A Week in the War on Women: Monday 27th July - Sunday 2nd August
By JL
Monday 27th July - At Liberty to Mislead
Liberty is the UK’s biggest civil liberties organisation. Together with Stopwatch, an independent police watchdog, Liberty has issued information cards to assist people who might be stopped and searched by the police.
But the information provided is inaccurate and misleading. The text conflates sex with gender and, more worryingly, the information misrepresents the Equality Act 2010; the protected characteristics are Sex and Gender Reassignment , not ‘Gender Identity’
“Know your rights” says Liberty, without actually knowing our rights.
Tuesday 28th July - Playing Mummies & Daddies
Channel 4 screened a documentary called Our Baby: A Modern Miracle about a transgender couple using a surrogate to become parents.
Jake Graf, a trans-identified female, and Hannah Graf, a trans-identified male, are a married couple.
Jake was always intent on being a parent so, prior to meeting Hannah, suspended testosterone treatment in order to harvest her eggs for future use. She told the programme, “Harvesting is very invasive and very intimate and not at all pleasant for a man”. Hannah did not “Store gametes” (his oblique way of referring to freezing his own sperm) prior to his surgery but Jake’s eggs had already been fertilized using a sperm donor.
Jake chose not to carry the baby herself. Instead, the couple appeared on national television to canvas for “a very kind stranger” to be their surrogate. Throughout the programme, the couple refer to Jake, whose egg was used to create the embryo, remember, as being the child’s father and Hannah as its mother.
At one point in the documentary, Jake expressed a preference for having a baby boy. “You can throw a boy around… Girls are more about glitter and dolls”.
Doesn’t it just break your heart.
Wednesday 29th July - Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
FAIR COP: Barrister, Sarah Phillimore’s recent experience demonstrates the extent to which hate crime statistics are being manipulated.
Stonewall and Mermaids et al like to talk about ‘attacks’ on trans people but the figures they quote are meaningless.
Sarah Phillimore made a Subject Access Request (SAR) to her local police force to find out what is being held against her name. The occurrence report she received in response listed her as “posting hate” about transgender people. The complaint against her was based on tweets she posted between May - December 2019 though none of her comments were in any way abusive or threatening.
I got the occurrence report on 6th July. It reads:
A barrister who has been posting hate’ about Jewish and transgender people.
I am not even given the benefit of an ‘alleged’. It records my full name, my address, my date of birth, my telephone number and my work email. The complaint was made in December 2019 and I had never been told anything about it.
I then asked for disclosure of the online publications that formed the basis of this complaint. I received 12 pages of screenshots of tweets dating from May 2019 to December 2019. These tweets were a mixture of jokes, sarcasm or simple factual statements: transwomen are men, for example. There was no abuse; no threats; no targeting.
Transphobic hate crime is legally defined as "Any incident / criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender".
“Perceived by the victim” is a terrifying phrase when you consider the many, many things that are considered ‘transphobic’ by lunatics.
Furthermore, The College of Policing’s Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG) requires that any report of ‘hate’ must be recorded, even if the incident is not investigated or the alleged perpetrator offered an opportunity to give evidence.
How can we rely on statistics when a ‘hate crime’ is defined by the alleged victim instead of by the law and the police have to record even unsubstantiated reports?
As Sarah Phillimore writes, “What the police are doing is allowing themselves to become accomplices to those who themselves wish to harass others”.
(Note from Graham: these were the same tactics used by Aimee Challenor against Andy Healy, ’Stephanie’ Hayden against a transexual friend of mine, (and me), and Adrian Harrop, also against me.)
Thursday 30th July - One Billboard Outside Waverly, Edinburgh
THE TIMES: A poster celebrating the much-loved children’s author, JK Rowling, has been removed from Edinburgh’s Waverley railway station.
The billboard was commissioned by women’s rights campaigner, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, and first appeared outside Waverley railway station on Monday 27th July. It simply reads “I ❤️JK Rowling” and was intended to celebrate the author’s birthday on 31st July.
But on 29th July the poster was removed because it is ‘too political’. A source at Network Rail said that the billboard’s ‘context’ means it was ‘likely to cause offence’.
Network Rail issued the following statement: “The poster in question is against our code of acceptance for advertising in our stations owing to its political nature. We do not allow advertising that is likely to support or promote one viewpoint over another.”
Clearly, as an apolitical organisation, it’s important Network Rail do not demonstrate any bias in the debate around gender identity ideology.
Except for this, of course.
Friday 31st July - The Existence of Women is Transphobic
News Channel CNN published an article about cervical cancer in which the word ‘woman’ does not appear.
The article is about the changes to screening guidelines in the US and the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine. Throughout the piece, women and girls are referred to as ‘individuals with a cervix’ and even ‘those with a hysterectomy’.
It seems that CNN has no such sensibilities when it comes to male healthcare though.
The following day Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury, made the mistake of ‘liking’ a tweet which challenged CNN’s phrasing.
She experienced a barrage of abuse in retaliation and there were calls for her to be expelled from The Labour Party.
Even the Young Labour organisation in her own constituency couldn’t wait to condemn her.
Cervical cancer is a largely preventable disease if diagnosed and treated early enough. Proper screening can detect pre-cancer changes in the cervix as well as cancer in its early stages, thus greatly improving the chances of survival.
Not all women in the US or the UK speak English as a first language. According to the UK's leading cervical cancer charity, almost half of the women in the UK don’t know what is a cervix is, still less that they have one. Female health issues should be discussed in clear, concise language that ALL women understand. But in this brave new world, being ‘inclusive’ is apparently more important than saving women’s lives.
Saturday 1st August - Scottish Government Attempts to Redefine “Woman”
Lawyers acting for For Women Scotland have written to the Scottish Government to challenge its attempt to redefine the word “woman”.
In March 2018 the Scottish Government introduced the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act with the intention of increasing the representation of women on public boards.
However, the Statutory Guidance published in May will render the act absolutely futile because the word 'woman' has been redefined to include males. The definition of 'woman' not only means "anyone born female" as per the UK's Equality Act 2010, it also includes those who meet the following criteria:
Have the characteristic of gender reassignment, as defined in the Equality Act
Be proposing to undergo, is undergoing or undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning their sex to female
Be living as a woman
What does "be living as a woman' even mean? Well, according to the guidance the law 'would not require the person to dress, look or behave in any particular way’; using female pronouns or calling yourself Susan on the gas bill will suffice.
Maureen Calder, a spokeswoman for For Women Scotland:
“It beggars belief that the Scottish Government has introduced new legislation that contravenes the very essence of what a “woman” is in law. This is just the introduction of self-identification of sex by the back door… We believe this Act raises significant concerns for the status of women in Scotland.”
Sunday 2nd August - The Sex That Dare Not Speak Its Name
LBC RADIO: Lib-Dem leadership hopefuls, Sir Ed Davey and Layla Moran, pretended not to know what a woman is when appearing on Iain Dale’s programme.
A listener called in to ask the two Liberal Democrat leadership candidates to define what a woman is.
Sir Ed said that, "A woman is defined by the individual. If a person believes they are a woman, a trans woman is a woman, that's my view, it's the party's view”.
Layla Moran stated, "Every individual has the right to decide who they are, it's not up to society to do that, it's for the individual to do that". She went on to confuse trans identities with DSD (or ‘intersex’) conditions, talked about people being ‘in the wrong body’ and said that she’s more interested in the “person inside”. (You may remember that Moran once said that she can “See someone in their soul”.)
Sir Ed then likened women who object to dehumanising phrases such as “Individuals with a cervix” to those who opposed to same-sex marriage. He said people would just have to accept that “Words do have a context and they sometimes change”.
One wonders how they’d have answered if asked to define the word “Man”.
See you next week.