It’s a funny thing, when you think about it, that trans women are women, but women are cis women. I think it should be the other way around. Women are women, and trans women are not.

Helen Joyce:

It’s obviously extremely hurtful for men whose dearest wish is to pass as women to be told they really don’t. I wish they hadn’t been lied to and misled by gender doctors, who promised them the impossible.

These men were promised that if they took cross-sex hormones and underwent genital amputation, they would magically transform to such a degree that everyone, but specifically women, would see them as women.

Those men want that so badly, and they are so self-centred, that in response to such promises they take it upon themselves to enter women’s spaces as if by right. And they interpret women’s silence as proof that women see them as women.

Is it possible to be trans without being self-centered? I lean toward no. I think if you take other people into account, you’re unlikely to develop ideas about a magical hidden inner self, and even less likely to try to impose your magical hidden self on those other people.

That silence is motivated by kindness, embarrassment and fear. Women are told they will lose their jobs – or get a punch in the face – if they say that they can see these men are men. It takes astonishing narcissism to interpret our forced acquiescence as genuine acceptance.

And it takes astonishing recklessness to interpret astonishing narcissism as evidence of magical special beautiful awesomeness. Trans women are lionized while women are ignored at best and bullied at worst. Weird kind of social justice.

I feel sorry for them. But women’s rights are on the line, and we’re half the population. We can’t indulge them any more. And so we’re saying politely: You’re men. Stop trying to control our language. Stop coming into our spaces.

No, you don’t pass. No, you’re not welcome. No, we’re not “cis”, we’re just women, and you’re not. I understand it hurts to hear this, but you have left us no choice but to say it. And if you don’t listen when we say it politely, you can expect to be told less politely.

I gave up saying it politely years ago.

Peter Brookes in The Times:

H/t Margaret Nelson

Where it started.

It’s worth belaboring this because it’s dangerous as well as wrong. It’s a not very subtle way of inflaming and intensifying hatred of people who don’t subscribe to gender ideology.

No, wrong; she doesn’t deny that trans people exist, she denies that people can be the opposite sex. She disputes a fact claim about people who call themselves trans, which is very different from denying that people who call themselves trans exist. We know they exist. We see their smirking selfies and/or their enraged threats.

People can say “You’re not a socialist” to someone who identifies as a socialist, and that is not denying that the person who identifies as a socialist exists. You can substitute almost any self-descriptive noun or adjective for “socialist” and the result is the same. The one exception is “alive.” “You’re not alive” is indeed a denial of someone’s existence, but it’s also a bit weird. If the subject is not alive what’s the point of saying so? If the subject is alive, still what’s the point of saying so? But anyway, disputing descriptors is not repeat is not denial of existence.

It’s a symptom of the stupidity of the ideology, frankly, that people under its spell keep repeating this dopy claim.

Existence precedes essence.

What’s not super hard is grasping that people don’t cease to exist when others don’t believe their self-descriptions. The two things are separate. Tom Coates could claim to be very clever, and I would not believe that claim, yet my non-belief would not cause Tom Coates to stop existing.

Originally a comment by Freemage on Mandatory affirmation.

Puberty blockers have been weighing on my mind, in particular, lately.

The whole claim is that the blockers prevent the development of sexual characteristics until the child has become old enough to be able to decide for themselves as an adult whether or not to transition. On first glance, this seems reasonable–I’m fine with adults transitioning, though I still agree to the GC in terms of what transition actually entails, and more importantly, permits. (Ie, an adult TIM still has no business in a women-only space, or participating in women’s sports, etc.) At that point, it becomes cosmetic surgery, which is generally up to the person getting it.

But this claim overlooks the fact that the whole reason adulthood exists as a legal category is cognitive development–you don’t suddenly become more able to make decisions about alcohol because you’ve taken 21 trips around the sun; you become more cognitively able to perceive the impacts of drinking after your body (most specifically, your brain) has developed to a point where you can make at least some amount of rational choice about such things.

But that development is both experiential and hormonal–if you stop the hormonal development with blockers, then you impede the very state of being that is supposed to enable you to decide better if you want life-altering surgery.

I know a family who adopted a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. She just hit her 18th birthday, but cognitively, she’s about 12 (and likely will still be at that stage for most purposes for the rest of her life). She’s a genuinely caring, friendly and happy kid–but the notion that she’s now at the point where she could be given the benefit of the doubt upon declaring that she wants to be considered a man is flat-out absurd. While hormone blockers probably aren’t as drastic in their inhibition of development as that, it seems pretty damned likely that the 18 year old who’s been on blockers since they were 12 is not going to be in the same position cognitively as one who actually has had all the brain development that comes with adolescence.

Abigail Shrier tells us:

Gender ideologues in California let the mask slip, or perhaps just tossed it away: A new bill, AB 957, directs family court judges to award custody based in part on “a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity,” which the bill defines as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”

And what “a child’s gender identity” means in this context “a child’s assertion that she or he is the other sex.” So custody decisions will be based partly on a parent’s “affirmation” of a silly lie, one which could end up prompting the child to make drastic changers to her or his body – irreversible damage in short.

How far must a parent go in pursuit of “affirmation”? The bill doesn’t say. “Affirmation” can include anything from allowing your daughter to adopt a male name and pronouns to commencing a schedule of hormones and surgeries that are variously risky, irreversible, and without proven mental health benefit. Puberty blockers, a staple of so-called “gender-affirming medicine,” can produce permanent sexual dysfunction and infertility, diminish cognitive development, undermine bone density and tooth enamel. How much is custody or visitation of your daughter worth to you, the Gender Thugs want to know. Sterilization and splitting teeth?

Not to mention diminished cognitive development.

Today, the notion that “affirmation” is necessarily in the best interest of every child can no longer seriously be believed. In the last two years, England, Sweden, Finland, France, and Norway have all conducted rigorous scientific reviews of pediatric gender medicine and concluded the opposite. The efficacy, far too doubtful. The harms, too grave. These countries—every one of them liberal—responded to their independent reviews by shuttering pediatric gender clinics, curtailing the availability of these medicines, restricting them to experimental settings, or banning them entirely.

It’s a fad, people, and one with far more dire consequences than most.

Birdy has the information.

But wait, there’s more! (I didn’t wait. Wasn’t possible. I couldn’t leave that bit of Emptyspeak unmocked for one second.)

It’s genius, isn’t it?

WHAT KIND OF BEHAVIOR??

Did they forget, between the second tweet and the third, that they hadn’t said what “kind of behaviour” they were talking about? The word “remarks” doesn’t quite cover it. We can’t believe they would never knowingly book an artist known for making remarks. There must be something specific about the remarks that they disapprobate, but they haven’t said what that something is.

Trans ideology makes people stupid.

This is the sort of thing up with which one must not put.

Could it be any more stupidly meaningless? “Somebody told us somebody said something not in keeping with some values. As soon as somebody told us, somebody pulled somebody’s performance.”

It’s bound to be about trans something, because people don’t talk this stupidly and meaninglessly about anything else, but even beyond the trans-bullying aspect, the vapidity of the statement is enough to make you despair of the human species.

Whooo-eeeee, we’ve got a live one here.

What?????

Andrew Tate is our fault????

How, exactly? Show your work.

But wait, there’s more.

Imagine what we could have achieved by now if men who pretend to be women hadn’t smashed women’s rights into a billion pieces.

What a horrible man.

Expertise is a powerful thing.

I do wonder how he knows that though. I wonder how he could know it. Is it possible to know all there is to know about every human society through all of history? Even if some of them left no records of any kind? Do we know, for a fact, that every human society through all of history has left records that tell us some members of all those human societies were trans? I don’t think we do, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because some human societies left very minimal traces. That’s it, that’s the how. There aren’t written or pictographic or similar records for every human society through all of history. Think of Ötzi for instance, aka the Ice Man. Scholars were beside themselves with joy over the informative baggage Ötzi had with him, because informative baggage going that far back is extremely rare. I’m pretty sure there was nothing with Ötzi that established the existence of trans people in his circles. Ötzi is just one guy. There were other human societies contemporary with him that scholars know nothing about, because the evidence is either gone or inaccessible.

If Fogg is willing to make this silly claim why should we be persuaded by his fervent belief in the reality of male women?

The Telegraph:

A patient who was referred to the controversial Tavistock transgender clinic at age 15 has spoken out saying she feels like a “mutilated experiment gone wrong” after undergoing a mastectomy.

Jasmine, who was born a girl, decided to identify as a boy but has since detransitioned – meaning she has returned to identifying as female.

Or to put it another way, she decided to pretend to be a boy but then changed her mind. What is the difference between pretending and identifying as? Is there any? Is the second just more polite? If that’s the reason maybe we should stop saying it, because too much politeness is how we got here.

“Identifying as” sounds kind of more grown-up and thoughtful, but as we all know, the reality is startlingly childish and credulous. It would probably be better for everyone over the long haul if we stopped being tactful about it. Men can pretend to be women, but that’s all it is – pretending. It’s no more real or serious or adult than children pretending to be horses.

Jasmine was referred to the GIDS clinic for children and young people at London’s Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust by a trans charity when she was 15. She was seen by professionals there three times.

From the age of 17, GIDS patients were transferred to adult services where they could then undergo gender reassignment surgery.

At her second 45-minute appointment at the adult clinic, she said she was referred to be prescribed cross-sex hormones and put on the waiting list for “top surgery”, or a mastectomy, which she said did not “help” or “fix” her but “made things a lot worse”.

Her second appointment. Cool that they didn’t rush her into it on her first appointment.

She’s just one person, of course. Some people are happy with their “transition,” as the Telegraph makes clear. But…on her second appointment???

Here’s the BBC slobbering over Paris Lees in 2013:

The annual Pink List named Paris Lees as the most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender figure in the UK. But her rise from being a “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” has been far from simple.

Huh. The “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” makes it sound so cute, but the reason he was in a prison cell was because he had been in a teenage gang that beat up an elderly man who died soon after the beating (it’s disputed whether the beating was the cause of death). There’s nothing cute or “silly” about that. It’s weird of the BBC to put it like that, to fail to explain why the silly boy was in a prison cell, to fail to mention the victim at all. Instead the BBC proceeds to burble about Lees at an awards ceremony/party.

The party – hosted by leading gay magazine Attitude – may have been glamorous but Paris was invited because of her work as a journalist, broadcaster and activist.

Plus the pretend-woman thing.

With the organisation All About Trans she is determinedly changing media representation of transgender people like herself. And as the first transgender presenter for Radio 1 and Channel 4, she is making a mainstream audience aware of trans issues.

It’s hard to believe she had difficulty leaving the house a few years ago and could not get a job answering phones because of her criminal record. “I genuinely thought I wouldn’t be able to function or have a normal life or do anything so it’s gobsmacking that I’ve got any semblance of normality, let alone do all these fabulous things,” she says.

Yeah it is kind of gobsmacking. Women are pretty gobsmacked that this guy is considered newsworthy and exactly the right person to explain girlhood to all of us.

“I had a lot of time for thinking when I was in prison.”

Paris felt like she was at “the bottom of society” but had a vision of who she wanted to be.

The vision included giving up smoking, going back to college to do her A-levels, and becoming female.

A David Copperfield or Jude Fawley, except for the becoming female part.

Paris worked hard and was released early on a curfew, but she carried on living as a boy when she went back to college.

“I knew I wanted a transition and I was so jealous of all the girls at college that looked pretty and had boys talking to them and all those things,” she says.

Ooooooh yeah all those things – that’s the best summary of girlhood ever. They’re like paper dolls, but in 3-D.

Paris stopped wearing boyish clothes and moved to Brighton to study English at university.

“In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy with my grandma still alive, to living in Brighton as a girl,” she says.

Yep. That’s all there is to it. Just stop wearing boyish clothes and bam, you’re a girl.

Thanks, BBC. It’s about time we had more men explaining us what it feels like for a girl.

The Telegraph story on school children who meow when asked a question reads like a parody of Gender Religion.

Difficult as it may be to believe, children at a school in East Sussex were reprimanded last week for refusing to accept a classmate’s decision to self-identify as a cat. 

The Year 8 pupils were told they would be reported to a senior leader after their teacher said they had “really upset” the fellow pupil by telling them: “You’re a girl.”

And, aha, one of the clever girls recorded the whole thing so now everyone knows how batshit it was.

The incident at Rye College, first reported by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, was not a one-off. Inquiries by this newspaper have established that other children at other schools are also identifying as animals, and the responses of parents suggest that the schools in question are hopelessly out of their depth on the question of how to handle the pupils’ behaviour. 

Gee, I wonder why. I don’t suppose it could be because people have been screaming ever more deafeningly for the past decade or so that TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN could it? It couldn’t be because of the sacralization of identity could it?

Schools have established protocols when it comes to transgender pupils, but the issue of “furries” is more complex. 

Is it simply a spillover from early childhood imaginative play, or the growing phenomenon of cosplay – in which participants dress up as superheroes, aliens, animals or whatever else they choose – being brought into the classroom, where children should be politely told to leave their fantasies at the gates?

People of all ages should be told (not necessarily politely) to leave their fantasies at all the gates, every last one of them.

The teachers are also letting down other pupils whose education is being disrupted by the affirming of children with abnormal behaviour. 

That, too, applies more broadly. Everything is being disrupted by the affirming of men with abnormal behavior and vast contempt for women.

One pupil at a state secondary school in Wales told The Telegraph of a fellow pupil who “feels very discriminated against if you do not refer to them as ‘catself’”. She added: “When they answer questions, they meow rather than answer a question in English. And the teachers are not allowed to get annoyed about this because it’s seen as discriminating.” 

…

“It’s affecting other people and their education and everybody in their lessons. It’s distracting to sit in a lesson and have someone meow to a teacher rather than answer in English, especially at secondary school age. 

“That’s going to take a lot out of a lesson because people are going to spend the entire lesson talking about whoever it is over there meowing to the teacher. 

“It’s a big ask to sit there and listen to someone answer like that and not have that be the main talk of the classroom rather than the lesson going on.” 

Check, check, check. It’s like a parable about the ridiculous situation we’re all stuck in, being bullied and called names for refusing to play along with the stupid boring fantasies of people like India Willoughby. We have our own damn lives and work and interests so why should we have to devote ourselves to the fantasies of strangers? We shouldn’t. It’s simple.

The Telegraph also spoke to a pupil at a school where one student, who identifies as “moonself”, wears a cloak to school, described by a fellow pupil as “like a Harry Potter wizard cape”. 

The child in question did not identify as the Moon, but as a moon, and said they could put curses on people. 

But while other pupils would be pulled up for wearing non-uniform items, such as facial piercings or dyed hair, children who identified as cats or moons would be allowed to wear cat ears or cloaks to express their “true self”, breeding resentment among other pupils. 

It does breed resentment to treat this one small group of silly people as combination saints and victims of the worst oppression on the planet.

Teachers are not helped by the fact that respected organisations to which they might turn for guidance can themselves be caught up in the confusion between cosplay and self-identity. 

Well what is the difference? Is there much? Is there any?

The Safer Schools organisation (not to be confused with the Safer Schools Alliance), which claims to be a “multi-award-winning safeguarding ecosystem” has issued guidance to parents and teachers in which it says: “The furry community itself is a complex one, made up of many different identities and definitions of what it means to be a ‘furry’.” 

It also advises parents and teachers to “engage in conversation about what it means to be a furry and the benefits of the furry community”. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh the furry community. Once it’s baptized as a “community” all hope is lost. It’s an idenniny and it has a communniny; resistance is futile.

If teachers – or parents – hope that the Government will clear up the whole mess when it issues its new guidance on self-identity this week, then they will be sorely disappointed. 

The Department for Education said the issue of children identifying as animals will not be addressed in the guidance, with a spokesman saying that the department trusted teachers to apply “common sense” in each individual case.

Because there’s been so much common sense about this identity nonsense all along? Please.

Modernity! Progress! Change for the sake of change!

Shared, all-gender washrooms the future for Burnaby schools

Why? Why can’t washrooms (toilets, restrooms, bathrooms) go on being single-gender? Why can’t girls continue to have privacy when taking their pants down?

Not everyone is happy with all-gender washrooms installed at a Burnaby elementary school last year, but the school district says the concept is the bathroom of the future for local schools.

Oh well, kids who aren’t happy can just hold it for eight hours.

The NOW got a tour of the new bathrooms last week.

Instead of a door marked “boys” or “girls” there is now an open entrance way that leads to a space with banks of individual, locking cubicles on each side for everyone to use.

Unlike traditional stalls, the door and sides are longer, extending nearly up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

Nearly. So spy photography will be possible, and sounds will be audible.

“These inclusive washrooms are very private,” school district secretary-treasurer Russell Horswill told the NOW in an emailed statement.

Since when are toilets supposed to be “inclusive”? They should include all students of course, and they shouldn’t separate students for bad reasons, but the reasons for separating by sex for, say, changing tampons are not bad reasons. We don’t always have to be “inclusive.” We’re allowed to have privacy at times. Children and adolescents need that permission even more than adults.

Horswill said parents who have questions should reach out to their school principal.

“When the renovations and additions to Parkcrest were complete, there were a couple of parents who didn’t know why we would change washroom styles,” he said. “The principal gave them a tour, so they could see for themselves how students’ privacy was protected and how gender-neutral washrooms support inclusivity. While you’ll see this style of washroom in restaurants, other businesses, and schools in other districts, it’s perfectly normal for people to have questions when there is a change to how something has always been done at their child’s school.”

You’ll see complaints about them in restaurants and other businesses, too. See the outrage when the Old Vic made all the women’s toilets “inclusive” but left the men’s as they were. Don’t be like the Old Vic, or like the Burnaby School District either.

Let’s just pause a moment to savor the first few words of the headline.

Judge issues order that Trump keep quiet

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…music.

Ok, the actual full headline not quite so magical.

Judge issues order that Trump keep quiet about disclosure of discovery material issued in classified documents case

Among the restrictions approved by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who previously approved the search warrant the FBI executed at Mar-a-Lago last year, is that “The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court.”

I think this is where we came in.

The order sought by prosecutors and approved by Reinhart was expected and used standard language. However, it comes in a first-of-its-kind federal criminal case against an ex-president who has a proclivity to express opinions on social media and who is being prosecuted, in part, because of his alleged mishandling of sensitive government information.

In other words he’ll probably disclose whatever he feels like disclosing.

Oops he’s letting his hatred of women show. You’re supposed to hide it, bro!

At 40 seconds he lets the mask slip to do a snotty baby-voice parody of women saying words he doesn’t like. “Oh, we’re just out to protect children and women.” He all but bats his eyes at the camera, then snaps “No yer not.” He makes it very plain that he despises women.

At 1:21 he does it again. “It’s not us who, um, make it unsafe for trans women.” Breathy Marilyn Monroe silly voice again, along with feeble fluttery hesitant delivery. Undisguised unabashed contempt.

We can see you, Willz.