Much ado about nothing

[sam]

So sayeth a high school acquaintance.



If only we were discussing the book. No, this had to do with her upset about the Trump executive orders concerning gender.

Where to begin.

I chose the medium of Rowling, it being easier to let someone else do the writing. "None of these things are impacted by transpeople," replied acquaintance, a signal that we're living on different planets. It was the usual story: she has friends who are no longer "confused, depressed, and suicidal" now that they are free to "be themselves." The confused part is beyond debatable; as for the therapeutic value of claiming to be something you're not, another quote to the rescue:

Transgenderism is audience participation therapy. No one will ever look at this man and think he is truly a woman, but he is signaling to us that he has gender dysphoria and needs our assistance with his treatment, that the kind thing to do is play along and pretend we don't see a man, but a beautiful woman. This is why there's this babying affectation when people communicate with transgender people - why, for instance, Dylan Mulvaney won "Woman of the Year" for being the worst influencer in the history of the world - because it's therapy, and people are being extra gentle.

We can and should ask "so, is it all going to be therapy now?"; are we, as a society, really going to reduce every female space and action to therapy for dysphoric males? Are we really never going to have any female sports ever again, it will all be just backdrop for the emotional therapy of men dealing with dysphoria? Are we really never going to allow a sorority, a public bathroom, a feminist meetup to be a safe space for women, is it all reduced to cheerleading and assisting dysphoric males?

I didn't deploy that though, or even <sound of lazy knuckles cracking> attempt to use my own words to persuade her that men don't belong in women's spaces, perhaps pointing out that one's friendship circle is not a viable basis on which to run things ("friends don't tend to perv on friends" might not have gone over too well). Instead I immediately offered her an out, asking if she wanted to discuss it more or leave it at that. She opted for the latter: "You won't change my mind."


Peace! I will stop your mouth.

Anything Bad Orange Man is for or against, one must be against or for. (Doublechecks. Yes, that's correct.) The irony of wanting to change a woman's mind is of course not lost on me. My wife wasn't amused either, but that had more to do with my wasting time on a handmaiden, as she also calls such enablers – "The civil rights warriors of our time."

https://x.com/twisterfilm/status/1888255119449268674

A trans activist just published a list of "anti-trans hate groups". Annoyingly it was alphabetical and not a league table. Otherwise I'd have known who to donate to.

Is hate groupie a thing?


The Telegraph

In defence of Sandie Peggie – The Spectator

Peggie’s case has broken through to the mainstream broadcast media this week in Scotland. Some of that reporting didn’t even make me want to gnaw my own thumbs off in frustration, which, for Scottish coverage of this issue is real progress. I almost felt like donning a jaunty bobble hat at one point. The cost to Peggie, however, has been far too high. But to echo Mind to Mind’s message in their social media campaign video – she really isn’t alone. I hope that is some comfort to her as the case progresses.

Woman vs Fragile Fife Filly, Day 6:

One of the worst things about the trans nonsense is when I have to listen to sensible people like Naomi having to explain 2+2=4 to people who then pretend not to know what numbers are or what equals means or even why she cares.

"Biological sex is a nebulous term that doesn't mean anything." Said by A DOCTOR. A DOCTOR. <fans self frantically>

This is impossible. How can you reach the truth without a common language?

It's clear that Upton is a very fluent (more so than Naomi Ummm Cunningham) and extremely practiced liar.

The way you use language is purposefully misleading.

That was part of the fascinating "digression" (not really a digression as it cuts to the heart of this case) into language, when Cunningham pointed out that Upton was attempting to establish dominance over her by not accepting the common definitions of words that she was using. As someone said on Mumsnet, he's both asserting dominance and claiming victimhood status at the same time – best of both worlds.

I think every sane person was Naomi, ramming their head again and again against a brick wall.

...my experience with narcissists is that they come at you with a slightly different version of whatever untruth they are peddling if you manage to refute the first versions.

Up is down, black is white, and trans = on the other side of the truth. Truthphobic.

I have observed from my own interactions with my trans-identifying child that arguing with the nonsense just fuels it and is an opportunity for her to practise at making the arguments in a more and more convincing way, and the batshit beliefs seem to get stronger and take hold even more. In that way the mindset seems similar to that of an addiction or an eating disorder where the person is controlled by these behaviours and behaves in a controlling way towards others in order to be able to keep doing the behaviours, which have become a habitual way of dealing with underlying anxiety. Enabling the behaviours and trying to reason with the controlling mindset are both very unhelpful and make the person worse. Saying that my child is a teenage girl and they generally have different reasons for falling prey to this ideology than grown men.

Everytime I feel dumb for having failed college I remember that there are journalists who write "her penis" in articles and doctors who don't know what a woman is.

The modern hysterical fear of "transphobia" and "outing" is role play and part of the manipulation to get what they want - picking up the trappings of the gay rights movement, just like they steal everything else.

Let's take an intermission.

I actually think there's no such thing as trans...

Can't believe I haven't come across Az before.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/interview-az-hakeem/

Having worked in the field for 23 years, Hakeem knows more about the ‘trans community’ than most of his peers in the psychiatric profession. For 12 years, from 2000 to 2012, he worked with patients with gender dysphoria at the NHS Tavistock and Portman Trust, where he championed a pioneering approach. He brought together people seeking so-called sex-reassignment surgery and post-operative transsexuals. The two groups were able to talk honestly, dispelling some of the fantasies the ‘pre-op’ people had about life trying to pass as the opposite sex. This cemented his interest in reconciling gender-dysphoric patients with their bodies and managing the expectations of those who want to undergo surgery.

‘I have dedicated a large proportion of my career to understanding and working with people with gender dysphoria’, he tells me. ‘My understanding has been informed by the many hundreds of hours I have spent with each patient, getting to know them often better than anyone else has known them in their lives.’

Stay tuned for the heat death of the universe, or a return to sanity, whichever comes last.


Another beaut

[The Dept. of Health and Human Services in the US] has just released its official updated statement defining sex for all federal agencies, external partners, and the public!

SEX is a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.

FEMALE is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).

MALE is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.

The new guidance also includes detailed clarifying remarks:

"There are only two sexes, female and male, because there are only two types of gametes. An individual human is either female or male based on whether the person is of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova) or sperm.

"The sex of a human, female or male, is determined genetically at conception (fertilization), and is observable before birth. Having the biological function to produce eggs or sperm does not require that eggs or sperm are ever produced. Some females or males may not or may no longer produce eggs or sperm due to factors such as age, congenital disorders or other developmental conditions, injury, or medical conditions that cause infertility.

"A person’s sex is unchangeable and determined by objective biology. The use of hormones or surgical interventions do not change a person’s sex because such actions do not change the type of gamete that the person’s reproductive system has the biological function to produce. Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete. That is, the reproductive system of a person with such a disorder does not produce gametes other than eggs or sperm."

That's the department newly headed by the much derided RFK Jr. Meanwhile, legacy media digs in as truth bombs keep exploding all around.



Citing ‘Biological Truth,’ Kennedy Issues Guidance Recognizing Only Two Sexes - The New York Times

The tongs around Biological Truth say it all.

Trump says there are ‘two sexes.’ Experts and science say it’s not binary. - The Washington Post

I want to step away from reading or keeping up with anything trans related but it's this unreal slow train wreck of scientific regression unfolding before my eyes and every defense of it by liberals at this juncture defies understanding.

Funnily enough I took that as a joke, as in he's been mortally disappeared by the (assigned Auntie at birth) Beeb.

Yet we're the cult.
https://x.com/MaudMaron/status/1801327636657910267

Differences of Opinion by Wendy Cope

HE TELLS HER

He tells her that the earth is flat —
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

Irischild's he tells her (after Wendy Cope)

He tells her he's a woman too
He has a ladybrain
He tells her his identity
and hers; they are the same
He tells her not to talk about
her body; it's not fair
her body is her privilege
his own, a cross to bear

He tells her that she cannot talk
Or otherwise allude
to what her female body does
It's nasty to exclude
He says respect diversity
except he would prefer
that she would not point out the ways
that he's diverse from her

He tells her that biology
does not impact her life
she should still bear his children
but she must call him 'wife'
He says that words must all evolve
She must learn to make do
And now that woman is his word
He's taking 'female' too

He tells her that a woman is
whatever he decides
He will not put it into words
She must not ask, he chides
He tells her he is more oppressed
Than she has ever been
He says she must agree with him
or else she's being mean

She searches for the words she needs
To talk about herself
The billions who exist like her
their lives, their rights, their health
Whatever word she chooses now
He finds a way to spin it
The conversation carries on

But she's no longer in it

[sam]

A Courtroom Drama
A transcript from the future

I am a silicon-based human. You are a carbon-based human. The AI Control Act is not intended to discriminate between different kinds of human.

Interview with Naomi Cunningham

I don’t like the phrase ‘gender critical’, if I’m honest. It is one of the astonishing coups of the gender identity theory campaign, that the thing that everybody knows is true, that everybody on the planet knows that they’ve got a mother, and that their mother could only have been a woman, and that human beings only come in two types, the sort that can gestate and give birth to children and the sort that can beget children. Everybody knows that. And yet there is a mad niche idea that gender identity somehow trumps reality. And somehow, these things have been flipped. So, the mad, niche cult idea hasn’t got a name that everybody recognises, I call it gender identity theory, but it hasn’t really got a well-recognised name, and the mainstream, ordinary acknowledgement of reality and fact has a name, gender critical. They don’t need another name for it – it’s reality.

By Any Other Name

My name is Helena, and as of this writing I’m a 23-year-old woman who, as a teenager, believed I was transgender. In the years since detransitioning (stopping testosterone treatment and no longer seeing myself as transgender), I’ve become interested in exploring why, in the last decade, nearly every English-speaking country has seen a meteoric rise in adolescents believing they are transgender and pursuing cosmetic medical and surgical interventions. Here, I’d like to go over how and why I came to see myself as transgender, the process of transitioning, and the events leading up to and following my detransition.

"Translate post" may be necessary for those who don't speak sociopath.

Some will hahahahahahaha a video by Matt Walsh, their sympathy reserved for party-approved victims. I'd rather a different overview myself, but don't have all day. Btw, the infomercial @ the 5 minute mark only seems like it lasts forever; it's 45 seconds.

Ovarit

When you think about a [Trans Identifying Male] as an abstract concept especially within a culture that glorifies them, you might think of a woman with slightly mannish features, or a man who dresses like a woman but manages to pull it off without being creepy while radiating emotional depth and who really has a ''female psyche''. Someone acceptable, someone non-threatening, someone you could theoretically be friends with. You're all supportive of these marginalized women, of course!

And then you encounter a hulking man in his 50s, wearing a cheap wig that doesn't fit his skin tone in the slightest, with lipstick and women's clothes (did he buy them or are they his victim's clothes?). A stab of fear goes through your body as you immediately sense the creepiness and inappropriateness of this. Before you can collect yourself and put on your big girl's trans ally pants the moment has passed and he's lumbered on, without receiving that womanly reciprocal smile. You just murdered his soul by denying him his sisterhood.

Off you go into the depths of social media to post praising comments to men in wigs to atone for your sin.

Speaking of hulking men in wigs, I watched The World According to Garp again last night, probably because John Lithgow has been in the news catching flak from gendermentalists.

While I collect my thoughts about this, see The Crying Game.

. . .

I liked 'Roberta' too. It's only now that I'm incredulous at the scene where he and Garp meet: a woman screams at being touched by a man (Garp), but accepts the comforting and much larger hands of... a man. (Note how Roberta's swallows Garp's when they shake.) Perhaps it was because Garp was a stranger, and Roberta had proven his empathetic credentials. Or perhaps it's just fiction.

Garp's "You just seem like the only normal person around the place" is played for laughs, but a lot of reviewers fell for Roberta. Quite understandably; it's a great character. One wonders how he'd translate to the modern age.

clicky

Happy International Women's Day

I've been celebrating IWD by doing something only a woman can do: having a hysteroscopy.

[sam]

A wake-up call for the trade union movement [archive]

Because the reality of biological sex is central to the case, the tribunal agreed that Dr Upton could be referred to as male, rather than his preferred pronouns of she/her. For the same reason of clarity that is adhered to in this article.

Every little helps.