Is that really true though?

Is Thomas Willett’s ability to be himself at work really vital? Is it true that he shouldn’t have to hide who he is?

I don’t mean specifically the azza gay man part, I mean the generalization. Is it vital for people to “be themselves” at work?

I’ve always taken the truth of this claim for granted, but today I paused to interrogate it.

I don’t think it is, at least not always, not necessarily, not regardless of what the work is or who the other workers are or what is expected of employees.

Work is not primarily a social opportunity. It’s work. Some kinds of work may go much better if the workers know each other well and get along, but lots or most kinds of work don’t depend on that. Skills matter, effort matters, attention matters…a lot of things matter more than whether or not every employee is her or his beloved self. It may be preferable for people to feel they don’t have to hide things about themselves at work but I doubt it’s always vital.

And sometimes the need goes the other way. Some people don’t want to spill much about themselves at work, especially if they’re pushed to do so.

I don’t want to go too far with this. I’m certainly not saying people should be closeted, or that nonconforming people should conform. I’m just saying don’t overstate it. No homophobia in the workplace: definitely. Being yourself at work: frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Here we are, ready and eager to mutilate you!

Rebecca Mead wrote a rather interesting piece for The New Yorker about the Bloomsbury people and their clothes and what it all meant, but sadly it does end up at the too familiar trendy place.

At the exhibition, Morrell’s garments have been lined up like runway models at the end of a contemporary designer’s show. “Morrell spoke in her journal of how her preferred look was long and plain—she thinks her look is very simple,” Porter said. “But it seems to me that she is responding to her own features and exaggerating things because of the way she looked herself, rather than trying to hide anything.” Given Morrell’s height, hair, and hauteur, she was well aware that she looked striking and odd. Indeed, her appearance qualified as what she and her contemporaries would have called “queer”—that is, peculiar. In “Women in Love,” Hermione Roddice is described as “waving her head up and down, and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strange affected smile, making a tall queer, frightening figure.”

Oh dear. Once the q-word enters the conversation the rest must follow.

Alongside the “Bring No Clothes” exhibition, Porter has published a book that shares the title. In both, he aims to demonstrate how people in the Bloomsbury circle used clothing, fashion, and the rejection of fashion to liberate themselves in a way that presages the modern usage of “queer” as an umbrella term for “not straight.” “I describe myself as ‘queer’ rather than ‘gay,’ even though I am a gay male,” Porter writes. “The word is specific enough to have meaning, broad enough to give all queer humans the space to be themselves.”

And, bonus, it infuriates a lot of “not straight” people because of its long history as a pejorative and sometimes a prelude to violence.

Porter is not alone in the world of the arts and fashion in finding that the Bloomsbury group speaks to contemporary notions of queerness: the actor Emma Corrin, who is nonbinary, recently starred in a West End adaptation of “Orlando,” which the lesbian writer Jeanette Winterson has categorized as “the first English language trans novel.” The British designer and artist Luke Edward Hall—whose interior schemes for homes, restaurants, and retail venues, with their clashing patterns and vibrant colors, are informed by the aesthetic of Charleston—has recently launched a line of home goods and gender-neutral clothing, called Chateau Orlando, that includes baggy floral shorts and the kind of boxy sweater-vests that are perfect for a weekend in an inadequately heated country pile. Porter writes that, if Woolf were alive today, “we might imagine her identifying as non-binary or trans.” 

I think not. She was a great deal too fastidious to find the gender police attractive or persuasive.

Elsewhere, Porter writes with subtlety about Carrington’s efforts to find language for an identity that today might be categorized as nonbinary. In a 1925 letter rejecting a former lover, Gerald Brenan, Carrington tells him, “You know I have always hated being a woman. . . . I am continually depressed by my effeminacy.” Writing elsewhere of an affair with the American journalist Henrietta Bingham, Carrington confesses to having “a day-dream” of “not being female.” 

But nothing is gained by calling it “nonbinary.” Literature is full of girls and women hating being a woman, at least in the sense of hating the automatic assumption of inferiority and not-mattering that comes along with it.

Porter also advances a theory that Morrell and Virginia Woolf may have fleetingly been lovers. He cites, among other suggestive evidence, a remark in a letter to Vanessa Bell from Roger Fry, an art critic in the Bloomsbury group, that Morrell and Woolf “have fallen into each other’s arms.” At the very least, Porter argues, it makes sense to consider Woolf and Morrell as “queer comrades.”

It makes even more sense to say they were both non-conformists in various ways and leave it at that. This business of trying to stuff them into a contemporary category just betrays the silly assumption that we’re vastly cleverer than they were because we came up with these contemporary categories.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Google confirms: she does say that.

I want to tread carefully here, but wouldn’t you think a personality disorder would be a hindrance to being a good representative of the people? It’s not called a personality variation but a disorder. I’ve gathered that the borderline type is…difficult. I know “ableism” is a no-no but all the same, people in government really do need some basic abilities.

I suppose the reality is that some people now think of such things as matters of “identity” and thus sacred. Thus BPD is not an obstacle to dealing with people reasonably, but a brave and stunning identity that makes the owner a miracle of empathy and supportivity.

Is that the thinking?

Joan Smith at UnHerd yesterday:

A social worker has won her claim for harassment after she was suspended for expressing gender-critical beliefs — and the judgment has far-reaching implications for freedom of speech. For years now, activists have claimed an exclusive right to decide what constitutes “transphobia” and too many organisations — employers, regulators and political parties — have let them get away with it.

Not any more. An employment tribunal has found that Rachel Meade suffered harassment by her employer, Westminster Council, and her regulator, Social Work England (SWE). It’s a stunning vindication for Meade and a warning to other organisations that take accusations of transphobia at face value. 

Meade’s ordeal began when the regulator received a single complaint about her sharing gender-critical posts on social media. 

That single complaint, I’ve been learning, came from one Aedon Wolton, a trans man and busy “activist.”

SWE responded by launching a lengthy “fitness to practise” investigation and issuing a formal sanction. It was later withdrawn but Westminster Council suspended her for a year. A finding of gross misconduct was eventually withdrawn, but by then the damage had been done. 

Now the tribunal has stated what the council and the regulator should have acknowledged from the start: Meade had not broken any law or said anything that compromised her ability to do her job. “All of the claimant’s Facebook posts and other communications fell within her protected rights for freedom of thought and freedom to manifest her beliefs,” the panel held. 

And how did we get to the point where people are being suspended from their useful jobs for knowing and saying that people are not the opposite sex? We need to be free to know and say who is which sex, for a million reasons, some of them to do with the most basic safety.

The ruling goes further, calling out organisations which passively accept allegations of transphobia without considering that they might be malicious. The judgment explicitly criticises the regulator for “an apparent willingness to accept a complaint from one side” of the debate without any attempt at objectivity or balance — and for failing to look at the complainant’s own tendentious social media posts before initiating action against Meade.

It’s a body blow to all those gender warriors who claim that anodyne statements about biology constitute “hate speech”. Trans activists lurk on social media, like teenage boys looking for someone to throw stones at, and supposedly decent people are too cowardly to call them out. 

It’s almost as if the whole point of being trans is the power to stick it to people who don’t adhere to the absurd ideology.

What I don’t get is, why do people feel so happy to talk about themselves endlessly like this? It makes me cringe with embarrassment just to watch it – I can’t begin to imagine actually doing it.

Mind like a steel trap:

…the miracle of magnets still appears to stump some people, including Donald Trump.

At a recent rally in Mason City, Iowa, the former president went on a rant about the [fragility] of magnets while complaining about the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

Simply put: The ship has an electromagnetic aircraft launch system that relies on very large magnets.

“They had a $900 million cost over on these stupid electric catapults that didn’t work. They had almost a billion dollar cost over on the magnetic elevators,” he said. “Think of it, magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this: Give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”

That is, of course, not how magnets work. They work just fine underwater.

He didn’t say underwater. He said “a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets.” It has to be a glass of water, it has to be dropped, the person doing the dropping has to be Trump.

The former president has repeatedly brought up his fixation with the carrier, its electromagnetic catapult system, and the bizarre claim that magnets don’t function with water.

“They want to use magnets to lift up the elevators,” Trump said in a July 2021 interview with a Princeton professor. “I said magnets will not work. Give me a cup of water, throw it on the magnets, you totally short out the system. They said, ‘How did you know that?’ I said, ‘Because I know that.'”

There’s that thing he does again. “They said” – who said? They. Yes but who? They. Also, no they didn’t. Just like the people who, according to Trump, said “How did you do that???” when he said “woman man person camera tv” they didn’t say what Trump said they said. Nobody rushed up to say how brilliant he was, for the simple reason that no one thought he was brilliant and no one felt like saying he was. So when he talked about throwing a cup of water on the magnets no one hastened to congratulate him on his mind-bending genius. No one. And he doesn’t know that. He made it up, which is not the same as knowing it.

The SNP doesn’t mess around:

Parents who refuse to allow their children to change gender would face up to seven years in jail under SNP plans to ban “conversion therapy”.

Proposals published on Tuesday state that actions designed to “change or suppress” another individual’s gender identity, causing them physical or psychological harm, would become illegal under the radical law.

SNP ministers acknowledged that so-called conversion practices often took place in a “family setting”, raising the prospect that parents could be criminalised if they refuse to go along with their child’s declaration that they are transgender.

You mean if they refuse to agree that their son is a daughter or their daughter is a son.

The fact that parents are likely to have a better grasp on reality here is apparently beside the point.

“We have grave concerns that these plans will criminalise loving parents, who could face years in jail simply for refusing to sign up to the gender ideology cult,” Marion Calder, a director at the campaign group For Women Scotland, said.

And who would foster the kids while the parents are in jail? Susie Green? Jeffrey Marsh?

A few weeks ago:

But that’s not inclusive and fair. That’s the whole point. It’s not fair to women. Women are people too. Please make a note of it.

Also how the fuck does that “reduce administrative complexities for all athletes”?

Forced teaming in journalism:

A public consultation is under way on planned laws to ban conversion therapy for sexuality or gender in Scotland.

Sexuality and “gender” [i.e. gender ideology] are two different things and should not be discussed as a pair.

The proposed ban has raised concerns from those who fear attempts to counsel people struggling with their identity could be seen as conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy refers to practices “aiming to change or supress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”.

Only because captured news outlets like the BBC keep shoving them together. Conversion therapy for sexual orientation has nothing to do with awareness that people can’t change sex.

During a visit to LGBT Health and Wellbeing in Edinburgh, [Equalities Minister Emma] Roddick told BBC Scotland News the ban would apply to “so-called therapy services” or “coercive behaviour” that tried to change someone’s sexuality or the gender they identified as.

Not the same thing, not the same kind of thing.

Ms Roddick added that a parent would only be criminalised if they caused harm to their child who was coming out as gay or transgender.

See above.

However, concerns have been raised about the scope of the proposed laws and the lack of clear definitions in the legislation. The LGB Alliance, a charity supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, said they were concerned that new laws on gender identity could outlaw any response to a child questioning their gender “other than affirmation of their self-diagnosis”.

Scottish trustee Rhona Hotchkiss, a former women’s prison governor, said: “We know that the majority of unhappy children presenting at gender clinics describe themselves as same-sex attracted. The affirmation-at-all-costs approach hurts confused young people – most of whom would grow up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual if left alone by the gender industry.”

See how the two are different? Growing up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual is a good outcome; being “affirmed” as trapped in the wrong body, not so much.

She added: “‘Transing away the gay’ is the real conversion therapy.”

Ms Hotchkiss also questioned why the consultation document used the term LGBTQI+ throughout because same-sex attracted people had their own needs and were disadvantaged when “force-teamed” in campaigns by TQ+ lobbyists.

Exactly. BBC: listen to Ms Hotchkiss.

Ah they’ve noticed.

Yes, it could, and yes, it is, and we’ve been dealing with that for years now. Feminist women who don’t believe in magic gender have been monstered, punished, ostracized, expelled, called Nazis and cunts and all the rest of it.

Ok then.

A tiny spot of light at the end of the tunnel.

Quite a startling assertion, in a piece that’s not even about trans ideology.

…my experience of an all-girls’ school, followed by twice as long as a trustee of a prison charity, informed a lot of my politics, including why I became a transgender ally. Before I had thought seriously about trans rights, and the immeasurable preciousness of any human being with the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life…

What???

So Zoe Williams is saying that trans people, as such, just because they are trans people, are immeasurably precious because they have “the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life”?

There’s so much that’s absurd about that. Where to begin?

One, are trans people the only people who have that particular form of courage? And by the way what’s so scary about it? Also what does it mean? And why is it “truthful” to claim to be something you’re not? Why is it so truthful that you’re immeasurably precious because you claim it?

Two, why is that more of a reason to think people are “immeasurably precious” than any number of other things? Like altruism, generosity, empathy, for example?

Three, why does a quality that’s about the self deserve such hyperbolic flattery? In fact why does it deserve any? I think people are all too ready and eager to “live their most meaningful and truthful life” at the expense of other people. What’s so great about it? Why present it as heroic and rare?

Four, how the hell is it living a “truthful life” when it starts from a gigantic lie?

This ideology rots people’s brains.

They’re already doing it.

Over here we have women bleeding to death because the hospital refuses to end their pregnancies, and over on this other side we have women being strip searched by male cops and female cops forced to strip search men because the police refuse to protect women.

Women’s Rights Network reports:

In December 2021, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) approved a policy paper proposing that officers be permitted to strip and even intimately search suspects of the opposite sex if the officer self-identified as the same “gender” as the person being searched.

In other words male cops can grope female suspects if the male cops claim to be women.

The policy – which has been accepted and is now being implemented by the majority of police forces across the country – does not refer to the protected characteristic of sex. Instead, it proposes that self-identified “gender” [be] used in place of sex in contravention of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). PACE states that searches involving the removal of more than outer clothing are required to be conducted by, and only in the presence of, an officer or staff member of the same sex, and out of public view.

By “outer clothing” do they mean coats and sweaters? Or do they mean everything but underwear? Because I don’t think men should be searching women who are stripped down to underpants, or underpants and bras.

The policy paper made it clear that anyone who objects to being searched by a member of the opposite sex, and any officer refusing to carry out such a search, may be the subject of a hate crime or a non-crime hate incident if this is based on “discriminatory views”.

This is not a hypothetical situation. Many forces already have officers who identify as the opposite sex including West Midlands where 12 officers identified as the opposite sex when asked in February 2023. 

Women can get hauled in by the police for calling a man a man, and now we learn that they can then be stripped and searched by men who pretend to be women.

Utopia, right?

Idaho wants to see women killed by their own pregnancies.

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a challenge to Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions, which the Biden administration said conflicted with a federal statute that allowed for some exceptions. In scheduling arguments for April, the court also temporarily revived the law, which had been partly blocked by a federal trial judge.

…

President Biden criticized the court’s action. “Today’s Supreme Court order allows Idaho’s extreme abortion ban to go back into effect and denies women critical emergency abortion care required by federal law,” he said in a statement.

It’s not even as if the woman’s death will mean the fetus will survive. The fetus will die along with her, but that’s ok, it’s worth it to make sure the uppity bitch dies.

Under the state law, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, “an emergency-room physician who concludes that a pregnant woman needs an abortion to stabilize a condition that would otherwise threaten serious and irreversible harm may not provide the necessary care unless and until the patient’s condition deteriorates to the point where an abortion is needed to save her life.”

Remember Savita Halappanavar and Galway University Hospital? That’s exactly what they did – wait until her condition had deteriorated so far that she ended up dead. That’s what Idaho wants: more of that kind of thing.

H/t Tim Harris

Man cheats woman in sport, BBC weeps crocodile tears for the man.

A transgender pool champion says she received “vile” and “horrific” abuse online after her opponent refused to play her in a final.

That’s their lede. Not “Man insists on competing against woman in pool final” but “Man receives vile horrific abuse for cheating woman in a final.”

Why does he automatically matter more than she does? Why is fairness to her less important than his feefees? Why does he get to cheat in the first place?

Lynne Pinches conceded the Women’s Champion of Champions tournament to Harriet Haynes in Prestatyn.

Pinches said she did it out of “fairness”, claiming male-born players who identify as women have a competitive advantage.

Fuck you, Beeb. Fuck your scare-quotes on “fairness” and fuck your “claiming.” Of course men have an advantage.

It follows an apparent U-turn by the sport’s governing bodies, the World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF) and Ultimate Pool Group, on its transgender policy. In August players were told “only naturally born women would be eligible to play in their ladies’ categories”, but that decision has since been reversed. “When the U-turn happened, and the announcement happened, it absolutely devastated not just me but loads of players,” said a tearful Pinches in an interview with TalkTV.

But the BBC doesn’t care about them. Only the men matter.

Haynes generously says he would get out if…

“If the rules were changing and there [were] categoric evidence that I had a massive advantage over someone else, I would stop playing in female pool. That would be the end of it. Trans women are not a threat to pool. We’re not coming over in droves… it’s a very small percentage. And there’s nothing to fear.”

Ahhhhh isn’t that kind. If there were categoric evidence that he had massive advantage then he would stop. Non-categoric evidence that he has a large advantage isn’t good enough, he’ll go right on taking that large advantage, non-categoric-like.

Thanks, BBC. We feel so loved.

Comerford is considering legal action. I know what that’s like. I consider a lot of things. I don’t do them, I just consider them.

Nonsense. Comerford is dim-witted. He parades this fact about himself regularly. He’s not sharp. He’s not a thinker. He’s not good at argument. He’s not even bright enough to realize this very tweet is not going to work out well for him.

Cruel and unusual punishment…

A mother-of-four claims she pleaded guilty to a crime she didn’t commit to avoid returning to a prison that housed two [male] trans inmates locked up for murder and sex assault, MailOnline can reveal.

Amanda Benson, 42, from Inverkip, Scotland, was imprisoned on remand at HMP Greenock with the two trans women – murderer Alex Stewart, 34, and sexual assaulter Laura Miller, 30.

They haven’t had any surgeries or “gender-affirming” hormones, she says.

Stewart – previously known as Alan Baker – was jailed for 19 years for stabbing father-of-two John Weir, 36, to death after they met on a dating site. The trans prisoner reportedly started dating a female child killer in HMP Greenock in 2020. 

Miller was jailed for almost two years in 2022 after she sexually assaulted a woman who had taken sleeping medication on multiple occasions in 2017 and even filmed one of the attacks, in which she made an offensive sexual remark about her.

…

‘It’s terrifying to be in there with them so [I did anything] to get out of there. I felt the threat that I could have been raped by these men and that could have led to me falling pregnant.

‘They were both quite tall. One was very heavy. He dressed like a man. The other guy tried to wear sparkly jeans. Neither had had any surgery. They just said they were women and wanted to be in a women’s prison. We can’t leave. We are locked up with them, no matter what.’

Cruel enough?

The cells at Greenock Prison don’t have showers in them, meaning women have to use communal showers.  

Rhona Hotchkiss, who was Governor of HMP Greenock until 2019, said: ‘We had three or four trans women in at once. It was a horrific situation. None of them had identified as trans before they came into prison. The behaviour was appalling. They were clearly, most of them, there for sexual reasons.’

She added: ‘Male staff are not allowed to go anywhere near those showers but trans women can.’

Despite the appalling behavior.

No you’re inappropriate.

A civil servant was told by a Whitehall investigator that it was inappropriate to say there are two sides to the trans debate.

…

On March 11 2021, civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions met online for an International Women’s Day event entitled “What trans is and some of the issues faced”. The call, in which officials were encouraged to submit written questions in an online chat, featured a transgender woman civil servant discussing issues faced by trans people in the UK.

In other words the civil service summoned a man to talk about himself for an International Women’s Day event. As if that’s not insulting enough by itself, what he talked about was his fantasy of being a woman.

One civil servant was subsequently investigated and found guilty of breaching the department’s behaviour policy and rules on harassment for their comments on the call.

Among the remarks made by the civil servant, and branded as “inappropriate comments relating to trans women” by a DWP investigator, were the comments: “One of the things I struggle to understand as a lesbian myself is, how can trans women be lesbian as lesbian is same sex attracted, not gender?”, “I find the term cis very offensive”, “Sport is segregated because there is a difference” and “What if you don’t believe in gender? I don’t”.

So the conversation was about men pretending to be women, and a lesbian was punished for saying what she thought. Happy International Women’s Day!

The civil servant’s comment that “I think IWD should centre [on] women really” was found “to exclude trans women from the relevance of International Women’s Day” and was therefore inappropriate.

Hey! You know what’s inappropriate? Talking about men who cosplay as women on International Women’s Day!

When the civil servant was accused on the call by fellow officials of displaying “Terf [Trans exclusionary radical feminists] behaviour”, the civil servant responded by saying: “STOP BEING INSULTING”.

The investigation found the latter comment to be “not the appropriate manner in which to raise concerns about others behaviour/language as writing in all Caps letters is interpreted as aggressive and shouting when read out”.

Jeezus. I hope she sought and found a much better job with much better people.