The Great Trans Panic

[weathered man]

Title inspired by Eejit, username* by Maj, both of the London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed forum.

Patti forgot her cue cards, else she would've sung this.

The original title "I'm gender critical, ask me anything" remains an open invitation. There's also a poll, in case you're too shy to post.

Just between you and me,



I'm pretty sure they're going to be too shy to post, even if they're curious enough to follow my link.



To sum up that thread, or at least the portion of it kicked off by British Cycling's recent decision to create an Open and a Women's category for elite cyclists:



Any hopes I had that there might be the possibility of a decent discussion, inspired by brokenbetty's heartfelt post, are currently dashed, and it wasn't just the worst of the usual suspects



that dashed them. Heavy #bekind presence. Sprinkled with 'cis', of course. Every indication that most haven't been paying attention much beyond their own patch of terra firma. Stranger in a strange land territory. Thus my trial balloon of a wide ranging gender critical thread.

I don’t really want to contribute to the continuation of this thread, as I think some of the views that have been expressed here are vile and certainly hugely disrespectful - at the very least - to any trans members of the LFGSS community. I will therefore be banging this thread on ignore as of now.

An aphorism about believing people who show you who they are comes to mind here.


*OT poetry for long nights of the soul.

[peanutbuttersoup]

Long time LFGSS user here. Mostly for buying/selling but rarely post in other threads as I can't bear the sanctimonious tone over there. Glad to see a few sane posters in that BC thread tho and it gives me a bit of hope that at least some people haven't been captured by the regressive, homophobic gender ideology (modern day conversion therapy). Personally, I don't believe in a "gender identity" and don't believe trans women should be competing with biological women. Have the people who think people born biological males don't have an advantage even thought about this for a second?   I'm not even sure I have heard a convincing definition of what gender/gender identity actually is. IMO gender identity is a belief which, of course, people are free to believe in. But we are also free not to believe in something as ridiculous sounding as a "sexed soul". We are also free to reject the nonsensical language (cis etc) and the rest of the "woke" ideology/critical theory nonsense and unfalsifiable claims such as the patriarchy, 'systemic racism' and intersectionality.

I see the biggest issue is the closing down of debate and the complete refusal from these puritans to listen to another side or even accept that these issues are complex and nuanced. It should go without saying that everyone should be free to express themselves however they please and be free to live their lives however they like. No-one is denying people any basic human right.


"...sustaining doubt is harder work than sliding into certainty"

[weathered man]

sustaining doubt is harder work than sliding into certainty

I've got a copy of Thinking, Fast And Slow somewhere, but can't find it for a photo op (love my photo ops). These will have to do:



How nice to have an unexpected guest from across the... æther? Tundra? Road is too pedestrian. Let's call it a desert, because some imagine they see tumbleweeds as they approach NACF, but really, this is an oasis.

I'm a fan of peanut butter. Sadly it's now verboten thanks to a late-blooming allergy.


Holy EPIPEN^®, Batman!

Look at me, chatting with you like you're still here. I am pleased that somebody followed my breadcrumbs (mmm, PB&J).

As to LFGSS, it looks like I spoke too soon:

it's nice to be able to discuss things without fear of censorship or outright banning, which does happen in some of the less enlightened establishments.

I haven't been banned, but almost certainly would be if I attempted to navigate their cockeyed version of reality:

Just a reminder that your forum admin is in the trans-umbrella and not shy about it, identify as non-binary and very much going to enforce a zero-transphobia policy.

British Cycling were assholes before this latest move, unfortunately I can't throw a strop and remove affiliation as I'd already done that with BC. But I can ban transphobes who even think they can use this space to further their views, and will do so on subtle digs and nuance too... I won't wait for blatant statements.

So this is the general warning, that if you don't think transwomen are women, and that transmen are men... then this forum is a place of very thin ice for you.

This chilling administrative clarity means I can relax. Breathe easy.



Treat the scythe brushing close by

Please do not link Mumsnet and JK Rowling... neither need more attention for their hate, and it's not educational either.

as a breezy sayonara to my part in a doomed discussion. At least we finally know who the Grim Reaper is afraid of.



The battle for free speech is already lost at LFGSS.

Brokenbetty's additional contributions turned out to be a false second dawn for anyone hoping for an airing of gender critical views, but if she's allowed to stay and keep posting as she was, it'll continue to be helpful to others. Bumblers like Brommers – I'm all ears, buddy – won't be helping much if at all.

As to who qualifies as a woman, well, on that point I am going to take the coward's way out and defer to others.

It's just biology.

On edit:



Not him. Her:

We share many challenges. We could have a fantastic dialogue between trans people and female people about the way male-shaped culture shapes us and how to escape that and make it better for all of us. But we cannot do that when male people who believe they are the same as us appropriate our cultural and physical spaces, our political voice and even our own name, because you do not even allow us the words we need to describe what it is to be us and not you.

Because even if you don't believe our sex is innately significant, living as female in culture shaped by and for male people makes it significant, and we need the rights and language to talk about that.

If anyone can thread this needle,

I can ban transphobes who even think they can use this space to further their views, and will do so on subtle digs and nuance too... I won't wait for blatant statements.

brokenbetty, who's embedded in the community, can. It's going to take a woman to make a breakthrough at that very male-centric site, if such is possible.

I must say I've felt a pang of regret about giving up ACF all those years ago. If I hadn't, we'd have a nice big uncaptured UK cycling forum (thanks for sticking me with a recurring Battheme, Oasis cover man).

[sam]

We've all got a part to play.

Fucking hell the TERFs have arrived.

Squeals the mighty Wizard of LFGSS, having already revealed himself to be a boring little man who identifies as non-binary, presumably because a flying monkey made off with his penis brain.

OK. Let me put this plain.

Rhymes with brain. As in, you've got a plain old guy's brain.

Transphobia is hate speech, I am going to now ban a few people... and I'm locking this thread.

And I've archived it, just in case the memory hole ever beckons.

The ban hammer didn't come down on me, presumably because I absented myself from the thread after the flying monkey's keeper arrived. Look, this isn't all going to make perfect sense, I'll fix it on rewrite if I ever get around to it.

The only one who gets off by the skin of her teeth is brokenbetty (because honestly, I respect that she's engaging and rational)... but @brokenbetty I'll be very explicitly clear. I do consider your views to be transphobic and if they appear on this forum again I will ban without warning or regret (because it is opening the flood gates for TERFs and I won't move an inch on that).

Flashback to something brokenbetty said earlier:

As a female person (not a minority yet undeniably historically and still marginalised), I find the forum far less welcoming than I used to...

[click here to read more] [archived]

Sure, if you redefine womanhood as type of mind you can make comforting statements about "including all women" in women's sport, but all you've really done is created new opportunities for male people at the expense of female.

I don't believe this - or at least I hope it doesn't - comes from a place of hating women but I do think it comes from a deep seated unconscious belief that women are lesser than men, and that men have the objective vision, and therefore the right, to define society and women's place within in it. And I am quietly terrified how quickly rage and yes, hate, arises against the women who stand up and say No to having this new, mental definition of womanhood imposed upon them.

Women (OG version) are talking about this to each other. More and more every day. If they are not talking to you about it it's because they are scared to.

Let that sink in. Women are becoming scared to tell so-called progressive, feminist men the truth. They do not believe you will listen. They believe you will call the witch hunt on them.

BB has been a member of the forum since September 2010, two months after I arrived on the scene, but she made herself much more at home. I wonder how welcome she's feeling right around now.

To everyone: Please read up on intersectional feminism and perhaps this [link to bullshit from Vox].

If your feminism isn't intersectional, then it's not feminism.

Which means you support ALL women, including trans women, black women, poor women, disabled women... everyone... and you'll sometimes find yourself fighting for the rights of black people, gay people, etc. This is what intersectional feminism means, this is what feminism is.

If you find your flavour of feminism isn't that, then it's exclusionary... it's a hate speech, and I am banning for it. Feminism is about egality for the collective womenhood, for all women. It places the collective above the individual. If your feminism only fixes things for you and not all women, it probably isn't feminism.

A man telling a woman what feminism is. Let that sink in. (Remind you of anyone?) Nepeta @ Mumsnet responds:

Velocio doesn't understand what intersectionality means. If we used Velocio's definition, then feminism would have to be a movement which fights every single thing that is wrong in this world, pretty much, whomever it might affect, and that is a) impossible, b) never demanded of any social justice movements and c) a way to ultimately bury feminism for good.

True intersectionality is about understanding that the way misogyny, sexism etc. affects women and girls also depends on where they are positioned in the society along other axes of oppression.

Race, ethnicity, age, social class, sexual orientation, disability, religion etc. can all affect how and to what extent and how sexism and misogyny affect women and girls, and understanding that, in all its complexity, is an important task for feminist analysis.

But if we drop out 'sex' in that list of possible intersections, then we are no longer talking about feminism, but about something different.

As long as we're there:

You gotta love Velocio. Anything varying from the TWAW line, and it's game over re discussion. No ifs, no buts.

You might get rinsed on MN taking a TRA view, but noone will tell you what you can't say, and you'll be argued against to within an inch of your life. But you'll never be told you can't hold your view or that you can't promote it. Just that you bloody well be prepared to justify it.

But the TRAs like Velocio? They know best, they know all. Anything and everyone else is silenced.

Have you ever seen a "rights" movement more guilty of emptiness, so intellectually barren, so fragile as to be vulnerable to the merest pushback, and so lacking in pride that it needs to hide from scrutiny?

I haven't.

I was aiming for the colours of the rainbow, but yellow and orange don't show up so well. Back to Velocio:

Why won't I allow debate on this... because TERF views being openly accepted are a Nazi bar situation

That's how I see the debate too... the people this place attracts by giving an inch here are not welcome. I won't run this place for those people, and the people I do want to run this place for are the people that are going to fight for the rights of others... intersectional feminism over trans-exclusionary radical feminism, and seriously... no war but class war.

[peanutbuttersoup]

That Jonathan Haidt book should be read by those maniacs over there at LFGSS. But they dont have the self awareness or open mindedness to even contemplate that there might be another side to listen or, god forbid, they might actually be wrong about something. So sure they are that any disagreement is transphobic and that anyone who happens to believe in a sex binary is a bigot!

Remember when freedom of speech was a left wing position? Remember when you debates where about refuting points with your own position or actually having evidence to back up your view point? Now clowns like velocio think they hold the moral high ground and instantly shut down debate if anyone strays from the party line. It's absolutely tragic that #nodebate is now a common tactic for these extremists. And, as you say, it's actual women who are getting silenced by men. It's always the women who suffer here. The narcissism on display is sickening. Your chosen 'identity' doesn't give you special access to the 'truth'. You may bring some valid 'lived experience' to the table, and your point of view is welcome, but refute the point, criticise the idea, bring your evidence and let bad ideas and "hate speech' be countered by better ideas.

I'd love to hear what Velocio's definition of non-binary actually is. What does it even mean? They don't feel the 'essense of man'? They dont subscribe to gender sterotypes? They don't have a 'gender identity'? If so, then I am also non-binary! Who knew!?

But we'll never hear what they have to say, because to even question such things is 'transphobic'! It's pathetic.

And if trans women are women, what then is their definition of a women? I am genuinely curious. But we can't have this discussion. It's instantly #nodebate.

Sigh...

[weathered man]

Remember when freedom of speech was a left wing position?

Yes I do.

Would the ACLU Still Defend Nazis' Right To March in Skokie? - Reason
An interview with ACLU great Ira Glasser - Why Evolution Is True

when I came to the ACLU, my major passion was social justice, particularly racial justice. But my experience was that free speech wasn't an antagonist. It was an ally. It was a critical ally. I said this to the audience, and I was astonished to learn that most of them were astonished to hear it—I mean, these were very educated, bright young people, and they didn't seem to know this history—I told them that there is no social justice movement in America that has ever not needed the First Amendment to initiate its movement for justice, to sustain its movement for justice, to help its movement survive.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew it. Margaret Sanger knew it. [The labor leader] Joe Hill knew it. I can think of no better explication of it than the late, sainted John Lewis, who said that without free speech and the right to dissent, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings. And that's historically and politically true without exception. For people who today claim to be passionate about social justice to establish free speech as an enemy is suicidal. [My link, obvs.]

tune association

[close]

This is a smorgasbord of links from my yuge collection, though this next one is not a going anywhere but 404ville because the article disappeared before I started archiving as a matter of course.

‘No Chance of Winning’: Four female athletes challenge high school transgender policy

Connecticut’s laws preventing discrimination against trans youth in school and sports are consistent with federal law,” said Elana Bildner, ACLU Foundation of Connecticut senior staff attorney. “For years now, Andraya and Terry have carried more on their shoulders, as two Black trans youth, than most adults face in a lifetime. We hope the court will uphold the lower court’s decision so our clients may move forward with their lives, and so all transgender students in Connecticut can rest assured that their rights, humanity, and ability to be fully part of their school communities is not up for debate.

PayPal’s censorship marks a vicious new phase in the war on free speech - Fraser Nelson
Until now, financial services have rarely policed the political opinions of their clients: such behaviour was thought to have been left behind after the collapse of communism. But to an extent that politicians have not properly realised, British traditions of free speech are being steadily replaced by de facto Silicon Valley censorship.

PayPal vs Toby Young isn’t about free speech – it’s about the free market - Chris Stokel-Walker
But scratch beneath the surface of Young’s claims and you begin to realise that the ban may be more justified than people think. This isn’t just a rabble-rouser trying to keep the home fires burning in a fictitious, bubbly culture war. The Times reported that PayPal closed it down for spreading Covid disinformation – a real harm that puts lives at risk. The R value of disinformation discouraging people from taking up the offer of perfectly safe vaccines outstrips that of the virus that has killed, to date, 6.5 million people.

There's a battle [online] and it is ragin'

Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Death of the Internet - Joshua Moon
I've moved the Kiwi Farms domain to Cloudflare's domain registrar. This is a very risky decision, because in the past the mob would direct its noise at both Dreamhost and Cloudflare. Now, there's a more centralized point of failure. I am ordinarily afraid to even say the name Cloudflare, as if speaking it aloud could remind them I exist and compel them to step on me.

The world should not need Kiwi Farms - Corinna Cohn
On September 3rd, the security company Cloudflare dropped the website Kiwi Farms as a customer...

Kiwi Farms is one of the websites right-thinking journalists warn you to avoid visiting. Its users include journalists, lawyers, and academics arguing cheek-to-jowl with white supremacists, fascists, and every other type of rat-eating troglodyte with access to a keyboard. Unlike the highly-regulated social media platforms to which we’ve become accustomed, Kiwi Farms allows discussion of nearly any topic, but typically users flock to forums to document, discuss, and yes, sometimes harass outlandish public figures...

Journalists are swapping out their duties from reporting news to defining what is information and what is “disinformation.” The media companies, competing for attention first and dollars second, are providing their full backing. The world should not need a website like Kiwi Farms. Instead Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Wordpress, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and the myriad other publishing platforms should already be open forums supporting free expression and committed to viewpoint neutrality. But this is not the reality. Kiwi Farms, though it may be a hive of scum and villainy, may also be one of the last places where free expression lives online. The only way to solve a problem like Kiwi Farms is to restore the norm of free expression everywhere else.





(Oops, got myself in that screenshot)

Whoever will stand up for the bigoted hatemongers behind KiwiFarms? Glenn Greenwald, of course - Darrell Lucus
KiwiFarms, the now-defunct website that made it its business to dox, swat, and harass innocent people—especially trans people—got a long-overdue dose of karma last weekend. Security firm Cloudflare stopped providing KiwiFarms with protection from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks late Saturday night. after initially resisting calls from one of its latest victims, trans activist and streamer Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti, to cut ties. Cloudflare’s claims that cutting the cord with KiwiFarms would do more harm than good came undone in the wake of increasingly violent posts from KiwiFarms users...

Now, who would have a problem with this deserved downfall? Glenn Greenwald, of course. He seems to think taking down one of the most noxious websites ever created is a sign of authoritarianism run amok.

I'd love to hear what Velocio's definition of non-binary actually is. What does it even mean?

It appears to be an IQ test.

And if trans women are women, what then is their definition of a women?

Elon's Twitter of course being one of the fronts of the free speech battle.

I seesaw between optimism and pessimism. Only Sopranos aficionados will get this next reference, and it would be pretty torturous to turn it into some kind of analogy, but it popped into my head, so here it is:

[weathered man]

Back to the knotty question "What is a woman?" [mandatory Andrew Doyle link]

Funnily enough even TERF HQ blanched at a thread by that very name, twice deleting one started the other day. Fortunately a third, about Walsh's documentary, was allowed.

It is good at exposing the knots people tie themselves in to avoid linking the definition to biology, so to avoid saying something that would get them cancelled. Shining a light on the inability to speak freely is good.

Even better, this one on the popular Am I Being Unreasonable board is now up.

To think this is a form of contagious social madness spreading from the USA?

This is not a thread that should be moved to a niche corner. This harmful ideation of individual arbitrary identities trumping reality and all its very adverse effects which is being exposed in this documentary very much involves children too and as such belongs on a popular mumsnet board.

Here's The Offensive Tranny's reaction after the premier last year:

I've watched it. There's nothing much new there for me except introductions to a few more villains, which sounds like a silly word to use, but one is left nearly speechless by what they have to say. The ramifications are indeed beyond the pale.

You want memes? We got memes.

(This looks like an older meme, as it's the TQ+ propaganda that's the problem)







If you're triggered by this next one – and it is unpleasant enough to put in its own protective wrapper – do yourself a favour and read this.

Don't say I didn't warn you

[close]

[close]

It's reasonably well done, though I'd only give it a passing grade because it has and will continue to bring these issues to a large audience. Some hated the ending. Relax, people, it's partly tongue-in-cheek. I say partly because it's a perfectly good illustration that to deny men are generally stronger than women is why we're in this mess in the first place.

This has been doing the rounds:



* Technically it's the Feminism: Sex & gender discussions board which is HQ for those Tired of Explaining Reality to Fuckwits – a popular reformulation of that acronym in the finer establishments.

Don't take pride in promoting pseudoscience – Colin Wright
A growing genre of articles in high-profile news outlets, magazines, and scientific journals is signaling the end of a binary and immutable perspective on biological sex. The appeal of these pieces lies in the belief that rejecting the binary concept of sex provides society with a liberating opportunity for self-definition, unfettered by material constraints.

Being trans

Being trans is having a gendered soul that is immaterial and unobservable, something to which, like your consciousness, you alone have privileged access, but, unlike with your consciousness, reality must bend to accommodate it, rather than the other way around. It requires congruity between the soul and the body, so that surgery and medicalisation are medically necessary, life-saving procedures, unless they're not, when they are truscum fetishisation.

Being trans is a state that nothing can change, unless you decide to change it and come out as another gender instead. It is both immovable and unutterably fragile. Trans people are painfully marginalised, except by governments, NGOs, corporations, political parties, lobbying groups, and the more enlightened churches, synagogues, etc.

Being trans can get you executed, but at the same time it's impossible to tell whether someone's trans or not, but at the same time trans people are obsessed with whether they pass or not, which means whether they actually look like a member of the opposite gender—although as gender isn't a binary it's not clear what a trans person is meant to be passing as. Certainly not as the opposite sex, as sex is definitely not a binary, except when two trans people love each other and want to make a baby. Genitals are irrelevant as to whether you love someone, but it's medically necessary for an individual to have the right genitals, unless it isn't (see above).

Passing for a trans person is nothing at all like the sort of passing as white that some Black people used to be forced to attempt to improve their life-chances, although segregating the sexes, by contrast, is exactly like apartheid, except that there aren't two sexes, as sex isn't a binary (see above), so it must be that segregating genders is like apartheid, but this sort of segregation is impossible as nobody knows another person's gender without knowing their pronouns at the very instant you are interacting with them.

Finally, being trans is nothing to do with sexuality, unless you're AGP, in which case it's all about the boners, unless you get bottom surgery, in which case you need a corrective surgeon and probably a good lawyer.

[weathered man]

I went back to LFGSS for a chat with one of the participants of the thread that sparked this one.

He seemed friendly enough, and ended up having a few questions for me. I suggested a public discussion over here. We probably wouldn't agree on some major things – the whole point of the exercise.

When he demurred, I then asked permission to use his questions as the basis for a post, without attaching his username: anonymity squared.

This scared him off completely. It presents a head-scratcher for casting.

. . .

Having left Kansas a while ago, look where we've arrived!



John Hopkins University of Misogyny

JFC on a bike.

How it was reported in Newsweek:

A small subset of conservatives online has expressed outrage at Johns Hopkins University over its non-binary-inclusive definition of "lesbian" in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms...

On Monday, the glossary's current definition of "lesbian" came under attack from right-wing users on social media...

The flare-up comes amid a broader backlash among conservatives to LGBTQ+ rights and the embrace of queer communities by society...

. . .

Remember this?



In case it slipped your mind (these things happen), here's a link to the debate, and one to the transcript.

Spoiler

The secret to having one is to not be afraid to use it.

[close]

Kirsty Blackman's genitals

Don't worry, it's just a link:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/kirsty-blackmans-genitals/

[close]

* Been there, done that.
(Apologies for the unfortunate wording with this juxtaposition.)

[weathered man]

I like that headline so much I'm holding it over.

FATAL SYSTEM ERROR! SHUTTING DOWN! - The Babylon Bee
Under previous gender paradigms, it might be considered a sign of progress for a woman to take over a space that would otherwise belong to a man. However, science has now shown that trans individuals can make up whatever they want whenever they want at all times, and if you question it, you're a bigot. Obviously, I'm not a bigot, so I don't question it.

The Bee ("Sketch comedy you can trust") has been busy.

Go past the 2.40 mark on this next one at the risk of venturing into purple mountan majesties:

Goddammit, satire from a conservative Christian source can't be funny. Shame about that.

As long as we're on the subject:



There's a rumour the ACLU lured Chase from a promising career as a comedian.

[weathered man]

"I've wanted to write this for a long time," says a commissioning editor at The Observer. Quite a buildup for quite a letdown, if like me you wouldn't mind something decent from the genderists for a change. [When will I learn to archive everything I link?]

https://twitter.com/EllieCumbo/status/1670522457210466309
Surprised at journos sharing the Kathryn Bromwich piece with variants of "at last" & "read this". That view has been the dominant one in soi-disant left/progressive circles for some time. Is the idea that if I see it written down enough times, I'll realise I do agree after all?

https://twitter.com/HannahBerrelli/status/1670392253779435521
It’s insane to cite statistics decrying the prevalence of male sexual violence, while simultaneously advocating for a culture where women are not allowed to challenge men in their spaces, and men’s assertions that they are outside the sexual class that commits that violence.

https://twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1670427230504116230
Uttering "Cis" is best construed as the white flag of the gender wars, nothing says "I surrender" more clearly than ceding the very word for what you are. That qualifier offers you a qualified existence, that you are now a subset of something you used to be. Existential surrender

https://twitter.com/helenstaniland/status/1670401311055945728
I feel I've read this exact same article over and over again. 'Why is there so much effort expended here?' It asks. Because this isn't a fight over toilets. This is a fight over the fundamental right of women to assert their own boundaries. If we lose this, everything else falls.

https://twitter.com/GPair10/status/1670514431850102787
And note, no one’s trying to get you cancelled. No one’s sent anything sexually threatening or any death threats. Now go take a look at what happens when our side says no to what you’re advocating for.

https://twitter.com/Bagehot99/status/1670470135633551364
I don’t read opposing viewpoints!! It’s how I stay so informed.

https://twitter.com/us21c/status/1670467257145630721
The coward's ratio.

Nothing to worry about

Some of those arguments are real blasts from the past. I.e. if you say biology is what makes someone a woman or not, you’re reducing women to their biology. And: if a woman doesn’t have all the biological characteristics that only women have, are you saying she’s not a woman, hmm?

I assumed both of those, which I used to see all the time a few years ago, had been retired as embarrassingly and transparently facile and illogical, but obviously not.

These arguments haven't been retired because they don't have any better ones.

Speaking of Cis,
Irrationally annoyed about educated women who should know better peddling Cis bollox

If they're not simply thick (or bright but too extremely busy doing something of genuine importance to pay proper attention) then my observation is they're compensating for something.

I see this with some of my own friends and acquaintances. Compensating for having had a sheltered upbringing somewhere small; compensating for perceived class privilege; compensating for previous homophobia or homophobic parents. These people have a lower cultural capital because of these factors.

Suddenly here comes a way to raise the cultural capital by uttering a few words and showing a special flag. Perhaps you need to defer a little more to some special males but that is just regular female socialisation and many of us do it without thinking. I think female socialisation also encourages us to outcast the bad females (TERFs) because the patriarchy frames women as always being in competition with each other.

PS. Cycling messiah held over by popular demand.

Hold that PS, I'm not done sharing links yet. Real Christ on a bike territory in the Daily Mail, no surprise. We live in times where the Observer can make you cringe, and the Mail is paying attention to some stuff that actually needs paying attention to.

Don't be afraid, it's an archive site
'We believe masturbation would come under the statutory requirements to teach.' That's going to be a popular class.

Ah, school days.
Good for these girls, they defended biology, women and even the LGB community in one feel swoop. And they're just teens, by the sound of it. I will remember them if I ever feel afraid of speaking out.

A few more as long as I'm at it:

https://reduxx.info/france-female-only-lesbian-groups-barred-from-pride-month-events-over-transphobia/

https://twitter.com/cliftonaduncan/status/1670120155496456193
This is one of the most brutal Community Notes ever.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4829343-rapist-and-murderer-denied-essence-of-human-dignity?reply=126969689

https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/394186/dumbest-reason-someone-has-been-called-a-transphobe

Gender ideology asks you to disbelieve your eyes, ignore your discomfort, reframe your trauma, interrogate your sexual orientation, fight your instincts, and remove your boundaries. This is not a civil rights movement: it's an abuser's wildest dream.