Tag: Trans manipulation

This explains a lot – trans activism gets massive government funding while feminist resistance to the parts of trans activism that harm women gets…can you guess?…zero funding.

It’s called “policy laundering” according to Mary Harrington. Useful term.

In its most blatant form, policy laundering looks like government departments using taxpayer money to pay lobbyists to influence government…

…

Let us consider an example: the Scottish Trans Alliance. This is a project funded by the Scottish Government Equality Unit and delivered by the Equality Network, which is largely funded by the Scottish government as well as by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (funded by UK government).

The project delivers research, advisory, and training, including to government-funded bodies, who in turn repeat the ideas received via reports, training and consultancy back toward policymakers. Thus, a nested series of public sector grants has enabled government to conjure into existence a body that shapes public sector policy. Meanwhile, the pronouncements and statistics produced by this arms-length government body are treated by the (government funded) BBC as though emanating from independent civil society voices.

See what I mean? Explains a lot. I’ve been wondering for a very long time how all this incoherent bullshit got such a purchase on the minds of politicians, and this seems to answer that question.

The whole cycle amounts to a process of laundering, by semi-independent bodies, a series of policies the government already wanted to adopt so they look as though they come spontaneously from the society upon which they will in due course be visited.

Mind you, that introduces the question all over again. Why did the government already want to adopt trans policies?

The result looks like a thriving voice for civil society in the national debate. But in reality it is more like the government having a conversation with itself, via a series of proxies. Meanwhile, that part of civil society without insider status sits scratching its head trying to work out which form to fill in to get a seat at the table.

Under those circumstances, you might expect differences to emerge between the official conversation and what people actually think and feel on the ground. Taking our example of transgender activism: in 2018 then-Equalities Minister Maria Millar launched a consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act. The proposed changes would effectively have turned legal recognition as the opposite sex from a bureaucratic years-long procedure involving medical testimony into a simple matter of form-filling.

The initial proposal was developed in consultation with government funded LGBT charities, but included little input from women. Opposition to the GRA reforms first gained traction on the parenting messageboard Mumsnet and over 2018 morphed into the campaigning organisation Fair Play For Women (government funding: nil) and swelled the ranks of Transgender Trend (government funding: nil).

These groups, aided by a coalition of social conservatives, radical feminists, transsexuals, ordinary concerned women and the occasional man, challenged the GRA reform campaign led by Stonewall (2018 UK government grant funding: £233,000, Scottish government funding £90,000, earnings from delivering paid-for training courses to the public sector: higher still).

They’ve got a lock on the money.

It explains a lot. It’s depressing as fuck.

Via Kathleen Stock:

You may recall that Jonathan Best is being punished by the University of Huddersfield for violating orthodoxy on trans issues. He tweets today:

News on the Uni of Huddersfield disciplinary case against me: my appeal against the warning given to me by the Dean has been allowed and I now proceed to a full, disciplinary hearing on November 15th. These are the allegations the university brings against me, and which I refute:

That third item made me sit up and take (extra) notice. Breach of the Trans Equality Policy? What is the Trans Equality Policy? What special kind of equality is there that applies to trans people and not others? So I went looking for it, and found it. The odd thing is, though, it’s dated this past September and October…so they’re accusing Best of breaching something that didn’t exist when he is supposed to have breached it. They appear to have written a new policy for the very purpose of accusing Best of breaching it before it was written.

Trans Equality Policy Statement [pdf]:

1. The University of Huddersfield is committed to removing any form of unlawful
discrimination against people on the grounds of their gender identity or gender
expression. Where this policy refers to ‘trans people’, it has in mind a broad range of
people whose gender identity may not be expressed in ways that are typically
associated with their assigned sex at birth. This includes those who have non-binary,
agender or gender-fluid identities.

But unlawful discrimination against people on other grounds is ok? No. So what’s the point of specifying the grounds? Besides attempting to justify punishing Jonathan Best with a retroactive rule? Unlawful discrimination is unlawful.

2 and 3 are about valuing diversity and respect and no harassment. Then it gets more specific.

The University undertakes the following:
• Students will not be denied access to courses, progression to other courses, or fair
and equal treatment while on courses because of their gender identity or because
they propose to or have transitioned.
• Employees will not be excluded from employment or promotion or redeployment
opportunities because of their gender identity.
• Requests to change name and gender on records will be handled promptly and
employees and students will be made aware of any implications of the changes.
• The University will respect the confidentiality of all trans employees and students’
identities and will not reveal information relating to their trans status without the
prior agreement of the individual.

So apparently they’re saying that as far as they’re concerned students and employees can change sex instantly and on request, with no questions asked, and that students will be made aware of any implications of the changes while at the same time the whole thing is kept confidential. So that’s confusing.

Then we get to the bit they apparently wrote specifically to justify their bullying of Jonathan Best:

Transphobic abuse, harassment or bullying (name-calling/derogatory jokes,
unacceptable or unwanted behaviour, intrusive questions etc.) will not be tolerated
and will be dealt with under the appropriate procedure,
https://staff.hud.ac.uk/media/universityofhuddersfield/content/files/hr/policies/staffha
ndbook/Dignity-At-Work-Procedure.pdf

Nice “etc.” there – what do you bet it will turn out to cover whatever they need it to cover in order to justify their bullying of Jonathan Best. What do you bet it will turn out to cover any kind of skepticism about “gender identity” at all. I guess it doesn’t matter what you bet because nobody will take the bet – the reality is too obvious.

Page 3 has all the dates. September and October.

Updating to add: Best replies to my questions:

Versions of these policies were in existence prior to the complaint against me. The clauses I’m accused of breaking have been made clear to me.

Ok. I remain very suspicious of this late re-write, and especially of that “etc.”

Morgane Oger provides, if nothing else, an in-depth illustration of how The New Language Rules function to help him (and others like him) blur the picture so thoroughly that most people give up trying to see it clearly.

Here:

It is explicitly prohibited in Canada for any women’s service to discriminate against more-vulnerable women while favouring less-vulnerable women.

There are no exceptions, have not been since our charter was adopted in 1983.

That sounds sensible on its face, but the trouble is that he means “it is explicitly prohibited in Canada for any women’s service to discriminate against men who say they are women while favoring women.” He is claiming that men who say they are women are, as a class or category, more vulnerable than women. How? How are men who say they are women more vulnerable than women? Not physically, certainly, because even if they do the full hormone thing they still have the male skeleton, musculature, lung capacity, and so on. Men don’t magically make themselves not just as vulnerable as women but more vulnerable than women by the power of thought. So how are men who say they are women more vulnerable than women? Given that they remain physically stronger, how can they be more vulnerable?

They can’t. It’s just the typical hyperbolic bullshit, and it’s a lie, but Oger gets away with it because of the verbal magic that is at the heart of the whole thing. Change names and pronouns and bam you’ve won most of the battle. Change names and pronouns and you condition people to think men are women and thus potentially more vulnerable than women, because they get to add their trans status to their bogus female status and get two, where women get only one.

Again:

VRR successfully protected its right to choose its own members. They did not defend any right to deny service to a woman because she is transgender. THAT has been illegal for decades in Canada.

But they didn’t “defend any right to deny service to a woman because she is transgender.” The right in question is to deny service to men, no matter what they claim about their “gender.” They don’t deny the right because the man is transgender, they deny it because he is a man.

Another:

TERFs are not “women who’ve created single-sex spaces for victims of male violence to recover free from the presence of males” They are trans-exclusionary radical feminists, a philosophy that VRR adhers to and enforces.

No. Feminist women who don’t accept the claim that men can become women by saying so can be women who have created single-sex spaces for victims of male violence to recover free from the presence of males. Whether that’s “trans-exclusionary” or not isn’t really relevant, because feminist women get to be focused on feminist issues rather than trans issues.

And:

The fact is that VRR is discriminating against one group of women on prohibited grounds. They have no defense for this other than “those women are not women”. Whereas that works for membership in an organization, it is illegal in a service.

No. The fact is that VRR is declining to serve men because their mission is to serve women. They don’t need a “defense” for it, and their reason for it is that those men are not women. If it’s illegal for women’s organizations to decline to include men then there’s something badly wrong with Canada and it should fix it. [Updating to add: it’s not; see Naif’s comment @ 3.]

Finally:

Anyone can make a tall-locally-born-women-of-childbearing-age-who-had-kids club with its own space.

Nobody can tell a woman she is not a woman.

But the issue isn’t telling a woman she is not a woman, it’s telling a man he is not a woman. Anybody can do that. Women can do that.

Oger is an entitled male bully who spends all his time bullying women for wanting to get away from him and men like him.