Ok let’s see if I can stomach this. Dreadful pompous smug fencing coach in August 2023 telling women and girls why they should take a back seat and like it.

So perhaps, before you dive in, it’s best to call out my beliefs up front before you waste your time reading this and find yourself throwing up your hands in a tizzy.

He means women there. It’s only women who “throw up their hands in a tizzy.” It’s so womany – stupid, weak, emotional, futile. Already we know where we are.

• Trasngender women are women and gender is not sex.
• Transgender fencers deserve the right to compete with the gender they identify with, and those of adult age should comply with the competition guidelines and regulations outlined by USA Fencing and the IOC—even if the science those IOC guidelines might be imperfect.
• A separate division denies them their truth to compete as their authentic selves and is antithetical to USA Fencing’s Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) vision.
• There is a possibility that transgender women have a physical advantage over their cisgender opponents after transitioning. There is also a possibility they do not. In Fencing, there is no data to support either viewpoint.
• Giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory.

Transgender women are men. If they were women they would just be called women.

Males who claim to be transgender have zero right to “compete with the gender they identify with” (presumably meaning as the gender they identify with), because males have physical advantages over females. It’s perfectly simple and obvious.

Talk of “their truth” and “their authentic selves” is just cloying silly rhetoric, and in no way a reason to trash women’s sports.

Of course men have an advantage over women before and after and during transitioning. There’s no “there is a possibility” about it.

If giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is so important why isn’t it as important for women as it is for men???

What a horrible man.

There’s a lot more. Basta.

The rot is deep.

A director on the USA Fencing board once published an opus in support of trans athletes — less than two years before the athletic organization disqualified a female fencer from a tournament because she refused to compete against a trans opponent.

Damien Lehfeldt, the board’s elected at-large director, outlined his staunch position in a long-winded Aug. 30, 2023, blog post, in which he defended the right of trans fencers to compete against women, despite conceding they may have “a physical advantage.” 

Can confirm. I started reading it but had to stop – it’s too enraging. I might go back to it later to gather some excerpts. It is indeed long-winded, and of course self-admiring, and smug as the smuggest thing that ever smugged. There are few things more annoying than reading a smug self-admiring long-winded asshole explain why it’s fine for men to ruin women’s sports.

“There is a possibility that transgender women have a physical advantage over their cisgender opponents after transitioning,” the board member wrote. “There is also a possibility they do not. In Fencing, there is no data to support either viewpoint. Giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory,” [he] continued.

Oh shut up. Of course there is not a possibility that men don’t have a physical advantage over women. And fuck off with your breezy giving away of women’s medals and competitive glory for the sake of men in skirts. Men like this guy just can’t believe their luck in finding a way to mess up women’s lives while pretending to be the good guys and getting away with it.

Lehfeldt was part of the board that expelled Stephanie Turner from the Cherry Blossom Open in Maryland over the weekend because the 31-year-old opted to take a knee rather than compete against trans fencer Redmond Sullivan — a move that critics have ripped as unjust. 

It’s unjust all right.

From the tribunal:

Not to mention at work as a doctor or nurse or similar.

Well that is quite the admission, bro. He can’t get his head around the very idea that a woman would be startled and alarmed at the very least to see a man bounce into a women’s changing room. He’s confessing to having absolutely no clue what life is like for women.

Every right to be there? Like hell. The only right he has to be there is the fanciful dangerous one bestowed on him by men like Grant Buttars.

Et tu Brontë Parsonage Museum?

Meet the Senior Leadership Team:

Our Senior Leadership Team steers the Brontë Parsonage Museum towards achieving our goals, and ensures we continue to work with our core values at heart.

Contact list of staff members

• Rebecca Yorke Pronouns She/her Role Director
• Mhairi Tomlinson Pronouns She/her Role Head of Finance
• Gail Price Pronouns She/her Role HR and Operations Manager
• Ann Dinsdale Pronouns She/her Role Principal Curator

Let’s see…does the Shakespeare Trust do that?

Nope. Not a pronoun in sight.

Dickens Museum?

Nope. The staff seems to be all or mostly women – the real kind.

Reduxx back in 2023 on men taking over women’s fencing.

In November of 2022, USA Fencing adopted a Transgender and Nonbinary Athlete Policy which stated that division placement would be determined based on self-declared “gender identity” or “gender expression” rather than on biological sex.

Now let’s pause for a second to think about who benefits from such a policy and who does not.

Could it be that men benefit at the expense of women? And thus necessarily women are cheated for the pleasure of men?

Yes, it could. It couldn’t be any other way. Everybody knows this.

“USA Fencing will not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, regardless of sex assigned at birth, or any other form of gender expression for participation in any division,” read the policy. “As such, athletes will be permitted to participate in USA Fencing sanctioned events in a manner consistent with their gender identity/ expression, regardless of the gender associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.”

And, more to the point, regardless of HOW FUCKING UNFAIR TO WOMEN such a policy is. So there, nyah.

Rylie Rueda, previously known as Mateo, had a lackluster career in men’s fencing prior to identifying into the women’s category.

From 2016 to 2017, Rueda finished 38th at the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Association Fall Invitational in the men’s division. According to a report on the Boston College (BC) website, Rueda continued to compete on the BC men’s fencing team in 2018, which ranked last overall following three matches against Harvard, Brandeis, and MIT.

In 2019, after switching to the women’s category, he was awarded the gold medal and title of Champion in the Women’s Epee at Boston College. In 2022, Rueda took first place at the NCAA Regionals in the women’s category.

Gosh, what fun for him. From nowhere to the top spot, just by pretending to idennify as a laydee.

Dawn Wilson, another man who identifies as transgender, was recently profiled positively by USA Fencing for Pride Month on their official Instagram account, and claims he was involved in the creation of the formal “inclusivity” policy for USA Fencing.

Wilson is currently rated 7th in the country in the Over 50 Women’s Division. According to his profile, Wilson is a two-time Women’s Veteran World Saber Champion, having received the title in both 2014 and 2015. He was also a US Veteran World Championship Team Member in 2017 and 2018 and has reached a world ranking of 14th on several occasions.

A vocal trans activist, Wilson has expressed disapproval over a bill in his home state that would prevent the medical transitioning of minors. Kentucky’s Senate Bill 150, which was blocked by a federal judge at the end of June at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), would prohibit health care providers in the state from administering puberty-halting drugs and performing “gender-affirming” surgeries on children.

Doctors have a Civil Liberty to maim confused children who say they’re the opposite sex.

He currently sits on the board of the United States Fencing Association where he has served as the Kentucky Division Chair since 2013. Speaking with local outlet Spectrum News 1 in June, Wilson said he was involved in the creation of the transgender policy put in place last fall by USA Fencing.

“One of the things with USA Fencing, especially with belonging, we take that very seriously,” Wilson said. “Because if you don’t feel like you belong, if you feel like you don’t have any agency there, you’re not going to do well in the sport.”

Ahhh yes belonging. What a good thing belonging is. What a good thing a feeling of agency is. How sad that women don’t get to have either of those feelings, thanks to men like “Dawn” Wilson.

When babies fall out.

Donald Trump fired six national security council staffers after a fraught meeting in the Oval Office where the far-right activist Laura Loomer presented opposition research against a number of staffers that she said showed they were disloyal to the US president, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The firings encompassed four staffers who were fired overnight, after the meeting, and two who were removed over the weekend. It created the extraordinary situation where Loomer appeared to have more influence than the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, over the NSC and undercut Waltz in having aides axed under him.

And when the Guardian says “Loomer” it means a completely random person off the street with no work history or expertise or learning or anything else that qualifies her to tell a head of state to fire her little list of people. Mind you the head of state is as unqualified as she is, but two wrongs don’t make a soufflé.

Loomer brought a booklet of papers laying out the perceived disloyalty of about a dozen staffers, including Waltz’s principal deputy, Alex Wong, to the meeting, which was also attended by JD Vance, the chief of staff Susie Wiles, the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Waltz himself.

While the firings appeared arbitrary, one of the people said that the White House looked through Loomer’s opposition research and verified parts of it. Ultimately, it found that one NSC official had recently criticized Trump on social media and others had ties to Republican establishment figures like the senators John McCain and Mitch McConnell, whom Trump despises.

Rock solid proof that these are people we don’t like and don’t want at our lunch table so there!

Loomer sat directly across from Trump in the Oval Office as she made her pitch to him directly to remove the people she was targeting. The New York Times reported that the Republican representative Scott Perry, who had his own concerns about staffers in the administration, was also trying to meet with Trump at the same time.

Well yes but he’s just some random amateur outsider so obviously he’s not going to get time with the big kahuna.

This all seems very reasonable and carefully thought through.

The Trump administration has fired the head of both the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, the BBC’s US partner CBS has reported. The removal of General Timothy Haugh comes amid what appears to be a wider purge of top security officials at the agency and at the White House.

Democrats have said they are “deeply disturbed” by the move and say it jeopardises national security.

It is not clear why Gen Haugh was removed, but it comes after a meeting between President Donald Trump and far-right activist Laura Loomer on Wednesday.

Between Trump and who the hell is Laura Loomer?

She’s an…internet personality. Ah. That’s definitely who should be making these decisions. She ran for Congress in 2020 but lost. She’s an “activist” and a conspiracy theorist. That’s it, that’s her credential for supervising the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command.

Ms Loomer reportedly urged Trump to fire specific employees whom she suspected lacked support for his agenda. She posted on X that Gen Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble, who US media reported was also sacked, “have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”

Before their firings were reported, Trump told reporters he would get rid of any staff deemed to be disloyal. “We’re always going to let go of people – people we don’t like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Trump made the comments as reports emerged of the firings of at least three other officials at the White House National Security Council (NSC), following the reported meeting with Ms Loomer. The president did not confirm names.

Did the president confirm why he had a “meeting” with some random flake and then fired a bunch of key people on her say-so?

Aboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, on Thursday, Trump praised Ms Loomer and confirmed he had met with her, calling her a “great patriot” and a “very strong person”.

“She makes recommendations… sometimes I listen to those recommendations,” he said. “I listen to everybody and then I make a decision.”

Make no mistake, peasants! He makes a decision! No one else! He’s the boss! But he does take very good excellent professional informed advice from random people he found on the internetz.

[Loomer] texted a statement that said: “It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings. I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of STRONG VETTING, for the sake of protecting the President of the United States of America and our national security.”

Oh good. Whew. She has research findings. That’s ok then! I thought it was just her personal brain work, but no, she found research findings. That’s a huge relief.

USA Fencing tells lie after lie after lie.

It’s not the least bit “committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful community for everyone” in their sport. It’s committed to the exact opposite – it’s committed to fostering a community that forcibly excludes women who decline to compete against men in women’s competitions. That policy is not inclusive of women and it’s not respectful to women. It excludes women from their own competitions, it insults them, it punishes them, it bullies them.

They don’t believe in the principle of creating safe communities, either. Forcing women to fence with men is not safe. They don’t believe in creating communities where all athletes have a place, either: they took a woman’s place in their “community” away because she refused to compete against a man.

Telling us to “keep the conversation respectful” just adds insult to injury.

Oh, gee, thanks; good to know.

Stickers saying “I Love JK Rowling” are not a “dog whistle” for transphobia, a university professor has told an employment tribunal.

Academics Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne are suing the University and College Union (UCU) after its Edinburgh branch said their film Adult Human Female was an attack on transgender identity.

How are we defining “attack”? “Identity”? “Transgender”?

People who talk about and believe in and aggressively defend “transgender identity” believe that sex is swappable and that “transgender identity” is vastly more important than mere bodies. It’s all a bit church-like, really – never mind the vile body, it’s the soul that matters.

The film challenged trans rights claims and provoked protests when they tried to show it at the University of Edinburgh, the tribunal heard. The academics say this was unlawful discrimination by the UCU against their belief that there are only two sexes.

It’s not a belief. Everyone knows there are “only” two sexes (how many do you want ffs?) so the act of believing it is superfluous.

From the Telegraph’s coverage of the tribunal:

Naomi Cunningham, for the academics, said: “The conduct of the union in encouraging protest against these screenings and calling for [the] venue to be withdrawn was a completely consistent part of a wider course of conduct.” She said that Dr Wanggren, Grant Buttars, UCU Edinburgh branch president, and the union had sought to create “a hostile environment for anyone who held a gender critical view”.

Ms Cunningham added: “You were trying to create an environment, both at Edinburgh University and in the union as a whole, in which it was simply impossible to discuss gender critical ideas or arguments at all because you regarded those ideas as inherently transphobic.” She went on to say: “The branches conduct in response to the two proposed screenings was for the specific purpose of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for any member of the union with gender critical views, whether at Edinburgh or elsewhere, wasn’t it?”

Dr Wanggren replied: “Absolutely not.”

Ms Cunningham suggested that large numbers of gender-critical members of the union have now left.

Dr Wanggren said that was “not to my knowledge” but that she is aware that some people had left, and said a comparable film with different or opposing views would likely have been treated the same way. She said: “I am telling the tribunal that if a comparable film against any other minority group that used the kind of language, the broad brush strokes that harm that minoritised community, UCU would in line with our policies [have] acted in a similar way.”

She said the union has a policy on a range of equality issues including those affecting trans, race and LGBTQ communities.

But not, of course, women. Never women. Never ever women.

Why is that, exactly?

Is it because women are not strictly speaking a “minority”?

And yet women are treated like a minority, and arguably viewed as a minority. Women are the Other. Women are the mistake, the exception, the where things went wrong, the defective. Proper people are male, with the big muscles and the beards and above all no nasty stinky hole Down There. Men are the real people and women are the sly plotting treacherous feeble mistakes.

That’s why UCU and Dr Wanggren wouldn’t dream of protecting women’s right to speak and protest. Women don’t deserve it. The only good woman is a male woman.

Another front in the Shut Up About Women wars.

Two academics behind a gender-critical film have taken legal action against their union, accusing it of discrimination and harassment after it campaigned on social media to stop the documentary being screened.

Deirdre O’Neill, a senior lecturer in film studies at the University of Hertfordshire, and Michael Wayne, a professor of media and film studies at Brunel University, describe Adult Human Female as the first UK documentary to look at the “clash between women’s rights and gender ideology/trans rights”.

When a screening was arranged at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, documents before the tribunal said the local branch of the University and College Union (UCU) wrote to the university calling on it to cancel the event, describing it as a “clear attack on trans people’s identities” and denouncing it as “transphobic” on Twitter.

But what about the women’s rights part? Does that not matter at all?

Don’t be silly; of course it doesn’t. Fans of trans ideology succeeded in preventing the film from being shown on two occasions.

Adult Human Female is regarded by trans rights groups as inflammatory, transphobic and inaccurate. Documents before the Watford tribunal said the film examined claims made by trans rights activists that “trans women are women” and should be treated as women in all legal and social contexts.

Can you imagine? Actually examining claims that men are women and should be treated as women in all legal and social contexts? Whatever next? Examining claims that dogs are trees?

O’Neill and Wayne, who describe themselves as gender critical, believe sex is a matter of biology, that it is impossible for a human to change sex, and that sex is important in a range of different political and social contexts.

Or rather they are aware that sex is a matter of biology and that it is impossible for a human to change sex. It’s a reality more than a belief. It is a belief in a sense but it muddies the water to call it that. We don’t burble about “belief” when it’s a matter of speeding cars crashing into objects or bodies jumping off tall buildings. We’re aware of certain realities and we act accordingly.

The union – or respondent – denies it has discriminated against O’Neill and Wayne. Documents before the tribunal said: “The respondent’s conduct was proportionate and necessary in the interests of advocating the rights of others. Accordingly, the reason for any less favourable treatment was not the claimants’ gender-critical belief or lack of a belief in gender identity theory.”

Is that right? What if the film had been about racism? What if the protesters had been brandishing placards raging at immigration and Pakis and replacement?

Denying harassment, the union’s defence stated: “The conduct of the respondent was to highlight its commitment to supporting its members that identify as trans or non-binary. The respondent’s conduct was proportionate and in line with its current support for its trans, non-binary and LGBT+ members.”

But what about women?

We know the answer to that. The answer is nothing. Nothing about women.

Round up the usual manipulations.

Fencer disqualified for refusing to compete against transgender opponent

No. Female fencer disqualified for refusing to compete against male opponent. The problem is not that he’s transgender, the problem is that he’s male.

USA Fencing has backed a transgender athlete after a female opponent refused to compete in their match and instead took a knee in protest.

No. Again. USA Fencing has backed a male athlete after a female opponent refused to compete in their match. Issue not transgender; issue male.

Sullivan transferred to Wagner College’s women’s team, having previously competed in the men’s division. On Wednesday, USA Fencing came out in support of Sullivan after footage of the protest went viral.

The statement read: “USA Fencing enacted our current transgender and non-binary athlete policy in 2023. The policy was designed to expand access to the sport of fencing and create inclusive, safe spaces. The policy is based on the principle that everyone should have the ability to participate in sports and was based upon the research available of the day.”

But of course a policy of allowing men to compete against women does not create inclusive, safe spaces. It does the exact opposite of that. It forces women to compete against men. That’s not safe for women and it’s not inclusive of women.

“We understand that the conversation on equity and inclusion pertaining to transgender participation in sport is evolving. USA Fencing will always err on the side of inclusion…”

No no no no. No pats on your own back. You are not erring on the side of inclusion. You are erring on the side of excluding women. You might as well call it “inclusive” to let adult male gorillas compete in wrestling matches.

Musk’s hobby:

Ashley St. Clair, who says she is the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has accused the billionaire of withdrawing child support payments to punish her for “disobedience.” It comes after St. Clair said she sold her Tesla car on Saturday to make up for Musk’s alleged 60 percent cut to payments, according to the The Daily Mail.

…

Responding to St. Clair’s claims on Monday, Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out. No court order is needed.

“Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”

Not a huge amount of child support for such a rich gangster.

Ashley St. Clair wrote on X on Monday: “It’s ironic that your last effort in court was to try to gag me while you use a social media channel you literally own to distribute derogatory messages about me and our child to the entire world. It’s all about control with you, and everyone can see it.

“America needs you to grow up, you petulant man-child.”

Yeah well that’s not happening.

The Dems are suing.

The Democratic Party on Monday asked a U.S. court to block Republican President Donald Trump‘s executive order overhauling the election system, arguing the changes risked denying eligible U.S. citizens the right to vote.

In a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the Democratic National Committee said Trump exceeded his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do not comply.

“The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy—all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed by longtime Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm.

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in the case.

…

Trump has long questioned the U.S. electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. The president and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs.

In their lawsuit, the Democrats said the U.S. Constitution empowers individual states and Congress – not the president – to control how federal elections are conducted. They said this was critical to making sure presidents do not seek to change election rules to favor themselves.

“The Framers of our federal Constitution foresaw that self-interested and self- aggrandizing leaders might seek to corrupt our democratic system of government to expand and preserve their own power,” the lawsuit read.

What kind of leaders? Can we see that again?

…self-interested and self- aggrandizing leaders might seek to corrupt our democratic system of government…

Why, that describes Trump himself. What a coincidence.

It seems that a Netflix drama about male violence against girls and women can get attention but actual real world male violence against girls and women not so much.

When real women talk about it it’s just boring and shrill. When Netflix does a male-focused drama about it Keir Starmer sits up and takes notice.

Wisconsin steps up.

Democrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.

Musk endured a wave of gloating on Twitter/X, his own social media platform, after Brad Schimel, a Trump-endorsed judge that he spent $25m supporting, lost by 10 percentage points to Susan Crawford, whose victory sustained a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

On a day that Trump has earmarked as “liberation day” to mark his long-awaited roll out of trade tariffs, Democrats seized on the result as a referendum on Musk – who has spearheaded the president’s slashing of federal government workers and spending programmes – while casting it as a platform for a recovery in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

…

The result is politically significant because the court is due to issue abortion rulings while also deciding on electoral redistricting questions which now have the potential to help Democrats in future elections in a state where contests are traditionally close.

Let’s not get carried away here. Expect nothing, avoid disappointment.

Lots of hedging here so don’t get too hopeful yet…

Trump has indicated to top advisers that Elon Musk could be taking a step back from his current role in the administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Musk is employed by the government as a “special government employee” — meaning his appointment is not to exceed 130 days. His term would be up around the end of May, but it was widely rumored that the White House could take steps to keep him on or extend his employment status in some way.

As ABC News has previously reported, Musk’s decision-making has divided Trump’s top aides and at times has sparked rifts among those closest to the president. Some of Musk’s defenders in the White House caution reporting that Musk is being pushed out is overblown, sources said.

So, who knows.

ABC News previously reported that some White House officials who had grown frustrated with Musk had resigned themselves that the billionaire is unlikely to be reined in anytime soon and had instead focused on managing the situation as best they can until his special government contract comes to an end in May.

Oh, how funny, because that’s what the rest of us have to do too.

Headline:

Sandy Stone is the first transgender woman inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame

Should of course be “Sandy Stone is the first man inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.”

They just can’t get enough of insulting us, can they. Without rubbing women’s noses in male contempt what would “trans women” even mean?

Bupkis. Insulting women is the entire point; there’s nothing left over.

The Advocate really relishes the work.

Stone, credited with starting the academic field of transgender studies, is also a recording engineer, an artist, and the first known trans woman in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Around the end of this year, her story will be told in a documentary film.

The first known trans woman – geddit? There are lots of secret men in the women’s hall of fame already, teehee.

Stone was inducted into the hall last year along with several other prominent women, such as civil rights icon Ruby Bridges, tennis champion Serena Williams, and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Notice the care taken to name only Black women, nudging us to accept the trans ideology truism that “transphobia” is racism by another name.

“It’s a great honor and a great responsibility,” Stone says of her induction. “Somebody has to go first.”

Go first? Go where first? What somebody? Has to why? Does the first white person have to be inducted into the African-American Hall of Fame? Why does somebody have to be the first man inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame? Please explain – really explain, not just assert.

“Obviously this was an incredibly historic induction,” says Jennifer Gabriel, CEO of the hall. 

Yeah obviously it’s massively historic when men are invited to take women’s awards.

Of inducting a trans woman, Gabriel says, “Of course there’s going to be backlash and pushback — but it’s really beautiful that we didn’t experience a lot of that.”

Why? Why is it of course? Could it be because it’s so insulting to give a man an award that’s specifically for women? If so why do you think it’s rilly byootiful that you got away with it easily?

On the transphobia coming out of the White House and elsewhere, Stone says, “Our side has been preparing for this for years, but our response will necessarily be tactical and slow, which gets no click-throughs at all. But still it will happen, and it’s just as real as what the transphobes are doing. My game, going forward, is to help people learn to turn fear into rage and defense into attack.”

Transphobes have an “unwholesome focus on other people’s genitalia,” she adds, and there’s no point in talking to them.

“There is nothing you can say to them,” she says. “Living your life is the best revenge. The best way to fight is to just be your authentic self.”

Yes, the best way to fight is to be your authentic fake self.

Originally a comment by Mosnae on No no not the chair, the person.

Gender is a [social] construct. But so is sex. So is money. We work with [social] constructs all of the time.

The point appears to be that it’s not bad for gender identity to be a social construct because the authors can come up with examples of social constructs that aren’t bad. Leaving aside the highly dubious claim about sex, there are a few issues with this. For starters, why not throw in some undesirable social constructs, too? Why not point out that God is a social construct, as well as racism and homophobia and honor killings and forced marriages and slurs?

Then there’s also the matter that money is very different from gender. Consider the following attributes:

Concreteness

Sure, money is a social construct. But it also has a very clear physical manifestation. I can point to a twenty-dollar bill and tell you: “There, that’s money.” Maybe you don’t attach value to it like I do. But you know there’s a specific thing in the real world that stands for my concept, and you can observe it and examine it and tell it apart from other things (the one exception being well-made counterfeit $20 bills). And although the broader concept of money might only exist in the mind, this particular money isn’t just in my mind; if you take the bill away from me, I don’t have those twenty bucks anymore. You can’t really do any of that with gender identity. (Of course, you can do it with gender to some extent, but it’s a limited extent, and anyway I don’t think that’s what the article wants to get at.)

In addition, though this is not a necessary feature of money, it is quite often defined, created and regulated by governments with great precision. I don’t think I need to explain how this clashes with gender and gender identity; the latter pretty much just consists of random people going around saying they have gender identities, with no particular coordination.

Mutuality

Money as a social construct only works because its users agree on it. I’m not going to convince you to trade twenty dollars’ worth of food for a worthless piece of paper. You need to regard that piece of paper as money, or no transaction will take place.

This is exactly why money has a physical instantiation. It’s not feasible to have a monetary system without any concrete token to stand for it. Alice can’t just go up to Bea and tell her that she has $20 in her mind and that she’ll transfer them over to Bea in exchange for food. How would Bea know that Alic is saying the truth? Even if she did agree to go through with the transaction, how would she use those $20? If Bea wants to buy something from Clara with the money Alice gave her, then Clara finds herself in a situation in which both Alice or Bea could be making stuff up. It just doesn’t work. Even without accusing Bea of being a liar, Clara should be able to say, “Listen, I have no way to know whether you’re saying the truth or not. No offense, but I can’t acknowledge your money nor go through with this transaction.”

With gender identity, however, people are the “experts of themselves” and if they say they have a gender identity then they do and that’s that and everyone should just take their word for it.

Utility

As far as I’m concerned, this is the big issue. Money has a clear function and purpose. We don’t just run around believing in it and telling each other about it without having any reason for doing so.

On the other hand, there isn’t an evident reason for which it would be useful to tell others about your gender identity and have them believe you. I don’t see what purpose there is in getting your gender identity acknowledged through proper pronominalization. Gender identity doesn’t impact interactions between humans in any obvious way. Or at least, there isn’t anything that’s obvious to me.

Maybe it would be fairer to put it this way: I can easily make up many scenarios in which Alice, Bea and Clara are communicating and need to have information about money. But when it comes to gender identity, I’m drawing a blank.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can reject social constructs. Granted, doing so might put you at odds with society, or prevent you from living within it. But you don’t have to use money or to adhere to a monetary system; not everyone does. And a given society can change; it’s possible for entire social constructs to disappear. Yet, despite claiming that “gender is a [presumably social] construct,” the authors appear to treat it like it’s some kind of weird absolute that is intrinsic to human beings.

Oh look, it’s Alok Vaid-Menon again. It’s been a long time.

To paraphrase somewhat liberally, he says the reason people think trans ideology is bullshit is because we’re so miserable and unfree. “It’s easier to romanticize the unfreedom,” he says emphatically, “decorate and accessorize it” –

Wait wait wait. He’s the guy recording himself in a colorful abstract-patterned shirt and dangly earrings and bright pink hair and heavy eye makeup and lipstick. Who is decorating and accessorizing here?

Another deepity: “People are made to destroy their own creativity, their own simultaneity – “

Our what now? Simultaneity? No we’re not. Look at me: typing and breathing with all the simultaneity in the world.