Author: Ophelia Benson

The White House is saying Trump’s MRI was just normal routine preventative care. The trouble is, that’s not a thing. I asked Google/AI specifically: Is it true that preventative MRI scans are normal? The answer is no.

No, preventative full-body MRI scans are not considered standard or normal by major medical organizations. While they can find abnormalities, they are not recommended for the general public because they often lead to false positives, unnecessary anxiety, expensive and potentially risky follow-up procedures, and lack of proven effectiveness in improving health outcomes or lifespan. Standard MRI scans are typically used to diagnose specific symptoms or monitor a known condition, not for general, symptom-free screening.

And yet the White House swears up and down that Trump’s MRI was just totally normal routine boring standard practice.

Trump is furious at the Times again.

The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I won our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history – I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down. To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.

He still has his Energy, damn you! He also still has his random Capital Letters – Work and Energy get caps but prices, groceries, life, piece, and facts do not. Even dear friendly opposite does not get a capital letter.

They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap “RAG” is truly an “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.

Doooooooonald, you’re projectiiiiiiiiiing again.

There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone

But he’s careful not to run his battery down.

Katha Pollitt asks

Why Did So Many People in Epstein’s Circle Look the Other Way?

Here is what I’ve learned from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal so far: If you are rich, practiced in the art of flattery, generous with favors and connections and donations, give star-studded dinner parties, and offer flights on your private plane, nobody cares if you hired a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Or, nobody except those boring cranky argumentative people who think women and girls matter.

Even if you went to jail for it—though Alan Dershowitz and future labor secretary Alexander Acosta finagled a deal whereby you didn’t serve your whole sentence and were allowed out during the day and on weekends. Nobody’s going to ask a lot of follow-up questions about your activities in the years since your encounter with the law. It was just the one time! Mistake of judgment!

As Jeffrey Epstein’s very good friend Noam Chomsky (yes, that Noam Chomsky) put it in 2023 when The Wall Street Journal asked him about his extensive contacts with Epstein over many years, “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

What???

Like hell it does.

It yields a you have served your sentence. Having served a sentence is not the same thing as a clean slate. It means you can’t be sentenced again for the same crime; it does not mean you are now a decent human being. You may be a reformed human being, but then again you may not. Having served a sentence doesn’t tell us which you are.

Epstein had no problem attracting famous, brilliant, immensely powerful people into his circle, almost all men.

Because women are for poking; women are not for brilliant. Nobody cares what’s in a woman’s brain.

Everyone who hung out with Epstein had more than enough information to ask hard questions about their dear friend Jeffrey and chose not to ask them. Or maybe even to think them. As the Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, who himself left Arizona State University over sexual harassment accusations, told an interviewer in 2011, “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people.”

Oh come on. That’s azza scientist I judge based on empirical evidence? I’ve seen all these very young women around him but I haven’t watched him fuck them so I would believe him and no one else? That’s not judging on empirical evidence, that’s seeing what you want to see and nothing else. Or as Katha puts it, “Empirical evidence apparently doesn’t include a conviction for soliciting a minor and lifelong placement on the sex-crimes registry.”

These are men accustomed to looking beneath the surface and pursuing what is hidden wherever it leads—about science, language, world affairs. But about these women those men evinced a profound incuriosity. They were just the scenery, the help, or as Dominique Strauss-Kahn memorably put it, the “equipment.” In degree but not in kind, they are like the men in Southern France who were invited to rape a drugged Gisele Pelicot, and justified this bizarre situation on the basis that her husband had given permission.

But they’re important dudes so whatever.

Trump continues to urge the US military to commit war crimes.

The president has picked up where he left off before Thanksgiving, when it comes to his anger at the six Democratic lawmakers who took part in a video urging service members to “refuse illegal orders”.

A reminder, that Trump initially went on a Truth Social tirade, accusing the members of Congress (all of whom are veterans or former intelligence officials) of sedition, adding that their actions are “punishable by death”.

They are all veterans or former intelligence officials, and he is not. He is a real estate hustler. That’s it, that’s his “profession”. He’s qualified to tell service members to commit war crimes by his decades of experience building casinos and golf resorts.

Good to know.

Department of Defense Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 states the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders.

What’s its key example? Wait for it . . . It’s "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 1, 2025

Julie Bindel talks to an escapee from fanaticism:

In 2003, aged 20, Appel trained as a hairdresser and worked in a salon for a decade. In 2011, he met his husband-to-be, and in 2017 they moved to New York, where he enrolled at Columbia University. Studying non-fiction writing, while campaigning against the incoming Trump administration, he became embedded within the so-called liberationist movement that includes LGBT rights.

In the three-and-a-half years he spent there, Appel saw fellow students becoming indoctrinated with pseudoscientific, anti-Western dogma sold to them as progressiveness. He began to see that what was happening was cult-like and “in many ways worse than Lamb of God”.

Any slight digression from the “trans women are women”, “death to the West” type politics was severely punished, he says. “Intelligent young people bent over backwards to be anti-racist, against imperialism and even embracing Islamic jihadists in the process.”

And embracing the idea that being critical of Islam is equivalent to being racist, or for the less subtle types racism tout court.

Social justice warriordom morphed into the cult of queer, and punishments meted out for failure to adhere to the creed were severe, involving bullying and ostracisation.

He had been indoctrinated in the view that sees white cis men (gays included) as the enemy. For these new puritans, the airing of grievances was the preferred blood sport, and there was an obsession with identifying the oppressor, rather than the victim.

That’s a good point. The sadistic thrill of othering one of their own is the top priority.

In his third year at Columbia, he continued to excel, but mentally he was falling apart. “Suddenly,” Appel says, “I was having these symptoms that were exactly like [the ones I experienced as a teenager].”

He found himself flooded with constant anxiety about being a bad person, misspeaking, misgendering and sinning. “It was so all-consuming,” he says. “People started to call me something called ‘cis’ and it had to do with my gender performativity. It sounds horrible. It sounds like sissy.” Not only that, but it was said “in the same cadence that the middle-school kids called me fag, and with the same hatred and the same vitriol behind it”.

The hatred and vitriol are the point. The cause they’re in aid of is just the launchpad.

Now a full-time writer, and non-aligned politically, Appel says: “You have to keep in mind that arguing with these people is like trying to argue with a biblical literalist, in that they believe that holding certain views makes them a good person and protects them from going to hell.

“Now I can say, there’s no third gamete, men should not be in women’s prisons, children are never in the wrong body, and not all white people are racist. I will be saying this even if they bring back the guillotine, right before the blade falls.”

They don’t need the guillotine. They could just lock you in a cell with a video of India Willoughby talking on a loop forever. This is hell, nor are we out of it.

Could be a war crime.

A top Republican and Democrats in Congress suggested on Sunday that American military officials might have committed a war crime in President Trump’s offensive against boats in the Caribbean after a news report said that during one such attack, a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors.

The remarks came in response to a Washington Post report on Friday that said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a verbal order to kill everyone aboard boats suspected of smuggling drugs, and that this led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.

“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the thinking is that once the enemy is disarmed and helpless it’s a war crime to kill said enemy.

I don’t fully understand why that doesn’t apply to dropping bombs on small boats, but anyway.

The United States has built up a military presence in the Caribbean meant to put pressure on Venezuela. Trump administration officials have said that they are trying to deter drug smuggling, and that the boat strikes, which have killed more than 80 people since early September, are part of a purported formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But members of Congress have been voicing concerns over the legal justification being used to conduct them.

Well it certainly sounds weird. What formal armed conflict? The drug cartels have formally declared war?

Democrats have repeatedly criticized the boat strikes as illegal, likening them to extrajudicial killings. Mr. Kelly was part of a group of six lawmakers who made a video this month that reminded troops they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, though it did not mention any specific order.

On Sunday, Mr. Kelly, who is being investigated by the Pentagon for his remarks in the video, said he had “serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over.”

Mkay so I’m not the only one who doubts the drug cartels have declared war on the US.

Still, many Republicans have expressed support for the military operations in Venezuela. On Sunday, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a close Trump ally, dismissed The Post’s report and defended the administration.

Mr. Mullin, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Trump was “protecting the United States by being very proactive.”

Well, that’s one way of putting it. No doubt Lt. Calley would have said it if it had been current jargon at the time.

Headline:

Woman who tried to summon her MP to court is jailed for harassment

Caption under photo:

Tracey Smith used phrases including ‘a person is dangerous when they have nothing to lose’, ‘be warned’, and ‘bullets will be flying around’.

Lede:

A woman who tried to summon her MP to court has been jailed for harassment.

Clear enough?

What comes next:

Tracey Smith, who is a trans woman, sent Solicitor General Ellie Reeves 22 emails and 10 voicemails calling her “transphobic” and accusing her older sister – Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves – of physically assaulting her at a buffet bar.

Smith used phrases including “a person is dangerous when they have nothing to lose”, “be warned”, and “bullets will be flying around”.

Newspapers have no business lying about the sex of a violent threatening man in a news article.

The good news is he was sentenced to 26 weeks in prison.

Nevertheless The Standard calls him “her” and “she” throughout the article.

Another “Here’s a thing for women that’s not for women” boobytrap.

It was as Mara Hafezi watched the first wave of runners line up for Nike’s latest After Dark race aimed at women that she noticed something wasn’t quite right. The 10km event, held last Sunday evening around the Excel centre in east London, had been marketed as an opportunity for women to come together and “reclaim the night” — but among the thousands of female runners in attendance were a handful of men.

“It was really disappointing,” said Hafezi, 35, from London. “The moment you have men involved, whether it’s two or twenty, it’s no longer a women’s-only race. There were people asking, ‘Why are they here?’ I just couldn’t understand it.”

They were there to underline the message yet again that women don’t matter.

Yeah no he doesn’t get to do that.

“I hereby declare your airspace closed!”

“Backsies!”

Venezuela has reacted angrily to US President Donald Trump’s statement that the airspace around the country should be considered closed.

The country’s foreign ministry called Trump’s comments “another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people”.

The US does not have legal authority to close another country’s airspace and the Venezuelan statement accused Trump of making a “colonialist threat”.

Colonialist or idiotic. One of those.

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

Writing something on a personal social media platform is just that. It has no more force than a tweet about what someone had for lunch.

Furthermore, writing it in all caps is also toothless. It doesn’t become more of a legal order when issued in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

With Trump ratcheting up his threats, some Democratic and Republican members of the US Congress have expressed anger that he has not sought legislative approval. “Trump’s reckless actions towards Venezuela are pushing America closer and closer to another costly foreign war,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted on X on Sunday. “Under our constitution, Congress has the sole power to declare war.”

But, of course, many presidents have sneaked around that rule.

War Powers refers to both Congress’ and the President’s Constitutional powers over military or armed conflicts by the United States. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. The President, derives the power to direct the military after a Congressional declaration of war from Article II, Section 2. This presidential power is titled as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. These provisions require cooperation between the President and Congress regarding military affairs, with Congress funding or declaring the operation and the President directing it. 

Nevertheless, Presidents have engaged in military operations without express Congressional consent. These operations include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, the Afghanistan War of 2001 and the Iraq War of 2002. However, Congress never explicitly declared war during these operations; therefore, they are not considered official wars by the United States. 

So that works out. Presidents can do wars, they just can’t call them wars. Cool.

When the mainstream media just plain lie to us:

The Guardian:

Woman jailed for harassing Rachel Reeves’s MP sister

But it’s not a woman. But the Guardian just plain lies about it before admitting it.

A woman who tried to summon her MP, the solicitor general Ellie Reeves, to court has been jailed for harassment in London.

Tracey Smith sent Reeves 22 emails and 10 voicemails calling her “transphobic” and accusing her older sister – the chancellor, Rachel Reeves – of physically assaulting her at a buffet bar.

Smith, who is a trans woman, used phrases including “a person is dangerous when they have nothing to lose” and “bullets will be flying around”.

Not until the third paragraph does this respectable mainstream news outlet admit that Smith is a “trans woman” i.e. a man. The shamelessness of it is breathtaking. Yet again, for those at the back of the room, these are not our fucking crimes.

When the headlines say woman but it’s not a woman.

Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman:

…a few days ago, my friend and co-editor Lucy Hunter Blackburn and I were sent an open letter signed by a motley crew of more than 150 members of Scotland’s “academic, heritage, arts, literary and cultural sectors”.

It was addressed to the board and senior management of the National Library of Scotland and, in the whiny voice of an entitled teenager denied the latest iPhone, complained that the inclusion of a “certain book” in the library’s centenary exhibition created a “hostile environment for queer and trans people working at and visiting the library”.

How would that work exactly? Can people visiting the library somehow sense that the “certain book” is there even if they don’t so much as glance at the centenary exhibition? Does wrong-think exude a poisonous miasma?

The book in question is The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays on women’s rights campaigning in Scotland edited by me and Lucy. It was briefly the subject of controversy earlier this year when the National Library excluded it from its centenary exhibition, despite it winning a public vote, after staff concerns that it would cause “harm”.

It was re-instated following a torrent of complaints, and today sits proudly among the 200-plus books that shaped people’s lives, including Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Kidnapped and Juno Dawson’s What’s The T, described as a “no-nonsense guide to all things trans and/or non-binary for teens”.

A splendid display of Scotland’s diverse and inclusive culture one would think, but not, it seems, for the self-appointed guardians of our nation’s culture.

Their missive went on to complain, with no evidence, that “anti-trans activists had been emboldened to harass library visitors”. The library has, in recent months, become “materially less safe”, they said.

And by “materially” they mean…?

It was signed by such luminaries as writer Catherine Wilson Garry, Dave Coates, duty manager of the Fruitmarket Gallery, and Ryan Van Winkle, director of Stanza, Scotland’s international poetry festival.

Peppered among the poets, arts administrators and writers were a number of academics including no less than three professors at Glasgow University and Dr Kevin Guyan, of Edinburgh University, who also happens to be chair of the Scottish Government-funded charity the Equality Network.

A Glasgow University lecturer posted the letter on social media urging people to sign it in support of the library’s queer and trans staff who were “going through an awful time at the moment”.

Are they? Who says? Is the time they’re going through worse than the time women (to choose just one random example) are?

An “awful time” caused, according to the signatories of the letter, by a book written by 34 women about a campaign for women’s rights. A book so powerful that it can cause harm simply by sitting on a shelf next to an Oor Wullie annual. A book so toxic, these modern-day witchfinders cannot even bear to speak its name.

You know…if people are having an “awful time” because of a campaign for women’s rights…doesn’t that tell you more about those people than it does about the campaign for women’s rights? I mean it’s like saying racists are having an awful time because racism is frowned on. “Aw, honey, are you? Well try not being a racist then.” Same with books about women’s rights. If you’re miserable because of a book about women’s rights maybe that’s a you problem and not a that book problem.

Trump thinks exercise is bad for you.

It’s old news, but it’s so absurd I can’t just look away.

Most recently, there was this nugget of information from a New Yorker magazine story about the president. Trump “considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy,” writes Evan Osnos.

This belief is also described in the Washington Post’s biography of the 45th president, which explains that he gave up sports after college because of this same mysterious “battery” belief, that working out would deplete his energy.

But but but then how does he explain all the successful athletes who…work out?

Spoiler: he doesn’t.

Hmmm yeah people don’t get to declare other people’s countries’ airspace closed. That’s not how that works.

Trump said on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety”, but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

A fool shouting something on social media is just a fool shouting something on social media.

What he means is that he’s planning to shoot down planes in Venezuelan air space. He’s not allowed to do that either.

U.S. forces in the region have so far focused on counter-narcotics operations, although the assembled firepower far outweighs anything needed for them.

They have carried out at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, killing at least 83 people.

Also illegal.

It’s called escalation.

A judge has told a non-binary health worker who tried to sue their NHS Trust over being ‘deadnamed’ and ‘mis-pronouned’ that they should not have been so offended.

Using preferred pronouns to live as non-binary does not have the same protected status as reassigning sex, employment judge Ann Nicola Benson found.

Ooooooooooh you’re not allowed to say that. Living as non-binareee is SACRED and nobody is allowed to say it’s not as anything as anything else.

The case was brought against Cheshire and Wirral NHS Foundation Trust and six staff members by Haech Lockwood, a cognitive behavioural therapist.

Rilly? Who wants cognitive anything from an egocentric loon?

‘We therefore find that the claimant does not have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment,’ the judgement added.

Among the claims from Lockwood, who was born female and was previously known as Heather, were that they were referred to as ‘her’ on a series of IT servicedesk tickets and as ‘she’ or ‘her’ by colleagues during several interactions.

They were also sent employment contracts with their ‘deadname’, despite having changed it by deed poll and having previously brought grievances about similar issues.

Babe, nobody cares. Nobody has the time or attention to keep track of your boutique idenniny. We’re busy with other things. How about you get busy with other things yourself.

‘All staff involved demonstrated a real intention to do their best to ensure they get it right going forward and propose and, in most cases, put in place positive steps to achieve this,’ the judgement found.

Despite this, Lockwood would not accept an apology unless it showed a ‘deep understanding’ of the impact it had on them. And they demanded an apology from the IT team, instead of the apology on its behalf that had been issued.

‘We consider that the apologies given by every member of the Trust were genuine and heartfelt, and such as to seek to ensure the claimant’s concerns were appreciated and understood by them,’ judge Benson wrote. ‘It is unfortunate that the claimant was unwilling to accept them as such and take such an inflexible stance.’

Which is why it’s a mistake to humor this bullshit at all ever. Just say no, or you’ll be bogged down in absurd quarrels for the foreseeable future.

One of the complaints related to an IT ticket Lockwood received after flagging an issue on July 5, 2023, which used the pronoun ‘her’ to describe them.

Lockwood responded to say the misgendering had left them distressed, and the IT technician immediately emailed to apologise, changed the pronoun ‘her’ to ‘their’ and left a note for the next person so they would be aware of Lockwood’s non-binary status.

The tribunal found that Lockwood had not told the IT technician of their non-binary status when they made the call, and the technician had taken steps to remedy the situation at the time.

‘Although the claimant says that it was not up to them to, for example, tell someone their pronouns, that takes away their opportunity to influence the environment and educate colleagues as to the environment they seek to create – particularly where the social norms are binary, and there are such a small number of non binary people in the organisation,’ the judge said. ‘The claimant approach has, as indicated by one of the witnesses, been unforgiving.’

Of course it has, because that’s the fun of it. Fuss fuss fuss pay attention to me me me no not that way but a different way, and more, and better, according to me, look at me now and also tomorrow and forever. That’s how you be a good ally.

To the surprise of no one, Trump is doing what Trump does.

Trump is doubling down on the aggressive anti-immigration policies that helped deliver him a second term, launching an interagency federal investigation into the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, while also directing his administration to take steps to stem migration into the US.

In the hours following the shooting, an emboldened Trump addressed the American public. He painted a picture of a country overrun with “cuckoo” and “unvetted” migrants and he vowed a crackdown to expel them from the country and “permanently pause migration” from others – a priority he’s centered in his return to the Oval Office.

…

Hours later, the president intensified his rhetoric, calling for what he described as “reverse migration.”

“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” Trump said in a lengthy post to social media late Thursday evening, adding that he would “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.”

And how are we defining asset? Is Trump an asset? What are the criteria?

From SEEN in Journalism:

We’ve contacted BBC Scotland about the trigger warning, or ‘content signposting’, on Scotcast with Naomi Cunningham.

The use of signposts on content based on the reality of sex is unique in this debate.

We’re pleased that Scotcast conducted and published this interview even though the other side did not respond to an invitation.

This is in line with Editorial Guidelines: items must not be vetoed because one side does not take part.

However having to ‘empty chair’ the other side does not justify repeated content warnings, which imply potential offence, abuse, discrimination, extreme or hateful speech or misogyny.

We’ve asked the BBC never to use trigger warnings for ‘gender critical’ content again, unless it’s also prepared to add them to every article which describes people as if they were the opposite sex, which could equally be considered offensive or discriminatory.

That would go a long way to establishing fairness, balance and consistency, while also protecting presenters, who can be very exposed on this issue.

We’ve also asked them to support programme teams and presenters editorially by producing fact checks on which they can draw, concerning biological sex and related issues.

Belief in gender identity should never be presented as equivalent to the understanding that sex is a reality. This does not prevent any presenter legitimately explaining that people do have a range of alternate beliefs.

As the BBC moves towards neutrality on this issue, its presenters specifically are vulnerable to the sort of vitriol from activists that women have suffered for years.

Guidelines are needed from the top to ensure that they are editorially protected and able to conduct their work with the accuracy and impartiality required.

No more trigger warnings on reality-based content around sex and gender. They are not necessary, and they frame ‘gender critical views’ as outside appropriate and socially acceptable discourse.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Who just went along with it.

I’ve heard working-class women come out very strongly for “the ideology”. I’ve heard a female friend saying that she would have no issue with sharing a changing room with a trans-identified male, even if he still had male genitalia.

Perhaps this is an illustration of how memes work, right? There is this idea that a female mind (and mind is ill-defined) can be trapped in a male body, and since it’s the male mind that is most likely to commit sexual abuse then such women feel safe with an intact male who has a female mind in their space. So, for Brian Wu to go in and trade lipstick tips, well that’s just being “one of the gang.”

I think that the second issue that’s blocking people from thinking skeptically is the association that people have cultivated between right-wing ideology and being anti-trans. So, any sort of objection to men in womanface in women’s restrooms is dismissed as being MAGA or UKIP. Also, I see people making the ludicrous suggestion that if their only goal is to molest women, they wouldn’t go through the whole womanface thing. A rule isn’t a barrier.

The third is that skeptics skew left politically and there are many topics which left-leaning people adopt prima facie and that is the idea that the transgender experience is as much a natal characteristic as is sexuality. If one can be born gay, lesbian, or bisexual, then it is very much the same thing to be born trans or enby. Questioning that is as bigoted as questioning any other innate characteristic. And the problem is that by adopting this uncritically, bystanders who lean left follow along.

I don’t know how much sociology is taught in secondary education, and I took it as an elective back in the 1970’s; but we learned very clearly the difference between sex and gender roles. We learned that even though gender roles are founded on sex difference, they varied from society to society. My anthropology course confirmed that. Logically from that, I do not see how gender identity can be innate. It’s not a leap to understand how certain aspects of personality are innate, so that if someone has preferences that are considered to be more characteristic of the other sex one might be scorned for acting on those preferences. Suppression of those preferences might express as a sexual fetish in a Freudian world, and as we know, gender is a trap that reduces our options for expression. My impression is based on several courses in psychology, even though I am not a trained psychologist. But my conclusion is that by tying gender directly to sex in a way that leads people to believe that they will be whole by modifying (here used as a synonym for mutilating) their body to match the appearance of the gender whose roles one prefers to express, is a result of toxic masculinity and a symptom of regression. It is an affirmation of the gender trap, rather than a refutation of it.

Things have gotten so tangled and gnarled that those who would prefer to express as androgynous now call themselves “Non-binary” and that is considered a third choice on the forms where we report our sex. I think that the “Free to be, you and me” program was a great start in attacking the gender trap, but it seems to have been abandoned. Sociobiology from the seventies and eighties, and evolutionary psychology in the current century, seem to create the meme that sex and gender are irrevocably intertwined and that to have feminine characteristics a male must be truly female, and vice versa.

I don’t think that most of those good-meaning people who “support transgender kids” hate girls or women consciously. I don’t think they are stupid. I do recognize that many men who demean women as “ugly TERFS” hate women and find this another issue on which they can shout women down and tell them they are stupid and ugly. But for the large part, those who adopt the ugly adaptation of the rainbow flag do so out of a desire to be more inclusive, and the meme has replaced their skeptical thought patterns on this issue.

Last weekend I came out as being pro-Title IX at an atheist meeting and was being shouted down by someone who demanded to know if I know anyone who takes cross-sex hormones. I know that person doesn’t hate women, and I know she considers herself a skeptic. But, I think she was infected by the transgender meme.