More demands for more more more gender reform:

More than 100 LGBT organisations and celebrities are urging the government to reform UK gender identity laws, the BBC has learned.

But what if “gender identity” doesn’t actually mean anything?

But, in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, LGBT groups said the UK was “lagging behind” other countries “in terms of legal equality for trans and non-binary people”.

Is it? How? In what way do trans and non-binary people not have legal equality? What does “legal equality” in that sentence mean?

Ashleigh Talbot, a transgender woman, says the current process to get legal recognition is too negative.

“It’s an extremely bureaucratic process,” said Ms Talbot.

…

Ms Talbot added that for any other community to be required to prove something to a panel in order to be granted full rights would be an “absolute outrage”.

But that’s nonsense. Talbot is using “full rights” to mean something it doesn’t mean. People don’t have “full rights” to get government recognition for whatever “identity” they choose – helicopter, grapefruit, shark, Vesuvius, the War of the Spanish Succession. Talbot already has the same “full rights” everyone else has.

She continued: “I know people who have had their application turned down because of a perceived fault with the evidence – they were so humiliated.

“The stress and the emotional toll that it takes on members of the community, simply to have legal recognition, is all extremely damaging.”

In other words Talbot deployed the usual emotional blackmail. Talbot talks like an abuser – “Give me what I want or I’ll burn the house down with us in it.”

The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) sets out the legal process by which a person can change their gender.

It was last updated in 2004, and was the first piece of legislation that officially recognised transgender people but, since then, the way people identify has come a long way.

That is, since then the list of demands and threats has ballooned grotesquely.

The BBC does allow one dissenting voice through.

Dr Nicola Williams, director of Fair Play For Women – which campaigns for the sex-based rights of women and girls – said GRA reform would mean any male could change their birth certificate to say they were born female.

“Women have a lawful right to exclude males from female-only spaces when it’s necessary for privacy, safety and fairness,” she said.

It would make women’s existing legal rights “unworkable”, she added, and that advancing rights for one group “at the expense of another vulnerable group” is wrong.

But now let’s hear from the More Special Than That community.

Jamie Windust, an LGBT and non-binary activist who does not identify as a man or woman, says things need to change.

“Non-binary people like myself are not even given the option to change our gender identity through the GRA,” they said.

“This is not only invalidating, but having your own government not allow you to just exist is really painful.”

Except of course that the government is not “not allowing you to exist.” Windust is allowed to exist, and judging by the fact that the government quotes Them, Windust does in fact exist. It’s not “invalidating” for the government to reject an invented category for birth certificates.

Stupidest possible reaction to Karen’s tweet about a woman murdered by a “sex toy” which is to say a spiked wheel shoved up her vagina:

A woman has been killed.

But the take here is that “Kink shaming is bullshit.”

That’s Grade ‘A’ bullshit if you ask me. pic.twitter.com/yJUln3q1Jv

— Dr Karen Ingala Smith (@K_IngalaSmith) July 29, 2019

Strangling women is “breath play” and shoving spiked wheels up women’s vagina’s is “sensation play.”

What is wrong with people?

Open Labour is a group or organization or faction or ______ that aims to make the Labour Party more wonderful. Or something. What they stand for:

We represent Labour’s open Left: a practical, open-minded and tolerant type of democratic socialism. Our ideas and campaigns are based on a simple strategy: creating broad and diverse alliances behind policies which transform society.

We are realistic about public opinion, but we believe that Labour’s democratic left must seek to lead it. This will only happen if our party is vibrant and democratic – if it can include a wide variety of views and groups without intolerance or bigotry keeping members away.

So I guess the rest of Labour is impractical, closed-minded, and intolerant? And they don’t aim to create broad and diverse alliances behind policies which transform society?

I don’t know. It all seems quite vague to me, but I’d never heard of them before. I heard of them just now because they issued a statement on Twitter. It’s not on their website, just on Twitter – I don’t know if that makes it more official or less or if there is no difference.

Sadly, we need to clarify our position around transphobia. Our National Committee have decided unanimously to issue the below statement. pic.twitter.com/c4yAmBREnc

— Open Labour (@OpenLabour) July 29, 2019

The reason it caught my attention, along with the fastidiously prurient denunciation of “one of our committee members,” is the unmarked oddity of the first sentence.

At Open Labour we seek to stand in solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, and with trans people in particular in the struggle for respect and equal rights.

The unmarked oddity is “and with trans people in particular.” Why with trans people in particular? Seriously, why? That’s constantly implied and occasionally spelled out like that but it’s never (that I see) explained. Why are we endlessly told, implicitly or explicitly, that trans people are due particular, extra, emphatic, special solidarity?

If we understood that we would have a better grip on why it’s seen as acceptable and even admirable to single out women for threats and abuse if we fail in this duty to give particular solidarity. We would have a better grip on what they think they mean and why they think it, so then we might be able to make a dent in this idiotic claim.

Of course there is nothing at all in the statement itself that would help with that. It’s pathetic how this whole branch of activism relies on empty slogans endlessly repeated and just utterly fails to ground any of it in comprehensible reasons.

Great. Trump is replacing the Director of National Intelligence (Dan Coats) with a party hack.

President Donald Trump’s just-announced nominee to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence had already drawn national attention earlier this week, when he delivered an aggressive diatribe against former special counsel Robert Mueller.

…

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, called Ratcliffe’s questioning of Mueller “demagogic” and said the White House selected him for intelligence director because he “exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump.”

“It’s clear that Rep. Ratcliffe was selected because he exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump with his demagogic questioning of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” Schumer said in a press release Sunday. “If Senate Republicans elevate such a partisan player to a position that requires intelligence expertise and non-partisanship, it would be a big mistake.”

They’ll do it.

This is not a good argument.

Imagine for a moment how this allegation would read (and what the reaction would be) if the word "trans" was replaced with the name of any other minority group within our society: https://t.co/F2Dicb7zKC

— Stop Funding Hate (@StopFundingHate) July 28, 2019

It’s not a good argument because, first, any minority group? But that could be rapists, or psychopaths, or serial killers, or greedy landlords who don’t make repairs (hello Jared Kushner!), or members of the KKK. Being part of a minority group doesn’t automatically make people right about everything. And second because the trans lobby is in fact a special case, so swapping in for instance “feminist lobby pressure” wouldn’t do the work Stop Funding Hate wants it to do. The trans lobby does in fact apply fierce pressure to everyone it can reach to accept and echo and flatter the dogma about what it is to be trans.

I’ll quote again a bit from that Guardian piece that I quoted from yesterday:

Evans said that since his resignation he had become concerned that the debate around transitioning had been shut down by a vocal minority. “The mind that is free to think or ask difficult questions is treated as a real threat; TV producers and journalists continually report that while people are willing to speak in confidence to them about their reservations about treatment in these areas, they shy away from being named, for fear of being accused of being bigoted and transphobic and sometimes either disciplined or even sacked for speaking their mind.”

Emphasis added. We know that’s not a foolish or empty fear; we know it happens. We just saw it happen to another blog at Freethought Blogs earlier in the week. We saw it happen to the Vancouver Public Library, told it can’t be part of Pride because it allowed Meghan Murphy to give a talk in its building. We know it happens. The allegation is not a false one.

Guest post by Josh Slocum

Lesbians and gays had to ask, beg, plead, protest, and keep it all up for decades just to get:

• The right not to be fired for being gay
• The right not to be evicted for being gay
• The right to participate in the same tax incentive system that straight married people had

That’s all. That’s all we asked for. Nothing that took from, or imposed on, anyone else.

Trans comes along and is required to do exactly zero work. All they have to do is be a straight man in a wig and scream that they’re oppressed, and instantly laws are changed to make women’s space their legal property.

This is fucking obscene.

Even the Guardian has started to notice.

School counsellors and mental health service providers are bowing to pressures from ‘highly politicised’ transgender groups to affirm children’s beliefs that they were born the wrong sex, a leading expert has warned.

Marcus Evans, a psychotherapist and ex-governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, whose Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) is the only NHS clinic to provide gender counselling and transitioning, said many experts were living in fear of being labelled transphobic, which was having an impact on their objectivity.

Because it’s not just a matter of “being labelled transphobic” and then walk away – it’s a matter of being labelled transphobic and then being shunned and demonized and berated on social media, of losing friends and publication opportunities and even jobs, of being treated as a thousand times more evil and harmful than even Donald Trump or Boris Johnson.

The number of children referred annually to GIDS has risen from 468 in 2013 to 2,519 in 2018. Some claim social media is a factor in the increase.

Ya think?

Evans said that since his resignation he had become concerned that the debate around transitioning had been shut down by a vocal minority. “The mind that is free to think or ask difficult questions is treated as a real threat; TV producers and journalists continually report that while people are willing to speak in confidence to them about their reservations about treatment in these areas, they shy away from being named, for fear of being accused of being bigoted and transphobic and sometimes either disciplined or even sacked for speaking their mind.”

Because it happens. We’ve watched it happen. We’ve watched it happen many many times by now.

Since his high-profile resignation, Evans’s concerns have broadened as parents approach him for advice about their children.

“They confirm that a gender-affirmative approach is being adopted by many school counsellors and CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services),” Evans notes.

“These parents all expressed alarm that, after their children suddenly announced they believed they were the wrong sex, practitioners were immediately endorsing the belief that this was the cause of the child’s distress, rather than offering time to explore perhaps long-standing psychological/developmental issues.”

Satanic panic all over again.

Powerful.

President Trump tweeted that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ district is a “rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

It’s @VictorBlackwell’s home district.

“When he tweets about infestation, it's about black and brown people,” Blackwell says. pic.twitter.com/YFCvPCFhFk

— CNN News Central (@NewsCentralCNN) July 27, 2019

Wait, what?

The Scotsman reports on payments from the US State Department to Donald Trump’s golf resort in Scotland. So far so corrupt and so familiar. But there’s an extra twist.

Last summer, The Scotsman, detailed a series of payments made by the State Department to SLC Turnberry Limited.

The first, for $10,113 (£8,112), was approved on 5 April 2018, followed by $39,602 (£31,768) and $30,074 (£24,125) on 10 and 11 July respectively.

The latter two payments were for hotel accommodation for Mr Trump and key members of his administration. The president was photographed playing two rounds of golf during his two night stay at Turnberry, part of his visit to the UK.

It is understood the April payment related to a visit to Turnberry by Eric Trump. the executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organisation.

By Eric Trump? What does that have to do with the State Department? State shouldn’t be pouring money into Trump’s businesses anyway, but the usual scam is for them to book half the administration into Trump hotels while on official business. But Eric Trump is in no way part of the administration, so why are his bills being added to the tab? It’s second-level graft.

The Scotsman doesn’t explain.

Rex Murphy wonders where the Canadian reporting is.

From my perspective the core of the story is not Yaniv, who, from what I have read, presents as opportunistic, cruel and delusionally self-entitled, who manipulates the ever-changing fixations of identity and gender politics for (a) notoriety, (b) possible gain, and (c) some delight in pushing and insulting hard-up people, especially Asians and newcomers (see last week’s column) as a very questionable personal amusement.

Where is this yarn — outside the National Post and Toronto Sun — in the large media of this country? CTV, CBC, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star? Silence. (The Post Millennial has covered the story, as has Blaire White, herself a transgender woman — she posted her work on YouTube.)

He then says the tv networks are too busy reporting on Trump, which I think is nonsense.

Is it not Canadian news that the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is giving this apparently aggressive and eagerly litigious person such specialized and respectful attention? At the same time as 16 women are going through what must be to them a frightening, perplexing and tormenting legal grinder? Why are the Canadian media not at least reporting on what they are going through?

Is it simply because even the word “transgender” is kryptonite to the brave media who are always otherwise anxious to write and broadcast “truth to power”? The silent passing over of this story is journalistic cowardice, the fear of offending the passing pieties of militant progressivism.

There are competing pieties here though. Normally militant progressivism is quick to stand with persecuted immigrants, and rightly so, but for some reason one narcissist’s claimed transitude is more piety-worthy than 16 persecuted immigrants women.

Did the tribunal’s members think maybe if 16 — 16! — women unanimously turned Yaniv down, the problem was more likely with the would-be customer, not the provider? Did they consider the upheaval in their lives as solemnly as they presided over this transparently noxious, trivial, illogical and indulgent complaint?

In my column last week, I lamented the Tribunal’s lack of common sense. This week I ask where’s their sense of human sympathy, compassion for the newcomer — and to use one of their most-beloved terms, for the marginalized? The woman from Brazil has lost her income while Yaniv enjoys the publicity.

He’s not wrong. I suspect I disagree with him on most things, but he’s not wrong on this one.

Ahhhhhhhh shut up.

Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian on The Yaniv Question:

The answer to that is clearly “no”, right? If a female beautician has only been trained to wax female genitalia and only wants to offer these services to women then that should be her prerogative. But, hang on a minute, what if the person who wants their intimate areas to be waxed is a woman with male genitalia? What happens then?

Nothing happens then, because there is no such thing. Women don’t have male genitalia. The question would be “what if the person who wants their intimate areas to be waxed is a man who says he is a woman?”

Then Mahdawi gets down to the serious business of poisoning the well.

While the Yaniv case has been going on for a while now, you may not have heard much about it, as it has largely been covered by the rightwing press. The sort of outlets that normally joke about consent and women’s rights are now outraged that women are being forced to handle male genitalia against their will. The sort of writers that are normally whipping up hate against immigrants are now outraged and concerned that at least one of the beautificians that Yaniv has filed complaints against is a poor migrant. In short there has been a hell of a lot of bad faith and transphobia involved in the reporting around the case.

To put it another way, the leftwing and mainstream press has shamefully failed to cover this story because hey it’s only women being bullied out of their jobs and into a lawsuit.

The press has looked away, but lefty feminist women on social media have not.

A number of the world’s worst people have used the story as an example of “political correctness gone mad” and as a way to stoke hatred against trans people.

The world’s worst people? Seriously??

Sometimes the brainwashing cleans everything away.