Helen Joyce’s talk at Gonville and Caius went ahead yesterday evening; the Telegraph has details:

Naï Zakharia, an attendee of the talk, said: “There were hundreds of protesters. They screamed and hit the door. It was hard to hear the speakers. In the middle of the talk a group of protesters got in to right behind the door of the auditorium.”

All because of a woman who doesn’t believe in magic gender.

On Tuesday night, organisers were expecting 75 masked protesters to assemble at the church.

Students rallied each other via other emails, seen by The Telegraph, to “bring pots and pans to make some noise” along with “banners, flags and signs”. Protest organisers added: “Facemasks are recommended for privacy reasons.”

Make noise in order to disrupt the talk, and wear masks to do it with impunity.

Prof Ahmed said: “Senior figures in the University have expressed regret that this debate is even going ahead. The only response to that is to arrange another, bigger event like it. That is what I intend to do.”

Helen reports:

Why can’t India Willoughby be accurate?

Rowling doesn’t “view” trans women as men, she just knows that’s what they are, because it is what they are. Women are just called women; the modifier “trans” means “not literally.” The word “trans” points to fiction, pretending, fantasy, playacting, imagining.

Of course Rowling believes trans women should use “the right facilities.” It’s Willoughby who thinks trans women should intrude on women.

As for the clumsy “uses cases from around the world as proof to fear us” I suppose he means she cites examples of trans women assaulting women. Well? What’s the point here? That we should keep our bitchy mouths shut about men assaulting women? That’s not going to happen.

Pink News rushes to compile a self-serving story on how Benjamin Cohen is without flaw and critics of Pink News are demonic:

Kemi Badenoch used her first appearance as equalities minister to attack PinkNews CEO Benjamin Cohen, while claiming she would work with “compassion”.

The new women and equalities minister made her comments when asked about a series of tweets posted by Cohen in response to her appointment in Rishi Sunak’s government.

What series of tweets?

Then Benjamin Cohen, scourge of “transphobes” everywhere, calls someone a cunt.

You never have to work hard to uncover the misogyny.

Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, can dish it out but he can’t take it.

What he leaves out when he says “No we were not either sued, that’s a lie!!!” is that they weren’t sued because they backed down. True but incomplete, in short, so incomplete as to be misleading, which should not be the goal in journalism. Pink News purports to be journalism. It doesn’t call itself Pink Chatter or Pink Think, it calls itself Pink News, so it should do better than “We avoided being sued by withdrawing the assertion.”

But it’s not such a big difference morally or ethically or journalistically, and a news outlet CEO should understand this.

Even Young Labour hates women.

Originally a comment by Eava on A world with.

I feel like this rhetoric runs in parallel to that of some disability rights activists, deaf activists who oppose cochlear implants as destroying deaf culture, autism advocates who oppose therapies to help reduce or eliminate autistic behaviors, that instead we need to embrace “neurodiversity” just like gender diversity/gender expansiveness, etc. There is research being done on treatments for children with Down Syndrome that can improve their cognitive abilities, it would not be a “cure” but it would help them live fuller, independent lives, but this leads to similar claims of, if not genocide, eliminationism. Which is so ironic because if there were treatments for Down Syndrome that could help those children become functionally independent, I would bet more women would opt to continue a pregnancy vs have an abortion if they got a prenantal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.

The idea that we’re all perfect how we are born gets twisted by TRAs and disability rights advocates to make any attempts to cure or repair disabilities “genocidal”. Of course, the irony is overwhelming where a surgery to restore a child’s ability to hear is verboten, but surgeries to remove or create body parts, leading to sterility and lack of sexual function, is “life saving health care”.

I think the other big sleight of hand at work here is equating being trans with being gender nonconforming. This rhetorical tactic is trying to say Gender Critical feminists not only want to eliminate trans people, but they want to eliminate people who don’t conform to the societal stereotypes for their sex. It completely misses the point that GC feminists don’t believe we have a “gender identity” and nothing about how we dress, how we behave, or who we sleep with changes that.

I want a world where no one feels they have to physically alter their bodies to be happy, where a gay boy and lesbian girl are free of the homophobia that makes them feel the only way they can live the life they want is to alter their bodies and claim to be the opposite sex. Where a heterosexual girl does not feel targeted, devalued, and unsafe in her female body, so worthless because of misogyny (familial or societal) that the only way out she sees is to make her body appear male and claim a male identity. And a society where pubescent boys can find treatment for AGP behaviors before it becomes their identity and way of life.

I do think there will be people who can’t get to the point where they make peace with their body and natal sex. There are people for whom no treatment, psychological, medical, etc. helps them achieve peace. I believe we can make space in society for people who can’t find relief any other way than transition. But that number is incredibly small and doesn’t require rewriting laws and language to accommodate them.

Here’s the whole letter sent to all Cambridge sociology students by the big boss of sociology:

In the first sentence Desai takes for granted that “distress was caused to” the students by the fact that Helen Joyce was giving a talk at Cambridge – as if she were a proponent of genocide or something equally horrifying.

In the next sentence she takes it for granted that Helen Joyce’s lecture is “potentially harmful” – as if she were a proponent of genocide or something equally horrifying. It’s pretty evil, this kind of thing. If someone were giving talks at universities advocating slavery for lesser races, or literal non-metaphorical LITERAL genocide, or the right of men to murder their female relatives, I would consider that harmful, but after all these years I still don’t consider it harmful to point out that humans can’t change sex.

In the next sentence Desai says with regret that “we” (the good people?) can’t tell independent colleges to disinvite speakers “we” disapprove of. She doesn’t, of course, go to the trouble of saying why “we” disapprove – she treats it as self-evident.

In the next sentence Desai gloats that the University’s alphabet groups have written to the guilty independent college to “express dismay.” Hooray for universities and students and the right and need to think carefully about things!

In the next two sentences Desai says grovel grovel grovel grovel please don’t hit me.

In the final sentence Desai says there’s a “welfare event” and a “gathering” in the evening – I guess so that the stricken prostrated students can get medication and prayer and mugs of Horlicks.

What a pathetic display.

Inclusion crime klaxon:

Dear Students:

PANIC!!!!!!

PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC

love,

Head of Sociology at Ancient University

Cambridge is what now?

It aimed to encourage students to speak more “inclusively” and not fall foul of those who may be offended by sex- specific pronouns. But the University of Cambridge’s decision to say Auf Wiedersehen to teaching gendered German has prompted warnings from linguists that students risk making a fool of themselves when talking with native speakers.

[There’s also singular and plural. …students risk making fools of themselves, not a fool of themselves. Subject-object agreement.]

The students have been urged to

use “inclusive language” and “to use gender- and non-binary-inclusive language when we address or refer to students and colleagues, both in writing and in speech in English and in German”.

Language can’t be “inclusive” in that way without ceasing to do the job language is there to do.

Course managers said they encouraged students and staff to choose newer forms with plural nouns.

When writing, they may render feminine nouns unisex by inserting an asterisk before the suffix — a nonstandard usage known as the “gender star”.

Funny that there’s no mention of making masculine nouns unisex. Funny how it’s always women who have to be disappeared, and never men. Ha ha.

A spokesman for the University of Cambridge said: “As it clearly states on the faculty of modern and medieval languages and linguistics website, ‘students are free to choose for themselves how to engage with inclusive language when speaking and writing in German’. To suggest otherwise is entirely wrong.”

But by calling it “inclusive” language they’re implying that the alternative is the enemy of “inclusivity.”

This is an odd question.

Meaning, do I want a world without people who are so unhappy in their own bodies that they wreck them in an attempt to be the other kind of body? Of course.

On the other hand if he means do I want a world where everyone conforms to gender rules, of course not. He’s apparently not bright enough to frame the question carefully.

And then he goes on to pretend he asked something different altogether.

Ah ah ah no you don’t, that’s not what you asked. You didn’t include the bit about being forced back into the closet.

He’s such a sleaze.

Here’s another question: do I want a word without gender ideology in it? Again: of course.

The Times reports on the NHS’s shift on gender magic:

Most children identifying as transgender are simply going through a “transient phase”, new NHS guidance states. Doctors caring for youngsters distressed about their gender have been told that it is not a “neutral act” to help them transition socially by using their preferred new names or pronouns.

The draft guidelines say doctors should “carefully explore” all underlying health problems, including mental ill health, amid concerns that the NHS is rushing children on to irreversible puberty-blocker medication. The new “watchful approach” adopted by the NHS is a significant change of course from the “affirmative” approach advocated by campaign groups, including Mermaids.

This is in the wake of the damning Cass report.

NHS England’s draft guidance states that there is “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making” for children with gender dysphoria. It stresses that “in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” among younger children. “The clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence,” it reads.

If the child has “transitioned” and the gender incongruence does not persist, that child is pretty much guaranteed to experience “difficulties.”

There are situations in which you can’t claim to be “bullied” even though the other party has more power or social clout than you do. Like, for instance, when you’re the bully. A spindly kid can’t hit a bigger kid with a rock and then scream “bully” when the bigger kid demands an apology.

A Twitter warrior can’t tell a venomous lie about JK Rowling and then scream “bully” when Rowling says it’s a lie.

TinyWriter doesn’t get to complain about the number of Rowling’s followers when TinyWriter is the aggressor. It’s a very special kind of bullying to think you can bully someone famous because the fame makes it morally suspect to fight back.

Well done Ralph Fiennes.

Ralph Fiennes has mounted a vocal defence of Harry Potter author JK Rowling, saying that the “abuse directed at her is disgusting”.

In an interview with the New York Times, Fiennes discussed his role as Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films and reportedly “bristled” at the controversy surrounding the writer. Fiennes said: “JK Rowling has written these great books about empowerment, about young children finding themselves as human beings. It’s about how you become a better, stronger, more morally centred human being. The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting, it’s appalling.”

He added: “I mean, I can understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. But it’s not some obscene, uber-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman.”

I have to say, I can’t. I can’t understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. I know what it is, but I can’t understand it. That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. No, I don’t understand how men can think it’s ok to pretend to be women and then try to bully all women into agreeing that the men are indeed women. I don’t understand how they can expect us to comply without a murmur, let alone agree that yes indeed they are women.

That’s not the point though, the point is hooray for Ralph Fiennes.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Feminism requires saying “This is not for you.”

I think the problem there, Bjarte, is that Capitalism and Socialism are both “dominator” structures. According to Riane Eisler, the ideal to strive for is the “partnership” model. So the struggle is framed as Left v Right, when it really should be framed as trust v demand, or order v mutual respect. I realize that what Eisler is referring to is an ideal form of society, and I’m not sure that we are capable of reaching for it as we are presently driven towards power.

When we talk about politics, we tend to fight each other based on the notion that either “right” is good and virtuous, or “Left” is the virtuous side, when neither is good nor virtuous. So, until we can rid ourselves of the dominator hunger for power, we will continue to struggle to find any sort of achieving equality for the minorities whehter they are sex, race or cultural. Authoritarians need to have someone to blame for their struggles in order to get more authority, and authoritarians populate nearly all of the ideologies on the left-right continuum.

When left-wingers talk about how evil capitalism and colonialism are, they conveniently ignore the coercion that it takes to convert a society from monarchy to a socialist society, as in China and Russia. And with XI’s moves to retain power over the weekend by purging those who were not his allies, we can see that even a capitalist-communist hybrid is not immune from being a dominator society. The Soviets made this clear when they told people that their usage of force was necessary in order to evolve into the New Soviet Man.

Pressing for diversity makes people feel good, but in the end, there is an aspect of coercion that is required. Whether it’s justified, as in bringing racial and sexual minorities into the power structure, or not justified in the examples of pressing for fake pronoun usage and male access to women’s private spaces, there is still a power exchange.

Eisler, being a futurist, is certainly aware that we can’t force a partnership culture (that would certainly be antithetical, that we perhaps have to evolve into it. I think that once we stop thinking of our possibilies as being limited to a left-right scalar, we will nudge towards that, but it’s so hard to talk about politics as they are without devolving into it. The reason that I remain a Democrat despite their capture by the TA’s, is that most of their social programs align with my perceptions of my needs and the needs of people I know about. But I recognize their limitations and am active so that I can try to influence them from a local standpoint.

Transactivism is a function of male domination, which is why it’s accepted and pushed by left-leaning men. It’s a socially acceptable aspect of male domination, and if conservative men figure that out, they’ll support it, too. We know that if affirms the gender structure, they haven’t figured it out yet.

Feminism at its ideal is in tune with the partnership model, which is why it struggles so hard to gain traction even among women. I see so many women who are mistaken in thinking the purpose of feminism is in using oppression to seek special favors in society, It’s hard to get through, because the dominator model is the medium we swim in and depend on, much as fish depend on water.

We can’t fix all this in ours or the next or the next generation, since we currently see through the lens of a balance of power. Once we get past that, in however many centuries from now, then we can advance as a society. In High School, the Catholics taught us that we need a “second Copernican revolution,” but instead of in technology, we need it in terms of a societal change in how we see each other. I had hope for the Church as a Catholic teen, but then realized in a confession one day, just how authoritarian it will always be and must be, because they are nothing without power and will never give it up willingly.

I don’t think a revolution could move our world into a partnership model, I think only evolution could do that. Revolutions are coercive, and you end up being in a battle against counterrevolutionaries to maintain what you achieved. But partnership is an ideal we can strive for now, if people can discard their reliance on a left-right model where all your political opponents are “extremists” on one end or the other. It’s still a hunger for power either way.

Speaking of Dylan Mulvaney…a woman takes exception to his insulting parody of women:

Despite not actually being a woman and even only “identifying” as such for less than a year, Mulvaney has somehow become the woman du jour.

Mulvaney is a TikTok influencer with over 8 million followers and a viral series he calls, “Days of Girlhood”. His portrayal of his “transition” in the series is littered with cartoonish portrayals of womanhood — take Day One, where Mulvaney insists he cried several times for no apparent reason because, obviously, women are constantly PMSing and thus incapable of controlling their emotions. Later in his journey, Mulvaney describes planning the perfect slumber party, despite most women I know leaving group sleepovers behind in middle school. He also has a shopping addiction and cries when he sees bugs. Cute.

I suppose that’s why he’s viral and an “influencer” and chatting with Biden and all the rest of it – because he’s such an extreme and insulting parody of women.

On Day Eighty-Nine, Mulvaney posted a tutorial for followers looking to “tuck” their girl penises. Seventy-eight days later, Mulvaney sat down for an Ulta Beauty podcast titled “The Beauty Of… Girlhood.”

Ulta Beauty, one of the largest makeup retailers in the country, is welcome to market its makeup to men if they think it will make them money. Inviting two men onto a podcast to discuss women’s issues? Absolutely not. Mulvaney does not have a uterus and will never menstruate (among other female-exclusive biological realities) but proudly insists on the podcast that he can’t wait to be a mom someday. The entire exercise was absurd and insulting. As many women pointed out as they announced their intention to boycott the beauty brand, it was like the modern day equivalent of blackface.

I’ve pointed that out several million times over the last seven years or so.

This is not the first time Mulvaney has been treated as a defining voice for females. In September, Mulvaney spoke on a panel at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit.

We remember.

On his 222nd Day of “being a girl,” the walking minstrel show was invited to the White House. Mulvaney revealed on his TikTok that he interviewed President Joe Biden for Now This News.

Biden talked to him why? Because he’s a man pretending to be a woman. Why is that a reason to talk to him? Why is it considered anything but insulting to women? Would Biden talk to a white woman who pretended to be black? Complete with offensively stereotyped costume, mannerisms, speech?

We know damn well he wouldn’t.

Now this crap:

A number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced and enacted on the state level in recent months, with many aimed at attacking transgender rights by outlawing gender affirming health care and prohibiting trans kids from playing in youth sports that align with their identity.

One: the bills are not in any way anti-LGB.

Two: they’re also not anti-TQ except in the sense that they don’t promote the novel, dangerous, stupid doctrine that people can be literally trapped in “the wrong body.” Bills that outlaw surgery and/or drugs that alter children’s bodies for the sake of a delusion are not anti the children being protected. Bills that forbid males to compete in female sport are not anti-T, they’re pro-female.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has signed several executive orders to protect trans rights. 

Define “trans rights.” They don’t, of course.

Dylan Mulvaney has publicly been sharing her transition on TikTok with her viral “Days of Girlhood” series. She spoke with Biden at Now This’ Presidential Forum about the right-wing attacks on trans lives and how the administration can better advocate for the trans community.

…

Mulvaney: Thank you. I am extremely privileged to live in a state that allows me access to the resources I need, and that decision is just between me and my doctors. But many states have lawmakers that feel like they can involve themselves in this very personal process. Do you think states should have a right to ban gender-affirming healthcare?

What if we call it sex-denying health malpractice? What do you think then?

But of course that’s not what Biden replied to.

Biden: I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that. As a moral question and as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong. You know, I think I was saying before we started that my son, my deceased son, used to be the attorney general of the state of Delaware. He passed the broadest piece of legislation he, as attorney general, was able to convince the legislature and the governor to sign that dealt with all gender-affirming capabilities. I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, you sometimes—they try to block you from being able to access certain medicines, being able to access certain procedures, and so on. None of that should be available. I mean, no state should be able to do that, in my view. So I feel very, very strongly that you should have every single solitary right including use of your gender-identity bathrooms in public.

And women can just go jump off a roof. Thanks Joe.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Wielding their imagined marginalization as a weapon.

Those who have been marginalized want to leave their enforced marginalization behind; those who marginalize themselves (or who falsely claim to have been marginalized, like white males, claiming the plight of Black trans prostitutes in Brazil as their own), wield their imagined marginalization as a weapon, using it as leverage to gain special status and privilege on a permanent, continuing basis.

Yet those who falsely claim to have been marginalized may not be aware that their claim is false. I suspect the group of trans-identified males is a philosophically mixed lot, divided between those who come at their transness from the postmodernist Queer Theory break-the-boundaries perspective and those who have fallen for the idea that they themselves are a woman trapped in a man’s body and it’s just pure torture.

Both enjoy using their marginalization as a weapon, but the target may be slightly different. The Queers want to run over those they perceive to be “normal” for the wider social purpose of eliminating the boundaries between male and female, gay and straight, normal and abnormal. The Sincere want to run over those who won’t let them be and do what they want for the wider social purpose of allowing people to be and do what they want.

Ironically, the means (I’m oppressed, obey me) may have become the ends, given that power corrupts. Gay rights didn’t involve making such drastic demands, so the effort involved in getting people on board trans rights has taken on a life of its own. I think you’re right and that many, drunk on power, will take their marginalization and move on to the next target. But I suspect that’s not the feature, but a taking-control bug taking control of the entire project.

It seems the NHS really has made a serious shift:

Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.

NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.

The services, which will replace the controversial Tavistock clinic, will be led by medical doctors rather than therapists and will consider the impact of other conditions such as autism and mental health issues.

Hoo-boy – what an improvement.

NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.

Naturally; that’s the whole point of it. Mind you, I think there should be plenty of middle ground on clothing so that what people wear can be a neutral act. Can we get more men to wear kilts?

The proposals say that the new clinical approach will for younger children “reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and doctors should be mindful this might be a “transient phase”.

Instead of encouraging transition, medics should take “a watchful approach” to see how a young person’s conditions develop, the plans state.

How very sane and reasonable.

Owen Jones has another correction for us.

Unrepresentative how? Well for one thing where are the yoof???! But he’s not ageist.

So anyway. For one thing most of the people in the photo are in shadow, so he can’t actually tell what they look like, so he can’t even judge how “representative” they are because he can’t see them. For a second thing why does he think he can tell how “representative” they are just by looking at a photo? For a third thing, of course they’re not “representative” of QT: they’re not trying to be. They don’t consider the Q and the T to be inextricably related to the LGB, in fact they consider it to be quite different.

I think all OJ really means is that what he can see of the people in that photo tells him they’re not as trendy and exciting and fun as he and his friends are.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Queering queer.

Queerness, he argues, is a fashion and a political statement that not all gay people subscribe to. “Queerness is also self-consciously and purposefully marginal,” he told me. “Whereas the arc of the gay rights movement, and the individual lives of most gay people, has been a struggle against marginality. We want to be welcomed. We want to have equal rights. We want a place in our institutions.”

So he’s saying that there’s a difference between being marginalized (by others) and pursuing marginalization (yourself). That makes sense. The former group would want access to the legal rights they are being denied (housing, voting, health, etc.; what we think of as “human rights.”) They want to be let in to the legal and social arrangements everyone else has. They’re not looking for special treatment, but equal treatment. The latter are seemingly heading out to the frontiers of “rights” and expecting society to surrender and acquiesce to their extraordinary demands (affirmation and validation of who they are not; erasure of sex in language and law; access to spaces reserved for the opposite sex: what we would call trans “rights.”) Those who have been marginalized want to leave their enforced marginalization behind; those who marginalize themselves (or who falsely claim to have been marginalized, like white males, claiming the plight of Black trans prostitutes in Brazil as their own), wield their imagined marginalization as a weapon, using it as leverage to gain special status and privilege on a permanent, continuing basis. It is used to reject reasonable accommodation in third spaces, and coerce admittance into spaces reserved for women. This is not a demand for equal treatment, but a rejection of it. It is a demand for colonization and usurpation, a demand that has succeeded in overturning previous standards based on sex in favour of new ones based on “gender.” These new standards, enacted and enforced by governments and corporations, put the lie to the claim that trans identified males are “marginalized.” They have been listened to preferentially, they have benefited, and they have marginalized women in the process. This is a feature, not a bug.

Which truly marginalized group could demand “NO DEBATE” and claim “NO CONFLICT?” And because debate is preemptively taken off the table, the very real and injurious conflicts with women’s sex-based rights are swept away as purely conjectural, hysterical scaremongering. With media collusion, too. Yes, oh so marginalized.

And once they’ve achieved their immediate goals, how likely would it be that TiMs would abandon their claim to “marginalization?” Not very. They would simply move on to the next target, bringing their “vulnerability” and “marginalization” (as well as the power and influence of captured institutions) along for the ride, always at the ready for brandishing.