To think I used to admire Peter Tatchell.
So, who cares, right? So 80 “cis lesbians” do get pressured to have sex with men pretending to be women, so what? Bitches. Karens.
A lot of people make the point that Simon makes:
How many people was that claim based on? 27.
Bros before hos.
Simon Edge tells us that the publishing industry is full of horrible little censors. Little in mind, regardless of stature.
He and Stock and Joyce and Shrier and Bindel all found publishers who would ignore the tiny-minded ones, but they still deal with retail staff who hide the books and rebuke customers who want to buy them.
(Off topic – All those shiny buildings? They’re all brand new. That part of the city used to be low-rise, drab, quiet, uninteresting, a neglected edge of downtown.)
We know what’s next.
But if the custom is to yell and cheer and scream, a bizarre silence is itself any unpleasantness. Very unpleasant indeed if you ask me.
And now another ratchet. You thought it couldn’t get worse? Ha.
A blacklist. Very progressive.
A crudely written vituperative piece on the Allison Bailey tribunal by one Moya Lothian-McLean:
Barrister Allison Bailey – a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, a transgender-exclusionary organisation – is suing, in one fell swoop, Garden Court, her legal chambers, and Stonewall, the largest LGBTQ+ organisation in Europe.
It’s just stupid and ludicrous to call the LGB Alliance “transgender-exclusionary.” There is no law or rule or unwritten agreement that lesbians and gay men must “include” trans people in everything they do. It’s not particularly obvious why they’re expected to “include” them at all ever. Stonewall, meanwhile, could be said to have become a mostly trans-focused organization, and it can certainly be called one that treats some lesbians and gay men like The Enemy.
Bailey’s case is just one of several legal challenges brought by those who fall under the umbrella of what’s now termed the ‘gender critical movement’. They’re made up of a loud (and often public-facing) minority, that run a gauntlet from rightwing evangelicals, in the American mould, to radical feminists.
Oh sorry are we loud? That must be awful, when the trans minority is so very whispery and gentle and self-effacing. Also “run the gauntlet”? She means “run the gamut.” Too bad nobody at Novara caught that. Embarrassing.
Binding them is an inexplicable opposition – in many cases, what feels closer to virulent hatred – to the existence of trans people.
Mkay now we’re getting defamatory. She’s implying that the gender critical movement wants to genocide trans people.
Increasingly, their focus is on the law and attacking even the current meagre rights it offers trans individuals, from access to healthcare to protection from the likes of conversion therapy.
From the likes of? This fool cannot write.
An interview with a Stonewall lawyer follows, but it’s too stupid and dull to go into.
Oh, gee, I thought Priss Choss was such a keen environmentalist.
The duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, two of the royal family’s largest portfolios of land, have snubbed tree campaigners who are calling for the royals to rewild their estates.
Well. You know. There’s The Environment, and then there’s One’s portfolio of land.
Rewilding advocates at the campaign group Wild Card have been meeting for months with the crown estate, which manages most of the royal land and pays the revenue into the Treasury. They say relations have been “really positive”.
However, the duchies are separate to the crown estate, and not subject to the same level of accountability. The two organisations – described by the land campaigner Guy Shrubsole as “medieval anachronisms” – manage more than 73,000 hectares (180,000 acres) of royal land between them, with all profit going directly to the royal purse.
That’s how it is when your ancestor was the successful mob boss.
Both estates have lower levels of tree cover than the national average. The duchy of Cornwall, run by Prince Charles, has only 6% tree cover, and the duchy of Lancaster has 13%. The average in the UK is 16%, while in Europe it is 38%.
Choss is a tree-hugger of other people’s trees.
The duchies have no intention of talking to any of these pesky rewilding people.
“The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have categorically ruled out meeting with our campaign. This is an appallingly undemocratic affront to our futures,” said Emma Smart, campaigns manager for Wild Card, which has highlighted the lack of forest cover on royal land.
The group has delivered a 100,000-signature petition and emailed the duchies on nine occasions, but has had no response.
Wild Card is asking the royals to practise what they have preached during the Queen’s jubilee tree-planting scheme and allow more trees to grow on their own land.
…
The duchy of Lancaster owns about 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres) of grouse moors on the North York Moors and about 180 hectares (450 acres) of grouse moors in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire. Campaigners have said much of this land lies on peat bogs*, which should be allowed to grow wild to sequester carbon instead of being used for grouse shooting.
There it is, it’s the grouse shooting again. What do the environmental benefits of trees matter compared to a handful of toffs shooting birds out of the sky for the mere sake of killing them?
*Updating: see Enzyme’s comment on peat bogs as much better carbon sinks than forests are.
Honoring Pride Month.
H/t Jane Clare Jones
Jon Pike talks about conceptual engineering and That Word:
There is a growing approach in philosophy called “conceptual engineering”. It’s a cool name for an interesting project. Indeed, one of my colleagues at the Open University is heavily involved as a conceptual engineer. They look at our concepts and see if they are doing good work — if they are functioning well. If not, then we should try to improve them (“ameliorate” is the key term). The chief thinker behind this is Sally Haslanger; the title of her main work Resisting Reality: Social Constructions and Social Critique gives you a flavour of what she is up to.
…
So far, the term (and concept) “female” has seemed relatively immune from such attempts. The term “female” is straightforward. It’s generally accepted as an ordinary scientific and biological term. You can see that it is unambiguously a sex term rather than a gender term by realising that it applies across species: we don’t have woman squirrels, but we do have female squirrels.
It’s a good thing that we have some fixed and simple terms that apply to regular and important features of the world. It enables us to describe those features of the world in straightforward ways. To have the term “female” is a help in describing features of the world that matter — sexed features. That there are such features of the world seems to me important, and obvious. You only need to look at the work of Caroline Criado-Perez to see why, and the emergence of organisations like Sex Matters is part of a political move to focus on those features of the world where, well, sex matters.
The word is useful, we need it, so let’s not re-engineer it so that it means something else.
Creasy, and others, want to decouple “female” from the reality of biological sex. That project I find intellectually disturbing. It’s lots of other things — I think it’s politically damaging to the party we both support, I think it’s an affront to women, and I think it radically distorts the discussion. In policy, I think a redefinition of “female” would be disastrous, most obviously in health care. In the words of Keir Starmer, it generates more heat than light.
The affront to women is particularly…noticeable, in my view. It’s very affrontful. It’s an absolute classic of the “Well women don’t matter much so…” school of thought.
But my concern is in some ways quite narrow. I write about sport, and sex categorisation in sport. Here, it is obvious that sex matters. I have to be able to refer to biological sex in order to do my job. Creasy, then, is blunting the tools — the words — that I need. I argue for this claim: it is unfair for people with male advantage to compete in female sport. I try to give reasons for that view, to argue for it with governing bodies, to work out ways to apply it to sport policy. Whether people agree or disagree with that substantive view, this is legitimate academic work. In order to do it, I have to use a term to refer to biological sex. If Creasy succeeds, I will have to reorder my position. I will have to say that “it is unfair for people with advantages accruing from Homeostatic Property Cluster One to compete in sport designated for people with Homeostatic Property Cluster Two” or something similar. If we reached that point, there would be a loss to public debate. It would become obscure and technical.
Not to mention just way too goddam much trouble. If we have to use nine words instead of one to name women we won’t be able to name women at all, because any time we try people will just walk away.
Warwick Pride Issued a Statement the other day – which is to say, it wrote a public post on Facebook. It’s quite a surprising document.
STATEMENT REGARDING EXTERNAL SPEAKER NADHIM ZAHAWI
That is, Facebook post regarding external speaker Nadhim Zahawi.
TW: Transphobia, SA, abuse, homelessness
SA = sex abuse, right? So why isn’t it either “SA, A,” or “sex abuse, abuse”? Or indeed “abuse, sex abuse” – it’s more usual to start with the general and go on to the specific.
Picky picky.
It has been brought to our attention over the past few weeks that the Warwick Conservative Association is running an external speaker event, inviting Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education, to campus on Friday the 27th of May.
It’s very pompous, that “It has been brought to our attention” – makes it sound as if they’re so important and powerful and busy that they don’t have time to keep track of events, and as if they have armies of sycophants eager to bring things to their attention.
Towards the beginning of this academic year Nadhim Zahawi said the following regarding former Sussex University Professor Kathleen Stock, a notorious transphobe that is a signatory to the WDI (Women’s Declaration International formerly known as the WHRC) “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights”, that published the transphobic book “Material Girls”, that is a trustee of the LGB Alliance:
What’s up with saying “that” instead of “who”? Three times? Is it deliberate, to indicate that Kathleen is a thing rather than a person? Or just illiterate?
“It was unacceptable that a scholar of her calibre should be hounded out of university. For me that was just a terrible stain on the history of that great university.”
The WDI declaration argues for the legal elimination of transgender people. Quite frankly, Kathleen Stock’s behaviour as well as the university’s reaction is the only real “stain” on Sussex University concerning this incident.
That makes it sound as if the WDI Declaration argues for genocide. It’s as malevolent as it is stupid, and that’s saying a lot.
There are about 15 more paragraphs of the usual spite and blather. I miss the good old days when lefty students campaigned for workers and women and people of color and lesbians and gay men.
Headline news: Lia Thomas does not admit that his competing as a woman in swimming competitions is unfair. No, really?!!
Transgender NCAA swimming champion Lia Thomas is firing back at those claiming her dominance is unfair to biological women … saying trans athletes will not destroy women’s sports.
“Firing back,” eh – that’s tactful. He’s already physically bullying every woman he competes against; he’s not the one who needs to do any “firing back.”
The University of Penn athlete broke her silence on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday … saying she knew she’d face backlash once she started competing against women, but no amount of scrutiny would stop her.
And no amount of women pointing out how unfair it is would stop him. Of course it wouldn’t: he’s an entitled prick.
“I was prepared for that, but I don’t need anyone’s permission to be myself and do the sport that I love,” she said.
Except that it’s not himself. It’s a fiction. Himself is a man, but he’s competing against women, while claiming to be a “trans woman.”
And the boast about not needing anyone’s permission is very rapey, very entitled, very domestic violence-like.
“Transitioning to get an advantage is not something that ever factors into our decisions,” he says. I don’t believe him. “Trans women are not a threat to women’s sport,” he says. Of course they are. Men have physical advantages over women, so if men start forcing their way into women’s sport, they will ruin it for women. That’s a threat.
A tale of hecklement and Labour royalty:
One of the students who led a trans protest that hounded Nadhim Zahawi off a Russell Group campus is the son of Labour grandees Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, it has emerged today.
Is a trans protest a bunch of people sitting at Starbucks pretending they’re at a protest?
Mr Zahawi was hounded by around 30 activists who chanted ‘Zahawi is a transphobe’ and ‘Tory scum’ outside a talk the Cabinet minister gave to Warwick University’s Conservative Association.
In video posted by the Warwick Labour society, Joel Cooper interrupts the Education Secretary’s Q&A to heckle him over his trans views. He then sits down to cheers from fellow Labour activists. Later, he shared the clip to his Instagram story, Guido Fawkes reported.
I wonder what the views are. That men aren’t women? Crazy stuff like that?
In a statement issued by Warwick Pride before the talk, they branded Mr Zahawi a ‘reactionary harmful transphobe’ after he defended Kathleen Stock, a former Sussex lecturer who was hounded for her views on trans rights and left the university following protests against her.
…for being “a reactionary harmful transphobe” blah blah blah and thus we go on until every reasonable human on the planet has been told to wheesht.
The group added that the Education Secretary ‘plays a significant role in institutional transphobia’ in the UK, ‘trivialises’ the effects of outing LGBT+ young people to their parents and claimed he has used the ‘common transphobic dog-whistle ‘adult human female”.
The what? We’re not allowed to use the words “adult human female” now? While “women” no longer means “women”? What word or combination of words are we allowed to use to name the female sex? (Obviously not “female sex”; I committed a crime by using those two words next to each other.)
The Mail tells us a little about the Pride activists who were protesting.
Less is known about Warwick Pride’s president, who goes by the first name Mia. A mathematics and physics undergraduate, Mia identifies as ‘transgender, non-binary, genderfae, asexual, demiromantic’ and ‘neptunic’. Their interests include ‘music, electronics, programming, arcana, community management and moderation’ – and ‘Lego’.
It’s not just the eccentricity of the labels, it’s also the wealth of detail. Nobody cares. That’s a basic truth that people should learn early and never forget. Nobody cares about the details of wonderful you. Ask yourself how much you care about other people’s details of wonderful them. Got it? It’s a very small figure, isn’t it. Now notice that it works the other way around. Now resolve never to forget it again.
I do wonder what “neptunic” is though.
Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Democrats, was acquitted on Tuesday of a felony charge that he lied to the F.B.I. about having no client in 2016 when he shared a tip about possible connections between Donald J. Trump and Russia.
The jury returned the verdict after about six hours of deliberations split by a holiday weekend. It was a blow to the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration three years ago to scour the Trump-Russia investigation for any wrongdoing, and a vindication for Mr. Sussmann’s decision to fight the case before a jury.
Good. The more blows to Durham the better.
Yeah right.
If that were true he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing. If that were true he would go on competing against men, or give up competitive swimming. If it were true he would make very sure he did nothing whatever to take advantage of his True Self at the expense of women. If it were true he would be sharply aware that exploiting his advantage over women to cheat them out of medals and opportunities would be a terrible look. He would find the very idea painful, and flinch away from it. He would know he had no right to make the mix-up of his birth into the wrong body a problem for women. He would look at himself in the fucking mirror and say no way and that would be the end of it.
What kind of difference though?
The Crown Prosecution Service seems like a branch of government that should be particularly unpolitical. Sophie Cook is a man who identifies as a woman.
That sounds benign, but male trans activists tend to have a particular idea of EDI – equality, diversity, inclusion – that is very far from unpolitical…or uncontroversial or uninsulting to women. In other words I think putting a man who calls himself a woman in charge of helping to embed EDI at the Crown Prosecution Service is a punch in the face to women.
Women aren’t included yet. Women don’t have equality yet. Why put a man in this job rather than a woman? Why, especially, put a man who pretends to be a woman in this job? It’s a double insult – passing over women in the usual way, and then giving the job to a pretend-woman who is in thrall to an ideology that treats women like a costume? Why not give the job to, say, Allison Bailey instead?
Updating to add what I didn’t notice – he has replies turned off. Yay, Speak Out Champion, helping with incloosion and diversitee, and doesn’t want to hear from the peasantry.
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Claiming to believe.
It’s the choice to believe this, coupled with the smug, arrogant forcing of that belief on others that is so bafflingly infuriating. Creasy wouldn’t be so condescendingly flippant if she wasn’t backed up by a virtual army (and actual police forces) ready, willing, and able to punish wrongthink. Fortunately, more and more people are willing to speak out against this insanity. Sometimes just repeating what transactivists say (i.e. Ricky Gervais) is enough to show just how insane the “required” beliefs and compelled speech are.
To the extent that trans activism has operated behind the scenes to influence laws and regulations outside the bounds of open, democratic debate, it really is an “elite” movement. It really is a conspiracy. And, it might just be the reaction of the great, “unwashed masses” of people outside the rarified, indoctrinated bubble of social media that helps to turn this around.
I’ve hated the fact that some on the Left have handed the Right this big pink and blue cudgel with which to beat us. While branding any disagreement or criticism as fascist bigotry, they are helping actual fascist bigots. I’ve hated the fact that media outlets have destroyed their credibility in the course of pandering to gender ideology. Their dishonest reporting on the everything from TiMs in women’s sports, male rapists “identifying” their way into women’s prisons, and the gutting of single sex spaces for women represents actual, unironic, no scare-quotes fake news. And all of this in the midst of an accelerating climate disaster, an ongoing pandemic, and a war in Europe. Bravo, you stupid, selfish assholes. (Slow clap). They should all be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps, someday, some of them will be.
Today is the day we learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Bill Gates grows fake meat in a peach tree dish.
“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said.
“They want to know when you are eating, they want to know if you are eating a cheeseburger which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”
She’s both – stupid and ignorant. Win-win.
Jo Bartosch on Stella Creasy’s confused ramblings of the past few days:
[I]n an interview for the Telegraph on Friday, Creasy made her contempt for women’s rights campaigners clear. She claimed to believe that ‘some women were born with penises’ and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’. In the interview she complained about being a victim of sexism while feigning frustration and bemusement that some women, like JK Rowling, continue to hold on to the belief that biological sex matters.
Funny thing: it’s actually sexist to express frustration that Rowling, or any woman, continues to be aware that biological sex matters.
At this point, Creasy had two choices: she could eat a slice of humble pie and slink off to do some learning, or she could persist and await the inevitable serving of her own bruised arse. Predictably, she chose the latter and what followed was a less-than-edifying online temper tantrum, during which she tried to cast those asking legitimate questions as Twitter trolls.
But wait, it got even worse! There was the part about saying she’d spoken to all the women’s groups, and the women’s groups saying no she hadn’t, nope, no, not us, no, never met her.
She has nowhere left to go but clown shoes.
Originally a comment by Rob on Collective frustration.
Winning at sport is a hugely compelling motive for people who are into sports. Even if there’s no money involved, even if there are no scholarships at stake.
I can certainly attest to that. While I played some sport at high school, it was not a focus for my life, but as an adult I took up a high risk aviation sport and discovered that I was very highly competitive – even though the most recognition that got you was a ‘nice flight’ from peers. Competitive enough that I’ve more than once put my life on the line, which once back on the ground was clearly stupid, but in the air seemed like a carefully reasoned and absolutely proper thing to do.
Athletes in whatever sport aim to be the best they can, and preferably to win. I see that in my partner and her multi-sport friends. None of them is ever going to win a major contest, but they devote enormous resources in both time and money to maintaining and incrementally extending their performance. And this is middle aged women doing it for kicks, not people chasing life changing scholarships, promotional deals, and representative team slots.
I remember a couple of decades ago a large number of college and potential Olympic athletes were anonymously polled whether they would use a performance enhancing drug that would guarantee an Olympic win, but lead to a dramatically shortened lifespan. An eye popping number (I recall it as being between 20-30%) said they would.
I don’t have any idea what goes on in William/Lia’s head, but I have no problem in believing that winning and fame at any cost is lurking in there somewhere.
Government and heads of schools differ over the “What To Do about students who say they are trans” problem.
School leaders have described advice from the attorney general, Suella Braverman, to “take a much firmer line” with pupils who identify as transgender as “unhelpful” and potentially damaging to children’s mental health.
In an interview last week, Braverman said schools in England do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender and are under no legal obligation to address them by a new pronoun, or let them wear a different uniform.
They shouldn’t have to or be under a legal obligation to, it seems to me. Schools aren’t required to play along with all students’ fantasies, after all, so why is this one fantasy singled out for Careful Handling? Especially when the basic job of schools is to educate, and that requires not lying.
Headteachers, however, who are increasingly having to navigate their way through these issues, fear that not listening to young people “would risk damaging mental health” at a time when pupils have already suffered during the pandemic.
Maybe it would, but here’s the thing: maybe so would “listening to young people” in the sense of agreeing that they are the other sex. Maybe both are risky. Maybe both are risky but one is more risky than the other and it’s not clear which one. Maybe the listening and agreeing approach is more risky over time – a palliative now but the source of disaster in two or five or ten years. It’s really not the case that humoring the belief system is obviously and clearly and reliably the safer option.
The attorney general told the Times that under the law, under-18s cannot legally change their gender, so schools are entitled to treat all children by the gender of their birth. She also said some teachers were effectively encouraging gender dysphoria by taking an “unquestioning” attitude.
This prompted criticism from Caroline Derbyshire, the executive head at Saffron Walden county high school, leader of the Saffron academy trust and chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable – a non-party political headteachers’ group operating as a thinktank.
She said: “No good can come of any young person being forced to adopt a gender they feel miserable with. It certainly won’t improve their learning.”
How about letting the young persons dress (and cut their hair) however they like, and just set aside all the My Gender Is stuff until later. (It’s hard to know what “adopt a gender” even means. A girl isn’t “adopting a gender” if teachers continue to call her “her.”
“Schools do all kinds of things to safeguard the welfare of young people that they are not ‘bound’ to do by law,” she went on. “I am a believer in rules and following them, but I think that not listening to young people and their parents on this quite particular and personal matter would risk damaging mental health.”
But what if agreeing to young people’s fanciful and socially-induced ideas about their Magic Gender would also risk damaging their mental health? Which, if you think about it, seems pretty damn likely.
Some schools have already adapted their uniform codes to remove distinctions between boys’ and girls’ schoolwear in an effort to accommodate transgender students. Dysphoric or transgender pupils at Brighton College, a private day and boarding school that takes pupils from reception to sixth form, can choose between wearing a traditional blazer, tie and trousers, or skirt and bolero jacket.
That. Do that. Relax about the clothes, and then stop thinking about them. Don’t draw wild conclusions about teenagers being the other sex because they don’t like the clothes they’re made to wear. In fact why can’t they wear trousers and a bolero jacket? Why can’t they wear trousers and a turtleneck? Why make them wear ties for god’s sake? They’re not working in office towers. Loosen up on the clothes, and leave “gender” for much later, when it’s someone else’s problem.
Even apparent adults do it. Roger Pielke seems like an adult:
Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001. He is the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics. Roger’s research focuses on science, innovation and politics. In 2011 he began to write and research on the governance of sports organizations, including FIFA and the NCAA. Roger holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science, all from the University of Colorado. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. Roger also received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Impressive. Serious. And yet…
Updating: Naif informs us Pilke’s a climate change denier.
Holly Lawford-Smith says unions shouldn’t persecute women. Seems sensible.
THE Universities and College Union (UCU), which represents academic and related staff in UK universities, meets for its annual Congress this week.
…
UCU has chosen to include in the agenda a highly divisive motion celebrating a lesbian feminist academic losing her job after a relentless campaign of bullying and harassment.
Anyone seeing the images of masked activists on campus demanding the sacking of Professor Kathleen Stock must have wondered how political debate on women’s rights could sink so low.
The UCU Sussex branch notably failed to offer any solidarity to Stock, who had been a loyal member for decades.
The failure to support her right to participate in public policy debates about women’s rights sets a precedent that can only damage the labour movement.
…
Motion 38 is wilfully divisive. It depicts as “transphobes” anyone who holds “gender critical views,” which means the view that sex matters in a range of contexts, from sports to single-sex service provision.
The motion denounces anyone who disagrees with the erasure of sex as a legal category, and anyone who criticises the corporate lobby group Stonewall, or opposes “affirmation-only” therapeutic approaches for children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria.
Wouldn’t you think we’ve had enough of denunciations?
Motion 38, “Defend trans and non-binary people’s rights,” reads:
Congress notes:
1. Government hostility towards Stonewall for its support for trans rights, including disaffiliations by the BBC and government bodies;
2. Government’s refusal to implement Self-ID in the Gender Recognition Act;
3. Government’s failure to recognise non-binary as a legitimate identity;
Wait a second. What is a legitimate identity? What does it mean for a government to “recognize” anything as a “legitimate identity”? What other “identities” does government “recognize”?
That doesn’t sound like government language to me at all. What business is it of governments what “identities” people have? The word can mean anything and nothing – by meaning anything it ends up meaning nothing. And then add “non-binary” to the mix and you have meaningless nonsense cubed.
4. The EHRC’s [Equality and Human Rights Commission] attempts to delay anti-conversion therapy legislation for trans people and undermine the Scottish government introducing Self-ID;
5. The Tories’ anti-conversion therapy Bill that dangerously presents equivalence between oppressive anti-trans conversion therapy and pro-trans affirmative intervention.
Congress:
a. Congratulates Sussex University UCU for their solidarity with student protests against ‘gender critical’ views;
Ohhhh that’s ugly. That is ugly. They’re wanting the union to congratulate the Sussex branch for bullying and terrorizing Kathleen Stock out of her job there, because they hate her view that men can’t literally become women.
b. Welcomes the founding of the Feminist Gender Equality Network, committed to opposing transphobia on campuses and more broadly;
c. Resolves to oppose ‘gender critics’ and transphobes promoting ‘gender ideology’ and trying to undermine trans and non-binary people’s rights and promote divisions between women’s and trans people’s rights.
They want the university union to bully and punish women who don’t think men can become women. They might as well go full Vatican.
Sonia Sodha on the “cotton ceiling” issue:
If policing people’s sexual preferences through the lens of race feels deeply unpleasant, when it comes to sexual orientation, it is wrong and dangerous. Yet we are in the extraordinary position where lesbians are now being told by some activists that it is bigoted for them to say they are not attracted to trans women who are biologically male. This is not a fringe belief: the chief executive of LGBT charity Stonewall recently said in relation to a BBC story about lesbians feeling pressured into dropping their boundaries: “Sexuality is personal… but if, when dating, you are writing off entire groups like people of colour or trans people, it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction.”
What are “entire groups”? How do we define them? Are trans people the same kind of “entire group” as people of color? How about poodle-havers? Quiche eaters? Fans of Antiques Roadshow? How do we know when we’re “writing off entire groups of people” when there are so many possible groups to consider?
Last week, a QC on the Bar Council’s ethics committee defended the concept of overcoming the “cotton ceiling” – the offensive idea that a lesbian’s lack of desire for trans women is rooted in bigotry rather than their same-sex attraction – and compared it to initiatives to promote racial integration in post-apartheid South Africa.
Which outraged not only because it compares lesbians to supporters of apartheid, but also because it compares people who call themselves trans to victims of apartheid. It’s hard to know which is more disgusting.
Cotton ceiling is a reference to lesbians’ knickers. It is a riff on the glass ceiling and posits that just as the professional advancement of women is hindered by sexism, the sexual acceptance of trans women is impeded by the “transphobia” of lesbians attracted only to females. It was Cathryn McGahey QC, a witness for Garden Court, who drew the analogy between this workshop exploring how “ideologies of transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire” and South African racial integration and who implied it was possible in a non-coercive way to persuade a same-sex attracted lesbian she might want to have sex with a trans woman.
And on what planet would this “non-coercive way” be found? Certainly not this one. Trans “activism” is the most coercive “social justice” movement I’ve ever witnessed.
