Originally a comment by Sastra on Verification.

when a trans person says they are male or female, that is what they are and that is how we should treat them. It is damaging to them to say otherwise.’

If the second statement is removed, would that change the truth of the first statement? In other words, is “a transwoman is female and a transman is male” dependent on “ trans people are damaged when other people say otherwise?”

If so, then the damaged trans people would be conclusive evidence of their sex, in the same way the fact that people believing in God is conclusive evidence that God does, in fact, exist. Or, a closer argument: because religious people need their belief in God to buttress their morality and provide comfort and meaning, then 1.) atheists should keep their views to themselves and 2.) God exists.

If a TRA thinks those Arguments for the Existence of God are crap, then they’re going to have to separate the presumed neediness and fragility of trans people from the question of what sex those transpeople are. They’re going to have to make a scientific case for something which did not come out of scientific investigation, but emerged from the social justice concern over protecting vulnerable people — with the science then playing catch-up to the moral mandate.

It doesn’t work. And they know it doesn’t work because they keep going back to the Argument from Damage.

My god this subject brings out the stupid in people.

Explains? Explains?? Explains what? That’s not an explanation, it’s a stupid and dogmatic assertion.

I’m pretty sure we all used to know that we don’t have to believe whatever people tell us about themselves, because some people lie sometimes.

That becomes all the more the case when what the people are telling us is patently not true. If someone says to me “I am a moose” I’m not required to believe it, not as a matter of good manners and certainly not as a matter of epistemology. A moose wouldn’t be able to say “I am a moose.” A moose doesn’t even know she’s a moose. We’re allowed to keep these things in mind, and form our beliefs accordingly.

What a display.

The vastly condescending James Max tells Kellie-Jay that “somebody can be born in somebody else’s body” and two minutes later that “you can never be in the brain and body of somebody else.” Well which is it?

He reminds me of Jolyon. The smugness twins.

This is where the stapling on of the T to the LGB has been such a destructive mistake:

Two California teachers were secretly recorded speaking about LGBTQ student outreach. Now they’re fighting for their jobs

Hm, I thought when I saw the headline. Are we talking about LGB, or T?

This fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

So far so good. GSAs are a good thing, and gay kids need support.

Speaking about recruiting students, Baraki said, “When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork. One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Uh.

Maybe they meant “recruitment” that little bit too literally.

Shortly after the October conference, a surreptitious recording of the presentation was handed to a conservative writer known for asserting that transgender adolescents are part of a dangerous “craze.”

Guess who that “conservative writer” turns out to be. Abigail Shrier, of course. Danielle Echeverria at the Chronicle seems very confident that teenagers thinking they’re trans isn’t part of a dangerous craze. So there’s no danger at all in puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, amputation of healthy breasts or penises?

She published a story Nov. 18 headlined “How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids,” criticizing Caldeira and Baraki for actions they had seen as proper: keeping club members’ identities confidential from parents and finding a couple of potential members by viewing their online activity in class.

The trouble here is that the two are different. Suppose some teenagers are unsure about whether they’re gay or straight, and they lean toward gay and join a gay-straight alliance and later change their minds. What happens? They change their minds, that’s all. They haven’t had their breasts cut off, they haven’t disrupted their puberty with blockers, they haven’t set themselves up for health problems in adulthood. In short it’s not a problem. It may be an emotional upheaval but then adolescence is that.

Needless to say the same is not true if teenagers think they might be trans and join some school LGBTQ+ club or group or union, and proceed to the medicalization stage. Then change their minds later.

But the Chronicle wants us to think it’s all the same basic thing, L and G and T, and it’s only evil people who worry about teenagers being nudged (or shoved) into thinking they’re trans.

So the club was suspended and the teachers were placed on leave.

The controversy has roiled the small district south of Salinas and east of Monterey, alarming advocates for LGBTQ youth and marking one of a number of recent incidents in which influential conservative voices have forced the hands of local officials.

But this isn’t about left v right in any clear-cut bright lines way. Supporting lesbian and gay teenagers is one thing, and rushing teenagers into thinking they’re trans is another. That kid could have Googled Trans Day of Visibility out of curiosity or any number of other non-transitioning reasons.

On the other hand I sure as hell don’t want schools closing down gay-straight alliances or any other efforts to support and protect lesbian and gay students. It’s complicated.

Trans journalist group tells us what we can say about trans people:

A trans journalist group which advises media on how to cover trans-related topics has published a style guide encouraging media outlets to “kill” stories on trans criminals, censor detransitioners, and erase all references to biological sex.

Next up: rapist journalist group publishes a style guide encouraging media outlets to call rapists “heroes” or “rapscallions.”

And by “accurately” they mean…not accurately.

In one section, titled “guidance on covering anti-trans hate and disinformation,” the TJA encourages media to avoid coverage of certain topics, including detransitioning – wherein a person ceases a gender transition – which the TJA states have been “overemphasized” as well as “sensationalized and given a disproportionate amount of weight in the media.”

In sharp contrast to trans activism, which doesn’t get any weight in the media at all, right?

The association also encourages media to “avoid giving a platform to TERFs or so-called “gender critical feminists,” going on to state that “when reporting on fringe groups and hate groups, instead of calling them TERFs or gender critical feminists, use language like transphobic, anti-trans, etc. Avoid referring to anyone as a feminist when they are spreading anti-trans hate.”

Silence feminists; lie about trans people. Sterling advice for purported journalists.

More egregiously, the TJA encourages writers to avoid any negative press directed at criminals who are transgender. In the section titled “guidance on respectful coverage,” the TJA states that journalists should note the consequences for a trans person to have their criminal history disclosed, writing “publishing such information is rarely in the public interest,” and that journalists should “Consider killing a story if [they] have no alternatives.”

Well we wouldn’t want people to know that some men who identify as women are rapists, would we.

Despite rejecting the concept of biological sex, the TJA also discourages writers from marking transgender people as ‘identifying as’ whatever gender they do, stating: “This language questions a trans person’s gender by calling it an “identity” instead of just stating someone is non-binary or a man/woman.” In all cases, the guide seems to steer journalists towards simply never identifying a person as being trans save for instances it is overtly positive coverage.

Awesome Trans Woman Breaks Glass Ceiling type of thing.

In March, Open University Philosophy of Sport Senior Lecturer Jon Pike had one of his articles on trans-identified males in women’s sports edited without his consent to abide by the TJA style guide.

Without his consent or knowledge.

It’s a massively important distinction.

It doesn’t seem the least bit trivial.

Worried about losing all your brain cells?

They’re just complying with local law…

Amazon quietly removed criticism of President Xi’s books by scrubbing bad reviews, ratings and comments from its Chinese site, it has emerged.

The US retail giant agreed to Beijing’s demand to have anything below a five-star review of Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of China removed from Amazon.cn about two years ago, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified sources.

The US retail giant is just being polite.

An Amazon spokesman said that the company “complies with all applicable laws and regulations, wherever we operate, and China is no exception.”

If there’s a law that all Jews must be reported to the government for deportation and elimination, who is Amazon to argue?

Last year, Zoom shut down a paid US account after it hosted an online forum on Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, citing the need to comply with “local laws.”

About 250 people attended the forum, including some from China who dialled in to listen to speeches by a mother of a slain protester and former student leaders in exile.

Zoom said that it shut down the US account, which was set up by Chinese dissidents, because participants from China had violated “local laws”. It later reactivated the account without providing a reason.

That’s interesting. Zoom is not based in China, unless you consider San Jose part of China. The account was a US one, and some people in China joined the forum. It’s a pretty zig-zaggy road to get from there to “Zoom has to shut down the account because of the law in China.” I suppose that’s why they furtively reactivated it.

Ground-breaking! Giant leap!

Rachel Levine has shattered not one but two major glass ceilings this year. In March, she became the first openly transgender person to win confirmation in the US Senate after Joe Biden nominated her as assistant secretary of health.

Then in October she was sworn in as the first openly transgender four-star officer as an admiral and head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. At that exalted rank she gets to wear the blue uniform of the corps, which though non-military is one of eight uniformed services.

First! Glass ceiling smashed! Twice!

Until you remember – this is a man. It’s not smashing any glass ceiling to appoint a man to an important government position. It’s just one more man added to all the other men.

Levine said her starting point when thinking about trans youth was how at risk they are. “Transgender youth are very vulnerable,” she said. “They are vulnerable to being bullied, to discrimination and harassment.”

You know who else is very vulnerable? Girls. Female youth are very vulnerable to being bullied, to discrimination and harassment.

Jim Banks, a Republican congress member from Indiana, was temporarily suspended from Twitter in October for willfully misgendering Levine. In a tweet, he said: “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man”

Much as I hate to agree with a Republican congress member, on this one he’s right.

In addition to such politically laden hatred, Levine thinks that fear plays a large role in driving much of the transphobic agenda. “People fear what they don’t understand and have experience of. I’m hoping that my appointment, and my being open and out and working for the nation’s public health, will lead to less fear and more acceptance. That’s my goal.”

But people also fear what they do understand and have experience of. Fear is not always a mistake. I fear the way men like Levine are stealing firsts and prizes and honors from women. I fear Levine’s complete lack of shame about doing that – I fear the way he’s wallowing in it instead of refusing it. I fear the unembarrassed way he displaces women and then accepts flattery for doing so.

No independent thought allowed.

Russia’s supreme court has ordered the closure of Memorial International, the country’s oldest human rights group, in a watershed moment in Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on independent thought.

The court ruled Memorial must be closed under Russia’s controversial “foreign agent” legislation, which has targeted dozens of NGOs and media outlets seen as critical of the government.

Just define “critical” as “foreign” and your work is done.

Memorial International’s closure marks an inflection point in Russia’s modern history, as efforts to publicise crimes under Soviet leaders such as Joseph Stalin have become taboo 30 years after the secret government archives were opened after the end of the Soviet Union. While not quite seeking a return to the Soviet past, Putin has become deeply sensitive to any criticism of it by groups including Memorial.

Gee I wonder why that might be.

The decision also follows a sustained assault on Russian civil society this year that has led to opposition leaders such as Alexei Navalny being imprisoned, prominent activists and journalists fleeing the country, and NGOs and media outlets hit with fines and closures under Russia’s “foreign agents” and “undesirable” laws.

…

The Russian prosecutor portrayed the organisation as a geopolitical weapon used by foreign governments to deprive modern Russians of taking pride in the achievements of the Soviet Union. Those arguments dovetail closely with the Kremlin’s use of Soviet history as a rallying point for society and reinterpretation of key historical moments in its confrontations with European countries.

Huh. Does that sound familiar at all? The uproar about “Critical Race Theory” along with the sweeping of all exploration of race and racism into the “CRT” box? It sounds way too familiar to me.

Speaking of Christine Burns (who participated in that cozy chat about terfs on Al Jazeera)…here’s a think-piece from 1996:

On a Saturday afternoon in a pleasant English University suburb I went along to find out the hard way. To argue, as both advocate and plaintiff, that transsexual women have more in common with the experience of their sisters than they blandly imagine.

Sorry for being bland, but I still get to think that we don’t have the experience of being a woman in common with men.

Under debate was the question of whether the group I was visiting should argue the case with their peers for other women like me to be admitted to their women-only space.

The air was thick with irony as I politely answered question after question. Corrected lie after lie. Defended my client’s very existence and justified their (and my) course in life.. as though I should be expected to succeed in communicating a personal experience that’s no easier to describe to the uninitiated than a panic attack or childbirth. … As though the court before me, drawing its’ authority from the shape of genitals they were born with, had the intellectual right to weigh up and judge the evidence which I’d spent much of my life studying and experiencing first hand. At stake, not just my client’s but my own self image and status as a woman in a club which I didn’t personally want to join. The charge, that my client (and by implication I) would make them feel uncomfortable.

It’s not a question of “drawing authority” from one’s genitals, it’s just a matter of definition. The disdain and hostility are noted however.

That majority would join with me in being horrified by the notion that, after being raped by a man, a woman like myself would be turned away from a politically correct Rape Crisis Centre. Told, in the ultimate act of cruelty, that she was a man. That she should seek counselling from a man. That she made her sisters feel uncomfortable. In a bizarre way rapists have a better line in manners. At least they treat their victims, without prejudice, as women.

Those last two sentences are currently being passed around on Twitter by some of those wicked heartless women who don’t think men can magically become women.

An elegant beginning:

Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting. He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably good job of keeping from public view any redeeming qualities he might have.

You know who else is like that? Donald Trump senior. Empty suits beget more empty suits.

Trump spoke at a Turning Point USA gathering on December 19. He displayed seething, nearly pathological resentments; playground insults (he led the crowd in “Let’s Go, Brandon” chants); tough guy/average Joe shtick; and a pulsating sense of aggrieved victimhood and persecution, all of it coming from the elitist, extravagantly rich son of a former president.

Yes but where’s the respect? Why can’t empty suits get respect any more?

The Taliban pinch women ever harder.

The Taliban have said Afghan women seeking to travel long distances by road should be offered transport only if accompanied by a male relative.

Right. If she’s going only a mile or two she won’t flop down and open her legs, but if she’s going far, down she’ll go, the whore.

The majority of secondary schools remain shut for girls, while most women have been banned from working.

Of course. Women are for fucking, and for dealing with the sons that result. It’s a big mistake to let them do anything else, the whores.

The latest directive, issued by the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said women travelling for more than 45 miles (72km) should be accompanied by a close male family member.

To keep those legs closed. Only a close male family member can do that.

Female people are not valued in India.

Laali’s unborn daughter is among India’s estimated 46 million “missing females” over a period of 50 years, ten times the female population of London. A deepening gender bias, breeding rampant sex-selective abortions and female infanticides, means that India accounts for nearly half of global missing female births.

“The traditional pattern of marriage and customs dictate an inferior position to women in Indian societies,” says Prem Chowdhry, a gender activist and retired professor at the University of Delhi. Since girls leave their birth family after marriage, she says, the dowry and cost of raising a girl is considered an unwelcome obligation, and sex-selective abortions are common.

Not a problem. Just abort the female ones and let the male ones proceed. There will be no more female people and everything will be perfect.

Laali was 19 when her marriage was arranged with a farmer in 2009. In the next three years, she gave birth to two daughters. During her second pregnancy, she was regularly drugged by traditional and faith healers in order to “make” a boy.

When her baby girl was born, no one from her family came to see them in the hospital. Returning home was worse. “My mother-in-law refused to see my daughter’s face,” Laali said. “She refused to take care of me, saying: ‘you are giving birth to girl after girl. How far can I take care of you?’”

Every night, as she sat down for dinner after a day of labour in the field, someone would toss in a taunt. “When anyone had a son in the village, it was a nightmare for me,” she recalls. “My family abused me in front of my girls.”

…

For Laali, harassment is part of her daily life. By the time she was 15, her mother had aborted two female foetuses, and her younger sister has aborted at least three.

“You are brought up in an environment where this violence against women is completely acceptable and normalised,” says George. “The question is: how do you resist this on the ground? And that’s frightening.”

Without women there aren’t any babies, female or male. You’d think that would make females valuable to people who want babies, but nope.

If truth doesn’t matter in the courtroom then…?

Judges have been told that they should refer to criminal defendants by the gender they have chosen for themselves.

Just “gender”? What if criminal defendants have chosen to be called Duke? Doctor? Father? Sister? Lord? Admiral? Your honor? Why is “gender” the one category defendants get to force everyone to lie about?

New guidance instructs judges to consider whether alleged victims of sexual offences should be required to describe transgender defendants by the pronouns they self-identify with.

It will give rise to concerns that witnesses and alleged victims of rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse could be forced to refer to defendants as women, even if they view them as male.

The victims (who will be women) don’t “view them” as male, they know fucking well they’re male. It’s not a matter of “viewing as,” it’s a matter of blunt in-your-face fact.

Revisions to the “equal treatment benchbook”, a 540-page guide from the Judicial College, have told judges: “There may be situations where the rights of a witness to refer to a trans person by pronouns matching their gender assigned at birth, or to otherwise reveal a person’s trans status, clash with the trans person’s right to privacy.”

What does a right to privacy have to do with ordering people to call you by the wrong sex? That’s not privacy, it’s public narcissistic coercion.

Nancy Kelley’s “Ah the joys of throwing women and gay men under the bus chatting on Al Jazeera” tweet really isn’t winning her many friends except maybe in Qatar.

Replies of course are turned off.

Really not many friends at all, in fact I haven’t seen one single friend.

Well…

Unless the oppressed are women, of course. They don’t matter. Men who say they are women are the oppressed, but women, never.

Also, “those who abuse power” does not include Jolyon Maugham. Never mind the baseball bat, never mind the bullying of lesbians and gender critical feminists, those are not abuses of power. It’s women who say men are not women who abuse power.

Well…

Unless it’s women. Or foxes. Or the LGB Alliance. Don’t choose them, obviously. It’s the men who say they are women who are really LOVE; you have to choose them.

The Guardian invited us to nominate a Person of the Year.

Time magazine has announced that Elon Musk will be their “2021 person of the year”, citing the billionaire Tesla boss’s influence “for good or ill” as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman”. The choice has been criticised for Musk’s attitude to tax, opposition to unions and playing down the dangers of Covid.

With this in mind, we would like to hear about your own choices. Who would be your 2021 person of the year, and why?

A number of people said JK Rowling.

Maybe they just had enough, or…

Ah yes good old Al Jazeera. Qatar is notoriously queer-friendly right?

Yes it’s a “trans panic” to think women shouldn’t be erased from the language and shoved aside by men pretending to be women.

Oh damn, so sorry about all the bad faith arguments!

What’s wrong with this lede?

Nearly 250 people incarcerated in California prisons — the vast majority of whom are transgender women — are waiting for their chance to transfer out of a men’s institution. The longer it takes, the greater the odds that they could be raped, beaten or killed.

One major thing wrong with it is that it frames the likelihood of being raped, beaten or killed as something to “transfer out of” as opposed to something to stop altogether. I daresay men who aren’t transgender women also don’t want to be raped, beaten, or killed.

But of course the more obvious thing wrong with it is the hidden assumption that men who “identify as” women get to transfer out of men’s prison and into women’s prison, where they can be the ones posing the threat. The even more hidden assumption is that women get no say in any of this because they just don’t matter.

When in doubt, pretend women don’t exist.

A BBC television doctor repeatedly referred to mothers-to-be as ‘pregnant people’ on the popular daytime show Morning Live.

Dr Xand van Tulleken was discussing the various groups who have so far declined to have the Covid jab when he said: ‘Pregnant people, for instance, early in the pandemic there were very mixed messages [on whether expectant mothers should be given a shot] so people didn’t get vaccinated when they were pregnant and they haven’t got it subsequently.

‘Pregnant people are not unreasonably nervous about putting things into their bodies.’ 

Whatever you do, don’t let on that it’s women who get pregnant, especially if you’re a doctor, even more especially if you’re a doctor saying things on the BBC. The word “women” is a foul obscenity, so don’t ever say it.

In 2016, the British Medical Association recommended that its staff use ‘pregnant people’ instead of pregnant women.

And in February last year, midwives at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust were told to start using terms such as ‘chest milk’ instead of breast milk.

If you mention “women” they get all uppity and confident, as if they’re real people instead of brainless dress-dummies.