Next up: an abstract from Sage Publications from December 2020:

Specificity without identity: Articulating post-gender sexuality through the “non-binary lesbian”

That’s actually really easy. Non-binary doesn’t mean anything. A lesbian who calls herself non-binary is just being a bit precious. (This raises further questions – are there non-binary butch lesbians and non-binary femme lesbians? Or do they have to pick one? Can we ever ever ever escape the dreaded binary? Answers from a napkin from the last lesbian bar on the planet, if you can find it.)

This paper uses the paradigmatic pairing of non-binary and lesbian as identity labels to investigate changes in conceptualizations of sexual specificity as gender becomes divorced from its founding binaries. Contrary to the belief that lesbian is threatened by movement away from binary gender, this analysis postulates that it is not individual identities that are becoming problematic as gender identity becomes less binary; rather, it is the fundamental structure of identity which, for decades, has sanctioned identities built on exclusions. This cultural shift has the potential to liberate structures of desire, giving way to a model in which sexuality without gender is more redemptive than contentious.

In what way is the pairing (what pairing?) of non-binary and lesbian “paradigmatic”? What’s it paradigmatic of? Nonsense? Why pair them at all when they make no sense as a pair?

The deepity about identity being “for decades” (what because before that it was all different?) “built on exclusions” is especially hilarious. You can’t have anything called “identity” without “exclusions” – you can’t have most things without “exclusions.” If you go to the farmers’ market for tomatoes you’re “excluding” all the other fruits and vegetables, and all other food items and objects and red things and one could go on forever.

Yeah let’s have totally inclusive definitions of everything, we will arrive at Utopia without even needing a passport!

I’m curious about this “it’s a misconception that lesbians are women attracted to women” thing, so I’m looking for tracks. Here’s an item from Planned Parenthood’s blog March 23:

Someone asked us: I’m non-binary but also a lesbian. Does this mean I’m straight or does my sexuality have nothing to do with my actual gender, which is a girl?

Uh…wut? And why are you asking Planned Parenthood? You’re not going to be needing contraception.

PP explains:

Gender identity — like nonbinary or girl — is what gender you feel like and identify with. And sexual orientation — like lesbian and straight — is about who you’re attracted to.

Wut?

Confusion confusion confusion. “Gender identity” is a fad. Ignore it. Sexual orientation is about which sex you’re attracted to. Not a random meaningless ungrammatical “who” but which sex.

Sexual orientation has to do with both your gender and the type of people who turn you on or who you’d prefer to be sexual partners with. Sexual orientation labels say whether you’re attracted to your same gender, different genders than yours, both your and different genders, and other variations.

Wut?

Being “straight” usually means that you’re only attracted to people of the opposite gender. In our culture, straight usually means boys who are only attracted to girls, and girls who are only attracted to boys.

Unlike all those other exciting cultures where it means something completely different, which we won’t spell out because we’re already quite lost enough thanks.

A lesbian is usually a girl who’s sexually and/or romantically attracted to other girls. But some nonbinary people also identify as lesbians. So, use “lesbian” if that resonates with you.

Lesbian means woman or girl attracted to women or girls. That’s all. It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it. No need to worry about resonance.

Only you get to decide which labels make the most sense for you, and there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to be.

Well, yes and no. You won’t be arrested for getting all your words wrong, but it doesn’t follow that you should just talk gibberish because only you get to decide. Language has to be mutually comprehensible to be any use at all. It’s simply not true that there’s no right or wrong. Try visiting Paris and resolutely speaking English on all occasions, see how well that goes.

There are also lots of different sexual orientation labels people use beyond lesbian and straight, like: queer, gay, bisexual, pansexual, and skoliosexual. Some people may also use questioning or fluid if they’re not sure of their sexual orientation, or if it changes from time to time. Many people who have a sexual orientation other than “straight” use the umbrella term “queer” to describe their sexual orientation.

Many people are pretentious fools who spend far too much time talking about themselves.

Why the blacklist?

There’s nothing as coarse as an official blacklist at the BBC. Our national broadcaster doesn’t ban people, it doesn’t forbid words or phrases, and it doesn’t proscribe certain stories.

It’s just that some words and phrases are never used, some stories never see the light of day — and some people never, ever get the call. This is true for domestic coverage at least, which is what I know about.

This struck me when the BBC on a single day interviewed not one, but three men whose behaviour has ranged from dubious to deplorable — Philip Schofield, TikTok star Mizzy and the misogynist Andrew Tate. The activities and views of these men didn’t prevent them from getting the opportunity to explain and defend themselves.

But what activities and views do prevent the BBC from inviting you for a chat? Feminist ones. Like –

Helen Joyce, former staff journalist at the Economist, including as International, Finance and Britain Editor, author of the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and the Director of Advocacy at the campaigning organisation Sex Matters. She used to appear on the BBC fairly routinely, as a guest on the papers review, and commentator on economic issues and UK politics.

Then she became interested in the feminist approach to sex and gender, took a sabbatical from the Economist, wrote Trans and has never been on BBC radio or TV since. 

Why? Why is Andrew Tate good radio and tv while Helen Joyce is not? What is it about the trans religion that causes this? I guess it must be to do with the frantic claims about fragility and phobia and whatnot, but that just rewords the question. Feminist women point out the ways trans ideology is harmful to women but that doesn’t result in everyone rushing to have them on the BBC so what is it about transism that is so much more potent that way than feminism is or has ever been? Why are self-obsessed men so much more convincing than feminist women?

How does this happen? No, there’s no blacklist. There are unspoken mores, born in a miasma of fear, confusion and occasional activism, that seem to function as a brake on allowing a certain kind of convincing gender critical feminist to have much of a platform at the BBC.

But Andrew Tate is worth talking to.

Helen Joyce says the interest in her dried up instantly after an interview on Woman’s Hour in 2020, before her book was published, when she said what she describes as “all the sorts of things you aren’t allowed to say on the BBC” about biological sex. She understands that higher representations have been made internally, in an attempt to end the blackout, but to no avail. The Woman’s Hour Twitter account has at times been inundated with requests to bid Helen on the issue of women’s sex-based rights. People want to hear about it, and they want to hear from Helen. The call never comes.

It’s not a question of resources. The resources were there, for example, when the trans activist academic Grace Lavery was interviewed on Woman’s Hour after he pulled out of a public debate with Helen. It’s a question of picking up the phone.

Woman’s Hour will talk to horrible “Grace” Lavery but not to Helen. Woman’s Hour. Why is this?

The BBC was asked to comment for this article and replied: “There is no “blacklist”, a range of views are regularly heard across BBC outlets.”

Then why isn’t Helen Joyce one of them?

The Times on Oxfam’s ostentatious hatred for women:

Oxfam has been branded “utterly shocking” for releasing an anti-trans cartoon character apparently based on JK Rowling.

The charity’s animated #ProtectThePride video was issued to mark Pride month. It said it could not “ignore the cruel backdrop” against which LGBT people marked the celebration.

And to illustrate the “cruel backdrop” it threw in a Cruella Rowling caricature.

The woman [in the caricature], with blood-red eyes and face contorted in hate, was wearing a green dress – similar to one worn by Rowling at a film premiere – and was looking at the Pride flag. As she appeared on screen, a caption said that LGBT people were “preyed on by hate groups online and offline”.

A green dress with a V-neckline and a colorful blob on the left, exactly like the one worn by Rowling.

Milli Hill, a feminist author, told The Times: “Oxfam’s caricature of an ‘ugly hag’ wearing a Terf badge is so typical of the attitudes displayed to feminists who stand up for women’s rights. We are evil old witches basically, and this is the same old misogyny we’ve been fighting for decades, repackaged as ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’.

“It is utterly shocking that an established global charity like Oxfam would portray women in this way, it shows huge disrespect and discrimination – but it also shows their true colours.”

That applies to so many people. It’s been startling to learn how much loathing and contempt for women still bubbles away under the surface, ready to burst out whenever a woman says no.

A letter to Oxfam staff today:

The character wearing the “terf badge” didn’t resemble JK Rowling, it was adapted from a photo of JK Rowling. It’s wearing the same damn top ffs. Of course it was the intention of the designers.

Oxfam may say it’s committed to becoming feminist, but I don’t believe it for a second.

Updating to add: or as Simon Myerson put it much more crisply:

From the Holocaust Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia:

Der ewige Jude

As part of its heightened wartime attack on Jews, the Ministry of Propaganda turned to motion pictures as a medium for antisemitic messages.

Fritz Hippler, the president of the Reich Film Chamber, directed the film Der ewige Jude, with input from German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. A pseudo-documentary, it included scenes of Jews shot in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos by propaganda company crews attached to the German military. This film was quite popular with audiences in Germany and throughout occupied Europe.

That image looks familiar somehow.

H/t Fred Sargeant

Oxfam’s unedited video:

“preyed on by hate groups online and offline”

Oxfam has issued a stupid resentful blamey OFFICIAL STATEMENT that says it’s transphobia’s fault.

One: there are no LGBTQIA+ communities. Those are different, sometimes competing things, and they can’t all be mashed into “communities” together.

Two, define transphobia.

But three, we know how you’ll define it, because of that vicious caricature of JKR. You mean feminists defending the rights of women and continuing to know that men are men even if they call themselves trans. You’re saying you want to stop women being feminists and defending our ability to enjoy our rights. You want men who claim to be trans to have the ability and the “right” to cancel our rights in favor of their rights, or rather their pseudo-rights.

You say you made a mistake but fail to admit what the mistake was. It was that grotesque disgusting Der Stürmer-level cartoon of three monstrous people, one of whom was quite obviously Rowling. You’re the Julius Streicher of trans propaganda; I’m surprised you’re so minimalist about trying to walk that back.

As for “no intention to portray any particular person or people” – well that’s just an obvious lie, isn’t it. You just said this is about “transphobia” so the intention was certainly to portray people you consider “transphobic.” A sneery cartoon of some generic “Jewish people” doesn’t become Not Anti-Semitic because the cartoonist says they’re no one in particular (but especially not when at least one of the generic people is instantly recognizable).

It’s nice of you to support our right to hold our philosophical beliefs, but it doesn’t do us much good if you don’t support our right to utter them.

And in conclusion – never mind our “sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics” – what about our sex? Do you support our right to have our sex respected? Since you took great care not to say so, I’ll assume that you don’t.

Have regained the use of speech somewhat. May still be slightly truncated and explosive.

The oh so clever Indy headline writer calls feminist women terrible people.

The propagandist who created the image goes for the gut.

The Indy scribbler, Ian O’Dell, pours on the verbal acid.

“Gender critical” activists – some of whom proudly brand themselves a ‘terf’ (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminist) in their Twitter bios – are now upset at the anti-poverty organisation Oxfam for an LGBT+ Pride advert painting ‘terfs’ as evil people.

Misogynist activists – some of whom purport to be journalists – have no qualms about displaying their own glaring throbbing misogyny.

[I]t was an illustration displayed as they spoke of “hate groups” which has caused Oxfam to be subject to a social media pile-on – an illustration which saw three people with red eyes and angry faces towering over six figures in the colours of the rainbow.

Red eyes and distorted twisted evil faces.

The central character, a white woman with short brown hair, is seen wearing an orange badge on her which says ‘terf’ – and those opposed to trans rights are saying the image “demonises” older women.

Notice what the “reporter” carefully doesn’t say – the “white woman with short brown hair” is JK Rowling.

The war on women drags on and on and on.

Speechless.

Oh come ON.

She actually says that – the damn fool in the clip.

“The misconception that lesbian means a woman who loves other women um and actually the definition is non-men who are attracted to and love other non-men.”

Is the definition of gay man non-non men who are attracted to and love other non-non men?

Second question: has it been officially ruled that the word “woman” is now 100% taboo?

“Throughout history there have always been gender-nonconforming lesbians? um and it’s interesting to see nowadays that there are folks who kind of try to gatekeep that identity? and only include folks who identify as women um and that’s not what being lesbian is all about, there are trans men who identified as lesbian for many many years and still feel comfurble in that communinny and that idenniny – there are non-binary folks of all kinds who identify as lesbians, there’s just, there’s like a zillion different ways to be a lesbian? ann if that word is comfurble for you then nobody can they can’t gatekeep it from you.”

Suddenly she mashes her hands together.

“I am non-binary transmasculine and I am a lesbian.”

The stupid the stupid the stupid. We’re drowning in it.

More hilarity.

…as in not not wot wot as in not not not not…

Actual gynecologist. And woman.

[Updating to say sorry, the tweet with the question to which the answer is yes was deleted by the tweeter. It was a pair of images of Dylan Mulvaney parodying girlyhood and the question “Is this a woman?”]

I have to wonder what part of her training as a gynecologist tells her Dylan Mulvaney is a woman.

Not fake? An inverted penis is not a fake vagina? Inverted penises are perfectly functional as vaginas? Really?

Replies (and now quote-tweets) are many, scathing, graphic, enraged, and hilarious.

The Public Discourse September 2020:

The American Journal of Psychiatry has issued a major correction to a recent study. The Bränström study reanalysis demonstrated that neither “gender-affirming hormone treatment” nor “gender-affirming surgery” reduced the need of transgender-identifying people for mental health services. Fad medicine is bad medicine, and gender-anxious people deserve better.

And that’s all the more true when the “medicine” isn’t medicine at all. The only purpose of “gender-affirming hormone treatment” and “gender-affirming surgery” is, well, to affirm gender, and affirming gender is a mental/emotional/psychological thing, not a medical thing. Gender-affirming hormones and surgeries don’t treat an illness or heal an injury, they attempt to make people feel less unhappy in their bodies. If people don’t even feel less unhappy in their bodies after the hormones or surgeries maybe stop doing them? Seeing as how the side effects are pretty major?

A major correction has been issued by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The authors and editors of an October 2019 study, titled “Reduction in mental health treatment utilization among transgender individuals after gender-affirming surgeries: a total population study,” have retracted its primary conclusion. Letters to the editor by twelve authors, including ourselves, led to a reanalysis of the data and a corrected conclusion stating that in fact the data showed no improvement after surgical treatment.

So…surgical or pharmacological mutilation with no improvement. Fabulous.

Our co-author Dr. Paul McHugh ended sex reassignment surgeries at John Hopkins Medical School when a study from his department revealed that the mental and social health of patients undergoing sex reassignment surgery did not improve. He adds here that this paper, and even the correction, misdirects clinical thought in many ways. Most crucially it presumes an unproblematic future for these subjects, despite evidence that the psychological state of many will, after surgery, worsen with time. Our experience at Hopkins, when we first recognized that the psychological well-being of patients undergoing surgery did not improve, rested on relatively short-term assessments. The long-term Swedish study of Dhejne demonstrated that the serious fallouts including suicide emerged only after ten years. None of this clinical experience is reflected in this paper or its correction.

Or the news media coverage of the subject or the sloganeering of the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, National Organization for Women, Stonewall…

Thanks to guest for the link.

Depends on how you look at it.

State laws restricting transition care for minors have surged over the past few months, as part of a Republican movement to regulate the lives of transgender youth.

But is there even such a thing as “transition care”? Trans ideology wants us to think so, of course, but trans ideology isn’t the same thing as medical knowledge. In other words “transition” isn’t really “care” – it’s a drastic intervention that may or may not help the patient psychologically. It should be a last resort, not a swiftly and eagerly performed tampering with a patient’s sex.

And it’s tendentious to call regulation of these interventions “regulating the lives of transgender youth.” Restricting drastic (and still experimental) attempts to make people resemble the sex they’re not is not the same as regulating lives. If all this does turn out to be a social contagion and a big mistake, the people who didn’t try to change their sex will be the very very lucky ones.

In a little over two years, Republican-led state legislatures have enacted restrictions on a host of L.G.B.T.Q.-related issues, including gender-affirming medical care, bathroom access, and sports participation for transgender children and teenagers.

None of that has anything to do with LGB. It’s all T.

This year alone, 16 states have enacted bans or significant new restrictions on some or all gender-affirming care for minors, most ending the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.

Shock horror, but what if it turns out that cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are bad for people and should not be offered as “care”? What if there’s no such thing as gender-affirming care but only mutilation and hormone-experimentation? What if for once the Republicans have it right and the Democrats are horribly destructively wrong?

Legislators who support the restrictions have said they are seeking to protect children from irreversible decisions.

And that’s not automatically or obviously evil.

Lawmakers this year have also passed a series of laws prohibiting transgender students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity.

In other words a series of laws keeping boys out of girls’ restrooms. It’s not just obvious that the freedom of boys to go into girls’ toilets is something to cheer on.

The Times moves on to the sports issue, and continues to shrug off the obvious harms to female people.

Republicans have called this issue “a battle for the very survival of women’s sports,” pointing to a debate at the most elite level of sports as well as at high schools and colleges. Critics say that these rules affect very small numbers of students and that the bills keep transgender children and adolescents from joining social activities.

That’s a lie though. Children and adolescents can join social activities according to their sex instead of their Magic Gender. Brushing off the unfairness to girls as “very small numbers” is beneath contempt.

The small but meaningful flare of rage at this…

I’ve never “fluttered my eyes” in my life, nor do I give any “slow, warm smile.” I don’t manipulate, I don’t play coy, I don’t pretend to be adorable or tiny or bashful or cute or kittenish or feeble or dim or helpless or half-witted. I don’t and I never have, even when barely hatched. I despise this kind of thing and it makes me want to vomit to see men pretending to be women and resurrecting all that stupid bullshit. Just stop.

Let’s flop onto the couch and watch a good old cop show mystery comedy soap non-binary top surgery conversation.

The BBC has been criticised over an episode of Casualty which shows a non-binary character discussing top surgery.

A what discussing what? A woman discussing non-medical mastectomy.

The episode, which aired at 8.20pm on Saturday on BBC One, includes a character discussing their “top surgery” and being presented with a surprise cake shaped like breasts.

Her. Her top surgery. She has breasts. She couldn’t have them cut off if she didn’t have them.

Arin Smethurst, the non-binary trans actor who plays Sah, previously told Metro: “Sah is really interesting for me to play for a number of reasons. I think that I’ve figured out more about my queer identity than they have when you meet them in the show.

“I am familiar and comfy with my sexuality and I’m uncovering new parts of my gender identity at a rapid pace. I am non-binary and also transmasculine, which means that I consider myself to lean more towards masculinity. I’m more boy than anything else, but still not a man.”

Above all she’s self-obsessed and convinced that she’s far more interesting than she is.

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on What is wrong with this guy?

He needs to clarify when he’s talking about definitions, and when he’s talking about frames. For example, he claims that “your definition of what “big” means might not be the same as mine,” but I very much doubt that his definition of “big” matches my definition of, say, “green” or “lawn mower”. I suspect that we would all agree that “big” means something like “substantially larger than normal”. How we apply that definition, though, depends on the frame of reference: what’s big for a dog may be small for a horse. And when there’s a mismatch in our frames, we may disagree on whether an exemplar of a category is big or not (think of Europeans and Americans discussing cars).

You can say much the same about his other examples. Something that is wrong goes against the established norms of a frame (2+2=5 in arithmetic; eating pork among Orthodox Jews); we may have different frames, or disagree about the norms within the frame, but we generally understand what someone is trying to say when they say something is wrong.

But there’s really only one relevant frame for the word “woman”, and that’s the human species. Everyone agrees on that frame (how could it be otherwise?), so we are arguing about definitions. What we say a woman is (adult human female) is not what they say, but they haven’t come up with a coherent definition, and they tacitly acknowledge the need for a word or phrase that covers the same semantic ground when the say things like “people with uteruses”.

Still pushing this line. Is he six?

“What is a woman?” is not the same kind of question as “What is big?” or “What is right and what is wrong?”

He must be confusing “What is a woman?” with “Tell me everything there is to know about women.” The first question is just a definitional question with a very concise answer. The second, obviously, is not.

But based on these idiotic deepities we’re supposed to agree that anybody can be a woman just by claiming to be one.