A new hate-crime law in Scotland causes widespread concern

Subhead:

Transgender identity is protected; biological sex is not

Thank you for noticing and saying. That’s so unusual. The BBC and the Guardian take great pains not to notice and not to say. They take such great, and conspicuous, pains that I’m pretty confident they know they’re doing it, that they do it with malice aforethought, that it’s not mere clumsiness or absence of mind or confusion.

Scotland already has an offence of “stirring up racial hatred”. From April it will become a crime to use “threatening or abusive” behaviour with the intention of stirring up hatred on the basis of other characteristics, too—namely religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. 

But not sex. Not sex. Definitely not sex. Women are fair game. Stir up hatred of women all you like – it’s not as if women are subject to violence, now is it.

“Discussion or criticism” of protected characteristics is acceptable, and a carve-out has been made that allows Scots to voice “antipathy, dislike, ridicule or insult” for religion. But the carve-out does not apply to the other characteristics named under the law. And some characteristics are not covered by it at all, most obviously sex and non-religious beliefs. That explains why some of the law’s most vocal critics are women who argue that biological sex should take precedence over proclaimed gender identity in areas from sports competitions to changing rooms to prisons. Many of them believe the new law will be weaponised by trans-rights activists to try to silence them.

And we believe that for damn good reason. Trans activists never stop trying to silence women who know that men are not women.

Another concern centres on investigations that do not result in a prosecution. These are still recorded against the person’s name as a “non-crime hate incident” and may show up on safeguarding checks for job applications. On March 25th Murdo Fraser, a Conservative politician, threatened to take legal action against Police Scotland after a tweet of his criticising the Scottish government’s policy on non-binary people was logged as a “hate incident”, even though no law had been broken.

Hate of what? The Scottish government? Non-binary people? The weather? Sheep? Haggis?

Always lead with the careful obfuscation.

Practical suggestions on how sports federations can be fair to transgender athletes

He means male “transgender” athletes of course, but he hides that in the usual way. He is one Andy Harvey, a former lecturer in sport science at Swansea University, writing for an outlet called Play the Game.

In the absence of robust scientific data, sports federations should take an ethical approach on how to include transgender athletes. Andy Harvey suggests developing benchmarks for tolerable unfairness and baselines for acceptable safety risks as a way to determine if transgender athletes should be included or not. 

That’s cool because the “tolerable” unfairness will have to be tolerated by women, not men. Obviously that’s an ethical approach. You may wonder why inclusion of men in women’s sports is more important and more “ethical” than fairness in women’s sports. I wonder too.

Transgender inclusion in sport is one of the more difficult issues facing international federations and national sports governing bodies. How transgender athletes can participate and compete in sports has become a vocal feature of the ‘culture wars’ that have ignited in many Western countries and elsewhere. 

Recently, I have participated in two conferences and one expert meeting on the topic and am convinced that sport’s rule makers need some assistance in working out how best to include trans athletes in their sports. This article sets out a brief guide to some of the relevant matters they should take into account when developing policy. 

Again, the careful deceit of saying “trans athletes” instead of “male athletes wanting to play women’s sports.” He admits it’s a “difficult issue” but carefully doesn’t say why it is.

There are good reasons why some sports are organised along separate sex/gender lines: as a population, men enjoy a physiological advantage over women for those sports that rely on strength, speed and power that would make mixed gender competitions untenable and unfair. Enabling women to compete against each other, rather than against men, leads to contests of greater fairness where participants have a chance of winning if they are good enough. 

Sex segregation has proven to be a powerful tool to expand participation in sports to include girls and women. However, the problem is that the world is not neatly divided up into binary categories of sex.

And there it is. He gives one whole paragraph to the admission that women need their own sports, and then moves on to the more interesting and gratifying business of explaining why it’s necessary to let men invade women’s sports anyway.

There’s a whole lot more, but nothing we don’t already know. It’s smug, insulting, manipulative; a cold, calculated “women don’t matter.”

Case dropped.

A government lawyer who faced legal action after expressing gender-critical views at work including commenting that only women menstruate has had the case against her dropped.

Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley works for an arm’s-length body affiliated to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and was due to appear at a tribunal this week accused of harassment.

The claimant has now officially withdrawn all accusations against Duemmer-Wrigley, who is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views.

That is, a civil service network that represents staff who are aware that people can’t change sex. Weird that it needs a network; weird that there are apparently staff who think people can change sex.

The network has more than 700 civil servant members across 50 government departments who support the belief that biological sex is binary and immutable.

It’s not a belief though, it’s just a dull obvious fact.

Is there an authoritative list of what we’re allowed to hate and what we’re not?

Are we allowed, for instance, to hate the trans ideology?

Are we allowed to hate misogyny? (That’s a pun of sorts, but it’s also what I mean. Are we allowed?)

Are we allowed to hate bad illiberal lawmaking?

Are we allowed to hate religions?

Are we allowed to hate tyrants?

Is it a hate crime to hate Donald Trump, and to say so, with details?

Is it a crime to hate Putin? Hamas? Netanyahu? Kim Jong Un?

Please advise.

But will they enforce it?

A New York judge on Tuesday issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial.

Judges have issued gag orders on Trump before, and he’s violated them, if I remember correctly. He’s violated them and gotten away with it.

The judge, Juan Merchan, cited Trump’s previous comments about him and others involved in the case, as well as a looming 15 April trial date in granting the prosecution’s request for a gag order. “It is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Merchan wrote.

Prosecutors had asked for the gag order citing what they called Trump’s “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about people involved in his legal cases.

As well as about people he dislikes, people who annoy him, people in his way, people who make him look small and stupid and without talent.

The order also bars Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about people involved in the trial, but it does not apply to Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, because he is an elected official. The gag order adds to restrictions put in place after Trump’s arraignment last April that prohibit him from using evidence in the case to attack witnesses.

He needs restrictions and gag orders because of who he is – a loudmouth bully who never shuts up unless someone stuffs a towel down his throat.

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

Contemporary academia in the US is blessed with a wealth of programs that start with the word “Critical” and end with the word “Studies”.   I hereby announce a new discipline which will interrogate the history, sociology, hermeneutics, and astrology of all these programs.  Our new discipline is called Critical Studies Studies, and its monographs will appear in our own scholarly journal, to be called Studies in Critical Studies Studies.  We intend this journal to take its place in high-powered scholarly publication, alongside such outstanding examples as Social Text, the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, the Journal of Progressive Policy & Practice, Hypatia, and Gender, Place & Culture.  We will require “positionality statements” with every submission—in fact, we welcome submissions that contain nothing but the authors’ positionality statements.  And, like our colleagues at similar leading journals, we will never quibble about such obsolete issues as repeated publication or duplicative language.  

We will soon advertise positions in this new discipline, with preference going to members of minoritized racial, ethnic, sexual, transgender, transanimal, and transvegetable communities.  In the interest of Inclusion, we will employ cluster hiring so as to staff our field exclusively with members of these communities.  Every member of a minoritized community will feel him-, her-, they-, zher-, or it-self to be fully majoritized in the exciting new field of Critical Studies Studies.  

Engineers say yeah that’s what happens.

To bridge experts, the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after being hit by a heavy cargo ship was as inevitable as it was devastating.

When a vessel as heavy as the Singapore-flagged Dali collides with such force against one of the span’s supercolumns, or piers, the result is the type of catastrophic, and heartbreaking, chain reaction that took place early Tuesday.

So maybe take all possible measures to keep that from happening? If you have a setup where massive container ships regularly go toddling under bridges, you’re gonna wanna make sure they don’t go oops on the way through.

No bridge pier could withstand being hit by a ship the size of the Dali, said Benjamin W. Schafer, a professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “These container ships are so huge,” Schafer said. “That main span has two supports. You can’t take one away.”

Those ships have grown and grown and grown. Remember the one that got stuck across the Suez canal, blocking shipping for days and days and days? It’s one of the new massive type.

Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, reviewed video footage and said there appeared to be at least two protective objects in the water next to the Key Bridge. The objects, known as “dolphins,” are supposed to protect maritime structures from being hit by vessels. But Dali, the container ship that struck the bridge, appeared to have come in “at an angle,” Firth said, which means the devices were unable to prevent the ship from striking the bridge, sending part of it tumbling into the water.

…

If the Dali had been traveling straight on instead of at an angle, Firth said, it probably would have hit the protective objects. And if there had been three or four vessel-protection objects around the bridge, the outcome might have been different, Firth said, adding that he expects lessons will be learned from Tuesday’s tragedy.

Firth noted that the bridge, which was built in 1977, was erected at a time when ships were not as big as they are now and the flow of traffic was not as busy. These days, structures are designed with better protective measures in place, he said, though he noted that even a brand-new bridge would have “come down in the same way” if it were hit by such a large vessel traveling at speed.

So make sure they don’t do that.

I’m wondering about the role of tugboats. One of their purposes is to keep larger vessels from crashing into things.

Schafer, who said he used to teach about the bridge in his Johns Hopkins classes since it was “one of the signature bridges of Baltimore,” called the collision “a huge infrastructure failure,” but not because of the bridge collapse. He said the shipping industry needs systems to keep a ship on track when it loses power.

Why yes. Fork out for some tugboat assistance when you have bridges to go under.

I was accidentally awake in the middle of the night, as I often am, so I saw that clip of the bridge disintegrating soon after it happened. It grabbed my attention rather. I live in a port city and see container ships chugging in and out all the time. Seattle is also a very bridge-having city, because of being so up and down, so seeing a massive bridge go from normal to in the water in pieces in a matter of seconds is a shocker.

CNN is updating:

The DALI container ship that struck Baltimore’s Key Bridge dropped its anchor prior to impact as part of its emergency procedures after losing propulsion, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said in a statement Tuesday.

It apparently happened insanely fast.

Here’s a timeline of how the incident unfolded. All times are ET:

• 1:24 a.m.: The DALI container ship’s lights flicker as it travels down Patapsco River, according to video from the scene.
• 1:26 a.m.: The ship begins to change course toward the Key Bridge’s pillar, CNN analysis shows.
• 1:26 to 1:27 a.m.: The ships lights continue to flicker on and off, video of the ship shows.
• 1:27 a.m.: The ship hits the Key Bridge, quickly causing it to collapse.

Three minutes.

An emergency call from the container ship gave officials time to begin closing the Francis Scott Key Bridge to vehicle traffic before the ship slammed into it, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said on Tuesday.

“I’m thankful for the folks, once the warning came up and once notification came up that there was a mayday, who literally by being able to stop cars from coming over the bridge — these people are heroes. They saved lives last night,” Moore said.

I guess Seattle is fortunate in having no bridges for container ships to go under.

The BBC is so infuriating on this subject.

More than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they would be uncomfortable with transgender women competing in female categories in their sport.

That’s such a bad, stupid, misleading, unfair, sneery lede.

Yes, duh, elite sportswomen don’t want men competing in female categories in their sport. Why would they?! The issue, as always, is not being “transgender” but being male. But the Beeb just will not admit that, ever, so instead it solemnly reports that sportswomen are creepy nasty bigots for feeling “uncomfortable” about their darling trans sisters.

But many have expressed fears over sharing their opinion publicly because of concerns they would be seen as discriminatory.

Says the BBC, having just framed its own reporting on this so that the women are seen as discriminatory. It’s not until the fourteenth paragraph that the Beeb admits that the reason for the nasty women’s lack of comfort is “physical performance advantages” – and even then it does it with sneers and nudges and at the end a denial.

In the debate surrounding the inclusion of transgender athletes, many argue that transgender women should not compete in elite women’s sport because of any physical performance advantages they may retain – but others argue that sport should be more inclusive.

See that? It can’t even stand to admit, in the fourteenth paragraph, that men have “any” physical advantages they “may” retain, without adding the rider about how decent people think sport should be more “inclusive” – of men in women’s sport.

They make me want to hit them with a brick.

H/t Mostly Cloudy

Originally a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany Room.

The Trump appeals court reprieve really bothers me. Here’s a take by David Graham in The Atlantic, which argues that, even though Trump routinely exploits legal procedures to get out of justice, it’s right of the appeals court to lower his bond and grant him yet more extensions. It would be “unjust” for Trump to lose his ill-gotten assets if he succeeds in getting this case dismissed:

But then imagine that a few weeks from now, Trump won his appeal, convincing the court that Engoron’s finding was incorrect, or that the calculated amount of the penalty was unfair. Trump would have no way to recover the assets he’d been forced to unload at fire-sale prices. It doesn’t take any affection for Trump to see why a court would want to avoid such an outcome, and why—even if Trump would still be filthy rich—this would be unjust punishment

In other words, in the face of Trump’s brazen abuse of legal procedures to get out of justice, if we lean into offering him more legal leniency, the very kind which he keeps using to his advantage, it will in the end prove that the legal system works just as it’s supposed to. The idea is, give him every possible chance we can, so we can show the world that when he eventually loses, there can be no question that he lost fair and square.

The problem is, we’re not trying to use Trump as an example to demonstrate how noble the legal system is. That’s a foolish idea. Right now we need to use the legal system to urgently stop a dangerous man from destroying democracy. Trump and his followers don’t care about fair-and-square; they won’t ever be reasonable. The judgment against him is plainly reasonable and the odds of a successful appeal are minimal. That’s grounds to take hard action, now. He will rage about procedure no matter what you do moving forward, so stop trying to appease him. There’s no fucking point in saying please and thank you to an angry bull. It won’t stop him from charging.

This is exactly the kind of cowardice we saw when the Germans were puzzling over how to stop Hitler’s brazen power grab in 1932. In the face of someone recklessly trampling over the institutions that uphold a democratic society, the instinct to lean harder into process, procedure, decorum and restraint is perhaps understandable, but it’s all wrong. That logic ignores the asymmetry at play when you’re dealing with a corrupt narcissist.

Democratic systems keep failing at dealing with raging bulls because too many individuals within “the system” are cowards. What people like the appeals court panel who granted Trump reprieve today and the SEC who greenlit his blatantly illegal stock scam are doing is passing the buck: they’re preemptively ceding to Trump the benefit of the procedural doubt because they’re scared to do their jobs, to uphold the rules, when it’s their turn to step into the ring and face the bullhorns. They tell themselves that the system will eventually work and justice will prevail, because viewing “the system” as an abstract force for good is easier than facing the fact that “the system” is only ever as just as they, the tangible, fallible individuals it’s made of, are willing to act under duress.

Trump has lately taken to comparing himself to Al Capone. That’s an apt comparison. It took Eliot Ness and his Untouchables to bring down Capone. Ness recognized right away that playing strictly by the book was no use after corruption had reached the threshold where it was threatening the survival of the system of law and justice itself. Extreme circumstances sometimes call for extreme measures.

And Trump has shown very clearly that today, more than the justice system is broken — the entire democractic system is ill-equipped to defend against this kind of tyrant.

But don’t worry, says David Graham. There’s plenty of time to play nicey-nice; it’ll all get sorted out down the road:

As for Trump, he may just be delaying that outcome—but that’s another problem for him to try to wriggle, cat-like, out of on another day.

No, David. We don’t have the luxury of time. There may not be any legal system left by the time the credulously pedantic legal idealists are done extending Donald’s rope. The time for passing the buck is over. This is a tyrant and if there are opportunities within the legal system to stop him, we must grab them now while we still can.

We should have brought the Untouchables in to clean this up years ago.

More from the women in sport front:

All this energy – conferences! more conferences! yet more conferences! – expended on getting more men into women’s sports. Why? Trans rights could be a thing without that, after all. Why is there such an obsession with ruining sports for women? If you pause and step back and look at it, it seems just spiteful. Just done for the sake of ruining things for women. Just because that many men really hate women and want to expend a lot of money and energy just to trash their sports.

It’s not a pleasant thought.

Bahahahahaha

Remember – from a few hours ago – the lanyard doctor? Who said “My work lanyard gets a lot of comments, and people spotting something on it and asking about it has started a lot of conversations over the years.”? Well, sometimes Twitter people step up.

SERIOUSLY??????

A New York appeals court on Monday paused for 10 days a massive civil business fraud judgment against Donald Trump — and sharply reduced to $175 million the bond amount he will have to post to obtain a longer stay of that award.

The ruling came the same day that New York Attorney General Letitia James would have been allowed to start seizing the former president’s real estate assets and bank accounts to satisfy the $454 million-and-rising judgment after he failed to obtain an appeal bond.

James is prevented from doing so — for now — due to the order from the five-judge panel in Manhattan Supreme Court’s appellate division.

…

In its order Monday, the appeals court stayed trial Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision that had barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of a New York company for three years, and that had barred him and the corporate defendants from applying for loans from New York lenders for the same period. The order also stayed Engoron’s judge’s ruling that had barred Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, from serving as officers and directors of New York companies for two years.

But the appeals court panel rejected a request to block enforcement of Engoron’s order extending and enhancing the role of a financial watchdog the judge had installed to monitor the Trump Organization’s finances.

We’re doomed.

H/t Artymorty

What was that we were just saying about using honest language to talk about women and sports and men invading women’s sports?

THAT.

I’m so tired of being pushed hard to understand why trans women must come first. I’m so enraged at being constantly told that men who claim to be trans are the Most Vulnerable, most persecuted, most tragic, most fragile, most in danger.

BBC Sport tells us, with a puzzled frown, that female athletes are not always entirely ecstatic to lose prizes to men who pretend to be women.

More than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they would be uncomfortable with transgender women competing in female categories in their sport.

Or to put it in ordinary language, more than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they don’t want men competing in their sport. Well duh: of course they don’t. Women’s sport is for women.

Over the past couple of years, a raft of sports have banned transgender women from competing in elite women’s sport because of concerns.

Because they are men. They have the male physical advantage, and they are a danger to women.

Among the concerns from athletes was that having transgender women in female categories was like “going back in time and putting women at the bottom of the pile again”, and that it created an “unfair playing field” and could be “harmful”.

All of which is blindingly obvious.

In a statement to BBC Sport, sports minister Stuart Andrew said: “When it comes to the participation of transgender athletes in competitive sport, I firmly believe that fairness has to be the primary consideration.

“I continue to work closely with sport governing bodies to ensure clear direction is in place that shows compassion to all athletes, whilst protecting the integrity of women’s sport.”

Why is there any need for “compassion” for men who are trying to invade women’s sport? How about saving the compash for women being cheated? The men cheating don’t deserve any compassion.

Oooooooooh an all-female film festival!

Sheffield’s first all female film festival

Ok then! Mark your calendars: it’s November 24 at the Showroom Cinema.

Highlighting the work of women and women’s achievements in all incarnations of cinema. Inspired by events showcasing films made by women (such as Scotland’s Femspectives), we want to recentre the focus of film history and the future of the industry on projects creatively led by women. Sheffield has a rich cultural history and we hope to further develop the city’s reputation as a hub for excellence supporting diversity in film in the North of England.

The aim of FFStival is to provide an intersectional platform highlighting the work of women, female presenting and non binary people’s achievements in all incarnations of cinema.

Oh. Thud. So it’s not an all female film festival. It’s that other thing: the sneering taunting smirking claim to be all-female while in fact including men. It’s not an all female festival but rather a calculated insult to women. How cute. How “intersectional.”

Aims:

In line with other similarly inclusive events, we aim to:

• Provide a platform for films made by female-identifying and non-binary people, accessible to everyone. 
• Provide a safe space for discussion that recognizes differences in experience, outlooks, privilege and barriers. 
• Create a place for honest and open discussion, learning and debate while acknowledging similarities and the need for solidarity.
• Highlight marginalized and underprivileged voices. 

So it turns out it’s not just not all-female, it’s all-not-female. It’s not about women, it’s about men who pretend to be women and think they’re “marginalized” and “underprivileged” because we know they’re men.

Primum non nocere: First do no harm.

That plus the frenzied messaging. I would feel extremely uneasy with all that hectoring from a doctor. I think I would feel that way whether I agreed with the content or not, because it’s so…all about Dr Opinions instead of about what Dr Opinions is supposed to be doing.

Here is the lovely man talking lovingly about himself.

Me me me all about me – just what one wants in a doctor.

Even worse:

“#VisibleAllyship” she says – well yes, it is very visible, and is that really what medical staff are there for?

But also…

So the question becomes why are they allowed to wear them?

Oh yay, another dude wins a women’s race, how heartwarming.

Congratulations Kylie Not All That Small!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Seen using a loud hailer.

To be fair, events like the one “Dr.” Ikharia* was protesting do indeed represent a threat; a threat to her credibility and livelihood. Not that anyone claiming to be “trans, nonbinary” should have much credibility left to defend, let alone a “doctor.” But she is right to see this conference as a direct rebuke of what she’s doing. If the tide is indeed turning, then “gender affirming” clinicians are at risk of being left high and dry, without the institutional support to which they have grown accustomed.

Dr Ronx, 40, presents alongside twin doctors Chris and Xand van Tulleken on the popular children’s health show Operation Ouch!

Last night, Stephanie Davies-Arai, of campaign group Transgender Trend, said: ‘A CBBC presenter should not be involved in protests against evidence-based medical care for children. That Dr Ronx led a protest that prevented attendees from accessing the conference is a serious public order infraction.’

Back up a moment; what’s a “trans, non-binary ‘doctor’” doing on a show dealing with children’s health care in the first place? She has invested herself in a delusional ideology that causes harm to children. There are thousands of doctors you could have chosen instead; why is she being given this platform at all? Would they put an anti-vaxxer on the air as a host? How about a homeopath? Would they allow an anorexic person who is not undergoing treatment to present to children? What about a cutter? If you’ve got a show aimed at children designed to get them interested in health and medicine, it would behoove you to make sure that your on-air personalities are not going to undermine your putative core mission of children’s health.

But then again, being the BBC, it’s possible the rot is deeper than one presenter. If the execitives in charge of the show believe in the efficacy of and need for “gender affirming care,” then there’s clearly more than one person needing to be sacked.

Interlude

Imagine a world where, very recently, influential lobbyists have made back room deals wherein arson was made legal. It wasn’t called “arson” of course. It was called “pyro-renewal,” “incendiary remodeling,” or amongst the trendy, a “hot makeover.” Surprisingly, many fire departments and fire-fighters jumped on this burning bandwagon, offering their services to torch people’s homes. Soon there was lots of media coverage about “hot makeovers” and how they were revoltionizing urban life. Movies and television series had storylines devoted to it; advertisers used burning buildings in more and more of their pitches, with happy, cheering crowds gathered around the blazes, dancing in the firelight.

Not everyone saw the benefits of this move, and some even protested against it, but those who had brokered the arrangement, and those who benefitted from it, were able to paint these critics as unenlightened fossils who lived in the past, who were holding back development, and were doomed to be on the wrong side of history. Many who doubted the wisdom of these new developments, who had always thought that this strange mixture of fire and architecture was not a good idea, were nonetheless cowed into silence. Those who never wavered in their vocal opposition found themselves threatened, bullied, and dismissed from their jobs.

Reports would crop up now and then that threatened the happy, burning narrative; people whose homes had been burned down by mistake; others who had been pressured into it, still more who now regretted the decision to burn it all down. Some who had been silenced by fear found their voices again, and joined with those who, though silenced and sidetracked, had never remained silent. More began to question what they’d been told, having never thought about the issue before they themselves were affected by it. Studies were undertaken, inquiries launched. Pointed questions were asked about the fire service’s involvement in burning buildings down when, traditionally, their role had been to promote fire prevention, and to put fires out, rather than start them for money.

The above is a fantasy, and a far-fetched one at that. But not as outlandish as it would seem on first reading. How many people twenty years ago would have predicted that we would have descended into a Swiftian and Kafkaesue nightmare, where the mutilation and sterilization of children “for their own good” was promoted and celebrated? Our society might not be eating its children, but it’s doing what amounts to the next best thing.

Dr Ronx said: ‘To see people who are ‘professionals’ tut, frown and take pictures of us as if we are the enemy whilst accessing the conference was not nice. The intellectualisation of trans bodies frames our existence as debatable.’

In the fable above, Ikharia would be an arsonist defending the value and honour of her profession at a time when both were being questioned. It’s natural that she should feel threatened by the sudden scrutiny of her practice in this world; on the other hand, it is right that she should be put out of business. It’s not about being “nice” to her, it’s about safeguarding. Is it too much to think that that uneasiness and discomfort might be a tint bit of guilt trying to be heard above the amplified bravado of your self-righteousness? As far as children’s health care goes, she is indeed an “enemy.” A pious, deluded enemy, but a danger to children regardless. To ther person tied to the stake, it makes no difference if the Inquisitor truly believes that they are saving their victim’s immortal soul; the fire still burns.

If she can’t see the harm in her patient’s flattened breasts, displaced ribs, and breathing difficulties, then she has no business being a doctor. She herself has already intellectualized away the injury she is causing to the body in front of her in favour of the well-being of the “gender identity” it supposedly houses. It might be mind over matter, but it’s the body that suffers. That body is not a shell or a husk, she is her patient, whole and entire. She is not a project for Ikhaira to try to turn into something she is not, and never can be. She can’t stop her patient from being female any more than she can stop her from being a mammal. But she’s willing to burn that body down in order to “save” the imaginary “identity” she believes is trapped inside. Perhaps being “trans non-binary” herself, she finds it hard not to take the criticism personally. She might feel her own “identity,” ,and not just her practice, is being questioned. But Ikhaira’s critics are not debating her “existence”; they’re just asking her to put down the torch.

*Since Ikharia has put scare quotes around the “professionalism” of the conference attendees, I’ve extended the same courtesy by putting scare quotes around her “doctorhood.” Sauce, goose, gander.

Willoughby sees what isn’t there.

It would be funny if it weren’t so disgusting. A bunch of smiling women, and loony man who hates women sees “psycho coldness.”