Alan Johnson at Jewish News:

Should gender critical views be considered ‘shameful’ and ‘hateful’? That was the question that sprang to mind while reading an article on the Jewish News website headlined: ‘Appalled and disgusted’: Rabbi accused of transphobia over Eddie Izzard tweet’.

I am not on Twitter and I do not comment here on the rabbi, other than note he wrote the hardly-hateful comment: ‘We have to treat transgender people with the utmost kindness and respect, and accommodate them legally, but they must not be allowed to displace women’s rights.’

Yes to the “they must not be allowed to displace women’s rights” part, but I take issue with the “utmost kindness and respect” part. No we don’t have to treat them with that, any more than we have to treat anyone else with that. Utmost kindness and respect is extra, and not something we owe people except in emergencies. Basic decency, yes, but hyperbolic utmost anything, no. I quibble because this claim that trans people need and deserve this kind of extra has become a kind of gospel, and it’s nonsense. We can lavish them with kindness and respect if we want to, of course, but it’s far from an obligation. We really don’t need to give away the store in the first half of our sentences to buy ourselves the space to say “BUT we would really like it if they would stop dynamiting women’s rights” in the second half.

Johnson goes on:

There are three fundamental reasons why gender identity ideology is not simply the latest iteration of the liberation movement – women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, disability rights – that has unfolded from the 1970s.

First, the ideology demonstrably involves the ongoing erasure of the hard-fought and desperately needed sex-based rights, protections, spaces, prisons, rape crisis centres, DV centres, sports, language, dating sites, dignity and safety of women and girls.

He adds the gaslighting of lesbians and the ongoing medical scandal.

The Jewish News article contained an appeal for ‘pastoral care’ to be prioritised. Well, indeed. But [why] is pastoral care not extended to women and girls who are losing their rights and spaces and who, when they object, are then silenced, cancelled, shamed, gaslighted, doxxed, suspended, excluded and driven from the public square and employment?

Why indeed?! He’s a comrade. Read the whole thing.