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Brag elsewhere

Oh ffs. If you don’t understand something that basic go do something else. Leave women alone. Go shout at magpies or the man on the telly or the sky. Leave us alone.

Because saying you’re a lesbian (or a gay man) is not an extraordinary claim. Same-sex attraction and love has been known about for literally thousands of years. and it … Read the rest

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Brag elsewhere
By Ophelia Benson, May 31, 2023

Oh ffs. If you don’t understand something that basic go do something else. Leave women alone. Go shout at magpies or the man on the telly or the sky. Leave us alone.

Because saying you’re a lesbian (or a gay man) is not an extraordinary claim. Same-sex attraction and love has been known about for literally thousands of years. and it … Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Brag elsewhere 

Oh ffs. If you don’t understand something that basic go do something else. Leave women alone. Go shout at magpies or the man on the telly or the sky. Leave us alone.

Because saying you’re a lesbian (or a gay man) is not an extraordinary claim. Same-sex attraction and love has been known about for literally thousands of years. and it … Read the rest


Interrupting 

Reminder, or new information if you didn’t know it: if you want to joke or gossip about something entirely irrelevant to a serious post, the place for that is not the serious post but the Miscellany Room.… Read the rest


Familiar to many women 

Madeline Grant at the Times on Ed Balls trying to patronize Kathleen Stock:

Given the crisis unfolding in UK daytime TV, I shouldn’t have been surprised to turn on Good Morning Britain and be confronted with a bona fide monster. To her detractors on social media, Prof Kathleen Stock is the ultimate bogeywoman.

One of them. Let’s not forget JKR, and Maya, and Julie, and Allison, and – they are many.

You’ll be shocked – I repeat, shocked – to hear that Twitter doesn’t reflect reality. Instead, what GMB viewers saw was a clear thinker and lucid speaker with a dry and understated wit. Perhaps all those years of harassment and intimidation by maniacs have afforded Stock a certain gallows

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We gonna stomp you 

The Times on That Debate:

The choice of Nancy Sinatra’s song These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ was a crude threat. It blasted out of speakers deployed by extremist members of the trans lobby as Kathleen Stock entered the Oxford Union to take part in a debate yesterday. As admirers of the 1966 hit will recall, it promises: “And one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”

On the one hand they’re the most persecuted fragile vulnerable tragic people who’ve ever lived, on the other hand they’re going to walk all over feminist women. I’m not sure those two claims can be made compatible.

Dr Stock was backed by the prime minister before her appearance

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All is a crime, all shall have punishments 

The UK’s National Education Union aka NEU issued a statement yesterday, no doubt as a hex against the danger of all those witches running around talking about women and our rights. It’s a breathtaking piece of writing, especially coming from an organization that links itself to education.

The statement is a statement on transphobia. The statement states that it is

A clear expression of the union’s commitment to protecting trans members from harassment and offensive conduct.

Then it defines transpobia.

Transphobia is the fear or dislike of someone based on the fact that they are or are perceived of [sic] as trans or trans allies. It can take place through words or actions, expressing itself as harassment or

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Reasonably perceives 

But they perceive everything as offensive. They perceive reality as offensive.

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Measure the distance between the knees 

Also there’s the hur hur she’s a man approach.

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The refusal to distinguish between fact and opinion 

Cath Leng points out that actually the Channel 4 program took a very trans activist-friendly view of the core issue.

It’s not an opinion that men are not women, it’s a fact. That matters.

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Even more unhinged 

That letter, the one signed by Stephen Whittle and Finn McKay among others – it’s remarkably bad. Couldn’t they find someone to write a literate and coherent few hundred words? If they could, why didn’t they?

On Tuesday 30 May 2023, C4 is screening a documentary with the title ‘Gender Wars’.

We, the undersigned transgender and non-binary (TNB)people are featured in the documentary,

·   DID NOT AGREE to take part in the documentary viewers will see, and

·   would NOT HAVE AGREED to take part in any documentary focused on Kathleen Stock.

Either omit “are” before “featured in the documentary” or add “and” after it. For cryin’ out loud.

We wish to clarify to our peers within the

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About 400 issues 

Lucy Mangan at the Guardian on “Gender Wars”:

Channel 4 has bitten the bullet and is the first, I think, to produce a programme giving voice to both sides of what is usually called “the trans issue”. However, the first problem it faces is that “the trans issue” is actually about 400 issues packed into one, which has partly contributed to the endless difficulties in approaching, let alone resolving, it.

What are some of them? The incompatibility with women’s rights of course. The fact that it’s not true. The damage people do to their bodies trying to make it true. The entitlement that seems to go with it for so many. The maudlin hyperbolic rhetoric. The unwarranted belligerence. The … Read the rest


Better than pink shorts 

We were talking earlier about existential cuteness and puppy videos.

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Those who rail 

Channel 4 (UK)’s Gender Wars aired a couple of hours ago and was apparently very good, and not one long rant about terfs.

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Chrissy attempts the “if you” 

No, sir, this is wrong.

The guy with glasses and a microphone asks the guy in the purple top what he has made of what’s happening, particularly of “the professor, who’s come here to be part of a debate.” Purple top guy laughs a skeptical laugh and says “When you listen to that phrase itself, ‘a debate,’ a debate about, uh, trans existence, trans rights – if … Read the rest


Cuteness overload 

Oooooooh Hi yourself, cutie. Aren’t you just adorable?!

Just look at the lovely little fella. The bent knee/pointed toe – isn’t that sweet? The hand behind the head – so so cute! The darling pink shorts, the rakish denim shirt tied rakishly in a rakish knot, the darling winsome smile – he’s a far better woman than all you stubborn boring women who don’t take selfies with Pointed Toe.… Read the rest


Direct influence 

Suzanne Moore says the empire is tottering at last.

Susie Green, the former chief executive of Mermaids, who stood down “unexpectedly” last year, has been hiding in plain sight for so long that I sincerely hope we can see her clearly now. How this woman was ever allowed to have so much influence over vulnerable children, never mind medical professionals, is frankly disturbing. 

No medical training yet she bossed the medical professionals around and they asked her for more.

We now find that Green herself had direct influence on policy at the gender identity development service (GIDS) at the Tavistock. After being told that the Tavistock [claimed it] did not have any records of meeting with Green,

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So that was a lie then? 

JK Rowling says Patrick Strudwick told a huge brazen lie.

It’s one of those new long tweets that subscribers get to do.

As @PatrickStrud has blocked me on here (we’ve never, to my knowledge, interacted on Twitter or anywhere else) I can’t challenge him directly about the claim he published in iNews (see below) that a Let Women Speak event in Australia

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Banging on an open door 

Yes but no one says trans rights are not human rights. Trans people have human rights. The issue is fancy new bespoke rights that aren’t rights at all, because they trample on everyone else’s rights.

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Guest post: The Affirmative Affirmation Foundation Guest post: The Affirmative Affirmation Foundation 

Guest post by Jonathan A. Gallant

Some children, particularly at early ages, like to imagine themselves being cats, dogs, lambs, or other lovable animals, and they display their choice by making appropriate animal noises. 

I have established a foundation to help empower such children in their new identity.  The program, which we call affirmative affirmation, provides psychological affirmation, instruction about the animal of choice, imitation fur, and such medical interventions—pharmacological, dermatological, and surgical—as may become available as cutting-edge research in this exciting new area proceeds.  Contributions to the foundation can be sent directly to me, preferably in cash.  We accept $, but no longer accept British, Swedish or Finnish currency.  … Read the rest


Causing upset 

Nails.

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It’s not an obscene word 

And again, not two years ago but today.

800 million WOMEN.… Read the rest