Tumultuous trans troublemaker Jessica Yaniv was caught on camera pummeling a reporter Monday in B.C..
In a widely circulated video, Yaniv, 32, is captured battering Rebel Media reporter Keean Bexte outside a Surrey courthouse.
But that’s not enough! There always has to be more!
Later, Yaniv allegedly confronted Post Millennial’s Amy Eileen Hamm, accusing the reporter of taking photos of [him]* in a women’s washroom.
Cops dutifully searched Hamm’s phone. None of the alleged photos were there.
What actually happened is that Hamm saw Yaniv as she (Hamm) entered the washroom, and she promptly backed out. Yaniv is now claiming (on Twitter) that she sexually assaulted him.
*Media outlets really need to stop calling Yaniv “her.” He’s a large violent aggressive man who assaults people as they film him doing so, and tells lies about women who try to use the women’s room while he’s lurking in it.
Dawn Ennis, trans woman and Managing Editor of http://Outsports.com, explains why trans woman CeCé Telfer was such a slam dunk choice for athlete of the year:
You're right: We chose CeCé because she made history, and: Because she excelled at her sport, and: Because she did so despite incredible adversity, and: Because she exemplified what it means to be an outstanding female athlete.
They chose a man who “identifies as” a woman as female athlete of the year because it’s such an excellent poke in the eye to all female athletes, and because they’re all about the male entitlement, and because they like taking away the few prizes women are eligible for, and because they’re malicious shits.
Just in case anyone needs reminding 🤦 🤦♀️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♀️
Trans rights = human rights. Trans rights = human rights. Trans rights = human rights. Trans rights = human rights. Trans rights = human rights. Trans rights = human rights.#TransRightsAreHumanRights✊🏾
Human rights are human rights. What are “trans rights” exactly? If they mean trans people should be free from persecution and oppression, then sure, of course trans rights are human rights, just as other branches-of-human rights are. But if they mean special “rights” crafted specifically for trans people, then it depends. The right not to be bullied for wearing “the wrong” clothes? Sure. The right to force everyone to agree you are the other sex? No.
Why do you advocate for single sex provision in India and Africa but not in the West?
Here at 52 mins aprox @joswinson compares a lesbian entering a women’s refuge as a risk comparable with someone who is biologically male. I’m not sure she grasps why women need the Equality Act.
The “here” is a podcast by Andrew Marr, which is UK-only so I can’t listen; Jo Swinson is the Lib Dem Leader. She says lesbians are a risk to women in shelters just as men are.
What happened to everyone’s brain? Lesbians are not a risk to straight women! Just as straight women are not a risk to lesbians. That’s not how any of this works.
I’m so angry at this that I actually feel sick. A supposed ‘leader’ of the ‘liberal’ democrats telling ME I’m as big a risk as a man if I need to access a women’s refuge. This is an attack on an already marginalised group who have scant support when experiencing domestic abuse.
It used to be a marginalized group. Now we understand that the only truly marginalized group is Tranz Laydeez. Women, especially lesbians, gay men, people of color, all are simply oozing privilege compared to Tranz Laydeez.
I was pleasantly surprised when I read Labour’s manifesto. Not only did the party promise to end ‘mixed-sex wards’ in hospitals but they also vowed to “ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.”
Soon after the manifesto was published yesterday, a number of feminists tweeted relief and praise about the pledge. It marked a significant shift from Labour’s 2017 manifesto in which the party promised to: ‘…reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to ensure they protect Trans people by changing the protected characteristic of ‘gender assignment’ to ‘gender identity’ and remove other outdated language such as ‘transsexual.’”
She wondered how it had happened, but not for long.
And then Dawn Butler and her Momentum pals began to tweet their own version of reality. This was done, I assume, either in an attempt to pacify the mob, or even worse, to pressure the party into doing something they have not officially committed to.
“UK Labour will reform the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people. We will remove outdated language from the Equalities Act. And there is no way spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people. That is illegal and it will stay illegal.”
Labour activist Ellie Mae O’Hagan then claimed that Butler’s rewrite is the Labour party “official position”, suggesting that the Equality Act is illegal.
O’Hagan’s linked tweet is [cough] not entirely straightforward:
To be clear, I spoke to someone directly at Labour comms to obtain this statement. I have had absolute confirmation that this is the party’s official position.
What does “someone directly at Labour comms” mean?
I’m delighted Labour has confirmed that “single-sex spaces” mentioned in its manifesto are trans inclusive, and that the party is committed to trans rights. See statement below from a Labour spokesperson:
Note the lack of name and source, but people tracked it down and found it’s not from a Labour official at all but from an LGBT&&& “activist” who doesn’t speak for the Labour party. Sly. It’s almost as if they don’t have good arguments so they have to resort to tricks.
“This is now a matter of frontbenchers and senior staff over-riding the decision of the party at Clause 5. Unprecedented, in my view. If they can do it on this, they can do it on anything and there’s no point in having a democratic policy formulation process.”
Another suggested that neither Corbyn or Butler really understand either the issues or the implications, saying that:
“Neither the top brass nor the likes of Butler understood what they were agreeing when they overruled the 2017 manifesto on sex-based rights, and now she and her Momentum mates are trying to override it because Butler has been called out by trans-activists. She can’t think in two dimensions, and is very opportunist, playing to a crowd.”
Another brave man brags on Twitter about sending another Letter to another Institution telling it not to “platform” a woman. In this case the man is one Olly Thorne who has a popular YouTube channel on philosophy.
I’ve just sent this letter to the Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, concerning their decision to platform Kathleen St*ck at their Annual Debate. Those of us working in philosophy must stand up for our trans colleagues and students.
That is, those of us men working in philosophy must silence our female colleagues and students.
I’m writing in sadness rather than in anger to caution you that the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s decision to host Kathleen Stock at the Annual Debate may irrevocably damage the Institute’s reputation.
Yeah right. He’s writing in self-righteous spite and misogyny, is what he’s writing in.
Blah blah blah her lamentable history of comments about transgender people, in particular comments smuggled in under the guise of celebrating polite academic disagreement. Blah blah blah condemned blah blah widely condemned blah. Her inclusion at the Annual Debate will no doubt tarnish the reputation of the Royal Institute of Philosophy in like manner.
He says, energetically going to work to make that happen. “Hey, Dr Baggini, if you platform Stock your reputation will be mud, which I know because I’m going to be throwing mud at it myself. See? I’m doing it now!”
It is of course Doctor Stock’s right blah blah but blah blah might I suggest as an alternate speaker blah Talia Bettcher blah To use a literary analogy blah arsonists blah arsonists blah arsonists
If nothing else, at least let me appeal to mercenary practicality by telling you that this decision will result in significant negative PR for the Royal Institute of Philosophy from which it may find it very difficult to recover.
“How do I know? Because I’ll see to it! As I am right now by writing this pile of shit and posting it on Twitter!”
The gall of it is absolutely breathtaking. The letter is badly, stupidly, crudely written. I kind of doubt that Dr Baggini will read it and nod solemnly and tell Kathleen Stock he is going to swap Talia Bettcher for her.
A demonstration in support of trans rights will be held today in response to a meeting of self-described feminist group Woman’s Place UK (WPUK). WPUK was established in 2017 to oppose the trans rights enshrined in changes to the Gender Recognition Act, and has been widely condemned as transphobic.
The well is poisoned so carefully from the outset. “in support of trans rights” – because what kind of fiend could oppose someone’s rights? “self-described feminist group” – but we know better, don’t we, wink wink nudge nudge. “to oppose the trans rights” – there they are! They’re the kind of fiend who oppose someone’s rights! “widely condemned as transphobic” – the way we are condemning right now, with lies and innuendo. Pass it on.
Trans Action Oxford, who are organising the demo, decided not to directly protest the WPUK event, but instead hope the demonstration will show solidarity with the trans community. They said that rather than “play[ing] into their narrative of false victimhood, we are looking to re-centre trans voices, and to discuss trans issues alongside cis allies in a respectful and tolerant manner.”
Because women are stupid tiresome bitches, while the trans community is awesome. (The people at Trans Action Oxford need to up their game though – they mean “their false narrative of victimhood, not “their narrative of false victimhood.” Let’s get those clichés accurate.)
Some students are particularly concerned about the participation of Selina Todd, a Tutorial Fellow in History at St Hilda’s College, in the WPUK panel. Todd has previously faced criticism for her views on trans rights, but has defended her views on the basis of academic freedom.
I doubt that it’s quite that simple. I doubt she thinks her views are all wrong but defends them on the basis of academic freedom. I suspect she also defends them on the basis that they’re neither wrong nor hate-mongering, contrary to what “activists” would like everyone to think.
Todd has published her views on her website, where she states she believes that “being a woman rests both on certain biological facts and on the experience of living in the world as a woman, from birth, an experience that is shaped by particular kinds of oppressions.”
Ooh, gee, that’s what I believe too. Weird, huh?
One student at the college, who wished to remain anonymous, emphasised their concern about how this could impact students. They said: “St Hilda’s college and the History faculty should reassess their position in continuing to hire Professor Todd.
“How can a transgender student feel comfortable with the knowledge that their college believes that academic free speech is more important than their existence? Professor Todd has continually made this argument about freedom of academic speech which is not valid.”
But how does “their existence” come into it? Todd is not arguing that trans people (or anyone else) should not exist. The issue isn’t their existence, it’s their self-description, which 1. is wrong and 2. is incompatible with the self-description of, for instance, women, who are also a subordinated group.
A member of Trans Action Oxford also criticised Todd’s role, telling Cherwell: “I think it’s clear that there’s no place in Oxford for bigotry like Selina Todd’s. Her rhetoric is obviously harmful to the lives of trans people across the country, but it’s also worth stressing the impact on any trans students she might teach.
“Studying at Oxford is hard enough without your tutors denying your right to exist, and it’s vital to students’ welfare that they don’t have to face this kind of hatred.”
There again – she’s not denying anyone’s right to exist.
If they can only make their case by telling these stupid abusive lies, how good can their case be?
Todd denied claims that she was transphobic, telling Cherwell: “The claims that I am transphobic or ‘deny’ anyone’s existence are groundless and defamatory. I am very proud to be speaking at the meeting called by A Woman’s Place UK. Woman’s Place UK is not transphobic.
“Given that sex harassment affects many female students and staff in UK higher education, and the sex pay gap within higher education is higher than the national average, I consider sex discrimination a pressing issue.”
How very dare she, yeah?
I’ve been seeing many friends on Twitter saying today that Todd’s employers are under heavy pressure to fire her.
Jolyon Maugham QC, who will never find himself in the situation of a woman locked up with a predatory man who claims to be a woman, weighs in with his QC opinion on the subject.
There’s a need for great care when arguing for the need to protect ‘safe spaces’. To contend ‘X, member of group, is a criminal and so you should fear all in that group’ is to adopt a trope favoured by bigots down the ages. 1/3
Yes. This has happened and the rapist was called *Karen* White. Now returned to male prison. If we raise this we are called transphobic. But we will raise it. Stand with feminist women against these attacks on your rights. Go to a @Womans_Place_UK meeting. Find out. Push back.
The Equality Act (and the very provision Jean cites) talks of “proportionate” measures to achieve “legitimate” aims. This languages recognises the need carefully to balance conflicting rights and dignities. Trans men and women, like cis men and women are entitled to respect. 2/3
How real is the risk? What is necessary to safeguard against it? How might these safeguards be operated to protect the rights and dignities of all? These questions are more likely to generate policy responses that achieve that balance than broad assertion. 3/3
It’s not a risk he will ever face, and that could be why he finds it so easy to dismiss, minimize, shrug off.
[T]he Toronto Public Library (the well-known free-speech-mongering fascist hive) was the scene of great turbulence when Meghan Murphy (feminist scholar, writer) rented a room in one of its divisions to give a talk on gender identity and its various legal and other implications.
Now people living in less enlightened cities than Toronto might think that a civilized, qualified woman — feminist, too — speaking on the subject of women, in the quiet dignity of a public library, to people (many of them women) who wished to hear her, was the very definition of adult public discourse, an illustration of a healthy civic climate, and a very fine addition to the intellectual state of democracy.
Further, and this is a key point, the very consideration that the public library system of a city was obligingly renting a room for discussion and debate was proof, if any were needed, that TPL was living up to the great traditions of libraries since they came into the world, of providing a haven for intellect, exchange and debate.
A haven for TERFs you mean.
Immediately, the cry went up from always alert trans-activists that the library system was hosting “hate speech,” that it was a place where “bigotry” had found a home, that as a publicly funded institution it had no “right” to supply a “space” for “transphobia.” To judge from the volume and intensity of the outcry, one would believe that should this Megan Murphy give her 40-minute talk to a hundred people who wanted to hear it, Toronto was on a slide to become the Rome of Mussolini, liberal culture would expire, and it would scarcely be safe to go out at night.
…
As for the embattled Meghan Murphy, the most tireless label plastered on her — in news reports, sour columns and in the howling street — was that she was a “self-described,” “self-designated” feminist. That she couldn’t therefore be a “real” feminist. The careless mouths making that charge were standing in a thunderstorm of irony and not noticing they were getting drowned in the downpour.
What is the axle on which trans-identity turns? … Give me a minute here … I’ve got to check … Oh, yes. It’s self-identification. Self-description. Per exemplum, Ms. Yaniv, late of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and now bearing its fines, “self-identified” as a woman. That same self-identification gave Yaniv the “standing” to harass more than a dozen immigrant women.
Surely Meghan Murphy has a little more ground than self-identified Jessica Yaniv to assert the less troublous category of “feminist.” Feminist is — hold on — not even a biological state. Feminism doesn’t ask other people to wax its particles. It is an intellectual orientation.
In other words it’s a category it does make sense to “identify” as or with or into. It can still be debatable, we can still say it makes no sense to call yourself socialist or conservative if your views don’t align with your chosen designation, but it’s not pure childish make-believe.
But our brave trans-activists want to claim their “right” to nullify Murphy’s actual work, education and experience as a feminist because — by their angry tally — she just says she’s a feminist. I suggest that using “self-described” or “self-identified” as a term of scorn and rebuke is not the ideal tactic for a movement built on self-identification and self-description.
A world where Rachel McKinnon is a woman because he says so but Meghan Murphy is not a feminist even though she says she is and countless feminists agree with her is confusing at best.
A Canadian library has been criticised for refusing to cancel an event hosting a feminist with controversial views on transgender rights.
And misogynists have been criticized for trying to shut down and silence a feminist with reasonable views on women’s rights. We can all play this agentless “Xs have been criticized” game but it’s a bit cowardly and vague and uninformative so let’s not. People who think unspecified “trans rights” are always and everywhere more important than women’s rights are trying to shut women up when they object. That’s a more direct way of putting it.
Ms Murphy says she wants to ensure the safety of women in places like female prisons, women’s refuges and changing rooms.
In Canada, she has spoken against a bill that amended Canada’s rights act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender expression and identity over concerns it could undermine women’s rights by eroding their “safe spaces”.
“Under current trans activist doctrine we’re not allowed to exclude a man from a woman’s space if he says that he’s female and I find that quite dangerous and troubling,” she told the BBC.
…
Judith Taylor, from University of Toronto’s Women and Gender Studies Institute, calls Ms Murphy “basically a provocateur”.
She thinks that Ms Murphy, in asserting the rights of one group “is implicitly trying to sideline another” and disagrees with Ms Murphy that safe spaces and diversity cannot coexist.
“The more that we start embracing that diversity the better our learning and the better our strength,” she said.
You can tell what Murphy is saying. Taylor? Not so much. Ok she disagrees with Murphy that safe spaces and diversity cannot coexist, but what does she suggest? How for instance do we know which trans women really do think of themselves as women and really do just want to hang out with other women, and which want to invade and usurp women’s spaces? How do we know which trans women it’s safe to trust and which it’s not? And, more basic, what do we do about the fact that feminist women may want to gather to talk about women’s issues and women’s rights, as opposed to the issues of men who want to be women? What do we do about the fact that those are different things? What do we do if we don’t want to give up on the whole idea of being able to talk with and organize with women around issues that affect women? What if we don’t want to share everything with men who feel, or claim to feel, girly? What do we do about the fact that we’re told to shove over in a way that no other oppressed group is? What do we do with our suspicions that that’s because misogyny really is that deeply rooted? Do we just shrug it off and resign ourselves to including some men in every single thing we do? Is that what Taylor thinks we have to “embrace”?
People exiting a speaking event at a small Toronto Public Library branch were met with a chorus of boos as they descended the staircase at its front entrance on Tuesday evening. The branch has been at the centre of a firestorm over the line between free speech and hate speech.
Except that Meghan Murphy isn’t offering “hate speech.” It’s not “hate speech” to say that men are not women.
Hundreds flocked to the TPL’s Palmerston branch in protest after weeks of heated debate over the library’s decision to allow writer Meghan Murphy to speak Tuesday at an event put on by a group dubbed Radical Feminists Unite.
Or, less sneeringly, by a group called Radical Feminists Unite.
Funny old world when people on the left are accusing radical feminists of hate speech.
LGBTQ advocates have been harshly critical of the library’s decision to let Ms. Murphy speak, and they launched petitions, a phone campaign and a flurry of social-media posts preceding the protest, which took place at the same time as the speaking event.
Because they think men can magically become women just by saying so, and that it’s evil and “hate speech” to think they can’t. That’s how weird things have become.
“I hope that the Toronto Public Library realizes that trans people matter,” Gwen Benaway, a transgender poet who won a Governor-General Award on Tuesday, said at the protest. “Hosting transphobic speakers that promote intolerance in Canadian society is damaging and against the work of the Toronto Public Library.”
But Meghan doesn’t “promote intolerance.” That’s a lie.
Also Tuesday, drag artist duo Fay and Fluffy, who hold a popular storytelling event for children at several TPL branches, announced they have severed ties with the library over their decision to play host to Ms. Murphy.
Again with the slyly subtly denigrating word choice – the library didn’t “play host” to Meghan, it rented her a room for an event.
“I could not call myself an ally and fighter for my community if I continue a relationship with a space that will host someone who is actively fighting to take away my legal rights as a human,” wrote Kaleb Robertson, one half of Fay and Fluffy, on the duo’s Instagram page. “It’s heartbreaking to be put in this position by a place I have loved since I was a child.”
Meghan is not fighting to take away Robertson’s or anyone else’s legal rights as a human.
Despite the fierce opposition and public rebukes from prominent figures, including Toronto Mayor John Tory, city librarian Vickery Bowles backed the event because the TPL has “an obligation to protect free speech.” She said earlier this month that Ms. Murphy’s event was not in violation of the library’s room-booking policy, which allows the library to cancel events that “[promote] discrimination.”
That’s interesting – so it is a substance argument as well as a free speech argument. That’s how I see it too – they can say no to the KKK because the KKK does promote discrimination (and exclusion and violence). Radical feminists who think men are men are not comparable to the KKK.
Ms. Bowles also said that Ms. Murphy has never been charged with or convicted of hate speech. Toronto city councillors tabled a motion Tuesday calling for stricter room-booking policies at TPL branches, to “ensure that activities enabling discrimination and tolerance, including transphobia and transphobic activity, are given all due consideration as a human rights violation.”
So if that passes the TPL will be refusing to rent rooms to radical feminists in the future. Nice job, Toronto city councillors.
It still amazes me how quickly misogyny has come roaring back, and how shameless people are at proclaiming it.
Two hours before the event, a crowd of about 100 gathered in the heart of Toronto’s gay village for a preprotest rally organized by Pride Toronto and The 519, a local LGBTQ resource centre.
A mural depicting a diversity of LGBTQ people towered over the crowd as former Ontario MPP Cheri DiNovo led them in a chant proclaiming that “trans rights are human rights.”
Rah rah rah, but what are trans rights? What rights are specific to trans people and not to anyone else? Are they all “rights” to be endorsed and “validated” as being of the sex that they’re not? Because if so, that’s a very peculiar “right,” and one that’s in tension with other people’s rights.
So last night at the Philosophy Dept of @unimelb this talk happened https://philevents.org/event/show/74566; and this was the charming, reasonable response from protestors…
“TERF GRAVES ARE GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOMS” – aka we piss on your graves, bitches.
The ACLU is worked up over the “right” of male people who claim to be trans to compete against female people in sports, again.
Terry and Andraya are two transgender girls who are following their dreams as star runners in Connecticut. But as athletes on the track, they face harmful discrimination instead of accolades.
We’re fighting alongside Terry and Andraya for our right to live as our authentic selves.
Live as your “authentic selves” all you like; knock yourselves out. But that doesn’t translate to mean you get to live as your physically inauthentic self at the expense of people who are oppressed and marginalized on the basis of their physically authentic bodies, aka girls and women.
Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood are two transgender girls who are following their dreams as star runners in Connecticut. But as champions on the track, they face harmful attacks rather than the accolades they deserve. While Andraya and Terry’s teammates and coaches support them, some cisgender athletes want to keep them out of girls’ sports.
Let’s not forget that Miller and Yearwood were not star runners when they competed against other boys. They are “star runners” only when they compete against girls. They’re “following their dreams” by switching to competing against a class of people who can’t beat them, because of differences in skeleton, muscles, lung capacity, and the like. What they face are not “harmful attacks” but objections to the fact that they’re cheating the girls they’re competing against.
And I’m pretty sure the ACLU is lying when it says their teammates support them. I’m pretty sure we’ve heard from some who decidedly don’t.
Transgender people have the right to participate in sports consistent with who they are, just like anyone. Denying this right is pure discrimination.
But it’s not who they are. It’s who they aren’t. They’re not girls; they’re not boys who have the “souls” of girls and therefore get to compete against them. They may be boys who think they “feel like” girls, but I doubt it – I think they’re just straight up cheating.
And yes, it’s “discrimination” in the sense that we know how to discriminate between girls and boys. It’s not “discrimination” in the sense of unjust neglect or punishment or rejection.
The marginalization of trans student-athletes is rooted in the same kind of gender discrimination and stereotyping that has held back cisgender women athletes.
No it is not. Boys don’t get to appropriate the oppression of girls so that they can win races against them and get opportunities that should have gone to the girls.
When misinformation about biology and gender is used to bar transgender girls from sports it amounts to the same form of sex discrimination that has long been prohibited under Title IX, a law that protects all students – including trans people – on the basis of sex.
Girls who are transgender are girls. Period.
Period shmeriod – adding “period” doesn’t make it true. Are they six?
Updating to add: Josh points out that that photo is not of Miller and Yearwood, it’s a stock photo of female legs. Dishonest much, ACLU?
Gender critical feminism aka “radical feminism” is the view that womanhood is best defined by reducing the category of “woman” to essential biological properties shared by cisgender aka non-trans women.
No. One, radical feminism is not a synonym for gender-critical feminism. Two, saying that woman=adult human female is not a “view,” it’s just a definition. That’s how we use the word; that’s what the word means. (Notice Williams isn’t simultaneously trying to redefine “man”? Funny, that.) That’s what the word (and its equivalent in many many other languages) means and has always meant going back as far as we can peer. A little 21st century sect wants to change that, but little sects don’t get to change the meaning of words for all of us unless we agree to it. We don’t agree to it. I think you’ll find that it’s not only gender critical feminists or even radical feminists who see it that way.
Why do they define womanhood like this? Because it effectively excludes trans women from the class of women because trans women are not biologically identical to cis women.
But it’s not “they.” Everyone defines it that way – everyone except the small sect. It’s not that we define the word in a bizarre way that requires explanation, it’s that Williams & co do. Why do Williams & co define the word in a bizarre way? Because they have decided their happiness depends on universal validation of their internal “gender identity” and that depends on universal re-definition of the category “woman.”
Some people I know and respect have protested that academia is not in the grips of increasingly Maoist “liberal/progressive” young people. They say that it’s a right wing overreaction to isolated incidents. They then point out all that the right wing is doing to ruin the academy and strip colleges of funding.
Let me deal with the second claim first.
Yes. It’s a fact that corporatist politicians have slashed the budgets of our colleges and universities. Yes. I deplore it. Like you, I recognize it’s a huge institutional problem.
But as for “lefty madness is an isolated incident,” I part company with you. In fact, I think you’re dangerously wrong. Just wrong, not malicious. I’m not questioning your character.
But I am saying I think your emotional allegiances misguided you in this case, and that you cannot see a real emergency.
It cannot be the case that liberal-leftie outrage/infantilism, and all the pro-trans nonsense is “just isolated.” It can’t be true that “Most college experience isn’t like that.” It can’t be true that “most liberal arts colleges don’t have these problems.”
That is not believable. I know three separate undergraduate students at Smith, independent of each other. They have all told me privately that it’s dangerous there to question transgender activism. Did you know how many women at Smith are getting mastectomies? One friend noted last week by email—‘there are zero lesbians here.’
My own alma mater, Sarah Lawrence, has been entirely taken over by trans politics. And by “revolutionary” shit-head kids with money who are demanding things like free laundry soap, and taking entire academic buildings hostage while doing it.
I have classmates from SLC who will only speak about this to me in whispers privately. Some of them have lost their jobs in the arts community for being “TERFs”. I would be instantly banished from a reunion if I showed up.
And this is just my personal slice of the world. You can read the reports that are there for all of us to see and it’s obvious this is happening on campuses nationwide.
Trans-progressivism has warped the liberal arts academy beyond recognition. It’s not a myth.
Riley Black, who came out as transgender and non-binary this year, describes the challenges of cultivating diversity in a discipline with an ‘Indiana Jones’ image.
I’m all agog. Here I thought paleontology had to do with studying fossils, but that must have been completely wrong.
I’ve found a ubiquitous part of the trans experience is continually having to explain yourself to the world at large. Why change? Why now? What’s going to happen? At times it feels like the best solution would be to write a frequently-asked-questions pamphlet, kept readily at hand for the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. Even when questions are meant well, the persistent queries can turn into an endless grind: I wind up feeling like I’m being asked to justify my existence.
Maybe so, but the reality is we live in the world as it is, not in a different world where humans have no sex or gender and so the subject just never comes up. People who say they have a special bespoke sex [“gender”] can’t reasonably expect no one to wonder why and what that means and how the rest of us are supposed to act.
Even if not actively hostile, palaeontology presents queer people with terrain as challenging as any fossil-flecked desert. It’s easy to feel invisible. Although queer people in palaeontology are raising their voices and supporting each other, the fact is that the field might as well be frozen in the nineteenth century when it comes to representing and honouring the diversity that already exists in it.
Oh come now. The trans cult didn’t get going in 1900. People who take female and male for granted aren’t throwbacks to the 19th century.
This discipline, like many others, is still struggling even to find equity between cisgendered men and women.
Indeed, and the heavy breathing about special bespoke genders is only getting in the way of that…but he’s a male so he doesn’t need to worry about gender equity. Can we please talk about him from now on?
A lack of inclusion, and understanding, has real consequences. For transgender palaeontologists, maintaining mental and physical health is absolutely essential. Being trans is different for everyone, but therapy, hormone replacement and surgery are common parts of transitioning and as important to our health as are annual check-ups and other essential medical procedures. University hiring committees and researchers taking on graduate students, among others, need to know these facts.
So that they can decide not to take them on? Extra health needs are not an inducement, you know. If the hiring committees are wondering if young Angeldrawers is always going to be taking a week off for more essential medical procedures, why wouldn’t they move on to the next candidate?
None of this is frivolous. Looking in the mirror and not being quite pleased with who you see is a common experience, but imagine living in that space — feeling that your body isn’t right, not representative of who you are — every day.
It may or may not be frivolous, but what about the possibility that it’s self-absorbed and unrealistic? Any chance of that at all? I think lots of people, maybe most people, don’t feel that their outward appearance is “representative of who they are” – but they also know it’s kind of an adolescent thing to spend too much time on, so they shelve it and think about more important things.
And everything our author has said so far has led me to think he is in fact self-absorbed and unrealistic. This whole thing is as if designed for people like that. They get to talk about themselves! Endlessly! They get to make demands on the rest of the world, and be applauded for it! It’s a gift to narcissists. Our author talks like a narcissist. Maybe he isn’t one, maybe that’s just how this brand of activism is, but…I doubt it. Having a bespoke gender isn’t particularly appealing to non-narcissists. It’s embarrassing to demand all that extra attention, and reasonable people don’t want to do it.
In reaction to my first piece under my chosen name, which was critical of macho palaeontological tropes, I was accused of having an axe to grind against cisgendered men because I’m different. But the entire point of this transition is that I no longer want to be defined by other people’s expectations. Piece by piece, I’ve been removing the overburden of my past and digging into my true self. It’s a process carried out through therapy, prescriptions and introspection rather than through hammers and plaster, but the end result is much the same. I want to uncover the nature of myself as much as that of any dinosaur.
There have been some claims that Martina Navratilova has changed her mind about the fairness of male-bodied people competing against girls and women in sport, via a BBC documentary that aired a few days ago. (I haven’t seen it.)
She says no she hasn’t.
Sorry- I did not say that and I did not change my mind. Please watch the docu- thank you
Consternation. She still thinks girls and women should be able to compete against girls and women??!
Always said that- so I didn’t change my mind. I am for inclusion for as many as possible but it cannot trump fairness for girls and women. Which means different rules for different levels and different sports. What I said and you said I said are two different things.
It’s been a long time coming, but finally we have a definitive answer. JK Rowling is a TERF.
There have been multiple instances wherein the (in)famous Harry Potter author demonstrated solidarity with radical feminists who have waged a vicious smear campaign against transgender women.
Or not so much waged a vicious smear campaign as disagreed with, but you know, gotta fan the flames.
While the LGBT community and our allies have stood back and watched a rather ominous narrative form around JK Rowling, it has been without any direct confirmation or statement from the author herself. It’s as if she is conditioning the world to accept it rather than rebuke it. First she stuck her toe in the water, was caught, claimed it was a misunderstanding and we accepted that. Then, she persisted to do the same things… again and again.
She was “caught” – having her own opinion instead of prostrating herself before someone else’s. She “persisted” – as the US senator complained about Senator Warren when she wouldn’t stop talking simply because he told her to.
Finally, we have some confirmation of Rowling’s stance against the transgender community. She has followed one of the most hateful and aggressive anti-trans radical feminists on Twitter, Magdalen Berns.
Out of her 14 million followers, Rowling herself follows less than 700 people on social media, so it’s safe to presume her perspective aligns with that of the well known transphobe whose account is solely committed to espousing misinformation and dangerous rhetoric toward transgender women. This clearly isn’t another middle-aged moment. Instead, it seems more like Rowling unapologetically pulling back the curtain and finally ending what little left there was to speculate about with any optimism.
The terrible writing doesn’t help, but you get the idea.
so the question that you in no way need answered, that you probably weren’t thinking about at all until you saw this tweet, is:
“Is J.K. Rowling a terf?”
I just went through all the accounts she follows — it’s a pretty small list, under 700 — and here’s what I found.
Pause to admire the dedication, the altruism, the commitment it takes to investigate what accounts another person follows in search of evidence of…well, of following those accounts.
@/magdalenberns is a terf. her timeline is just crammed with anti-trans hostility.
@/damcou is a sneering transphobe. search “from:damcou trans”.
@/glosswitch speaks up in support of Bindel and believes that trans women are violent men.
@/hadleyfreeman, another bindel supporter, supports transphobes and transphobic causes while trying to claim she’s not a terf.
@/victoriapeckham is a high-profile terf who believes trans kids don’t really kill themselves all that often, and is incidentally a swerf as well
@/jolyonMaugham says trans women are women… except when any specific policy issue comes up, or self-ID, when he about-faces into ‘it’s complicated’ and ‘both sides’. search “from:jolyonmaugham trans”
@/claireshrugged thinks that trans women are ‘biologically male’ and cannot be lesbians.
Etc etc etc, with Jess Phillips and Frances Barber and Graham Linehan hauled in. Wrongfollow! Wrongfollow in the highest degree!
She’s a fucking terf. She has been all along. The only reason she hasn’t said so openly is that she wants to keep raking in LGBTQ fan dollars.
When you give her your money, you’re giving money to a terf. When you support her claims to being lgbtq positive, you’re providing rhetorical cover for a terf.
When you play the new harry potter game on your phone, you’re giving support and ad dollars to a terf.
