No no no no no. Wrong.

No no no. Conversion therapy is trying to “convert” same-sex attracted people to straighthood. That is not the same as telling people that it’s not possible to change sex.

Same-sex attraction harms no one. Gender ideology harms its adherents and women and, ironically, same-sex attracted people.

I wonder what would happen if gender ideology faded out to be replaced by an ideology that says people who identify as airplanes are airplanes. I wonder what the explanations and justifications and purported rights would be.

Now wait just a damn minute here.

Then why haven’t I been sent some? Even just a little? A token amount?

It’s interesting that the rival monotheisms are so hostile to each other. There is only one god and it’s NOT the one you’re bending the knee to. Bang bang.

The number of people arrested in the wake of the Manchester synagogue terror attack has risen to six as the attacker “may have been influenced by extreme Islamist ideology”, police have confirmed.

Jihad Al-Shamie drove a black Kia Picanto into worshippers at the Heaton Park synagogue and stabbed congregants on Thursday.

Two men were killed and three seriously injured in the terror attack which took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

And we’re thinking maybe just possibly it might have something to do with Islamist ideology? Excuse me, sorry, I mean extremist Islamist ideology – because there’s definitely a nice kind mild form of Islamist ideology, where they say “excuse me” before killing you.

What could possibly go wrong?

When the Vienna Regional Court for Civil Matters permitted the enforcement of an arbitration ruling based explicitly on Sharia law, the decision passed largely without international notice.

Yet its implications are profound – not merely for Austria, but for Europe as a whole. At stake is nothing less than whether the continent retains its secular constitutional foundations, or whether it drifts into the dangerous territory of legal pluralism, where parallel systems of justice compete against the law of the land.

Parallel but not comparable. Allah hates women; Quranic law is not fair to women, to put it mildly.

Critics are right to warn that this ruling risks legitimising “parallel societies.” For decades, European leaders have wrestled with the failure of integration policies. In cities from Malmö to Marseille, segregated communities have emerged in which religious authority often supplants the secular state. Informal Sharia councils already exist in parts of Britain, where Muslim women in particular have been pressured to submit to tribunals that deny them equal rights. The danger is not hypothetical – it is happening within the EU.

Sharia councils can be “informal” and still treat women like garbage.

Supporters of the ruling may argue that it is a harmless recognition of cultural diversity. If two consenting adults wish to settle disputes under Sharia, why should the state intervene? But this framing is profoundly misleading. Law is not merely a private contract; it is the foundation of citizenship. To permit religious codes to replace civil law is to suggest that citizens can opt out of the social contract altogether.

Also there’s the question of those “two consenting adults.” How consenting is the woman? How will any outsider know? How free will she be to refuse to consent?

Get serious. Men who want Sharia are not likely to see their wives as a consenting adult; they’re far more likely to see them as the inferior half of the couple and the source of the all-important sons, who must be fiercely watched and disciplined less they spread their legs for an outsider which the men will be tricked into raising. Can’t have that.

Cultural differences…

On a visit to New Zealand, FBI Director Kash Patel gave the country’s police and spy bosses gifts of inoperable pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws and had to be destroyed, New Zealand law enforcement agencies told The Associated Press.

Such a thoughtful present. How about an electric chair next time?

Inoperable weapons are treated as though they’re operable in New Zealand if modifications could make them workable again. The pistols were judged by gun regulators to be potentially operable and were destroyed, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told AP in a statement Tuesday.

Weird: people who don’t love guns. How can anyone not love guns?!

From The Times last March:

Doctors will be banned from giving transgender children a new NHS record after it emerged that biological sex had been erased from official data.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said it was wrong that doctors were changing the NHS numbers of children if they changed gender. He has told the health service to stop giving out new NHS numbers to under-18s.

A review ­commissioned by the last government and ­released on Wednesday found that the word “gender” started to replace “sex” in the collection of data in the 1990s and that for the past ten years ­“robust and accurate data on biological sex” had been lost.

That’s what happens when you tell lies about what sex people are.

Cancer referrals were missed and previous convictions were overlooked because biological sex had been erased from official data on health, crime and education. In medicine, adults and children have been able to request their gender is changed on their medical record. When this happens, a new NHS number and, therefore, medical record would be created.

The review, led by Professor Alice Sullivan of University College London, reported how in one case a paediatrician said that a child had been brought up in the preferred gender of the mother, which was different to their birth sex.

Oh really?! What happened to people are who they say they are? Now they’re who their mothers say they are, even if that means they are the opposite of what their mothers say they are? Parents can now stick their children with a fake “gender” of their choosing? In infancy???

“[The mother] had gone to the GP and requested a change of gender/NHS number when the baby was a few weeks old and the GP complied. Children’s social care did not perceive this as a child protection issue,” the doctor ­reported.

How does that even work? We are told and told and told that what’s in the gender-haver’s mind is what counts, not what anyone else perceives. How can a parent possibly “know” that an infant is trans? Does it fill its diaper in a peculiarly gendered way?

Unbelievable.

Sturgeon: “Trans women are women but in the prison context there is no automatic right for a trans woman – “

Interviewer: “There are contexts where a trans woman is not a woman.”

Sturgeon: “No there is” – nervous laugh – “there is circumstances in which a trans woman will be housed in the male prison estate, because [inaudible].”

WAIT WAIT WAIT.

Why?

You say trans women are women. You firmly slap down any suggestion that they are not. If trans women are women then how in HELL can there be “circumstances” in which they’ll be housed with the men? How can that possibly make any sense if they are women?

Game over.

The Green Party doesn’t want women defending women’s rights.

Women’s rights campaigners have claimed they are victims of discrimination after being banned from the Green Party conference.

Invidious discrimination, they mean.

The Green Women’s Declaration (GWD), a group advocating for sex-based rights for women, were told two days before the party’s conference that their stall booking was cancelled and they would not be allowed to recruit members. The group said the move “undermines the rights of women to advocate for single-sex spaces, services, and sports — rights that are protected under UK law”.

Sometimes protected. Other times, as we see, not protected.

The ban is the latest argument between those in the party who believe in sex-based rights and those who have made transgender rights a priority.

Those in the party who believe in women’s rights and those who believe that men are entitled to idennify as women and help themselves to women’s rights.

Zack Polanski, the new Green Party leader, has repeatedly spoken about his support for transgender people. He said this week that the party’s policy would remain that transgender people should be able to self-identify as whatever gender they wish.

But the issue isn’t really ability to self-idennify or not, the issue is forcing everyone else to endorse the self-idennifying. The issue is what follows from the self-idennifying. Nobody cares what other people think they are inside their heads; it’s when they act on it that things can get tricky.

In a letter seen by The Times, Jon Nott, the Greens’ chairman, said the party had “considered feedback from concerned members about the possibility of GWD attending, who described the hostile and demeaning encounters they have had with GWD in the past (including at previous conference)”.

He said: “They also noted the confrontational and derogatory ways in which some of GWD’s leaders and supporters have campaigned on issues of sex and gender identity, including online.

“The view taken is that there is a real likelihood that GWD would behave in a similar way at conference this year, and that in any event their presence would deter other members from attending and so would inhibit our ability to run an effective, inclusive event.”

And this is all entirely the fault of women. The men who claim to be women and shove women aside and tell women to get out are not at all a deterrent to other members, it’s only the women who object to being shoved aside who are the problem. It’s not the men in lipstick who deter others from attending, it’s those bitches who deter. It’s those bitchy mean demanding women who inhibit the Green Party’s ability to run an inclusive event, so kick them the fuck out, ok? Women are the problem no matter what; men who pretend to be women are their victims. That’s the rule.

A party spokesman said: “The Green Party will always offer a safe and welcoming space. The party decided that GWD’s presence at the conference would risk undermining that commitment and deter members from attending.”

Safe and welcoming for men, that is. Not for women. God no. Who cares about women? They’re a tiny minority, they’re pests, nobody cares about them. Welcome to our safe and welcoming space.

To the surprise of no one…

Dangerous thug Barbie Kardashian is facing arrest – as a prison Governor and officer are forced to take security measures amid threats she allegedly uttered.

Threats “she” uttered. The replies on TwitX all shout at the reporter for the many shes and hers in the story but it could be an editorial ruling – but either way it’s interesting that the first two words are “dangerous thug.” Women are not generally called thugs, however violent they may be; it’s a male-coded word.

Either way this lying really needs to stop. Just stop. Nobody cares that he claims to be a woman; everybody knows he isn’t one. Just stop.

Prison authorities believe Kardashian has already breached the conditions of her release – and want her hauled before a court where a Judge can have the power to reinstate the suspended portion of her prison sentence. Gardai are also understood to be examining the new threats, many of which directly threatened named individuals.

If convicted of such threats Kardashian could face a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison. In a statement to this paper, the Irish Prison Service said that such threats are taken very seriously – and that staff who are subjected them are offered support.

Great; go for it. Lock him very up. Also stop calling him “her”.

Bahahahahahaha I don’t think I knew this.

Gary Larson is a Seattleite, and back in the day he was friends with the herps people at the Zoo. Still is for all I know. This means I knew people who were buddies with Gary Larson, so there, ha.

Yet another reason to love Jane Goodall.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on In the face of challenges and hostility.

Alice Sullivan reported the most chilling thing I ever heard throughout the whole gender mess.

I wrote in late 2024, facetiously, that, “No doubt soon there will be newborn trans babies.” Barely a few months later, Alice Sullivan reported she’d uncovered at least one case where deranged parents brought their newborn child back to the hospital to have the paperwork changed: they were unhappy about the sex of their newborn so they decided to carry on as though the child was the other sex — the one they wanted — and to that end they simply declared that the newborn was “trans”. Then they stormed back to the hospital and demanded the doctors change the paperwork, and re-issue a new birth certificate that “affirmed” their child as the sex they wanted it to be. So far, so crazy. This is supposed to be the part where the hospital alerts the authorities and the child is taken into protective custody, because, obvious mental cases, right? Obvious child endangerment, right? It’s tragic, I know. But you’re wrong! Far crazier, and far more tragic, is that that’s not what happened. Instead, EVERY SINGLE PERSON at the hospital capitulated and said nothing to contradict the deranged parents. The doctors issued a new birth certificate with a false sex identification to placate them.

I guarantee you, every single person who bore witness to that went home and privately ranted about how crazy gender madness is. And I also guarantee you: not one of those fuckers stepped up in public to protect that child. In fact, we already know that that’s the case. Because it fucking happened, and it went unnoticed and undocumented until Alice Sullivan reported on it.

It burns my blood. I watched person after person after person keep his or her mouth shut while all this gender extremist horseshit was happening. Meanwhile, I lost all my friends, my jobs, everything. It’s been six years since I really started speaking up, and my life is still a fucking shambles. I struggle to keep a roof over my head, to pay my billls, to remain employed. It’s gotten to the point that I resent anyone with any money, any comfort, any success. Because they had to see what was happening. They must at some point have made a conscious choice to cover their eyes and their ears in order to maintain that status. And the very few of us who spoke up, we still haven’t gotten our recompense. It’s bloody brutal, living through a historical scandal and not being a coward about it.

I went to a gender-critical talk by Alice Sullivan in London a couple years ago. A University College thing. It was a strangely “underground” affair. We in the audience all knew that the event was considered taboo, even dangerous, to outsiders.

(Allow me a wee cheeky brag: I briefly met Kathleen Stock in person at the reception afterwards. Very unexpectedly, she came up to me and told me she recognized me! I nearly fainted. I’ve never interacted with her in person since. But I surely would do! I felt like I’d met a fucking rock star!)

It’s academics like Sullivan who are maintaining the integrity of the whole system. Can you imagine being a university dean in the future, looking back at your student body, and not finding even one single person who spoke up for the truth? UCL has Alice Sullivan almost single-handedly to thank for saving its reputation, because she pushed for that event, and they allowed it to take place, despite the risks.

God, there are so many institutions that weren’t so lucky. If only there were more Alice Sullivans and Kathleen Stocks across academia — across the whole of society!

Brava to Alice, for her nomination. Much deserved.

Oh god oh god oh god.

Push the play button. You’ll regret it, but do it anyway.

Sullivan nominated for Sullivan Review.

A leading gender critical researcher has been shortlisted for the 2025 Maddox Prize for her landmark review into how sex is recorded in publicly funded research.

Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at UCL, is the only UK-based researcher named on the six-strong shortlist for the prize, awarded by Nature Awards and the science communication charity Sense about Science, which recognises researchers with a record of “standing up for sound science and evidence in the public interest, and for showing courage and integrity in the face of challenges and hostility”.

It doesn’t get much more challenges and hostility than trans ideology. That’s probably because they are coming from inside the house.

Published in March, Sullivan’s independent review revealed how inconsistent approaches in how sex is recorded in publicly funded research has led to a “widespread loss” of data over the past decade.

Numerous studies carried out after 2015 dropped questions related to biological sex and instead collected data on ‘gender’, the study explained, with the term referring to gender identity.

Sullivan’s report recommended researchers should collect data on gender identity but avoid combining this category with questions on sex.

Because obviously they should, because “gender identity” is the opposite of sex. It’s about feefees, thoughts, fantasies, daydreams. It’s not just not the reality, it’s the enemy of the reality.

While Sullivan’s report won plaudits from many experts and politicians, including health secretary Wes Streeting, it was heavily criticised by others, including the transgender support group TransActual who claimed the report is “biased, inadequate and potentially harmful to all”. 

Snort. Sure, it’s “potentially” anything you like, but let’s stick to current reality, shall we?

Mermaids, a charity which supports families with transgender children, claimed the UCL professor is an “adviser to an organisation widely considered to be an anti-trans campaign group” – namely, the gender critical charity Sex Matters.

So typical. Typical of Mermaids and typical of gender ideology/manipulation in general. Anything they don’t like is “widely considered” to be anti-trans whatever. We know that, and we do not care.

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lisa Nandy should surely have taken the hint when, having worn a “protect the dolls” T-shirt on a transgender rights march in August, she found herself roundly eviscerated.

Dolls, a slang term from the 1980s for men trying to pass themselves off as women, had long been viewed as misogynistic, a description that succeeded only in objectifying femininity. Except now the Culture Secretary has gone a step further, making the fatuous suggestion at this week’s Labour Party conference that biological men should still be allowed to compete in certain women’s sports.

“There are three things that we’re trying to achieve,” she said on Wednesday. “The first is inclusion, the second is fairness, and the third is safety. And there are some sports where it’s perfectly possible to include everybody and still meet those principles around fairness and safety.”

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

If you “include everybody” then you exclude women from their own sports, so no, it is not “perfectly possible” to include men in women’s sports while still meeting any principles around fairness and safety.

The instinctive reaction to these remarks is to despair that somebody so oblivious to the reality of sex, and to why immutable male advantage means that the integrity of the women’s category in sport must always be protected, could have been elevated to an office of state. It is as if this year’s Supreme Court verdict never happened.

It’s also to despair that this somebody so oblivious to immutable male advantage is herself a woman and in the government.

“Inexcusable,” said Sharron Davies of Nandy’s latest statement. “Women’s sport is not a consolation prize for non-conforming males. Women’s sport belongs solely to females.” Tracy Edwards, the round-the-world yachtswoman, said: “It is beyond depressing that we finally have so many women in government and most of them don’t know what a woman is.”

Or, worse, pretend not to know at the behest of a lot of entitled women-hating men.

Farewell to Jane Goodall.

The United Nations said it mourned the loss of Dr Goodall, saying that she “worked tirelessly for our planet and all its inhabitants, leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity and nature”.

Greenpeace said it was “heartbroken” by her death, calling her “one of the true conservation giants of our time”.

Its co-executive director in the UK, Will McCallum, said: “Dr Goodall’s legacy is not only in science but in the global movement she helped spark to protect nature and give hope for a better world.”

Naturalist Chris Packham told the BBC that he counted her among his heroes, calling her “revolutionary” and “remarkable”.

“To have lost a hero at a time when we need all of them on the frontline fighting for life on earth is a tragedy.”

…

Her Jane Goodall Institute, founded in 1977, works to protect chimpanzees and supports projects aimed at benefiting animals and the environment.

Dr Goodall was appointed a Dame in 2003 and received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025.

January 2025 to be exact – received it from Biden.

I went to a talk of hers once, years ago, when I was volunteering at the zoo. I had campaigned hard to work in the gorilla unit. She was of course a hero to everyone who worked with the Great Apes, and I tagged along with them to her talk.

H/t Acolyte of Sagan

Labour shows off its hostility to women yet again.

The new trans rules are “not right” and should be reviewed by MPs, one of Labour’s deputy leadership candidates has said.

Lucy Powell appeared to criticise the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance on transgender issues, which has advised that workplaces provide protected single-sex spaces.

So she thinks workplaces should not provide protected single-sex spaces? She thinks women should have to deal with men in women’s spaces?

Speaking at a fringe event of the party conference on Monday evening, Ms Powell was asked whether she supported the EHRC’s interim guidance on trans issues, which was issue after a ruling by the Supreme Court in April.

The guidance suggested that businesses and public bodies must provide protection for women-only spaces such as lavatories because the court said legal obligations under the Equality Act were determined by biological sex, not gender identity.

Ms Powell suggested that MPs should review the full guidance before it is published later this year, opening the door to a veto in Parliament for the protection of women-only spaces.

What a shitty, privileged, ruling class thing to do.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, said: “The Supreme Court was crystal clear – biological sex matters, and women have a right to single-sex spaces. Time and again, Labour has sided with radical trans activists instead of the women fighting to protect their changing rooms and toilets from biological men. Labour cannot be trusted to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of women and girls.”

Oh well, we’re only half the population.

I hadn’t realized that Trump yammered at the trapped military brass yesterday for AN HOUR AND THIRTEEN MINUTES. Freestyle. Typical Trump brainless babbling, no script, just the endless spool of stupid soundbites and boasts and lies and gibberish.

Shawn McCreesh at the Times has some details.

Several hundred military commanders turned up at Quantico on Tuesday morning. Some had flown in for it from places as far away as Germany, Brussels, Japan and South Korea. They sat mostly in silence as Mr. Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking.

He talked to the generals about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the infamous autopen. He talked about the media. He talked about tariffs and the border. He talked about the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner. He talked about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.

It’s a milkshake of engorged ego and abject stupidity. Only an ego that blots out the sun can think that people want to sit still for AN HOUR AND 13 MINUTES OF BABBLING ABOUT SELF from a markedly brainless egomaniac.

These were pretty much the same things he talked about a day earlier while standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the State Dining Room at the White House, which were the same things he talked about at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which were the same things he talked about at Windsor Castle and at Chequers in England.

He might as well be a wind-up toy. He babbles the same babble every time he babbles.

On an almost daily basis, thousands of words pour forth from the president’s mouth. Sometimes, he tucks in a wild insight about the direction he is taking the country.

It can be hard to discern these moments for what they are. Partially that’s because we hear from Mr. Trump so often. He is on TV constantly. But it’s also because, in his second term more than ever, he has become so devoid of context. He seems unwilling or unable to modulate based on his audience, his setting or his circumstances.

Which is (surely obviously?) a sign of extreme mental impairment.

Could have been an email.

Pete Hegseth’s speech to top generals was supposed to serve as a rallying cry for military exceptionalism — but it didn’t land that way with many of the people it was targeting.

Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all.

“More like a press conference than briefing the generals,” said one defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to fears of retribution. “Could have been an email.”

Defense officials, in the Pentagon and at bases around the world, spent much of Tuesday trying to make sense of the last-minute gathering at the Quantico base in Virginia. Hegseth called out “fat generals,” and, separately, pushed fitness standards that could limit women in combat roles, while Trump offered his justification for sending the military into American cities.

I bet they didn’t really “try to make sense” of it or wonder why it happened at all. It’s obvious why it happened: fun for Hegseth. So it cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so what, it was the best ego trip ever. Slash the National Weather Service, shut down USAID altogether, and squander a big chunk of the budget on a Hegseth-Trump photo opp.

Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine suggested Russian and Chinese officials would worry that hundreds of American generals and admirals had gathered together. But some current and former defense officials instead feared the security risk of sticking almost all of America’s top officers in the same room. And they dismissed Hegseth’s effort to bolster the military’s aggressive image through grooming standards and ending diversity programs.

“It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,” said a former senior defense official. “It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”

Apart from that it was a brilliant idea.

The Defense Department, which Trump has rebranded the Department of War, argued the event boosted morale and empowered military leaders.

Did it though? Did it boost morale? I seriously doubt that. And how did it empower military leaders? More like disempowered them, if anything.

But both within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, people voiced worries about Hegseth’s remark that rules of engagement designed to protect civilians were “stupid” and Trump’s suggestion that the Pentagon would form quick reaction forces to quell upheaval in American cities.

“Deploying U.S. troops against U.S. citizens in American cities isn’t just unprecedented and unconstitutional — it’s UNAMERICAN,” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), an Army veteran who served in Iraq, posted on X. 

Well, sadly, it’s now all too American. We can’t pretend this isn’t what we’ve become under the Monster.

Awww, Owen Jones has been told to go away.

Much of Labour conference has seen MPs taking aim at Nigel Farage and his Reform party, but it would appear some left-wingers have ended up in the firing line too. Onetime Labour member and all-time general annoyance Owen Jones had been running around Liverpool vox-popping politicians and delegates with his cameraman – but he managed to get on the wrong side of the party and was rather embarrassingly informed today that his conference pass had been, er, cancelled. Yikes!

They told him it was a safeguarding issue.

After careful consideration, we’ve concluded that we cannot continue your attendance while ensuring we meet our safeguarding obligations to all attendees.

I think the subtext is “You’re a tiresome pest who never shuts up.”

He’s doing the Dreyfus act as hard as he can.

The thing is, OJ, you’re annoying. You look and act about 13, you talk way too fast, you’re self-righteous…you’re annoying. There is no Annoying People Liberation Front, so you’ll just have to cope.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Of dust and boots.

There is a teeny-tiny pebble of a good idea under all that rubble.

Obviously, I agree that this whole thing is preposterous. But there’s at least something to be said about military dress and discipline standards slipping. I looked into this because the military is probably the most common career among crossdressing men, and the campaign to end the “trans in the military ban” represents the moment around the mid-oughts that liberal allies of gays, sensing the gay rights war was winding down to a victorious close, began shifting their focus over to transgender “rights”. They wanted to keep the momentum going, to keep their activist juices flowing.

The flawed reasoning was that, because the military had once unjustly banned same-sex attracted men and women from service, it followed that it was also unjust to prevent soldiers choosing which sex they’re classified as for any and all military purposes. It started with coverage for cosmetic surgeries and special allowances for dress, then a push for cross-sex dormitory and shower access, with the eventual finish line envisioned as across-the-board replacement of sex with “gender identity” in all aspects of military organization.

But these two things were completely different:

The argument for allowing gays & bisexuals to serve in the military was that they were perfectly capable of adhering to the same code of conduct as everyone else. Lifting the ban on LGB people in fact served to remove an extra, outdated, unnecessary set of rules that had been carved out against us — it universalized the military’s standards between the mainstream majority and the marginalized minority, both simplifying the code of conduct, and eliminating an unjust piece of discrimination at the same time.

The “trans in the military” campaign had the opposite objective: it sought to add exemptions and make fundamental changes to the rules, effectively tacking on special privileges for trans-identifying personnel, to the detriment of everyone else.

Of course, this is what trans activists are doing right across society: “trans allies” naively think they’re universalizing and simplifying the normative framework of society by eliminating what they perceive as an extra, outdated, unnecessary set of rules and norms surrounding biological sex, when they’re inadvertently doing the bidding of a group of trans-identifying people who want the opposite of any kind of social uniformity between the sexes. Most trans-identifying males don’t want utopian sex-blindness, they want a society with a robust sense of sexual differentiation: they want to preserve different rules and norms for men and women — but base them on their imaginary “gender identities”, which would trample all over everyone else’s observation of material reality.

In the military’s case, as in the case with society at large, some — though not necessarily all — of the rules that involve sex differences (like housing and medical provisions, for example) are far from unnecessary or out-of date; they’re highly practical and beneficial to everyone.

Since extra rules to accommodate trans-identifying personnel were added, beginning under Obama, more and more exemptions began to creep in. Loosening standards to accommodate religious headgear led to loosening standards surrounding facial hair for men for “religious or medical” purposes, but the rules got so lax that almost any man could find an exemption if he wanted to. Nobody needs a shaving waiver for a supposedly medically serious case of razor burn that lasts years. But nobody needed a waiver to get fake tits, either, so… In for a penny, in for a pound. The principles behind uniforms and codes of conduct were beginning to crack. It started with medically-diagnosed “trans” beliefs, then it was “sincerely held” religious beliefs; now it’s sometimes just fashion and subculture.

The military is a unique domain in that tribal cohesion is such a critical component. Military training by necessity drills men and women to place their allegiance to their fellow soldiers above all their other allegiances, and that’s the point of ensuring they all dress alike and follow the same code of conduct. It’s also vital that soldiers can immediately distinguish their allies from their opponents, which is why visual “sameness” is vital. No flashy hairstyles or hipster mustaches. No big turbans. No face makeup. Definitely no military-issue, “medically necessary” fake tits.

I regret to say I agree with a line in Trump’s executive order from January that reiterates the military’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” Cohesion, uniformity, honesty. It may be possible to privately maintain a trans identity while still adhering to these standards. But I think if one brings too much of their personal “gender identity” to work — which in this case can be a literal battlefield — they’re demonstrating that they’re not suitable for the armed forces. The army’s certainly not for me. I don’t want to be “lethal” and I hate subjugating myself to a tribe. But I understand that that kind of thing is absolutely necessary — for them.

But I’m still ok with minor accommodations for differences, within reason, if they can be shown to benefit the whole. If a bit of accommodation for religious headgear or facial hair can be shown to be safe and beneficial on a case-by-case basis, that’s ok by me. (Say, a Muslim Arab translator or technician embedded within a troop, who wouldn’t otherwise be able or willing to do the job, for example.)

So this looks like a case where a reasonable principle of inclusion began to creep into unreasonable overreach, and that in turn has triggered a massive backlash far back the other way.

Isn’t that the shape of almost every flashpoint in the culture war? Left tries to be nice, then goes too far and triggers nasty backlash. Nice things no longer had by anyone.

And isn’t it the case that so many, many, many of these flashpoints originate in that moment when “gay allies” turned into “trans allies” instead? Perhaps we should stop waiting around for the next Reichstag Fire moment. It already happened, and it was “gender identity”.