87 Comments

Cates! I've already corrected it! Don't write in!!

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Needs corrected again at the end of the article

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thank you!

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and DOH!

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Excellent article - bravo, indeed.

I’m sorry and this is really childish, but I did have a little giggle when I looked up Miriam Cates to find out that she is the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge 😊

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Glad I wasn’t the only one…

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We're in a new world when we're getting good, basic, meat-and-potatoes feminism from The Telegraph. That was great. I hope you're going to be okay for posting it, Graham.

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Do you think she got her copy of Trans by Helen Joyce via that campaign by Feminist News to send a copy to every MP? If so, that's a triumph.

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I sent a copy through that campaign to my female MP, with my name. I also referred to the need to protect sex-based rights on a recent constituency survey she sent round, also with name. Hopefully she will read the book and respond. She is a Tory, recent intake. I asked her to support Liz Truss. Who knows, maybe there are some moves behind the scenes among the women MPs and this is the start of some kind of new offensive. One can but hope!

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Hey, well done you!

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"As a former biology teacher I struggle to see how statements such as ‘only women have a cervix’ and ‘only women can give birth’ are anything other than scientific fact."

Indeed a truth...don't let anyone blindside you to think different. What ever sex you are born you will age and die with that sex.

Or have they got the answer to growing old and dying with this new science they have found.!

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On Twitter yesterday I read a genetics “scientist” arguing that the fact that you can interfere with foetuses at the chromosomal level with new techniques they are developing, (to make chimaeras effectively),that this means that it is biologically possible to change sex so that statement is false.

Gruesome, so gruesome. Delusional. And utterly Evil.

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The question then would be: does the foetus get to choose?

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To clarify: he was probably referring to embryo, or zygote, or cell cluster, or something. It was I that used the word foetus. But it’s all the same IMO … will turn into a human baby in the end.

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Creating DSDs to validate trans. It had to come. We are full on living in a dystopian society.

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What is the foetus’ gender identity?

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Just because we CAN, doesn't mean we SHOULD. Wasting all sorts of resources and time on meaningless wank.

Meanwhile, people are languishing and wanting treatment for things we CAN change and help, but MaH lAdYfEeLz ;)

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Bravo Miriam. Good for her to join the ranks of Rosie Duffield. JK Rowling.. Baroness Nicholson. Kathleen Stock and many many others speaking up.

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Brava! 👏🏻 Absolutely wonderful! Thank you for sharing this article, Graham. I wouldn’t have been able to read it otherwise.

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Thank you Graham. And for risking the wrath of Khan to do so.

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Wipes tear from eye

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Wipes tear from eye. Googles Miriam Cates.

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It's difficult to see how any reasonable person could disagree with this clear-headed article. I wonder however, if Miriam Cates understates her case by saying, "...even if they have yet to go through any form of hormonal or surgical gender reassignment." This makes it sound as if we are talking about people who just haven't quite got round to surgery yet. Aren't some of them men with no intention of having their male genitals removed?

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Isn't it something as high as 90% that have no intention of surgery?

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How do we know as stats seem mysteriously missing or dreamed up. We're guesstimating. But but but and and and that's because they're being prevented from becoming their true selves by those nasty NHS people delaying them with the waiting lists specifically targeted at them and their human rights. It's a deliberate tactic. Or something.

So let's just let someone wear a dress and a wig or bind their breasts. Maybe some lippy/no lippy and very manly trousers and a badge. The pronoun badge is the most vital aspect of truly living your full womanhood or manhood. Or non-binary personhood. Your theyness. Shut your eyes, cover your ears, switch off your brain and all your senses, repeat after me...

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And what is gender reassignment surgery anyway? Sex cannot be changed. If gender is different to sex then it cannot be reassigned (who assigns social constructs into people, the gods?) And is unrelated to sex. There is little point in defending sex and then going along with the narrative that we are each randomly assigned a gender at birth and that can reassigned medically. We go straight back to square 1.

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Yep. Funny how the gender critical always get ticked off for not understanding that sex and gender are two different things whilst it's tras who actually conflate the two things all the time in order to peddle their wares.

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(Speaking as a languages teacher here) perhaps the meaning is not ‘surgery to reassign gender’ but rather ‘surgery to reassign genitals so as to conform to perceived gender’. Being charitable!!

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Would that no be rearrange genitals...🤔

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Gender reassignment is an oxymoron. Imo 😁

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Surgical mutilation and sterility for a mental illness. Inmates in charge of the asylum here.

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I think of it as sexual abuse of the ignorant; the sociopath surgeons are experimenting and doing shit Mengele would be proud of.

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Aye Rex, that thought struck me the mair aa learned about transgenderism. Interestin tae note that the first mutilation/ops were performed in Germany. They were horrific. Hirchfeld and and the ithers did..tae ma mind unspeakable stuff. No content castratin etc but transplantin an ovary and later a womb intae a man. He didnae survive long efter.

An the furst oprtunistic surgeon in the US ws a bloody urologist. Ye gods. Whit a history.

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Fit like? *I lived in Lossiemouth for 3yr* quine/loon? It's horrific. The sheer amount of $ we're up against is staggering - they can and have bought every outlet that might say owt about it. This is my hill, though - they came for the children, and I'm no' havin' it.

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True - surgery and hormones are irrelevant. Assuming they've gone through male puberty, men who've been castrated or take hormones still retain the physical strength of men, meaning they don't belong in places where women are vulnerable.

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With you - they can cut it off, tuck it up their arses, sing it a song, pop a hat on it, give it a nickname, let it make all their decisions. Got or had a dick? Can't be a chick. Thanks for coming to my TED talk! ;)

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Excellent and so worth sharing

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Brava Miriam Cates! I believe this will grab the attention of many politicians doing as it does placing the common sense Britain likes to think itself the exponent of squarely at the centre of the debate. This is a statement which can't be ignored and I can't wait to see the Guardian's reaction.

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What's so ingenious about the article is that while not pulling any punches it neither offers any handles for the eternally offended to get hold of to start with all their tiresome bigot/trans phobe nonsense. There's just nothing at all in it which could be misconstrued as bigoted. They'll do so anyway if course as they did with JKR whose article was also bigotry free. They're obliged to because the criterion is not the content of the article but how potentially influential the writer of the article is. And this is likely to be influential.

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And thus - hopefully- in the end will backfire because the zeal behind the defamations only serves to ensure that more people seek to read the article as with JKR, discovering then that the defamation is unfounded and setting the light of criticism then instead on the defamers.

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LoL I admire your optimism! I say: 'Only women get pregnant.'

MRAs say: 'OMG you want us all to die!'

I say: 'Men have penises, women do not.'

MRAs say: 'OMG you claim trans people don't exist!' and other such mental fuckery. Only mental illness the patients DEMAND as a civil right.

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No, they say “omg you want to eliminate trans you murderer!”

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That’s what I would expect an adult to say about this subject. Wonderfully clear.

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Absolutely first class. So glad there are some eloquent journalists willing to stand up and be counted. Now for politicians to show they have the guts to back them.

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It is bigger than the culture war but you'll generally find trans activists are the biggest advocates of it.

Whenever a pronoun wanker appears, Brit-bashing, race-baiting and historical revisionism will always accompany their misogynistic rhetoric.

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Thank you so much for this. what a wonderful, forthright, honest and rational woman Miriam is. It would be gratifying if more politicians and public figures were prepared to use their platform or privilege in this way. What is truly appalling is that this kind of expression has become exceptional. It's what we used to do based on inspiration and conviction, without feeling anxious or conscious that that every word we spoke or wrote might be policed and censored. We need to feel the sense of freedom again that only uncompromising resistance gives.

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