Marie Le Conte writes for the New Statesman and has the Approved Views. She’s sad about those people who have the Unapproved Views – they’re so obsessed.

Her thoughts on this were prompted by a Mumsnet discussion with MPs Stella Creasy and Caroline Nokes on what women should care about.

Though some questions focused on childcare for politicians and media attacks on the appearance of female MPs, the vast majority concerned one topic. “Should males be included in women-only shortlists?” was one. “Would you be happy if Labour’s first woman leader were a transwoman? (Biological male)” was another.

Le Conte found it “odd” that so many women asked questions about that one topic. She tweeted about it and got more replies than she wanted.

I am not here to complain about it or to make a case for transgender rights. I am not going to convince anyone to change their mind in a handful of sentences, and see no point in attempting to do so. Instead, I would like to point to two worrying developments in online feminism, which I believe were made depressingly clear by this incident.

The first is the obsessiveness of the “gender critical” movement.

We think about it and talk about it way too much. She, the normal one, doesn’t think about it that much, and neither do her trans friends. Normal people just get on with life. If only gender critical feminists were normal like her.

This leads us to the second point. By deciding to centre their online persona and their feminism around gender issues, these women now refuse to recognise the legitimacy of those with opposing views. It does not matter that feminism has always had strands and internal disagreements; if you support transgender people, you cannot be a feminist.

What would a feminism that doesn’t focus on gender issues look like? Like a big box with nothing in it, right? Like zero. Like empty space. Like nothing. She might as well rebuke BLM for focusing on racial issues.

As for opposing views and internal disagreements – as with everything, there are minor disagreements that needn’t lead to a split and then there are fundamental ones that can’t be ignored or accommodated. If you think men who say they are women are literally women, and that feminism is for them too, and not just “too” but “instead” and “more,” then your feminism is no longer feminism. It’s all in the “fem” part.

I have been called a handmaiden, a “pick me” girl, and been accused of vying for male attention. It does not matter that I have been a feminist all my life and have the receipts to prove it; my views on gender apparently mean I have taken the side of sexist men.

If your “views on gender” include the view that men are women if they say they are, then I don’t know what to tell you. You are in fact in solidarity with men in a disagreement over what feminism is, so yes, it’s true that you’re not a feminist, despite the receipts.

Ok now all you aspiring tv writers – I have just the thing for you. Vulnerable lawyers. Comedy, not drama. I owe the idea to Sarah Phillimore and Dennis Kavanagh.

“Bringing your whole self to work” is the very last thing people should be doing. No no no no no that’s all wrong: leave most of your self at home. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants the moods, the hidden injuries, the regrets, the resentments, the obsessions – none of it. Do not bring it to work.

That’s it! The new Fawlty Towers crossed with Boston Legal: vulnerable lawyers.

I’m not even kidding. It could be stomach-hurtingly funny.

Lily Maynard takes an in-depth look at Sidhbh Gallagher, a woman who is making a lot of money cutting girls’ breasts off.

Between 2015 and 2018 she reports that she performed more than 200 surgeries on trans-identified people, removing and reconstructing body parts and tissue in what she calls ‘gender affirmation surgery’.

…

Her practice specialises in performing elective double mastectomies on gender dysphoric young women at a cost of around $9-12,000. ‘Top surgery’ is her signature dish, but there are plenty of other strings to Gallagher’s bow- and she offers something for the lads as well.

She’ll cut their testicles off for a price.

It’s Spring 2018. “Summer is coming!” Gallagher reminds her followers, retweeting photos of a selection of the young women whose healthy breasts she has removed. Once you’ve had your breasts cut off, of course, there’s no need for the T shirt or bikini top that society expects women to ‘cover up’ with.  Let the fun times begin!

Hm. Which is more irksome – wearing a T shirt or having your breasts cut off? I think I’m going to go with door number 2.

Lily provides screenshots of a bunch of tweets showing post-mastectomy women enjoying the luxury of being outside with no shirt on, and a string of frivolous remarks by Gallagher about the awesomeness of the surgically-altered chest. Such as:

‘Monday morning masculoplasty motivation! Let’s make shirtless fall pictures a thing!’

That’s not creepy at all.

What about the ones with regrets?

In 2021 Gallagher recorded a short video for LGBTQ and ALL, on the importance of mental health.

She spoke of how some patients experience feelings of guilt or regret – or even become clinically depressed – after surgery. This could happen after any surgery, she hastens to add, but feelings of guilt and regret surrounding elective surgery can make it worse.  It’s important it is to encourage patients to plan in advance ‘while they’re in their right mind’ how they will deal with post-op depression, for example by booking an appointment with their therapist in advance.

Or they could avoid the post-op depression by not getting their tits cut off at all, but Gallagher doesn’t suggest that.

The darker side of ‘top surgery’, the physical and mental health issues that it may cause- or fail to resolve- is not one that young women tend to talk about on social media. Instagram is full of teenage girls who are convinced this surgery will be an answer to all their problems. Expressing regret is a great way to get yourself ostracised from the online community that lovebombs you before your own surgery; from the other girls who would do almost anything to fulfil their own ‘top surgery’ dream.

It sounds like any other cult. Most cults don’t cut women’s breasts off though.

Having your breasts removed with Dr Gallagher costs $9-$12,000. It’s hard to get all, if any of it covered on insurance. Many of Gallagher’s patients have worked two jobs, their parents have remortgaged their houses; some have crowdfunded for their surgery.

But it’s worth it, because you can go outside without a T shirt.

Gallagher has a startling social media presence and an attitude towards her potential clients like no other surgeon I’ve come across. The best word I can think of to describe it is frivolous. Nothing is serious. Everything will be fine! She is the cool, quirky big sister. 

Who will happily cut your breasts off, and tweet about it afterwards.

Gallagher’s TikTok account, where she has 191.1k followers and over 4 million ‘likes’, is if anything more surreal, featuring a variety of videos where she skips around like an excited, wide-eyed gazelle, erasing potential problems and complications from your ‘top surgery’ with a swish of the gender fairy’s wand and the occassional  swing from a jaunty ponytail.

It’s all just such fun.

Read the whole thing. It’s a long, detailed, horror-filled post, much more than the sample I’ve quoted. Read it all. You’ll regret it but it’s necessary. Not medically necessary, as Gallagher grotesquely insists breast-removal is, but necessary for the sake of resistance to this appalling reckless profit-making slicing and dicing of confused teenagers.

Shahrar Ali’s account:

Ok why is his view highly controversial and bad while the opposing view is…what? Wholly uncontroversial and benign? Is it as simple as: “genocide: yes or no?”?

He’s suing.

This happened.

Bright Green provides background:

The Green Party of England and Wales has removed Shahrar Ali from his role as the party’s spokesperson for policing and domestic safety. The decision was confirmed by the chair of the party’s executive Liz Reason on Twitter…

Ali was appointed to the position in June 2021. At the time of his appointment, Ali came under considerable criticism from party members and others, many of whom alleged that he had a record of transphobia. The following month, the party’s official youth and student wing – the Young Greens – passed a motion calling for his removal.

But of course we know that claims of “transphobia” generally mean just everyday feminism and/or everyday knowing the difference between women and men and the reality of human sexual dimorphism.

Following the criticism of his initial appointment, Ali told Bright Green in June 2021 that he had “fought for the human rights of the marginalised and voiceless in our society for decades”.

Doesn’t matter. It must repeat the creed or it gets the hose.

Prior to the decision to remove him as a spokesperson Ali released a statement in which he referred to “a recommendation from a newly formed Spokespeople Support and Monitoring Sub-committee that [his] Spokesperson appointment be suspended.” In this statement, Ali claimed to have “done nothing wrong” and to have “stood by the principles and values of the Party for twenty years; nine years as a national Spokesperson, two of which as Deputy Leader.”

Alongside this statement, Ali launched a crowdfunder for a legal case he intends to bring against the party. In doing so, he claims to have been “subjected to unrelenting abuse, harassment and detriment” for expressing “gender critical views”. He goes on to allege that by removing him as a spokesperson, the party is in breach of the 2010 Equality Act. At the time of publication, the crowdfunder [h]as received over £11,000 in donations.

…

Prior to the decision being taken, a member of the party’s executive – Zoe Hatch – publicly resigned from the body and from the party in protest over being asked to remove Ali as a spokesperson. In her resignation statement, Hatch said removing Ali would be “wrong on the basis of freedom of speech”. She also claimed that people who advocate for trans people to be recognised as their gender on the basis of self-identification “inadvertently support nefarious individuals, male predators and abusers”.

Not always inadvertently – all too often they do it despite being told they are aiding and abetting nefarious male predators and abusers.

Medscape tells us:

Media coverage of transgender healthcare judged to be “negative” was associated with a drop of around 30% in referral rates to gender identity clinics in Sweden among young people under age 19, a new study indicates.

“Associated with”=correlation as opposed to causation.

Malin Indremo, MS, from the Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, Sweden, and colleagues explored the effect of the documentaries, “The Trans Train and Teenage Girls,” which they explain was a “Swedish public service television show” representing “investigative journalism.” The two-part documentary series was aired in Sweden in April 2019 and October 2019, respectively, and is now available in English on YouTube.

In their article published online in JAMA Network Open, the authors say they consider “The Trans Train” programs to be “negative” media coverage because the “documentaries addressed the distinct increase among adolescents referred to gender identity clinics in recent years. Two young adults who regretted their transition and parents of transgender individuals who questioned the clinics’ assessments of their children were interviewed, and concerns were raised about whether gender-confirming treatments are based on sufficient scientific evidence.”

The programs, they suggest, may have influenced and jeopardized young transgender individuals’ access to transgender-specific healthcare.

Sooooo they think adolescents should be making drastic changes to their bodies without considering the risks and potential regrets. Interesting.

Which is the real jeopardy? Thinking seriously about the long-term effects of “gender-confirming” treatments? Or rushing to get “gender-confirming treatments” without doing any serious thinking?

The lies are already in the headline. CNN sets us up with:

Trans swimmer’s teammates claim she has ‘unfair advantage’

Scare-quotes on unfair advantage, no scare-quotes on trans or she.

Which is the real fiction here? That a large young man has an athletic advantage over young women? Or that a large young man who didn’t do particularly well competing against men but is breaking records competing against women turns out to be a woman?

Which is the more hard to believe of the two claims? Is it hard to believe that a large man has an athletic advantage over women? Is it hard to believe that a man who was meh swimming with men last year but now smashes records swimming with women is literally a woman?

I say no to the first and yes to the second. Of course it’s not hard to believe that a large man has an athletic advantage over women. (It’s also not hard to believe that a small man has such an advantage, but his size makes the nonsense all the more obvious.) Of course it is hard to believe that that same large man is actually a woman just because he says so.

You could make a credibility score, and the difference between the two scores would be stark…unless you cheated, as so many people are doing.

And yet, a reputable news outlet like CNN puts the scare quote on “unfair advantage” and leaves the “trans” and “she” alone, thus nudging readers into believing the grotesquely manipulative dishonest ideology.

Updating to add – All that and still I missed one.

“Claim” – it was right there and I missed it. The women “claim” the hulking man has an unfair advantage over them. Bitches. Karens. Terfs.

Ideologue Ben Hunte has a bad stupid mindless hit piece on the EHRC in Vice.

Employees are quitting Britain’s equalities and human rights watchdog because they say it has become “transphobic” and “the enemy of human rights”, VICE World News has learned. 

…

Three whistleblowers – still working at the EHRC – told VICE World News about an “anti-LGBT” culture being adopted by senior leaders at the organisation which is compelling non-executive staff to quit. 

But of course they don’t actually mean “LGBT” – they mean T.

This comes as VICE World News obtained leaked emails and documents showing leaders at the EHRC being actively involved in removing rights from trans people in the courts, as well as holding meetings with “gender critical” groups. 

That of course is classic trans “activism” – shouting about “rights” without ever spelling out what rights they mean. The EHRC is not removing rights from trans people.

An employee who recently left said: “When I started in 2018, we were all celebrating LGBT rights and the EHRC was pushing to make the UK better for LGBT people. It’s like working for a different organisation now.”

There it is again. It’s not about LGBT rights, it’s about claimed trans rights, which aren’t genuine rights at all. There is no “right” to force people to treat you as if you were a woman when you are in fact a man.

One former employee told the credulous Hunte:

“Staff are being pushed to not be so ‘woke’, and forced to be more impartial, but then we’re seeing statements from our leaders that are transphobic, or racist, and incredibly damaging.”

I bet they’re not seeing any such thing. I bet they’re seeing statements they don’t like, which they are calling “transphobic”…and “racist” for good measure, as they so often do.

The EHRC was established in 2007 by the then Labour government to monitor human rights in England, Wales and Scotland, and to enforce equality laws based on protected characteristics, such as sexuality, gender reassignment, race and religion.

But not sex? Trans women are protected but women are not? Or is that just Ben Hunte’s omission, not the EHRC’s?

Another former employee – who left at the end of 2021 – told VICE World News that Falkner had personally changed EHRC publications about trans people, making the documents more critical of gender identity, and actively going against the organisation’s own guidance to protect people’s rights based on gender reassignment. 

But what are those rights? If they’re not spelled out, we don’t know if they can be rights or not. No doubt that’s why they’re not spelled out.

Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project campaign group, said: “Under the EHRC human rights have turned 180 degrees. No longer are they protection for minorities against populist sentiment. Now they are mechanics which turn that sentiment – and the hostility of Ministers – into policy.”

Ah yes good old Jo Maugham, almost as reliably partisan as Ben Hunte.

Then we get a quote from Mermaids.

Impeccable journalism.

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Waaz ya sensa yuma?

Humour is a funny thing. Any subject can in principle be fit for a joke…or, rather, a joke can be fashioned out of any subject, even the ones which common decency insists there is no acceptable joke. Larry David has made jokes about the Holocaust, and Hannibal Burress has made jokes about rape, which many people have found hilarious and inoffensive (or at least inoffensive to human decency, rather than the social mores that many if not most jokes are crafted to offend).

In the former case the speaker is a Jewish man with a penchant for cynicism and self-deprecation, and in the latter case the speaker put his own career on the line to give credibility to Bill Cosby’s accusers, and can be given a non-trivial amount of credit for the latter’s fall from grace. And these jokes were well-crafted besides, targeted at least as much at the audience’s moral hypocrisy and lack of rhetorical sophistication, in effect aiming to get the audience to laugh not at victims of the Holocaust or of rape, but rather at themselves.

This, much more than the simplistic “punching up” or “punching down” framing of comedy, is what moves a large part of comedy as an art form; holding up a mirror to an audience, playing with their taboos and their presuppositions of their own morals, and subtly guiding them to realise that much of the mental world in which they live is kind of a ridiculous and laughable sham. When it is done well, it is a transcendent experience of a piece with losing oneself in a painting or a song.

Richard Spencer is no Larry David. He is a brute, promoting a brutal philosophy, and the only thing funny in this situation is how transparent his lies about it are. Like all brutes, he deserves some measure of pity and guarded sympathy for the circumstances which led him to his brutality, but he also deserves a good measure of scorn and ridicule for his inability to see how laughably ridiculous his own mental world has become.

Colin Wright on the “pronouns” question:

‘What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags.

…

The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are _____. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.

Even if you accept that claim (which I don’t), what about everyone else? What about being inclusive to people who understand what pronouns are and thus find it absurd to talk about your my our her his pronouns? What about people who want to be intelligible? What about people who are allergic to bullshit?

While being subjected to constant rituals of pronoun exchanges may seem silly or annoying at best and exhausting at worst, in reality participating in this ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society.

That too. That’s the most important reason for not complying, but there are also aesthetic, epistemic, moral, and other kinds of reasons. There are a lot of reasons not to and no good reasons pointing the other way.

Gender activists believe that being a man or a woman requires embracing stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, respectively, or the different social roles and expectations society imposes on people because of their sex. Planned Parenthood explicitly states that gender identity is “how you feel inside,” defines “gender” as a “a social and legal status, a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and asserts that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.”

…

The clear message of gender ideology is that, if you’re a female who doesn’t “identify with” the social roles and stereotypes of femininity, then you’re not a woman; if you’re a male who similarly rejects the social roles and stereotypes of masculinity, then you’re not a man. Instead, you’re considered either transgender or nonbinary, and Planned Parenthood assures you that “there are medical treatments you can use to help your body better reflect who you are.” According to this line of thinking, certain personalities, behaviors and preferences are incompatible with certain types of anatomy.

So Planned Parenthood is actually encouraging people to mutilate themselves and/or mess with their hormones. It’s shockingly reckless and destructive.

So when someone asks for your pronouns, and you respond with “she/her,” even though you may be communicating the simple fact that you’re female, a gender ideologue would interpret this as an admission that you embrace femininity and the social roles and expectations associated with being female.

Are there separate pronouns for feminists? No, of course not, so we’re stuck with this “I’m a woman and that means I embrace all the stupid rules imposed on female people” – and bang goes centuries of work trying to get rid of those stupid rules.

Coercing people into publicly stating their pronouns in the name of “inclusion” is a Trojan horse that empowers gender ideology and expands its reach. 

Along with being embarrassing and pathetic. I’ve never been asked, but if I ever am, I don’t imagine it will go smoothly.

Teaching about systemic racism is not permissible. Trying to overthrow the government on the other hand is fine.

The Republican Party on Friday censured U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for joining Congress’ probe of then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, calling the Jan. 6 Capitol attack “legitimate political discourse.”

Ah yes, legitimate political discourse, with sticks and clubs and guns to back it up.

It’s too obvious to say but I’ll say it anyway: imagine the Republican Party saying that about a BLM protest at the Capitol that was half as violent as the January 6th one. It is to laugh.

The Republican National Committee on Friday passed a resolution rebuking Cheney and Kinzinger for their involvement on the Jan. 6 select committee, accusing them of “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

The resolution passed on a voice vote as 168 members of the RNC gathered for their winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The yes votes were overwhelming, with a handful of nays, according to reporters at the meeting.

So they’re basically announcing they’re the pro-coup party.

Is it edgy comedy to have a good laugh about a particular genocide?

Jimmy Carr has been condemned by anti-hate groups including the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Auschwitz Memorial and Hope Not Hate for his comments about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community in his Netflix special.

I have no idea who Jimmy Carr is, apart from someone who had a Netflix special and fancies himself a comedian.

Carr said: “When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.

“No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”

I saw the clip earlier today. There was laughter but it wasn’t a great big roar. There’s no indication of how big the audience was so maybe it was a big roar for that particular audience, but it wasn’t the kind of torrent you usually hear for killer jokes. In short it was my impression that not everyone laughed.

Anyway, point is – genocide jokes at the expense of the victims as opposed to the perps are not so much “edgy” as…that other thing. Carr said it was edgy though.

The Auschwitz Memorial urged Carr to “learn about the fate of some 23 thousand Roma & Sinti deported to Auschwitz” in a tweet to their 1.2m followers.

Well I think he knows their fate; that’s what the joke was about.

The Guardian sums up:

It will be an unwelcome row for Netflix, who last year faced an intense backlash and a staff walk out after comments made by Dave Chappelle about transgender people in his comedy special.

Not comparable. Not comparable at all; not even close. Transgender people are not being packed into cattle cars and sent to gas chambers. It’s not necessary to catastrophize about trans people on every occasion.

Fresh Air yesterday:

In states across the country, laws have been passed or introduced restricting what teachers can discuss in the classroom and what subjects and ideas should be banned from curricula. These restrictions mostly apply to subject matter pertaining to race, sexual orientation, gender identity and political ideologies and philosophies. Many of these restrictions cover K-12 schools, as well as colleges and universities.

Since January 2021, 137 bills restricting what can be taught have been introduced or pre-filed in 35 different states. Over 87 of those bills are from this year. Restrictive laws have been passed in 10 states. My guest, Jeffrey Sachs, has been tracking these new laws and bills for PEN America, a writers organization dedicated to free speech. He teaches political science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. His areas of specialization include free speech issues and authoritarianism.

Both of which are decidedly in play here. Right-wing authoritarians don’t want us to be free to learn about other views. (Same with left-wing authoritarians, but their methods are a little different.)

The interview starts with “critical race theory.” What is?

JEFFREY SACHS: In many of the bills, it’s not defined at all. The term is just deployed in the text and then left hanging without any definition attached to it, which is the kind of ambiguity that the most paranoid teacher or outraged parent can fill with whatever meaning they want.

A problem we’ve run into here a lot.

In other bills, they do offer a definition. For instance, they’ll single out ideas like, quote, “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex.” In other cases, the bills will prohibit teachers from discussing systemic racism or suggesting that racism is anything other than the consequence of individual prejudice.

Which, ironically, is Robin DiAngelo’s whole shtick, and she presents herself as anti-racist! (She also, I learned the other day, is making a fortune off this grift. She charges tens of thousands of dollars for a talk or “training” session.)

SACHS:… a bill in Indiana that is currently under consideration would require, among other things, that in the runup to any general election in the state, students must be taught, quote, “socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded.” And it goes on to say, as such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.

Hello 1952, where ya been?

GROSS: So in Tennessee, there’s a law that allows teachers to teach slavery and how Native Americans were treated, but you can’t discuss that in the context of current events. So you can’t, for instance, talk about the George Floyd protests or Black Lives Matter and connect that to the civil rights movement or, you know, to anything else in history that might explain what’s happening now.

SACHS: That’s right. The Tennessee law is a great example of this, the dilemma I’m describing. It does include a carve-out saying that the list of prohibited ideas may be discussed in the context of an historical discussion of past discrimination. But for present-day events, like Black Lives Matter, it would be – the prohibitions would be in place. It would mean that a teacher could not discuss a present-day idea in Tennessee, like Black Lives Matter, if that idea, quote, “promotes division between or resentment of a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people,” which essentially means that a teacher has to avoid any current event that might possibly cause one student or a parent to feel feelings of resentment towards another.

Which, of course, would be everything. Everything might possibly do that, especially with Fox News in the room.

SACHS: Well, there’s a law currently on the books in North Dakota that was passed last November after just five days of consideration that has me up at night. This is a law that attempts to prohibit critical race theory in K-12 schools. And I just want to reemphasize here, this is not a law that prohibits people from endorsing or promoting critical race theory. It’s a law that forbids them from even including critical race theory in the classroom. And the way that that law defines critical race theory is what has me so concerned. This is a law that prohibits K-12 public schools from including in the classroom quote, “critical race theory, which is defined as the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality.”

So in other words by law schools have to teach children that racism is not systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality. But what if that’s not true? What if some of that systemically embedded racism has been slowly and painfully deleted, but not all of it? What then? What if it’s a mistake to teach fake history?

GROSS: How do you talk about American slavery or mandated segregation without saying that was part of the system? It was – this was like legally-mandated stuff. Would you say it was a bunch of individuals who were racist and happened to own slaves or a bunch of individuals who passed laws? I mean, how do you – these were created legally in the American system.

SACHS: Exactly. This is exactly the concern that’s shared by the North Dakota ACLU, which is investigating this law now and is terrified that whenever you discuss slavery, you’re a teacher, you’re right, would have to essentially say the slaveholders were racist. The system that they were in, the laws that supported them, the economy that made that business profitable, that is – you’d have to separate those institutional features and describe slavery purely as a product of individual bias, which does violence to the topic. It fails to educate students and I think might discourage students from thinking critically about contemporary institutions and identifying whether or not they also might be guilty of systemic racism.

It also completely fails to describe or explain what happened between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.

Hail, ignorance.

The Washington Post admits some of the truth, which makes a change.

Sixteen members of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team sent a letter to school and Ivy League officials Thursday asking that they not take legal action challenging the NCAA’s recently updated transgender policy. That updated directive has the potential to prevent Penn swimmer Lia Thomas from competing at next month’s NCAA championships,and the letter indicates the 16 other swimmers believe their teammate should be sidelined.

Thomas, a transgender woman who swims for the Quakers women’s team, competed for the Penn men’s team for three seasons. After undergoing more than two years of hormone replacement therapy as part of her transition, she has posted the fastest times of any female college swimmer in two events this season. The letter from Thomas’s teammates raised the question of fairness and said she was taking “competitive opportunities” away from them — namely spots in the Ivy League championship meet, where schools can only send about half of their rosters to compete.

And, of course, what they say is true. He is taking opportunities away from them. If he were a woman that would be fair, and what athletic competition is all about; since he’s a man, it’s not fair at all.

The NCAA swimming championships are scheduled for March 16-19, and Thomas has qualified for multiple events. She seemingly will be allowed by the NCAA to compete because it is phasing in its new transgender policy in three stages, the first of which covers this year’s championships in winter and spring sports.

People are oh so slowly starting to figure it out, but while they continue to stare in befuddlement Thomas will take advantage of their “phasing in” and “three stages” to grab his prizes while he can. What a fine principled generous young man he is.

Some people know who is a woman.

A county in central China has sparked controversy by offering a host of incentives to encourage “leftover” women to marry, including with unemployed men, local media have reported, amid rising concern about the country’s dwindling birth rate.

What are “leftover” women? Women who aren’t married. There’s no point to a woman if she’s not married – she’s just using up resources.

“At present, the phenomenon of ‘older young female cadres and workers’ remaining single in our county has become a very prominent problem, which urgently needs the care, help and support of the whole society,” the county government reportedly said in a document, referring to women older than 26.

Women who remain single are a terrible threat. Nearly all of them turn into witches.

More controversially, authorities are trying to encourage women to marry unemployed men by promising their husbands vocational and entrepreneurship training, business loans and priority for public service positions.

Don’t stop there. Encourage women to marry violent sadistic unemployed men by promising to heap these men with rewards for being married to women who get nothing. Fair.

China is grappling with a declining marriage rate and birth rate, which has prompted a flurry of policies from local governments around the country to address the problem, including establishing official matchmaking databases, organising dating activities and giving out housing allowances based on the number of children in a family.

Whatever. The reality of climate change will sink in some day, when it’s too late.

Guy says women who have given birth don’t understand biology, and in evidence offers a smug smart-ass young man in…a Youtube video.

That’s women told.

Another contrarian slams the door:

Boris Johnson’s top policy aide has quit over the PM’s false claim that Sir Keir Starmer failed to prosecute serial sex offender Jimmy Savile when he was director of public prosecutions.

…

Munira Murza said the PM he should have apologised for the misleading remarks.

In her resignation letter, published by The Spectator, she wrote: “You are a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, which is why it is so desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous accusation against the leader of the opposition.”

What’s funny about this is who she is.

Mirza, who quit over Boris Johnson’s false claim that Keir Starmer held back attempts to prosecute Jimmy Savile, was the official behind Downing Street’s much criticised report into racial disparities, which downplayed structural factors.

Contrarian, you see.

Her political journey has certainly been a long one. Born in Oldham in 1978 to parents who came to the UK from Pakistan, she went to her local comprehensive school and Oldham sixth form college before studying English at Mansfield College, Oxford.

Unlike Johnson, who was president of the Oxford Union and involved in Tory politics, Mirza was a student radical, becoming a member of the Revolutionary Communist party, contributing to its magazine Living Marxism.

There it is. She’s part of the RCP/Spiked crowd! The contrariest contrarians of all time, who turned as one from the RCP to…the Spiked tendency.

Labour woman MP says what now?

But…he doesn’t, does he. He didn’t. That’s the point, surely. Not that “if he did, he would be,” but that “He didn’t, because that’s not how this works.” Raping and murdering women is about women, it’s not about women and men who pretend to be women. What the Wayne Couzenses and the Peter Sutcliffes and the rest of them hate is women, not women and men who wear makeup.

How can Stella Creasy not understand that?

Men stealing women’s athletic prizes – cool, or no?

Less than two days after several members of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team released a letter in support of Lia Thomas, 16 team members and their families responded with a letter of their own. This letter, directed to the University of Pennsylvania and the Ivy League, requested that school and conference do not engage in litigation following USA Swimming’s release of its new transgender-inclusion policy.

The letter was sent to the University of Pennsylvania and the Ivy League by three-time Olympic champion Nancy Hogshead-Makar, who is the CEO of Champion Women. Hogshead-Makar has been a longtime advocate of women’s rights and has fought for equal opportunity for women’s athletes. During the Lia Thomas debate, Hogshead-Makar has repeatedly noted the unfair advantages of Thomas as a transgender woman when competing against biological females.

So there’s disagreement among the swimmers about the fairness of Lia Thomas’s con game.

We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically.

Or to put it another way, we don’t care what Thomas does with his “gender” in his private life.

However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy, and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete.

I will never understand why the grotesque unfairness of this isn’t so blindingly obvious to everyone that it just can’t get off the ground.

We have dedicated our lives to swimming. Most of us started the same time Lia did, as pre-teens. We have trained up to 20 hours a week, swimming miles, running and lifting weights. To be sidelined or beaten by someone competing with the strength, height, and lung capacity advantages that can only come with male puberty has been exceedingly difficult.

Because it’s so unfair, and so obviously unfair, yet grown-ass adults are forcing it on us. Exceedingly difficult indeed.

We have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer. When media have tried to reach out to us, these journalists have been told that the coaches and athletes were prohibited from talking to them. We support Lia’s mental health, and we ask Penn and the Ivy League to support ours as well.

You know, from the outside, Lia’s mental health looks pretty damn robust. He seems very cheerful, not to say triumphant and smug.

Amnesty UK last week:

On the recent statements published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the governments’ consultation on conversion therapy, Amnesty International UK disagree unreservedly in the EHRC’s assessment of separating protections for LGBTI people and specifically excluding trans people from initial legislation.

These statements are actively damaging to the rights of trans and non-binary people in the UK, and we find them to be disappointing and deeply troubling.

Emphasis very much theirs.

But what are these rights? What are these rights that trans and non-binary people have that mustn’t be separated from the rights that lesbian and gay people have? Amnesty UK of course doesn’t say. It doesn’t even mention. We’re just supposed to know.

Nor does Amnesty UK explain how it damages the rights of trans people to talk about them separately from those of lesbian and gay people. Again we’re just supposed to know.

And that’s a problem, because sometimes some claimed “rights” of trans people encroach on the rights of lesbian and gay people. Bullying lesbians who don’t want to couple up with men who identify as lesbians, for instance – there’s a place where the rights of lesbians clash with the putative rights of men who identify as lesbians. I say “putative” because I don’t think men who identify as lesbians have any right to bully lesbians, or demand “validation” from them, let alone any right to order lesbians to have sex with them.

So what rights are we talking about here? Why doesn’t Amnesty UK spell out exactly what those rights are? Why does it just repeat formulaic guff about “protections for LGBTI people” and leave it at that?

Probably because it knows that spelling out “trans lesbians have the right to demand sex from lesbians” would look a bit off.

We encourage the UK and Scottish Governments’ to continue to show commitment and leadership on human rights by delivering on their commitments to reforming the Gender Recognition Act and introducing a comprehensive legislative ban on conversion therapy that protects the whole of the LGBTI community, including those who are trans and non-binary

But “conversion therapy” for lesbian and gay people is not the same thing, or the same kind of thing, as asking questions before agreeing with people who claim to be the opposite sex. There are many differences. To take the most obvious: lesbians and gay people don’t have to do a single thing to their bodies either to be lesbian/gay or to be happy to be lesbian/gay. Not one thing. People who claim to be the opposite sex often want to do very drastic things to their bodies, and many of them are very young. That’s a huge difference right there.

And then, sexual orientation just is. There’s no element of fairy tale or woo – it’s just that some people fancy the other sex and others fancy the same sex. Who fancies whom and why is maybe a little bit complicated, but it’s not outright Let’s Pretend.

At least some of the adults at Amnesty UK must know all this, yet they carefully hide it in this stupid obfuscating statement. It’s appalling.