Ellen Pasternack at The Critic tells us of a terf-spotting guide for the imperiled students at Cambridge.

… just last week, Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) published a guide to identifying something called “TERF ideology”, featuring section headings such as Spotting TERFS in the Field and Signs Of A TERF. We learn from this guide that “the language of TERFS is ever changing” and that “the unique danger of TERF rhetoric is that it is styled to sound like feminism”.

Nah it’s not styled to sound like feminism, it is feminism. That’s what the F is for. It’s also not rhetoric, it’s critical thinking.

This eight page guide, intended for incoming students at the Freshers’ Fair, is an expansion of an earlier version published in 2019. It sits on the student union website alongside guides to exams, careers and student finance. There are no guides to spotting racist, sexist, or homophobic ideology: detecting TERFs is apparently a matter of unparalleled urgency.

Why? Why are trans people The Most while everyone else is barely on the radar?

Let’s have a look.

Trans liberation is part of feminism. Fighting for autonomy and freedom must be a fight for everyone, and there should be no room for transphobia or TERFs in feminist organising.

That’s stupid. Trans “liberation” isn’t part of feminism at all, and is in fact intensely hostile to it. Feminism has its own work to do, and helping men pretend to be women is not part of that work. The absurd idea that it is is yet another reason we need feminism.

The core characteristics of TERFs are a conservative, binary, essentialist conception of sex as the be-all-end-all, and a deep hatred for trans women, couched in the language of feminism and feminist theory.

No, stupid, not “the be-all-end-all,” just the reality. Women are women: they have women’s bodies. It’s not a religion, it’s just what the word means. If trans people take it we’ll just have to replace it with one that means the same thing.

The first thing is to try and figure out where they got it from. Did they hear it from a friend, or read a news article? If they’ve read something. and it’s the first thing they’ve heard about trans people or the first time they’ve taken an interest, it may be relatively easy to inform them about where they’re going wrong, and why what they’re backing is harmful. If they’ve heard it from someone they trust and care about, consider how you frame the argument to avoid it becoming about personal relationships, which may make them defensive.

Don’t look them in the eye, that makes them very aggressive. Move calmly and slowly. Always carry treats in your pocket, you may be able to coax them to listen to your lecture if you toss them a few olives or pistachios.

Seriously though, is there anything like the conceit of kids age 20 who think they invented the world?

Worcester News:

A GROUP of men who dress in women’s clothing to raise money claim they have been told their fundraising is potentially offensive by charity bosses.

I bet I know which set of people they were told it’s potentially offensive to, and I bet it’s not women. It’s been seen as perfectly fine for centuries, whether women saw it as offensive or not, but now…well there are more important people who might find it offensive. Women, you see, aren’t important. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Members and supporters of Upton Rugby Club have dressed in drag for the Leo Sayer All Dayer, and also held other fundraisers for 18 years, to raise more than £40,000 for St Richard’s Hospice.

But times have changed, amirite?

But the group claim they have been told their latest efforts cannot by promoted by the hospice because it might offend the LGBT community.

June Patel, St Richard’s chief executive, said they appreciated the group’s fundraising but were “striving to be mindful of equality, diversity and inclusion.”

When it comes to men, that is. Obviously not women.

I think they look ever so nice, I do reely.

Also, seriously? This is stupid. They’re now looking for fundraise for a different organization.

Hmm, interesting argument.

“They” have been warning us about global warming since the late 70s, and sure enough it’s been getting worse and worse, therefore it’s time to stop believing in it.

Uh…what?

Breathtaking.

Bystanders who stood by and failed to help a woman raped on a Philadelphia commuter train last week may face criminal charges, authorities have said. Authorities say that CCTV cameras show that bystanders on the train “did nothing” as the assault took place.

Police added that some of the bystanders may have been filming the incident instead of calling police.

Wtf???????

A man has been arrested for the rape.

The alleged rape took place last Wednesday on a train belonging to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa). In a statement, Septa said that “there were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may [might] have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911″. A Septa employee who boarded the train called police, who found the victim and took the suspect into custody.

While the passengers sat around watching the rape on their phones, I guess.

At a news conference on Monday, police said that they do not believe any witnesses called 911 as the woman was harassed and eventually raped over the course of more than 40 minutes.

…

“I can tell you that people were holding their phone up in the direction of this woman being attacked,” Septa police chief Thomas J Nestel said on Monday. “What we want is everyone to be angry and disgusted and to be resolute about making the system safer,” Mr Nestel added.

Timothy Bernhardt, superintendent of the Upper Darby Police Department, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that bystanders who failed to help could face criminal charges if they recorded the incident.

Before reading this horror story I was reading another one, about the shift from spiking women’s drinks when they’re not looking to INJECTING them.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Clue: Devi Sridhar is a professor.

JL at the Glinner Update reported on an attack on feminists in Portsmouth way back last March.

On Saturday afternoon Reclaim These Streets organised an event in Portsmouth to protest male violence against women and campaign for female safety.

Two young feminists taking part in this protest were threatened, taunted and even physically attacked by some of those in attendance.

“You’re protesting violence against women?? We’ll give you some violence against women to protest about!!!”

The two extremely brave young women stood on the Guildhall steps, holding a flag on which was written the dictionary definition of the word ‘woman’. Adult human female.

For this they were vilified and assaulted and the crowd jeered at them.

When the women were eventually forced from the steps, the crowd taunted them, made threatening gestures and shouted “Fuck off, c*nt!” as they walked away.

Compelling argument.

Solidarity forever yeh?

We spoke to Chinzia, one of the two women involved. She told us:

“We pulled a stunt to show what is being destroyed, our female sex, our meaning. They charged towards us on the guildhall steps, we were pushed, shoved, while we clung for dear life to the meaning of what we are. I shouted ‘The definition of what a woman is is in our curriculum’. They shouted back, ‘White supremacy is in our schools’.

Councillor Claire Udy encouraged the crowd to shout ‘Terf scum out!’. The crowd did not find it chilling to see men aggressive towards women at a protest against male violence. Young feminists applauded this moment”.

Councillor Claire Udy is an interesting character.

Incidentally, the Claire Udy to whom Chinzia refers is an independent councillor for Portsmouth’s Charles Dickens ward and a vociferous ‘trans ally’. She describes herself as ‘queer’, used to advertise a link to Pornhub in her Twitter bio, and parted company with the Labour Party after being caught out making anti-Semitic comments.

Feminist, lesbian and survivor, Sally Jackson, was also harassed and bullied at the Portsmouth event, seemingly also at the instigation of Claire Udy. The crowed chanted at her and she was called a TERF. After intervention by Udy, she was told by a steward that she may not be able to speak because the organisation she represents (Filia, a group with charitable status which campaigns for women’s rights) is ‘transphobic’.

Way back last March.

Imagine the cognitive dissonance of attending an event to protest male violence against women and then physically attacking, or cheering the attack on, two young women taking part.

Indeed, and yet we keep seeing it, over and over and over.

Here’s Claire Udy on October 7:

In other words stand with us in harassing a feminist conference. Rad!

The Telegraph on Stephen Nolan and Stonewall and the BBC.

Stonewall said it works for LGBTQ+ equality and that it is “deeply disappointing” that this can still be thought of as controversial.

“Equality” is just a manipulative buzzword there, in exactly the way “trans rights” are a manipulative slogan. What is “trans equality” exactly? What Stonewall campaigns for, and tells people to do if they want to be “Stonewall champions,” is a mess of pandering and flattering, that has nothing to do with equality. It’s not “equality” to order people to use Special pronouns, or agree that men are women, or nod enthusiastically at the claim that children know who they are. Gender critical feminist are not arguing against equality for trans people, either. It’s all deception. The push to bully us into agreeing that people can change sex is a million miles from equality.

Stephen Nolan, one of the broadcaster’s own journalists, has now spoken out, claiming that “there is a fear factor” among colleagues who disagree with the broadcaster’s alignment with the charity.

Of course there is. The trans ideologues are fanatics, and vindictive with it.

It’s because we trigger such strong feelings.

Female reality TV contestants are far more likely to be targeted for abuse by online trolls than men, research reveals.

Women of colour are particularly vulnerable to extreme and violent threats online, according to a report from the Demos thinktank, which looked at contestants on reality shows Love Island and Married at First Sight.

…

The researchers noted a particular recurrence of gendered tropes in the social media posts, including those which characterised women as devious, mentally unstable, emotionally volatile, evil, annoying or attention-seeking. Women were also much more likely to be “the subject of extreme misogynistic sexualisation and objectification” than men, they said.

And much more likely to be called cunts if they express an opinion.

Cindy Southworth, the head of women’s safety at Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said: “Women should feel safe everywhere, no matter what space they’re in. We don’t allow gender-based hate, misogynistic attacks or any threat of sexual violence on Facebook or Instagram, and just last week we announced stronger protections for female public figures, journalists and activists.”

Is that a fact?!

Spoiler: no.

What was that about death threats again?

On the one hand down with hate speech, on the other hand “suck my dick you transphobic cunts” is just strong feelings. Libby Purves in the Times:

Several evangelists have been convicted for lumbering around with placards against homosexuality, a chap got six months suspended for leaving a stupid cartoon in an airport prayer room and a peerlessly silly YouTube comedian got arrested for teaching a pug to do a Nazi salute. Quivering with sensibility, we proudly cherish our disapproval of “distressing” anyone, even if that distress is theoretical and caused by some harmless stranger’s moral opinion. There is little backing now for the tough old saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.”

Unless it’s about women defending their boundaries.

Yet as we have been rightly reminded by weary MPs after the killing of Sir David Amess, real and explicit death threats are commonplaces of public life. Every few weeks Tulip Siddiq finds herself informed by some random fellow citizen that she will be raped and murdered, her family butchered. Jess Phillips has to report similar messages “all the time” to the police. The mayor of London needs 24-hour security and Rosie Duffield missed the Labour conference because of the danger posed by transgender activists. Elected officials at every level and public health scientists have had their addresses published with explicit violent menaces, often mentioning or involving their families…

Being gender critical deserves all the abuse it gets, but genuine explicit death threats are ok.

Only very occasionally is someone brought to book for such threats: only four prosecutions can I find from last year. Meanwhile the learned, thoughtful academic philosopher Kathleen Stock, who again wields no actual power, has been advised by the police to teach online, install CCTV and take bodyguards on campus.

The people bullying her, on the other hand, wear masks.

They just never get the point.

The first tweet should begin “One of the protesters,” not “Thanks be” – autocorrect struck again.

“Emotions had run high”=it’s understandable and forgivable to call women “cunts.”

This is not an argument you ever see applied to the word “nigger” in internecine disputes among the left. No one on the left thinks that’s understandable and forgivable because of high emotions.

But when it’s women somehow that’s different. It’s just passion, it’s just excess zeal, it’s just emotions running high.

They don’t get it. They don’t ever fucking get it. The fact that when emotions are running high men start calling women “cunts” is the whole point. Yes of course it’s because the sign-maker was furious at the feminist women at the conference; that’s our point. Step one is calling us cunts, step two is beating us up. When men lose their tempers at women, violence becomes all too likely. It’s not mollifying to tell us that guy who called us cunts was just really pissed off. We already know that.

Julie Bindel on the conference and its misogynist enemies:

On arrival at the venue I saw the usual array of blue fringed students and other hangers on, some draped in trans flags, others with slogan T-shirts declaring themselves non-binary, genderqueer, he/him, they/them, zi/zir, idi/ot. They were protesting, yes, protesting, a conference with a key aim to campaign to end male violence towards women and girls, and to offer support and solidarity to the victims and survivors of that violence. Of course, the reason put forward by the blue fringes, including those that had waged a war against the conference venue from the moment it was announced, was that the organisers and attendees were anti-trans, as though everything is about them.

Specifically as though everything about women is about them – even more specifically as though everything about feminist women is about them. It’s feminist women who don’t “center” men who say they are women who really get their protest energies going. Men who don’t “center” women who say they are men? Pff, they don’t matter, because they’re men. Men’s hearts are always in the right place. It’s feminist women who are the real demons in the word – conniving, sly, cruel, witchy.

I met some women I had only ever seen on Zoom, such as the amazingly talented Vaishnavi Sundar, a filmmaker from South India and the founder of Women Making Films. Vaishnavi has worked with marginalised women all her life and campaigns against male violence. Her achievements are impressive – Vaishnavi successfully fought for women to be able to access morning-after contraception in the state of Tamil Nadu. In 2018 she began making a film about sexual harassment of Indian women, including the voices of lower-caste women in the workplace as a way to hold the Indian criminal justice system to account for the lack of implementation of its laws. The film, But What Was She Wearing?, was finished in 2020 and Vaishnavi secured screenings in North America before showing it in India. Her reputation is such that her work is always warmly welcomed in both the Global North and South. But shortly before a screening of the film in New York, Vaishnavi was emailed by the organisers and told that she was no longer welcome and the event was cancelled along with Sundar and her film, due to her ‘transphobia’. Their evidence? Tweets such as “A safe space for trans women is not inside a woman’s bathroom”, posted by Vaishnavi.

So the screening of a film about a film about sexual harassment of Indian women, including lower-caste women, was canceled because everything is about men who call themselves women. Men’s need to play-act being women is more significant and support-worthy than women’s need to be free of harassment and violence. What gruesome priorites.

Oh gosh the calendar has gotten away from me again. It’s just three days to International Pronoun Day!!

International Pronouns Day seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace.

Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender nonconforming people. Together, we can transform society to celebrate people’s multiple, intersecting identities.

One, no, referring to people by “the pronouns they determine for themselves” is not basic to human dignity. It really really isn’t. The whole idea is trivial as well as stupid. Things that are trivial and stupid can’t be basic to human dignity. Some things are basic to human dignity, but customized pronouns are not one of them. Treating language as an opportunity to impose personal whims on all other speakers of the language is itself undignified; it’s babyish and dopy. There’s no such thing as “determining” pronouns for oneself. That’s not how language works; that’s not what language is for. Failure to understand that is like a giant custard pie in the face. Dignity is nowhere to be seen.

Two, no, together we can’t transform society to celebrate people’s multiple, intersecting identities. It’s not that easy to transform society, and doing it in aid of something stupid and childish is extra difficult, and also not worth doing in the first place. Celebration of identities is a terrible goal for a transformed society. Identities are about the self, and the more people focus on their own precious selves, the less use they are to the world. Forget about fucking identities and just do something helpful.

Dang, says it all.

Tweet one says an African woman at the FILIA conference is talking about her experience of rape and ethnic cleansing, while “protesters” outside are shouting and drowning her out. The “protesters” at the conference were trans activists and allies who want to force women to be “inclusive” of trans women, i.e. men who call themselves women, in everything women do. This noble cause of forcing women to include men in everything we do drowned out the words of an African woman talking about rape and ethnic cleansing. Their trivial and unreasonable grievance over not being allowed to grab everything that belongs to women drowned out genuine and hideous violations of women’s rights in Africa.

The egomania of it is suffocating. And this “Steph” says if only FILIA were reasonable the egomaniacs wouldn’t have been punishing them. Sounds so familiar.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on This time it’s global.*

We humans see species being lost in huge numbers, but nothing catastrophic happening as a result. So we shrug and call environmental scientists alarmists, infuriating iknklast in particular. But obviously this is only sustainable for a little while and when climate change and habitat loss reach such a level that key species disappear and damage begins to propagate exponentially… well, we’re certainly going to notice then.

The short human lifespan (and even shorter business and election cycles) offer a poor basis for judging the results of our environmental perturbations. Our timescales are not well attuned to slow changes in our surroundings. Even outside of human activity, the Northern hemisphere is still undergoing post-glacial isostatic rebound after the most recent retreat of the great ice sheets. We even have a hard time noticing changes from events orders of magnitude faster, assuming we’re interested in paying attention to them in the first place. In Harold Edgerton’s high speed photographs of bullets passing through balloons, the punctured ballons retain their prior form for a brief instant before exploding and collapsing into a shapeless mess. When it comes to evaluating our impact on the environment we’re still in that instant before the explosion and resultant shapeless mess.

In the West the concept of extinction itself is barely 200 years old. Just looking at our destruction of a few species of birds, it’s only been about a thousand years since the extinction of Madagascar’s Aepyornis, about 600 years since the demise of Moa species in New Zealand, 350 since the death of the Dodo and just over 200 years since the functional extinction of the Great Auk. The passenger pigeon has been gone for just over a century. On top of the extirpation of these birds, we also cleared land, planted crops, and introduced other species, both wanted and unwanted, into most of their former haunts. In the waters where Auks once lived, we mined cod to the point of collapse. So we piled change upon change in rapid succession, heedless of the results of the initial destruction, ignorant of unintended conseqences, barely cognisant of what we actually did do.

An ecosystem which has suffered the extinction of one or more of its constituent species can never “return” to its previous “balance”. It must find a new shape. Given our continued disruption of so much of Earth’s environments, that new shape and balance, the accomodation to the imposed new order, is still being worked out, in many cases without the courtesy of our notice or concern until that new configuration and functionality has some unfortunate, unforeseen impact on our interests, comfort, or profits.

We’re living in the midst of a massive, multi-generational, uncontrolled and unrepeatable experiment on the entire biosphere of the only planet in the universe known to support life. Poorly designed, and launched without any ethical review, carried out with little or no follow-up, this experiment, thousands of years into its run, is only now stirring concerns about its effects and morality. Well, better late than never, I guess.

*Which is his own post. It feels faintly absurd to guest post a comment on the guest poster’s own guest post, but it can’t be helped.

This is repulsive coming from an MP.

They’re not a hate group! That’s such a foul thing to say.

He has me blocked on Twitter. I have no idea why, which means he probably subscribes to one of those “automatically block all the feminists” lists.

Misogyny is the new “progressive.”

We’re not allowed to talk about that, declares enlightened academic Alison Phipps.

“Trans lives are not up for debate” is a slogan meant to shut people up without saying “shut up.” What does it mean? Besides “shut up,” that is.

It means that we’re not allowed to question, or point out the flaws in, the elaborate claims about “gender identity” that are meant to underpin the political campaign to force everyone to pretend that men are women if they say they are. If a huge furious man with clenched fists shouts at you that he is a woman, you’re not allowed to point out that he’s acting like a man, and is threatening to you, and could do you harm if he threw a punch with one of those fists. It means the huge man’s claim to be a woman is his life and is a trans life and is not up for debate.

If that’s not up for debate then what is up for debate? If we can’t question claims as flagrantly untrue and untethered to reality is that then what can we question?

Whose rights to what.

The Government is spending £150 million at women’s jails on 500 new cells which can be used for transgender lags.

They will be single occupancy with ensuite loos and showers. But some will enable women to have their kids overnight to prepare for life at home.

Tory Baroness Scott of Bybrook confirmed the cells plan to support “transgender needs” as required by law and jail policy.

In July, a High Court Judge ruled holding transgender women in female jails is lawful because a ban would ignore their right to live as their ­chosen gender.

Their what? What right? What right is that?

There is no such right. That’s not a right. There’s no such thing as a “right” to live as any fictional category. There’s no right to live as a leprechaun, there’s no right to live as a visitor from another planet, there’s no right to live as a talking rabbit. None of that is forbidden, either, and people can fantasize whatever they like, but when it comes to requiring expensive special arrangements paid for by other people – forget it. When it comes to demolishing the rights of other people, knock it over the head.

Poisoning the well much? The day before the Filia conference started:

Flagpoles in Guildhall Square are currently flying the colours of trans, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, as well as suffragettes.

“trans, LGBTQ+ and non-binary” – so trans and non-binary get mentioned twice, while boring old lesbian and gay have to make do with once.

It comes ahead of a two-day ‘peaceful’ protest in support of trans rights that has been organised over the weekend (October 16-17).

That is, over the weekend of and in front of the feminist conference, protesting feminism. That protest.

Attendees of the Standing Against Transphobia will meet as a conference hosted by women’s liberation group Filia – which is accused of being ‘transphobic’ – will be held inside the Guildhall.

Thus sending the message that feminist women are evil and oppressive.

One of the protest’s organisers, Councillor Claire Udy, said: ‘This is a clear message from the council that trans and non binary lives are valid.

‘It also sends a message that it is time to reclaim the women’s suffrage flag, which has been co-opted by a transphobic movement.’

That is, it sends a message that it’s time (yet again) to tell women to stop talking about their issues and focus on trans issues instead, aka suck my dick you cunts.

Just last month a peaceful trans rights protest was held outside a University of Portsmouth building as a talk on single-sex spaces by Woman’s Place UK took place inside.

Peaceful or not, why is anyone protesting single-sex spaces? Why can’t women be allowed their own spaces?

But the piece does give Raquel Rosario-Sanchez the last word.

‘We support everyone’s right to protest but we do not support the way these protesters target and vilify us as women just because we are enacting our rights.’

I don’t support anything about these protesters.

The ACLU’s fascination with customized pronouns goes back several years. It’s a deeply peculiar cause for a civil liberties organization to focus on, because it has nothing to do with civil liberties – on the contrary, it’s a campaign to coerce people’s language for no good reason.

A blog post from ACLU Northern California in July 2015:

“Hello, my name is Anna and my pronouns are she, her, and hers.” That has now become my standard greeting at meetings and events. It wasn’t something that happened naturally, but with a little practice and intention, it became a habit.

Sure, anything can become a habit. “Hello, my name is Anna and I’m a wombat” could just as easily become a habit, but that doesn’t make it a sensible thing to say unless you’re joking.

And where’s the civil liberty? Whose civil liberty is being fostered here? Is it a civil liberty to be called by a customized (i.e. inaccurate) pronoun? It is not.

As an Organizer with the ACLU of Northern California, I spend much of my time advocating for schools that are welcoming and inclusive to transgender students. Part of that advocacy includes talking to people about gender, and educating people about transgender issues.

That’s not much about civil liberties either. Maybe a little bit, in that people can’t exercise their civil liberties if they’re being bullied or abused, but the ever-expanding claims about what it takes to make schools and everywhere else “welcoming and inclusive to transgender students” are more in conflict with civil liberties than they are protective of them. Women, in particular, are being ordered to give up a lot of civil liberties in order to be “welcoming and inclusive” to our trans sisters, i.e. men.

All people are impacted by gender and have identities that need to be affirmed and respected, but many cisgender people do not need to worry about having our gender identities recognized. We have the privilege of not having to think much about our gender or about people respecting our names and pronouns.

We also have the “privilege” of not having to think much about our species or about people thinking we’re tigers or naked mole rats or fruit flies. It’s a novel idea that there’s such a thing as “gender identity” and that everyone has it and that some tragic people have an opposite one and we have to rearrange all of life to make them feel more cozy – a novel idea and a batshit crazy one.

That is not the case for many gender nonconforming and transgender folks. Many transgender people fight on a daily basis to have their names and pronouns respected, which is no small or trivial feat. Names and pronouns shape how we are viewed in the world and are important pieces of our identities.

Where are the civil liberties? All this explaining and still not a word about them. It’s not a civil liberty to force the world to “validate” personal fantasies. If you’re trying to force people to “validate” personal fantasies you’re coming perilously close to trying to impose a theocracy. We don’t have to “validate” fantasy genders any more than we have to “validate” the father the son and the holy ghost.

The ACLU appears to have completely lost the plot.