Grace Lavery back in June explaining how it really really is true that you can change sex.

Berkeley News: Your work in trans feminist studies focuses on the belief that transition works — that it is truly possible to change sex. Can you talk more about what you’ve found in your research? Did you begin to explore the idea during your own transition?

Grace Lavery: I suppose, on some level, I’m bound to cop to that: Research is me-search, as they say. I think what my research has come to demonstrate is that for the past 150 years or so, roughly since the time that people started performing transition or transitioning or whatever you want to call it, there has been this enormous public effort or attempt to produce a cast-iron reason why it doesn’t work or why it is suspicious.

It doesn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t work to “perform transition” or “transition” or whatever you want to call it to a horse or a table or Mars. It doesn’t work because fantasy is fantasy, pretending is pretending, the mind isn’t magic.

There is a kind of conservative feminist position that argues that sex is set in stone, is assigned at birth. And I don’t agree with that. Most scientists I’ve spoken to seem pretty comfortable with the idea that sex, like any other biological category, is not a cast-iron law, but rather a sort of set of contingencies that can be played with and culturally reinforced or not culturally reinforced.

Oh yes that definitely sounds like how scientists think. Everything “can be played with” and once you’ve played with it long enough and whimsically enough, the magic happens and the biological category is…something else.

Postponed.

The government’s much-hyped information campaign targeting perpetrators of violence against women will not be launched until next year, the Observer has learned. This comes just as new research indicates the vast majority of females have experienced unwanted violent, aggressive or sexual behaviours on UK public transport.

Sorry and everything. We’d hurry if it were important but as it’s only women, we’ll get to it when we get to it.

As part of the home secretary’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls launched in July, Priti Patel promised a “multimillion communications campaign with a focus on targeting perpetrators and harmful misogynistic attitudes”.

Like calling women terfs and cunts and telling them “suck my dick” when they hold a conference? Those hateful misogynistic attitudes?

However, concern is growing that the campaign will not be up and running until 2022, with sources saying it remains at a “concept” stage more than three months after it was unveiled. The delay means it will not be launched until after Christmas – a period that tends to witness a rise in domestic violence – but also comes against a backdrop of concerted calls for the government to start prioritising measures to tackle violence against women and girls.

But they might be terfs. Surely you can see the problem.

The Telegraph article that Priyamvada Ghopal mentioned:

The Telegraph has spoken to academics, who wish to remain anonymous, who claim that Prof Alison Phipps, a former colleague of Prof Stock’s, was one of those leading the criticism of her, which ultimately led to her resignation.

Prof Phipps was a professor of gender studies at Sussex University, and has recently taken up a post as professor of sociology at Newcastle University. 

Now, it has emerged that she posted a series of tweets suggesting that “gender critical feminists” are also “racist and ableist”, and accused colleagues of being “bigots”.

Screenshots of the now-deleted tweets show that in January, Prof Phipps wrote: “I’d be interested to hear how many people with a prominent ‘free speech warrior’* at their workplace – whether that’s a racist, a transphobe and/or another flavour – have been subject to threats or official complaints from said warrior after criticising them in public.”

She followed this up with an asterixed “*bigot” and with another tweet saying: “(Any resemblance to my own workplace is, of course, entirely coincidental).”

In another tweet, posted in July 2020, Prof Phipps said: “Of course ‘gender critical’ feminists are also racist and ableist: their politics based on entitlement to define, speak for and dominate others makes all sorts of things possible, and a one-dimensional analysis of gender means a lack of intersectionality across the board.”

Except “of course” that’s not true. It’s not even a little bit true.

In January 2020, Prof Stock challenged Prof Phipps to a debate, saying: “Each time a news article about gender critical academics comes out, you tweet that Sussex Uni trans students and staff are made unsafe by us. 

“Instead why not engage with me in public debate at Sussex or elsewhere?”

Prof Phipps responded: “‘Reasonable debate’ cannot counter unreasonable ideas. History has shown this repeatedly. Insisting on ‘debate’ is about giving credibility where there is none.”

So the thing to do is lie about gender critical academics on Twitter.

Prof Phipps wrote the book Me Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism, which questions whether white feminists need to ask themselves whether they are causing harm when they fight sexual violence.

She’s the sociologist of Karen.

“White feminist tears deploy white woundedness, and the sympathy it generates, to hide the harms we perpetuate through white supremacy,” she wrote.

The book, which faced criticism after it was recommended in an Oxfam staff training document, says “privileged white women” are supporting the root causes of sexual violence by wanting “bad men” imprisoned.

The book faced criticism after people read it, because it’s so bad.

Ugly.

I think that “false flag opportunists” remark borders on libel. Yes it’s so opportunistic to get bullied out of a job you love.

For anyone laughing off the very idea that anti-Semitic tropes and images and movies and plays are something to object to, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has a collection you could take a look at.

Anti-Jewish hatred has pervaded Western art, politics, and popular culture for centuries. Perceptions and understandings of Jews throughout history were manifested in objects—from fine arts and crafts for the elite to everyday toys and knickknacks and household items. Many of these objects promoted negative attitudes and stereotypes about Jews.

The Katz Ehrenthal Collection—acquired through the generosity of the Katz family—consists of over 900 individual objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the Medieval to the modern era, created and distributed throughout Europe, Russia, and the United States. The same hateful stereotypes reappear throughout the collection, spanning centuries and continents. Not all of the objects are antisemitic, however, a small portion of the collection documents or combats specific antisemitic episodes.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi propagandists used these same stereotypes with deadly consequences. For example, feature films, newsreels, toys, and games helped intensify negative stereotypes of Jews. Already portrayed as second-class citizens, they were increasingly characterized as “degenerates, criminals, and racially inferior corrupters of German society.” Some of the same beliefs are still prevalent in Western countries today.

This isn’t over-indulged students squawking about imaginary transphobia.

Wait, are you saying that a fictional character’s being named Hershel Fink suggests that the character is Jewish??? The Royal Court theatre is shocked shocked to hear it.

[Al] Smith, the author of a new play coming to the Royal Court theatre this week, had given a lead character the name of Hershel Fink. But publicity for the production prompted angry complaints about Jewish stereotyping. In response, the famous venue on Sloane Square in London has now apologised and agreed to change the name, admitting that it was “unconscious bias” that had led to the Silicon Valley billionaire in the work being given this identity.

Being given this name, I think that should read. The Royal Court people claiming the character wasn’t given Jewish “identity” and that the name was…just a name.

In an official statement, the theatre management added that the character in Smith’s play, Rare Earth Mettle, which stars former Doctor Who actor Arthur Darvill, is not Jewish and that there is no reference to his faith or Jewishness in the show.

Except for the name. Ohhhh the name, says the Royal Court. We didn’t notice.

“The Royal Court claims they didn’t realise ‘Hershel Fink’ was a Jewish name. Hmmm. Somehow it just sounded so right for a world-conquering billionaire,” Baddiel posted on Twitter. This February, Baddiel’s new book, Jews Don’t Count, argued that antisemitic bias is the one prejudice that remains largely unpoliced in the “culture wars”.

Discouraging.

Huh. That’s quite a nice salary for helping men harass women.

LSE has an explainer for Athena Swan too, mostly quoting Athena Swan (or Athena SWAN as they call it) but tweaking the wording a little in places.

Athena SWAN was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employed in higher education and research.

So far so good.

In May 2015 the charter was expanded to recognise work undertaken in the arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL), in professional and support roles, and for trans staff and students. The charter now recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, rather than just barriers to progression that affect women.

Ok wait.

I once was blind but now I see, eh? We used to address gender inequality by working to advance the careers of women, but now we know better. Now we do it more broadly. More broadly than what?

There are two sexes. Just the two. Historically they have been unequal. Addressing that inequality means making the subordinated half of the pair equal instead of subordinated. How can one do that more broadly?

There’s only the one disadvantaged sex. Not two, not seven, not a thousand. Just. the. one.

The passage of time since 1970 hasn’t changed that. There are still two sexes. The female sex is still disadvantaged compared to the male. It’s still that simple. So what can it mean to “address gender inequality more broadly”? There is no more “broadly.” There’s only the female sex.

What is this Athena Swan Charter? According to Athena Swann:

The Athena Swan Charter is a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research. Established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment, the Charter is now being used across the globe to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women.

Ah, that’s very helpful – they tell us what treacherous idiots they are right in the first paragraph. They used to campaign for women and now they know better, now they look beyond “just barriers to progression that affect women.” Not just women but ALL the genders. Stupid women, thinking they get to hog everything.

Considering sex and gender 

We recognise the evolving social and legal landscape regarding data monitoring and rights in relation to sex and gender. Like many organisations we are reviewing our guidance. We also work closely with the sector on the ongoing development of the charter through the Athena Swan Governance Committee. In response to the changing landscape in relation to sex and gender we will continue these efforts to ensure it is fit for purpose and inclusive. 

By which we mean, inclusive of people who are not women, because it would be wicked and exclusionary and not in sync with the changing landscape to let women hog everything.

They do talk about women though. Maybe they’ll still have to be punished.

We commit to advancing gender equality in academia, in particular, addressing the loss of women across the career pipeline and the absence of women from senior academic, professional and support roles.

We commit to addressing unequal gender representation across academic disciplines and professional and support functions. In this we recognise disciplinary differences including:

the relative underrepresentation of women in senior roles in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL)

the particularly high loss rate of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM)

And so on. It’s not all about The New Genders, but the chipping away has begun. They are Reviewing their Guidance.

This is how it’s done – make yourself part of the Diversity N Incloosion infrastructure and bam, you get to make your crank ideas mandatory for all people who are part of that infrastructure. Stonewall seem to be the best at it but they’re not the only ones.

Lawyers and campaigners say that a university training scheme on gender identity is “totalitarian and unlawful”.

Imagine having to attend university training on “gender identity” when you don’t believe that’s a meaningful concept.

The latest row centres on a scheme called Athena Swan that is offered by Advance HE, formerly the Higher Education Academy, a charity that advises education institutions.

How do people get to appoint themselves “charities that advise education institutions”? How do education institutions decide which charities to take advice from? How does any of this work?

One thing it seems to do is make it harder to dissent from whatever “advice” these lobbyists are handing out, because it’s an extra layer. “This isn’t our advice/dogma, it comes from Stonewall/Advance HE.” Well who put them in charge? And why?

The organisation has a pivotal role in financing academics because those bidding for funds from UK Research and Innovation must complete an equality and diversity statement that is likely to have been compiled under its advice.

So they’ve somehow woven themselves into the bureaucracy but it sounds as if they’re not accountable to anyone. Why is that?

In a letter to The Times on Wednesday, Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at Oxford University, said that Advance HE had “considerable clout” and said that it “promotes a controversial view of sex and gender”.

Why does it have any clout at all? What is the mechanism by which these organizations get to have clout?

Naomi Cunningham, a barrister who specialises in discrimination and gender claims, says that the Advance HE programme could be challenged in the courts. “I think this is pretty clearly unlawful,” adding that it constituted “direct discrimination on grounds of philosophical belief,” and therefore would breach equality legislation.

She said that it “represents a pretty totalitarian attempt to entrench gender identity beliefs at the heart of all academic endeavour”.

Which is all the more alarming given how fatuous those beliefs are.

“Oh but you can’t lump me in with the cishets, I’m QUEER.”

I bet Laurie Penny’s not “glad to hear it” any more.

Gregor Murray, the unhinged man who shouts derogatory abuse at women on Twitter, is still a Dundee councillor.

Funny thing about that – you can’t tell from his official page that he’s “non-binary.” Nobody looking at that page would have any idea that he’ll flip all the way out if you call him “him” or address him as “sir.” People looking at that page are going to just assume he’s a man, because his name is Gregor and he’s dressed in the business uniform for men and he has a beard and a receding hairline and so on – they’re going to assume it because he “presents as” a man.

So…is the “non-binary” thing just for after hours? A hobby? Part time?

Or is it perhaps not even that but just a pretext for shouting derogatory abuse at women? Maybe he’s “non-binary” solely on Twitter?

H/t latsot

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more details about the abuse of the female goalie.

Armstrong principal Kirk Lorigan said the school is “appalled and embarrassed” at the actions of the student section and chants that the students used during Thursday’s game at Belmont Sports Complex in Kittanning. One of the chants was sexually explicit, and Mars coach Steve Meyers said his goalie was in tears after the second period. Mars has played five games this season and the female goalie has been the starter for all five games.

…

Lorigan did not attend the game but said he was “disgusted” that no one — from Armstrong parents to two security personnel — did anything to stop the chants.

What are the chants saying? What’s the point of them? Besides trying to distract the target?

They’re saying all you are is a thing for our sexual jollies. You’re not a person, you’re not a high school student, you’re not a girls with plans for her future, you’re a mouth and a cunt. You’re not a goalie, you’re not an athlete, you’re not a competitor, you’re not one of us, you’re just a couple of holes.

The joys of being a “cis” female yeah?

How is this ok?

It’s what male people say to gender critical feminists, too – suck my dick. Remember that sign at the FiLiA conference?

But please, tell us again how men who say they are women are the most oppressed Of All.

Trumpian hack refuses to answer.

Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark stonewalled the House Select Committee investigating January 6, responding to a subpoena demanding he appear for an interview with the panel, but not answering questions posed to him, sources familiar with his appearance told CNN.

He should be locked up then.

Instead, Clark provided a letter from his attorney Harry MacDougald that claimed he could not provide testimony until a court declares that his interactions with former President Donald Trump are not protected under attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

Attorney-client privilege!!!

He worked for the country, not Trump. He was a DoJ official, not Trump’s lawyer. He never worked for Trump. Trump was never his client.

Clark was one of the officials within the Justice Department pushing to pursue unfounded claims of voter fraud in the weeks after the November election, and, according to officials who interacted with him, was in touch with Trump repeatedly.

In an effort to steal the election. That doesn’t make him Trump’s lawyer.

As a sympathizer to election fraud conspiracy theories, Clark became Trump’s most useful asset inside the Justice Department in the days before January 6. Clark helped Trump devise a plan to oust the then acting attorney general, place himself atop the department, and have the DOJ intervene in Georgia to set aside its voting results in order to sway the state toward Trump.

Gotta say, I hope he gets prosecuted for all that.

When Clark’s superiors learned of his scheming with Trump in early January, they threatened to resign en masse.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to now claim that his illegal and illicit plotting with Trump confers attorney-client privilege on the plotting.

It does, doesn’t it.

That’s Kathleen Stock he’s calling calling a cretinous vile excuse for a human being.

Gregor Murray, in case you’ve forgotten, has a habit of verbally abusing women, so much so that he was suspended from his job as a councillor for it in 2019.

Scotland’s only openly transgender councillor has been suspended for two months over derogatory online remarks.

Derogatory remarks, eh? Like calling a woman philosopher who is both smarter and more humane than he is “a cretinous vile excuse for a human being”? Seems to be a hard habit to break in his case.

The standards commission said the councillor’s use of a “derogatory word in a public forum” had been “highly offensive and inappropriate.”

What was the word? Cunt? One of the lesser ones?

Councillor Murray said: “I accept that it is not appropriate for me to swear – I have apologised for this on numerous occasions and have already accepted sanctions for doing so.”

Speaking of cretinous – “swearing” is not the point. The point is the derogatory bit.

The Courier included screenshots.

Confirmed: the last word in the top left one appears to be “cunts.” There’s also “bastard” and “bigot” and “TERF” – and yes some generalized swearing.

He’s a dreadful, out of control man.

It’s an insurrection and price-gouging! Multi-tasking taken to a new level.

On December 19, Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Almost overnight, the cheapest room in his D.C. hotel on that January evening surged from $476 to $1,999. Just over a week later, prices hit $3,600, before eventually climbing to $8,000.

Makes it sound like the weather, something that just happens, as opposed to a greedy human being jacking up the prices because he can. Treason with one hand, grabbing all the dollars with the other.

Guests included insiders working to overturn the election from the “war room” down the block at the Willard hotel—as well as the president’s two eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric. 

Were Don Junior and Eric paying 8k a night?

The least-expensive room on Jan. 6 peaks at $8,000. The spike appears unique to Trump’s property: the average room rate at a downtown D.C. luxury hotel on Jan. 6 was just $415, according to data-hospitality benchmarking firm STR.

In other words Trump is the greediest pig on the planet.

Jan. 5, 2021, 4:53 PM

A video appears online showing Juan O. Savin—a pseudonym for a Qanon influencer who some acolytes believe is JFK Jr.—with his legs stretched out in a room at the hotel. He and former CIA case officer Robert David Steele, who is in his studio, share theories in the video about how the election could be subverted to ensure Trump stays in power.

While Savin says he believes Trump’s protection would ensure the Jan. 6 protest would be peaceful, he repeatedly stresses the need to slow down the certification process to allow time to take away the election victory from Joe Biden. “We are at a critical moment where it’s clear that you can’t get to justice through the Justice Department,” he says. “In that kind of a situation, enemies foreign and domestic comes into play. If we have to slow this down to get to a proper answer, and even if the military has to be called in in certain areas—not everywhere but in those places where there’s an exceptional problem—that’s what it’s gonna take.”

Steele goes further, advocating for murdering officials involved in the nonexistent conspiracy. “From where I sit, anybody associated with this election fraud needs to either make a deal or die.”

Just as well that he’s a former CIA employee.

The Financial Times on this mess we’re in:

Just over a week ago, Kathleen Stock resigned from her post as professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, following a relentless three-year campaign of bullying, harassment and character assassination.

…

“I can’t keep working somewhere where . . . there’s such toxicity,” she had told me the previous week, when I’d gone to speak to her at the home she shares with her pregnant wife and two children. The strain Stock was under was palpable — she broke down in tears twice during our conversation; several days earlier, she had been signed off work by her doctor because of stress. At one point, we were interrupted by the delivery of a video doorbell camera, which the police had advised her to install.

“It’s not based on who I am, what I’m like, what I think — it’s just this caricature of a witch in the office next door . . . They don’t want to argue with me, these people. They just want to ruin my professional reputation.”

They don’t want to argue with anyone. That’s the problem. The whole ideology is just one massive fiat – a shut up and do what you’re told. Women have never been able to get that kind of deference, but for some reason trans women can, and trans men sneak in under their coats.

Those who argue that “cancel culture doesn’t exist” or, as the National Union of Students argues, that “there is no evidence of a freedom of expression crisis on campus”, might say this was an isolated case. But for those who worry that such a crisis is in full swing, Stock’s departure is symptomatic of a culture that prioritises the “emotional safety” of students over robust debate and the expression of lawful, evidence-based opinions, and which is threatening the integrity and reputation of Britain’s universities.

The culture prioritises the “emotional safety” of students over robust debate and it portrays robust debate as inherently and obviously the enemy of students’ “emotional safety.” But if students require “emotional safety” to survive, and robust debate aka different views is/are the enemy of that safety, what are they doing at a university at all? If you have an allergy to learning new things, you shouldn’t be attending any kind of educational institution. If students are so fucking fragile and unwell and tottering that learning makes them sick, then they shouldn’t be at university. There’s a massive conflict here, which doesn’t really get addressed enough. This fragility in the face of new knowledge is a profound disability, and requires treatment and a quiet, empty environment. It’s just cruel to let kids go to a university knowing it’s bound to make them sick as dogs. First treat the disease, then go to university.

In other words learning new things, including new ideas, is the whole point of going to a university, and if you can’t take it, you should get tf out and do something else with your life. It’s probably still possible to get technical training without getting deathly ill, but any branch of the humanities is right out, and so is a lot of science.

“I do notice a big difference between now and 10 years ago,” says Arif Ahmed, a philosopher at Cambridge who campaigns for free speech in universities. “Ten years ago, nobody felt their jobs might be in danger for what they said . . . Now we’re in a position where, as happened with Kathleen Stock and as I’ve experienced here at Cambridge, when you ask people . . . they’ll say in private they support you, but they won’t speak out publicly.”

…

Stock, Ahmed and others I spoke to cite the 2010 Equality Act as a factor in universities becoming so anxious about offending students. The act describes unlawful verbal harassment as behaviour that “has the purpose or effect of . . . creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”, which some university administrators have interpreted as an invitation to police speech or other behaviour they deem offensive as “microaggressions”. 

The odds are good that there are some gender critical students who find the atmosphere intimidating and hostile…

Another consequence of the act has been an increase in the number of non-academic administrators in universities, working for example for “equality, diversity and inclusion offices” that seek to fulfil the requirement to “advance equality of opportunity between people who do and do not share a protected characteristic”, such as race or disability. But the guiding principles of these administrators are often at odds with those of academics — they are geared not so much towards encouraging free expression and the exploration of ideas as the so-called student experience, which focuses on keeping students feeling happy and comfortable.

But also “inclusion” never means “of feminist women.”

A comrade responds to Grant Buttars:

God help any woman who works in Scottish higher education who says that sex is immutable and is relying on University and College Union (UCU) Scotland Executive member and Branch President (UCU Edinburgh) Grant Buttars to defend her if some students demand she should be sacked.

In the post-Trotskyist version of a witch trial Buttars produces some of the most appalling arguments ever adduced by a man to justify the sacking of a woman. After a long set up referencing a case of a racist advocate of paedophilia in “When is it right for a union to support dismissal?”, Buttars explains it is OK when the target is a racist, an advocate of paedophilia or a feminist who doesn’t agree with him on sex and gender.

He tries to justify the ousting of Kathleen Stock from her job at Sussex University following a sustained campaign of intimidation and harassment by students which was supported by the UCU branch there. His core argument is that women who openly question the effects of gender ideology on women’s lives are comparable to Nazis and should be treated as such.

And the two are comparable because………..?

Stock’s senior management were quite supportive of her when a group of masked protestors were on her campus and putting up stickers demanding she be sacked. What sort of union activist has a problem with a management protecting a worker facing unprecedented harassment? Grant Buttars is breaking new ground for trade unionism and 21st century revolutionary socialism. All the more so since RS21 only exist because they correctly identified the sexism in the Socialist Workers Party and left because of it. Now they are supporting the hounding of women for being feminists.

…

Solidarity with the oppressed also includes solidarity with women who know sex is real and say so in public. The RS21 piece is the latest and most extreme development in a prioritising of identity politics over material reality and class solidarity.

If we’re not allowed to recognize material reality when we see it, how can we deal with pandemics and global warming and heavily armed insurrectionists trying to cancel elections?