Author: Ophelia Benson

  • What could go wrong?

    Sadism or stupidity or both?

    A trans-identified male serving a life sentence for murder who was quietly transferred in to a women’s prison is now sharing a shower with female inmates, causing them to feel “violated.” Bradley Richard Sirvio, 53, was transferred into Minnesota women’s prison MCF-Shakopee at the end of last year after claiming to identify as transgender and adopting the name “Aurora.”

    In November of 1995, Sirvio beat a man to death with a hammer before setting the victim’s house on fire. According to court records, Sirvio was checking himself into a detoxification center when he “volunteered to a staff member during the intake process that he may have murdered someone named George and then set the house on fire to cover up what he had done.”

    So, clearly, the Minnesota prison system has every reason to think it’s a good idea to put him in a women’s prison so that he can terrorize them instead of the poor helpless people in the men’s prison.

    Sirvio has several other convictions that include multiple charges of assault, burglary, and theft. He was quietly transferred to MCF-Shakopee, Minnesota’s only women’s prison, in November of 2023. The move was made a full five months ahead of the date that a newly-drafted gender identity prison policy was set to take effect, meaning that the state of Minnesota voluntarily chose to transfer Sirvio.

    Well, even states like a good joke.

    He hasn’t had any surgeries. He was put in a women’s wing that has only one shower. There’s no lock on the shower door.

    [Sirvio] added that since he was moved into MCF-Shakopee, female prison staff, rather than male guards, are required to perform strip searches and pat downs on his person. This is done as a result of the new gender identity policy, which states, “pat and unclothed body searches of incarcerated people who are transgender, gender diverse, intersex, or nonbinary must be done in accordance with the gender of the facility in which they are assigned… Incarcerated people who are transgender, gender diverse, intersex, or nonbinary may request that they receive pat or unclothed body searches from security staff of a specific gender.”

    While women may not have a shower to themselves.

    Commenting on Lusk’s transfer last November, Aaron Swanum with the Minnesota DOC remarked, “Minnesota has now joined 10 other states and the District of Columbia in approving transfers to facilities matching an inmate’s gender identity. The DOC is committed to providing supportive and safe environments for people of all gender identities and our new policy reflects this commitment.”

    No no no no no it isn’t. That’s not true at all. The DOC is all too clearly not committed to providing supportive and safe environments for people whose genner idenninny is just the boring old woman variety. Fake women get those supportive and safe environments at the expense of actual women.

  • Might but won’t

    Trump doesn’t have a great big huge sky-concealing mandate. He barely has a grocery list.

    On Election Night, with characteristic modesty, Donald Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” He certainly won the contest legitimately, if more narrowly than many observers initially thought. With nearly all the votes counted, the most complete tabulation, from Cook Political Report, shows Trump’s popular-vote margin over Kamala Harris has dropped from around 3 percent on the evening of November 5 (or about two-thirds of Joe Biden’s margin in 2020) to 1.47 percent (about one-third of Biden’s margin) today. That’s also about 0.6 percent smaller than Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote margin over Trump in 2016. To make some other comparisons: Barack Obama won the popular vote by 3.9 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2008, and George W. Bush won the popular vote by 2.4 percent in the very close 2004 election.

    …

    Given that perilous hold on power, Trump might want to reconsider his current strategy of ruling Washington like a devastated and occupied enemy city with a Cabinet largely composed of men and women who appear to intensely dislike the departments and agencies they are supposed to oversee, in addition to a governing plan that may rely on testing the tolerance of the federal judiciary for totally unparalleled assertions of supreme presidential powers. And Trump’s MAGA activists should also cool their jets a bit. There’s certainly a degree of triumphalism in the air that really isn’t justified by the election returns.

    Well, Trump might want to do that, in another universe, if he were a completely different person, but in this one, of course he won’t. When does he ever? He just says what he wants to say and does what he wants to do until/unless forcibly prevented. He doesn’t pause to consider the odds or ponder the realities, he just says and does whatever he wants. That’s all there is to The Story of Trump.

  • Marketing mutilation

    You know, we’re told, endlessly and loudly, that trans is innate, it’s built-in, it’s real, it’s an infallible inner sense.

    Well then why is it being advertised?

  • Guest post: They don’t want these children to get away

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Which twin has the propaganda coup?

    From the article

    But Alito, true to form, did not confine his opining to the notion that discrimination against trans people does not count as sex-based discrimination: he went on to suggest that trans people are not quite real, peppering Strangio, in a scene that seemed intended to humiliate the trans attorney, with questions about whether trans identity was truly an “immutable” characteristic.

    Well, is it? The Supreme Court could have called upon Sally Hines as a hostile witness. She has authoritatively* written

    ‘Gender identity refers to each person’s internal sense of being male, female, a combination of the two, or neither; it is a core part of who people know themselves to be.’

    ‘Genderfluid people experience their gender identity as changing over time or between different situations.’

    ‘Agender people identify as having no gender, or feel that their gender is absent or neutral.’

    Doesn’t sound very immutable to me. And, given Donegan’s dishonest framing (see OP above), I wouldn’t trust her characterization of any of these proceedings. From the context, I’m guessing that Alito was doubtful if transness is “real” or “immutable” not that people claiming to be trans aren’t “real” . There is a big difference, and one which transactivists (and captured journalists) have a history of confusing and substituting. It’s the familiar trans cry wolf tactic of accusing critics of gender ideology of denying trans people’s “right to exist.” But refusing to accept a given putative explanation or hypothesis for some human behaviour or characteristic does not negate the existence of anyone. If it did, rejection of astrology would entail the denial of the right of all human beings to exist, as nobody is really a “Scorpio,” or a “Leo,” or anything else in astrological terms, because astrology is crap. That doesn’t mean that people born in the time periods ascribed to those “star signs,” or any other, somehow don’t exist, just that astrology’s explanatory scheme is invalid. Nobody makes that kind of “genocidal” accusation in regards to the defence of the validity of astrology, but trans activists mischaracterize any pushback against gender ideology in exactly this way all the time, having successfully used this excuse to float their “NO DEBATE” strategy for years. Here, it looks like Donegan is doing more of the same.

    And as for “politicizing” and “weaponizing” trans “kids”, trans activists have been doing this for years, using them as human shields to deflect attention from the white male fetishists and unethical “clinicians” leading the trans “movement.” Even calling these disphoric children “trans kids” is political, because it’s jumping immediately from whatever type or degree of sexual or “identity” discomfort they might have, to a diagnosis of “born in the wrong body” that is supposedly only treatable through drastic pharmeceutical interventions and extreme body modification. This leap of terminology, and its accompanying rush to irreversible “treatments,” allows activists to ignore the existence of desistance, which would reduce the numbers of supposedly “trans” youth by approximately 75%, robbing the movement of future, committed activists, and the clinicians life-long customers. What was that about “innateness” and “immutability” again? One gets the distinct impression that the haste involved in pushing these children into the gender abbatoir is in order to prevent desistance. They don’t want these children to get away. Why else outlaw the “talk therapy” that would aid children’s personal growth and acceptance of their bodies just as they are as “conversion therapy”? Why else enforce “affirmation only” as the sole path of therapy? Why condemn so many children to a lifelong debilitation that they could have avoided by just growing up? If that’s not politicization and weaponization of children, I don’t know what is.

    So there’s actually a whole lot of truth behind the (supposedly) “right wing” accusation of “They’re coming for your kids!” It turns out that they are. If not their actual bodies, then at least their minds. On the flag pole of the public school just a few blocks from where I live, more often thanot, “Pride Day/Week?Month or not, the “Pride Progress” flag flies right beneath the Canadian one. (And this is the “Intersex Inclusive” version with the yellow triangle and purple circle at the left hnd edge. Even though “intersex” is considered to be an inaccurate and offensive term for DSD conditions. That doesn’t matter if the old, inaccurate term is usefull to trans activism.) The teaching of important civic virtues such as tolerance and respect is being used as cover for teaching bullshit.)

    And in the end there’s always this:

    That’s so distorted it borders on lying. It’s not “organized animus” to try to stop people mutilating children at the behest of an ideology that claims sex is switchable. The rage is not, of course, directed at the children, but at the adults messing up the children’s bodies. Donegan can’t really be unaware of that.

    What’s in it for her? What’s in it for the Guardian? What can trans activism give them in return for their souls? How can they not see the destructive, misogynistic, regressive, and fundamentally dishonest movement. In the normal course of events, you’d have expected crusading, investigative reporters and their courageous, supporting editors to sink their teeth into this kind story of a broad, multi-institutional, mutually-reinforcing, corruption rather than become cheerleaders and apologists for it. But what’s in the trough for them?

    *Or at least as “authoritative” as anyone can get in the fields of Unicorn Husbandry, or the biogeography of Snarks

  • How about panvomit?

    Oh come on.

    The US Department of Health and Human Services seems to have accidentally hired a befuddled teenager to do its social media messaging.

    Bring on the comet.

  • Guess how many

    National Organization for Women aka NOW being incloosive of men in the category “women” again.

    Guess how many times I’ve shared a bathroom with a trans person? No clue, because I just mind my own business.

    Oh yes? Does it work the same way with “man”? Would NOW proudly smirk “Guess how many times I’ve shared a public toilet with a man? No clue, because I just mind my own business”? Would NOW tell us to guess how many times a man has followed them late at night and NOW wasn’t worried about it at all?

    NOW doesn’t like it when we push back.

    NOW has “limited who can comment on this post.” Of course it has. Women who know that men are not women are The Enemy, while men who say they are women are the pampered cuddled darlings. So there is no actual national organization for women any more, because the one that has the name is not for women.

  • Speaking of taking back

    Take back the night 4 men.

    Women can’t have anything any more. Not even protests against male violence against women.

  • Which twin has the propaganda coup?

    Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan waves the flag for Magic Gender:

    The politicization of transgender children in the US is one of the most astounding coups of propaganda and organized animus in recent history. Rarely has so much attention and rage been directed at such a minuscule number of people, and more rarely, still, have those people been the most vulnerable and blameless among us: kids and teens.

    That’s so distorted it borders on lying. It’s not “organized animus” to try to stop people mutilating children at the behest of an ideology that claims sex is switchable. The rage is not, of course, directed at the children, but at the adults messing up the children’s bodies. Donegan can’t really be unaware of that.

    The first state to pass a ban on transition-related care for minors was Arkansas, in April 2021; less than four years later, more than half of states have such a ban on the books.

    It’s not care. It’s tampering at best and destruction at worst. There is no “transition” so “transition-related care” is not care; it’s a horrible mistake.

    These changes in public attitudes towards trans youth – from a broad if imperfect sentiment of tolerance to a widespread and politically weaponized attitude of hostility toward a small minority of kids – did not emerge by accident. It was the product of a deliberate, conscious effort to radicalize large swaths of the United States, and significant chunks of state policy, into a hostility towards a few children.

    It’s just a lie to claim that not mutilating children is hostility toward those children. Nobody is trying to “radicalize” people into hostility towards the children being mutilated.

    Donegan should be embarrassed to have written this dishonest crap.

  • New boss

    Now there’s a headline.

    Syrian government falls in stunning end to 50-year rule of Assad family

    (If only we could say the same about the Trump family.)

    The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held territory and entered the capital in 10 days.

    Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free.

    …

    Soldiers and police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.

    “My feelings are indescribable,” said Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer. “After the fear that he (Assad) and his father made us live in for many years, and the panic and state of terror that I was living in, I can’t believe it.”

    Daher said his father was killed by security forces and his brother was in detention, his fate unknown. Assad “is a criminal, a tyrant and a dog,” he said.”

    Then again…

    The rebels’ moves into Damascus came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters.

    The advances in the past week were by far the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations.

    Dictatorship or theocracy…kind of a narrow menu.

  • Cake gender

    What were we saying all along? That people are confusing personality with “gender” with sex.

    Meet…fluffgender.

    Profound misunderstanding of what “cake” is, too. The best cakes are not soft and fluffy at all, but dense and rich (cue the “like my cousin Tim” jokes). Soft fluffy cakes that taste of sugar and not much else are not so much cake as crap.

    Anyway. The hell with personality. Focus on morality, dedication, generosity, altruism, effort. Stop trying to be a cartoon character and do something with your life.

  • Feminism is for everyone tralala

    The “Feminist” Library has (of course) a whole long statement on twanzfobeea.

    As an organisation founded 46-years ago, the Feminist Library has evolved through different periods in the history and political landscape of feminism, as well as through different members contributing to the collective. No individual member of the collective represents the group’s views as a whole and we feel it important to note that we come from different political histories as well as cultural and class backgrounds. 

    Yadda yadda blah blah BUT there is one subject on which nobody gets to be “different.”

    Over the past year, we have conducted a number [of] internal “Organisational Culture” meetings amongst members of the core collective intended to address a wide range of issues included but not limited to: changing the external perception of the library, creating clear internal and external accountability procedures in order to hold each other to account, defining the characteristics of the space we aim to create, and determining a long term vision for the Library that embraces contemporary feminism’s radical and inclusive thinking.

    By “contemporary” they mean enlightened, aka correct. By “radical” they mean captured. By “inclusive” they mean inclusive of men in anything and everything that belongs to women including of course The Feminist Library. Inclusion now excludes feminist women who want feminism to be about and for women.

    We understand that in an increasingly hostile conversation regarding trans inclusion from in [sic] the mainstream press and certain sects of feminism, it is important for us to reiterate that we are a trans-inclusive organisation and that we stand in solidarity with all trans people in the face of mockery, denigration, humiliation and discrimination with regards to accessing healthcare and other legal rights. We wish to reiterate as members of the collective that we believe that feminism is a political project that works in service of all of us.

    They wish to reiterate as members of the collective that feminism is for men and any bitch who says otherwise is a Banned Person.

    Our Organisational Culture meetings led to a number of serious reflections of the library’s responsibility to trans people and our own internal and external failures on this issue. We understand and acknowledge that latent and active transphobia has been a part of the experiences of many of our volunteers in the past and that we were not attentive enough in challenging transphobia when and where it emerged. 

    In other words they “understand and acknowledge” that feminism is for men, not women, so get out before we push you out.

    The Feminist Library is an intersectional feminist space. We will not tolerate sexism, homophobia, racism, transphobia, nor oppressive language or behaviour based on any structural inequality, including disability, socioeconomic status, sexuality, age, education, religious affiliation or gender expression.

    We aim to be inclusive of all feminisms, and particularly welcome those who have historically been marginalised within society as a whole, and within the feminist movement. Our organisation is anti-sectarian, meaning we believe in coalition-building among people with different backgrounds and experiences. Respectful debate, discussion and learning are encouraged, provided all users abide by our community policy. 

    Well. That amounts to claiming debate and discussion are encouraged provided all users say what we tell them to say. It’s extremely obvious that debate and discussion of the question “can men be women?” are very far from being encouraged. They are expressly forbidden. You have to pick one, and you fools have picked the wrong one.

  • Who they are today

    There’s a thing called The Feminist Library in Peckham, London. It tells us it has a long history and has [cough] changed over the years.

    The Feminist Library was founded since 1975, and we have existed in many different forms since then. This is who we are today:

    That’s not a good sign. People running a library should be more literate than that. The point appears to be that the library was founded way the hell back in 1975 when the barbarians were unaware of the spiritual glory of trans ideology, and now the library is Uplifted and Perfected.

    So you know already what their “principles” are going to be.

    So there you go. It’s not a feminist library at all; it’s a transist library, which is not compatible with being a feminist library. Transism shits all over women every chance it gets, just as this “feminist” library is doing in this “who we are today” denunciation.

    And this is what we do:

    • We stand in solidarity with Palestine, and all colonised people.
    • We work collectively on a flat hierarchy.
    • We strive to make Feminist knowledge and history free and accessible to all.
    • We seek to be a free and welcoming space for the community in Peckham, South London, and the world.
    • We promote equity and justice for women and gendered minorities.
    • We provide a safe space for people of all genders.

    So, if you are an actual feminist woman, you had better get the hell out of their library, because they hate you. They hate you way more than they hate men who abuse or bully or assault women. They hate you more than anyone, really.

    Next up: that “statement” on their “history” with “transphobia.” It’s as bad as it sounds.

  • Such is the experience

    It’s not that publishers are boycotting Jews, it’s just that they aren’t publishing books by Jews.

    Such is the experience of so many Jewish people in British publishing today. In interviews with The Telegraph, authors, agents, scouts and publishers spoke of the growing sense of discomfort and [ostracism] they have experienced in their industry since the October 7 attacks. Many say a quiet but pervasive anti-Semitism – a sense of “Jews don’t count”, as one author put it – has begun to creep in.

    Mind you, that’s generally the case with all kinds of rejections, failures, not happenings. Is it because the book or article or movie or play is not good enough or is it because the author is not in an Approved category? It’s not always obvious.

    It all adds up to what many describe as a culture of “soft boycotting” which has taken hold, whereby Jewish stories are left untold, Jewish agents are quietly dropped, and Jewish authors find themselves persona non grata amongst their peers. Underpinning it all is a growing sense of isolation. Or, as one literary agent put it, “a feeling [that you are] not part of a community that you’ve been part of for many years”.

    “The general feeling of this year is of feeling outnumbered, isolated … this culture of soft boycotting is really hard to prove and makes you sound paranoid,” says another agent. “I’ve sent out two proposals by Jewish authors and I’m just not able to sell them. Neither have written books about the conflict.”

    Well that doesn’t tell us anything. Surely agents aren’t just automatically able to sell every book they offer. We don’t know that the two books were any good.

    Occasionally, she has been able to sell books by Jewish authors “where their Jewishness is not present or out there”. But if the book has an overtly Jewish theme? “It definitely feels like it’s much harder.”

    Oh well then, that settles it.

    This piece is frustrating, because it could be true that Jewish authors are being informally boycotted, but “feels like” isn’t good enough.

  • Rushed

    Lawsuit.

    Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the nation’s leading practitioner of transgender youth medicine, faces a medical-negligence lawsuit for the irreversible treatments she administered to a former patient, who has since detransitioned.

    It’s interesting that even the National Review endorses trans ideology by using trans ideology language. What exactly is “transgender youth medicine”? In what sense is it “medicine”? Why is TNR calling it medicine in the same breath as “medical-negligence lawsuit” and “irreversible treatments”? Also whaddya mean “treatments”?

    It’s nuts. How can we even talk about this if the language is so corrupted that even critics get it wrong? Shocker: maybe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones aren’t always “treatment” at all.

    Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, alleges Olson-Kennedy, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), and numerous other defendants rushed her into transitioning to a male in spite of her struggles with mental health and history of suffering sexual abuse. The plaintiff’s transgender treatments involved puberty blockers at age 12, cross-sex hormones at 13, and finally a double mastectomy at 14. The complaint was filed Thursday in Los Angeles, where the pediatric hospital is located.

    Olson-Kennedy, who serves as medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at CHLA, allegedly performed no psychological assessment, failed to ask Breen about her past trauma and mental state, and diagnosed gender dysphoria without consulting any other physicians. Furthermore, Olson-Kennedy allegedly did not adequately take into account the detrimental effects that puberty blockers would have on Breen’s bone density.

    There’s a reason we don’t let children drive cars. There’s a reason we don’t let toddlers play with loaded guns. There’s a reason we shouldn’t chop off children’s breasts or genitals on request.

    The lawsuit accuses the primary defendant of outright lying in several instances. Olson-Kennedy lied to Breen and her parents that puberty blockers were “completely reversible,” according to the suit. The pediatric doctor also allegedly lied about Breen’s purported suicidal thoughts to her parents when trying to convince them about hormonal therapy.

    The young girl had no suicidal thoughts, the lawsuit says, nor did she express that she had any during her medical appointments.

    So then why was Olson-Kennedy so eager to cut off her breasts and block her puberty?

    Olson-Kennedy then allegedly lied that Breen would commit suicide if she did not receive cross-sex hormones. Confronted with their daughter’s hypothetical death, the parents relented and agreed to the testosterone treatment. Breen also hesitantly agreed.

    It’s kind of like talking people into buying a house they don’t really want, only worse. Much much worse.

    Olson-Kennedy has come under intense scrutiny for refusing to publish the findings of a nearly $10 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health that found no evidence that puberty blockers improved the mental health of children.

    In a revealing interview with the New York Times in October, she admitted that the long-awaited study would be “weaponized” by critics of transgender youth treatments and that the findings would be used in court to argue against puberty blockers. The study began in 2015.

    Note how completely backward she has everything. “Oh no, we mustn’t publish the study, it will inform people that ‘transgender youth treatments’ are harmful quackery, and we don’t want that, we want transgender youth to keep getting the harmful quackery.” She wanted reasons for not handing out puberty blockers concealed so that she could keep handing out these destructive meds.

  • Lookada pitty twain

    It would be quicker to list what’s not “transphobia.”

    The Telegraph:

    LNER spent ÂŁ58,000 repainting one of its trains with a rainbow-themed Pride livery, it has emerged.

    The cost of the Pride rebranding was revealed after a passenger sent a freedom of information (FoI) request asking the government-owned train company for more information about it.

    58 THOUSAND quid. Just think of all the useful things one could do with that kind of money.

    But instead of answering Carol Fossick’s other detailed questions, a senior LNER manager wrote back and labelled her “transphobic” after trawling through her social media posts.

    I’m not a Mormon. I think the content of Mormonism is silly. Is that phobic?

    I don’t take part in pyramid schemes. I think pyramid schemes are a surefire way to lose money. Is that phobic?

    I was never a girl scout. I don’t regret it. Is that phobic?

    Maya Forstater, the chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, said: “LNER’s refusal to respond to an FoI request on the basis that the requester had expressed views that challenge gender ideology was disgraceful and discriminatory.

    “It’s appalling to see one of the UK’s largest transport companies losing touch with reality to the extent that it sees a focus on ‘binary sex divisions’ and criticism of its expensively clad Pride train as ‘vexatious’ and appropriate grounds for refusal. This attempt at thought-policing passengers for blaspheming against the rainbow suggests a corporate culture that is more akin to a medieval church than a modern business.”

    Exactly so; that’s why I brought Mormonism into it. We don’t have to join your church; you don’t get to force it on us.

    Ms Fossick’s questions to LNER included requests for things such as “information about LNER’s diversity initiatives, including the demographics of their staff and the selection process for future train designs” as well as the composition of the panel which decided how to rebrand the train.

    When LNER refused to reveal anything other than the cost of the whole exercise, she asked it to reconsider.

    A senior manager wrote back to brand her “vexatious” and said: “Since you submitted your internal review, your subsequent social media posts have demonstrated views that indicate a bias against transgender individuals.”

    Yo, spending 58 THOUSAND pounds on painting a train trans-color demonstrates an inability to spend the public’s money reasonably.

    An LNER spokesman said: “The Together train celebrates support of Pride activities on the route as part of our long-term commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives for colleagues, customers and communities.”

    No, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. It does the opposite of that, and does it with hostile energy. It’s not “diversity” or “equality” or “inclusion” to obsess over people who pretend to be the opposite sex while ignoring every other disregarded set of people on the planet. Paint a god damn train in women’s colors or workers’ colors for a change, then tell us how keen on equality and diversity you are.

  • Guest post: In the light of rational inquiry, queer theory withers and dies

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s A or B or both or neither.

    These people really don’t know what a definition is, do they?

    I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between not knowing what a definition is, and not having one, or not daring to offer one for fear of getting it wrong. It’s a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of ecumenicalism, wherein everybody under the infinitely elastic “trans umbrella” refuses to examine anyone else’s credentials for being a member. As soon as any kind of binding, coherent definition is offered up, somebody will be “excluded” or excommunicated, because so many of the posited attributes of the myriad gender possibilities are completely contradictory. By this measure, the lack of any such definition of “gender” is a feature, not a bug.

    If “gender identity” were an actual phenomenon, Rowling’s questions would be the basis of potentially fruitful lines of research. Correction: her questions would have been the pathway to such research, because these issues would have been investigated long ago; Hines would have already had answers to them. They would have been debated and thrashed out within the field itself. But no. The field is empty and fruitless. Nobody has been working in it because it is barren; “There is no there there.” Like astrology and palmistry, there has been no real attempt to delineate the exact nature, limits, and mechanism behind the phenomenon they claim to know so well. It’s all just claimed and assumed. They’re making it up as they go along with no thought or concern for coherence and consistency. Queer theory is above this petty need for evidence and explanation. In the light of rational inquiry (or simple questions), queer theory withers and dies, and genderism with it. Rowling’s comments are just making this plain.

    That an “unschooled amateur” like Rowling can come up with such devastatingly simple, basic, fundamental criticisms of this alleged field of alleged study is (or should be) a source of shamed embarrassment, rather than smug condescension. You don’t need titles or degrees to see that the Emperor is naked, though in the case of genderism, it’s more like there is no Emperor at all. Hines’ response is, ironically, just an iteration of PZ’s “Courtier’s Reply”. You’re supposed to steep yourself thoroughly in the minutia and nuance of their refined, cerebral bullshit before you dare comment on it.

  • Oops he forgot to pretend

    Hoooooooooo-boy.

    Sarah Pascoe really does really “correct him” to say that. She does it at high speed, aka a gabble, so you have to listen closely to catch it.

    Ince: …how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?

    Pascoe: [cozy chuckle] Um well first [??] really boring [??] trans men can have children n give birth so just [??] make sure I know we’re talking about something that is such a gendered thing we end up saying men and women but um

    Sorry about the three places where she gabbles so fast I can’t make out her words, but we get the idea.

    She gets Ince’s point about “if men gave birth” – the old old old point about how easy it is to dismiss the pain and effort and danger of other people if you’re completely safe from it yourself. We know she gets his point because she gives that little point-getting complicit chuckle – but then she instantly stomps on his point by pretending he Did a Naughty by saying it’s not men who give birth. Oooooooooooh you did not just say that.

    I wonder how furious Ince was. He goes to all this trouble, for years, to pretend that men are women if they say they are, and here this bitch is on his BBC show and she corrects him for saying “how much further d’you think we’d be with understanding embryology if it was [sic] men that gave birth?”

    I bet he was livid.

  • A handful of dust

    I’d say this one should have stayed in the “too pretty to demolish” category.

    Then again, Oxford Street itself is a horrible place, best avoided, so I suppose I should keep my opinion to myself. Won’t, but should.

  • It’s A or B or both or neither

    More fun with JKR versus a bowl of oatmeal Sally Hines.

    ‘Gender identity refers to each person’s internal sense of being male, female, a combination of the two, or neither; it is a core part of who people know themselves to be.’

    However, this core of what we know ourselves to be may change, possibly several times in a single afternoon:

    ‘Genderfluid people experience their gender identity as changing over time or between different situations.’

    And some people have a partially missing core, or a core part so feeble we can’t know whether it’s male or female:

    ‘Agender people identify as having no gender, or feel that their gender is absent or neutral.’

    Imagine writing those words and not once defining how it feels to have an internal sense of being male/female, not having a gender at all, or having a neutral gender.

    Other groundbreaking things I learned from your book:

    ‘Not all bodies are biologically male or female – they are both, or neither.’

    ‘French adjectives are grammatically gendered.’

    ‘Post-colonial is sometimes used to describe the period of time after colonial rule.’

    ‘Aristotle was a philosopher and scientist living in ancient Greece.’

    ‘Historically, women have often been associated with nurturing behaviour.’

    ‘Traditional male labour is typical in heavy industries, such as Skinningrove blast furnace plant, which closed in 1971.’

    Ouch.

    You list bits of jargon like ‘genderflux’ (experiences their gender more or less intensely at different times) without ever explaining what is the thing the person is experiencing. Why isn’t there an entry-level explanation of how we can tell whether our gender is male, female, both, neither, absent, flux or fluid? How does this important ‘core thing’ manifest internally? Do we compare the picture of Skinningrove blast furnace and the one of the Miss America pageant and choose where we’d rather be? I imagine not, as we’re told endlessly that gender doesn’t rest on sex stereotypes. Your book, written for a lay audience, explains terms like ‘post-colonial’ but not the concept featured in its actual title.

    Incidentally, it’s the nouns that are gendered in French. The adjectives merely agree with them. I’m qualified to tell you that; I have a French degree.

    Sally Hines is not equipped for these exchanges.

  • Cut all the things

    Musk is busy urging slashing funds for worker safety, consumer safety, and silly Marxist nonsense like that.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy head to Capitol Hill on Thursday to present their ideas for President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.

    The new group is expected to recommend drastic cuts to the federal workforce and to slash regulation. To achieve those goals, though, the group will have to work through Congress.

    Regulation is bad, you see. Mustn’t regulate capitalism. Profit is the only goal.

    In social media posts, podcasts, op-eds, books and speeches, Musk and Ramaswamy have sketched out what they have in mind: a 75% reduction in the federal workforce, a $2 trillion cut to federal spending and the elimination of entire agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    Consumer financial protection; have you ever heard of anything so absurd? The job of consumers is to hand over their money to the profit-makers. Profit is the only value.

    William Howell, founder and director of the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, notes that these workers simply implement laws enacted by Congress.

    “These are the folks who keep our air clean, allow planes to land safely, that keep the meat we buy at the grocery store devoid of disease,” Howell said.

    He said that indeed there are federal agencies working at cross-purposes and that leads to inefficiencies like those that DOGE is determined to root out. He pointed to the country’s “unbelievably complex tax code” and what he called an immigration system that “nobody would suggest is acceptable.” However for Howell, the rhetoric from Musk and Ramaswamy to “shut down” entire agencies and lay off workers raises red flags.

    “You may need to rebuild it and you may need to adapt it to contemporary purposes,” Howell said. “But the way to do it is not by taking a sledgehammer to it.”

    Yebbut taking a sledgehammer to it is so much fun.