Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Guest post: Like eating Pringles

    Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on There’s no undoing any of this.

    So much of Genderism succeeds because its supporters have no skin in the game, which lets them play a different game entirely. They face none of the consequences (as far as they can see, at least) of the policies they support, but their support earns them social credit. It’s in their interest to be blind to consequences that don’t affect them and to those that affect them less than the status they might gain. Setting men aside, handmaidens to the trans movement do not perceive significant consequences to themselves, so they will not see significant consequences to other women, because that sight would lose them status. Just look how casually they dismiss as trivial the trampling of other women’s sporting dreams. The vast majority of people, never mind women, have no hope of participating in high level competition, so there’s no skin in the game. Male incursion into sport will never affect them, so it can be ignored. Pro-life women exhibit the same myopia, perceiving pro-choice descriptions of real consequences to be no more than rationalizations to avoid the consequences of promiscuity.

    And why should we expect otherwise? Rationalizing consequences away is normal. After all, in the absence of real consequences, you’re free to play the status game, and you really want to play that game. There is status and prestige to be gained (within your tribe) by supporting your team. The more zealous your support, the more status you earn, which necessarily means that you earn less by having any reservations or criticisms. People have to be scared out of playing the status game, because only when repressing a concern obviously costs more status than voicing it do you allow yourself to even become conscious that you have any concerns in the first place.

    But by the time that should happen, you very likely have been complicit in the construction of social dynamics that elevate the cost of dissent beyond the immediate cost of compliance. The young zealots who have rewarded you for nodding along will turn and feast on you in a heartbeat, and you know it. So you stay silent, both internally and externally, and your bright red line gets pushed back. And it happens again and again and again as you voluntarily cooperate in building the walls of your own prison.

    Compromising moral principle for social benefit is like eating Pringles: once you pop, you can’t stop.

  • Guest post: There’s no undoing any of this

    Originally a comment by Artymorty on There she is now.

    There’s not going to be any recovery from this, for groups like Amnesty to have gotten basic women’s rights this wrong. If the people in charge of these groups were ever reasonable, if they were perhaps too afraid at first to challenge the young zealots in their staff, and somehow unable fully grasp the magnitude of what they were conceding, it’s too late to turn back now — the lunatics have well and truly taken over. They’re so deep in it, there’s no undoing any of this. Amnesty International is a massive NGO, and I genuinely don’t think their reputation can recover. How are they ever going to walk this back? “Oops, we accidentally declared that women have no human rights, but we’d like you to still trust us as advocates for human rights”? That’s simply not going to happen.

    So that’s it: Amnesty is gone, forever. Same for UN Women. Same for countless others.

    So much of the institutional infrastructure of the global human rights movement is being completely destroyed by gender madness. Completely destroyed.

    This is not a good sign for the continuation of free society.

  • There she is now

    Amnesty International proudly displays its contempt for women.

    Note the meaningless random photo, clearly meant to trick the uninformed into thinking that is “Roxanne” Tickle.

    Actual Mr Tickle:

  • Feels in her mind

    Daisy Dumas, a reporter for Guardian Australia based in Sydney, trots out all the familiar lies and some new ones:

    On Friday morning, the federal court justice Robert Bromwich said the respondents had considered “sex” to mean an unchangeable sex of a person at birth.

    “These arguments failed because the view propounded by the respondents conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years. Those … cases established that on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable,” he said.

    This shit is so maddening. Of course we consider “sex” to mean an unchangeable sex of a person at birth. The sex of a person=the unchangeable sex of a person at birth. There is no other kind. It’s grotesque that actual judges are framing us as the baddies for knowing what “sex” has always meant and still does mean. If it didn’t still mean that, women could protect themselves from rape just by saying “Oh you’ve made a mistake, I’m not a woman.” If it didn’t still mean that, women could hand the hard work of gestating a baby over to men.

    It’s funny how “sex” still does mean that when we’re talking about the other animals. Their sex is the unchangeable sex at birth. Why would human sex, alone among the animals, be changeable?

    Tickle said Friday’s decision showed transgender people could stand up for themselves.

    “I’m pleased by the outcome of my case and I hope it is healing for trans and gender diverse people. The ruling shows that all women are protected from discrimination,” she said outside court.

    Like hell it does. It shows that no women are protected from discrimination or from being forced to pretend men are women even in hospital wards, in women-only groups, in rape crisis centers.

    Changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 made it unlawful under federal law to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.

    It is the first time that alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by Australia’s federal court and goes to the heart of how gender identity – and being a woman – is interpreted. The outcome is likely to have wide-reaching implications for male and female spaces and activities and is being watched around the world.

    Yeah no shit. The outcome is a horror for female spaces and activities and is going to lead to all-out war.

    Over the course of a three-day hearing in April, the court heard that Tickle had lived as a woman since 2017, had a female birth certificate and gender affirmation surgery and “feels in her mind that psychologically she is a woman”.

    But that’s not what being a woman or a man is. He has a male body=he is a man. Feeling in our minds that we are _____ is baby talk. It’s called imagination, and it’s fine as long as we don’t lose sight of the reality outside our minds. The reality is that men are not women.

    Tickle’s barrister Georgina Costello KC said that “Ms Tickle is a woman” but that “the respondents flatly deny that fact”.

    Because it’s not a fact. It’s the opposite of a fact; it’s a fiction.

    Grover told the court that she would not address Tickle as “Ms” and that, even if a transgender woman presented as female, had gender affirmation surgery, lived as a female and held female identity documents, Grover would still see her as a “biological male”.

    Because he is.

  • Roxanne Tickle tells a bunch of lies

    Diddums.

    ‘Stolen years of my life’: Roxanne Tickle speaks after landmark ‘what is a woman’ case win

    Landmark demolition of women’s rights you mean. It’s a win for piggy men who want to take what women have, and a loss for women who want to keep what women have.

    Roxanne Tickle is relieved her legal case sparked by a ban from a female-only app is over, saying it has “stolen the last three years” of her life.

    Liar liar liar liar. He’s the one who stole years. He didn’t have to try to force himself on a bunch of women.

    Speaking outside the Federal Court in Sydney following the decision on Friday, Tickle said she was generally able to be herself and live a normal life.

    “But a small group of people have taken it upon themselves to declare that I am not who I know I am, and they have set about making my life miserable,” she said.

    Again: that’s a stupid ugly lie. He intruded on Giggle, not the other way around.

    Tickle became emotional as she recounted how she had felt after learning on Tuesday that a decision in the case would be made this week.

    “I’ve been bursting into tears at different moments because I knew soon this would all be over,” she said, her voice breaking.

    Oh fuck off, SBS (there is no byline on this pile of dung). He’s not the victim here. He’s loving every minute of it.

    She said the ruling shows that “all women are protected from discrimination”.

    No, it shows that men like Tickle can stomp all over women.

    Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody said the judgment sent the message that Australia wanted “an inclusive society in which all can participate”, including trans people. She dismissed a reporter’s suggestion the decision redefined what a woman was and would allow men into women-only spaces.

    “The judge found there are 30 years of legal precedent … that ‘women’ includes trans women,” Cody said. “This isn’t a new or landmark decision in that way — it is recognising … that is a part of our law.”

    Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said Justice Bromwich had “sensibly interpreted the law”.

    That’s the Sex Discrimination Commissioner and the Equality Australia CEO.

    I despair.

  • Women have no recognized expertise on being women

    From Jo Bartosch’s piece in Spiked! on the Tickle v Giggle ruling:

    The judge went on to explain that although the science of sex difference was not in dispute, ‘the issues in this case involve wider issues than biology’. He considered and then dismissed expert opinion from evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, author and philosopher Kathleen Stock, and campaigner Helen Joyce. Remarkably, he declared Joyce, author of a best-selling book on transgenderism, as having ‘no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion’.

    Well, if all the maniacs decide as one that they’re not going to listen to a single thing a woman says because they take it for granted that women are all worthless idiots, then sure, we worthless idiot women have no recognized expertise on being a woman, in their particular worldview.

    But they could always decide not to go that route.

  • They do know which people to slaughter

    Joan Smith on the ruling:

    Women no longer exist as a separate category in Australia. Sex is “changeable”, according to the judge who has just ruled in a case that effectively destroys single-sex spaces and services for Australian women. It’s a devastating blow for female rights in the country, which is experiencing an “epidemic” of violence against women according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

    If sex is changeable, tell us who the men are who have changed into women and gone on to get pregnant and give birth. Name one.

    The implications of the judgment, while not directly about sexual and domestic violence, are far-reaching. There has never been a more urgent case for single-sex services in Australia, yet the outcome confirms that “gender identity” now takes precedence over sex. One of the most shocking features of the case is that the result has been welcomed by Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who issued a press release stuffed with familiar jargon.

    How can the Sex Discrimination Commissioner do the job of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner if she (or he? but surely one doesn’t make a man the Sex Discrimination Commissioner?) thinks sex is changeable? It’s as if there were a Red Hat Wearing Discrimination Commissioner – just tell people to stop wearing red hats and boom, the job is over. Just tell women to change into men and problem solved.

    But while an array of courts, politicians and human rights organisations have decided that sex is no longer obvious and immutable, the same cannot be said about the assumptions of men who murder women.

    Last year, 64 women were killed by someone known to them in Australia, a higher rate even than in the UK. In April, six people — five of them women — were murdered in a rampage in a shopping mall in Sydney. It belongs in a horrific series of attacks based on sex that stretches all the way back to the Montreal massacre in 1989, when 14 female engineering students were murdered. The latest addition to this grim list happened in the UK last month, when three little girls were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.

    Well, no doubt there are plenty of trans “women” burning with resentment and fury that the killers didn’t murder them.

  • Pig pig pig

    Pig of a man who demolished women’s right to women’s spaces complains about how bad this has been for him him him him him him him.

    “Has stolen the last three years of my life” You know what would’ve helped with that? Not launching the case in the first place.

    “There is so much hate cast on trans people” Acknowledging biological reality is not hateful.

    “When I walked into the courtroom, I felt safe because I was treated with respect” Bro, the TRA’s out the front didn’t even recognize you. I know that because I was there. You were also “misgendered” multiple times by your own team. Pfft. THIS is the face that is setting women’s rights back in Australia. Jason Tickle is a man. Pass it on.

  • Nothing of our own

    It’s the “It’s in her passport” claim all over again. “What do you mean, it says she’s a woman right here in this little booklet thing!”

    It was nice having some rights. Quaint, but nice.

  • Women have zero rights now

    Fuming. Also raging.

  • They take EVERYTHING

    Fuck fuck fuck.

    Women can’t get together without men in Australia.

  • Total unpersonhood achieved

    Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, life is not quite so light-hearted.

    But at least they’re provided with water bottles.

  • From urologist to gender surgeon

    Yes but what is “his work”?

    I’m not gonna try and write a children’s book tomorrow. I rather wish she’d stick out of what I do, and not comment on stuff that she doesn’t know much about either.

    Like mutilating people’s genitals?

    This guy started out as a urologist and switched to “gender surgery” when it became the next big thing. He’s not a scholar of gender, he’s a surgeon. He knows how to perform surgery but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about whether it’s a brilliant idea to alter people’s genitalia to make them look more like the other sex. Since he has a financial incentive not to look deeply into that question, it’s rather the opposite.

    He has a website snappily titled GenderXchange. Good pun, yeah?

    James Bellringer qualified in 1982 from Cambridge and St. Thomas’ Hospital, London. After training in Urology, he started as a General Urologist in West London in 1996, but when Mr. Michael Royle retired, he was invited to come and take over the Gender Surgery service, at Charing Cross Hospital, London. After initial training with Mr. Royle in 2000, he has been working in gender surgery ever since, and with the increase in the gender workload, this has become his primary interest. An irretrievable breakdown with Trust management in 2014 led him to resign from Charing Cross, and he now works privately at Parkside Hospital.

    Gee I wonder what caused the irretrievable breakdown with Trust management.

    On other pages he provides details about his work. I don’t feel like quoting those.

  • He’s their sister now

    Ah yes, the “Oops I just realized I’m a woman” defense.

    A member of the police force in Basque Country, Spain, has been arrested for attempting to murder his wife in front of the couple’s two daughters. Following the horrific crime, the family learned that Jose* had changed his legal sex in an apparent effort to avoid harsher penalties for domestic violence.

    The Basque Government Security Department has confirmed that the attack took place in San Sebastián in the early hours of Saturday morning. Jose threatened to harm his daughters, one of whom is an infant, before grabbing a kitchen knife “of considerable dimensions” and attempting to harm his wife with it. Fortunately, the woman was able to locate some pepper spray that was in the house and used it to defend herself and the baby by pepper spraying Jose in the face. She grabbed the baby and ran, but not before Jose took the other child hostage.

    The police rescued the other child and arrested José for attempted homicide. José promptly revealed that haha he’s a woman now.

    According to El Correo, Jose requested to be treated according to the protocols established for the arrest of women, revealing that he had changed his sex marker to “female” last November without his family or friends being aware. Though he had not changed his name or appearance, Jose is recorded as a “female” in the Civil Registry.

    While unconfirmed, there is some speculation that Jose changed his legal sex to avoid certain penalties for the domestic violence he had been long subjecting his wife and daughters to.

    In Spain, males who assault or murder women can be charged with “gender based violence,” a specific crime which emerged in Spain to tackle the nation’s overwhelming struggle with femicide and domestic violence.

    So what happens? Men identify themselves as the very people they’re trying to wipe out, so that femicide and domestic violence can continue.

    Now is it clear how regressive and woman-hating this ideology is???

    This is the second case in the past month where a man in Spain changed his gender marker in an apparent attempt to avoid harsher penalties for crimes against women.

    The ironies are so many and so horrible they’re hard to keep track of.

  • The beliefs

    If only people could grasp that they’re not the same thing.

    Student psychotherapist wins apology over expulsion for gender-critical views

    James Esses has reached a settlement with the Metanoia Institute in London, which specialises in training counsellors and psychotherapists. He lost his place on the course after campaigning against the government’s proposed ban on conversion practices.

    Esses launched an online petition in April 2021 highlighting concerns that the proposed ban on conversion practices – the practice of attempting to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity – might end up criminalising explorative therapy for children with gender dysphoria. He was expelled from the course by email shortly after.

    That’s where the Guardian goes wrong, right there – sexual orientation is not the same as “gender identity.” There are some very salient differences.

    In the statement, the college noted: “Metanoia recognises that gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010. These are the beliefs that sex is binary, immutable and biological and is fundamentally important.”

    Of course they’re not actually “beliefs” – but they have to be framed as beliefs now because so many people have decided that sex is not binary, that it is mutable, and that it’s in the mind or personality or soul rather than the body. Those are the real “beliefs” but it doesn’t do to say so.

  • The Taliban’s new decree

    If her voice can be heard, next thing you know she’s pregnant with some stranger’s kid.

  • He wants to make it personal

    Trump explains to his advisors that he can’t take their advice because he’s too stupid.

    DONALD TRUMP HAS NO PLANS TO HEED the advice of his aides and limit himself to policy contrasts when he debates Kamala Harris. He wants to make it personal.

    “This is just the way I am. I hate my opponent. I hate my opponents,” Trump told a confidant who advised the former president to consider backing away from calling the vice president “stupid” or “dumb” at their high-profile standoff in a few weeks, which he has done repeatedly.

    Trump explained to the confidant that he’s treating Harris the same way he did Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. “Hillary, Joe, Kamala. It doesn’t matter. I just hate them.”

    That’s toddler-talk. Normal people, adult people, know better than to admit that kind of thing, because they know how repellent it is.

    I suppose people like it in Trump because it’s “real” – it’s a break from adult inhibitions or hypocrisies. He’s not fake.

    But the thing is, those inhibitions aren’t just hypocrisy. They’re morality, too. It’s not good to heap abuse on people, it’s not good to jab and poke and bully.

    On the other hand a lot of Murricans love it, so there’s that.

  • Political not factual

    How dare a woman expect a hostel for women to exclude men?

    An Australian traveller in France who complained there was a trans woman in a female-only bathroom at their hostel was shocked to be told that she had broken the law by raising her concerns.

    Melbourne woman Cassandra was visiting the French city of Lyon to watch the Olympics women’s soccer on July 26 and 27. 

    She booked a women’s dorm and got there late at night when everyone was asleep.

    On the first morning she was shocked to see a trans woman, who she initially thought was a man, in the bathroom. She asked to speak to the hostel manager.

    Derp. A trans woman is a man. That’s what the “trans” bit means – it indicates a man who is either pretending to be a woman or deluded that he is a woman. It does not indicate a woman.

    ‘The manager said the hostel classified them (the guest) as a woman. He told me my stance was political and not factual.’

    ExCUSE me??? We’re the ones with the “political” take here? Please. It’s “classifying” men as women that’s political and not factual.

    However the hostel’s response – forwarded by Hostelworld – accused Cassandra of being in the wrong. 

    ‘This guest was transphobic,’ the hostel wrote. ‘What she did not mention is that the “man” that was in the bathroom was a woman (man who transitioned to woman so identifying as a woman which mean she IS a woman). Her personal opinion on the subject does not matter. In France, being transphobic is prohibited by law. She clearly refused to admit this person was a woman.’

    Again, all backwards. No, “identifying as a woman” does NOT mean he IS a woman, it means he’s pretending or deluded. If he identified as a sewer rat that wouldn’t make him a sewer rat. If he identified as Marcel Proust that wouldn’t make him Marcel Proust.

    And she’s not the one with the irrelevant “personal opinion.” She’s the one grounded in reality, while Monsieur Hostel Manager is trying to enforce a fiction as fact.

    And she’s not the one who refused to admit anything. Monsieur Hostel Manager is the one refusing to admit this person is a man.

  • Hands up!

    Joyous Apostasy Day all. Celebrate! Blaspheme. Argue. Reason. Enjoy the wind in your hair.

  • Well at least they didn’t call her a slut

    Fury at the BBC again:

    They did, finally, amend it.

    If the murdered person had been a man who called himself a woman I don’t think the Beeb would have called him “a sex worker.”