He's gotta be peaking the world, right? The Biden interview with him? FFS! You couldn't write it. I hope it's played back on the "Biden was losing his marbles" reel, sooner rather than later.
Nicola Sturgeon.... I don't even know where to begin. Trans women are more likely to be sex offenders than men who don't claim to be women. So trans women pose a HIGHER risk to women. Stop defending men in dresses and start protecting women.
The thing with Self ID in regards to women's safety is that it will be impossible to stop any man entering any women only facility at any time. It's not so much about "transwomen" themselves, although that, too, warrants concerns and a lot of discussion, and frankly, anyone who claims that trans women should be allowed into women only facilities does not have a leg to stand on empirically, logically or morally.
That being said: I'd be very careful about making claims about men claiming to be women to be more likely to be sex offenders. We can only base that claim on two statistics which are potentially somewhat misleading. In both US prisons and prisons in England and Wales we know that pretty much exactly half of men claiming to be women have been convicted of some form of sex offense. That is roughly about four times as often as is the case with the general male prison population.
That should be taken with a huge grain of salt, though. We don't know when these men started "identifying as women", and why. In both the UK and the US, there are strong incentives for male prisoners to just claim they "identify" as women. Effectively, both jurisdictions have introduced Self ID in the prison system, meaning that these inmates have a right to be transferred to the female estate. That is in itself tempting for predators for obvious reasons, but also for other prisoners. Female estates tend to have much lower security, and are generally more relaxed than male estates. So many male inmates may consider them an attractive alternative.
What we are seeing is effectively that Self ID in a penitentiary system produces "transwomen". This also means that these people are not necessarily representative of men claiming to be women as a whole. This whole thing is of course madness and an imminent danger to women unfortunate enough to be in prison and must be stopped at once. It's just that we can not deduce much about "transwomen" from what we can observe there.
Of course, these many middle aged men and confused teenage boys giving sexualized parodies of women raise more than just one red flag in regards to the safety of women, but we do not have sufficient information to prove that these people are more likely to be sex offenders than the general male population. The same can and must be said about pedophiles who claim to be women.
It would take a lot of research to answer those questions. Sadly, in the current atmosphere in academia, that research is being stopped before it even starts. Just look at what happened to Jo Phoenix. And this is truly dangerous.
The barriers to research on the subject are incredibly dangerous, how the hell have we reached this point? It can't all be down to Stonewall, can it...? It beggars belief that such a tiny minority of the population wield this kind of power, it's truly shocking the strangle hold they now have over not just academia but all of us via the media, the workplace, schools, public services and so on.
I think here we have several related developments converge to form the Perfect Storm.
Large parts of academia have started subscribing to identitarian ideologies (i.e. identity politics) a while ago. This in itself restricts academic freedom. Trans ideology neatly attached itself to this and is the most extreme outcrop, at least so far.
The Left has largely abandonded economic analysis and theory as the basis of its politics all over the Western world, and threw out Class as a concept alongside its abandonment of materialism. This has opened the window for identitarian ideologies to fill the void. This is now exarbercated by that fact that for about a decade or so pretty much all young party functionaries have graduated in exactly those fields of academia that have succumbed to identitarian ideology. The latter also applies to media.
As a result we now have a bunch of heavily undereducated people in positions of power in political movements, academia and media who think that material reality not only does not exist but that the very idea it does is really all a conspiracy by old white men to subdue the rest of humanity.
This is even made worse by the fact that traditional right wing parties, such as Republicans and the Tories, have themselves abandoned all reason and have embraced openly racist other bigotted stances. (The Tories a lot more subtly than the Republicans.) The idea of reason as a guiding principle of politics has been completely lost over this, and this is btw. mostly to blame on Conservatives. (It's kind of ironic that it's now Cons who defend reason over ideology, as far as it suits them, that is. Life is full of contradictions.)
This makes it very easy to paint any resistance to liberal identitarian nonsense as really motivated by bigotry, being a reactionary, a fascist and whatever.
If you could see the photo of the older white man calling a black man a monkey at an antifa gathering, you'd know exactly what we're dealing with. This man was my confirmation that the government is backing antifa and planting obvious surveillance / security state personnel to ensure that antifa and their violence is identified by the gullible as "left." What better way to smear people who have some actual material analysis? And if you haven't seen the news, the antifa who shot and killed a man who had attended a Trump rally was another middle-aged white man who has now been killed by federal marshals in Washington State. To keep him from talking?
WPATH puts out dangerous so called “guidance”- where have all the investigative journalists gone! There’s a few publications like REDUXX doing stuff but most of the public still don’t know what’s happening. They are unlikely to follow this online. Reminds me of communism with all the censorship. We’ve had a conservative government for years though - I hope Sunak remembers what a woman is now he’s PM
But very good question. ICYMI, one particularly honest journalist talking about how "The post-Tavistock gender services will go deeper than mere affirmation of what a child tells them":
Yeah, it's all being shut down. It can't all be down to Stonewall. Stonewall is a UK charity. This is going on all over the world, the US and Canada are especially bad.
Apple Pi: "The barriers to research on the subject are incredibly dangerous, how the hell have we reached this point?"
Very good question, the one of the hour in fact. An hour which is growing very late; why we should not be talking falsely now -- as Bob Dylan put it some 55 years ago ... 😉
But as something of a rather damning answer, you might be interested in a review of Matt Walsh's documentary, "What is a woman?", by skeptic Michael Shermer where he quotes an "academic" [AKA "transgender ideologue"] at the University of Tennessee:
"But Grzanka’s dodge is not uncommon in academia today, and in exasperation with Walsh’s persistent questioning in search of the truth, Grzanka pronounces on camera, 'Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic.' ...."
Houston, we have an iceberg of a problem of titanic-sinking proportions. That "getting to the truth is deeply transphobic" may well or should serve as an epitaph for much of Academia.
I'm constantly pondering on how we as a society find our way out of this epic trans mess and I feel that the pro trans side seek to cause confusion and cognitive dissonance and their only defence they deploy to bat away intelligent discussion, enquiry, research and keeping single sex spaces and services is to loudly and aggressively accuse the questioners of transphobia and they round it off with the TWAW chant as though that's all that's required in explanation.
It's an incredibly revealing sentence "Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic" Grzanka is revealing that they'd rather not have the truth revealed because they actually do know what the truth is and know that the ideology simply does not stand up to scrutiny. An uncomfortable truth so they deflect and insult to avoid it being revealed and to avoid entering into discussion addressing valid criticisms because they know they have no counter argument that is either intelligent or makes any sense. As you say, the uncomfortable truth is enough to sink the Titanic behemoth which is the trans movement.
Apple Pi: "I'm constantly pondering on how we as a society find our way out of this epic trans mess ..."
Likewise. Kinda think it's important to go back to first principles which I think far too many have lost sight of, or never had a good handle on to begin with. Apropos of which, my take on that "age-old question" of "What is a woman?" 😉
Apple Pi: "... sink the Titanic behemoth which is the trans movement."
Hadn't thought of the phrase from that point of view, but some justification for it. 🙂 Kinda think the wheels are coming off the transgender bus; couldn't happen to a nicer bunch -- thugs and psychotics to a very large extent:
Women are hated by the men that want to be them but who know that they will never ever be the sex they desire to be, it's so enraging to them that the only way of expressing that is hate. It is actually quite terrifying to me, a woman, the level of threat issued by TIM and their handmaidens.
Yes, I see what you mean. We have no way of verifying motivation / intent when it comes to men identifying as women, when/why/how etc.
This is the statistic I was going from too:
In both US prisons and prisons in England and Wales we know that pretty much exactly half of men claiming to be women have been convicted of some form of sex offense. That is roughly about four times as often as is the case with the general male prison population. (I got it from the MOJ via Fair Play for Women).
Surely this stat still stands for the prison population, and surely we can gain insight from this, i.e. the types of men who claim to be women have a higher proclivity to commit sex offences, regardless of when / why they decided to make the change? Doesn't this tell us something about their psyche in general, i.e. statistically more likely to violate boundaries?
Perhaps I am undermining my own argument when I say that "trans women" specifically pose more of a threat. In essence, these are just men calling themselves so (and many as you say do it for an easier time in the female estate). But I'm trying to get across that the fact that these men who claim to be a woman makes them statistically more of a red flag than a man who doesn't claim to be a woman? The act of identifying as woman to gain access to the female estate is in itself, concerning.
I use the term "trans women" ironically. They are men. But it's not true that, as a result, we don't have separate stats. Because it does seem that men who identify as women in jail (regardless of why / when) are more likely to be bad eggs, as the MOJ stats above would indicate?
Human rights of prisoners must include a clean estate, food and a chance to rehabilitate in my opinion. I personally don’t even mind if they have TVs. But like the American armed forces decision - male offenders must go in a male prison even if it means a separate wing.
We know 75% or so have a paraphilia - believe that was valid research? Most would say no to placing any of these men in a woman’s prison. Anyone thinking it is ok is not woriads
All on board for keeping men out of women's prisons, changing rooms, toilets and what have you...
The 75 per cent paraphilia thing - well, that would apply to that demographic as a whole. That may not be true for inmates who for one reason or another start "identifying as women" while in prison. (Not sure how valid the 75 per cent number is at this point and time, because the whole situation has changed drastically since this estimate has been made.)
Again, we have a system that encourages "identifying as a woman", and this makes this whole mess even messier, and it gets messy squared by the fact that no one really knows what trans means anymore. This is a nightmare on so many levels.
Where is Kemi!? She seems to have her head totally screwed on when it comes to this. Her Times article on the Tavistock was just amazing. Such integrity.
A study of two California prisons revealed these statistics (and it's important to point out that these men were in male prisons): In one prison 28 percent of the trans-identifying males were convicted sex offenders, in another 48 (or 49) percent of the TIMs were convicted sex offenders. And one doesn't become a convicted sex offender because one works as prostitute. I think that tells us what we need to know about trans-identifying males and their inclinations, and these were not even the men pretending to be trans to get into women's prisons.
It doesn't tell us much, I'm afraid. Again, we don't know when, how and why these men started to "identify as women". These numbers just give us a ratio of sex offenders in a trans population that was already imprisoned. So, yes, that number did include those who just wanted to get into women's prisons, because there was no way from excluding them from the analysis. Plus, we have to keep in mind that the US penitentiary system largely allows Self ID, whereas the outside system does not, at least not on a national level. So different sets of rules, and an unclear database.
If we want to know if men "identifying as women" are more likely to be predators, we'd need conviction records as well as arrest records. That would also allow us to tell how Self ID in the penitentiary system produces "transwomen".
There is a reason I am saying this. In the early 90's the US DOJ published a statistic of federal prisons, according to which .7 per cent of the prison population (in the federal system) were atheists or non-believers. Back then, the ratio in the general population in the US was about 10 per cent. So, from a quick look we could deduce that atheists were 15 times less likely to end up in prison, and presumably become an offender, than the general population. Certainly something yours truly as an old atheist activist would highly appreciate. Propagandawise it can hardly get better than that.
Thing is: These stats don't tell us that. They certainly tell us that being religious doesn't make you a more moral human being than an atheist. But that's about it. There are too many things that really mess up the data.
For one, US penal codes and US courts particularly target the poor, the working class and ethnic minorities. In the US, all of these groups are a lot more likely to be religious than the average population, and that difference was even more pronounced in the 90's. (Talk to African American atheist activists if you don't believe me on that one. It's a nightmare for them.) Non believing or outright atheism was - and still is - a middle class to upper class thing in the US. Members of both classes are a lot less likely to end up in prison. So that alone would make atheists or non believers a lot less common in prisons than in overall society, and probably by a large margin.
We should also not forget that the US penitentiary system actively encourages religiosity, or at least the pretense of religiosity. Participating in religious activities earns you better treatment and is very likely to increase your chances to get parole. If you profess "I found God" you'll get out a lot faster. (Keep in mind the positive connotation of phrases like: "They are a church going family" or "He is a God fearing man". Both are used regularly to say that someone is a decent person.) And there's tons of proselytizers in US prisons, both inmates and from the outside.
In many cases religious conversion will also offer you membership in potentially desirable social circles in a given prison. Contrary to popular belief, gangs aren't the only thing that structures social life in US prisons, plus there are even a few gangs that partly form along religious lines. Black Islam is still a thing, or of you want to get with the Aryan Brotherhood, you better not be Catholic.
So, we have two very strong factors that account for there being practically no one in federal prisons in the US who states he's an atheist.
I highly suspect that we have factors in regards to "transpeople" that are likely to affect the share of sex offenders in men "identifying as women" in US and UK prisons. They'll be very different from my example, of course, and rather obviously they work the other way round. We shouldn't dismiss that idea, really.
Another potential factor is of course counsellors and psychiatrists working with sex offenders. Many of them will have been captured by transideology. They'll give their clients ideas. ("Oh, you're really a sex offender because you are trans and that causes so much stress. Poor, poor you." We have seen that line of defense in court already.)
Not to be misunderstood: We see every day how the umbrella definition of trans is a very convenient cover for sex offenders. It is a massive safeguarding problem.
How would you know? The questionnaire in US federal prisons did not ask about that.
And we should keep in mind that "trans" has become such a wide field that "transidentifying" hardly means anything anymore. We really have no way of knowing of what those inmates who "identified as women" really meant when they said they did, and we don't know why they said it.
And no, we can not rule out that these men, some of them, all of them or just few of them wanted to be in the female estate. They weren't asked that.
I am saying this is implausible. I am saying we have no solid evidence for that claim.
And again, I have repeatedly pointed out that there is no way can be housed with women in prisons or other protected facilities without seriously endangering women. We have many examples of that being the case by now, btw.
Whether all, many or few of these men have gender dysphoria or just pretend to get easier access to victims is entirely irrelevant.
Thanks Glinner. Please can you give a shout out to Kellie-Jay Keen who is on her US tour. She is on a mission to let women speak about women's rights and the unnecessarily medicalisation of children.
She has hit a snag (understatement of the year!)
Please consider donating a little if you are able to:
What a cult Nicola Sturgeon is. We know most men don’t need to ‘change gender’ to attack women but some do and they’re the ones we’re worried about. Sturgeon has told Scottish women that our concerns are “not valid” though.
what a nobhead. Yes it does and we will never experience them because we are not girls. Such arrogance to assume that he can have anyidea of what it is to be a woman.
He’s just picked the best bits as he sees them. I might do the same and identity as black. I like jazz and rap music, so i’ll take that. I like that sergeant a lot from aliens, so i’ll identify with that, i’ll leave out being pulled over by the police for being black- don’t much fancy that bit. I want to earn the most money as possible so i’ll just identify when it suits me- not at work, no i’m afraid actual black people will be on their own there. But after work, and when i can enjoy the good bits that black men enjoy, i’ll be there, soaking in my new identity and loving all the comments about how brave i am and how i’m finding my truth and to hell with all the racists saying i’m not really black. What would they know- they don’t know how I feel. Feelings are fact. I am black. I feel it. Get over it you racists. How dare you say my skin colour dictates my skin colour. Its just skin, my soul and spirit are black and thats what counts.
That man that said girl hood has had its ups and downs is delusional and selfish. And a nobhead.
Another thoroughly depressing post, JL. We are making small steps forward but this just shows how much more there is to be done. As for voting Labour, while they are so badly captured, I would rather vote Conservative, even if they made Larry the cat Prime Minister.
Let's give Rishi and week. He's got one week, then Larry should take over as PM. At least he won't spend taxpayer's money doing up No. 10. We can stretch to a new scratching post maybe.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
― George Orwell, 1984"
From an archive of a Medium article deleted because it offended the "Tranish Inquisition", the author apparently having coined the term: https://archive.ph/RJCqO
Think Starmer too is trying to convince everyone that two and two are five; he's certainly convinced himself ...
One of the things that really messes with my head is that the facts i.e. there are two sexes and humans cannot change sex, are no longer considered facts but have been designated a protected belief like a religion. I got into a spat over this with a female friend last week saying that it's not a belief, it is a fact. I was told in a mildly threatening way that I could get into a lot of trouble talking like this in a public space (coffee shop). A fact is a fact but of course we are living in the age of people "speaking their truth" Uh right, the truth is factual, not a little fairytale you like to spin. I'm made to feel that I have a weird belief system regarding biological facts rather than the trans population having a weird belief system that they have actually changed sex and are exactly the same as the sex they wish to be.
Apple Pi: "One of the things that really messes with my head is that the facts ... are no longer considered facts but have been designated a protected belief like a religion."
Indeed. Why I and many others -- including Graham if I'm not mistaken -- sort of objected to Maya Forstater making her claims a matter of belief rather of fact. Though I gather that that was partly due to the way the British legal system works -- or doesn't work:
However, I think it's less a matter of either belief or of fact than of the way the words "male" and "female" are defined. For example, it's not a matter of belief to say that legal side of the road to drive on (in the UK) is the left-hand side. Nor is it an "immutable fact" written into the fabric of the universe that "thou shalt drive on the left-hand side of the road" since most of world drives on the right-hand side. Rather it's a matter of choice and stipulation -- we pass laws stating which side is the lawful side to drive on. Nor is it a matter of belief to say if Fred is driving on the right-hand side of the road (in the UK) then he's probably breaking the law.
Similarly with "male" and "female". There are no intrinsic meanings to those words -- for example, some 600 to 1000 years ago "female" apparently meant "she who suckles" -- by which Jenner and his ilk might "reasonably" qualify 🙄:
But now -- with the discovery, in the late 1800s, that the basis of reproduction was the existence of two types of gametes (sperm & ova) -- we now DEFINE "male" and "female" accordingly. The only facts on the table are that those with the ability to produce either type of gamete can reproduce, and that those without that ability can't. How we connect those words to those abilities is then something of a matter of choice, of consensus. In the same way that we pass laws stipulating legal sides of the road to drive on.
But, for example, see the Springer Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science which states:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males (Parker et al. 1972) ..."
We COULD redefine those words -- as various transloonies are desperately trying to do -- but there are sound philosophical, logical and biological reasons to go with those definitions. And on the basis of them, transwomen (sexless eunuchs) like Jenner and male transvestites like Jordan Gray won't EVER qualify as females, or as "adult human females" (AKA, women) since they won't ever have any ovaries of their own.
Really not a matter of belief or of fact, but of how we define categories and of attaching words to them. Bit of a murky or tricky process, one which philosophers have maybe made heavy weather out of for the last 2500 years -- job security. But the basics of it seem simple enough which I've tried to illustrate in the context of answering that age-old question of "what is a woman?" 😉
Next time Starmer is being interviewed- like his most recent one when a caller asked him about Eddy Izzard - someone phone in and ask if he thinks the Channel 4 flasher is a woman!
Graham, I appreciate that you have been assiduously tracking the increasingly unbelievable mutations of the “trans” matter. Speaking as an inhabitant in a rural area*, much of what you report looks to me to be trailers for an unlikely dystopian movie. Indeed, quite often I have given up halfway through an article since I feel I can honestly no longer understand what is happening.
The impression I have is of a tiny minority of people who are obsessed with the minutiae of artificially invented distinctions which are becoming increasingly incomprehensible. Meanwhile the outside world burns.
*It is not true that this area is totally unaffected. There was the teenage daughter of a work colleague who decided to adopt a non-gender specific name. And it struck me how the trans issue was a marvellous opportunity to give young people another avenue for gratifyingly pseudo-radical posturing. It’s hardly surprising that over lockdown, the number of young who experienced the “revelation” that they were transgender skyrocketed.
Regarding the cancelled life saving surgery - She was stunned when, a few days later, she received an email from hospital CEO, Maxine Estop Green, cancelling her surgery. She was told that the hospital ‘did not share her beliefs’ and was committed to protecting its staff from ‘unacceptable distress’. She was advised to make alternative arrangements for her surgery." Why is is unacceptably distressing for TIM to not be allowed to carry out intimate care on a woman...? From a personal perspective as someone who has worked in care and had to provide intimate care to both males and females, it really wasn't the part of the job I relished and was always very relieved when I didn't have to do it. It's squirmy and uncomfortably embarrassing for both the carer and the person receiving the care, it never became routinely comfortable for me, and in no way distressing to be told I didn't need to do it because someone else had.
It is much better for males to provide care to males, and obviously ditto for women. My RN friend was never sexually harassed by his male patients, and he was far firmer with them than the female nurses were.
Fortunately I only had one male that was problematic for me in that way.
The use of the words "unacceptable distress" in the hospital's response is bizarre isn't it, the thought that they are protecting the TIMs from the distress of NOT being able to carry out intimate care of a woman. Bizarre and creepy.
Yes, I had male nurses when I was in the hospital and they were fine. One of them lived with his girlfriend, another nurse, and they had 19 cats. Meow!
Child sex abuser sentenced not to prison but to curfew.
Hah! That'll learn 'im ! Now he'll have to stay home at night, - when, as it happens, most 10-year-old girls are also at home. But he'll be free to harrass them during the day, unless all the girls are kept out of public spaces all the time.
Well done once again ,JL ,horrific as these stories are.. The woke "movement " is the cruellest ,least compassionate ,movement ever seen ,even including the Nazis and communists. The most extreme among extremes !! Do we need to allow them to cause the same damage like genocide / FEMiCIDE before we wake up to this. Keir Starmer's an abject coward and the though that he might get in as PM is really terrifying for women and children alike. As for Nicola Sturgeon ,my opinion of her is unprintable.!! She runs a puppet government whose strings are being pulled by Stonewall et al ,and they are obviously a misogynistic homophobic hate group !! Hopefully ULTA will go broke. THAT would be real social justice !!🙏🙏🙏
Makeup companies that keep virtual signalling to larpers, need to start selling clown makeup for the women who continue to buy from them.
PMSL
Why don't these men teach other men how to use make-up?
Most women are pretty good at it already; most men haven't got a clue!
Why don't men who identify as lesbians have sex with other men who identify as lesbians.
Good question! Could it be that they don't actually believe that TWAW and therefore TLAL !
Trans Lesbians Are Liars?
Does Dylan Mulvaney have an Oval Orifice?
😂
He's gotta be peaking the world, right? The Biden interview with him? FFS! You couldn't write it. I hope it's played back on the "Biden was losing his marbles" reel, sooner rather than later.
On Spinster: "Non-woman meets with non-president."
2, and one is his mouth!
In relation to LGBT+ 'Hate Crimes', I take it the law will always side with the T+ in cases involving a LGB person versus a T+ person.
Nicola Sturgeon.... I don't even know where to begin. Trans women are more likely to be sex offenders than men who don't claim to be women. So trans women pose a HIGHER risk to women. Stop defending men in dresses and start protecting women.
The thing with Self ID in regards to women's safety is that it will be impossible to stop any man entering any women only facility at any time. It's not so much about "transwomen" themselves, although that, too, warrants concerns and a lot of discussion, and frankly, anyone who claims that trans women should be allowed into women only facilities does not have a leg to stand on empirically, logically or morally.
That being said: I'd be very careful about making claims about men claiming to be women to be more likely to be sex offenders. We can only base that claim on two statistics which are potentially somewhat misleading. In both US prisons and prisons in England and Wales we know that pretty much exactly half of men claiming to be women have been convicted of some form of sex offense. That is roughly about four times as often as is the case with the general male prison population.
That should be taken with a huge grain of salt, though. We don't know when these men started "identifying as women", and why. In both the UK and the US, there are strong incentives for male prisoners to just claim they "identify" as women. Effectively, both jurisdictions have introduced Self ID in the prison system, meaning that these inmates have a right to be transferred to the female estate. That is in itself tempting for predators for obvious reasons, but also for other prisoners. Female estates tend to have much lower security, and are generally more relaxed than male estates. So many male inmates may consider them an attractive alternative.
What we are seeing is effectively that Self ID in a penitentiary system produces "transwomen". This also means that these people are not necessarily representative of men claiming to be women as a whole. This whole thing is of course madness and an imminent danger to women unfortunate enough to be in prison and must be stopped at once. It's just that we can not deduce much about "transwomen" from what we can observe there.
Of course, these many middle aged men and confused teenage boys giving sexualized parodies of women raise more than just one red flag in regards to the safety of women, but we do not have sufficient information to prove that these people are more likely to be sex offenders than the general male population. The same can and must be said about pedophiles who claim to be women.
It would take a lot of research to answer those questions. Sadly, in the current atmosphere in academia, that research is being stopped before it even starts. Just look at what happened to Jo Phoenix. And this is truly dangerous.
The barriers to research on the subject are incredibly dangerous, how the hell have we reached this point? It can't all be down to Stonewall, can it...? It beggars belief that such a tiny minority of the population wield this kind of power, it's truly shocking the strangle hold they now have over not just academia but all of us via the media, the workplace, schools, public services and so on.
I think here we have several related developments converge to form the Perfect Storm.
Large parts of academia have started subscribing to identitarian ideologies (i.e. identity politics) a while ago. This in itself restricts academic freedom. Trans ideology neatly attached itself to this and is the most extreme outcrop, at least so far.
The Left has largely abandonded economic analysis and theory as the basis of its politics all over the Western world, and threw out Class as a concept alongside its abandonment of materialism. This has opened the window for identitarian ideologies to fill the void. This is now exarbercated by that fact that for about a decade or so pretty much all young party functionaries have graduated in exactly those fields of academia that have succumbed to identitarian ideology. The latter also applies to media.
As a result we now have a bunch of heavily undereducated people in positions of power in political movements, academia and media who think that material reality not only does not exist but that the very idea it does is really all a conspiracy by old white men to subdue the rest of humanity.
This is even made worse by the fact that traditional right wing parties, such as Republicans and the Tories, have themselves abandoned all reason and have embraced openly racist other bigotted stances. (The Tories a lot more subtly than the Republicans.) The idea of reason as a guiding principle of politics has been completely lost over this, and this is btw. mostly to blame on Conservatives. (It's kind of ironic that it's now Cons who defend reason over ideology, as far as it suits them, that is. Life is full of contradictions.)
This makes it very easy to paint any resistance to liberal identitarian nonsense as really motivated by bigotry, being a reactionary, a fascist and whatever.
And, boom, there we go.
If you could see the photo of the older white man calling a black man a monkey at an antifa gathering, you'd know exactly what we're dealing with. This man was my confirmation that the government is backing antifa and planting obvious surveillance / security state personnel to ensure that antifa and their violence is identified by the gullible as "left." What better way to smear people who have some actual material analysis? And if you haven't seen the news, the antifa who shot and killed a man who had attended a Trump rally was another middle-aged white man who has now been killed by federal marshals in Washington State. To keep him from talking?
WPATH puts out dangerous so called “guidance”- where have all the investigative journalists gone! There’s a few publications like REDUXX doing stuff but most of the public still don’t know what’s happening. They are unlikely to follow this online. Reminds me of communism with all the censorship. We’ve had a conservative government for years though - I hope Sunak remembers what a woman is now he’s PM
Clothes Moth: "... where have all the investigative journalists gone?"
"Where have all the honest journalists gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will we ever learn?" 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y2SIIeqy34
But very good question. ICYMI, one particularly honest journalist talking about how "The post-Tavistock gender services will go deeper than mere affirmation of what a child tells them":
https://genderclinicnews.substack.com/p/explorers-wanted
About time, well past time. But more generally, you might also like this article:
"Why So Many Mainstream Media Figures Really Hate Substack"
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/08/why-so-many-mainstream-media-figures-really-hate-substack/
Thanks for links
The gender clinic news link is a sight for sore eyes and brings some hope, unless of course there's an election and Labour get in...
"sight for sore eyes", indeed.
Seems that that NHS story is getting a lot of coverage; for example see Spiked Online:
"Last week, in a victory for child safeguarding, reality and common sense, the NHS rammed a stake into the heart of trans ideology."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/10/25/the-nhs-is-pushing-back-against-trans-ideology/
"Spiking" the guns of trans ideology, so to speak ... 🙂
But a couple of others at GC News which I think you'll find is worth a follow 🙂
https://gcnews.substack.com/p/tuesday-october-25-2022
Yeah, it's all being shut down. It can't all be down to Stonewall. Stonewall is a UK charity. This is going on all over the world, the US and Canada are especially bad.
Apple Pi: "The barriers to research on the subject are incredibly dangerous, how the hell have we reached this point?"
Very good question, the one of the hour in fact. An hour which is growing very late; why we should not be talking falsely now -- as Bob Dylan put it some 55 years ago ... 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT7Hj-ea0VE
But as something of a rather damning answer, you might be interested in a review of Matt Walsh's documentary, "What is a woman?", by skeptic Michael Shermer where he quotes an "academic" [AKA "transgender ideologue"] at the University of Tennessee:
"But Grzanka’s dodge is not uncommon in academia today, and in exasperation with Walsh’s persistent questioning in search of the truth, Grzanka pronounces on camera, 'Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic.' ...."
https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-anyway/
Houston, we have an iceberg of a problem of titanic-sinking proportions. That "getting to the truth is deeply transphobic" may well or should serve as an epitaph for much of Academia.
"There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief".
I'm constantly pondering on how we as a society find our way out of this epic trans mess and I feel that the pro trans side seek to cause confusion and cognitive dissonance and their only defence they deploy to bat away intelligent discussion, enquiry, research and keeping single sex spaces and services is to loudly and aggressively accuse the questioners of transphobia and they round it off with the TWAW chant as though that's all that's required in explanation.
It's an incredibly revealing sentence "Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic" Grzanka is revealing that they'd rather not have the truth revealed because they actually do know what the truth is and know that the ideology simply does not stand up to scrutiny. An uncomfortable truth so they deflect and insult to avoid it being revealed and to avoid entering into discussion addressing valid criticisms because they know they have no counter argument that is either intelligent or makes any sense. As you say, the uncomfortable truth is enough to sink the Titanic behemoth which is the trans movement.
Apple Pi: "I'm constantly pondering on how we as a society find our way out of this epic trans mess ..."
Likewise. Kinda think it's important to go back to first principles which I think far too many have lost sight of, or never had a good handle on to begin with. Apropos of which, my take on that "age-old question" of "What is a woman?" 😉
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Apple Pi: "... sink the Titanic behemoth which is the trans movement."
Hadn't thought of the phrase from that point of view, but some justification for it. 🙂 Kinda think the wheels are coming off the transgender bus; couldn't happen to a nicer bunch -- thugs and psychotics to a very large extent:
https://terfisaslur.com/
https://helendale.substack.com/p/at-what-point-do-we-notice-the-misogyny
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/07/10/trans-activism-is-now-just-misogyny-in-drag/#.W14X6NJKi71
Women are hated by the men that want to be them but who know that they will never ever be the sex they desire to be, it's so enraging to them that the only way of expressing that is hate. It is actually quite terrifying to me, a woman, the level of threat issued by TIM and their handmaidens.
Yes, I see what you mean. We have no way of verifying motivation / intent when it comes to men identifying as women, when/why/how etc.
This is the statistic I was going from too:
In both US prisons and prisons in England and Wales we know that pretty much exactly half of men claiming to be women have been convicted of some form of sex offense. That is roughly about four times as often as is the case with the general male prison population. (I got it from the MOJ via Fair Play for Women).
Surely this stat still stands for the prison population, and surely we can gain insight from this, i.e. the types of men who claim to be women have a higher proclivity to commit sex offences, regardless of when / why they decided to make the change? Doesn't this tell us something about their psyche in general, i.e. statistically more likely to violate boundaries?
Perhaps I am undermining my own argument when I say that "trans women" specifically pose more of a threat. In essence, these are just men calling themselves so (and many as you say do it for an easier time in the female estate). But I'm trying to get across that the fact that these men who claim to be a woman makes them statistically more of a red flag than a man who doesn't claim to be a woman? The act of identifying as woman to gain access to the female estate is in itself, concerning.
I use the term "trans women" ironically. They are men. But it's not true that, as a result, we don't have separate stats. Because it does seem that men who identify as women in jail (regardless of why / when) are more likely to be bad eggs, as the MOJ stats above would indicate?
Does that make sense?
Human rights of prisoners must include a clean estate, food and a chance to rehabilitate in my opinion. I personally don’t even mind if they have TVs. But like the American armed forces decision - male offenders must go in a male prison even if it means a separate wing.
Totally agree with you, Clothes Moth.
I am going to refer to them as trans(wo)men from now on.
We know 75% or so have a paraphilia - believe that was valid research? Most would say no to placing any of these men in a woman’s prison. Anyone thinking it is ok is not woriads
All on board for keeping men out of women's prisons, changing rooms, toilets and what have you...
The 75 per cent paraphilia thing - well, that would apply to that demographic as a whole. That may not be true for inmates who for one reason or another start "identifying as women" while in prison. (Not sure how valid the 75 per cent number is at this point and time, because the whole situation has changed drastically since this estimate has been made.)
Again, we have a system that encourages "identifying as a woman", and this makes this whole mess even messier, and it gets messy squared by the fact that no one really knows what trans means anymore. This is a nightmare on so many levels.
Back to basics with the research we do have and work from there - we need truthful evidence based politicians like Kemi Badenoch for this
Where is Kemi!? She seems to have her head totally screwed on when it comes to this. Her Times article on the Tavistock was just amazing. Such integrity.
Hope she never lets women down - return of Suella B would be good as well
Yep, they now have special privileges.
A study of two California prisons revealed these statistics (and it's important to point out that these men were in male prisons): In one prison 28 percent of the trans-identifying males were convicted sex offenders, in another 48 (or 49) percent of the TIMs were convicted sex offenders. And one doesn't become a convicted sex offender because one works as prostitute. I think that tells us what we need to know about trans-identifying males and their inclinations, and these were not even the men pretending to be trans to get into women's prisons.
It doesn't tell us much, I'm afraid. Again, we don't know when, how and why these men started to "identify as women". These numbers just give us a ratio of sex offenders in a trans population that was already imprisoned. So, yes, that number did include those who just wanted to get into women's prisons, because there was no way from excluding them from the analysis. Plus, we have to keep in mind that the US penitentiary system largely allows Self ID, whereas the outside system does not, at least not on a national level. So different sets of rules, and an unclear database.
If we want to know if men "identifying as women" are more likely to be predators, we'd need conviction records as well as arrest records. That would also allow us to tell how Self ID in the penitentiary system produces "transwomen".
There is a reason I am saying this. In the early 90's the US DOJ published a statistic of federal prisons, according to which .7 per cent of the prison population (in the federal system) were atheists or non-believers. Back then, the ratio in the general population in the US was about 10 per cent. So, from a quick look we could deduce that atheists were 15 times less likely to end up in prison, and presumably become an offender, than the general population. Certainly something yours truly as an old atheist activist would highly appreciate. Propagandawise it can hardly get better than that.
Thing is: These stats don't tell us that. They certainly tell us that being religious doesn't make you a more moral human being than an atheist. But that's about it. There are too many things that really mess up the data.
For one, US penal codes and US courts particularly target the poor, the working class and ethnic minorities. In the US, all of these groups are a lot more likely to be religious than the average population, and that difference was even more pronounced in the 90's. (Talk to African American atheist activists if you don't believe me on that one. It's a nightmare for them.) Non believing or outright atheism was - and still is - a middle class to upper class thing in the US. Members of both classes are a lot less likely to end up in prison. So that alone would make atheists or non believers a lot less common in prisons than in overall society, and probably by a large margin.
We should also not forget that the US penitentiary system actively encourages religiosity, or at least the pretense of religiosity. Participating in religious activities earns you better treatment and is very likely to increase your chances to get parole. If you profess "I found God" you'll get out a lot faster. (Keep in mind the positive connotation of phrases like: "They are a church going family" or "He is a God fearing man". Both are used regularly to say that someone is a decent person.) And there's tons of proselytizers in US prisons, both inmates and from the outside.
In many cases religious conversion will also offer you membership in potentially desirable social circles in a given prison. Contrary to popular belief, gangs aren't the only thing that structures social life in US prisons, plus there are even a few gangs that partly form along religious lines. Black Islam is still a thing, or of you want to get with the Aryan Brotherhood, you better not be Catholic.
So, we have two very strong factors that account for there being practically no one in federal prisons in the US who states he's an atheist.
I highly suspect that we have factors in regards to "transpeople" that are likely to affect the share of sex offenders in men "identifying as women" in US and UK prisons. They'll be very different from my example, of course, and rather obviously they work the other way round. We shouldn't dismiss that idea, really.
Another potential factor is of course counsellors and psychiatrists working with sex offenders. Many of them will have been captured by transideology. They'll give their clients ideas. ("Oh, you're really a sex offender because you are trans and that causes so much stress. Poor, poor you." We have seen that line of defense in court already.)
Not to be misunderstood: We see every day how the umbrella definition of trans is a very convenient cover for sex offenders. It is a massive safeguarding problem.
Duh. These men were homosexuals and DID NOT want to be in a women's prisons. Quite happy where they were.
How would you know? The questionnaire in US federal prisons did not ask about that.
And we should keep in mind that "trans" has become such a wide field that "transidentifying" hardly means anything anymore. We really have no way of knowing of what those inmates who "identified as women" really meant when they said they did, and we don't know why they said it.
And no, we can not rule out that these men, some of them, all of them or just few of them wanted to be in the female estate. They weren't asked that.
I am saying this is implausible. I am saying we have no solid evidence for that claim.
And again, I have repeatedly pointed out that there is no way can be housed with women in prisons or other protected facilities without seriously endangering women. We have many examples of that being the case by now, btw.
Whether all, many or few of these men have gender dysphoria or just pretend to get easier access to victims is entirely irrelevant.
Reminder: CEO of 'Princess Grace Hospital' Maxine Estop Green is a Trustee of a Hospice.
https://www.cransleyhospice.org.uk/who-we-are/our-trustees/
Thanks Glinner. Please can you give a shout out to Kellie-Jay Keen who is on her US tour. She is on a mission to let women speak about women's rights and the unnecessarily medicalisation of children.
She has hit a snag (understatement of the year!)
Please consider donating a little if you are able to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbqhEIl--mU&ab_channel=Kellie-JayKeen
What a cult Nicola Sturgeon is. We know most men don’t need to ‘change gender’ to attack women but some do and they’re the ones we’re worried about. Sturgeon has told Scottish women that our concerns are “not valid” though.
A man that poses no threat to women does not belong in women's spaces any more than a man that does.
Exactly. It is impossible to tell beforehand which category he belongs to.
She's a feminist, apparently 🤬🤬
A feminist as defined by the same dictionary that says a man can be a woman?
Exactly! I can barely look or listen to her now!
I can no longer eat the fish! 😁
I would eat it if it got rid of it 😂😂
Ha, you got the sturgeon joke!
If Ulta products make you look like that freak there’s another reason to boycott them!
girlhood has had its ups and downs.....
what a nobhead. Yes it does and we will never experience them because we are not girls. Such arrogance to assume that he can have anyidea of what it is to be a woman.
He’s just picked the best bits as he sees them. I might do the same and identity as black. I like jazz and rap music, so i’ll take that. I like that sergeant a lot from aliens, so i’ll identify with that, i’ll leave out being pulled over by the police for being black- don’t much fancy that bit. I want to earn the most money as possible so i’ll just identify when it suits me- not at work, no i’m afraid actual black people will be on their own there. But after work, and when i can enjoy the good bits that black men enjoy, i’ll be there, soaking in my new identity and loving all the comments about how brave i am and how i’m finding my truth and to hell with all the racists saying i’m not really black. What would they know- they don’t know how I feel. Feelings are fact. I am black. I feel it. Get over it you racists. How dare you say my skin colour dictates my skin colour. Its just skin, my soul and spirit are black and thats what counts.
That man that said girl hood has had its ups and downs is delusional and selfish. And a nobhead.
Worse than the worst nightmare -- at least you can wake up and it’s over -- but this shit seems to be never ending.
Another thoroughly depressing post, JL. We are making small steps forward but this just shows how much more there is to be done. As for voting Labour, while they are so badly captured, I would rather vote Conservative, even if they made Larry the cat Prime Minister.
Let's give Rishi and week. He's got one week, then Larry should take over as PM. At least he won't spend taxpayer's money doing up No. 10. We can stretch to a new scratching post maybe.
Sure would like to see Starmer look at that Channel 4 video of Jordan Gray -- in his "naked glory" -- and say that Gray was a woman ...
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/a-revolution-of-mediocre-men
As Hannah Arendt put it:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8110811-the-ideal-subject-of-totalitarian-rule-is-not-the-convinced
A relevant quote from 1984:
“You are a slow learner, Winston.
How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
― George Orwell, 1984"
From an archive of a Medium article deleted because it offended the "Tranish Inquisition", the author apparently having coined the term: https://archive.ph/RJCqO
Think Starmer too is trying to convince everyone that two and two are five; he's certainly convinced himself ...
One of the things that really messes with my head is that the facts i.e. there are two sexes and humans cannot change sex, are no longer considered facts but have been designated a protected belief like a religion. I got into a spat over this with a female friend last week saying that it's not a belief, it is a fact. I was told in a mildly threatening way that I could get into a lot of trouble talking like this in a public space (coffee shop). A fact is a fact but of course we are living in the age of people "speaking their truth" Uh right, the truth is factual, not a little fairytale you like to spin. I'm made to feel that I have a weird belief system regarding biological facts rather than the trans population having a weird belief system that they have actually changed sex and are exactly the same as the sex they wish to be.
Apple Pi: "One of the things that really messes with my head is that the facts ... are no longer considered facts but have been designated a protected belief like a religion."
Indeed. Why I and many others -- including Graham if I'm not mistaken -- sort of objected to Maya Forstater making her claims a matter of belief rather of fact. Though I gather that that was partly due to the way the British legal system works -- or doesn't work:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/transgender-politics-why-j-k-rowling-took-a-stand/
However, I think it's less a matter of either belief or of fact than of the way the words "male" and "female" are defined. For example, it's not a matter of belief to say that legal side of the road to drive on (in the UK) is the left-hand side. Nor is it an "immutable fact" written into the fabric of the universe that "thou shalt drive on the left-hand side of the road" since most of world drives on the right-hand side. Rather it's a matter of choice and stipulation -- we pass laws stating which side is the lawful side to drive on. Nor is it a matter of belief to say if Fred is driving on the right-hand side of the road (in the UK) then he's probably breaking the law.
Similarly with "male" and "female". There are no intrinsic meanings to those words -- for example, some 600 to 1000 years ago "female" apparently meant "she who suckles" -- by which Jenner and his ilk might "reasonably" qualify 🙄:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/female#etymonline_v_5841
But now -- with the discovery, in the late 1800s, that the basis of reproduction was the existence of two types of gametes (sperm & ova) -- we now DEFINE "male" and "female" accordingly. The only facts on the table are that those with the ability to produce either type of gamete can reproduce, and that those without that ability can't. How we connect those words to those abilities is then something of a matter of choice, of consensus. In the same way that we pass laws stipulating legal sides of the road to drive on.
But, for example, see the Springer Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science which states:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males (Parker et al. 1972) ..."
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
And Oxford Dictionaries -- virtually the gold standard -- say pretty much the same thing:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
We COULD redefine those words -- as various transloonies are desperately trying to do -- but there are sound philosophical, logical and biological reasons to go with those definitions. And on the basis of them, transwomen (sexless eunuchs) like Jenner and male transvestites like Jordan Gray won't EVER qualify as females, or as "adult human females" (AKA, women) since they won't ever have any ovaries of their own.
Really not a matter of belief or of fact, but of how we define categories and of attaching words to them. Bit of a murky or tricky process, one which philosophers have maybe made heavy weather out of for the last 2500 years -- job security. But the basics of it seem simple enough which I've tried to illustrate in the context of answering that age-old question of "what is a woman?" 😉
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Next time Starmer is being interviewed- like his most recent one when a caller asked him about Eddy Izzard - someone phone in and ask if he thinks the Channel 4 flasher is a woman!
Graham, I appreciate that you have been assiduously tracking the increasingly unbelievable mutations of the “trans” matter. Speaking as an inhabitant in a rural area*, much of what you report looks to me to be trailers for an unlikely dystopian movie. Indeed, quite often I have given up halfway through an article since I feel I can honestly no longer understand what is happening.
The impression I have is of a tiny minority of people who are obsessed with the minutiae of artificially invented distinctions which are becoming increasingly incomprehensible. Meanwhile the outside world burns.
*It is not true that this area is totally unaffected. There was the teenage daughter of a work colleague who decided to adopt a non-gender specific name. And it struck me how the trans issue was a marvellous opportunity to give young people another avenue for gratifyingly pseudo-radical posturing. It’s hardly surprising that over lockdown, the number of young who experienced the “revelation” that they were transgender skyrocketed.
Regarding the cancelled life saving surgery - She was stunned when, a few days later, she received an email from hospital CEO, Maxine Estop Green, cancelling her surgery. She was told that the hospital ‘did not share her beliefs’ and was committed to protecting its staff from ‘unacceptable distress’. She was advised to make alternative arrangements for her surgery." Why is is unacceptably distressing for TIM to not be allowed to carry out intimate care on a woman...? From a personal perspective as someone who has worked in care and had to provide intimate care to both males and females, it really wasn't the part of the job I relished and was always very relieved when I didn't have to do it. It's squirmy and uncomfortably embarrassing for both the carer and the person receiving the care, it never became routinely comfortable for me, and in no way distressing to be told I didn't need to do it because someone else had.
It is much better for males to provide care to males, and obviously ditto for women. My RN friend was never sexually harassed by his male patients, and he was far firmer with them than the female nurses were.
Fortunately I only had one male that was problematic for me in that way.
The use of the words "unacceptable distress" in the hospital's response is bizarre isn't it, the thought that they are protecting the TIMs from the distress of NOT being able to carry out intimate care of a woman. Bizarre and creepy.
Yes, I had male nurses when I was in the hospital and they were fine. One of them lived with his girlfriend, another nurse, and they had 19 cats. Meow!
Child sex abuser sentenced not to prison but to curfew.
Hah! That'll learn 'im ! Now he'll have to stay home at night, - when, as it happens, most 10-year-old girls are also at home. But he'll be free to harrass them during the day, unless all the girls are kept out of public spaces all the time.
Are we living in Afghanistan?
Well done once again ,JL ,horrific as these stories are.. The woke "movement " is the cruellest ,least compassionate ,movement ever seen ,even including the Nazis and communists. The most extreme among extremes !! Do we need to allow them to cause the same damage like genocide / FEMiCIDE before we wake up to this. Keir Starmer's an abject coward and the though that he might get in as PM is really terrifying for women and children alike. As for Nicola Sturgeon ,my opinion of her is unprintable.!! She runs a puppet government whose strings are being pulled by Stonewall et al ,and they are obviously a misogynistic homophobic hate group !! Hopefully ULTA will go broke. THAT would be real social justice !!🙏🙏🙏