The moderate position has been found!

I don’t think that’s especially moderate though.

I really don’t think it’s “moderate” to say that people have a right to be treated as something they’re not. I think it’s pretty much the opposite – I think we all have a right to trust our senses and background knowledge about people, and act accordingly. It may be the case sometimes that a particular woman won’t mind playing along with a man’s claim to be a woman, but that should be up to her. Otherwise – it’s our choice. It’s not the pretender’s choice, it’s ours. It’s our right not to pretend, not their right to make us pretend.

And then the fact claim is highly dubious too. I get it that “trans-women are socially women” is “moderate” compared to “trans women are women,” but it’s still stupid. No, men are not “socially women,” even if they think of themselves that way. Men are playing a game of pretend, and that’s quite far away from “being” something socially.

It may sound easy at first, this treating as such, but if you think about it it isn’t. Social life isn’t like that, interaction isn’t like that, our awareness of other people isn’t like that. We will still know he’s a man. We’ll still know that he didn’t grow up experiencing life as a girl, even if he thinks he did. I just can’t see any way he has a genuine “right” to be treated “as such,” i.e. as socially a woman. He isn’t a woman even socially, because it’s just not that simple.

And Sebastian H. may think it’s rarely important who is physically female and who isn’t, but that’s a luxury men have, isn’t it. I say it damn well is important, and he can take a hike.

Uh oh, someone’s on the naughty step. (Ku Bar is a well-known London gay bar.)

The reason this grovel was necessary was Grand Inquisitor David Paisley.

I kind of hope they all get fleas.

What the world needs right now is a damn good explainer on bespoke pronouns, and by god the Good Men Project has provided one. How good they must be. The author is named Jane Sofia Struthers.

I just added a signature to my email. It says: “Jane Struthers (pronouns: she/her/hers)”.

But, you’ll probably ask, since that’s exactly what most people would expect, WHY include them? I was going to call you “she” anyway!

There’s a simple answer. Including your pronouns in your email and social media, even if you ARE gender-binary, is a recognition that the gender binary doesn’t apply to everyone. Even if it DOES apply to me (and it does!) there’s no way, simply by looking at me, that you’d know this. (Yes, despite me wearing a lot of pink and “femme” clothes, I could still be non-binary. Contrary to popular opinion, non-binary people don’t HAVE to dress androgynously!)

Oh that silly popular opinion! Imagine thinking that non-binary people have to dress androgynously – you might as well think frogs have to speak rollerskate.

Ok so there’s no way you would know by looking at Struthers that the gender binary DOES apply to her. She says. I bet there is though. I bet there’s the usual stuff, that’s so automatic we don’t think about it. Almost always we just know, because we always have, from infancy. And if you met Struthers and you didn’t know, what good would including your pronouns in your email and social media do? What, you’re going to say to this mysterious person holding out her his their hand on meeting “Excuse me a minute I have to look you up on social media to find out whether the gender binary applies to you or not”?

So that’s not really what it’s for at all. It can’t very well be, because it makes no sense. So what is it for? Silly question. The usual display of rectitude, of course. “Get me I am genderically enlightened and perfected.”

Including your pronouns is one way for gender-binary people to overcome the hurdles that our gender-binary ancestors have nailed into society. Sure, my pronouns are what a layperson expects. But having them there — simply the act of having them — causes the reader to do a double-take. And ask themself, Why did she include this information? Hopefully, they’ll realize that my pronouns might have been anything.

Naw, chum, they’ll realize you’re a posturing condescending fool, and they’ll find someone better to interact with in email and on social media.

Complaint upheld.

A programme on Today FM in which a contributor referred to author JK Rowling as a “transphobic bigot” breached rules regarding fairness, objectivity and impartiality, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has ruled.

A complaint was submitted in relation to a segment of the Last Word with Matt Cooper on September 18th.

It stated that during the weekly panel discussion, one of the contributors stated that Ms Rowling was transphobic, without providing any evidence to back this up.

So you mean there’s not a blanket rule that if you don’t agree that people can literally become the other sex, everybody is allowed to call you a transphobic bigot?

The broadcaster cited UNESCO as defining transphobia as “the irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be transgender”.

Do we have words for all examples of irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be [insert list of all possible items here]? Are anxiety and discomfort really something UNESCO needs to be calling an evil kind of phobia?

Also, what is the relevance of the UNESCO definition?

It said the panellist in question was of the opinion that JK Rowling exhibits some of the characteristics of transphobia, such as anxiety and discomfort.

Ah I see what they’re doing. They’re pretending that disputing the truth claims of trans ideology is the same thing as anxiety and discomfort about a set of people. Cheap shot. They’re not the same. If your best friend tells you she’s a horse, you’re allowed to think she’s wrong.

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on And then communicate it clearly and accurately.

The progress of science has helped us better understand who we are as trans people.

Maybe it has, but science isn’t any closer to showing that trans are the sex they claim than it was a century ago. Explaining why trans people might have their beliefs about their sex is not the same as confirming those beliefs as facts. Further, taking scientific findings about conditions such as intersex or atypical chromosone combinations out of context to back up transgender claims is not science, it’s exploitation of people with conditions only tangentially related to transgender.

I was thinking about that latter part earlier after reading PZ’s hit-piece on Jerry Coyne for his lack of belief in sex as a spectrum, a piece in which PZ once again pulls out the intersex and chromosome argument to ‘prove’ that science supports the core belief of transgender religion, and the conclusion I reached was this:

By use of visual examinations, blood tests, testing chromosone combinations, and without requiring any input from the person being examined, doctors can diagnose whether a person is intersex, standard xx-female or xy-male, chromosonally atypical, and so-on. There is no scientific test that can detect whether a person is transgender: there is no way of diagnosing transgender independently of having that information supplied by the transgender person, ie. self-reporting/self-diagnosis. So, science clearly does not support claims that transgender people are the sex they claim for themselves. True, neuroscience and psychology can confirm that people can and do believe themselves to be the wrong gender for their bodies, but confirming that they believe something is not confirming any physical reality behind the beliefs.

Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.

The part I’ve bolded there is transgender heresy. I have seen so many TRAs insist that being transgender is something one is from birth, not something that can or is caused by anything that may have been experienced since birth. Of course they have to make that argument because to admit that being transgender can be influenced by life experiences would negate that core belief that they are born with a discrepancy between their bodies and their ‘actual’ sex.

But if we can’t call a woman rude names how will we spend our time?

I’ll tell you what’s not fair! It’s not fair to tell people who like calling women rude names that it’s not fair to call women rude names! That’s what’s not fair!

But Poland was in Hawaii the whole time.

Historians fear that mounting pressure against scholars who implicate Poles in the Holocaust is having a chilling effect on research across Europe, with one France-based researcher saying she will tone down her upcoming book and shy away from naming names.

Audrey Kichelewski, an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Strasbourg who is writing a book about postwar trials of Poles, said she would be “very cautious with the vocabulary” she used and would not cite defendants’ names for fear of being sued by living relatives.

It is the latest episode in what critics say is a concerted effort by Poland’s right-wing government and supportive groups to aggressively enforce a narrative of exclusive victimhood, stressing the heroic stories of Poles who risked their lives to save Jewish compatriots but downplaying accounts of complicity in the Holocaust unearthed by some historians.

It’s a familiar pattern. White people in the US would rather say pious things about Doctor King (as they love to call him) than talk about the post-Reconstruction laws and regulations and real estate maps that entrenched racism for generations.

A 2018 legal amendment would have threatened jail for those who implied the Polish “state” or “nation” was complicit in Nazi crimes, although the law was repeatedly watered down after an international outcry and stripped of its criminal component.

In February, a Warsaw court ordered two scholars — Barbara Engelking, director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, and Jan Grabowski, professor of history at the University of Ottawa — to apologize after they detailed the case of a mayor of a Polish village who allegedly betrayed a group of Jews to Nazi occupiers.

Because that sort of thing never happened. Right? Because there never was any anti-Semitism in Poland, right? Because majority-Catholic countries are never the slightest bit anti-Semitic, right?

And last month, an ultraconservative Polish Roman Catholic group threatened to sue a French radio station for “infringing the reputation of the republic of Poland” by supposedly implicating Poland in Nazi war crimes during a program.

Poland as a nation was certainly an early victim of Hitler’s plan for world domination, but that doesn’t rule out ideological overlap.

The Polish League Against Defamation, which backed the case against Engelking and Grabowski, has launched lawsuits against newspapers and broadcasters in Germany, Italy and Spain, invoking concepts such as a right to “national pride” for Poles.

It sounds a bit trans activismy now, doesn’t it. “We have a right to see ourselves as fabulous! You are putting painful dents in our ability to see ourselves as fabulous! You are a criminal!”

American Atheists issues a statement rebuking…heresy.

In response to Richard Dawkins’ recent tweet regarding trans people, Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists, a trans woman, released the following statement:

So American Atheists don’t believe in a god but they do believe in a magical changeable “gender” that means men become women by saying so, and that no one is allowed to believe that’s nonsensical.

The progress of science has helped us better understand who we are as trans people. As the American Psychological Association notes, “Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.”

What are “identities”? Are they a solid and crisp enough concept to be scientifically investigated? Or are they just a fuzzy category about how people think of themselves?

I think neuroscience and psychology can investigate delusions…but “identities”?

We need science communicators like Richard Dawkins to put in the time to learn this information and then communicate it clearly and accurately to the public, not reinforce dangerous and harmful narratives put forward by the opponents of equality.

Who’s “we”?

And what are these “dangerous and harmful narratives put forward by the opponents of equality”? Notice that claiming to be the opposite sex is Science while saying that isn’t possible is “narratives.” The more important point is that dissenters from trans ideology are not opponents of equality. These shits really need to stop lying about what we think and what we say. It’s even in their own interest to stop, because insisting on telling the lies over and over just makes it look as if lies are all they have. You know? If they can’t make their case without lying that we hate them and hate equality, then what kind of case can it be? Besides empty?

Trans people are under constant attack across our country.

No they’re not.

Implying that our identities are somehow fraudulent and questioning whether we even exist dehumanizes us and helps justify this violence.

No it doesn’t.

Saying that humans can’t change sex is just making a dull factual statement. Brandishing the word “identities” to shore up the claims of being the other sex is just childish word magic. Nobody questions whether or not people who claim to be the other sex exist; we all know you exist, not least because you keep shouting about it.

It’s just hackery, this kind of thing. Stale phrases trotted out to justify fantasy-based ideas of “identity” – it’s silly, it’s childish, it’s beyond tedious.