Gender reform bill moves on to final stage of Holyrood scrutiny

THE reform of gender recognition policy in Scotland has moved on to the final stage of parliamentary scrutiny before becoming law.

By “reform” they mean removing all obstacles that could slow down men who want to call themselves women and take everything that belongs to women. Here you go, brothers, full speed ahead!

Today, MSPs debated amendments made at Stage 2 of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in a marathon committee meeting at the Scottish Parliament.

The bill aims to make it easier for transgender people to legally change the sex on their birth certificate and removes the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a doctor before they can legally do so.

No need for that, just step up and say your name is Petunia.

The committee meeting was briefly disrupted by a protester wearing the historic colours of the Suffragette movement before being completed this afternoon.

Stupid bitch, how dare she, thank god the committee ignored her and all the other stupid bitches.

Maggie Chapman MSP, Scottish Greens equalities and human rights spokesperson, said she was pleased that the bill was a vital step closer to delivering the reforms that trans people had been waiting so long for.

She said: “This is for those who have waited so long – too long – to be given the chance to live their lives as they choose to be recognised, but it is also for all those parliamentary colleagues who have faced down mistruths and disinformation.

“The consultations and committee scrutiny of the bill have been subjected to reckless scaremongering, ill informed innuendo and the most dangerous mistruths designed to distract people from the real issue at stake – the right of individuals to be recognised in law as who they really are.”

But that’s not the issue. That’s the opposite of the issue. The real issue at stake is the purported right of individuals to be recognised in law as who they really are not. It’s the purported right of men to be recognized as women despite all objections from women that such a “right” will dig a massive hole in our rights.

Apart from anything else it’s just breathtaking to see a parliament solemnly making law to validate people’s fantasies about themselves.

“It is to this parliament’s credit that such crude and frankly dog whistle attempts to undermine trans rights and democracy have failed because of the robust systems and structures that we have in place to represent all of our citizens, including some of the most marginalised.”

But not including our female citizens. Fuck them, right?

This is just news media gossip, but then news media gossip does matter, because we get our news from the news media, so we want to know which ones have good sense and which ones don’t.

There are approximately 7 million replies all saying are you seriously comparing Trump’s record of lies with your not being invited to Biden’s granddaughter’s wedding???

Parker is a Senior National Political Correspondent for the Washington Post.

Suzanne Moore wonders where the armbands for women in Qatar might be.

Women’s rights are not much of a fashionable cause these days and are mentioned often as an afterthought.

If they’re mentioned at all. Mostly people are too busy calling us Karens and terfs to mention our rights.

This is particularly evident in Qatar, where footballers and commentators are struggling to make righteous statements about the tiny but hugely rich country they are in. The agonising around wearing a rainbow flag armband seems to me a substitution for real thought. Obviously, it is terrible to stage the tournament in a place where homosexuality is illegal and even punishable by death, but identity politics flails against the reality of choosing to play in a country that adheres to the strict sect of Salafism, often referred to as Wahhabism, which is prevalent in both Qatar and Saudi. 

This interpretation of Islam also has severe consequences for women, who live under a repressive regime of guardianship.

They have to get the permission of their male “guardian” to do anything beyond staying home out of sight.

Neither rape nor domestic violence is illegal. Men can marry up to four wives but can divorce any wife without even informing them about it. Divorce for women is limited, even if the marriage is abusive. Women are not guardians of their own children. They do not have the authority to make decisions about their own children’s schools, finances or medical treatment. A woman who reports rape may be sent to prison. 

Women are not really people at all in this form of theocracy; women are a kind of livestock and only men are full human beings who can act and think and talk. The big difference between women and livestock is that women can conceive via other men and thus steal their husbands’ owners’ Right To Impregnate. Husbands can be tricked into raising some other dude’s kid! Or kids!! And women are such demonic whores that they’re bound to do it, so it’s essential to strip them of all rights starting at birth.

And, although the government and an increasing number of Qatari women talk about gender equality, women’s rights and female empowerment, the reality is that there is nowhere to go to complain and no monitoring of how women are treated. What the government really does is hand down a mandate to families to keep control of their girls in every way possible. If a father wants to pull his daughter out of education and beat her, then that is fine. The extreme patriarchal nature of Wahhabism means that everything a woman does is controlled; the honour and reputation of her family is paramount.

That and the paternity of her children.

When Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who is said to be well integrated into Qatari society and must surely know some of this, gave his deranged monologue about feeling gay, disabled, African etc, it was pointed out that he had missed out half the world’s population so he added: “I feel like a woman, too.”

And not one person on the planet believed him.

Another woman hauled up before the police for not genuflecting to trans ideology.

Meanwhile the “kill all the terfs” gang continues merrily on its way.

Glasgow Times reports:

Two people who have gone through gender reassignment treatment and later regretted it – sometimes referred to as detransitioners – are due to speak to MSPs at a meeting in the Scottish Parliament.

…

Sinead Watson, a 31-year-old woman from Glasgow, and Ritchie Herron, a 35-year-old man from Newcastle, will share their views on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill.

…

The stage one vote on the Bill led to nine SNP MSPs breaking with the whip to abstain or vote against the legislation, as well as the resignation of minister Ash Regan from the Scottish Government.

The Bill aims to make it easier for transgender people to be legally recognised as their preferred gender.

Which will make it easier for men to push women out of everything. Let’s not do that – let’s go back to not letting men do that.

Opponents have raised concerns about the impact of the legislation on women and girls, while supporters say it will have little impact outside the trans community.

Supporters who say that are telling whoppers.

A brand from the burning:

Shame on everyone who has thrown her to the wolves, she concludes.

NO in thunder.

Well done.

Baroness Nicholson has written a letter about that You are being monitored email. It’s good stuff. I especially like “awash with transgender-dominated staff groupings demanding ‘trans allyship’ in as official a manner as they can manage, while suggesting that anyone who demurs is a bigot or worse.” Exactly so, and it gets more suffocating and nauseating by the day.

Please tackle at your earliest convenience.

How can this circle ever be squared? Are they even trying?

If “trans people are entitled to use single sex facilities in accordance with their gender identity” then everyone else – 99% of people – is not. If men who call themselves trans are using women’s facilities then women can no longer use single sex facilities. Why do people who call themselves trans get more rights than everyone else?

I’ve never seen an answer to that question. I don’t see how an answer is possible.

The guy who stopped the shooter:

Richard M. Fierro said he was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub. His instincts from four combat deployments as an Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself.

In an interview at his house, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who left the Army in 2013 as a major, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

…

When the shooting started, Mr. Fierro said, he hit the floor, pulling a friend down with him. As bullets sprayed, he saw the gunman move through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of bar patrons had fled. Mr. Fierro, who served in the Army for 15 years, said he raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him.

“Was he shooting at the time? Was he about to shoot? I don’t know,” Mr. Fierro said. “I just knew I had to take him down.”

He bashed him over the head repeatedly.

As the fight continued, he said, he yelled for other club patrons to help him. A man grabbed the rifle and moved it away to safety. A drag dancer stomped on the gunman with her high heels. The whole time, Mr. Fierro said, he kept pummeling the shooter’s head while the two men screamed obscenities at each other.

He had thought he was finished with that kind of thing. He’d wanted to be finished with it.

Mr. Fierro, who owns a local brewery, said that on combat deployments in the Army, he had been shot at and had seen roadside bombs shred trucks in his platoon. His record shows that he was awarded the Bronze Star twice. The experiences of combat still haunt him, he said, and the psychological and physical toll of the deployments were why he left the Army.

He said he never thought he would have to deal with that kind of violence at home.

“I was done with war,” he said.

But this is the United States, where there are more guns than people.

Digging right through the barrel:

But this

never

happens.

The Colorado Sun gives background on Club Q:

Matthew Haynes opened Club Q 21 years ago with the goal of making sure LGBTQ people in Colorado Springs had a long-lasting place to call home.

Except that’s not exactly how Matthew Haynes words it, at least not in this story.

Haynes says Club Q has always been a community center more than anything else.

“There have been so many happy stories from Club Q,” he told The Colorado Sun on Sunday morning. “People meeting and relationships being born. So many celebrations there. We’re a family of people more than a place to have a drink and dance and leave.”

…

Haynes, who is a co-owner of Club Q, said he opened the club because Colorado Springs’ main gay bar at the time, Hide and Seek, appeared on the verge of closing. (The Colorado Springs Independent reports Hide and Seek shut down in 2005. The Gazette reported it opened in 1969.)

“It was clear that the Hide and Seek was in trouble, was failing,” Haynes said. “I bought that real estate (Club Q) intentionally because other gay clubs have come and gone in Colorado Springs. By owning that real estate and making our mark there it was intended to be long term. And it has been. It was literally: There wasn’t any place in Colorado Springs.”

When Haynes is directly quoted he calls it a gay club like other gay clubs. It appears to be the reporters who call it LGBTQ+.

Colorado Springs, which is home to Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian organization, has grown more friendly to the LGBTQ community, as has the rest of the country.

“Twenty-one years ago, we didn’t have marriage,” Haynes said. “Twenty-one years ago you got kicked out of the military if they found out you were gay. You couldn’t go sit in a restaurant next to your partner. Club Q was that safe place for people to come and feel and understand that they are normal — that the way they feel is normal and there are people just like them.”

Haynes talks about one community, the reporters talk about a different one.

(Also, though, is it true that two men or two women couldn’t go sit in a restaurant? That doesn’t sound right. I can believe they felt constrained to pretend to be Just Friends, but not able to go at all seems unlikely.)

Alycia Erickson, a pastor at Pikes Peak Metropolitan Church, which was founded in 1979 by members of the LGBTQ community, knows many people who patronize Club Q and and called it a refuge for them.

But there was no “LGBTQ community” in 1979. Nobody called it that then. There can’t have been members of a “community” that didn’t exist.

“Club Q has been an important part of this community for many years,” Erickson said. “We are not welcome in so many places, and we can’t be ourself. Gay bars have been a sanctuary of a different kind.”

Again the interviewee says gay and the reporters change it to LGBTQ.

Kelsey Fauser, pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Colorado Springs, described Club Q as a place “for safety, love and security,” and where people in the LGBTQ community could celebrate themselves and “just be.”

We can’t be confident that that bit outside the quotation marks is what Fauser said.

“It’s hard when you hear about news like this because it isn’t just some distant place or a news headline, but rather you know the color of the walls,” said Fauser, who is part of a LGBTQ league with drag queens and kings who perform at the nightclub.

Drag queens and kings. That’s not the same as trans.

The horror of what happened at Club Q is of course much bigger than the question of how Club Q is described, but all the same, the words do matter. It matters how women are described in reporting on violence against them, it matters how black people are described in reporting on violence against them, and the reporting on Club Q matters too.

Here’s a strange thing: Club Q in Colorado Springs describes itself as a gay or gay and lesbian adult bar, yet most of the headlines call it LGBTQ+. When did adding the TQ+ become absolutely mandatory with no exceptions? Why can’t lesbians and gay men organize and talk and agitate as lesbians and gay men? Why are they being forced to add trans people, when being trans is not the same thing as being lesbian or gay?

CNN: What we know about the suspect in the Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub shooting

NBC News: Live updates: Colorado LGBTQ nightclub shooting victims mourned as community pushes for answers

Washington Post: Shooting at popular LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs leave at least 5 dead

ABC News: Colorado club shooting updates: Suspect named after 5 dead, dozens injured at LGBTQ nightclub

Reuters: Colorado Springs police probe motive in LGBTQ nightclub

Thanks to all this forced teaming we get bullying crap like this from relentless bully Billy the bully Bragg:

They specifically excluded plumbers, ballet dancers, miners, academics, astronauts, poets, too; so what? What law is it that says an alliance of lesbians, gays and bisexuals has to name-check trans people?

Trade union catastrophizing:

“It’s great to be able to be loud and proud – and I will continue to be loud and proud against homophobia and loud and very proud to be a trans ally, and I will ensure that UNISON always remains the best trade union for LGBT+ workers.”

That was the pledge from UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea this morning, when she addressed the union’s LGBT+ conference in Edinburgh, as she applauded the fact that being “loud and proud” was the event’s central theme.

Proud to be against homophobia and very proud to be a trans ally – there’s always that little extra that signals the category “trans” is the most urgent, the most in need of allyship and love and concern and endless encouragement.

UNISON, she continued, had “always strongly advocated for trans rights.” The union’s “brilliant” trans equality campaign helps “give our activists the tools to combat the divisive political weaponising of trans issues,” which is damaging to trans people , but also to the “whole of society”.

What “weaponising” exactly? Mention of the conflict with women’s rights? Is that the weapon?

The past year had seen over 400 members trained on how to be a good trans ally, while there’s also been a “bump in members taking part in UNISON’s trans caucus.”

But Ms McAnea was clear that such things were needed precisely because anti-trans discrimination is “not going away and we have to be ever more vigilant.”

Ever more. Ever more and more and more and more. It will never end.

Endless relentless nagging:

Staff at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have been told they should not use the terms “gender critical” and “protecting women and girls” in order to be trans allies, The Telegraph can disclose.

But what if they want to be allies to women? What if they are women? What if they think being an ally to women – half of humanity – is vastly more urgent than being ally to a tiny minority of humanity in thrall to a delusion?

Thousands of officials were emailed for “transgender awareness week” and told it was “vital that we keep scaremongering and misinformation at bay”, with trans hate crimes up 56 per cent in a year.

“It is vital that we scaremonger and misinform about scaremongering and misinformation.”

Civil servants are warned in an introduction to the glossary: “It is important to recognise these words and phrases, understand their context and educate those you hear using them about the reasons why their use can be deemed offensive or upsetting, as people may have unknowingly used a term without being familiar with its meaning.

“Whilst passing uses of these phrases might not be considered misconduct, the importance of challenging their use cannot be overstated.”

“You must obsess about trans people all the time, every minute of every day, and you must police the language and thoughts of everyone you know or bump into in the corridor.”

Hmmm.

Politico a month ago:

Now, despite the setbacks Russia has suffered on the battlefield, [Fiona] Hill thinks Putin is undaunted. She sees him adapting to new conditions, not giving up. And she sees him trying to get the West to accede to his aims by using messengers like billionaire Elon Musk to propose arrangements that would end the conflict on his terms.

“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin,” Hill says.

And then they buy Twitter to be even more dedicated messengers for Putin.

Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing?

Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and the suggestion that the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia should be up for negotiation, because there should be guaranteed water supplies to Crimea. He made this suggestion before Putin’s annexation of those two territories on September 30. It was a very specific reference. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia essentially control all the water supplies to Crimea. Crimea is a dry peninsula. It has aquifers, but it doesn’t have rivers. It’s dependent on water from the Dnipro River that flows through a canal from Kherson. It’s unlikely Elon Musk knows about this himself. The reference to water is so specific that this clearly is a message from Putin.

…

This is a classic Putin play. It’s just fascinating, of course, that it’s Elon Musk in this instance, because obviously Elon Musk has a huge Twitter following. He’s got a longstanding reputation in Russia through Tesla, the SpaceX space programs and also through Starlink. He’s one of the most popular men in opinion polls in Russia. At the same time, he’s played a very important part in supporting Ukraine by providing Starlink internet systems to Ukraine, and kept telecommunications going in Ukraine, paid for in part by the U.S. government. Elon Musk has enormous leverage as well as incredible prominence. Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.

And now he owns Twitter.

Health Education England is some sort of government body, described slightly differently by each source I saw, and it came up with this new and exciting version of the usual sludge:

Health Education England statement of intent, publicly committing to trans inclusion and equality in support of the trans and non-binary community.

What is “trans equality”? What is the absence of “trans equality”? What are they talking about? In what way are trans people not already “equal”?

As for “inclusion,” we know what that means, and that’s the problem. It means men being “included” with women and (much less urgently and insistently) women being “included” with men. That’s a stupid idea of “inclusion.” We don’t have to “include” lawyers with doctors or doctors with lawyers; we don’t have to “include” students with teacher or teachers with students; we don’t have to “include” toddlers with adults or adults with toddlers; the list goes on. We don’t have to be “inclusive” of everything and everyone at all times and everywhere. We don’t have to “include” men with women, and we refuse to, and we’re not going to do it. Also we’re a “community” too, so how about being “inclusive” of us for a change?

And that’s just the title.

Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, Health Education England commits Health Education England to the below statement of intent:

All human rights are compromised if any one group is excluded. We are at our best when we stand together, and we all have a role in ensuring our NHS is a place where all our citizens are treated with respect, dignity, and compassion.   

Excluded from what though? Excluded from what??

In recent months, the public debate around trans and non-binary rights has intensified. As HEE’s leadership, we have growing concerns about the hostility that trans and non-binary staff & patients are experiencing.    

But those are two different things. Discussion of what “trans and non-binary rights” might be is not the same thing as hostility to trans and non-binary people. If the discussion of rights were more honest and less hostile to women, maybe the hostility that trans and non-binary staff and patients are said to be experiencing would cease to exist.

A fundamental promise of the NHS is that we exist for all and we have a duty of care to all. It is crucial that everyone, including trans and non-binary people, feel respected, safe and receive an equal level of care.

What about women? If men who claim to be trans are allowed to force themselves on women in wards then how can women feel respected and safe? What about them?

As a healthcare organisation we want to reiterate our commitment to implementing the spirit and the letter of the Equality Act – by striving to create an NHS that is fair and truly inclusive.

But if the NHS is “truly inclusive” of for instance men on women’s wards then it’s not truly inclusive of women. What about that?

Now, more than ever, is the time to educate ourselves and others to become active trans and non-binary allies. Within HEE, we have been making consistent efforts to understand and appreciate the experience of our trans and non-binary colleagues. We are having conversations, developing our own understanding, and continuing our learning. We have made progress, but we have a long way to go on our journey. We are confident that this is the only right way forward that reflects our values and the values of the wider NHS.

We stand with the trans and non-binary community.    

There’s no mention of women on the entire page. Not one. The word “trans” appears 11 times.

NHS Scotland wants to do more of it, faster.

Scotland’s NHS is planning to fast-track irreversible surgeries for transgender patients, documents seen by The Telegraph reveal.

Quick, before someone stops us.

An NHS Scotland report, suggesting new transgender treatment rules, calls for “barriers” to gender reassignment surgery to be removed and proposes radical measures to make operations more widely available.

These include allowing GPs, rather than specialists, to send patients for procedures and that a “single opinion” is enough to refer for surgery in most cases.

Let’s err on the side of reckless haste, because why not?

The report goes on to call for an “affirming” model of non-surgical care to still be delivered to children, despite an expert review for NHS England, conducted by the esteemed paediatrician Hilary Cass, raising concerns about the approach.

I wonder if, ten or twenty years down the line, NHS Scotland will be calling for an “affirming” model of care for children who identify as tigers or eagles or pythons.

David Bell, the consultant psychiatrist and Tavistock Clinic whistleblower, said it was “very troubling indeed” to see the Scottish NHS treat WPATH as an “authority” on matters of trans health, something he said was a “complete fiction”.

He also claimed that contrary to the document, clinicians had a responsibility to fully examine a patient’s mental health and background before referring them for irreversible surgeries which they may later come to regret.

Irreversible and very drastic.

“It’s a very disturbing situation,” Dr Bell said. “The attention of ministers seems to be more captured by groups representing an ideological movement, than those that represent an objective scientific approach to these matters, such as NHS England and the Cass Review.

“It is never a doctor’s job to affirm or not affirm, it is a doctor’s job to understand. That means understanding the narrative of a patient’s life, their childhood, how they developed particularly in terms of sexuality and gender, and how they’ve come to be the person they are.

“We have an ethical duty towards young people and adults not to treat things at face value. That is something that is completely incompatible with a proper clinical approach.”

But treating things at face value is portrayed as absolutely mandatory, on pain of ostracism and abuse, by the very ideology that’s capturing the attention of ministers and speeding up this already speeding train.

Uh…whut?

Of all the campaign groups in all the world you’d think this would be the least relevant to the trans ideology.

Endofuckingmetriosis??? Are you serious?!

Blah blah blah grovel grovel grovel trans trans trans. Meanwhile Sadiq Khan still has not explained why he dumped Joan Smith from her role as head of the Mayor’s Council for Women, or even had the minimal courtesy to tell her why, despite her repeated requests for an explanation.