What’s NARAL doing sharing this?
Of course women (and girls) are the only people who get abortions. What is a man going to do with an abortion? Men don’t get abortions, women do. The reasons are too obvious to spell out.
You can’t “remind” people of nonsense. “Reminder that owls aren’t the only rabbits who get shovels!” Can’t remind me of that because I never knew it because it’s a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers.
Meghan Murphy is underwhelmed by Andrew Sullivan’s urging us to “compromise.”
The problem begins with the premise: that the category of “trans” is either a definable or rational category, distinguishable from those who do not identify as “trans.” Often, explaining that there is no such thing as a “trans person” is (disingenuously, in my opinion) interpreted to mean I wish to “deny the existence” of people who identify as trans. I do not. I am well aware there are people in this world who identify as transgender or who have attempted to “transition” to the opposite sex or gender. It is the category itself that makes no sense. Anyone could be trans, should they choose to claim it. It means nothing and demands nothing. Today I could be a woman, tomorrow I could decide I am trans, and nothing will have changed. The identity is no longer based on surgeries, body modifications, appearance, or medication. It is a feeling or pronouncement.
And we’re expected (on pain of punishment) to take those pronouncements as absolutely and obviously true, and not just true but beyond question. We’re not allowed to doubt them or even to suspend judgement about them – we’re not allowed to treat them as meaningless claims about the internal self that are of no interest to anyone else. Things don’t usually work that way. We’re not usually ordered to believe whatever claims people make about their hidden surprising reality-contradicting Selves. It’s not a reasonable request, let alone command.
The question is also not and should not be one of “belief.” Stating “I believe trans people when they tell the stories of their lives,” as Sullivan writes, means nothing at all. What is it you believe? That these individuals feel at odds with their bodies? That they dislike the gender stereotypes imposed on them? Welcome to life. These feelings are not necessarily abnormal.
And they’re also not of interest to the wider world. Again, this isn’t a usual expectation – that we “believe” all stories people tell about themselves. The stories people tell about themselves are their concern but they’re not ours, not without a good reason, not as a general rule. Stories of police brutality or sexual harassment are of interest to the wider world, but stories of My Special Self are not.
And even for those individuals who may legitimately suffer from what is termed “gender dysphoria,” meaning that their body dysmorphia or rejection of either masculinity or femininity is so acute it constitutes a form of mental illness, “believing” them remains a meaningless approach. I also “believe” girls struggling with anorexia think they are fat, despite being dangerously thin. It doesn’t make them actually fat. These are just feelings and thoughts, which do not require the creation of an entire separate legal category of people…
That “just” in front of “feelings and thoughts” is so necessary. Our feelings and thoughts are important to us, but they’re not equally important to everyone else. You know why? Because everyone else’s feelings and thoughts are more important to everyone else, that’s why. This is the core thing that growing up has to teach us, and people who fail to learn it do not make good adults. See: Trump, passim.
Scientific American tries to tell us that “youth” who identify as trans need to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, yes need I tell you. It’s science.
This week Arkansas became the first state to ban physicians from giving hormones or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender people under age 18. Doctors who do so could be stripped of their licenses and sued. The law is called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act…
…
The state senate sponsor of the Arkansas bill, Alan Clark, has said that puberty blockers and hormone treatments are “at best experimental and at worst a serious threat to a child’s welfare.” But medical and scientific organizations say his claim is wrong.
We are given the usual long list of organizations and the usual claims that it’s all safe safe safe.
The Netherlands group was the first to study puberty blockers in transgender children. And Annelou de Vries, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, says she has not seen any major side effects in the approximately 1,500 adolescents treated at her clinic. Last June her team published a study showing that 178 transgender adolescents receiving blockers had better psychological functioning and fewer suicide attempts, compared with 272 transgender youth who did not receive early care.
What about the long haul though? What about how they fare as they get older? Is it really a safe bet that tinkering with teenage bodies this way will be good for them for the next 50 or 60 years?
And are the people doing this research inquiring into how these teenagers became convinced they’re the other sex in the first place? If you become convinced that you can’t be happy unless you have a diamond belt buckle, then having a diamond belt buckle may make you happy for a time, but how did you become convinced of that in the first place? Is it a real need or longing? Or is it a socially generated need or longing, which can be intense, for sure, but is very subject to decay and change over time. How sure can the researchers really be that blockers and hormones will be good for the subjects over a lifetime?
As their investigation progresses, Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues are trying to get as much information as they can about how gender-affirming treatments affect the body, which will help physicians better target treatment to individuals and know what to watch for. One major medical concern about puberty blockers is their effect on bone growth. The drugs prevent the accumulation of bone mineral in growing children, which is why physicians try not to administer them to adolescents for very long. But a study by the Netherlands team found that transgender boys’ bone density returned to normal within a few years.
Cool cool cool. Go ahead and weaken their bones then. Might as well, right?
But hey at least it’s nothing to do with social contagion, so that’s good.
I guess Strangio has access to the minds of all people who identify as trans, and thus knows all their thoughts and where the thoughts came from. Must be a lot to keep track of.
Huh. I thought Dawkins wouldn’t backtrack, but…wrong again.
Funny. It was always easy for him to brush off feminist women who disagreed with him, but trans women? Not so much, I guess.
So there can be such a thing as too much deference? Who knew?!
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history, as viewers expressed their annoyance that shows such as EastEnders and MasterChef were replaced with royal tributes.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
BBC One and BBC Two dedicated Friday evening’s programming to Philip, and their ratings fell as viewers switched off altogether, turned to streaming services or watched shows such as Gogglebox on Channel 4.
But but but but he was so important. Plus his death was such a shock and surprise, what with him being only 99 and all.
How we’ll miss those stories of the dear man crashing his car into people as he careened along the roads near Sandringham.
Within hours of Philip’s death the number of complaints about the coverage had become so large that the BBC set up a dedicated form in an attempt to streamline the process. This form was then taken down on Sunday, making it harder for people to register their displeasure.
Well they weren’t supposed to use the form. Peasants.
Not all the complaints were about the extent of the BBC’s coverage. Almost 400 people wrote in to complain that Prince Andrew had featured despite his association with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and refusal to answer questions posed by the FBI.
That is, despite his association with serial rapist and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his refusal to answer questions about whether or not he had joined his pal Epstein in any of the serial raping of trafficked teenage girls. That association.
A further 233 people complained that BBC presenters were not wearing sufficiently respectful clothes, with viewers complaining that not all newsreaders were wearing black…
collapses in helpless laughter
In an email on Monday morning, the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced that its chairman, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), presented Trump with its first-ever “Champion for Freedom Award.” The NRSC said that the award is given to conservative leaders who work “tirelessly” to “stop the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
…
Trump was handed the award on the same weekend that he rambled on about his usual grievances at the RNC’s spring donor retreat while delivering remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The former president, however, reportedly saved his most incendiary insults for McConnell, who he derided as a “dumb son of a bitch” for not opposing the November election results.
Well it doesn’t get much more freedom than that.
Following a series of confusing events after Trump lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to the NRSC, RNC and the National Republican Congressional Committee to stop using his name and likeness in their fundraising efforts, Scott was deployed by the NRSC to head to Mar-a-Lago to make nice with the former president. Trump and the NRSC chairman reportedly discussed how they could team up and find suitable candidates for the 2022 midterms that the former president could get behind, including incumbents.
And they decided one great way to boost Republican chances would be for Trump to call Mitch McConnell names. Hence the award!
Or something.
Well, no.
Where to begin. “Gender affirming care” isn’t a medical thing, it’s a political thing disguised as medical. There’s no such thing as “gender affirming care.” Saying he means it “in the most literal and serious sense” is ludicrous: not prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers can’t possibly be seen as literal (and serious) genocide. It’s not even literal withholding of life-saving medical care, which itself couldn’t be called genocide without a lot of other factors added. It’s not even that, and on the contrary, it’s intended to avoid risky interventions in natural puberty. There’s a heated debate about whether cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are harmless or not, about whether they’re harmful or not, about whether they help struggling adolescents cope with puberty or make it worse, about whether the psychological relief they provide to some who get them is worth the risk they pose to all who get them, and so on. There’s already plenty of evidence that some people who take cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers go on to regret it. Withholding cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers is simply not comparable to deliberately murdering an entire population. It’s not comparable to Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine, it’s not comparable to Hitler’s genocide, it’s not comparable to the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the genocide in Darfur. It’s not like that.
Dr. Tess Tanen is trans. Dr. Tanen is wrong about genocide.
Peter Tatchell orders women to let men into spaces reserved for us.
Excluding trans women from women’s spaces because of physical or sexual violence by a tiny unrepresentative minority is like banning all Muslims because of terrorist acts by a handful of extremists. SO WRONG!
So then not allowing men into women’s spaces because of violence by a minority is also like “banning all Muslims because of terrorist acts by a handful of extremists”? So then women don’t have a right to women-only spaces at all, ever, no matter what? Do women have to give birth in public then? Do we all have to do everything in public and leave all our doors and windows open?
In other words Peter didn’t bother to think about what he was saying, he just saw an opportunity to tell women what to do, and he seized it.
Not everyone said yes sir, whatever you say sir. A lot of people pointed out that it’s not his place to tell us we have to include men in spaces reserved for us.
He did a followup post explaining that he’s right.
As a follow up to my post on Wednesday about trans rights, which generated a staggering 1,400+ comments: I am not telling women what to do. I am merely expressing my point of view, in the same way that I accept that straight people have a right to comment on LGBT+ issues. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Moreover, I’m simply echoing the many feminists & women’s organisations that have been trans-inclusive for many years – with the support of staff and women service users, and without any problems. They endorse trans rights and inclusion. Are all these feminists and women’s organisations also misogynists?
He is telling women what to do though, and condescending to us as well.
I reject the trope of trans women as predators. Although I share the concerns of those who are worried about women’s safety, I don’t agree that a blanket ban on trans women is right or the answer. Men who want to harm women don’t need to pose as trans women to do harm.
In addition, many acts of women-on-women violence are committed by women who are not trans, so demonising trans women and focusing on them as a huge threat is disproportionate and not evidence based.
If there are trans women who have a history of violent or sexual assaults on women, and have not demonstrably reformed, I agree they should not have access to women’s spaces. Indeed, many women’s organisations already vet women & trans women to exclude anyone perceived to be a threat or not a genuine trans woman.
I recognise that there are many deeply held differences on this issue but believe they can be reconciled in a way that supports both women’s and trans rights. All women, trans or not, are victims of misogyny. And trans women suffer particularly high rates of male hate crime, domestic violence and sexual assault. This common oppression by men must surely give all women, including trans women, an interest in working together to fight misogyny in all its forms. I have supported every women’s rights struggle, including trans women’s rights, for over 50 years and will continue to do so, even if we disagree on the trans issue. Solidarity with all women worldwide fighting for respect, dignity, rights and freedom x
But trans women aren’t women, they’re men who “feel like” women or some such woolly nonsense. They’re not women, and they have a striking tendency to hate us. We don’t want to invite them to our party, and we don’t have to. Women are concerned with stuff that affects women; trans women are a massive change of subject. We don’t want to talk about their subject, and we don’t have to. Men as a group have a strong tendency to hog the microphone; we don’t want to share the microphone with them, and we don’t have to.
Be more inclusive by never mentioning mothers or fathers.
Schools and sporting groups in Victoria will be told to avoid terms like “mum”, “dad”, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” as part of a push to curb the dropout and suicide rates of LGBTQI+ young people.
Here’s a surprising fact: lesbians and gay men can have mothers and fathers. I don’t think lesbians and gay men object to the words “mother” and “father.” (I don’t know why schools are talking about “mum” and “dad” instead of “mother” and “father”; mum and dad are personal names, which schools shouldn’t be using for anyone, because it’s intrusive and weird. “Mum” and “dad” are not nouns, they’re family nicknames.)
The North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network has set up the #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign which will bring in unisex bathrooms, non-gendered playing teams and rainbow flags in a bid to be more inclusive.
But that’s not more inclusive, it’s vastly less inclusive. It excludes girls from school. Girls aren’t going to want to go to a school where they have to share the toilets with boys. And the sports thing, as we know to the point of tedium, excludes girls from sports.
Oh well, just girls.
Genevive Gluck at Glinner’s site on the core reversal:
In 2018, Me Too campaigner Rose McGowan was at a Barnes and Noble bookshop in New York promoting her memoir Brave, which details the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. During a question and answer session, as Rose was discussing her grief and recovery, a trans-identified male heckled her from the crowd, saying, “We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. Trans women are in men’s prisons, and what have you done for them?”
The viral video depicts a trans-identifying male with hair dyed pink, wearing a pale pink hoodie, standing among a crowd of seated patrons — who observe stoically — yelling, “This is genocide! This is the AIDs crisis all over again! This is white cis feminism!” an outburst prompted by an interview with RuPaul in 2017 wherein McGowan said that trans-identified males experience life differently from women. The heckler is peacefully removed while chanting, “White cis feminism!” in an apparent attempt to rouse the audience.
The audience wasn’t roused. Several women laughed.
After the removal of the heckler, urged on by supportive cheers, McGowan rises and shouts, “I do not subscribe to your language!” and proceeds to condemn the use of demeaning labels.
There was support from the audience, but clips from the event edited that out.
In particular, the US Women’s March organization denounced her within the day. Women’s March stated that “denying trans women’s identities is never okay,” in a tweet that also linked to trans activist Katelyn Burns’ interview with the agitator, a trans-identified male named Andi Dier. Dier claimed that those who identify as trans women are more oppressed than women, saying “When someone pulls down her pants and sees a v-gina, she won’t be murdered for it. That is not something she fears. That’s why she’s cis.”
Except of course when she is murdered for it, which is a great deal too often. Maybe Andi Dier fears violence if he tries to convince a man that he’s a woman who wants to have sex with him, but that’s a separate and quite specialized issue. It’s irrelevant to violence against women, and it’s in no way the fault of women. Why doesn’t Andi Dier run around interrupting men’s q and a sessions? Why does he target women?
Gluck did some research on Dier and found him to have some…permissive views on sex with minors. She notes that people get punished for mentioning such things.
In December 2020, while researching the influence of pornography on gender ideology, I noticed that Dier had reappeared on Reddit and Twitter, advertising homemade ’sissy’ pornography. Over the course of the past few months, Dier has been active in several subreddits, including both the r/rapefantasies and r/rape forums; the former focuses on rape-themed pornography, and the latter is a support group for victims. Even as Dier advertised in one forum by saying, “trans lesbian rapemeat needs to be f*cked straight,” he was simultaneously commenting in a support group for rape survivors.
In other words, I take it, he’s using a support group for rape victims as fodder for rape-themed pornography. Nice guy.
To consider Andi Dier an outlier is to ignore a disturbing trend involving the normalization of dangerous sexual paraphilias and the degree to which institutions have been more concerned with protecting their public image than with defending women and children from male violence. Indeed, women are being banned from social media platforms for calling attention to male sexual abuse as well as for questioning the increasing trend of forced inclusion of male-bodied people in women’s spaces.
Whaaaaat could possibly go wrong.
H/t YNnB
Several Republican leaders on Sunday expressed concern at incendiary comments made by former President Donald Trump during a speech Saturday night at a Republican National Committee donor retreat.
Incendiary comments were fine as long as he was squatting in the White House, but now that he’s the official loser, they’re discovering an uncomfortable level of heat.
The former president went off-script in a roughly 50-minute keynote speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, ripping into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, even calling him a “dumb son of a bitch.” Trump also took aim at former Vice President Mike Pence — saying he was “disappointed” in him for not fighting the certification of the election results in January — as well as Anthony Fauci, who Trump said was “full of crap.”
New Trump just like the old Trump. They lay down with this guy, they can’t complain about the syphilis now.
Trumpcine instead of vaccine. Dang, that’s really really clever. They should totally do that.
Ruth Smeeth, CEO of Index on Censorship, complains of polarization…a complaint I always find rather dull and beside the point. “X is for torture and Y is against it; oh no the polarization!” It seems especially beside the point for an organization whose title and purpose is to oppose censorship. It’s not literal censorship to say stop being so polar, but it is a form of pressure to say different things in a different way.
Of course, the reality is this has always been part of our political discourse. There is a healthy tradition of challenge in our public space. But…my concern is it is no longer on the fringes of our national conversations, it now dominates and the damage that it is doing is untold.
Says the CEO of the anti-censorship organization.
In the last week, we have seen academics compared to the KKK, a trans writer attacked for being long-listed for a literary prize for women, and a new narrative on intersectional veganism which attacks other vegans for not considering the role of white supremacy in their eating habits.
I added an Oxford comma there, because it’s badly needed for clarity. I hate the taboo on the Oxford comma. There needs to be a pause after her second example, so that we can separate it out in order to say what shite it is.
Torrey Peters was not “attacked for being long-listed for a literary prize for women.” The people who put Torrey Peters on the list were criticized and disputed for putting him there. We are allowed to do that, no matter how “polarizing” the CEO of Index on Censorship thinks it is.
Because of the list, there has been criticism of Peters’s writing, especially of the sissy porn “forced feminization is soooo erotic” trope, but again we are allowed to do that. Maybe it is “polarizing,” but whose fault is that? What are we supposed to do about woman-hating porn and woman-displacing trans-identified men? Just shut up? Very politely say sirs we do kind of wish you wouldn’t appropriate everything that’s ours?
I am not saying that people don’t have the right to these views – of course they do. Index on Censorship exists to ensure everyone’s rights to free expression. But that doesn’t mean that our words and deeds don’t have impact or consequence.
We witnessed in America only this year where this form of populist politics can lead to, at the extreme end – the storming of the Capitol. This week we’ve riots on the streets of Northern Ireland, again. Anti-Chinese hate crime has spiked post-Covid. In Belarus, Hungary and Poland we witness daily the appalling impact of the combination of this political polarisation and authoritarian-leaning governments. Words have consequence.
And she’s comparing gender-critical feminist women to that.
Wait, who is it that is polarizing again?
Young Americans for Freedom made the mistake of sneering at the observation that racism is built into many US highways, thus giving a lot of people the opportunity to educate onlookers about the well-documented fact that racism is built into many US highways. Own goal.
No, they’re right, it’s not parody, and it’s true.
That thing about roads designed not to allow buses? That’s closely tied to voter suppression, too. The suppressionist bills that limit voting places are helped along by extra difficulty getting from Point A to Point B for people with little money and no car. If you have to go a long distance to vote and there is no bus route near you – bam, there’s your obstacle to voting.
LA public radio station KCRW in June 2020:
While Los Angeles does not feature statues of slave traders or Confederate generals, there are less obvious monuments to structural racism. Just turn to freeways.
When construction of the Interstate Highway System began in the 1950s, white-dominated municipalities nationwide often routed freeways through communities of color or as a divider between Black and white neighborhoods.
The 10 freeway is a prime example. It split the affluent northern parts of the LA basin from some of the economically struggling Black areas of South LA. This affected thriving Black communities, including the Pico neighborhood in Santa Monica and the Sugar Hill area in West Adams.
Planners didn’t generally say “put them in the black neighborhoods,” at least not in public, they framed it as urban renewal, slum clearance, a brighter tomorrow.
He’s still alive, but it was a near thing.
A second lieutenant in the US army is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop last December in which the officers drew their guns, pointed them at him and used a slang term to suggest he was facing execution before pepper-spraying him and knocking him to the ground.
Body camera footage shows Caron Nazario, who is Black and Latino, dressed in uniform and with his hands held in the air outside the driver’s window as he tells the armed officers he is “honestly afraid to get out” of his SUV.
But they must have had a good reason for the traffic stop, right?
No.
Daniel Crocker, a Windsor police officer, radioed that he was attempting to stop a vehicle with no rear license plate and tinted windows. He said the driver was “eluding police” and he considered it a “high-risk traffic stop”, according to a report included in the court filing.
He wasn’t eluding police, he was heading for a place with lights, so that they couldn’t shoot him in the dark.
Another officer, Joe Gutierrez, was driving by when he heard Crocker’s call, saw him attempting to stop the SUV and decided to join the stop. Gutierrez acknowledged that Nazario’s decision to drive to a lighted area happens to him “a lot, and 80% of the time, it’s a minority”, Arthur said, quoting the officer.
Gee I wonder why.
The lawsuit says that by the time the two officers reached Nazario’s SUV, the license plate was visible in the rear.
In other words they had no reason to stop him.
Nazario drove to a gas station where, according to the lawsuit, the officers drew their guns and pointed them at Nazario. The officers attempted to pull Nazario out of his vehicle while he continued to keep his hands in the air. Gutierrez pepper-sprayed Nazario multiple times.
“I don’t even want to reach for my seatbelt, can you please … My hands are out, can you please – look, this is really messed up,” Nazario stammered, his eyes shut.
The officers shouted conflicting orders, telling him to put his hands out the window while telling him to open the door and get out, the lawsuit says. At one point, Gutierrez told Nazario he was “fixin’ to ride the lightning”, a reference to the electric chair and a line from The Green Mile, a film about a Black man facing execution.
Nazario got out of the vehicle and asked for a supervisor. Gutierrez responded with “knee-strikes”, knocking him to the ground, the lawsuit says. The two officers struck Nazario multiple times, then handcuffed and interrogated him. The stop was captured on Nazario’s cellphone and cameras worn by Crocker and Gutierrez, according to the lawsuit.
All this when they had no reason to stop him in the first place.
The video is stomach-turning.
On 11 March, Legal Feminist (a collective of feminist lawyers, of which I am a member: tweeting from @legalfeminist and blogging at legalfeminst.org.uk) tweeted this:
That’s from a pre-prize novella Peters wrote called The Masker.
The Masker isn’t a one-off: there’s a genre. It’s called “sissy porn,” and “forced feminisation” is a popular trope among aficionados[2]. It is a manifestation of a phenomenon known as autogynephilia: a tendency in some heterosexual males to be aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women[3].
With “as women” meaning things like getting aroused by “forced feminisation.” Has it all, doesn’t it – not only stealing what we are, but also treating what we are as all about masochistic joy in violent subordination. Gee, I can’t imagine why we would object to any of this, can you?
In this novella, Peters explicitly eroticises violence against women. The fictional narrator is a masochist for whom dressing as a woman and being treated as female is the ultimate sexually arousing debasement; and for whom “treated as female” means “violently abused.” The single most chilling line in this extract, to my mind, is “meek as an abused woman.” The narrator is luxuriating in his own fearful, humiliated capitulation.
Would Torrey Peters luxuriate in being told to fuck all the way off and not come back? Because I’d be more than happy to oblige.
That being so, it is scarcely necessary to spell out what nerve was hit by our tweet about Peters’ longlisting for a women’s literary prize. Women are being told that transwomen are in every sense women; that we should unquestioningly welcome them into women-only spaces, spaces where we are undressed or in other ways vulnerable or wishing for privacy from males. We are told that if we have any doubts about the safety of extending that welcome, or if it makes us feel uncomfortable, that is because we are bigots.
And here’s this guy writing about how sexy it is to be punched in the face and getting nominated for a women’s prize for writing.
[T]here is – in The Masker and similar material – clear evidence that some proportion of male-bodied people who choose to dress as women are individuals for whom the idea of themselves as women – doing women’s things, in women’s spaces – is not merely convenient and comfortable, or even affirming and validating, but positively erotic. And that some proportion of that category regard femaleness as inherently debased and humiliating, and find the thought of violence against women arousing.
We’re entitled to find that an alarming and enraging prospect: we’re entitled to take strong exception to being co-opted as involuntary bit-part players in someone else’s kink. We’re entitled, too, to fear that some of those for whom the thought of inhabiting the role of an abused woman is erotic may also be aroused by swapping places and abusing an actual woman. The violently abusive language directed against prominent women who speak against gender ideology does nothing to reassure us.
As for me, not only does it do nothing to reassure me, it pisses me off and disgusts me and makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with people.
Torrey Peters has come to prominence by being the first transwoman to be longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In other words, Peters is a biological male who is now in the running to win a prize that was conceived – and presumably endowed – on the basis that it would be ring-fenced for women.
What made the difference was the sickeningly misogynist nature of some at least of Peters’ writing.
A transwoman who has previously published misogynist and abusive pornography which treats femaleness as inherently degrading has been shortlisted for a prestigious prize for women’s fiction, and that fact has been triumphantly reported in the national press.
Exactly so.
This, to my mind, is blatant power play. Women have been abused, bullied, no-platformed, hounded out of their jobs, threatened and in some cases physically assaulted for putting forward civilised measured arguments against self-identification, and for explaining patiently and politely why biological sex sometimes matters, and even for writing accurately on the relevant law. Most of the mainstream feminist organisations and too many prominent individual women have capitulated and are obediently trashing women’s protections and reciting the mantra “trans women are women.”
This outrage – and others like it – feels like part of a victory parade: the more flagrant the outrage that we can be terrorised into ignoring, the more complete – meek as abused women – our capitulation.
And so we persist.
They just will not report on this subject honestly.
A protest against trans health-care scheduled this weekend in downtown Vancouver has reignited a debate pitting the protection of vulnerable youth against the right to free speech.
It’s not a “protest against trans health-care.” Nobody is campaigning to prevent trans people from getting health care. The issue is not health care at all, it’s health-compromising body modifications to match the sex one is not. It’s also not a matter of trying to block the protection of vulnerable youth. Nobody is demanding the free speech right to keep vulnerable youth from being protected.
Vancouver social justice lawyer Adrienne Smith fears the April 10 event will include transphobic rhetoric that contributes to real-world harm, and believes police and city officials have the legal tools necessary to shut the protest down.
What about the real-world harm to women and girls that transphiliac rhetoric contributes to?
“It’s definitely a breach of public order to say hateful things that are likely to inflame others,” Smith said. “There’s no middle ground with hateful comments.”
There’s also no universal agreement on what “hateful” means in this context, to put it mildly. I consider “trans women are women!!” far more “hateful” than “trans women are men.”
Promotional material says the event is to “stop child-medical transition.” In other words, to protest transgender kids accessing gender-affirming health care, which can include puberty blockers and connecting them with trans-inclusive health care providers.
“Gender-affirming” health care isn’t health care at all. It cures no disease, it prevents no disease, it heals no wounds. Being female or male isn’t a disease or an injury.
Gender identity expression is also protected under both the B.C. and Canadian human rights codes, and a recent court ruling chastised a parent for improperly trying to interfere with a teen’s gender transition, which had been approved by a team of medical professionals.
That’s because Canada has frankly gone nuts on this subject.
Andy Lewis on confusion between ontology and epistemology of sex
Much confusion appears to exist in popular discussion about the nature of sex. This has political importance at the moment, most visibly in recognition of people with trans identities in law and society. Confusions abound around conflations of the terms sex and gender, but, most fundamentally, about what a sex is, and what it means for an organism, animal or human, to have a sex. What is a sexed body? How can we tell what sex an organism is? Clear responses to these questions are so often lacking. And without that, policy, law and social arrangements are likely to be incoherent and unjust.
Much of that lack of clarity is deliberate, with the goal of convincing everyone that sex is how you identify as opposed to what you are.
I do not believe for one moment we can help improve the lives of people with gender dysphoria and trans identities if we rob all the relevant words that might objective describe those experiences of any stable and coherent meaning. And even more so, and despite [Sarah] Hearne’s wish to help women, we cannot help women if we cannot say what the word “woman” means. So intent is this article in denying the link between being a woman and being female, that an extraordinary statement is made,
But we should also bear in mind that women aren’t discriminated against because they have vaginas, or breasts, or even because they have babies. Having babies makes it easier to discriminate against us, but the pay gap still exists for childfree women. It goes back to gender – the “socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities” that have led women to be less valued than men in society.
Just what is it then that creates injustice and discrimination for women? To what are these “socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities” applied to if it is not being female and the sex that bears children? No suggestion is made.
Which is absurd. Why do male animals of many species fight each other for access to ovulating females? It’s not because of “gender.” Why do dominant male animals of many species monopolize ovulating females and attack them if they stray? Not because of “gender.”
It is difficult to think of a greater conceptual and ideological muddle than this that exists amongst educated people. The Skeptic magazine as the “home of critical thinking” has obviously absolved itself of the need for thought here, or indeed the need for consistency. Not a few days before, the magazine published another article which apparently appeared to know full well why women are subject to discrimination based on their sex, and that fact they have vaginas, when they wrote an article entitled “Virginity testing is as unscientific as it is sexist, but will banning these tests prove effective?”
Virginity testing can be described as barbaric, monstrous, revolting, (insert your own virtue signalling qualifier here). It denies women autonomy over their bodies, reinforces gender inequality and outright devalues their humanity. But virginity testing is a symptom of the underlying root cause, which is the violation of human rights and the oppression of women.
But what’s the underlying root cause of that? Eggs. It’s all about the eggs.
We can be sure that no virginity testing is applied to anyone with a penis. One of these articles is horribly wrong. Or worse, the second is horrifically “transphobic”. But in this world of the denial of sex, consistency is not required. Pointing out incoherence and inconsistency is the only crime.
Maybe we should skip the shirts and posters with the definition of “woman” and just make it “eggs.”
McKinnon did his CNN bit. He’s highly excited.
CNN calls him Associate Professor of Philosophy at College of Charleston, which is misleading since he’s “quit” [or been told to quit or be fired, or just plain been fired] and will be gone as of May 15 and has been on sabbatical and then medical leave all this year.
His fans are gloating at his…erm…whatever this is.
Anyway. Point is, things have to be arranged to suit McKinnon. That’s all you need to understand about trans women in sport.
There you go. If transgender people had their own sports then McKinnon would literally have no one to race against, and we can’t have that, so all of women’s sport has to be wide open to takeover by men who say they are women. Mind you he doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t have people to race against, he just asserts it, as if it were a rule of sport that people who win literally have no one to compete against. He’s equating being the best in the field with being the only in the field, but that’s just silly. Literally.
Oh look, a provocation from Dawkins that doesn’t make me roll my eyes.
Been discussing for several years now. Progress slow.
It’s outrageous that children are being taught that in school, by the people delegated to educate them. Talk about violating human rights.
