There is much confusion right now about Labour and its position on women and what exactly it is trying to say.

Yesterday @Womans_Place_UK tweeted:

WPUK is pleased to see that @UKLabour recognises the importance of the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act is committing to upholding them. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf 1/2

But now there is waffling, or there isn’t but there is the appearance that there is.

Dawn Butler, Labour Women & Equalities Secretary, says nothing has changed.

.@UKLabour will reform the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people.

We will remove outdated language from the Equalities Act.

And there is no way spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people. That is illegal and it will stay illegal.

So when they say single-sex based exemptions (such as changing rooms and toilets) will be enforced they don’t mean it? Or they do, and Dawn Butler is resisting? The situation is unclear.

Sarah Ditum observes:

Labour putting a sensible-sounding position on gender identity and women’s rights in the manifesto, then giving an outrider the contradictory version the faithful want to hear, is such a dishonest idiot’s version of politics

I mean, it’s smart in that it puts the sane version where the sane people will see it, and the one for the Twitter nutters where the Twitter nutters can see it, and both groups get tell themselves they’re the wife and the other one’s the mistress

But if Labour is ever in power, there is no way here to write a functional policy. Then again who gives a fuck about policy when it only affects that capricious group of semi-humans called women

Kathleen Stock:

Like @helenlewis I’m deleting earlier tweets suggesting @UKLabour finally recognise that women are distinct group who need legal protection. I continue to hear from well-placed people this doesn’t reflect intention of manifesto but position’s destructively ambiguous to say least.

Do they? Don’t they? It’s up in the air.

In other news, the event involving Kathleen Stock went ahead.

Happy to report that talk went ahead without incident. Turns out 6.3k likes for no-platforming campaign translates to 5 individual emails sent against me; meanwhile 3 emails were sent in support, one of which had over 300 signatures. (Thank you so much to all who wrote & signed).

I did. There were over 300 I think.

Being Human Festival has details on the subject matter and participants:

Diversity has become a divisive issue in today’s society. In this debate philosophers at the front line will be picking at its complexities and difficulties. What are the different forms of diversity? Why do they matter? Should we be promoting or managing diversity? Should we even be reducing it in the name of greater cohesion?

For this year’s Royal institute of Philosophy debate the antagonistic for/against format will be abandoned and instead speakers have been invited to have a more collaborative discussion in which increased mutual understanding matters more than winning. In an increasingly polarised society, people need to be brought together more than ever. Confirmed speakers include Tommy J. Curry, Onora O’Neill and Kathleen Stock with the BBC’s Ritula Shah as the chair.

Sounds interesting, to me, and well done dropping the tedious antagonistic for/against format, which I’ve never found interesting.

A thread by Sarah Phillimore on the Fair Cop judicial review:

Home again after a hectic two days at #FairCopJR. Feel a lot more optimistic tonight than I did this morning. It’s hard to pick favourite moments out of so many but my Top Three have to be:

1. Judicial recognition that TERF is a slur
2. Both College of Policing and Humberside making it clear they didn’t understand the Equality Act
3. The carefully redacted document that was hiding the fact that the ‘victim’ had used hateful language herself

But the – possibly unseemly – glee provoked by watching someone stuff up their own case, line by line is tempered by the growing realisation that the Government have farmed out policy on such important areas to axe grinding pressure groups.

And that if more people don’t wake up, and soon then we risk huge damage to the rule of law and the structure of our society. Are the judiciary the last line of defence? I think they might be. I will await the judgment with great interest.

And well done to all @WeAreFairCop. Proof that we are greater than the sum of our parts and everyone has played to their strengths. I have learned a lot about the power of collaboration.

So I guess she is one of the Fair Cop team. Good on her, and them.

About that custody battle over the kid whose mother wanted to trans him while his father did not –

The Younger case has gained much media attention, in the U.S. and beyond. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC all seem to cast the father as the villain, in particular for his refusal to agree that his child is transgender. Rolling Stone opines that the Younger story has become a “terrifying right-wing talking point.” Vox is worried about Republican state legislators’ trying to introduce bills prohibiting chemical and surgical interference with the sexual development of children who say they’re transgender, and “what [this] could mean for families nationwide” when “legislators want to have a say in whether Luna Younger should be allowed to socially transition.” For the Left, the Younger story is a tale of backwards attitudes victimizing a child.

Not the whole left though – there are quite a lot of us who think it would be victimizing the child to let this fantasy ruin his life before he’s old enough to understand what people are doing to him.

Since there are no objective tests to confirm a transgender diagnosis, all of this is arbitrary and dependent on a child’s changeable feelings. To make aggressive treatment more acceptable, its advocates have come up with a media-friendly euphemism, “gender affirmation.” If it’s affirming, activists say, it’s also kindness, love, acceptance, and support. The opposite, trying to help a child feel more comfortable with his body, is a rejection: abuse, hatred, “transphobia,” or “conversion therapy” likely to lead to child suicide. This is a lie — a lie designed to obscure a critical truth: that neither a child, nor his parents on his behalf, can truly consent to experimental, life-altering, and irreversible treatments for which there is no evidentiary support.

More.

A side note in Fiona Hill’s testimony at the impeachment hearing is of interest:

This is a bit of a sidebar to her testimony but Hill’s low estimation of the professional environment in the UK has not gone unnoticed.

“Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England,” Hill testified. “I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent.”

Julian Borger tweets:

Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. She’s saying even in 1980’s 1990’s, you couldn’t get recognition for your talent and expertise if you had a working-class accent.
It was an indictment of Britain. https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1197538764731629568 …

Robbie Gramer
✔
@RobbieGramer
In new testimony, Fiona Hill issues scathing rebuke of 1960’s England

That is, her rebuke was not just of 1960’s Britain but of 1980’s 1990’s, in fact decidedly the latter since she was born in 1965 so she wasn’t starting her career in the 60s.

She continued:

In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America. For the better part of three decades, I have built a career as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional focusing on Europe and Eurasia and especially the former Soviet Union.

The White House issues a statement:

Shifty Schiff thinks he hasn’t gotten enough camera time. So during a brief break, he’s doing a press conference.

New hoax. Same swamp.
8:12 AM · Nov 20, 2019· TheWhiteHouse

Not a hoax.

Things from the past:

Many centuries ago, a cat walked over an Italian manuscript, leaving its paw prints on the document forever. 1445

You’re welcome.

Speaking of that Times article…

A feminist artist who was due to speak at Oxford Brookes University yesterday had her talk cancelled at the last minute after students accused her of holding transphobic views.
The event featuring Rachel Ara, hosted by the university’s fine art research unit, was called off after the LGBTQ+ society sent a letter to Anne-Marie Kilday, the pro-vice-chancellor, condemning her invitation.

That’s all it took. One letter, from stupid uninformed people complaining of the sharing of two tweets.

The letter to Professor Kilday was signed by a number of people, including the chairman of the university’s Labour Party Club and the president of the LGBTQ+ society.

They should have read it more carefully.

Ara, 53, said that her art was clearly “too challenging for today’s youth” and lamented that “the world has gone slightly mad”.

She added: “I was going to be talking about feminism and art, and the difficulties that exist for women trying to break through. It was nothing to do with trans issues. I’m not transphobic. I have been openly gay for 35 years. I think this movement is misogynistic — they are only targeting other women.”

It’s unmistakably misogynist.

Also happening today – because there’s not enough going on?? – is that Fair Cop is in court tweeting the case of Harry Miller aka Harry the Owl, whose account was suspended for evilthought.

A selection of the tweets:

Opening by Harry’s counsel. Plainly a very important case involving freedom of speech in the internet era. Won’t go through all background facts but take the court to important documents. #FairCopJR

The involvement of the police in social media discussion about this. Judge interjects – want to lay down a marker. What is said against you is that recording a hate incident is not a sanction so not interference. And said your client is robust enough to comment.

Judge – suppose I find that combination of recording and remote potential for it to be disclosed and I find that PC Gul created impression that your client should stop – would all of that be sufficient to interfere with Art 10, not because it impacted YOUR client –

– but had chilling effect on others? Answer – yes. Recording under this policy, the publicity around what the police can do… if they had some deterrent effect on others that is sufficient – absolutely. #FairCopJR

Judge accepts that some of HM’s posting is capable of contributing to debate but not all. Counsel – will need to look in context.

Further discussion about putting ‘offensive’ speech in context of national conversation. The consequences of amendment to GRA are far reaching.

Judge – I note in the Times this morning that Oxford Brookes have ‘disinvited’ a speaker.

Why? Because she shared two tweets that some “activists” disliked.

This could be an apocryphal or exaggerated story, but if not…

A Hollywood executive wanted Julia Roberts to portray Harriet Tubman in the leading abolitionist’s biopic, the screenwriter of the new film “Harriet” said.

After studying Tubman’s life in college, about how she helped lead enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard was determined to adapt her story into a feature film, he said in an interview with Focus Features, the distributor of “Harriet.”

When he met with a studio president about the idea in 1994, his script garnered praise, Howard wrote in an essay in the Los Angeles Times. It also received a casting suggestion.

“Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,” the executive told Howard.

Howard said the one other black person in the meeting said that would be impossible, as Julia Roberts is white.

The president replied, “That was so long ago. No one will know that,” Howard wrote.

But…what would the plot be then? Harriet Tubman spends a weekend with Richard Gere in an expensive hotel? Harriet Tubman meets scruffy bookseller Hugh Grant and his eccentric Welsh flatmate? Harriet Tubman dies young leaving her mother Sally Fields bereft but plucky?

A highlight reel of the statement:

The Oxford Mail has the story on the abrupt last minute cancellation of Rachel Ara’s talk:

A FEMINIST artist who was due to speak at Oxford Brookes University tonight has had her talk cancelled at the last minute after accusations from students that she is transphobic.

Rachel Ara announced on Twitter this morning that her event had been cancelled after complaints from students and speculated that her art is ‘too challenging for today’s youth’.

It comes after Oxford Brookes LGBTQ+ society sent a letter to the university’s pro-vice chancellor, professor Anne-Marie Kilday, condemning the invitation to the artist to speak at the university because of her alleged transphobic views.

Ms Ara, who won the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 for her project This Much I’m Worth, was due to speak today about her work at Oxford Brookes School of Arts.

Her work? Who cares about that? All that matters is that somebody somewhere said she is transphobic. What kind of monster gives a damn about her work??!

In the letter to the professor, the LGBTQ+ society said: “Rachel Ara is a trans exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) who frequently shares transphobic discourse on her social media.

In other words they found two (2) retweets that they consider “sharing transphobic discourse.” Watch what you retweet, bitch!

“She has openly showed support for the “LGB Alliance” which is openly transphobic and seeks to isolate trans people within the LGBTQ+ movement.”

That’s “shown” in English, and no it isn’t and no it doesn’t. Why are the people in charge so reluctant to tell these twerps to fuck off? Why do they take this illiterate mindless garbage so seriously?

“She has also openly shown support for Selina Todd, who is a strong advocate of “A Woman’s Place, a transphobic organisation acting under the guise of academic freedom.”

Selina Todd is an award-winning feminist historian who specializes in the history of working class women, but don’t let that slow you down.

The creeps are proud of their letter and shared it (OPENLY, to use their censorious word) on Twitter:

And Oxford Brookes, astonishingly, did what these two creeps told them to do.

Oh good, another smug stupid slogan from another group that should know better. Lambda Legal tweets:

Qualities that make someone “a real man”:

1. Identifying as a man.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

#InternationalMensDay

Can anyone play?

Qualities that make someone a real pilot:

1. Identifying as a pilot.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

Good? Compelling? Obviously true?

Qualities that make someone a real Beluga whale:

1. Identifying as a Beluga whale.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

Qualities that make someone a real planet:

1. Identifying as a planet.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

Qualities that make someone a real daffodil:

1. Identifying as a daffodil.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

Qualities that make someone a real Model-T Ford:

1. Identifying as a Model-T Ford.
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

It’s all so enlightening, isn’t it?

The ACLU pronounces:

Trans men are men.

No they’re not, and we all have the civil liberty to say so.

It made an image to illustrate its four word pronouncement.

Of course there’s no one way to be a man; it doesn’t follow and it isn’t true that men who get “their” periods are women, nor does it follow nor is it true that “men” who get pregnant and give birth are men. There’s no one way to be a man, but there are ways not to be a man, such as being born with a female body.

And we all have the civil liberty to defend that truth, and to say that it is truth and that what the ACLU asserts is not truth, is false, is wrong, is a lie. The American Civil Liberties Union has no business trying to bully us into agreeing that men can be women and women can be men.