What fresh hell is this

[Dorothy Parker]

This is going to be a collection of reposts, drawing largely from Mumsnet, concerning trans ideology and women's rights.


Missing: essentialist, reductionist, absolutist

In other words, more of what I've been doing for a while now – just a new thread with a spiffy new title. For those 'bots & strays who take notice of what I get up to and thinking "But it's not Dorothy's birthday!", I've decided to give her a permanent staff position.

The regulars at the Feminism: sex & gender discussions board earned my respect by being the opposite of how they're portrayed by trans activists and their sympathisers. For example:

the folks on mumsnet absolutely ascribe the absolute worst kind of anti-trans bigotry & attack people with name-calling & bullying tactics until they either give in or leave

I simply don't recognise that as an accurate description of what usually goes on there, aside from the part about some people giving up and leaving. That's what happens when you come swaggering in and can't defend what you say because it's incoherent. Kudos to those who stick around, perhaps changing their name (truly one of the joys of Mumsnet), shedding yet more glorious light and giving wordsmiths fresh opportunities to shine.

As the biggest and most famous bastion of 'gender critical' speech on the internet, many would love to take it down, because they won't be satisfied until everyone is bludgeoned into affirming their beliefs.

[Dorothy Parker]

Woman is not an identity statement

The entire idea that woman is an 'identity' comes from postmodern/queer theory. As Kathleen Stock points out, if we believe in science and reality then there is no need for us to follow the dictates of postmodernism!

The argument appears to be this. Every woman is different and no woman has the same experiences. There are rich women, black women, disabled women etc each with their own struggles. So we can't find a single thing that women have in common that unites them as women.

What about the female body? Well, postmodern feminists fret that defining women by their bodies (a woman is an adult human female) is reductive and reduces them to their biological functions, which is what the patriarchy does. Since the early 90s, postmodern feminism has been terrified of 'reducing' womanhood to some property or other, but hasn't really been able to articulate why this is even reduction and why reduction is so terrible in the first place.

So being a woman must be an 'identity', something that a person opts into and chooses because there is nothing externally that fixes what a woman is. It must be something internal and personal. And then along came Judith Butler with 'gender trouble' and her views that gender is a performance, and suddenly being a woman is an identity that can be adopted by anyone.

[Dorothy Parker]

The F-word have given up.

No other social justice movement is expected to cover all possible causes, by the way. Only feminism is, and this has been the case for quite a while. It's interesting, and ultimately has to do with the way women are not allowed to have boundaries or the right to say no.

Intersectionality is an important component for feminist analysis as women's oppression also depends on their position with respect to the other axes of oppression. But once we drop sex from those axes of oppression altogether, we have dropped the reason for feminism. And I see intersectionality now almost always used in a way it was never intended to be used: To expand the bailiwick of feminism to every cause in the whole world and to expect feminism to fix all of those. Women are the universal mothers and cleaning ladies of the world.

[Dorothy Parker]

Owen Jones's video

So in old money, OP is a gay man?

It's not possible to say because although they've declared themself to be a "straight trans woman", we have no idea what they mean by ""straight" or "trans" or "woman".

[Dorothy Parker]

Transgender Couple with Children making me rethink

Remember exactly how vulnerable you were having just given birth. Possibly torn and stiched, definitely bleeding, suffering after pains as the uterus contracted. 'Baby blues' as the hormones swung about turn. Engorged breasts as the milk came in. Waddling to the loo with a mattress between your legs and in fear of the impact of urine on your tears and grazes or the pressure of a poo and possible piles. Self consciously getting your breasts out to try and feed with all the struggle that involved. No sleep and possibly none for days due to labour. And then there are those who've had c-sections - major surgery - possibly still on catheters and pain pumps unable to get out of bed. And others frantic with worry with their baby in nicu. Others with abusive partners or difgicult living situations wondering how they will keep their baby safe. All incredibly vulnerable.

And a man says he is 'frightened' of them! If he is frightened of anything it is the reality of being a woman and the recognition that it is something a man could never be.

[Dorothy Parker]

At last! All the reasons 'c*s' women are privileged

You can make a sarcastic privilege list about any group, actually, once we separate 'privilege' from its old historical meaning. For instance, as I am not terribly rich I never need to worry about hiring housekeepers for my multiple residences or about yacht insurance or about employing bodyguards for my children (to ward off kidnappers).

If I was someone in prison I would have the privilege of never worrying where my meals come from and I wouldn't have to fear dying in traffic etc.

The initial idea with the privilege concept was good, i..e., using introspection to understand that we, personally, may not have experiences about certain kinds of discrimination and that this does not mean it's not happening. But the way it is used now is simply to divide people into separate groups for whether they can speak about something or not and also to divide people so that they won't unite behind a cause they would all share.

And as Caroline Criado Perez keeps showing us, women are certainly not treated equally with men in medical research or medical care because so many treatment guidelines are still based on measures derived form men's bodies.

The idea of 'cis' privilege does begin to look a little ridiculous if you are a woman in places such as Afghanistan. But that's partly the genius of the gender identity ideology: To erase sex-based oppression and to hide that erasure by changing language and by treating all 'cis' people as if they were equally privileged with each other. In other words, all traditional forms of exploitation and oppression are erased in that treatment, except when they are used for forced teaming to enhance trans objectives.

[Dorothy Parker]

Times article on academia

I'm glad this - a grain of sand on a huge beach tbh - was included:

"This view, together with the belief that “cis women have more power than trans people”, led genderist academics to refrain from forthrightly denouncing some transgender activists’ aggressive tactics towards feminists. These include threats and ideations of extreme violence, which, as well as being pervasive on social media, appear to be increasingly condoned at universities. For example, last year, a London School of Economics postgraduate student conference paper described a scene in which feminists critical of genderism “scream for mercy”. The paper then described the potential threat: “I hold a knife to your throat and spit my transness into your ear”, concluding: “Are you scared? I sure fucking hope so.”

When discussing this horrific anti-feminism, some interviewees, including those working on violence against women, would nonetheless still equivocate. As one sociologist put it: “My priority are the people who are being harmed by this debate, who I perceive to be trans people.” “These gender-critical feminists – they are intellectualising [sex and gender], and I think it’s harmful,” she added."

Plus the admission that they don't really know or care what the GC position is.

"When asked to describe their arguments, however, she responded: “I don’t know if what I understand or what I think are the issues, are the issues, I’ll be honest with you – I stay out of their way.” This remarkable coupling of condemnation and ignorance regarding gender-critical feminism was fairly common among genderist academics. Many readily admitted that they limit their academic engagements, including their reading, to their “echo chambers and bubbles” where, as one journal editor noted, “we all share basically the same perspectives”."

[Times Higher Education] has touched on the 'trans debate' issues in the past, but never with something as refreshing (and horrifying) as this.

Get it out in the open, discuss it - unless your beliefs cannot withstand scrutiny.

[Dorothy Parker]

Mermaids v LGB Alliance

One of the things I find problematic with the oft repeated phrase "trans rights are human rights" is that it undermines the concept of human rights.

As far as I can tell, nobody sensible is saying that trans people should not have human rights. But the point of human rights is that everybody has them, and they have the same ones. Trans people have exactly the same rights everyone else has; no fewer, and no more.

Human rights that we all have, such as the qualified right to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion, apply to all of us. You are free to believe in gender identity theory. We are free not to. You are free to manifest your beliefs in public. So are we. We all have the right to express our disagreement with belief systems we do not share. We do not have the right to harass or persecute people we disagree with. Trans activists do not appear to respect this.

We have the right not to be discriminated against, including for our sex. In order to protect this right, we must have the language to accurately define and discuss sex.

At the end of the day, they aren't objecting to the words we use, but to our right to express certain concepts. Such as the concept of humans coming in two biological sexes, and there being important differences between the two sexes which are not impacted by your personal identity. And the concept of same sex attraction, meaning being sexually attracted to people of the same biological sex as yourself, i.e. people with the same kind of genitalia you have, not people who believe they identify as the same thing you are.

This is why it is naive to assume that if you ignore the nonsense and just get on with your life quietly, it won't affect you.

Sooner or later you are going to find yourself given a verbal warning at work for using the wrong pronoun, or see your teenage daughter lose her spot on the sports team to a trans identifying male teenager, or be told by a rape crisis organisation that if you don't feel comfortable attending a women only therapy group where "male bodied people" are present, they won't help you (and neither will any other rape crisis organisation).

It's just getting worse and worse, and unfortunately it's not going to stop until a majority of people stand up and say, "No. I support trans people's rights to live in a way that makes the most sense to them, but not at the expense of everyone else's rights. This has gone too far."

[Chuck Jones]

Ontario teacher’s prosthetic bust offers a lesson about body shaming the state of journalism

Clearly there was a 'shock and awe' motivation behind this experiment. How would this 'teacher' feel if he arrived at his doctor's office for a checkup and the physician was dressed in that get-up? Or better yet - would he fly on an airplane if the pilot were in this costume? Surely the students deserve some respect.

Would you want your child to be taught by someone who looked like this?

The author of that article does seem to have recognised that this is a male imposing his fetish on children.

Gender identity is not a choice. However, showing up to teach in cartoonish fake breasts is one. It’s a choice to wear what is effectively a fetish outfit while teaching, in a way that is visible to all. Whether done as a stunt or a sincere expression of sexuality, if anything qualifies as inappropriate, that would be it.

But she's so caught up in the idea that anything to do with 'trans' is progressive that the article as a whole ends up as a confused mess.

I'd like people like her to explain exactly what they mean by 'progressive'. It seems to be the idea of 'anything goes', but they fail to see that this leads to things like men parading their fetishes around children and non-consenting adults, and when it does, their heads explode.

"We are committed to supporting all our teachers and staff and students in an environment that upholds their dignity."

"I wonder if the man in question knows it's a fetish or instead thinks that he is really transgender because that is what all these groups tell him it is? Is he another "victim" (I deliberately put that in quotes) of the affirmation culture?"



There are victims in this - but it's not him. It's the children forced into accepting him as a "role model". It's every unconsenting adult having to remain "professional" and not call out the disgraceful behaviour that this is. Add to this the erosion of boundaries and safeguarding children from adult fetishes that this represents. Not to mention the professional reputation of a school that is unable to say the word "no" in the face of such behaviour.



This is what an "oppressed & marginalized"
minority looks like. How it behaves.
Happy to join?
Eager to become "an ally"?
Keen on shredding the "cotton ceiling"?
Well, then crack on and take your part in
the social justice struggle.
Victory is yours and it looks precisely like that.
Very tasty, indeed.
Both aesthetically and ethically pleasing;
which is what we all want:
beauty and goodness personified.
Hallelujah.

[Dorothy Parker]

Fingal Council Lost the Plot

The Fingal Library Twitter account was found to be following various clearly suspect accounts like Maya Forstater’s, Allison Bailey’s etc. We can’t have that, can we?

It's the glee that gets me. They're so delighted with themselves every time they get someone disappeared.

I mean, cancelled.

PayPal shuts down accounts of Free Speech Union - The Telegraph
Withdrawing financial services from dissidents and non-conformists and those who dare to defend them is the new frontline in the ongoing war against free speech.

Unintended Consequences - Lucy Leader
Because of the level of secrecy required to operate MfM, this website is in danger of disappearing soon. Reprinted with permission of the Mothers for Mother authors I am republishing a series of their posts as a form of archiving them for future readers who appreciate the sanity of those who believe in biological facts, over the thoughts of those who posit that nothing is more important than what they feel or believe about a made up world of their choosing.

Antipodean fruit growers - Canary in the internet coal mine
Free speech absolutism is a challenging concept. Language has power to oppress and coerce and silencing is disempowering. It is natural to wish to use language to our advantage and silence those who threaten us.

However, in practice, restrictions on speech are wielded by, and most benefit, those who dominate society and culture.

Women, females, the majority of the population but the largest minoritized class, have the most to gain from free speech absolutism. The impact is magnified because speech is both the weapon and shield of choice for women against the overpowering physicality and fiscal advantage of men.

The rebellion of #womenwontwheesht is a non-violent protest against both compelled speech and censorship, shifting the focus away from policing speech for our protection and towards pushing away barriers to liberation.

Movements for civil rights and civil liberties - including freedom of speech - arise from the downtrodden, at the grass-roots. By contrast, "Social Justice" is an astro-turfed movement of the managerial class serving corporate interests.

A whopping great clue is in the fact that social justice initiatives are driven, implemented and enforced by the university-educated, the privileged.

"Creatives" who tick the right "progressive" boxes are favoured by grant-giving bodies. Human Resources staff, people whose main qualifications are making rules for the conduct of others and disciplining those who break them, to the point of removing their means of making a living.

Politicians, police, teachers, health and social care professionals, union officials, all university-entry and indoctrinated to eradicate species-survival instincts of fairness and empathy. Police prioritising "hateful" social media posts over call-outs to active crimes of violence and burglaries. Women in prison punished for "misgendering" male inmates.

The horror is that this has cascaded down to primary school, with little children being punished by teachers for saying what they see, and mobbed by gangs of self-righteous bullies. Encouraged to inform on their parents too - anyone who cannot see shades of Hitler Youth and the Stasi in this is wilfully blind or woefully ignorant.

may well be entitled to free speech, but he is not entitled to freedom from its consequences

This phrase sets off my ‘fascist claiming to be antifascist’ klaxon like no other.