Some snaps from I think Brighton:

“Rapey McForehead” is trending on Twitter so I looked to find out why. The Washington Post:

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told a former White House aide that he was seeking a preemptive pardon from President Donald Trump regarding an investigation in which he is a target, according to testimony given to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Johnny McEntee, according to people familiar with his testimony, told investigators that Gaetz told him during a brief meeting “that they are launching an investigation into him or that there’s an investigation into him,” without specifying who was investigating Gaetz.

McEntee added that Gaetz told him “he did not do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great.” Gaetz told McEntee that he had asked White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for a pardon.

Didn’t do anything wrong, nope nope, obviously not.

Gaetz never did get a pardon from Trump.

Aaaand The Atlantic runs an article by freelance writer Maggie Mertens that announces Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense. It’s every bit as stupid as it sounds, and then some.

Though school sports are typically sex-segregated, a new generation of kids isn’t content to compete within traditional structures.

Ah yes, it’s just a matter of “traditional structures,” like women having to wear skirts. Thank god the new generation of kids has seen through it at last.

School sports are typically sex-segregated, and in America some of them have even come to be seen as either traditionally for boys or traditionally for girls: Think football, wrestling, field hockey, volleyball. However, it’s becoming more common for these lines to blur, especially as Gen Zers are more likely than members of previous generations to reject a strict gender binary altogether. Maintaining this binary in youth sports reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting—a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.

No it hasn’t. Sports scientists are having a good (albeit furious) laugh at that line.

Decades of research have shown that sex is far more complex than we may think. And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential.

That’s not true either. Just ask Serena Williams.

In recent years, the question of who can play on what team has developed into a full-blown front in the culture war, based in large part on the fear that transgender girls will unfairly take over girls’ sports because of sweeping generalizations about biological athletic advantages.

Welllll, sweeping generalizations plus “Veronica Ivy” and “Lia” Thomas and a boatload of other men and boys cheating women and girls out of medals and prizes.

The insistence on separating sports teams strictly by sex is backwards, argues Michela Musto, an assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the effect of the gender binary on students and young athletes. “Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around,” she told me by phone.

Cargo cult physiology! What could go wrong?!

While the need to separate athletes by sex is still held firmly by many as a way to protect girls and women from harm, many people advocate for moving to a more integrated and inclusive approach.

Yeah let’s just blow off that whole physical thing and stop protecting girls and women from being smashed up by boys and men, and instead focus on being more incloooooooooosive [of boys and men].

What a horrible man.

School prepares for backlash over high school teacher who claims to be trans. I think the teacher is just taking the mickey.

The Halton District School Board is “standing behind” an “accepted” transgender teacher who has gone viral in social media video posts.

In addition, HDSB Chair Margo Shuttleworth tells the Toronto Sun that staff are looking at “going through creating a safety plan” to ensure the Oakville Trafalgar High School teacher’s security as they prepare for potential protests when the school opens for classes Monday.

Gone viral why? Potential protests why?

Trans? Or mockery? It looks more like mockery to me. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be in a high school class taught by that teacher.

Anna Slatz at Reduxx has more:

Shocking media first began to circulate on Twitter earlier this week, with multiple accounts sharing a mobile phone video and stills of a shop teacher demonstrating how to use a circular saw.

The teacher is seen wearing an extremely prominent prosthetic bust, one which clearly outlines the nipples through his tight shirt. He is also donning a bright blonde wig and short-shorts.

Totally appropriate for high school, right?

Action shot:

Back to the Toronto Sun:

Pre-transitioning the teacher was known to students and faculty as a male and went by a man’s name. But the teacher now identifies as a woman and is referenced with a female name.

The school board says it sees her simply as a good teacher.

“This teacher (who teaches shop) is an extremely effective teacher,” said Shuttleworth. “All the kids really love being in the class.”

I don’t believe either of those claims.

Which one really has the stupid argument here?

The “like” there isn’t “like,” because of the meaning of the word “trans.” OJ is pretending that all adjectives are just additions, but that’s a really stupid thing to pretend.

For instance: pretend; artificial; fake; counterfeit; fantasy; mock; sham.

That’s the thing about the adjective “trans”: that’s what it means. That’s its only meaning.

For that reason, it’s both fatuous and dishonest for OJ to pretend that “trans woman” is comparable to “tall woman.”

This is a really stupid line of argument!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Near-total control.

In the press article, my experience of abuse by GCs and their far-right allies is not represented (and I did describe this; some of it was also read out to me). I assume this is also the case for other trans inclusive feminists who were interviewed, as the account is one-sided.

Pardon me if I fail to believe you. First, I have grave doubts about your ability to distinguish “abuse” from “criticism.” It’s a natural response to the transperbolic claim that “misgendering” is “actual violence,” and that your critics are hell-bent on trans genocide. Please. Second, the whole “far-right allies” thing is an immediate indication that yours is not a good faith appraisal of your critics, many of whom are left-leaning women.

You’re trying to hide the striking asymmetry between the actions of feminists and genderists. How many trans meetings have been harassed by threatening mobs of feminist activists? How many genderist professors have been hounded out of their teaching positions by feminist students and their allies? How many public gatherings of genderists have been greeted with bullying, intimidating feminists dressed in black, barring access to their chosen gathering place? None. How do I know this? Because I would have heard about it. We all would have. If even one of these counterfactual things had transpired, it would have been reported worldwide by captured media outlets. It would have been a front page, first item story if feminists had even once been half as threatening and intimidating to genderist gatherings and academics as trans activists have consistently been to women defending their rights and boundaries. Instead the actual threats, intimidation and violence have all been in the other direction. You’ll spin this as legitimate self-defence of a terrorized, embattled, marginalized community in the face of imminent genocide. Besides, those women are all evil, far-right bigots on the wrong side of history, so they get what they deserve. Right?

How did this situation become so entrenched so fast? There was certainly nothing like it in connection with feminism and its critics, was there? Opposition and emotion, yes, but surely not such systematic and intense vilification and ostracism? (Shall I call it V&O for short?) I don’t think feminism has ever had that kind of power or invoked that kind of loyalty.

This. This still blows my mind. Women have never been able to get the police to take rape seriously, but they’ll go all out against limericks.

Unlike feminism, its political subject is not female people but rather all those subjected to gender oppression – a concept that is redefined to emphasise lack of choice and affirmation relating to gender identity.

But how is this supposed concern for “all those subjected to gender oppression” working out in real life? Again there is a striking imbalance in how all this high-falutin’ theory is applied in society at large. Also a striking imbalance in who it is that bears the burden and pays the price of this application of gender ideology.

We’ve all seen examples posted here on B&W of the ongoing, concerted erasure of the word “woman” in a broad range of organizations and institutions. All in the interests of “inclusivity”. But is there an equivalent, concerted effort to erase the word men in all those same arenas? No. Only women are subjected to this treatment.

At the same time that “woman” is being banished from institutional vocabularies, women’s single sex spaces have effectively been turned into mixed sex spaces. Toilets. Prisons. Rape crisis centres. Hospital wards. Sports teams. Human sexually dimorphic physiology means that men, on average, represent a physical threat to most women in a way that does not happen in the reverse direction. The cover that gender self ID provides to potential sexual predators is one that endangers women disproportionately, if not exclusively. If we replace “sex” with “gender” as the exclusive locus of legitimate concern, than this lopsided cost and damage are rendered invisible. The underlying explanation of sex discrimination is no longer available or allowed under a regime of gender primacy. If the category of “woman” is redefined to include men, then the concept of women being a sex class with its own needs and interests becomes incoherent, and can no longer be used as the basis for defending anything exclusively “female.”

This is not an issue of equivalent importance to men, as, traditionally, under patriarchy, they had amassed most power to themselves to start with. Women have had to take power from them. Men were the norm, the standard, the model. Trans identifying females are not a threat to the male power base. The definition of “man” is not on the table. Never has been, never will be. We are not being erased, or colonized. Gay men are not being attacked for “genital fetishism” or “sexual apartheid” to anywhere near the same degree that lesbians are. You never hear anyone make the claim that “we’ve always entered your spaces,” or “women will always force their way to gain access to men.” Yet both “arguments” are made against attempts to retain women’s single sex spaces. Men’s boundaries are ultimately secure against women, and always will be, because of male advantages in physical strength.

In actual practice, women are the clear losers in the gender game. The invasion is unidirectional, and has nothing to do with”equality”, “fairness” and “inclusion.” No amount of gender studies degrees can erase or sugar-coat this truth, whatever statements, petitions, and apologies emanate from these useful idiots in academia. How they see this as “justice” is beyond me. The only way they will be on the “right side of history” is if they’re the ones writing it.

First of all, what is Forbes Power Women’s Summit? I’d never heard of it so I had to look it up. (It’s tricky trying to figure out the grammar. Is it a summit for power women? If so, what are power women? Is it a women’s summit organized by Forbes Power? If so, what is Forbes power? Is there a third option?) Google explains all:

In 2013, Moira [Forbes] launched the annual Forbes Women’s Summit in New York City, which brings together 250 female leaders to discuss and solve the world’s most intractable issues.

I don’t know or care who Moira Forbes may be, but at least we know where we are. It’s some kind of corporate jamboree for women. It’s cool that 250 women can go to a corporate summit and, without further ado, solve the world’s most intractable issues.

Anyway, of course there had to be the usual insult.

Dylan Mulvaney isn’t a woman.

It’s physical.

But. It seems the aggression failed.

Updating to add more snaps:

More on the Leeds march:

That was 5 minutes before the march was due to start. Nothing since. I expect they’re way too busy working to uncancel the march to do any updating. Please tell us again how vulnerable trans women are.

Wait here’s something.

Yes West Yorks Police please do explain.

Alarming development.

That’s now. The march should be in progress. But

People are seeking confirmation.

A hot topic for today: a piece by Laura Favaro in the Times Higher about the tyranny of gender idenniny.

Warnings that the field was risky for an early career researcher to investigate came from scholars on all sides – from “gender-critical” feminists, who described being vilified and ostracised for stating that sex is binary and immutable, to those who saw that position as callous bigotry, or, moreover, “a genocidal project” (including journal editors thus endorsing censorship).

Some people warned of vilification and ostracism, others vilified and ostracized.

More than two years ago, I set out to find whether the warnings about entering this domain were justified, or, as others suggest, spurious claims made by those keen to spark a phoney “culture war”. It led me to interview 50 gender studies academics across many disciplines, including sociology, psychology and education, most of whom worked at English universities, to learn about their views and experiences of the dispute.

…

It was clear that the “gender-critical” feminist academics I interviewed had faced negative repercussions for years for expressing their view (now protected in the UK under the Equality Act 2010 following last year’s tribunal ruling that a thinktank researcher, Maya Forstater, had been unlawfully dismissed for tweeting that women could not change their biological sex). Among other experiences, my interviewees described complaints to and by management, attempts to shut down events, no platforming, disinvitations, intimidation, smears and losing career progression opportunities, including being blocked from jobs.

How did this situation become so entrenched so fast? There was certainly nothing like it in connection with feminism and its critics, was there? Opposition and emotion, yes, but surely not such systematic and intense vilification and ostracism? (Shall I call it V&O for short?) I don’t think feminism has ever had that kind of power or invoked that kind of loyalty.

From these [gender-critical] scholars’ perspective, the supporters of what is often called “trans-inclusive feminism” held near-total control in academia, deciding what was discussed in departments or included in scholarly journals.

But did trans-inclusive feminists see themselves as holding this powerful position? I spoke to 20 such academics to understand their heterogeneous, often ambiguous and contradictory constellation of ideas and to explore whether they recognised the accusations of unfair “gatekeeping” made against them.

Ha. Pretty sure that’s a No.

Despite its conceptual diversity, genderism coheres around the push for gender (identity) to replace sex in most – if not all – contexts. Unlike feminism, its political subject is not female people but rather all those subjected to gender oppression – a concept that is redefined to emphasise lack of choice and affirmation relating to gender identity.

Lack of choice is an interesting thing to emphasize. We don’t have a choice about a lot of things. We don’t choose to be humans, or animals, or alive; we don’t choose to be tall or short, born in Pakistan or Peru. We are thrown into the world, as the existentialists said. Choice is a luxury. It’s good to expand it, but it’s not always good to be enraged at its absence.

For many, the urgency of recognising this societal injustice could not be overstated. “Trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (Terfs), as they frequently labelled them, are part of nothing less than a “colonial [and] ultimately an eliminationist project” against people who identify as transgender or non-binary, some believe, as explained by Alison Phipps in her 2020 book Me, not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism.

Alison Phipps took to Twitter to object to this article and its writer today. To object to it and throw around accusations about it.

On the issue of “no platforming”, some interviewees ridiculed the idea that gender-critical feminists were victims of it, echoing influential writers such as Sara Ahmed, who in 2015 discredited claims by feminists about silencing at universities being “a mechanism of power”, even while conceding that she was “aiming to eliminate the positions that aim to eliminate people”.

“There is no such silencing, but I plan to assist it.”

Others, however, openly embraced the “no debate” position on the basis that gender-critical feminism is “hate speech” or even “rhetorical violence [that] actually does have real-world aims”, equivalent to movements such as fascism and eugenics. One interviewee who identified as a trans woman described the current situation in academia as “a political battle over an institutional space”, clarifying that: “My political bottom line is – I don’t concede to people who are interested in the eradication of me and everyone like me in the world because I consider that a genocidal project.”

In other words they lie. Systematically and often. We object to the concept of “gender identity” and to how it’s playing out, and they call that eradication and genocide. We are not seeking the eradication or genocide of anyone.

This view, together with the belief that “cis women have more power than trans people”, led genderist academics to refrain from forthrightly denouncing some transgender activists’ aggressive tactics towards feminists. These include threats and ideations of extreme violence, which, as well as being pervasive on social media, appear to be increasingly condoned at universities. For example, last year, a London School of Economics postgraduate student conference paper described a scene in which feminists critical of genderism “scream for mercy”. The paper then described the potential threat: “I hold a knife to your throat and spit my transness into your ear”, concluding: “Are you scared? I sure fucking hope so.”

That’s plucky and admirable; feminist women saying men can’t become women is pure evil.

Gatekeeping was also suggested in the responses by another 11 interviewees who held principal editorship roles at feminist, gender and sexuality studies journals. All confirmed that genderist perspectives dominate these publications, in the sense that “on the editorial board, none of us would describe ourselves as in the gender critical camp”. Editors additionally pointed to the preferred perspective of authors, readers and publishing houses. For some, it was a matter of scholarly values, with gender-critical feminism described as “wrong-headed”, “outdated” or “completely delegitimised”. Others, however, acknowledged that “the objection is a political one”.

Feminism is wrong-headed, outdated, and completely delegitimized. Back to the kitchen, wims.

Genderist academics reported personally imposing bans from academic networks and events, along with language policing of colleagues as well as students. “If students write ‘female’ in their essay, I’ll cross it out,” a sociologist told me, because “what matters is gender [identity]”.

So what matters is not the potential to get pregnant? Not the smaller less muscular body? Not expectations of child-bearing and kitchen work and submission? None of that matters any more?

Marina Hyde notes the UK has toppled into absurdity:

In the wake of the Queen’s death, these moments of hopelessly unintentional, tenuously sane hilarity have surely been produced by the behaviour of any number of our commercial brands. Them and Nicholas Witchell, anyway. It’s been like a competition to see which retailer can act the most preposterously, the most self-regardingly, and with the most complete commitment to the twee.

Could it be Morrisons, announcing that it had turned down the volume of its till beeps “out of respect”? Could it be pawnshop chain Cash Converters formally announcing its self-seclusion from social media? Or could it be – and this one’s the correct answer – Center Parcs decreeing that holidaymakers must be thrown out of its villages for the day of the Queen’s funeral “as a mark of respect”, before backtracking and permitting customers to remain on site, while ordering them to “remain in their lodges”?

Is that even legal? Health and safety measures apart? Yes the police, fire departments, and epidemiologists can tell people to stay inside in an emergency. Commercial holiday vendors? Not so much.

If you’ve felt slightly “managed” by aspects of the relentlessly choreographed elements of the past week, then this really was your Triumph of the Corporate Will. It was, all of a sudden, simply impossible not to picture oneself in one’s wood-effect, lodge-effect detention hut, cowering by the forest-mural feature wall as village guards toured the site with loudhailers while screaming “REMAIN IN YOUR LODGES!”

1984 plus Bozo the Clown.

The commercial landscape is awash with this nonsense. I know our society is measured by how it treats its most wantonly evil members, but my finger does hover over the “deploy whole-life-tariff” button when I read about Innocent Fruit Smoothies not tweeting for a few days “out of respect” for Her Majesty’s death. But of course – of course – Innocent would take this immensely self-righteous stand. Its products are just a few among an ever-growing mountain that plaster their terrible pious catechisms all over their packaging, and where the words “the good stuff” are supposed to signify something moral as well as nutritional. Sorry, but no. Stop managing me. Just sell me your crap and be on your way.

See: Whole Foods. There’s a Whole Foods across the street from a bus stop I regularly frequent, and I spend the waiting time contradicting the chat on their posters, which is invariably toe-curlingly smug. “No I don’t; no you aren’t; no it isn’t.”

Quite how we’ve got to this ridiculous place where irrelevant retailers feel moved to act like the archbishop of Canterbury is unclear, but the past week has certainly underscored the necessity of getting out of it before we submit fully to becoming One Nation Under Brands. Every one of these botched attempts at gravitas now turns me full Braveheart – and I very much hope you are with me.

I so am. Whole Foods is number one on the list.

Consistency from one hour to the next; does OJ have it?

OJ tries to conceal his inconsistency (or should we call it pathological lying? if he can accuse us of pathological lying we can return the favor, yeah?) by not saying “the lesbians who were kicked out of Pride for stating that lesbians don’t like penises” but rather “anti-trans activists invaded a Pride march.” That’s not a very honest or forthright move, especially for a journalist, especially for a journalist who has just called a bunch of people “pathological liars.”

How can lesbians be said to be “invading” a Pride march? Why does OJ think he gets to tell lesbians they’re “invading” Pride? What is a “cis lesbian”? Why does OJ think it’s ok for straight men who call themselves women to be at Pride but not ok for lesbians to be there? For that matter why does he think it’s ok for him to bully and shout at and try to silence lesbians?

Does Ted Cruz really think people are THAT stupid?

Now try 4.2 million, he says, to the 15,000 people who live on an island that is 87 square miles. Ted Cruz is a senator from a state that is 268,597 square miles with a population of 28 million.

Texas is bigger than France; Martha’s Vineyard is a third the size of Chicago.

Why would Ted Cruz try to illustrate the burden of immigration on Texas by comparing it to a tiny island with a tiny population?

Also:

“Liberals’ golf games”???????????? That’s his gotcha?

Hello and welcome to Pseuds’ Corner. Our guest today is a self-obsessed young person who would like to explain to us how special xir is.

Carla Hernando, 26, never quite felt like they fit into a particular gender. Then, when Covid-19 took hold in March 2020, they got a lot of alone time to reflect on their identity. The journey continued during Pride Month that June, when Hernando found both an article and a documentary on non-binary gender identities, by Time Out Barcelona, further opening their mind to possibilities beyond the gender binary of ‘woman’ or ‘man’.

I hope they also read up on non-human identities, to open their mind to possibilities beyond the human-chimpanzee binary.

“[Spain] is way behind in terms of gender,” believes the Barcelona-based Hernando, who uses both they/them and she/her pronouns. “I did not know what non-binary meant. I just had felt completely different my entire life.” But the more education they got about the range of possibilities outside the gender binary of ‘woman’ or ‘man’, the more they felt they related. 

It’s so exciting that Hernando uses both. I wonder how the BBC knew when to use “they/them” and when to use “she/her.” Maybe they (the BBC, that is) asked them (Hernando, that is) each time? That must have taken a lot of asking, if so.

That experience was the gateway to another discovery: the term ‘gender fluid’. Hernando felt it was an even more apt descriptor for their gender identity. 

“One day I wake up and feel more feminine, and maybe I want to wear a crop top and put earrings on. And then there’s times in which I’m like, I need my [chest] binder [to minimise the appearance of my breasts], because I’m not feeling it,” they say. The lived experience of gender fluidity – wearing a binder one day and more feminine outfit the next – is what ultimately helped Hernando discover that the term applied to them. 

Deep. Deep deep deep stuff. Profound. Life-altering. Trippy.

Gender fluidity has grown even more visible as celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Ruby Rose and Cara Delevingne embrace it in the public eye. The term is hard to pin down precisely, since it describes such a vast array of people and experiences, say experts.

“Experts”? Who and what might they be?

Come on. The term “is hard to pin down precisely” because it’s such bullshit and also because it’s so obvious. It’s NOT REMARKABLE that people feel like wearing one kind of clothes one day and a different kind another day. It’s not remarkable and it’s most certainly not A Sign of a mysterious exciting complicated new understanding of female and male.

There are of course many more paragraphs of this piffle, which I’m not going to read because what I’ve seen so far makes clear how stupid it all is.

Oh yes, what could possibly go wrong?

More and more and MORE “gender affirming care” – more castrations, more hysterectomies, more mastectomies, more puberty blockers, more cross-gender hormones, and more and more and MORE. It’s all so pink and festive and fun.

Reduce those barriers! In fact actively encourage people to wreck their bodies for the sake of a mass delusion! What have you got to lose?

Oh good GRIEF.

The same way it impinges on his happiness, Owen, to KEEP IT A SECRET THAT HE IS GAY.

On a different (yet oddly similar in some ways) subject, John Kelly knew Trump is a psycho.

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.

News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

…

[Kelly’s] struggles to impose order on Trump and his underlings and his virulent falling out with the president have been extensively documented. According to Baker and Glasser, who interviewed Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general bought a copy of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump as he “sought help to understand the president’s particular psychoses and consulted it while he was running the White House, which he was known to refer to as ‘Crazytown’”. “

Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person.”

Came to consider? How did he not know that all along?

The authors report that Kelly’s view was shared by unnamed senior officials, quoting one as saying: “I think there’s something wrong with [Trump]. He doesn’t listen to anybody, and he feels like he shouldn’t. He just doesn’t care what other people say and think. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Same. I’ve seen plenty of people who don’t care enough, but not people who don’t care at all.

Onward again.

[As always I tweak the transcript to expand abbreviations and supply missing words and punctuation and so on, as it’s done at speed without technical aids.]

MG: moving on to LGBA attitude to Mermaids. Page 232 

MG: You deny trying to deprive Mermaids of funding or attack on their fund raising efforts.

KH: yes.

MG: You appreciate my client takes a different view. Turn back to vol 2.2. This time at 1136 and what LGBTA says here, tweet dated May 5 2020 ‘profound homophobia at heart of GI’ that’s straight attack, undermine Mermaids.

KM: straight attempt to say all these groups are displaying profound homophobia.
MG: it’s gender propaganda?
KH: [reads] statement full of feeling. Feeling behind is love for children who are confused. That’ll be seen in future decades as most wicked medical scandal.

Yeeting the teets? You think?

Skipping a bit of back and forth.

MG: the institutions you mention are responsible for profound homphobia.

KH: yes.

MG: You denied seeking to undermine Mermaids but contrary to what we see in tweet. 

KH: I don’t agree. There’s a place for challenging discussion. This is a life and death discussion. Most serious issue I’ve ever been involved in in my life as a lesbian. I find it terrifying and staggering in size of influence. I believe its our duty to challenge when promoted. 

On other hand I see Mermaids has a right to exist. We can criticise them, they can criticise us. That’s pluralistic society
MG: nature and tone from LGBA, this combative attack. Do you accept that’s your approach? Not pluralistic, but personalised.

KH: targeted commentary of danger posed to children. It’s not illegal to be confrontational.

MG: Your use of language now you don’t regret tone? You think appropriate?
KH: yes
MG: and happy to use language you just have?
KH: yes 

They go back and forth over funding and lottery money and whether LGBA tried to get Mermaids denied lottery money. MG gets insulting.

MG: I suggest that’s coyness that answer.

KH: well it isn’t intended to be coy. Intended to say it could be seen as that. I’ve never been coy in my life and don’t intent to be in the hearing. 

In other words “coyness” is a sexist taunt so FO. I too can use acronyms.

KH: 2 things by clinicians. Think David Bell talked about TATG and others at GIDS talking about homophobia said ‘soon won’t be any gay kids left to trans’. That’s hearsay but think well known to be factual.

MG: You put that in a hashtag.

KH: We were not allowed on the BBC thanks to the efforts of Mr Nicolson… it became important for us to use twitter for our voices to be heard. Our voices have been suppressed and everything we’ve spoken we’ve been called transphobic bigots.

All because of a mass delusion.