A Week in the War on Women: Monday 10th August - Sunday 16th August
By JL
Monday 10th August - Twitter Still Censoring Gender Critical Voices
Dr Debra Soh is a neuroscientist, academic and journalist who specializes in gender, sex, and sexual orientation. Her new book, The End of Gender has just been released.
Last week she was a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The pair discussed the inclusion of trans-identified males in women’s sport, the effects of puberty blockers on children’s health and the unscientific notion of sex being a spectrum.
Twitter tried to censor the episode. Site users were prevented from immediately accessing the link and the podcast was labelled as including “Potentially sensitive content”.
Twitter has a track record of censoring gender critical voices. Meghan Murphy, GN Centric, Claire Graham, Seven Hex and our very own Graham Linehan, to name but a few, have been booted off the site for speaking honestly about gender identity ideology. Convicted paedophiles, Peter Bright and Eric Joyce, however, still have their accounts.
Also Today - This Is The Future
Twitter user, Lily Maynard, drew our attention to an incident which took place in the US during one of the Portland Protests.
Male police officers detained a female protestor and began to pat her down. When asked if a female officer was available to carry out this search, one of the cops replied: “How do you know I don’t identify as a female?”.
Tuesday 11th August - Detransition Stories to Break Your Heart
FEMINIST CURRENT: Chantal Louis interviewed three young lesbians, Sam, Nele, and Ellie, who transitioned to ‘live as men’ before realizing they’d made a mistake.
Sam was diagnosed as trans after a therapy session lasting just 30 minutes and she was prescribed testosterone soon afterwards. Even though she experienced serious doubts prior to having a mastectomy and a hysterectomy, she felt she had to go through with the surgeries. She was 24 years old.
Nele reached puberty very early and couldn’t cope with the male attention she attracted. She was so desperate to get rid of her female body that she developed an eating disorder. In her early twenties, she believed herself to be trans and saw a therapist who immediately recommended testosterone. He claimed that Nele’s ‘being born’ transgender was the cause of her eating disorder and depression.
Ellie was bullied in her early teens and hated her own body. She describes visiting a trans organisation which ‘planted a small seed’ and then being further encouraged to identify as trans after watching YouTube videos. She was sixteen when her doctor, who had been recommended by the same trans organization, persuaded her parents that she needed to start hormone treatment. At seventeen Ellie had a mastectomy.
Both Nele and Ellie have suffered health problems as a result of taking testosterone and all three women feel they were failed by their clinicians and therapists.
Wednesday 12th August - Bristol University’s Delaying Tactics
Raquel Rosario Sánchez is a writer, campaigner and researcher from the Dominican Republic. She is currently studying for a PhD at Bristol University.
In February 2018 she chaired a Woman’s Place UK (WPUK) meeting in Bristol. An anonymous open letter calling for the meeting to be cancelled was circulated to Bristol University staff and students.
Sánchez suffered abuse and intimidation from a particular student trans activist and made a formal complaint about him to Bristol University in February 2018. The university failed to take any action against the individual in question, ‘terminated’ the disciplinary procedure in June 2019 and then dismissed Sánchez’s student complaint six months later.
Sánchez is now taking legal action against Bristol University for its failure to properly protect her from the bullying and harassment she suffered. A detailed Letter Before Claim was filed by her legal team on 18th June, asking the university for a response within 28 days. After ignoring the initial email, the university eventually requested an extension. This week the university requested a further extension.
This is far more serious than it sounds. Sanchez is an international student and so has only a limited amount of time in which to pursue this action. The longer the university delays, the more chance of Sánchez having to return to the Dominican Republic before her legal claim can be settled.
Sánchez states, “I believe that the University’s failure to protect me is because they have a policy of not properly applying its disciplinary procedures against students who identify as trans rights activists.”
Thursday 13th August - Mixed Sex Toilets By Order Of The Principle
THE DAILY MAIL: Parents are outraged that mixed sex toilets are being installed in their children’s school without warning or consultation.
Swanmore College has installed mixed sex toilets for Year 9 pupils - ie 13 year olds - without consulting parents. The new facilities were unveiled on social media just a few weeks before pupils are due back at school.
Parents have reacted angrily, stating that these facilities will compromise pupils’ safety and privacy. One mother told the paper, “I am not happy about this… Makes me very nervous of sexual assaults, abuse, name calling”. The school’s solution to the possibility of bullying and assault was to install CCTV in the communal areas.
Headteacher, Kyle Jonathan, defended his decision. He said, “I don't feel in today's equal society, we should ask permission to be inclusive”.
Tell that that to the young girls who, in the midst of puberty and all that entails, now have to deal with adolescent males in their toilets.
Friday 14th August - A Robust Response to Solnit’s Sycophancy
Philosopher, academic and writer, Dr Holly Lawford-Smith, published a response to Rebecca Solnit’s painful genuflecting to trans activism in last week’s Guardian.
In response to Solnit’s claim that “Trans women post no threat to cis [sic] women”, Lawford-Smith provided several examples to demonstrate that isn’t always the case.
She cited, Karen White, who sexually assaulted two inmates in a female prison, Kristoffer Johansson, who murdered and mutilated his girlfriend, Michael Williams, who raped and murdered a 13 year-old girl, now ‘identifies as a woman’ and is awaiting transfer to a women's prison in Canada, and Ashley Winter, who tortured and murdered a 17 year-old girl.
“You say it's a 'sad waste of time to focus on imaginary maybe presumably it-could-theoretically-happen violence'. But these examples weren't imaginary, they were real, they happened to real women and girls.”
Dr Lawford-Smith isn’t the only woman to feel betrayed and enraged by Solnit’s dismissive piece. Read Victora Smith’s piece for us here.
Saturday 15th August - Joining the Police Requires Magical Thinking
THE TELEGRAPH: Two police forces have turned down job applications from a woman because she doesn’t believe that human beings can change sex.
A female serving police officer anonymously applied for vacant positions at 26 different forces around the UK by emailing their internal recruitment teams. She made it clear that, although she is firmly opposed to discrimination against trans people, she doesn’t believe that it’s possible to change sex.
She received 14 responses. Two police forces, Norfolk Constabulary and the officer’s own employer in the South East, turned her down because of her gender-critical views. The Norfolk force told her that her views would “not be something we could uphold within the constabulary” and the SE force said her views did not constitute “the behaviours expected”.
The woman challenged the response from the Norfolk force and asked them, “If there were serving officers with these views (as I know that there are), would their employment be under threat?” A recruitment adviser contacted her and asked her to provide “Details and any evidence” of officers who share her views so that they could be “investigated”.
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a believer in biological reality?”
Sunday 16th August - Trans Activists Are Further Marginalising Trans People
THE SCOTSMAN: Trans rights activists are harming genuine trans people.
Euan McColm describes the ferocious attacks of trans activists on women who express perfectly reasonable views.
There are numerous examples - JK Rowling, Rosie Duffield, Jenny Marra, Gillian Philip, Julie Bindel, Lucy Hunter-Blackburn, Dr Kath Murray, and Lisa Mackenzie - of women who are abused, bullied, described as bigots and TERFs, and even physically attacked, for simply wanting to examine an ideology which could have a potentially devastating effect on their rights.
“Men – surprise, surprise – are often the most aggressive in their condemnation of women raising concerns about GRA reform. I suppose it’s easier to fully explore one’s misogyny when you’ve dressed it up in “progressive” clothes.”
But McColm warns that these bullying and silencing tactics are only serving to radicalise anyone who has concerns. “And those trans rights activists who wish to silence women may find that their sole achievement is the further marginalisation of the people they claim to represent.”
A conjecture on our part, but when all of the abusive cross-dressers, fetishists and cosplayers find that the online bullies who protected them have moved on to other sport, things will change. After cheapening and appropriating the experience of people with gender dysphoria, and wreaking bloody havoc on the historical empathy between women and transexuals, these men will melt away, leaving nothing but an expensive bill, and trans people holding it.
See you next week.
Excellent as ever. This should be a regular column in a national newspaper.
Graham, I was not impressed with Dr. Debra Soh. I thought she was lacking in insight on a number of issues, including the nature of gender. She fully associates the word as a substitute for sex it seems to me, very oddly given the nature of the discussion on our side and in transgender ideology itself about the nature of gender and the denial of sex, but she associates it, if I understood her properly, as a shortcut to refer back to sex which comes about as the result of the joining of gametes (egg and sperm) that form either males or females depending on chromosomes. She does not speak of gender fluidity as the activists do but that gender is real and associated with males and females. She understands that sex is biological but at one point refers to gender as biological. Radical feminists describe gender as femininity or masculinity and as being influenced by culture. Dr. Soh does not believe gender is influenced by culture, again if I understood her correctly (I was doing several things at the same time as I was listening to this over two-hour podcast). It seems to me that she undercuts her reasoning about transgenderism in that it cannot therefore be criticized as a cultural product. Radical feminists believe gender is fully influenced by culture. I am not sure I can go that far, in that, there are apparently some behaviors that are influenced by hormones and other physiological processes in both sexes. I do agree however that the way a culture conceives proper behavior on the part of males and females is an incontrovertible part of the way femininity and masculinity are formed, displayed, and practiced. I consider myself a rad fem for the most part, but I am neither a lesbian nor a separatist and some, but by no means all, radical feminist lesbians do consider femininity and masculinity as wholly influenced by culture, if I understand them properly. Dr. Soh also fell down the rabbit hole on pornography and only later, when Joe told her that her ideas about pornography were not those held by many others and he explained why, did she back down a bit and did manage to admit that it was not appropriate for children. Prostitution understood as work and not as an oppressive system that supports patriarchy probably would be accepted by her, but it wasn't mentioned. As a Liberal, by her own admittance and someone who said she has a problem with many things about feminism, she said everything goes (or words to that effect) as long as it is between two (or possibly more?) consenting adults. She completely accepts homosexuality, which is fine, and is completely against the transitioning of children, which is good, but she believes that adults should be able to transition if they wish. She alluded to homosexuality being biological, whereas no genes have been found to be associated with homosexuality or with transgenderism although birth order and twin studies have shown there to be a correlation to some extent with homosexuality. The study she mentioned about the correlation of scans of gay male brains with that of females is not one that is widely accepted, at least in my reading of the issues. So much about these issues are not yet understood. Certainly the level of hormones in the pregnant woman's body has an effect on the development of the foetus, which she mentioned, but it is not shown to be definitive in the development of homosexuality or transgenderism. She and Joe both believe that some people are naturally transgender. I do not fully accept that, as I believe culture and parental and peer and other societal influences are extremely strong and act on the individual's understanding of themselves. On the other hand, I am not averse to changing my mind of that. In transvestism for instance I believe something goes wrong with males within the family and in society that make them extremely susceptible to these kinds of fetishes. She did not discuss the environmental and psychological conditions that exist in the family that produce the idea of gender dysphoria, for instance, sexual, physical, or psychological abuse many girls and boys have in their histories as well as a propensity toward body mutilation because of the departure from gender norms and the influence of ADD or autism in the development of dysphoria. She also said in connection with pornography that it wasn't an addiction and Joe also pushed back at that in some amazement at her lack of understanding of the highly addictive nature of pornography (which can be just as harmful as addictions to gambling and to alcohol and other drugs). She seems to be totally unaware of the true nature of most of the porn that is out there and the development of trans porn, another issue that wasn't discussed, but she tried to backtrack a bit but it wasn't convincing. This is basic stuff and she was out to lunch on it. Except with her brief mention of the word feminism, she did not discuss the issues within the context of the gender-critical feminists critique of it. She did discuss briefly autogynephilia and paraphilias generally (which I gathered was the subject of her graduate dissertation) in relation to MtoF transitions of I believe heterosexual transvestites, who are overwhelming heterosexual, but did not discuss the prevalence of most transitions being that of transvestites rather than feminine-identified gay males. The condition of autogynephilias and other paraphilias was apparently new information for Joe. She failed to mention, however, the history of the development of the transgender ideology, its funders, their aims, pedophilia, drag queens at libraries and schools, and the detailed history and nature of transgenderism that one finds in reading Janice G. Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, Heather Brunskell-Evans and others. She failed to mention any of the thousands upon thousands of verbal attacks, the many job losses or demotions; deplatforming aimed at feminists who criticize transgender ideology; disruption of meeting sites or cancellation of conference venues; nor of the few actual physical attacks by trans activists on women, their spaces, etc. She never mentioned women's and girls' sports, or even the importance of maintaining separate facilities for vulnerable women, except she did mention prisons but did not mention the well-documented information about crimes committed by sex offending female-identified transgender persons in prisons against women. In fact, she totally ignored all the data that is being noted by feminist critics of this issue. I got the impression she keeps herself away from feminist criticism. That's too bad, because without that criticism one misses a great deal, if not most of the analyses out there. Both she and Joe of course spoke of the ideology as a form of religion and some of the reasons why activists and their allies and people working in academia and other societal institutions support this movement but not in depth. Altogether, I thought it was a major disappointment. Sorry.