Smith on reading the names and not getting distracted:

Today, for the eighth year running, in the Parliamentary International Women’s Day debate, MP Jess Phillips read out the names of women in the UK who have been killed since the previous years IWD debate and where a man or men are principal suspects. This year the list contained the names of 107 women, the youngest, Holly Newton was just 15 years old, the oldest, Anne Woodbridge was 92.

I have been collating and commemorating UK women killed by men for 11 years, since the murder of 20-year-old Kirsty Treloar on the 2^nd January 2012.

I am grateful to Jess Phillips for amplifying my work and for doing something that I could not do without her: ensuring that those women’s names are afforded the respect of being recorded in perpetuity in the official parliamentary record. This year and last year, Jess invited members of families of women who have been killed by men, some of them whose names have been read out in previous years, to sit in the House of Commons public gallery to listen. Jess and I are frequently told how much this gesture means to those who knew and loved the women who are commemorated.

This year, following the suggestion of my Femicide Census co-founder and fellow Director, Clarrie O’Callaghan, two weeks ago the Femicide Census wrote to every MP who had one or more constituents whose names were going to be read out.  84 letters were sent and followed up by email. We asked MPs to honour their constituents and act to prevent further femicides. We told them that femicide is a local and national problem occurring within the broader context of men’s violence against women which inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Seven MPs acknowledged our letter: Rosie Duffield, Rushanara Ali, Lillian Greenwood, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, John McDonnell and Andrew Lewer. Others were visible in the parliamentary broadcast. However, like preceding years, the benches were noticeably empty. Whilst each man who chooses to end a woman’s life must be held to account and to justice, the names stand as a roll call of state failure, the government could be doing so much more to end men’s violence against women and girls. The almost empty chamber does not reflect well on political will to address men’s violence against women.

The almost empty chamber – that’s shocking to me.

H/t J.A.

The Telegraph on The Lesbian Project:

“I could never have imagined,” says [Kathleen] Stock, who today is launching – along with [Martina] Navratilova (who[m] she has never met in person) and writer Julie Bindel – the Lesbian Project, a group that intends to champion UK women who are same-sex attracted.

…

[I]ts existence will infuriate those who see her and Bindel, along with their ally – and heterosexual – JK Rowling, as a trio of arch-Terfs (trans exclusionary revolutionary feminists), largely because of the animosity between some trans activists who object to lesbians refusing to have sex with transgender women who have male genitalia.  

The reporter must have been writing in haste. It’s a quartet, not a trio, and I’m pretty sure the three Ls don’t see JKR as “their heterosexual.” Also no, the animosity is about much more than lesbians saying no to sex with men.

The idea that lesbians still need some kind of protective body may seem almost laughably anachronistic, not least since the 2013 same-sex-couples marriage act. But the project isn’t so much battling homophobia as preventing lesbians from being overlooked in favour of newer, more “fashionable” sexualities.

There you go, that’s better.

“We’ve got a report coming out that will show millions of pounds are going into LGBT but increasingly that funding is going to trans projects, while for lesbian-only projects it’s vanishingly rare,” Stock says.

Which is one major reason the acronym is so poisonous – it simply pulls a veil over this kind of neglect or just plain hostility. Same old sewer water in a shiny new bottle: women don’t matter, it’s men who claim to be women who matter.

Via Mick Hartley

Waterstones says it’s not true it’s not it’s not it’s NOT.

Waterstones has refuted [rejected] accusations made on social media this week that it is failing to stock certain titles about gender, saying the claims are “of course… untrue”. 

Twitter users had claimed that Waterstones branches were refusing to stock Hannah Barnes’ Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children (Swift Press), with similar suggestions made about Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith (Fleet). 

Not so much refusing to as failing to. I saw no claims that Watersones staff were stupid enough to say “We refuse to stock it!” when asked. The claims are that it’s extremely difficult to find at branch after branch after branch – that it’s “sold out” or there’s one copy remaining and it’s in a special place somewhere.

A spokesperson confirmed that the retailer was stocking Time to Think, and that the book had performed well in sales. They told The Bookseller: “Quite simply, many of our shops sold out temporarily and we are expecting a fresh delivery which will land on our shelves very soon. Of course, this does happen from time to time with books that sell well. We stock the book sensibly and refute the misrepresentation implicit to these tweets.” 

That could of course be true – but the tweets I’ve seen don’t say the staff say it’s sold out and a large new shipment is on the way. They say staff are evasive or unhelpful.

The Washington Post shares more of Tucker Carlson’s texts that reveal what whoppers he tells on Fox News every night.

Like:

It’s so interesting that Carlson knows that about Trump and that it’s never stopped him helping Trump and harming Trump critics and opponents. What Trump is good at is destroying things so here we are helping him destroy the US, democracy, the climate, the rest of the world…

He knows but does it anyway. What a guy.

Jess Phillips read the list of murdered women in Parliament today but…

You know what comes next.

Brianna Ghey was a trans girl.

Family values:

Anti-abortion Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert has said that her 17-year-old son will make her a grandmother in April.

Isn’t that sweet. She had a baby when she was a teenager and now her son is following her lead.

“There’s something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert continued. “They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Or they’re lower in urban areas because people with better access to schools and libraries and higher education understand that teenagers don’t make the best parents.

A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) suggested that teen birth rates in rural areas might be higher than in urban areas because teens might be vulnerable to “local conditions that limit unintended pregnancy management options.” Teens living in rural areas often face large geographical barriers to access abortion providers—a difficulty that’s been exacerbated by a proliferation of abortion bans in Republican-led states.

Also teenagers living in rural areas often have parents like Lauren Boebert.

The CDC also reports the impact that teen pregnancies have on the girls’ lives: only 50 percent of teen mothers receive a high school diploma before the age of 22. Among women who don’t give birth in their teens, this number goes up to 90 percent. A 2008 study mentioned by the CDC also studied the impact of teen pregnancies on the children. 

The offspring of teen moms are more likely to have lower school achievement or drop out of school; have more health problems; be incarcerated in their teens; and give birth as teenagers themselves.

Like Lauren Boebert’s son’s babymama.

Boebert was a teen mom herself and had to drop out of high school because of her pregnancy. 

And she’s never caught up.

He’s just loving it.

He’s only twice their size.

And still a man.

Trudeau pretends to express solidarity on International Women’s Day and then promptly says haha fooled you, I don’t mean a word of it.

Hooray for women’s day and also you women sit down and shut up while the men talk for you.

Piss off Justin.

Eva Kurilova on The Man Who Speaks for Canadian Women, Even on International Women’s Day.

Marni Panas, born Marcel Panas, is an Alberta man who claims to be a woman and likes to talk about how authentic he is. Recently, he was also invited to speak on a panel at an International Women’s Day event called “She Is” organized by Discovery House, a Calgary-based women’s charity.

A women’s charity that doesn’t know what a woman is. I remember the days when everyone learned this in very early childhood.

Two real women were invited to join Panas on the panel of “women leaders and change-makers across a variety of sectors”: Mandy Stobo, an “artist, entrepreneur, actor and mother,” and Christy Morgan, an “Indigenous Strategy Lead.” Discovery House also invited Canadian journalist Anna Maria Tremonti to give the keynote speech.

Well that’s nice of them. 75% women – I suppose that’s enough really. We wouldn’t want to be greedy.

Panas himself works as the program manager for Diversity and Inclusion at Alberta Health Services (AHS) and is a Canadian Certified Inclusion Professional (yes, that’s a real certification).

His specialty of course is the “include men as women” brand of inclusiony inclusion.

According to his website, he provides diversity and inclusion services to “health care professional colleges and societies, health centres, municipal and education governments, community services organizations, police services and other first responders, corrections facilities, corporations, and other institutions locally, nationally and internationally.”

I suppose the “services” are finding trans women for health care professional colleges and societies, health centres, municipal and education governments, community services organizations, police services and other first responders, corrections facilities, corporations, and other institutions to include in their inclusionary inclusion. What a saintly man he must be.

Panas made the news again in 2016 as an advocate for Bill 10. The bill mandates that schools can not refuse student requests for “diversity clubs” and that they must allow students who identify as transgender access to the washrooms and changerooms of the opposite sex.

Panas attended an Everyone Can Pee rally at the Alberta Legislature grounds to support the bill, where he clashed with members from a group called Parents for Choice in Education.

While those against the bill expressed concerns about undermining parental choice in education and women and girls losing their single-sex spaces, Panas told CBC that people with such concerns had to “catch up or shut up.”

You can submit or you can shut up; those are the choices.

About this idea that women are attention-hogs while men modestly stand aside and let us blather – Deborah Tannen has written about this misperception:

I do say, in my just-published book about women’s friendships, that women friends, as compared to men, tend to talk more — more often, at greater length and about more personal topics. But that’s private speaking — conversations that negotiate and strengthen personal relationships. Research, my own and others’, has also shown that men tend to talk far more than women in what might be called public speaking — formal business-focused contexts, like meetings. In a now-classic study, Barbara and Gene Eakins recorded seven university faculty meetings.

They found that, with one exception, the men at the meeting spoke more often and, without exception, spoke longer. The longest comment by a woman at all seven gatherings was shorter than the shortest comment by a man. Susan Herring found a similar pattern in online discussions among linguists on professional topics: Messages written by men were, on average, twice as long as those written by women.

One reason women tend to speak less at meetings, in my view, is that they don’t want to come across as talking too much. It’s a verbal analogue to taking up physical space. When choosing a seat at a theater or on a plane, most of us will take a seat next to a woman, if we can, because we know from experience that women are more likely to draw their legs and arms in, less likely to claim the arm rest or splay out their legs, so their elbows and knees invade a neighbor’s space.

While way too many men are all too comfortable doing exactly that.

For similar reasons, when they talk in a formal setting, many women try to take up less verbal space by being more succinct, speaking in a lower voice and speaking in a more tentative way. Women in my classes at Georgetown University have told me that if they talk a lot in class one week, they will intentionally keep silent the next. Psychologist Elizabeth Aries observed a similar pattern in comparing the participation of women and men in college discussion groups. Even Margaret Mead, according to her daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, judiciously chose the issues on which she would speak up, so as not to come across as dominating.

It’s a great lose/lose, isn’t it. Women talk less but get accused of talking more – they lose the benefits of talking more but still get blamed for hogging the discussion. Oh well; suck it up bitches.

I wonder if Tucker Carlson drew a line under his own career with that stunt.

(It won’t signify much to him – he’s been paid a lotta dollas over the past x years.)

Anyway I love the way Anderson Cooper says this.

Oxfam orders us to amplify trans women on International Women’s Day, and Women’s Voices reminds us of Oxfam’s history.

H/t latsot

Now here’s a poignant pairing of articles on the BBC front page (and probably a lot of other front pages, unless they’re mashed into one article):

Tucker Carlson slammed by Republicans for sharing and lying about the riot footage

Tucker Carlson said he passionately hates Trump

We knew he was cynical and in it for himself, but…

First the slam:

Senate Republicans and Capitol police have criticised Fox News after one of its hosts aired previously unseen clips of the riot two years ago at Congress, and played down the violent disorder.

…

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday it had been a “mistake for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks” about the riot.

Mistake? No. Bad, yes, evil, yes, cynical and self-serving, yes, but a mistake, no. Very much on purpose.

Mr McConnell pointed to an internal memo by Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, whose agency is responsible for protecting the buildings where the lawmakers meet. In that memo, Mr Manger says the primetime Monday broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack”.

“The programme conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video,” he wrote. “The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

And now it turns out Tucker Carlson can’t even stand the guy.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a text message after the 2020 election that he “passionately hated” Donald Trump, according to new court filings.

Mr Carlson’s message to a colleague in January 2021 emerged as part of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”

Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.

“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

Can this be the end of Carlson’s squalid career?

Even in reporting on a violent abduction with murders we still have to use the baby talk about women.

Two surviving Americans who were were kidnapped at gunpoint in Matamoros, Mexico last week are being treated at US hospitals. Their two friends who were also abducted died during the incident.

…

Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown died after unidentified gunmen opened fire as the group of four drove a white minivan on 3 March through Matamoros, a city of 500,000 people located directly across the border from the Texas town of Brownsville.

A Mexican woman, believed to be a 33-year-old bystander more than one block away, was killed in last Friday’s incident.

The group had travelled from South Carolina and crossed the border into Mexico because Ms McGee had an appointment for a tummy tuck, a cosmetic surgery procedure to remove abdominal fat, her relatives said.

That. Can we not have adult reporting? Why “tummy” for godsake?

Of course there’s also the pathetic fact that a cosmetic surgery jaunt ended up with three murders. Humans are a constant disappointment.

Daily Beast:

When the Department of Justice took the position this week that former President Donald Trump acted improperly by urging his followers to attack Congress in 2021, prosecutors did more than open the door to a potential flood of civil lawsuits from police officers who were injured on Jan. 6.

What they actually did, according to legal scholars, is lay the groundwork for a potential criminal indictment against Trump for inciting the insurrection.

It seems odd to think the DoJ could have taken any other position – how could it not be “improper” for Trump to incite his fans to a violent attack on Congress? What else would it be, proper? In line with his office? Part of his duties?

At the behest of the District of Columbia’s federal appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo weighing in on a civil dispute by injured police officers. The department clarified that Trump’s speech, full of vitriol and fury, was not protected by presidential immunity, nor was it protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“Such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States,” the DOJ wrote.

I’m glad to hear it, but not so glad there could have been room for doubt.

So far, the Justice Department has not indicated its legal analysis of the looming federal case against Trump, which concerns the effort his campaign led to undermine the electoral vote by Congress. However, its new legal memo draws a clear red line on his actions during the lead up to the actual attack on Congress.

Can we hurry up with that looming federal case? Before the next election?

Also shoving women aside on International Women’s Day: Jeremy Corbyn.

The Independent goes out of its way to rub our noses in the fact that women don’t even get to have our own day any more:

Don’t tell me what a woman is, based entirely on what she is not

Says a man pretending to be a woman. Hey bub don’t tell us we don’t get to say that men are not women. You’re not a woman, based entirely on the fact that you’re a man.

Jordan Gray is the guy who played the piano with his penis on tv.

His first move is to gloat:

Indy Voices has asked me what it means to be a woman in 2023. I’m honoured by that question.

Of course he is. He likes to make people call him a woman, so when a national newspaper does it, hopla, that’s a good day.

The Independent has listed me as one of the “50 Influential Women of 2023”. All the while I’m keeping a stiff upper lip, while my human rights are disputed by billionaires.

No he’s not. It’s not a human right to force people to agree that you’re a woman when you’re a man.

On any given day, I can post a picture of myself online (eating some Wotsits, perhaps?) and the comment section will be inundated with unsolicited definitions of what a woman is… based entirely on what she is NOT. “Women are not men!” “Women don’t have penises!” “Women won’t wheesht!” (which I believe to be some type of gateau?). “Women have babies!”

Oops. Stupid, isn’t he. Based entirely on what she is NOT, like for instance “women have babies!” Dude, check your copy.

So he explains to us what a woman actually is.

A woman endures. A woman takes a licking and keeps on kicking. In 2023, a woman is angry – and has the power to channel that anger with incredible effect. A good woman looks before she aims.

But she is not allowed to keep on kicking against trans ideology. She’s not allowed to be angry at piggy men like Jordan Gray. She’s not allowed to channel her anger at the complete bullshit talked by men like Jordan Gray. She’s not allowed to see Jordan Gray when she looks before she aims.

H/t latsot

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Do you wanna be a slave? Do you?

Apart from the bit about slavery, this is a direct copy of the Australian policy of the last 20 years.

We have people confined to places like Manus Island and Nauru, so determined are we that “if you come by boat, you will never settle in Australia”. We paid millions of dollars to Cambodia to take a handful of these poor, desperate people. The USA and New Zealand have taken some off our hands, but too many still languish.

Apart from the inhumanity, we are also losing great opportunities by not settling these people and taking advantage of the undoubted skills many can bring. A number of earlier “boat arrivals” have gone on to great things:

Hieu Van Le – arrived by boat from Vietnam, and became a much admired Governor of South Australia.

Anh Do – On a boat from Vietnam, multi talented entertainer, artist and author.

Munjed Al Muderis – arrived by boat, after an arduous journey from Iraq, is now a world-renowned humanitarian and surgeon.

These are but a few of the refugees who have made Australia, and in the case of Munjed Al Muderis the world, a better place.

We love to see ourselves as the world’s greatest and most egalitarian nation, but in reality, we have the national mindset of children terrified of the dark and jailers terrified of the prisoners.

It is to our lasting shame that we have treated people seeking refuge in such a callous manner, and both our major political parties are in lock step with these policies.

The UK taught us so well, that the student has now become the teacher and they are following our lead, no matter how dark the lesson becomes.