50 Comments

JB doesn’t like being a woman, doesn’t like women, refuses to believe she is a woman, she’s too good to be a woman, oh there is a word for that…she is a misogynist. She’s applauded for making misogyny acceptable and anyway haven’t men always made better women than women? Damn her soul

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Dead right. I think there might be some internalized homophobia there too.

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I love the 'unfortunately, we are living in anti-intellectual times' - what a self-righteous, stuck up bitch - who the hell does she think she is? She has found a little fan base and she thinks she's special but she is a weird cult leader who will have their comeuppance eventually.

I took a couple of gender and sexuality modules for my English literature degree a few years ago (which were compulsory by the way - which also alarms me) and reading Butler was crap, boring and pointless - no one I know agreed with anything she said we just couldn't wait until it was over. Little did I know that the university were trying to brainwash their students.

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She's right, though not in the way she means. That fact that she has any credibility at all shows how anti-intellectual we've become. Her writing is terrible, and her ideas come from "The Life of Brian".

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lol, yes - she has become the anti-intellectual poster girl or they/them

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"Fuck that"

This is far more nuanced a response than I could muster.

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What a load of bloody nonsense from The Grauniad. The trouble is, it’s harmful bloody nonsense.

As legend has it, those drawn to particular professions or study are often motivated by good or bad personal experience and a desire to explain and promote the good or facilitate change when it’s bad.

This becomes, in some instances, the creation of a set of rules or even dogma that don’t explain universal truths but formalise and extrapolate to the entire world a single individuals own experience or problems.

The root of all this woo appears to be deeply unhappy people that cannot accept themselves and encourage others with similar unhappiness to seek answers in controlling the perception of others, by contorting language and even physical appearance, so they can be perceived as the vision they have in their head rather than compromise internally with reality. This approach is failing everyone’s mental health and damaging some people physically (often irreversibly).

I’m in this fight particularly for the safeguarding of the child and vulnerable women, because I’ve been both.

This all has more in common with evangelical and fundamentalist preachers than it does with science or the humanities because it explains absolutely nothing, has no body of evidence but demands blind faith and adherence to doctrine. Outside of medical diagnoses, it is castles built on sand.

I’ve gone the long way around saying fuck this shit, I’m not playing this game.

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I agree. To me, JB's academic career consists of creating a bunch of faux-intellectual garbage to justify her unhappiness at not being a boy.

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Bang on.

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Guardian: publishes interview wherein a TRA defends a pedophile

Guardian: oops, just kidding, deleted

TRAs: terfs are silencing us!!

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My “that’s it” moment with The Guardian came when the women’s sports page was filled by a whole page (with huge photo) of a TIM who was a photographer with Bournemouth Town! That was the sum total of ‘women’s sport’. The Guardian can fuck right off.

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I wouldn't line a litter tray with that rag.

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Surely the guardian will take a hit from hoax-gate? How could you support them after that? They haven't even acknowledged it

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I hope Cubana Angel sues them all, I really do. Nick Sandmann was falsely portrayed by the media in a spectacle that was totally set up to hurt him, a schoolboy who committed the crime of wearing a MAGA hat and standing his ground when heckled by a group of adults (actors). The Wi Spa hoax is the same kind of smear campaign. Sandmann has sued several media outlets for false reporting. Unfortunately they just settle out of court and carry on.

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Jane Clare Jones is the undisputable champ. The gender ideologues barely can reach to her ankles..

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I've been trying to write a response to this for a while, but it keeps heading towards an essay! I'll go and type up my thoughts properly, and then ask Graham if he thinks it is worth publishing anywhere. However, my short response is that I cannot even begin to understand how the thought-process that sex is a social construct begins. That people have built careers on it staggers me.

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My mind also boggles that an academic can claim that "sex is assigned at birth" and not lose here job.

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Yes ,some medical doctors are even espousing that theory now and THEY should know better . Imagine being treated by a doctor who doesn't know basic biology !! Scary !!

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Agree. Makes you wonder by what process 7.8 BILLION people got here !! Must have been some kind of " social construct " but considering that Neanderthal man had no developed language then it must have been a miracle instead

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Thank God I finally unsubscribed about a year ago. I only stayed as long as I did for a sports (football) writer I liked, and Felicia Cloakes’ recipes. Inertia is a powerful force.

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Even worse from me - continued to buy the occasional copy for the killer sudoku and codeword.

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We don’t need to rethink the category of man, apparently. The exploitation opportunities available when pretending to be a man are tiny compared to how much a pretend woman can exploit woman.

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Ah look, Butler specifies pronouns as they/them. As a proud woman who will never deny my womanhood I say fuck her and her trendy pronouns.

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She's been doing that for a while. So cutting edge. I saw someone on Twitter likening her pretence at being gender fluid or whatever as Madame Curie contracting radium poisoning. Made me laugh!

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What a contrast to Hilary Mantel, who points out that using they/them is just another way to neutralize and erase women's achievements.

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“We need to rethink the category of woman” means they HAVEN’T THOUGHT THIS THROUGH.

And it shows, especially when politicians all have to invent their own definition every time they’re asked what a woman is.

Everybody already KNOWS what a woman is. It’s that thing that some men want to be and unable to be: an adult female human.

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A good article, easy to engage with. I’m so scared for reality, and particularly the reality of women’s lives everywhere. This Butler creature writes badly and hides her lack of substance with bullshit. If you can’t explain something to a child, then you have no real understanding. This sort of person in my world could print what she likes but in my world Butler would be a sideline oddity rather than being taken seriously by anyone at all.

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My mother told me decades ago that academics who wrote accessibly -- and were consequently read by nonacademics -- were viewed within the academy: they were reviled!

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'It is very appalling and sometimes quite frightening to see how trans-exclusionary feminists have allied with rightwing attacks on gender.' [What's gender?]

'The anti-gender ideology movement is not opposing a specific account of gender

[The argument must never venture outside the dogma of gender] but seeking to eradicate “gender” as a concept or discourse, a field of study, an approach to social power.'

[Gender is a concept linked to social power: quelle surprise]

'Sometimes [LOL!] they claim that “sex” alone has scientific standing [sexnotgender being the most popular # related to GCfem] but other times they appeal to divine mandates for masculine domination and difference [male prison statistics are cited]. They don’t seem to mind contradicting themselves.' [Rather than abandon gender as a concept let's believe gendered identities exist irrespective of sex]

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Those statements that you quoted seem to come from the mind of someone on serious mind-altering drugs (alcohol will do this eventually). My experience of alcoholics is that they will often be incoherent while believing themselves to be speaking quite clearly. Divine mandates? What does that mean? I didn't realize god was in the business of keeping crime statistics. The one who doesn't mind contradicting zeeself is Butler; she does it constantly. I truly suspect she has substance-abuse problems.

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Crime stats? That's all they talk about at the gates of heaven! That and long spoons.

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Eva Comrie, a lawyer who used to be a safeguarder, writes about why safe spaces for women and children are vital assets: https://www.barrheadboy.com/safe-spaces/#comments

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