Oh gee, how nice of him.

Eddie Izzard rules out appearing on all-women Labour MP shortlists

Izzard, 60, who became famous as a cross-dressing comedian and now identifies as a gender-fluid trans woman, has made the longlist of the open contest to become Labour’s candidate for the safe seat of Sheffield Central in the next general election.

In a short telephone interview with the Guardian on Thursday, Izzard said she had suffered a “torrent of transphobic abuse” since announcing her candidacy, including being photographed by a gender-critical feminist using the women’s toilet.

Oh poor darling. How dare those bitches talk back to him just because he’s trying to shove them aside.

Though Izzard announced two years ago that she preferred to be addressed with female pronouns and wanted to be “based in girl mode from now on”, she said “I don’t mind he/him”.

Anything as long as we’re all talking about Eddie Izzard. The key thing here is to keep TALKING ABOUT EDDIE IZZARD.

Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, suggested recently that she would rather be arrested than refer to Izzard as “she”.

When asked about the possibility of misgendering someone becoming a hate crime, Duffield said: “Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to parliament anytime soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I’m not calling Eddie Izzard a woman.”

Imagine arresting people for saying Rachel Dolezal is not black. Now imagine arresting women for not saying Eddie Izzard is a woman. The first is absurd, the second is commonplace. Shut up, women, you don’t matter.

Asked for her message to Duffield, Izzard said: “She has got to join the 21st century. She’s got to catch up with the rest of us. The vast majority of the world is now moving forwards … The millennium has happened and we’re 22 years into it. So come and join us in the 21st century.”

Fuck you, Ed. We haven’t “got to” do anything at your command.

On the pronoun question, Izzard said: “I am not telling anyone else to do anything. I prefer she/her. Don’t mind he/him. Changing my pronouns after a number of years being out just seemed to align more with how I was living my life. And am I not allowed to do that?”

Depends. If you’re doing it inside your head, sure. If you’re doing it outside your head and ordering the rest of the world to play along, not necessarily.

But…

But sir. But sir, why does a system that puts compassion at its heart=taking rights away from women and giving them to men who call themselves women? Why are trans women, aka men who call themselves women, deserving of compassion at the expense of women? Why are women not deserving of compassion?

Not that we want “compassion” of course. We just want our fucking rights. We just want men like you to stop cheerfully giving our rights away and ignoring us when we object and calling that “compassion.”

The bullying escalates some more.

Those fists. Those fists used to stand for we won’t back down, for courage, for solidarity, for speaking truth to power. They stood for workers or women or people of color or lesbians and gays uniting to resist oppression. Here they just stand for we will punch you bitches.

Just to make sure everyone has all the facts –

Good

to

know.

Helen Joyce’s talk at Gonville and Caius went ahead yesterday evening; the Telegraph has details:

Naï Zakharia, an attendee of the talk, said: “There were hundreds of protesters. They screamed and hit the door. It was hard to hear the speakers. In the middle of the talk a group of protesters got in to right behind the door of the auditorium.”

All because of a woman who doesn’t believe in magic gender.

On Tuesday night, organisers were expecting 75 masked protesters to assemble at the church.

Students rallied each other via other emails, seen by The Telegraph, to “bring pots and pans to make some noise” along with “banners, flags and signs”. Protest organisers added: “Facemasks are recommended for privacy reasons.”

Make noise in order to disrupt the talk, and wear masks to do it with impunity.

Prof Ahmed said: “Senior figures in the University have expressed regret that this debate is even going ahead. The only response to that is to arrange another, bigger event like it. That is what I intend to do.”

Helen reports:

Why can’t India Willoughby be accurate?

Rowling doesn’t “view” trans women as men, she just knows that’s what they are, because it is what they are. Women are just called women; the modifier “trans” means “not literally.” The word “trans” points to fiction, pretending, fantasy, playacting, imagining.

Of course Rowling believes trans women should use “the right facilities.” It’s Willoughby who thinks trans women should intrude on women.

As for the clumsy “uses cases from around the world as proof to fear us” I suppose he means she cites examples of trans women assaulting women. Well? What’s the point here? That we should keep our bitchy mouths shut about men assaulting women? That’s not going to happen.

Pink News rushes to compile a self-serving story on how Benjamin Cohen is without flaw and critics of Pink News are demonic:

Kemi Badenoch used her first appearance as equalities minister to attack PinkNews CEO Benjamin Cohen, while claiming she would work with “compassion”.

The new women and equalities minister made her comments when asked about a series of tweets posted by Cohen in response to her appointment in Rishi Sunak’s government.

What series of tweets?

Then Benjamin Cohen, scourge of “transphobes” everywhere, calls someone a cunt.

You never have to work hard to uncover the misogyny.

Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, can dish it out but he can’t take it.

What he leaves out when he says “No we were not either sued, that’s a lie!!!” is that they weren’t sued because they backed down. True but incomplete, in short, so incomplete as to be misleading, which should not be the goal in journalism. Pink News purports to be journalism. It doesn’t call itself Pink Chatter or Pink Think, it calls itself Pink News, so it should do better than “We avoided being sued by withdrawing the assertion.”

But it’s not such a big difference morally or ethically or journalistically, and a news outlet CEO should understand this.

Even Young Labour hates women.

Originally a comment by Eava on A world with.

I feel like this rhetoric runs in parallel to that of some disability rights activists, deaf activists who oppose cochlear implants as destroying deaf culture, autism advocates who oppose therapies to help reduce or eliminate autistic behaviors, that instead we need to embrace “neurodiversity” just like gender diversity/gender expansiveness, etc. There is research being done on treatments for children with Down Syndrome that can improve their cognitive abilities, it would not be a “cure” but it would help them live fuller, independent lives, but this leads to similar claims of, if not genocide, eliminationism. Which is so ironic because if there were treatments for Down Syndrome that could help those children become functionally independent, I would bet more women would opt to continue a pregnancy vs have an abortion if they got a prenantal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.

The idea that we’re all perfect how we are born gets twisted by TRAs and disability rights advocates to make any attempts to cure or repair disabilities “genocidal”. Of course, the irony is overwhelming where a surgery to restore a child’s ability to hear is verboten, but surgeries to remove or create body parts, leading to sterility and lack of sexual function, is “life saving health care”.

I think the other big sleight of hand at work here is equating being trans with being gender nonconforming. This rhetorical tactic is trying to say Gender Critical feminists not only want to eliminate trans people, but they want to eliminate people who don’t conform to the societal stereotypes for their sex. It completely misses the point that GC feminists don’t believe we have a “gender identity” and nothing about how we dress, how we behave, or who we sleep with changes that.

I want a world where no one feels they have to physically alter their bodies to be happy, where a gay boy and lesbian girl are free of the homophobia that makes them feel the only way they can live the life they want is to alter their bodies and claim to be the opposite sex. Where a heterosexual girl does not feel targeted, devalued, and unsafe in her female body, so worthless because of misogyny (familial or societal) that the only way out she sees is to make her body appear male and claim a male identity. And a society where pubescent boys can find treatment for AGP behaviors before it becomes their identity and way of life.

I do think there will be people who can’t get to the point where they make peace with their body and natal sex. There are people for whom no treatment, psychological, medical, etc. helps them achieve peace. I believe we can make space in society for people who can’t find relief any other way than transition. But that number is incredibly small and doesn’t require rewriting laws and language to accommodate them.

Here’s the whole letter sent to all Cambridge sociology students by the big boss of sociology:

In the first sentence Desai takes for granted that “distress was caused to” the students by the fact that Helen Joyce was giving a talk at Cambridge – as if she were a proponent of genocide or something equally horrifying.

In the next sentence she takes it for granted that Helen Joyce’s lecture is “potentially harmful” – as if she were a proponent of genocide or something equally horrifying. It’s pretty evil, this kind of thing. If someone were giving talks at universities advocating slavery for lesser races, or literal non-metaphorical LITERAL genocide, or the right of men to murder their female relatives, I would consider that harmful, but after all these years I still don’t consider it harmful to point out that humans can’t change sex.

In the next sentence Desai says with regret that “we” (the good people?) can’t tell independent colleges to disinvite speakers “we” disapprove of. She doesn’t, of course, go to the trouble of saying why “we” disapprove – she treats it as self-evident.

In the next sentence Desai gloats that the University’s alphabet groups have written to the guilty independent college to “express dismay.” Hooray for universities and students and the right and need to think carefully about things!

In the next two sentences Desai says grovel grovel grovel grovel please don’t hit me.

In the final sentence Desai says there’s a “welfare event” and a “gathering” in the evening – I guess so that the stricken prostrated students can get medication and prayer and mugs of Horlicks.

What a pathetic display.

Inclusion crime klaxon:

Dear Students:

PANIC!!!!!!

PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC

love,

Head of Sociology at Ancient University

Cambridge is what now?

It aimed to encourage students to speak more “inclusively” and not fall foul of those who may be offended by sex- specific pronouns. But the University of Cambridge’s decision to say Auf Wiedersehen to teaching gendered German has prompted warnings from linguists that students risk making a fool of themselves when talking with native speakers.

[There’s also singular and plural. …students risk making fools of themselves, not a fool of themselves. Subject-object agreement.]

The students have been urged to

use “inclusive language” and “to use gender- and non-binary-inclusive language when we address or refer to students and colleagues, both in writing and in speech in English and in German”.

Language can’t be “inclusive” in that way without ceasing to do the job language is there to do.

Course managers said they encouraged students and staff to choose newer forms with plural nouns.

When writing, they may render feminine nouns unisex by inserting an asterisk before the suffix — a nonstandard usage known as the “gender star”.

Funny that there’s no mention of making masculine nouns unisex. Funny how it’s always women who have to be disappeared, and never men. Ha ha.

A spokesman for the University of Cambridge said: “As it clearly states on the faculty of modern and medieval languages and linguistics website, ‘students are free to choose for themselves how to engage with inclusive language when speaking and writing in German’. To suggest otherwise is entirely wrong.”

But by calling it “inclusive” language they’re implying that the alternative is the enemy of “inclusivity.”

This is an odd question.

Meaning, do I want a world without people who are so unhappy in their own bodies that they wreck them in an attempt to be the other kind of body? Of course.

On the other hand if he means do I want a world where everyone conforms to gender rules, of course not. He’s apparently not bright enough to frame the question carefully.

And then he goes on to pretend he asked something different altogether.

Ah ah ah no you don’t, that’s not what you asked. You didn’t include the bit about being forced back into the closet.

He’s such a sleaze.

Here’s another question: do I want a word without gender ideology in it? Again: of course.

The Times reports on the NHS’s shift on gender magic:

Most children identifying as transgender are simply going through a “transient phase”, new NHS guidance states. Doctors caring for youngsters distressed about their gender have been told that it is not a “neutral act” to help them transition socially by using their preferred new names or pronouns.

The draft guidelines say doctors should “carefully explore” all underlying health problems, including mental ill health, amid concerns that the NHS is rushing children on to irreversible puberty-blocker medication. The new “watchful approach” adopted by the NHS is a significant change of course from the “affirmative” approach advocated by campaign groups, including Mermaids.

This is in the wake of the damning Cass report.

NHS England’s draft guidance states that there is “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making” for children with gender dysphoria. It stresses that “in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” among younger children. “The clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence,” it reads.

If the child has “transitioned” and the gender incongruence does not persist, that child is pretty much guaranteed to experience “difficulties.”

There are situations in which you can’t claim to be “bullied” even though the other party has more power or social clout than you do. Like, for instance, when you’re the bully. A spindly kid can’t hit a bigger kid with a rock and then scream “bully” when the bigger kid demands an apology.

A Twitter warrior can’t tell a venomous lie about JK Rowling and then scream “bully” when Rowling says it’s a lie.

TinyWriter doesn’t get to complain about the number of Rowling’s followers when TinyWriter is the aggressor. It’s a very special kind of bullying to think you can bully someone famous because the fame makes it morally suspect to fight back.

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 not some obscene, uber-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman.”

I have to say, I can’t. I can’t understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. I know what it is, but I can’t understand it. That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. No, I don’t understand how men can think it’s ok to pretend to be women and then try to bully all women into agreeing that the men are indeed women. I don’t understand how they can expect us to comply without a murmur, let alone agree that yes indeed they are women.

That’s not the point though, the point is hooray for Ralph Fiennes.

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 and virtuous, or “Left” is the virtuous side, when neither is good nor virtuous. So, until we can rid ourselves of the dominator hunger for power, we will continue to struggle to find any sort of achieving equality for the minorities whehter they are sex, race or cultural. Authoritarians need to have someone to blame for their struggles in order to get more authority, and authoritarians populate nearly all of the ideologies on the left-right continuum.

When left-wingers talk about how evil capitalism and colonialism are, they conveniently ignore the coercion that it takes to convert a society from monarchy to a socialist society, as in China and Russia. And with XI’s moves to retain power over the weekend by purging those who were not his allies, we can see that even a capitalist-communist hybrid is not immune from being a dominator society. The Soviets made this clear when they told people that their usage of force was necessary in order to evolve into the New Soviet Man.

Pressing for diversity makes people feel good, but in the end, there is an aspect of coercion that is required. Whether it’s justified, as in bringing racial and sexual minorities into the power structure, or not justified in the examples of pressing for fake pronoun usage and male access to women’s private spaces, there is still a power exchange.

Eisler, being a futurist, is certainly aware that we can’t force a partnership culture (that would certainly be antithetical, that we perhaps have to evolve into it. I think that once we stop thinking of our possibilies as being limited to a left-right scalar, we will nudge towards that, but it’s so hard to talk about politics as they are without devolving into it. The reason that I remain a Democrat despite their capture by the TA’s, is that most of their social programs align with my perceptions of my needs and the needs of people I know about. But I recognize their limitations and am active so that I can try to influence them from a local standpoint.

Transactivism is a function of male domination, which is why it’s accepted and pushed by left-leaning men. It’s a socially acceptable aspect of male domination, and if conservative men figure that out, they’ll support it, too. We know that if affirms the gender structure, they haven’t figured it out yet.

Feminism at its ideal is in tune with the partnership model, which is why it struggles so hard to gain traction even among women. I see so many women who are mistaken in thinking the purpose of feminism is in using oppression to seek special favors in society, It’s hard to get through, because the dominator model is the medium we swim in and depend on, much as fish depend on water.

We can’t fix all this in ours or the next or the next generation, since we currently see through the lens of a balance of power. Once we get past that, in however many centuries from now, then we can advance as a society. In High School, the Catholics taught us that we need a “second Copernican revolution,” but instead of in technology, we need it in terms of a societal change in how we see each other. I had hope for the Church as a Catholic teen, but then realized in a confession one day, just how authoritarian it will always be and must be, because they are nothing without power and will never give it up willingly.

I don’t think a revolution could move our world into a partnership model, I think only evolution could do that. Revolutions are coercive, and you end up being in a battle against counterrevolutionaries to maintain what you achieved. But partnership is an ideal we can strive for now, if people can discard their reliance on a left-right model where all your political opponents are “extremists” on one end or the other. It’s still a hunger for power either way.

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.