More on the Justin Webb issue.
Also it’s about what we’re allowed to say, and according to whom.
It’s not a trivial matter, when and if we’re allowed to tell the truth about who is a woman and who is not. It’s extremely important and extremely basic. It’s shocking and dangerous that a news organization, especially one with the clout of the BBC, is telling its personnel that they are required to lie about it.
BBC to its talking heads: you WILL say men are women; that’s an order.
The BBC has upheld a complaint against Today presenter Justin Webb after he said “trans women, in other words males”.
Webb made the comment during a discussion about new International Chess Federation (FIDE) guidelines on 22 August last year regarding whether being biologically male can give players an advantage in the game. A listener complained that the comment amounted to Webb giving his personal view on a controversial matter in breach of the BBC’s requirements on impartiality.
The only sense in which it’s “controversial” to say a man is a man is the one where tiresome people make a big stupid stink about saying a man is a man. That’s not a very important or urgent sense of the word, and it has nothing to do with the truth of the matter.
The BBC‘s executive complaints unit said, in a ruling published on Thursday, that it was not in a position to determine Webb’s personal opinion on the issue but that it was not necessary to do so in order to judge whether he had breached impartiality rules.
It said: “The ECU understood Mr Webb’s intention in using the phrase ‘trans women, in other words males’ was to underline the question arising from the FIDE guidelines but noted a press line issued at the time included an acknowledgement that his phrasing did not convey an entirely accurate impression.
“In relation to impartiality, however, the ECU considered it could only be understood by listeners as meaning that trans women remain male, without qualification as to gender or biological sex, and that, even if unintentional, it gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area. It therefore upheld this aspect of the complaint.”
But it isn’t a “viewpoint.” It’s a fact, a reality, a true statement. Ask a farmer. They don’t ask their cows and ewes what gender they identify as. Why don’t they? Because it would be otiose. Cattle and goats don’t bother fretting over their magic genders, they just eat their grass and stay away from wolves. Be more like cattle.
Transgender women who are convicted of a crime must be recorded as men if they have not legally changed their gender, Downing Street has said.
The intervention comes after The Telegraph revealed that Scarlet Blake, 26, a male-born transgender woman who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a stranger and killing a cat, has been recorded as a female criminal in official statistics.
And that’s not ok even if he has “legally changed his gender” – which is frankly a meaningless phrase. If “gender” is just the social bit then why tf would it justify falsifying the statistics? If it’s sex we’re back where we started: no he is not.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “The PM has been really clear on this issue. And the definition of a woman is the biological sex and that biological sex matters. So it is important that we take that approach to these issues.
“Police forces should follow the College of Policing guidance that a person’s gender is that which was registered at birth unless they have been issued with a gender recognition certificate under the Gender Recognition Act.”
Those two claims cancel each other out. If the definition of a woman is the biological sex then “a gender recognition certificate” might as well be an all-day bus pass.
This is how we get inched into it.
That’s not good news at all. Who cares if they have “legally changed their gender” or not? It doesn’t matter. Men’s crimes should not be reported as women’s crimes.
Laws aren’t magic. It’s futile to pass a law saying dung is ice cream; you still don’t want to eat it. You could pass a law saying Mars is an easy 5 hour trip by plane, but it wouldn’t be true. Laws can change some kinds of reality, but not all kinds.
A couple of months ago, it was revealed that 1,151 police officers in England and Wales are under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse, including 657 of Couzens’s former Met colleagues. One in seven of the overall total has been allowed to continue working as usual while 428 have been placed on restricted duties. Only 378 have been suspended. Allegations against officers are so widespread that the Met Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, admitted last year that he couldn’t guarantee that a woman reporting a rape wouldn’t be interviewed by a predator. Is anyone surprised that so many rape investigations go nowhere?
It has been clear for a long time that there are failures at every point in the system, from vetting of police recruits, training and supervision of officers, and investigation of complaints. Various initiatives have been announced in an attempt to regain public confidence, including Operation Onyx, which reinvestigates allegations against officers where lines of inquiry might have been missed.
But none of this is happening quickly enough for women who find themselves agonising over whether to report a rape. Couzens should never have been allowed to become a police officer, but how many more does that apply to? Scarcely a week goes by without another officer being charged with a whole series of serious sexual assaults, but it’s often taken years before they were exposed.
I have to wonder if more attention would have been paid to this issue if people hadn’t been so busy giving all their attention to the plight of Our Trans Family. It’s as if there’s been a collective decision that feminism won a long time ago and there is no longer any need at all to stand up for women, while men who pretend to be women are writhing in agony on a bed of coals as we speak.
Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer and opportunities were missed to stop him, an inquiry has said. A radical overhaul of police vetting and recruitment is needed now, the independent review found.
…
Police “repeatedly failed” to spot warning signs about his unsuitability to be an officer, the inquiry said, and it identified at least five incidents which were not reported to police. The inquiry said this included evidence Couzens allegedly committed a very serious sexual assault against a child, described as barely in her teens, before his policing career began.
Yebbut boys will be boys. It’s just nature. You can’t correct nature. You want the cops to be tough and scary, right? Macho? Macho men will be macho men. If you weed them all out you’ll have nothing but wimps and [shudder] women in the police.
His crimes were “the culmination of a trajectory of sexually motivated behaviour and offending”, including indecent exposure, the sexual assault on a child, sexual touching and sharing unsolicited photos of his genitals, the report found.
He was a horn dog, we get it. Horn dogs make great cops.
The report found that “Couzens’ crimes “sit on the same continuum” as sexist and misogynistic behaviour within police culture.” Imagine our surprise.
Sexist misogynistic behavior is everywhere, so it’s going to be within police culture unless the police can get it into their heads that women are people too. These days they seem to be too busy sobbing over the plight of their trans mates to fix their attitudes to women.
Jamie Klingler who founded the group Reclaim These Streets in the wake of Ms Everard’s murder said she felt worse about women’s safety and police conduct than she did three years ago. “I’m not scared there’s one more Wayne Couzens on the Metropolitan Police, I’m scared there’s many, many of them,” she said.
Never mind that, what have you done to validate and uplift our trans fam lately?
The crimes of a transgender cat killer and murderer will be officially recorded as having been committed by a woman, The Telegraph can disclose.
Scarlet Blake, 26, who was born male but identifies as a woman, was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 24 years in prison on Monday for the murder of Jorge Martin Carreno in Oxford, having previously mutilated a cat.
Blake has been sent to a male prison, but was referred to as a woman during the trial.
Despite the fact that he is in reality a man.
If just saying things were enough then he could escape all this hassle by simply saying he didn’t murder Jorge Martin Carreño.
Dr Kate Coleman, director of the campaign group Keep Prisons Single Sex, said it was “outrageous” and “complete misrepresentation of the facts.”
Maya Forstater, founder of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “Police should always record suspects and perpetrators’ sex, both in order to keep them and officers safe during custody, and so that crime statistics are an accurate base for research and prevention.
“No law requires police to record false information about criminals’ sex or to mix it up with the nebulous concept of ‘gender identity’. It is high time that the Government told police forces to stop affirming criminals’ fantasies and get back to their day job of investigating crime and bringing wrongdoers to justice.”
…
As the row over the case has grown, lawyers have taken issue with official guidance from the Judicial Office which urges judges to “respect” the gender identity of those who appear in the courts by using their chosen name and pronouns.
Naomi Cunningham, a barrister in discrimination law at Outer Temple Chambers, and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Cabinet minister, called for the guidance in the Equal Treatment Bench Book to be reviewed, but the Judicial Office has stood by it.
Because endorsing people’s fantasies about themselves is more important than having accurate information on which sex is more dangerous than the other.
The lies they do tell I must say.
“Marianne” is a bloke.
Look at that makeup. Might as well be burnt umber shoe polish.
Originally a comment by Artymorty on Many doctors share our concerns.
Doctor groups like the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) came out swinging.
Doctor’s groups aren’t the same thing as patients’ groups, though. And doctors’ groups aren’t even the same thing as groups of doctors. Doctors’ groups are special interest bureaucracies, and the policies they advocate are not always in line with the interests of the patients at the receiving end of their respective fields of medicine, and they’re often not even in line with the majority of doctors working in the fields they purport to represent. Doctors’ interests diverge from patients’ interests all the time. That’s why medical scandals keep happening. And doctors’ groups’ interests diverge also from doctors’ interests, because the doctors they purport to represent are often too busy treating their patients to rigorously vet all the various policies the groups endorse, and the groups themselves are made up of office busybodies with plently of time to get persuaded by pharmaceutical lobbies or other parties with financial interests.
It’s lazy journalism to assume doctors’ groups speak for all doctors, just like it’s lazy journalism to let supposed gay rights lobbies like GLAAD, HRC & Stonewall UK speak for all gays & lesbians.
And maybe that’s the real reason for the intense pressure. People who have already transed want company.
They want company. And clout. And most of all, they want cover. Some adults who engage in unreasonable behaviours and make unreasonable demands want the veneer of legitemacy that comes with associating their behaviour with vulnerable children born special.
And other adults with obvious mental health conditions have made bad decisions they can’t undo. This group, trapped by the sunk cost fallacy and haunted by the truth seeping in through the cracks, are seeking solace by vicariously convincing others that “transness” is an innate state and that going ahead with transition is never a mistake.
It’s such a terrible psychological flaw in humans, our capacity to do great harm to others rather than admit that we made mistakes and harmed ourselves.
James Esses tells us that incloooosion stretches even to the pet industry.
There’s a handbook.
This Handbook sets out to members of staff the policies and terms & conditions they must adhere to at work. Pets at Home describe this as “our expectations of you as one of our colleagues”.
At the beginning, this reads like any other corporate virtue-signalling manifesto (which, unfortunately, are ten a penny these days). Pets at Home state: “Diversity and inclusion is an important part of who we are and what we do…We aim to create an inclusive experience for our colleagues where everyone can connect to our purpose, be themselves and make their best contributor to our business”.
Everyone can be themselves? What if my self is lazy, slow, selfish, grumpy, disobliging, careless, rude, incompetent?
Employees are also told: “We ask that you support diversity and inclusion everyday by recognising that your individual actions will impact on others and that you have a responsibility to help us create opportunities for diverse people in an inclusive environment”.
How do I know which people are diverse and which aren’t? What do I do to help you create opportunities for diverse people in an inclusive environment? Are you going to create opportunities for me in an inclusive environment? How can I tell if I’m diverse enough or not? How can I become more diverse so that you will create opportunities for me in an inclusive environment? How can I get in on this scheme?
Very quickly the indoctrination ramps up, as employees are directed towards a guide on “how to be a better ally”, entitled ’10 Ways You Can Make A Difference’.
Why do I have to be a better ally? Why do I have to make a difference? When will I have time to stock the shelves and ring up the dog food?
It goes on and on and on and on in that vein. Anyone would think it was a (colossally captured) university as opposed to a chain of shops.
Should we just give up and hand it all over to the bots?
Gemini is essentially Google’s version of the viral chatbot ChatGPT. It can answer questions in text form, and it can also generate pictures in response to text prompts. Initially, a viral post showed this recently launched AI image generator create an image of the US Founding Fathers which inaccurately included a black man. Gemini also generated German soldiers from World War Two, incorrectly featuring a black man and Asian woman.
Yebbut diversidee.
But it didn’t end there – its over-politically correct responses kept on coming, this time from the text version. Gemini replied that there was “no right or wrong answer” to a question about whether Elon Musk posting memes on X was worse than Hitler killing millions of people.
There’s no right or wrong answer to anything, maaaaaan.
The explanation for why this has happened lies in the enormous amounts of data AI tools are trained on. Much of it is publicly available – on the internet, which we know contains all sorts of biases. Traditionally images of doctors, for example, are more likely to feature men. Images of cleaners on the other hand are more likely to be women. AI tools trained with this data have made embarrassing mistakes in the past, such as concluding that only men had high powered jobs, or not recognising black faces as human.
In other words AI tools are trained the way we’re all trained. Donald Trump all by himself is the US’s trainer-in-chief. Bias in bias out, yadda yadda.
“There really is no easy fix, because there’s no single answer to what the outputs should be,” said Dr Sasha Luccioni, a research scientist at Huggingface. “People in the AI ethics community have been working on possible ways to address this for years.”
Same with the rest of the world. We’ve been working on it for years, and progress is hella slow, and easily reversed. See above about the teachings of D. Trump.
Two doctors write in The National Post [Canada]:
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s recently announced policies on restricting transgender medical interventions for minors have generated much outrage, notwithstanding a subsequent Leger poll that suggested more Canadians than not agree with her proscriptions.
Doctor groups like the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) came out swinging, each issuing strongly worded statements expressing grave concerns. Dr. Sam Wong, head of the AMA’s pediatrics section, argued that “this is poor legislation that is targeting a small percentage of population that has already been targeted by society … and the government is piling on.”
But maybe, just maybe, it’s not “targeting” people to protect them from damaging physical interventions.
The general public could be forgiven for concluding that doctors are collectively of one opinion on this issue. But that’s an illusion: the AMA and the CPS do not speak for all of us. There is no medical consensus on transgender medical interventions for minors.
It’s impossible to know what percentage of physicians agree with Alberta’s premier, given the high professional cost of speaking up. But as physicians who have spoken out publicly with our misgivings around youth gender transition, we can say that many doctors share our concerns. They approach us privately, both in person and electronically, to voice as much. But they shy away from offering public support because of fear of condemnation and career harm.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a great idea to make it taboo to share medical concerns about a medical intervention.
One reason for the taboo, they explain, is the threat of suicide…but how real is the threat?
Fact: There is no evidence for increased suicidality in kids with gender dysphoria once one corrects for psychiatric co-morbidities. A just-published Finnish study in BMJ Mental Health, for instance, which studied more than 2,000 gender-dysphoric youth and compared them to 16,000 matched controls, concluded that clinical gender dysphoria is not predictive of suicide.
Well, ok, but the kids will yell a lot and the parents don’t want to hear it. That’s a good enough reason, right?
As for puberty blockers themselves, Dr. Wong et al. simply sweep aside legitimate concerns over the use of these drugs in physiologically normal children. Hormonal suppression of puberty may permanently alter neurodevelopment, sexual function, and bone development.
Moreover, pubertal suppression may alter the course of gender identity development — essentially cementing into place a gender identity that might otherwise have reconciled with biological sex during the natural course of puberty. Over 95 per cent of youth treated with puberty-blocking GnRH analogs go on to receive cross-sex hormones, whereas up to 95 per cent of those managed with psychological support alone desist from their dysphoric state during puberty.
And maybe that’s the real reason for the intense pressure. People who have already transed want company. It’s not for the benefit of the potential trans kids, it’s for the benefit of the people marooned on the other shore.
That would be an understandable motivation, but also a horrible one.
Finnish physician Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, one of the architects of Finland’s youth gender transition program, has done a U-turn in light of growing evidence of the program’s harm. She now says that just as with the recovered memories of sexual abuse craze of 30 years ago, “Gender transition has gotten out of hand. When medical professionals start saying they have one answer that applies everywhere, or that they have a cure for all life’s pains, that should be a warning to all of us that something has gone very wrong.”
Remember the recovered memories fad? That relied on a wildly naive and credulous idea of how memories work? Now the trick is to be wildly naive and credulous about the meaning of “identity.”
And just two weeks ago the European Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement urging caution, stating that puberty blockers “may irrevocably lead to the use of trans-sex hormones and surgical transition, so it may arguably compromise rather than facilitate freedom of choice.”
I think that’s often the whole point. “Activists” long to compromise freedom of choice in this area, they long to lock people into the Trans Life for the duration.
All of this flies directly in the face of the professed certainty of Dr. Wong and the AMA that the benefits of youth gender transition outweigh the harms. It should raise grave questions as to why the “affirmation” model continues to be the standard of care in Canada.
I think I can safely say that part of the reason, maybe much of it, is the ferocious bullying meted out to dissenters.
I just signed this.
If you want to sign and spread the word, I will not stand in your way.
The Guardian explains its “Woman killed man” lie. The explain is: everybody else was doing it.
“It’s not our fault, we relied on an agency report, and we saw no reason to question the claim that a woman had murdered a man by hitting him on the head and strangling him shut up shut up shut UP.”
Breathtakingly feeble and incompetent.
As for the Metro piece itself, by two compliant female reporters, it’s as snide and sneery and dumb as you’d expect.
JK Rowling has sparked backlash over her Sky News criticism for referring to murderer Scarlet Blake as a woman.
Well, she’s “sparked backlash” among the dimwits who are so ready and eager to be sparked that they can’t be bothered to think about what they’re saying.
A clip of the broadcast was shared on the news channel’s X page, and re-posted by Harry Potter author Rowling, who criticised them for not stating that Blake was transgender in the 55-second clip of the show.
The issue is not that he’s “transgender”; the issue is that he is not a woman. News outlets calling him a woman are doing bad journalism and shitting on women.
Her comment has sparked intense backlash, including from the likes of the UK’s most recent Eurovision entrant Mae Muller, who accused Rowling of transphobia and asked her to have perspective.
Oh well. If a Eurovision entrant said so then that settles it.
‘This woman put a cat in a blender and your first reaction is to be transphobic joanne babes have a day off,’ she wrote.
No, this man did. That is the point.
Rowling has been vocal in the past on her thoughts about how sex should be defined and even stated that she’d rather go to jail than change her mind.
She’s been “vocal in the past on her thoughts about how sex should be defined” because mobs of people have been vocal in the past on their thoughts about how sex should be defined, which is the opposite of the way that maps onto reality. We obstinate old bitches who open our mouths to say things are being vocal about our thoughts that women should not be defined out of existence by delusional men.
This stupid childish piece concludes by quoting the three Harry Potter actors who stabbed Rowling in the back.
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Bitch opened her mouth did she?
And Metro falls into her trap. Once again, Rowling uses her uncancelleable position to amplify the messages of other women in a way that can’t be ignored, bringing more attention to the issue that these media outlets are quietly, complicitly sweeping under the rug. By commenting now, she keeps the story in the public eye, and brings it to the attention of readers and viewers who had not realized that they had been lied to in the original reportage. While Metro (and other media outlets) think that somehow “Rowling’s transphobia” is the story they’re telling, they’re unwittingly shedding more light on media capture. Interestingly, at least some of them, in recounting the “Scarlet Blake” story as part of the background to Rowling’s criticism of Sky News’ coverage of it, continue to use “she/her” in the Blake portions, unintentionally highlighting her exact concerns by repeating the lies, and thereby showing how disgusting and pervasive the ongoing deception is:
What, if anything will bring about some awareness in all of these editorial boards that this pandering to trans sensibilities is self-destructive folly that makes them look incredibly dishonest because it is incredibly dishonest? Their professional reputation is sinking beneath their feet, and Rowling is showing them the drill they’ve been using so diligently to put holes beneath the waterline. They can stop at any time. Yet, still they drill. Maybe it’s just too embarrassing to be schooled in the First Law of Holes by someone they’ve tried to bury.
Rowling has cleverly goaded trans “rights” advocates (once again) to defend the “identity” of a convicted criminal, placing the use of “preferred prouns” ahead of the truth, defending a murderer’s “identity” at the expense of all women. It’s become a reflex. There’s no longer any thought in the process. And not only activists, but the media particularly, which seem to be fully prepared to clutch their style guides even more tightly, even in the face of intense scrutiny and criticism. Rowling is showing just how mendacious and corrupt the media have become in reporting on trans issues, as they have become actors in their own right in deceiving the public. What is it that compels them to do this? Who can punish them or hold them accountable if they stop worrying about the “crime” of “misgendering” and start reporting the true sex of actual criminals? They’re so scrupulous about a suspect’s “alleged” crimes before a conviction (and rightly so), but quite free and easy to lie about their supposed “gender identities,” dishonestly stating that men are women, males are females, he is “she.” You’d think that would violate some kind of journalistic standards and guidelines, but apparently it doesn’t. It should. Rowling might not be building a case herself against the media, but she’s helping to amass plenty of evidence for anyone else who wants to. It’s continuous self-incrimination.
I know I’ve noted this before, but I still find it remarkable (even though, at this point, I shouldn’t); Rowling didn’t have to do this. She could have retired from the conflict; she’s already done so much; instead, once again, she uses her position of comparative strength and security to continue defending women. In some ways it’s become a bit easier, because now that her reputation has been trashed (in certain quarters), she has nothing to lose in that regard. If she had worried about this, she wouldn’t have stepped up in the first place. Those who have decided to believe the lies about her have written her off, but they just can’t resist writing about her when she speaks out. They have to put the boot in. Again. Whether or not they see her pattern and spot the trap, they’re just too dim and self-righteous to ignore the bait. Sometimes negative reinforcement simply doesn’t sink in. They just can’t pass up an opportunity to pile on JKR. Again. And when she has the spotlight turned on her, she redirects it to places her detractors might not expect. They still can’t see that she’s not going to respond to the continuing lies told about her. Instead, she focuses her attention (and everyone else’s) on the misogyny of her critics. Again.
Meaning…what?
Does she mean that men who claim to be women do not have male anatomy because it’s their anatomy so it’s not male? Or does she mean they simply magically don’t have male anatomy?
Or both? Or does she not mean anything except “do it to them, don’t do it to me?”
I wouldn’t ask, but this is a former Deputy PM of Canada so…
An active-duty member of the US Air Force who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, on Sunday, has died, authorities said. Aaron Bushnell, 25, said in a video of the incident obtained by CNN that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that his suffering was minimal compared to that of Palestinians as the humanitarian crisis persists in Gaza.
He then sets the recording device on the ground before pouring an unknown liquid over himself and igniting it while yelling “Free Palestine” repeatedly. He eventually collapses as police officers rush to douse the flames with fire extinguishers.
Then he died. Then…
Sanctimonious fool.
How dare a woman say things.
I wanted to show the tweet itself but they seem to have taken it down.
Telling us to shut up only makes us talk more.
Updating to add an incensed reaction or two.
Deborah Arthurs is the Editor-in-Chief of Metro.
