A couple of them waivered a bit, I think. A young woman and a young man, both of them alone, they sounded more unsure. They have to listen to that doubt they’re feeling!
I wonder how many of them were thinking, "I'm being filmed, better say the right thing." I also wonder how many said it was all nonsense but didn't end up making the final cut. This was a conservative production after all. If the Left had their heads on the right way round they'd be doing their own video talking to dissenters or running a campus-wide secret ballot to find out what the majority really think. We'll be stuck with 1000 years of Tory rule if they don't start waking up.
Totally agree. Conservatives don't need to do anything much, just watch the Left implode, but they will start exploiting this sooner or later.
The irony is it's the Govt that is presiding over men in women's prisons and this ludicrous Conversion Therapy Bill mess. All they have to do is to back away from Stonewall, firm up the Equality Act and they could actively win voters, not just watch Labour et al lose them.
It was painful to watch. But it shows how much of the nonsense is "bandwagon ning" rather than real thought and understanding. If this represents students at uni, we should all be really worried about what will happen when they rejoin the real world and have to get jobs. I can honestly say I could not/would not employ any of them as they cannot string a sentence together that makes sense and they live in a fantasy world.
I don't think young people have to be middle-class anymore to be this stupid. It seems like a lot of working-class kids as well have been raised in insulated bubbles.
And that's a difference, I think, between the U.S. and U.K. I used to think it was only well-off kids who could afford to be living in La-La Land, but it seems that here many young people who are not well-off have moved there as well. I would really liked to see some demographics on people 18-29, detailing their political beliefs, socioeconomic status, etc.
There was a fair bit around Brexit for the UK as it followed yet tipped up assumptions and traditional voting patterns. Some good maps online and you can select for what you outline. It tended to be little islands of stay in towns or cities, or university towns, in little seas of out. Then constituent parts of the UK voted slightly differently too. Less sure of that for the US but similar, then the seaboards and who switched from historically voting one way en masse or by state. Match up where Facebook or others put focus or funding.
Yes, that would be really interesting. I've been trying to find any information that might show how children from less affluent backgrounds respond to this new regime. It would imagine that it's much harder for a kid from a poorer background to be accepted in their immediate community as trans id. Any pointers welcome!
I watched the video of students attempting to explain gender identity and I weep for the future. They can't even explain it, name anything but male and female and it is so obvious that they are all trotting out the same tired lines they have swallowed wholesale. Universities used to be places of debate, critical thought and challenge, now they seem to be places where you get taught to trot out nonsense mantra and don't ask questions.
Some of them look scared. They know they don't know what they are talking about; they know what they are meant to say. I have a teen and a young adult and the younger one tells me frequently I have no idea of the ubiquity of these ideas and how they are pushed on TikTok. He's savvy enough to know when to speak and when to shut up.
That was a very hard watch for me because none of them seemed nasty. Just young people trying hard to be considerate. Which is nice. They're captured, but considerate. But ultimately we're all fucked if they get into positions of influence in the next few years.
The other reason is that the folks who commissioned this are an offshoot of US right-wing outfit Turning Point, of which I'm not a fan. The left should be doing videos like this but aren't.
My husband yesterday saw a photo of a young TIF we know, 18, friend of our son from primary school but they lost touch. Clearly on testosterone with shadowy tache and beard that only grows under the chin. Well she does look like a boy, he said. NO SHE DOESN'T!!! He can't see it!!
It's not fair to call them that. Wrong-headed, ill-served, thoughtless, group-minded. We need to blame the real wankers who are the influencers, groomers, rainbow police etc, and I'm sorry to say, teachers, who sold them this 'be kind' ideology. And of course all the mutual reinforcement.
Yes, they weren't born wrong-headed, they were conditioned. It's too easy to label them as unforgivably bad and call them names. It's much harder to dismantle the network of influences that shaped them (and a lot let satisfying) but it's the only thing that's going to stop it from happening to every new generation.
I just hope they grow out of it and learn acceptance of differing points of view but you're right, if it were just them, they would have been disciplined by the university without any further controversy.
I feel by saying they are just conditioned and hopefully they will grown out of it lends them some kind of sympathy and understanding. It's the 'be kind' narrative again and I've had it being kind to people who are harming us. They persecuted Kathleen Stock out of her job. As far as I'm concerned they are the enemy of reason and civility and whilst I welcome the idea that deradicalising them is the way forward, there must be a certain level of nastiness and vitriol in people who can behave this way (or cowadice, as I feel even in that YT video that some of them were too scared to speak out against this rubbish for fear of the same treatment that Kathleen Stock got). I have zero sympathy for any of these people. It's like excusing the tyrranical behaviour of people in history by saying "well the dictators made them do it". You have to be a certain type of person in the first place to want to hound somebody out of their job for holding a different view to you.
I'm wondering what they'll do when FACTS stare them in the face, such as drowning in a flood or burning up in a fire (climate chaos), no food at the grocery store, etc. I'm sure the Fates will ask them about their "feelings."
I've already seen this happening and the woman lets her child run wild -- a guest had to tell the little girl to stop harassing a dog -- as well as a horse she does not fence on a road (so it can be free, don't you know) where people drive like they're at a racetrack.
It's ok, they can feel that they are not drowning, burning or hungry. Sorted. I hope that maturity brings with them the ability to self reflect, to think objectively and to aactually make decisions rather than comply or jump on a popular bandwagon.
Good point. I've managed to feel a bit pleased about UCL and Reading has always had a very practical, pragmatic no shit style. UCL really are so big they can do what they want. I was a bit worried at one open day in 2011 by being asked 'but will I get a First if I come here?' and having to try to get over my shock and give a 'nice' response that, well if you work hard and apply yourself in your studies, with a fair wind, then yes you stand a good chance of achieving a First. They wanted a guarantee on an open day? From a random member of staff? No other questions about us, the department, or the courses we offered? None? No. With their parents looking on like hawks (no one was rocking up on their own which also freaked me out a little).
The OU are really in trouble (again). Jo Phoenix has gone :-(
We are now reframing ignorance as knowledge, and that's a really difficult thing for me to indulge. I can't sweetly nod along to those who are in their teens and twenties without screaming STOP BEING SO ****ING STUPID!!! I don't but am not sure how to help those so resistant to the art of thinking. They don't know how to critically analyse or be if anything crosses their minds they dislike or find hard. Barring or being unable to debate, that's not being kind, this version of dressed up 'kindness' is indulging ignorance and silencing debate.
It is strange like some sort of invisible disease that some people seem incapable of critical thinking. I personally give them the benefit of the doubt of not being thick as a plank, which unfortunately means it must be wilful, unwilling to consider they could be wrong, so certain of their cause. It has to be emotional problems. These must be inherently disenfranchised, lonely people, who feel that they have found a new ‘home’. Always for me the question, What is the pay off? What do they get out of it? I think a sense of belonging, someone made them feel special for once, or perhaps just ‘seen’. They’ve found their first ‘community’, and identify so strongly with it that they will fight to the death to defend it. (And by fight to the death I mean doc and harass outspoken women on social media). And then for some just a sense of righteous, moral superiority and renown (these are the worst). And that’s before we start talking about the really messed up ones.
Verrrrry little time for any of these people. You must have the patience of a saint.
What you've described is grooming. That's why it spread so well in campuses. Taking vulnerable people, and that's vulnerable to this kind of attention and coaxing and coercing them. Making them feel special. It's the payoff that groomers and abusers use, then make the victim feel guilty. That they are 'special'. Mustn't speak out or disagree or tell. And they do make people feel good for a time, or sometimes, or so confused they lose their ability to realise what's happening. It's not unusual for those groomed not to realise or to continue defending the perps for decades after. That's how strong the group think or grooming has been. It makes me sick to see the parallels.
When you get one person exposed, then it takes a lot of work and years to identify all the likely victims. Sometimes police contact people and need to explain how they are victims and the realisation, or some final justice and recognition destroys their life. Again, more parallels.
Oh 100%. Though there are levels. I wasn’t just thinking about impressionable Uni students. There are victims. And there are grown ups from comfortable backgrounds with no life hardships to speak of who should know better. But instead subconsciously choose ‘the community’ because it feels good, makes them feel special and ***k everyone else. James Lindsay has some interesting stuff to say about the psychotic core of genuinely nasty manipulators really driving this ideology, then the slightly psychotic inner circle of followers, and the outer circle of sheep willing to believe anything their told - I’m paraphrasing, badly. All inner and outer perhaps groomed in a sense, but many without the moral fortitude to stand up for what they know is probably right, because it feels better to be popular, or listened to, or whatever their need is. Attention.
Students and teenagers have my sympathy, I went down a few rabbit holes in my younger days, lord knows I could have been one of them if I choose the wrong rabbit hole or it was decades later. But adult need to start adulting.
Yes and to the levels. Levels in the abuses of power. Hard to work out who are victims or oppressors at the time sometimes and it can be hidden if that suits the cause. How they grow gradually or sweep along and it's hard to identify key aspects other than in retrospect. There's a hierarchy to them all and the unwilling or willing foot soldiers and those caught in the fall out. I'm trying to tread carefully, but your description sounds very like other 20thC and early 21stC 'movements' that had factions, offshoots and layers of adherants and some still harking back to the good ole days and fighting for a cause and 'the community'. I'm not sure I could have withstood some of it. How it's hard for others removed by time and space to truly understand the nitty gritty or imagine how. Then something causes it to come to a head, it speeds out of control, or things are aligned so the cause is no longer needed (or allowed). Serves its purpose, and that troubles me as I can't see what they are ultimately fighting for with this TRA or if they even know. Land? Power? Self-determination? Extermination of another group (women?)? Identity - the scariest of them all.
Absolutely they do, some of us take or are gifted responsibility early, and adults need to adult. I put the blame firmly and squarely on publishers cottoning on to the expanding market to market children's authors to adults ;-) who got to imagine they were kiddies all over again and infantilised themselves...
I will read more on Mr Lindsay. It seems those who name themselves professional troublemakers seem the sanest. It was very clever to market all this under the 'be kind' tag. Who would willingly pause and question that. Letting people live in delusions is not kind. And tolerating intolerance calling itself tolerance.
A few have spoken up about this and how the loss of music tribes over generations might be relevant. How do you test out things and grow into yourself. Where are groups - online and not in the physical sense. No physical money, no going to buy physical music. Streaming life and less shared experience as more share experiences. There's a swing back towards physical actual lived and embodied experiences. Transient ones. Dr Az Hakeem has spoken openly (and very funnily) about this growing up period and his own life being a goth. Many have spoken up about going through those phases before settling into themselves and how lucky we were to be able to have the time and space to do that and to experiment, test boundaries without Big Trans convincing us to lop bits off, swallow pills and really escape the world.
Yeah this is on the money and really interesting. It was punk for me, and music became my obsession. No obsession is healthy but at least it leads to experiences like you say, playing music and seeing gigs, record shops (remember those!) and meeting people. Tangible experiences instead of online, anonymous, faceless, casts worlds of messy information that can easily fool you into thinking it’s real or it means something. That video earlier of the teenagers explaining gender is a good example of how things that make sense online and in your head, quickly crumble when you have a real life face to face conversation on the same topic. The illogicality of it all. I’m sure if they just talked it through enough f2f they would come to the same Conclusion as the rest of us! Hard how times have changed, interesting point.
Still love record shops! If you've not seen this, the whole panel are great and even the most evil, dangerous, homophobic psychiatrist in the world ;-) (time stamps listed in the description) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01YzVihxjI0&t=3745s
Interesting about the loss of music tribes! Of course, the one that has made the headlines in the UK is drill rap, and promoted on BBC radio 6 music and radio 1, and which is implicated in various gang related murders in Birmingham and London. Frightening, violent lyrics.
I'm saddened but not at all surprised by what you have said. The standard of the avergae graduate is so low these days. We get them where I work on grad schemes and all they want to do adn expect is to be promoted. None of them want to do anything they deem below them, they want spoon feeding and if you try offering constructive criticism rather than glowing priase you run the risk of being reported for bullying. I was reported twice (once for raising a point with one outside a meeting and once for checking the policy on the grade allowed for a sensitive task). You are so right - they don;t know how to critically analyse or deal with anything they find disagreeable or uncomfortable.
Yes Tony Blair put pay to critical analysis by dumbing down education, and also to risk taking (so they are even more afraid to speak against the narrative) and NONE of that was a coincidence.
You want to know what goes to college in the U.S.? Children who cannot write an entire sentence let alone a paragraph. I had a friend who was teaching English at the local college and she was bidden to pass them even if they didn't turn in their work. Another friend checked out SAT scores at Colby College ($40,000/year) as opposed to open admission (they take everyone who applies) at Kansas State University, and the latter students had higher SATs.
I don’t think LSE has been untouched unfortunately, but encouraging to hear that economics hasn’t been transmogrified. Thats probably a wrong thing to say now is it? Oh bugger it.
I used the word 'discrimination' (as in, of sounds, v important when listening to a foreign language), and was told off by the students! They honestly have such poor command of English vocabulary. I think it's partly because they mainly read stuff written by ppl their own age... And most 'young adult' fiction is quite unchallenging in writing style.
I worked in admin at UCL for 18 years and considering their guiding spirit is Jeremy Bentham, it is reassuring to know they still follow his philosophy. I have to do long distance (I now live in Bulgaria) but I'll check other institutions than the OU, definitely.
:-) and their debt the rest of the UK population who don't or can't go to Uni are subsidising. I remember a friend detailing why she was giving extra tuition to a boy and why his family viewed it as so vital that he 'had a good education' and how that was strikingly different to others who didn't apply themselves. How culturally it was so important to get a place at one school. And how an employer said he'd always take boys from this one place as he 'knew' that an 'A' still meant an 'A' or a 'B' (or 1 or 9 or XYZ) and that he wouldn't have to waste time bringing the kid up to a basic level of understanding and job readiness. Life skills. He'd be ready for work and to apply himself in addition to having jumped some academic hoops. That seems the bit missing with talk about the old school ties or networks and why they still perpetuate.
We have appeared to be training savviness and life skills out of people at rate of knots. Then Unis have tried to do the catch-up from what schools used to do or reframe what success and ability is and the divide has become even greater. The age of being in the real world has become later and later and easier for some, and earlier and earlier and harsher for others. I feel for those who could be high achievers stuck in this system unable to know how to play it.
In the UK it's swung the other way with university admissions, old boys' networks / private schools don't cut it any more, in fact even super-bright applicants from private schools are assumed to have had help to get there and are actually discriminated against. The huge push under Tony Blair to grow university to 50% of school leavers has had some bad unintended consequences in terms of quality of courses and suitability of applicants for university study. And with them 'paying' £9k a year they consider themselves customers, there to dictate and not to learn. The customer is always right, don't you know? So lecturers trying to teach stuff which challenges their thinking are vilified and hounded. Even in Economics there is a counter movement against how Economics is taught, a complete rejection of classical economics (racist or something), it is the first year students who are the biggest agitators! My son was sucked in, went to conferences etc. I said, you've only just started your course, how can you claim you know more about Economics than your lecturers?? Learn something first before you start trying to pull it apart!!
Absolutely. The stanbdard of graduate we see applying for places on graduate schemes is continually droppong. The cannot cope with a work place, being told they may not know everything, not being promoted when they wnat to be, receiving constructive feedback. And the top echelons keep reinforcing their views as "bright young things" and seeking their views over the views of longer standing adn more experienced staff.
Yes. The change has been odd but this kind of game playing been happening for most of my life. I was 'allowed' to apply to one Cambridge college by my state Sixth Form that crucially had no history of sending students there (I was working and doing evening classes) and they did offer me a place. Odd as a year or two before that I had been advised that I shouldn't apply to that same ever so liberal place as I was at an Independent Girls' School, hadn't been on the 'Oxbridge track' to go from the age of 11 and that they prefer state school applicants. So I was disadvantaged, then advantaged by the mistaken perceptions of my privilege. Hey ho.
I have worked in research and my route through has been unconventional and not easy by any stretch. Unlike my cousin who revealed recently that he was advised by a 'friend' that a particular Oxbridge don liked redheads so an application to that college might be looked upon favourably. And lo, like magic, that's where his child went...
Yes they are following a script, a narrative. I realise Nick Tenconi had to make out he really didn't get the gender thing, but that meant that he couldn't really scrutinise these people and if he had they would have crumbled in front of our eyes.
Disturbing stuff but a great photo at the top to cheer us up.
Whenever I see women demonstrating for our rights somewhere in the world, I get so moved I want to hug everyone. Lovely to hear the new from the US. Something really is happening there.
I also now enjoy seeing 'controversial' and 'Stonewall' in the same sentence. Yes, words are powerful.
And, as a French person I'll say this: Michel Foucault (pronounce it 'fuck all' or 'fuck it' it's all the same to me) est un vieux degueulasse et un enfoire. Une vraie sous-merde.
So any attack on that dirty old bastard is definitely not anti-French.
Horrible stories of dirty, manipulative, sexist, abusive men in the highest cultural echelons of French society recently, sadly. I love France but I have been horrified. 😢
And I've just been reading about the rightest of the right-wing politicians who wants to keep France pure -- what is the French obsession with purity? -- he's an Algerian Jew! and he is not only racist towards Muslims, he excuses the Vichy government and declares Albert Dreyfuss a German! Once again, some people take self-hatred too far.
Quite. Still, I doubt Zemmour will get anywhere despite being a TV personality (I just hope my compatriots don't get swayed by meaningless fame). He's unpredictable and even makes Marine Le Pen look thoughtful. No mean feat that.
As for 'pure', the full expression should be 'pure shit'. The French population is such a mix, even when discounting mixed race couples. At school most of us had one French parent with the other parent variously from Germany, Italy and Spain, but also Poland, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, etc. Pure we're not.
Interestingly, France is not nearly as diverse as other European countries according to the NYT article. Most immigrants are from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and most new immigrants are coming to join family members. I mentioned purity because of all the fuss about keeping the language "pure." I see languages as living, always ready for an infusion of new words and ideas. But there's an entire department devoted to keeping French "pure," which I'm sure you already know about.
I'm not sure about that, it's got a different size and geograpy to the UK. It's different for sure. Add in where colonial lands are and ties and it gets interesting. What your home language and education and culture is or are. Nationality and Nation states and borders. How before a certain time we were of the land that we called 'home' despite being born or living thousands of miles away. Then immigration rules are changed and you need to have new papers or become 'official' in a new way. What makes someone French? What makes someone English? Or British? Can you be dual nationality? What makes someone North American? What makes someone South American? Which comes first? That's why identitarians hopping on self-ID upsets me. My grandmother was under pressure/made to choose to 'make it easier' (for?) and grieved having to officially give up a part of her identity in her latter years. Politics changes. Look at Windrush. I also know those born in a British protectorate who then found themselves without any official home or land, on the wrong side of new borders and losing that 'protection'.
The Academy? Language? Sometimes there is similar in the UK but more disseminated. Add in pride and pride of what. There's been a lot of 'pure shit' and jingoism with Brexit.
Interesting questions! My mother was fascinated by people caught between two cultures. Two of her friends in Japan were a Japanese husband and German wife. They had two daughters, one of whom looked German, the other Japanese, and the latter wanted an arranged marriage, something unimaginable to both of her parents.
I don't particularly identify as American; I was born and raised here on Turtle Island, living my entire life on stolen land. I think it was Ashley Montagu who said that very few people in each culture transcend their culture and that they have more in common with each other than with the other people in their culture. That makes a lot of sense to me.
This is the killer because when I was growing up in France in the 60s, it was a lot more diverse. In our little block of flats there was a black policeman with his white wife, an Egyptian family, a Bulgarian family and my mother was married to a Spaniard. At my school there were Algerian, Tunisian, West Indian (Guadeloupe and Antilles) and Madagascan children. (When we moved to Paris, we were friends with the same groups and also many Vietnamese. ) Our area was not particularly considered an ethnic melting pot. It was what it was and that's all. For some reason, something changed in the late seventies. (By the way, don't think I'm unaware of the vicious attacks on Algerians in the late 50s, I'm not).
However, the 'pure' language is something I enjoy. The new gender neutral pronoun 'iel' (mix of 'il' and 'elle') has French sticklers really annoyed and their anger might just put spokes in the wheels of that trundling nonsense.
The Académie Française is so far resisting calls to accept 'gender-neutral' articles and pronouns, much to the disgust of the ideologues (and MFL teachers in the UK who are all trying to teach beginner students of French, German and Spanish all the new pronouns, neutral gender agreements (on the end of adjectives and nouns) etc!!! Talk about confusing. Leave it to A'level.
Oh...those young women. They are so close and yet so far. Think they invented gender nonconformity. No concept of what males are capable of. Bless their innocence - don't blame them in a way. Once your eyes are opened it's really really shit.
I suspect naive about everything, and they have to be well-heeled to go through life and maintain this level of gullibility. I don't know about the U.K. but in the U.S. the number of people scammed is shocking.
I think it's really important to understand that Kathleen Stock herself has said, including in today's Observer interview, that the worst vitriol came from her colleagues, not her students:
Just watched that interview with students at Sussex ! Totally shocking how far gone they are ,even although it's very obvious that they have NO IDEA what they're talking about and have absolutely zero understanding of the real life issues and the harms that these " beliefs " have caused , and continue to cause , to real people ,mostly to women and children. They've definitely swallowed the koolaid and are just reciting parrot fashion what they've been indoctrinated into. To think that they ,and others like them ,were responsible for bullying and harassing Kathleen Stock out of her job.. That's unforgivable and I completely agree with the interviewer's opinions at the end. Hope those idiots watched it .
Debbie Hayton I gather is considered problematic with some of the Glinner subscribers but plenty of Debbie's articles in the Spectator have been very sympathetic to us and this interview I think is very important. Thanks for sharing.
Concise summary of some really important issues relating to what's wrong with the bill. I don't really care who wrote it and the personal story just adds a certain perspective. I think it's a good one to forward because not heated.
The way he describes his obsession sounds very much like serious eating disorders. There's a clinic on the left coast where the clinicians deal with this type of thinking with a range of tools and have a high success rate. I think any decent therapy helps people stop playing the same record over and over again in their heads, but it takes work.
At this point i would charge by the year to slap sissies around then ignore them. Stick em in a cage and leave. Wanna torture a sissy? Ignore him. All this "brave and beautiful" shit has peins leaking.
Thank you. What a bumper selection. Why is Laurie Penny continuing to argue some really weak points? Vive la France.
I'd like to pose this question to her - just because we don’t have a specific ‘law’ officially telling us not to do something specific means it’s ok to do it? Huh Laurie? Nothing tells us deep down it might not be a great idea, and we don’t need someone, or a big red sign saying NO STOP!
Does she drive? I think much law doesn’t detail exactly how nasty or stupid you can be to infringe the rights of others, as you know, it’s the general principle? Legislation would be very long if every muppet says, but it didn’t say in 4.4.12 ‘Laurie! This is for you, just you, right now and here on Saturday with poor visibility, we suggest you wear a seat belt and don’t drive at 60 in this 30mph zone, but you know, as you were!’. Then put really big red signs every four metres, you know, just so she ‘knows’. She has no feasible way to work things out otherwise. She might not have realised that many laws cover many things and need to be drafted so those who choose to think like she does try to find a way round them. Oh, but you didn't make it clear! Or there was a law against it?! That is your defence Laurie? She is somehow arguing that freer drafting of principles or very historically misogynist hangover ways of drafting, and some contentious attitudes in France who tend to be less proscriptive about certain things, means it's ok to be a paedophile? Still?
No one told me or reminded me not to? Oh fill your boots French paedos Laurie thinks that's ok on a very weak misreading of a technical misunderstanding. Is she not aware of all the demonstrations by women in France, and why?
The French style of law tends to work opposite to that of common law systems. We're used to the assumption that anything that isn't specifically banned is allowed, whereas Code Napoleonique countries assume that anything that isn't specifically allowed is banned (this is a broad generalisation, but it does inform the attitude to everyday law). However (unsurprisingly), when it comes to sex with children, it worked the other way around. The French attitude to age if consent (i.e. not having one) has been controversial within the country for many years, with a strong belief that there was a de facto age of consent below which it was socially unacceptable to have sex, but powerful men abused the lack of an age of consent to do as they pleased (as usual). Whether the new age if consent will gain sufficient traction in the French law courts to be effective remains to be seen, but the first few trials will definitely worth watching.
Thank you, far better expressed than my mangling attempt! Laurie doesn't appear to know what common law systems are. I don't know how she doesn't know that. Oh, wait a minute, yes I think I might. I get bogged down in differences in jurisdictions then realise it is usually the same issues in a different form or nuance.
Laurie Gougnafier.e.? (is that masc?) showing her glory yet again and the cherry on the cake of whipping up anti-French feeling - or attempting to present that as what someone on Twitter was doing - in a bizarre attempt to point score is not good. At a time when diplomatic relations are somewhat strained. So now we're having to defend France and the French now too Laurie? Give us a break. I wonder if she knows why famous men in French film are or are not allowed in the country. Or about incendiary French popular music. Or other French artists and painters.
West Yorkshire Police say that they will be recording misogyny and misandry as an aggravating factor in crimes. But they intend only to ask victims whether they feel hostility to their gender was a motivating factor. They won't be recording crimes motivated by hostility to person's sex - many of us don't have a gender.
The CSO pulled the same trick with the Crime Survey for England and Wales. They recorded crime reported by
(1) people who had the same gender identity as their sex registered at birth and
(2) people who had a different gender identity from their sex registered at birth.
They don't bother recording crime against people who don't have a gender identity.
Channel 4 is where? Dont we have laws againt prending to be a child in porn. Decades ago you couldnt say you were underage while having phone sex, or do fisting. Who removed protections?
17 min 24 sec into the "Exposing Woke Students' Gender Nonsense" it seems it doesn't take long to brainwash the students at Sussex Uni. A year it took for that guy there, apparently, once he'd got to Brighton. Oh no! Wait a minute -18 min 6 sec: He thinks there's one more...so that makes 5 genders.... EPIC FAIL! Go straight to jail. Do not collect £200, do not pass go. Only 5 genders? You must do better mate. There are 100s don't you know.
Those students, it's bad enough saying "They are no longer biologocal men....even if they haven't transitioned" but saying that 'trans' women in men's prisons are at far more risk than they are to women in a women's prison or kids of 6 have some of the best ideas.... it's ludicrous. And the things they are saying about testosterone levels are simply not true. They are completely misinformed and sorry, thick as shit. But most of all, they are dangerous.
First point with the those "students" the guy is taking the proverbial! but they so naïve they can't see it!
They sound like middle class namby pamby kids who know nothing, and have been nowhere … but have jumped on the band wagon.
Its like Dougal and the spider baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xkOBvcAO1o&ab_channel=HatTrick
I loved one of the comments in the YT comments section: These people are the future - I finally understand why Elon is trying to get off the planet
While he's busy making it as uninhabitable as possible.
And what a shame he didn't ask them if it's possible to identify into a different race. If have given gold to hear their answers to that one.
I'd have . .
A couple of them waivered a bit, I think. A young woman and a young man, both of them alone, they sounded more unsure. They have to listen to that doubt they’re feeling!
I wonder how many of them were thinking, "I'm being filmed, better say the right thing." I also wonder how many said it was all nonsense but didn't end up making the final cut. This was a conservative production after all. If the Left had their heads on the right way round they'd be doing their own video talking to dissenters or running a campus-wide secret ballot to find out what the majority really think. We'll be stuck with 1000 years of Tory rule if they don't start waking up.
Totally agree. Conservatives don't need to do anything much, just watch the Left implode, but they will start exploiting this sooner or later.
The irony is it's the Govt that is presiding over men in women's prisons and this ludicrous Conversion Therapy Bill mess. All they have to do is to back away from Stonewall, firm up the Equality Act and they could actively win voters, not just watch Labour et al lose them.
Yes. I got the impression some of them were too scared to say what they really think.
It was painful to watch. But it shows how much of the nonsense is "bandwagon ning" rather than real thought and understanding. If this represents students at uni, we should all be really worried about what will happen when they rejoin the real world and have to get jobs. I can honestly say I could not/would not employ any of them as they cannot string a sentence together that makes sense and they live in a fantasy world.
I don't think young people have to be middle-class anymore to be this stupid. It seems like a lot of working-class kids as well have been raised in insulated bubbles.
Working class kids are more likely to say it as it is.
I am from that background (council houses) and live now in a poor part of the south Wales Valleys UK.
They may not be as academically educated so climbing up the greasy pole for careers and having to tow the woke agenda is not a problem.
And that's a difference, I think, between the U.S. and U.K. I used to think it was only well-off kids who could afford to be living in La-La Land, but it seems that here many young people who are not well-off have moved there as well. I would really liked to see some demographics on people 18-29, detailing their political beliefs, socioeconomic status, etc.
There was a fair bit around Brexit for the UK as it followed yet tipped up assumptions and traditional voting patterns. Some good maps online and you can select for what you outline. It tended to be little islands of stay in towns or cities, or university towns, in little seas of out. Then constituent parts of the UK voted slightly differently too. Less sure of that for the US but similar, then the seaboards and who switched from historically voting one way en masse or by state. Match up where Facebook or others put focus or funding.
Yes, that would be really interesting. I've been trying to find any information that might show how children from less affluent backgrounds respond to this new regime. It would imagine that it's much harder for a kid from a poorer background to be accepted in their immediate community as trans id. Any pointers welcome!
I watched the video of students attempting to explain gender identity and I weep for the future. They can't even explain it, name anything but male and female and it is so obvious that they are all trotting out the same tired lines they have swallowed wholesale. Universities used to be places of debate, critical thought and challenge, now they seem to be places where you get taught to trot out nonsense mantra and don't ask questions.
Some of them look scared. They know they don't know what they are talking about; they know what they are meant to say. I have a teen and a young adult and the younger one tells me frequently I have no idea of the ubiquity of these ideas and how they are pushed on TikTok. He's savvy enough to know when to speak and when to shut up.
That was a very hard watch for me because none of them seemed nasty. Just young people trying hard to be considerate. Which is nice. They're captured, but considerate. But ultimately we're all fucked if they get into positions of influence in the next few years.
The other reason is that the folks who commissioned this are an offshoot of US right-wing outfit Turning Point, of which I'm not a fan. The left should be doing videos like this but aren't.
Fair points, but those students did bully a woman out of her job.
True. I'm going to watch again and see which one of them resembles the flare-waving guy in the balaclava.
You tell by their body shape, despite them pretending we can't. Pssst we can.
My husband yesterday saw a photo of a young TIF we know, 18, friend of our son from primary school but they lost touch. Clearly on testosterone with shadowy tache and beard that only grows under the chin. Well she does look like a boy, he said. NO SHE DOESN'T!!! He can't see it!!
I don't think men are very observant. They haven't needed to be.
Theyre trying to be accepted. Not considerate. Theyre selfserving, like all wankers.
It's not fair to call them that. Wrong-headed, ill-served, thoughtless, group-minded. We need to blame the real wankers who are the influencers, groomers, rainbow police etc, and I'm sorry to say, teachers, who sold them this 'be kind' ideology. And of course all the mutual reinforcement.
Yes, they weren't born wrong-headed, they were conditioned. It's too easy to label them as unforgivably bad and call them names. It's much harder to dismantle the network of influences that shaped them (and a lot let satisfying) but it's the only thing that's going to stop it from happening to every new generation.
I just hope they grow out of it and learn acceptance of differing points of view but you're right, if it were just them, they would have been disciplined by the university without any further controversy.
I feel by saying they are just conditioned and hopefully they will grown out of it lends them some kind of sympathy and understanding. It's the 'be kind' narrative again and I've had it being kind to people who are harming us. They persecuted Kathleen Stock out of her job. As far as I'm concerned they are the enemy of reason and civility and whilst I welcome the idea that deradicalising them is the way forward, there must be a certain level of nastiness and vitriol in people who can behave this way (or cowadice, as I feel even in that YT video that some of them were too scared to speak out against this rubbish for fear of the same treatment that Kathleen Stock got). I have zero sympathy for any of these people. It's like excusing the tyrranical behaviour of people in history by saying "well the dictators made them do it". You have to be a certain type of person in the first place to want to hound somebody out of their job for holding a different view to you.
Although I do agree with you, the phrase 'self-serving wanker' has a lovely ring to it
I'm wondering what they'll do when FACTS stare them in the face, such as drowning in a flood or burning up in a fire (climate chaos), no food at the grocery store, etc. I'm sure the Fates will ask them about their "feelings."
They'll probably just identify as people who aren't dying. Briefly.
Or when it's them trying to bring up their own children.
I've already seen this happening and the woman lets her child run wild -- a guest had to tell the little girl to stop harassing a dog -- as well as a horse she does not fence on a road (so it can be free, don't you know) where people drive like they're at a racetrack.
It's ok, they can feel that they are not drowning, burning or hungry. Sorted. I hope that maturity brings with them the ability to self reflect, to think objectively and to aactually make decisions rather than comply or jump on a popular bandwagon.
Worth remembering Reading University and UCL buck the trend by safeguarding freedom of expression.
I wanted to do a Master's with the OU, I'm brokenhearted but I don't want to know them anymore.
Good point. I've managed to feel a bit pleased about UCL and Reading has always had a very practical, pragmatic no shit style. UCL really are so big they can do what they want. I was a bit worried at one open day in 2011 by being asked 'but will I get a First if I come here?' and having to try to get over my shock and give a 'nice' response that, well if you work hard and apply yourself in your studies, with a fair wind, then yes you stand a good chance of achieving a First. They wanted a guarantee on an open day? From a random member of staff? No other questions about us, the department, or the courses we offered? None? No. With their parents looking on like hawks (no one was rocking up on their own which also freaked me out a little).
The OU are really in trouble (again). Jo Phoenix has gone :-(
We are now reframing ignorance as knowledge, and that's a really difficult thing for me to indulge. I can't sweetly nod along to those who are in their teens and twenties without screaming STOP BEING SO ****ING STUPID!!! I don't but am not sure how to help those so resistant to the art of thinking. They don't know how to critically analyse or be if anything crosses their minds they dislike or find hard. Barring or being unable to debate, that's not being kind, this version of dressed up 'kindness' is indulging ignorance and silencing debate.
Please do your Masters somewhere else!
It is strange like some sort of invisible disease that some people seem incapable of critical thinking. I personally give them the benefit of the doubt of not being thick as a plank, which unfortunately means it must be wilful, unwilling to consider they could be wrong, so certain of their cause. It has to be emotional problems. These must be inherently disenfranchised, lonely people, who feel that they have found a new ‘home’. Always for me the question, What is the pay off? What do they get out of it? I think a sense of belonging, someone made them feel special for once, or perhaps just ‘seen’. They’ve found their first ‘community’, and identify so strongly with it that they will fight to the death to defend it. (And by fight to the death I mean doc and harass outspoken women on social media). And then for some just a sense of righteous, moral superiority and renown (these are the worst). And that’s before we start talking about the really messed up ones.
Verrrrry little time for any of these people. You must have the patience of a saint.
What you've described is grooming. That's why it spread so well in campuses. Taking vulnerable people, and that's vulnerable to this kind of attention and coaxing and coercing them. Making them feel special. It's the payoff that groomers and abusers use, then make the victim feel guilty. That they are 'special'. Mustn't speak out or disagree or tell. And they do make people feel good for a time, or sometimes, or so confused they lose their ability to realise what's happening. It's not unusual for those groomed not to realise or to continue defending the perps for decades after. That's how strong the group think or grooming has been. It makes me sick to see the parallels.
When you get one person exposed, then it takes a lot of work and years to identify all the likely victims. Sometimes police contact people and need to explain how they are victims and the realisation, or some final justice and recognition destroys their life. Again, more parallels.
Oh 100%. Though there are levels. I wasn’t just thinking about impressionable Uni students. There are victims. And there are grown ups from comfortable backgrounds with no life hardships to speak of who should know better. But instead subconsciously choose ‘the community’ because it feels good, makes them feel special and ***k everyone else. James Lindsay has some interesting stuff to say about the psychotic core of genuinely nasty manipulators really driving this ideology, then the slightly psychotic inner circle of followers, and the outer circle of sheep willing to believe anything their told - I’m paraphrasing, badly. All inner and outer perhaps groomed in a sense, but many without the moral fortitude to stand up for what they know is probably right, because it feels better to be popular, or listened to, or whatever their need is. Attention.
Students and teenagers have my sympathy, I went down a few rabbit holes in my younger days, lord knows I could have been one of them if I choose the wrong rabbit hole or it was decades later. But adult need to start adulting.
Yes and to the levels. Levels in the abuses of power. Hard to work out who are victims or oppressors at the time sometimes and it can be hidden if that suits the cause. How they grow gradually or sweep along and it's hard to identify key aspects other than in retrospect. There's a hierarchy to them all and the unwilling or willing foot soldiers and those caught in the fall out. I'm trying to tread carefully, but your description sounds very like other 20thC and early 21stC 'movements' that had factions, offshoots and layers of adherants and some still harking back to the good ole days and fighting for a cause and 'the community'. I'm not sure I could have withstood some of it. How it's hard for others removed by time and space to truly understand the nitty gritty or imagine how. Then something causes it to come to a head, it speeds out of control, or things are aligned so the cause is no longer needed (or allowed). Serves its purpose, and that troubles me as I can't see what they are ultimately fighting for with this TRA or if they even know. Land? Power? Self-determination? Extermination of another group (women?)? Identity - the scariest of them all.
Absolutely they do, some of us take or are gifted responsibility early, and adults need to adult. I put the blame firmly and squarely on publishers cottoning on to the expanding market to market children's authors to adults ;-) who got to imagine they were kiddies all over again and infantilised themselves...
I will read more on Mr Lindsay. It seems those who name themselves professional troublemakers seem the sanest. It was very clever to market all this under the 'be kind' tag. Who would willingly pause and question that. Letting people live in delusions is not kind. And tolerating intolerance calling itself tolerance.
A few have spoken up about this and how the loss of music tribes over generations might be relevant. How do you test out things and grow into yourself. Where are groups - online and not in the physical sense. No physical money, no going to buy physical music. Streaming life and less shared experience as more share experiences. There's a swing back towards physical actual lived and embodied experiences. Transient ones. Dr Az Hakeem has spoken openly (and very funnily) about this growing up period and his own life being a goth. Many have spoken up about going through those phases before settling into themselves and how lucky we were to be able to have the time and space to do that and to experiment, test boundaries without Big Trans convincing us to lop bits off, swallow pills and really escape the world.
Yeah this is on the money and really interesting. It was punk for me, and music became my obsession. No obsession is healthy but at least it leads to experiences like you say, playing music and seeing gigs, record shops (remember those!) and meeting people. Tangible experiences instead of online, anonymous, faceless, casts worlds of messy information that can easily fool you into thinking it’s real or it means something. That video earlier of the teenagers explaining gender is a good example of how things that make sense online and in your head, quickly crumble when you have a real life face to face conversation on the same topic. The illogicality of it all. I’m sure if they just talked it through enough f2f they would come to the same Conclusion as the rest of us! Hard how times have changed, interesting point.
Still love record shops! If you've not seen this, the whole panel are great and even the most evil, dangerous, homophobic psychiatrist in the world ;-) (time stamps listed in the description) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01YzVihxjI0&t=3745s
Interesting about the loss of music tribes! Of course, the one that has made the headlines in the UK is drill rap, and promoted on BBC radio 6 music and radio 1, and which is implicated in various gang related murders in Birmingham and London. Frightening, violent lyrics.
I'm saddened but not at all surprised by what you have said. The standard of the avergae graduate is so low these days. We get them where I work on grad schemes and all they want to do adn expect is to be promoted. None of them want to do anything they deem below them, they want spoon feeding and if you try offering constructive criticism rather than glowing priase you run the risk of being reported for bullying. I was reported twice (once for raising a point with one outside a meeting and once for checking the policy on the grade allowed for a sensitive task). You are so right - they don;t know how to critically analyse or deal with anything they find disagreeable or uncomfortable.
Yes Tony Blair put pay to critical analysis by dumbing down education, and also to risk taking (so they are even more afraid to speak against the narrative) and NONE of that was a coincidence.
Yes, although I used to be a Labour supporter, I think we can lay the start of stupid thinking trumping evidence squarely at his door.
You want to know what goes to college in the U.S.? Children who cannot write an entire sentence let alone a paragraph. I had a friend who was teaching English at the local college and she was bidden to pass them even if they didn't turn in their work. Another friend checked out SAT scores at Colby College ($40,000/year) as opposed to open admission (they take everyone who applies) at Kansas State University, and the latter students had higher SATs.
Pleased to report that my son doing his Master's at LSE, no infiltration from the gender loonies into the pure economics, or not that he's noticed!!
I don’t think LSE has been untouched unfortunately, but encouraging to hear that economics hasn’t been transmogrified. Thats probably a wrong thing to say now is it? Oh bugger it.
No, not at all untouched, it is the home of the appalling Gender Studies Master's course which condones this vile language:
https://sex-matters.org/posts/the-workplace/gender-studies-and-sexualised-threats/
We are damn well still allowed to say translating and translation, and transport! And transubstantiation...
I used the word 'discrimination' (as in, of sounds, v important when listening to a foreign language), and was told off by the students! They honestly have such poor command of English vocabulary. I think it's partly because they mainly read stuff written by ppl their own age... And most 'young adult' fiction is quite unchallenging in writing style.
Well, as long as it's not transitory :-)
Amen to that lol. Though I’m not sure I could say transubstantiation anyway to be fair.
Yippee :-)
I worked in admin at UCL for 18 years and considering their guiding spirit is Jeremy Bentham, it is reassuring to know they still follow his philosophy. I have to do long distance (I now live in Bulgaria) but I'll check other institutions than the OU, definitely.
Sorry to see that about Jo Phoenix but pleased she's gone to Reading. What will happen to her GC network?
*Master's
In what sense are any of those labels a "gender"??!
Inarticulate muppets. I fear a university education is wasted here. Oh well, it's their money.
:-) and their debt the rest of the UK population who don't or can't go to Uni are subsidising. I remember a friend detailing why she was giving extra tuition to a boy and why his family viewed it as so vital that he 'had a good education' and how that was strikingly different to others who didn't apply themselves. How culturally it was so important to get a place at one school. And how an employer said he'd always take boys from this one place as he 'knew' that an 'A' still meant an 'A' or a 'B' (or 1 or 9 or XYZ) and that he wouldn't have to waste time bringing the kid up to a basic level of understanding and job readiness. Life skills. He'd be ready for work and to apply himself in addition to having jumped some academic hoops. That seems the bit missing with talk about the old school ties or networks and why they still perpetuate.
We have appeared to be training savviness and life skills out of people at rate of knots. Then Unis have tried to do the catch-up from what schools used to do or reframe what success and ability is and the divide has become even greater. The age of being in the real world has become later and later and easier for some, and earlier and earlier and harsher for others. I feel for those who could be high achievers stuck in this system unable to know how to play it.
In the UK it's swung the other way with university admissions, old boys' networks / private schools don't cut it any more, in fact even super-bright applicants from private schools are assumed to have had help to get there and are actually discriminated against. The huge push under Tony Blair to grow university to 50% of school leavers has had some bad unintended consequences in terms of quality of courses and suitability of applicants for university study. And with them 'paying' £9k a year they consider themselves customers, there to dictate and not to learn. The customer is always right, don't you know? So lecturers trying to teach stuff which challenges their thinking are vilified and hounded. Even in Economics there is a counter movement against how Economics is taught, a complete rejection of classical economics (racist or something), it is the first year students who are the biggest agitators! My son was sucked in, went to conferences etc. I said, you've only just started your course, how can you claim you know more about Economics than your lecturers?? Learn something first before you start trying to pull it apart!!
Absolutely. The stanbdard of graduate we see applying for places on graduate schemes is continually droppong. The cannot cope with a work place, being told they may not know everything, not being promoted when they wnat to be, receiving constructive feedback. And the top echelons keep reinforcing their views as "bright young things" and seeking their views over the views of longer standing adn more experienced staff.
Everyone is afraid (for their job/reputation...) 😢
Yes. The change has been odd but this kind of game playing been happening for most of my life. I was 'allowed' to apply to one Cambridge college by my state Sixth Form that crucially had no history of sending students there (I was working and doing evening classes) and they did offer me a place. Odd as a year or two before that I had been advised that I shouldn't apply to that same ever so liberal place as I was at an Independent Girls' School, hadn't been on the 'Oxbridge track' to go from the age of 11 and that they prefer state school applicants. So I was disadvantaged, then advantaged by the mistaken perceptions of my privilege. Hey ho.
I have worked in research and my route through has been unconventional and not easy by any stretch. Unlike my cousin who revealed recently that he was advised by a 'friend' that a particular Oxbridge don liked redheads so an application to that college might be looked upon favourably. And lo, like magic, that's where his child went...
Yes indeed
Hollywood isnt helping either and thats where everyone is desperate to be.
Yes they are following a script, a narrative. I realise Nick Tenconi had to make out he really didn't get the gender thing, but that meant that he couldn't really scrutinise these people and if he had they would have crumbled in front of our eyes.
If youre obediant ill sign a th the dotted line.
Disturbing stuff but a great photo at the top to cheer us up.
Whenever I see women demonstrating for our rights somewhere in the world, I get so moved I want to hug everyone. Lovely to hear the new from the US. Something really is happening there.
I also now enjoy seeing 'controversial' and 'Stonewall' in the same sentence. Yes, words are powerful.
And, as a French person I'll say this: Michel Foucault (pronounce it 'fuck all' or 'fuck it' it's all the same to me) est un vieux degueulasse et un enfoire. Une vraie sous-merde.
So any attack on that dirty old bastard is definitely not anti-French.
Horrible stories of dirty, manipulative, sexist, abusive men in the highest cultural echelons of French society recently, sadly. I love France but I have been horrified. 😢
And I've just been reading about the rightest of the right-wing politicians who wants to keep France pure -- what is the French obsession with purity? -- he's an Algerian Jew! and he is not only racist towards Muslims, he excuses the Vichy government and declares Albert Dreyfuss a German! Once again, some people take self-hatred too far.
Quite. Still, I doubt Zemmour will get anywhere despite being a TV personality (I just hope my compatriots don't get swayed by meaningless fame). He's unpredictable and even makes Marine Le Pen look thoughtful. No mean feat that.
As for 'pure', the full expression should be 'pure shit'. The French population is such a mix, even when discounting mixed race couples. At school most of us had one French parent with the other parent variously from Germany, Italy and Spain, but also Poland, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, etc. Pure we're not.
Interestingly, France is not nearly as diverse as other European countries according to the NYT article. Most immigrants are from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and most new immigrants are coming to join family members. I mentioned purity because of all the fuss about keeping the language "pure." I see languages as living, always ready for an infusion of new words and ideas. But there's an entire department devoted to keeping French "pure," which I'm sure you already know about.
I'm not sure about that, it's got a different size and geograpy to the UK. It's different for sure. Add in where colonial lands are and ties and it gets interesting. What your home language and education and culture is or are. Nationality and Nation states and borders. How before a certain time we were of the land that we called 'home' despite being born or living thousands of miles away. Then immigration rules are changed and you need to have new papers or become 'official' in a new way. What makes someone French? What makes someone English? Or British? Can you be dual nationality? What makes someone North American? What makes someone South American? Which comes first? That's why identitarians hopping on self-ID upsets me. My grandmother was under pressure/made to choose to 'make it easier' (for?) and grieved having to officially give up a part of her identity in her latter years. Politics changes. Look at Windrush. I also know those born in a British protectorate who then found themselves without any official home or land, on the wrong side of new borders and losing that 'protection'.
The Academy? Language? Sometimes there is similar in the UK but more disseminated. Add in pride and pride of what. There's been a lot of 'pure shit' and jingoism with Brexit.
Interesting questions! My mother was fascinated by people caught between two cultures. Two of her friends in Japan were a Japanese husband and German wife. They had two daughters, one of whom looked German, the other Japanese, and the latter wanted an arranged marriage, something unimaginable to both of her parents.
I don't particularly identify as American; I was born and raised here on Turtle Island, living my entire life on stolen land. I think it was Ashley Montagu who said that very few people in each culture transcend their culture and that they have more in common with each other than with the other people in their culture. That makes a lot of sense to me.
This is the killer because when I was growing up in France in the 60s, it was a lot more diverse. In our little block of flats there was a black policeman with his white wife, an Egyptian family, a Bulgarian family and my mother was married to a Spaniard. At my school there were Algerian, Tunisian, West Indian (Guadeloupe and Antilles) and Madagascan children. (When we moved to Paris, we were friends with the same groups and also many Vietnamese. ) Our area was not particularly considered an ethnic melting pot. It was what it was and that's all. For some reason, something changed in the late seventies. (By the way, don't think I'm unaware of the vicious attacks on Algerians in the late 50s, I'm not).
However, the 'pure' language is something I enjoy. The new gender neutral pronoun 'iel' (mix of 'il' and 'elle') has French sticklers really annoyed and their anger might just put spokes in the wheels of that trundling nonsense.
Where you grew up was far more diverse than much of the U.S.
The Académie Française is so far resisting calls to accept 'gender-neutral' articles and pronouns, much to the disgust of the ideologues (and MFL teachers in the UK who are all trying to teach beginner students of French, German and Spanish all the new pronouns, neutral gender agreements (on the end of adjectives and nouns) etc!!! Talk about confusing. Leave it to A'level.
Oof I've fainted the rudest of rude works for a lady. Brava!
Oh...those young women. They are so close and yet so far. Think they invented gender nonconformity. No concept of what males are capable of. Bless their innocence - don't blame them in a way. Once your eyes are opened it's really really shit.
I know. So naïve about the prisons!!
I suspect naive about everything, and they have to be well-heeled to go through life and maintain this level of gullibility. I don't know about the U.K. but in the U.S. the number of people scammed is shocking.
So gullible. They wish they were from the 80s, then fuck it all up.
What is Laurie Penny’s malfunction? Seriously?
Extreme Attention Seeking Behaviour
Decorum and defamation suits prevent me from saying.
I think it's really important to understand that Kathleen Stock herself has said, including in today's Observer interview, that the worst vitriol came from her colleagues, not her students:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/05/kathleen-stock-interview-university-sussex-transgender-headlines-2021
That overweight girl with the blue hair is a foot-soldier; an immature young person who found a tribe and swallowed their dogma.
Yes she was the worst. You could tell she was completely sucked in by it.
Just watched that interview with students at Sussex ! Totally shocking how far gone they are ,even although it's very obvious that they have NO IDEA what they're talking about and have absolutely zero understanding of the real life issues and the harms that these " beliefs " have caused , and continue to cause , to real people ,mostly to women and children. They've definitely swallowed the koolaid and are just reciting parrot fashion what they've been indoctrinated into. To think that they ,and others like them ,were responsible for bullying and harassing Kathleen Stock out of her job.. That's unforgivable and I completely agree with the interviewer's opinions at the end. Hope those idiots watched it .
Wow. Such a lot to take in! Thanks Graham.
Here's a great article by Debbie Hayter in the DM which I've forwarded to my sympathetic MP. Hope she speaks out in the House of Commons.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10273719/Transwoman-DEBBIE-HAYTON-gives-view-new-Government-bill.html
Debbie Hayton I gather is considered problematic with some of the Glinner subscribers but plenty of Debbie's articles in the Spectator have been very sympathetic to us and this interview I think is very important. Thanks for sharing.
Debbie does write really well. Very clear. Shame that it takes a man to give us credibilty but there we are.
It's true but having a trans on our side against trans activism must take the wind out of some sails.
Concise summary of some really important issues relating to what's wrong with the bill. I don't really care who wrote it and the personal story just adds a certain perspective. I think it's a good one to forward because not heated.
Women are too busy trying to avoid an angry man in pink panties attacking them.
Debbie wore a T-shirt saying, "Trans women are men. Get over it," in 2019. That's good enough for me.
The way he describes his obsession sounds very much like serious eating disorders. There's a clinic on the left coast where the clinicians deal with this type of thinking with a range of tools and have a high success rate. I think any decent therapy helps people stop playing the same record over and over again in their heads, but it takes work.
Hayton
I do find it funny when Laurie Penny says something so out there that it gets not a single like from her 176,000 followers. And then she doubles down!
Reddit run by pedophiles?
Well, spank my ass and call me Susan!
Pay me.
Do you charge by hour or session?
At this point i would charge by the year to slap sissies around then ignore them. Stick em in a cage and leave. Wanna torture a sissy? Ignore him. All this "brave and beautiful" shit has peins leaking.
I'll drink to that.
Thank you. What a bumper selection. Why is Laurie Penny continuing to argue some really weak points? Vive la France.
I'd like to pose this question to her - just because we don’t have a specific ‘law’ officially telling us not to do something specific means it’s ok to do it? Huh Laurie? Nothing tells us deep down it might not be a great idea, and we don’t need someone, or a big red sign saying NO STOP!
Does she drive? I think much law doesn’t detail exactly how nasty or stupid you can be to infringe the rights of others, as you know, it’s the general principle? Legislation would be very long if every muppet says, but it didn’t say in 4.4.12 ‘Laurie! This is for you, just you, right now and here on Saturday with poor visibility, we suggest you wear a seat belt and don’t drive at 60 in this 30mph zone, but you know, as you were!’. Then put really big red signs every four metres, you know, just so she ‘knows’. She has no feasible way to work things out otherwise. She might not have realised that many laws cover many things and need to be drafted so those who choose to think like she does try to find a way round them. Oh, but you didn't make it clear! Or there was a law against it?! That is your defence Laurie? She is somehow arguing that freer drafting of principles or very historically misogynist hangover ways of drafting, and some contentious attitudes in France who tend to be less proscriptive about certain things, means it's ok to be a paedophile? Still?
No one told me or reminded me not to? Oh fill your boots French paedos Laurie thinks that's ok on a very weak misreading of a technical misunderstanding. Is she not aware of all the demonstrations by women in France, and why?
The French style of law tends to work opposite to that of common law systems. We're used to the assumption that anything that isn't specifically banned is allowed, whereas Code Napoleonique countries assume that anything that isn't specifically allowed is banned (this is a broad generalisation, but it does inform the attitude to everyday law). However (unsurprisingly), when it comes to sex with children, it worked the other way around. The French attitude to age if consent (i.e. not having one) has been controversial within the country for many years, with a strong belief that there was a de facto age of consent below which it was socially unacceptable to have sex, but powerful men abused the lack of an age of consent to do as they pleased (as usual). Whether the new age if consent will gain sufficient traction in the French law courts to be effective remains to be seen, but the first few trials will definitely worth watching.
Thank you, far better expressed than my mangling attempt! Laurie doesn't appear to know what common law systems are. I don't know how she doesn't know that. Oh, wait a minute, yes I think I might. I get bogged down in differences in jurisdictions then realise it is usually the same issues in a different form or nuance.
Laurie Gougnafier.e.? (is that masc?) showing her glory yet again and the cherry on the cake of whipping up anti-French feeling - or attempting to present that as what someone on Twitter was doing - in a bizarre attempt to point score is not good. At a time when diplomatic relations are somewhat strained. So now we're having to defend France and the French now too Laurie? Give us a break. I wonder if she knows why famous men in French film are or are not allowed in the country. Or about incendiary French popular music. Or other French artists and painters.
This caused a few pauses in EU legislation and Directives I think? Do/don't do principle, and accommodating how it will be interpreted across the EU.
West Yorkshire Police say that they will be recording misogyny and misandry as an aggravating factor in crimes. But they intend only to ask victims whether they feel hostility to their gender was a motivating factor. They won't be recording crimes motivated by hostility to person's sex - many of us don't have a gender.
The CSO pulled the same trick with the Crime Survey for England and Wales. They recorded crime reported by
(1) people who had the same gender identity as their sex registered at birth and
(2) people who had a different gender identity from their sex registered at birth.
They don't bother recording crime against people who don't have a gender identity.
Channel 4 is where? Dont we have laws againt prending to be a child in porn. Decades ago you couldnt say you were underage while having phone sex, or do fisting. Who removed protections?
T did nothing. They hid. Said they were delusional.
17 min 24 sec into the "Exposing Woke Students' Gender Nonsense" it seems it doesn't take long to brainwash the students at Sussex Uni. A year it took for that guy there, apparently, once he'd got to Brighton. Oh no! Wait a minute -18 min 6 sec: He thinks there's one more...so that makes 5 genders.... EPIC FAIL! Go straight to jail. Do not collect £200, do not pass go. Only 5 genders? You must do better mate. There are 100s don't you know.
Those students, it's bad enough saying "They are no longer biologocal men....even if they haven't transitioned" but saying that 'trans' women in men's prisons are at far more risk than they are to women in a women's prison or kids of 6 have some of the best ideas.... it's ludicrous. And the things they are saying about testosterone levels are simply not true. They are completely misinformed and sorry, thick as shit. But most of all, they are dangerous.