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 group sleepovers behind in middle school. He also has a shopping addiction and cries when he sees bugs. Cute.

I suppose that’s why he’s viral and an “influencer” and chatting with Biden and all the rest of it – because he’s such an extreme and insulting parody of women.

On Day Eighty-Nine, Mulvaney posted a tutorial for followers looking to “tuck” their girl penises. Seventy-eight days later, Mulvaney sat down for an Ulta Beauty podcast titled “The Beauty Of… Girlhood.”

Ulta Beauty, one of the largest makeup retailers in the country, is welcome to market its makeup to men if they think it will make them money. Inviting two men onto a podcast to discuss women’s issues? Absolutely not. Mulvaney does not have a uterus and will never menstruate (among other female-exclusive biological realities) but proudly insists on the podcast that he can’t wait to be a mom someday. The entire exercise was absurd and insulting. As many women pointed out as they announced their intention to boycott the beauty brand, it was like the modern day equivalent of blackface.

I’ve pointed that out several million times over the last seven years or so.

This is not the first time Mulvaney has been treated as a defining voice for females. In September, Mulvaney spoke on a panel at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit.

We remember.

On his 222nd Day of “being a girl,” the walking minstrel show was invited to the White House. Mulvaney revealed on his TikTok that he interviewed President Joe Biden for Now This News.

Biden talked to him why? Because he’s a man pretending to be a woman. Why is that a reason to talk to him? Why is it considered anything but insulting to women? Would Biden talk to a white woman who pretended to be black? Complete with offensively stereotyped costume, mannerisms, speech?

We know damn well he wouldn’t.

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, they’re pro-female.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has signed several executive orders to protect trans rights. 

Define “trans rights.” They don’t, of course.

Dylan Mulvaney has publicly been sharing her transition on TikTok with her viral “Days of Girlhood” series. She spoke with Biden at Now This’ Presidential Forum about the right-wing attacks on trans lives and how the administration can better advocate for the trans community.

…

Mulvaney: Thank you. I am extremely privileged to live in a state that allows me access to the resources I need, and that decision is just between me and my doctors. But many states have lawmakers that feel like they can involve themselves in this very personal process. Do you think states should have a right to ban gender-affirming healthcare?

What if we call it sex-denying health malpractice? What do you think then?

But of course that’s not what Biden replied to.

Biden: I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that. As a moral question and as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong. You know, I think I was saying before we started that my son, my deceased son, used to be the attorney general of the state of Delaware. He passed the broadest piece of legislation he, as attorney general, was able to convince the legislature and the governor to sign that dealt with all gender-affirming capabilities. I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, you sometimes—they try to block you from being able to access certain medicines, being able to access certain procedures, and so on. None of that should be available. I mean, no state should be able to do that, in my view. So I feel very, very strongly that you should have every single solitary right including use of your gender-identity bathrooms in public.

And women can just go jump off a roof. Thanks Joe.

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 and those who have fallen for the idea that they themselves are a woman trapped in a man’s body and it’s just pure torture.

Both enjoy using their marginalization as a weapon, but the target may be slightly different. The Queers want to run over those they perceive to be “normal” for the wider social purpose of eliminating the boundaries between male and female, gay and straight, normal and abnormal. The Sincere want to run over those who won’t let them be and do what they want for the wider social purpose of allowing people to be and do what they want.

Ironically, the means (I’m oppressed, obey me) may have become the ends, given that power corrupts. Gay rights didn’t involve making such drastic demands, so the effort involved in getting people on board trans rights has taken on a life of its own. I think you’re right and that many, drunk on power, will take their marginalization and move on to the next target. But I suspect that’s not the feature, but a taking-control bug taking control of the entire project.

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 has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.

Naturally; that’s the whole point of it. Mind you, I think there should be plenty of middle ground on clothing so that what people wear can be a neutral act. Can we get more men to wear kilts?

The proposals say that the new clinical approach will for younger children “reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and doctors should be mindful this might be a “transient phase”.

Instead of encouraging transition, medics should take “a watchful approach” to see how a young person’s conditions develop, the plans state.

How very sane and reasonable.

Owen Jones has another correction for us.

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 a photo? For a third thing, of course they’re not “representative” of QT: they’re not trying to be. They don’t consider the Q and the T to be inextricably related to the LGB, in fact they consider it to be quite different.

I think all OJ really means is that what he can see of the people in that photo tells him they’re not as trendy and exciting and fun as he and his friends are.

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 as “human rights.”) They want to be let in to the legal and social arrangements everyone else has. They’re not looking for special treatment, but equal treatment. The latter are seemingly heading out to the frontiers of “rights” and expecting society to surrender and acquiesce to their extraordinary demands (affirmation and validation of who they are not; erasure of sex in language and law; access to spaces reserved for the opposite sex: what we would call trans “rights.”) 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. It is used to reject reasonable accommodation in third spaces, and coerce admittance into spaces reserved for women. This is not a demand for equal treatment, but a rejection of it. It is a demand for colonization and usurpation, a demand that has succeeded in overturning previous standards based on sex in favour of new ones based on “gender.” These new standards, enacted and enforced by governments and corporations, put the lie to the claim that trans identified males are “marginalized.” They have been listened to preferentially, they have benefited, and they have marginalized women in the process. This is a feature, not a bug.

Which truly marginalized group could demand “NO DEBATE” and claim “NO CONFLICT?” And because debate is preemptively taken off the table, the very real and injurious conflicts with women’s sex-based rights are swept away as purely conjectural, hysterical scaremongering. With media collusion, too. Yes, oh so marginalized.

And once they’ve achieved their immediate goals, how likely would it be that TiMs would abandon their claim to “marginalization?” Not very. They would simply move on to the next target, bringing their “vulnerability” and “marginalization” (as well as the power and influence of captured institutions) along for the ride, always at the ready for brandishing.

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 very essence of feminism is incompatible with this impulse toward social approval.

Feminism is (duh) supposed to be about the flourishing of female people, requiring at minimum being able to distinguish between the sexes. Otherwise, it’s impossible to focus attention on females or to recognize sexism when we can’t tell who’s male and who’s female. You can only say that people are affected by some phenomenon. (Some might argue that such language would be intrinsically good due to its inclusivity.) The same problem arises from completely ignoring race: it’s impossible to recognize racism when we can’t tell who’s one race and who’s another. Feminism requires not being inclusive of males. It requires telling someone, “This is not for you.”

Being a vocal feminist means pointing out when something constrains female flourishing, but the “cool girl” who fits in with the guys would never do that. It sometimes means standing in opposition to what others in your peer group deem acceptable. It means telling people from whom you probably want approval that their actions or beliefs are wrong, even harmful. Few things are more likely to shrink popularity than that. Marking exclusion immoral assuages the cognitive dissonance that this all generates.

Thus we see the metamorphosis of feminism into its modern form, that ridiculous movement for all oppressed groups, because for females to have their own movement wouldn’t be sufficiently “inclusive”. “No, guys,” it says, “we’re not like those ugly, old, boomer bitches. We’re young and cool and always DTF.”

Chase Strangio is mad at the Times.

Oh no, how will they go on?

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 introduce herself and frame the mission of her organization, which was founded 40 years ago by the gay activist Steve Endean to help fund political campaigns for pro-gay-rights candidates. In the video, Robinson talked about voting rights. She talked about transgender kids in school. She talked about abortion access and workers’ rights. She said a lot of things, including getting “to a world where we are free and liberated without exception — without exception — without anyone left behind.”

Not once, however, did she say the word “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.”

Aha, another one of those disappearing words situations. Planned Parenthood and NOW avoid ever saying the word “women,” even when talking about abortion rights, and now we’re told the Human Rights Campaign avoids “gay” and “lesbian.”

The word “gay” is increasingly being substituted [displaced] by “queer” or, more broadly, “L.G.B.T.Q.,” which are about gender as much as — and perhaps more so than — sexual orientation.

Which means among other things that precision is being lost. The umbrella initials are an umbrella, and sometimes one is talking specifically about lesbians or gay men, in which case an umbrella gets in the way of precision and clarity.

“It is quite often a generational issue, where younger people — millennials — are more fine with it. Gen Xers like myself are somewhat OK with it. Some you might find in each category,” Jason DeRose, who oversees L.G.B.T.Q. reporting at NPR, said of the news organization’s move toward queer. “And then older people or boomers, maybe, who find it problematic.”

Blah blah blah – but it’s not just a matter of “being ok with it” or not. It’s a matter of being able to say what you mean as opposed to having to veil your meaning behind a lengthening string of initials. NPR in its usual mush-brained way confuses verbal precision with feefees. Chase is embarrassed by the Times and I’m embarrassed by NPR.

Let’s be clear: Many lesbians and gay people are fine with this shift. They may even prefer umbrella terms like “L.G.B.T.Q.” and “queer” because they include people who identify according to gender expression or identity as well as sexual orientation.

But those are not the same things, and it’s not always useful or even “kind” to include more and more items in a definition. Language can’t be infinitely “inclusive” that way or it ceases to function as language.

 “Queer” can mean almost anything, and that’s the point. Queer theory is about deliberately breaking down normative categories around gender and sex, particularly binary ones like men and women, straight and gay. Saying you’re queer could mean you’re gay; it could mean you’re straight; it could mean you’re undecided about your gender or that you prefer not to say.

So everyone can join the club, all shall have prizes. But if you want to talk about lesbians? Well, sorry, that makes you suspect, so you’ll have to go back 500 turns.

“Queer” carries other connotations, not all of them welcome — or welcoming. Whereas homosexuality is a sexual orientation one cannot choose, queerness is something one can, according to James Kirchick, the author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.” 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.”

Also, there are far more interesting and useful ways to be marginal. Be more thoughtful or useful or generous or altruistic than most people. Surprise us!

Speaking of hating feminism…

“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 wars?

You could say yes to all those, I guess. There’s always an element of opposition, necessarily – if there were nothing to oppose there would be no struggle, no movement, no campaign. They’re all about something, they all contest a status quo, so they’re all oppositional, so there is potentially hatred for at least situations and arrangements and institutions, and thus potentially for the people in charge.

So how do you choose? If you’re Eventbrite do you reject pacifists and anti-racism activists? Or is it only feminists who say men are not women who are seen as too oppositional to promote?

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, why it’s captured the liberal masses, why it’s captured our institutions is primarily because feminism is hated,” she told the audience to applause.

“This is the old intolerance by the way, not the new. Feminists like me that speak about male violence, and point the finger at male perpetrators, are hated, including by men on the left.” She said that the trans debate had “given them an opportunity” to criticise feminists in a way “they never could before” and still be seen as “being on the right side of history”.

It’s the truth. Just before reading this story I made the same point in a quote tweet.

Feminists are hated, and feminists are hated because women are hated.

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 thing that interests or concerns him. He’s very flat in that way – very thin, diminished, airless. His interests are few and trivial and shallow.

Was there anything, amid the four-year madness of all caps tweets, hirings and firings, insults and lies that shocked even her? Haberman picks the day that Trump stood on the White House podium floating the idea that coronavirus patients might inject themselves with bleach. “He was feeling competitive with the doctors because he gets competitive with everybody. That was a pretty striking moment.”

In a way that’s part of his flatness. If he had any mind, if he knew how to think, he wouldn’t be competitive with everybody, because he would understand the value of knowledge and expertise. Having an empty brain, he can’t understand how medical experts could know more than he does about medical issues.

Some White House alumni have been condemned for cashing in by writing memoirs. Haberman herself has been accused of holding back pearls of news for her book rather than publishing them in the Times immediately. Critics seized on its revelation that, following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump told an aide: “I’m just not going to leave.” His state of denial culminated in a deadly insurrection by a mob of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6.

Political consultant Steve Schmidt tweeted: “Was it important information for the public to know Trump said he wasn’t leaving after losing an election? Yes. Was this information deliberately concealed for an economic reason that took higher precedence than the truth and the public right to know? YES.”

Haberman flatly denies the charge, saying that she would have published the story if she could have confirmed it at the time but she only nailed it down long after Trump left office. When, during research for the book, she did land a scoop about Trump apparently trying to flush documents down a White House toilet, she alerted the Times and printed it right away.

“Books take time. They’re a process of going back and interviewing people again and revisiting scenes that have happened. I turned to this project in earnest after February 2021 and the second impeachment trial. My goal was to get confirmed, reportable information in print as quick as possible and, if I had known these things in real time, and had them confirmed, I would have published them.”

For Confidence Man she spoke to 250 people, some of whom were more willing to speak for a book than a here-today-gone-tomorrow news story.

I saw a lot of those “Haberman saved the biggest stories for her book” rants, and wondered if they were fair or not. (The same criticism is made of Bob Woodward.) It’s good to see some arguments from the other direction.

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.

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 40 minutes. Two policeman provided an escort for us to leave the pub.

Now, we’re not talking corporate predators here, we’re not talking people who market addictive drugs, or tobacco, or oil, or assault rifles. We’re not talking about warmongering politicians, or exploitative bosses, or torturers, or environmental vandals. We’re talking about two feminist women who publicly defend the rights of women. Squawk squawk.

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.

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.

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

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 one side of their mouths, even as they say “however” out of the other. I am also sadly used to being casually defamed: such is the fate of everyone who, like me, refuses to be frightened off talking about the baleful impacts of gender-identity ideology on vulnerable groups, including women, children and same-sex attracted people.

Why are we so used to it, she asks? Because of people like Pipps and Andy, including Pipps and Andy.

You said in your email to Caius students and fellows that my views are “offensive, insulting and hateful”. Caius, you said, “should be a place for the highest quality of research to be produced and discussed, rather than polemics”. What “highest quality of research” on gender-identity issues have you or Caius produced or discussed? What about my work is polemical? Have you even read my book?

How offensive insulting and hateful is it for Pipps and Andy to make such a claim? Pretty god damn offensive insulting and hateful, I’d say.

You also say that you both work hard to make Caius an “inclusive, diverse and welcoming home for our students, staff and Fellows”, and that my event “will not contribute to this aim”. How inclusive and welcoming do you think this sort of shunning makes your college feel to students, staff and Fellows who care about sex-based rights? To those who want to attend my talk, but are frightened that there will be protests, enabled by your unwillingness to give unqualified support for free speech? To women who understand their identities as based on biology, not tired sexist stereotypes? To the people—and some do still exist in Cambridge; even if you don’t hear from them, I do—who still care about the highest ideals of academia, and watch despairingly as it is shredded?

The word “inclusive” has shifted meaning over the past decade or so: it now applies solely to people who claim to be the other sex (and mostly to the male people in that category).

You tell the little totalitarians of Caius College that you will not be attending the event on Tuesday. Why not? If you truly thought I, and what I say, are so awful, surely you’d like to point out my errors and show me up? Why not come and tell me to my face that I’m offensive, insulting and hateful? Why not critique my book and tell the world what I have got wrong?

Seriously. Why don’t they tell Helen that to her face?

I mean, it’s not difficult to think of people who really would merit such a face to face telling. Trump leaps to mind of course, and there’s Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani – they’re all writers and polemicists as well as “activists,” and we really could back up the telling with evidence. But Helen?

If you don’t have the decency to come to the event on Tuesday, let’s meet up on another occasion. I’d like to hear from you directly, in person, why you thought it was all right to characterise me as bigoted to an entire academic community, without so much as getting in touch first to find out more about me or my work. Please suggest a few days and times.

Come on, Pipps and Andy. Either accept the request or withdraw the venomous lies about Helen and apologize. Abjectly.

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 Cookie Monster.

Tutors are even opening a “safe space” welfare tearoom for students during the talk, blaming “understandable hurt and anger for many students, staff and fellows at Caius” caused by the invitation.

Understandable? Go soak your heads, all of you. No it’s not understandable. Helen Joyce doesn’t advocate genocide or forced pregnancy or stoning women for not wearing bags over their heads. Helen Joyce simply doesn’t buy into the new and stupid ideology of magic gender, and she explains why you shouldn’t buy into it either. That’s all. The most you can say about her views is that people who have adopted the trans ideology feel angry about them, and that is nowhere near enough to justify fatuous driveling claims about students needing a “safe space welfare tea room” for fuck’s sake.

Now, in an unprecedented intervention, the college’s master Prof Pippa Rogerson – the most senior position – has emailed all students rebuking her own staff for hosting it. 

Unprecedented. Nobody did this for workers, or women, or Jews, or immigrants, or any other neglected and despised set of people, but somehow pampered middle class people who think they’re the other sex merit all this screaming and tearing of hair and welfare tea rooms when anyone disbelieves their fantasies. The more trivial the cause the louder the wailing has to be, is that it? Compensation? “Well guys, this is really a pretty stupid banner to carry, so we’re gonna have to really ham it up to get anywhere. Let’s pretend opposition makes us disintegrate into tiny pieces before their very eyes.”

Prof Rogerson, writing alongside Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, said that while freedom of speech is “a fundamental principle… on some issues which affect our community we cannot stay neutral”.

It’s a fundamental principle which we are going to ignore because otherwise trans people will disintegrate into tiny pieces before our very eyes.

Their letter, seen by The Telegraph, adds: “We do not condone or endorse views that Helen Joyce has expressed on transgender people, which we consider offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here.”

So what? Who cares? What’s their point? They don’t have to condone endorse views that other people speak aloud in talks at Cambridge. That’s not a criterion or filter for such talks. Their feverish emotions have nothing to do with Helen Joyce or her talk.

Ms Joyce, the author of best-seller Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, added: “When I was a student at Cambridge I would have been disgusted and embarrassed to receive a communication like that; Pippa and Andrew sound like CBeebies presenters.

“Why are they staying away? If they think I’m that much of a bigot they should turn up, hear what I have to say and tell me I’m wrong. A pair of intellectual cowards who do not deserve to be in two of the best jobs in all the world’s universities.”

Seriously. They sound like absolute chumps.

Celebrating Salman:

Writers including Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes and Nigella Lawson will gather this week at an event to celebrate Salman Rushdie.

An Evening for Salman Rushdie will be held at the British Library in London on 13 October, with members of the public invited to take part by attending in person or watching a live stream.

So we missed it, sorry, but it’s good to know it happened.

Others taking part by sharing readings or reflections include Mona Arshi, Melvyn Bragg, Mariella Frostrup, Meena Kandasamy, Kathy Lette, Pauline Melville, Margie Orford, Philippe Sands, Burhan Sönmez and Alan Yentob.

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The British Library event on Thursday is being described as a gathering to celebrate Rushdie’s “strength and dedication as a writer, activist, and a champion of free expression”.

You’re damn right. He stood up for Charlie Hebdo when way too many Manhattan trendies called them “Islamophobic.”

Jesus & idenniny.

It’s a nice elbow in the ribs to The Atheist Communinny and the Skeptic Communinny, because it is indeed true that way too many members of said communninnies laugh other absurd claims out of court but when it’s a man who idennifies as a woman suddenly they can’t recognize an absurd claim any more.

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