The full documentary is now available to watch for free on YouTube. Please consider watching. People need to know the truth of this illness so that we can get the funding we need and deserve. This is another example of an illness that affects mostly women and is treated horrifically by the medical system.
‘Because one of the catch-cries of the trans movement is that they are the most ignored and the most marginalized group in America, yet can outspend its electoral opponents by orders of magnitude. That doesn’t sound like the most marginalized group in America. I wouldn’t think the most marginalized group in America would have a well-funded lobby group behind them. One capable of outspending the Christian Right on an 8–1 basis. Something doesn’t add up.’
Hey this is an outstanding piece of investigative journalism. It covers literally everything wrong with the trans movement, articulates it well and backs it up. Save this, archive this, spread this.
“But the facts and figures say there isn’t an epidemic. Rather the opposite — trans people have the world’s best murder statistics, as a group. The ‘epidemic’ is easily debunked using LGBTQI+ groups’ own statistics. The trans murder rate is a false meme worthy of inclusion in a late 90’s chain email promising you the truth about Bill Clinton and Whitewater. It’s literal fake news.”
“Because, from the horses mouth, being transgender is about identifying with the stereotypes and not being a stereotypical member of one’s own sex, then using modern medicine to fix this problem. This problem is fixed by treatments to cosmetically resemble the opposite sex. If I want to be a woman, all I need to do is identify as a woman. If I want to be a man, all I need to do is identify as a man. That is a tautology, and it is incoherent. It should not be the basis for a civil rights movement.”
“One sponsor of particular interest for my inner comedian is lesbianhealthinfo.org, a domain that has unfortunately expired and is being squatted. The link now leads to a WordPress blog in German, that Google Translate advises me is about ‘Lesbians also play in the casino’ and contains possibly the worst summary of The Iliad that I’ve ever read. I applaud this German spam blog for its inclusivity of lesbians in the casino. It has been the most lesbian-inclusive website I have seen through the course of writing this article.”
“SCIENCE! I love the first acknowledgement of gender stereotypes in this entire paper is in this ‘experiment’. I have a question — who decides which outfit belongs to which gender? Is it the gender police? What gender is the uniform of the gender police?”
“It is impossible for such a scientist to be impartial when they stand to make money and have been compensated by a particular pharmaceutical company to advocate use of their drugs. It is less a science and more a religion. These are not scientists. They are priests of a cult.”
What really happened at the ‘gender wars’ lunch thrown by the author at the River Café? I was there and it was glorious
What really happened at the ‘gender wars’ lunch thrown by the author at the River Café? I was there and it was glorious - Suzanne Moore
We had all been waiting for this lunch for a very long time. JK Rowling had asked a number of women who have supported her and each other during the great ‘gender wars’ for a slap-up Christmas lunch.
In the run-up, we all chatted excitedly about it. I knew some of the women involved, some not and I’d never met Jo herself. Obviously there had been messages of support from her during what I call the great “unpleasantness” at my former paper. Which meant a lot. Like everyone else, I have watched day in, day out the abuse she gets on social media for standing up for women and girls. Anyone in the public eye who speaks out gets abuse, but the extent to which Rowling has stood firm in spite of being vilified is testament to her extraordinary strength. What I didn’t know until we started messaging is quite how hilarious and sweary she is. These are all qualities I like in a woman.
Alas, that lunch never happened as Covid rates shot up. Rowling’s husband is a doctor and had advised her not to get us all together at that point in December. We reluctantly agreed that even though he is a man, he may know what he is talking about. Instead, she sent us all goody bags. Totally lovely.
Yet us would-be ladies who lunch, including of course the alleged “international network of powerful lesbians” seem to have formed a little support group as each of us have been under attack at various times. Maya Forstater, Rosie Duffield, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Joanna Cherry, Alison Bailey and Bev Jackson: all of us know what it’s like to open Twitter and see nothing but abuse and “Die Terf” threats. This undiluted misogyny in the name of trans rights is mostly not perpetrated by trans people at all but by their so-called allies, often very alienated men.
But the lunch with this bunch of women finally did happen and I have now read several accounts as to why it took place.
We must be a coven, or launching a campaign or plotting. The actual reason? To eat, drink and be extremely merry, which seems never to have occurred to these steely investigative reporters.
Jo had booked a private room at The River Café. “No men?” they had asked her. “That’s right, no men”. I arrived to find a beautiful table, the wine already flowing and a bunch of overexcited women. I was seated next to Julie Bindel. For decades she has been fighting for women in prison, who are trafficked and abused. She has been physically attacked for opposing “gender ideology”. But that’s not the only reason why I love her. She is full of mischief and raucousness. Helen Joyce whose book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality was next to me. Her book has done brilliantly, as has Professor Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls. This is a huge boo-ya to the publishing world who are complete cowards on this subject.
Most of the women I had met before and the rest I felt I knew anyway. It was fabulous to meet Angela Wild and Liane Timmerman, out and proud butch lesbians. So please don’t talk to me about gender non-conformity. All the prissy little puritans have no idea how physically brave such women are. Liane was wearing a T-shirt with ‘Lesbian Not Queer’ on it. Maya Forstater has just launched the Respect My Sex campaign, calling on local authorities and others to commit to protecting sex-based rights and to acknowledge “that sex matters. Women matter. Single-sex spaces matter. Female-only sporting events matter. Child safeguarding matters.” Those who don’t respect this will not receive their vote, they starkly warn. Were we there to plan the next phase of this campaign? No, not at all, though I was pleased to see her so well after all she has been through.
No, in fact we were there to discuss incredibly important subjects. Like, has KD Laing ‘gone off’ as a gay icon? And the Keanu Reeves test. Me and JK think if you don’t fancy Keanu you definitely are a lesbian. Bindel, as ever, was goading us, saying we were not as heterosexual as we think. JK, she reckons, is about 66 per cent straight. She seems to believe that she has some sort of lesbian Geiger counter. In a conversation when we joked about whether Angela Merkel could be secretly gay, she found it hysterical when I said “Isn’t she just a scientist?” .
It would be lovely to tell you we discussed how to bring down the patriarchy, shared some innovative campaigning strategies, had an agenda and took notes. In fact we had so much gorgeous food and wine – The River Café does a nice spot of pasta – that we phoned up Martina Navratilova and sang ‘We love you Martina!” to her voicemail. God knows what she will make of that message!
There was some chat about whether, if we could impregnate women without men, we would. Apparently I was very keen. Kathleen Stock asked Helen and I about the failure of investigative journalism when it came to this issue.
JK and I talked about how many high profile people we know who send us support in private, but will not come out with that support in public. There were speeches. Possibly I made one. They were mostly about how wonderful it was to be together having felt so outcast. Obviously, there has been Covid but all of us there – straight/gay/bi, single parents, Left-wing – have been made to feel as if we are pariahs simply because we challenge the idea that womanhood is a feeling in a man’s head. Ironically, I got so much grief over this – especially because I did not support Corbyn – from young guys telling me I was old, ugly and drunk. How I have had three kids and a career is a mystery to them.
We have reached the utterly bizarre situation where the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, cannot say what a woman is, whereas Boris Johnson – who I have never said a good word about – can spell it out quite plainly. Indeed, in one of the clearest statements he has ever given, recently he said that biology is real, that those who had gone through male puberty should not compete with females in sport and that children should not be rushed into transition.
Meanwhile Labour flounders; saying that a woman can have a penis (Thornberry) and men can grow a cervix (Lammy) while most of us sit agog and think: “Stop drinking the Kool Aid and talk to your voters”. None of us wants to stop trans people expressing themselves or accessing healthcare, but nothing Rowling has written is transphobic. What it is though, is a considered view about protecting the rights of women, particularly vulnerable ones, and not medicalising girls who may simply be unhappy and may be gay.
This week a perfectly nice woman canvassing for Labour knocked on my door and I explained to her that I would not be voting for a party that does not know what a woman is. She looked utterly bewildered and I felt so sorry for her that I started talking about bin collection. But how can Labour be so unprepared for this question? A Democrat friend in the US tells me that the whole sports issues highlighted by swimmer Lia Thomas is really playing badly for Biden on the doorstep.
How perfect, then, that the lunch had been rearranged to take place on a sunny day when gender critical views are now becoming seen as the common sense they are.
And it really was perfect. Not only did we get extremely and gloriously smashed, but there is nothing like laughing with other women. It’s just the most life-enhancing thing. As Maya Angelou said: “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh”. That is in the end why we will win. We cackled away not just at the humourless little puritans who think they define us, but at our own silliness. As you can see from the pictures, if radical feminists did hen dos, this is how they’d look.
I got home with another goody bag and found amongst the many treats some beautiful Easter eggs, which I had to eat in the middle of the night, still giggling to myself about the brilliant day, the brilliant women, the brilliant feeling of being in the company of those who are not afraid to stand up and being counted. JK Rowling made this particular gathering happen but all over the country, all kinds of women are standing up too.
And though of course I am never drinking again, I raise my glass to you.
Respect my Sex: what is it and why?
Not since Brexit has a cultural-political issue proved so polarising. The question of gender identity and whether biology matters has, perhaps improbably, cast a far-reaching shadow over public debate.
On one side are those who believe we can define our own gender based on who we feel we are, and that any attempt to deny this is an attack on the rights, wellbeing and safety of transgender people. On the other: those who believe in the primacy of biological reality, and who would seek to defend it against erasure.
Put more simply, the argument boils down to one deceptively tricky question: what is a woman?
The debate has rumbled on for several years, with frequent flare-ups whenever JK Rowling – the Harry Potter author, who sits firmly on the gender-critical side of the fence – says anything new. But if most politicians had hoped to steer clear of this particular minefield, silence is no longer an option. Now, in the lead-up to the local elections on May 5, a group called Women Uniting that comprises members and supporters of six political parties has launched a campaign called Respect My Sex – and it’s coming for every candidate.
“In corporations and councils, from parliament to playgrounds, the two sexes – man and woman, male and female – are being sidelined in language, law, policy and public spaces,” the group claims on its website. “Biological sex is a fact of life. It is simple and straightforward, and central to how we organise our world. But now the concept of sex is being undermined.”
Describing themselves as a “cross-party group fighting for women’s sex-based rights,” the campaigners are calling on local authorities and others to commit to protecting sex-based rights and to acknowledge “that sex matters. Women matter. Single-sex spaces matter. Female-only sporting events matter. Child safeguarding matters.” Those who don’t respect this will not receive their vote, they starkly warn.
Supporters are encouraged to ask canvassers the kind of questions that have been causing headaches for (predominantly Labour) politicians: what do you think is most important, sex or gender? Do you support the replacement of women’s single sex spaces with mixed sex ones?
Politically speaking, there are no right answers: whichever side a candidate comes down on, he or she risks alienating voters who fervently believe the opposite. The number of those who have bravely (or gutlessly, depending on your perspective) tried and failed to straddle the divide is growing. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, would not be drawn on whether a woman can have a penis in an LBC radio debate last month. Weeks earlier, Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, struggled to offer a clear answer to the question of Labour’s definition of a woman when asked on BBC Woman’s Hour.
It’s not just a Labour problem: Rishi Sunak, the Tory Chancellor, when asked on talkRadio, attempted to bat away the question by saying Prime Minister Boris Johnson had already given the answer – one that he seemed strangely unable to repeat on air.
Johnson’s answer – “I think that when it comes to distinguishing between a man and a woman that basic facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important” – was at least clear, and given in the knowledge he’s unlikely to lose too many woke young voters as a result, since they were probably never his to begin with.
The Mumsnet vote, meanwhile, is up for grabs. And some vocal users are firm believers in the now-controversial idea that a woman is an adult human female. Their response to Labour’s fence-sitting has been predictably scathing. “I can hear Aretha singing it now,” wrote one, after Dodds’ awkward run-in with the woman question on Radio 4. “You make me feel like a natural context-dependent cervix-haver.”
For some, the cost of living crisis will determine who gets their vote. But for those invested in this thorniest of culture war issues, the question of how to define a woman goes to the heart of whether their elected representatives speak for them.
throwback to the time 2 years ago that I told my therapist that I thought I was using makeup to self harm, and she told me that it wasn't possible because makeup doesn't harm anyone, and also that by saying that I was shaming her for wearing it
Yeah, had a kinda similar experience with my therapist as well, when I told her that being exposed to porn as a child and growing up in a “sex-posi” environment that encouraged not only to keep watching porn but to emulate porn even if I felt no pleasure by doing so was actually “exploring my sexuality in a natural and healthy way”….. weeks later, while still discussing this topic and how harmful it was to feel like every sexual act emulated porn and was not personal, she said “well but you’re a human being and not a porn actress” like lol you think porn actresses aren’t human? she corrected herself a minute later by saying “I mean a porn character”
Libfem therapists are detrimental to women’s mental health because they actually believe misogynistic propaganda to be real and spill those views in our most vulnerable moments
The way women express love and desire is typically quieter. Take the shame we feel as a result of widespread homophobia and mix it with the shame all women have been made to have about our sexual desires, and you’ve got a shame casserole. So the way we communicate desire to other women is by staring at them silently, then walking away, ultimately never speaking. Glancing is our mating call.
- Céline Sciamma, writer and director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Another advice for girls and young women: love and sex is supposed to be fun, happy and make your life better. If it’s not, if it’s making you miserable, if it’s making you love yourself less, if it’s making you doubt yourself, and if you feel like you have to sacrifice yourself or put up with things you don’t want to, you are absolutely entitled to throw it out from your life. In fact, you should, because your life is so, so valuable and you have the right to be happy. Being a girl does not mean having to accept misery and pain, even if that’s what we’re often taught. You are allowed to decide what comes into your life. Let it be happy and beautiful.
telling girls to love themselves is terfy? telling girls that they can be a woman in any way they like is terfy?
so you’re admitting that the woke, pro-trans, non-terfy thing to do is to tell little girls not to love themselves, and that if they don’t fit into a specific image of womanhood then they’re Non-women? 🤔
Shortly after women were finally getting heard about how unsafe our world is, how we fear male violence, how we’re disproportionately affected by male violence, how awful men treat us, suddenly, there’s no such thing as sex. Suddenly, you can’t tell men and women apart. Suddenly, a man isn’t actually a man if he “identifies” as something else. Suddenly, you “can’t assume someone’s gender”.
It still amazes me that I talk to guys who still think they get harassed just as much as women online. Like even from people who aren’t clearly and totally gross dumbasses. It kinda makes me think that, even in the best cases, it might be hard to really understand the sheer difference in frequency. You see a woman get harassed on a game and you go “Oh well I’ve been harassed” without understanding that there is seldom a session for her where that doesn’t happen or understanding what her inbox might look like…
the idea of dogwhistles / hidden agendas / misleading language has really been utilised to just smear people for having certain opinions. like people taking to twitter re: billie eilish’s comments on porn
like how are you meant to have a reasonable discussion with someone if, no matter what you say, simply for disagreeing with them or holding an opinion they don’t like they discuss you as though you’re secretly fascist, or part of some underground conspiracy to… I don’t know, harm some group. for like. a fairly benign opinion that you’re explaining to them exactly why you hold, all while offering evidence for why you think that way. like what can you possibly say… you can’t
Hate to admit it but most of the internal communication issues we’re facing in leftist spaces is due to bad argumentative habits, logical fallacies and intellectual shortcuts that were cultivated when discoursing with “the enemy “ aka right wing people. Not defending right wing opinions but it’s clear this devolution of discourse and habits of intellectual engagement started there. Except in that scenario we were often literally speaking to fascists so the laziness and automatic canned opinions didn’t seem so bad then. But look at us now. There’s always a price to pay for shortcuts and laziness
It’s always a trip to remember just how bad it’s gotten with things like this. Like, not so long ago it was considered OBVIOUS that women would hate porn, and men were also more cagey about it. Now no one is allowed to talk badly of it even when it’s caused them personal harm. Similar problem with everyone being at each other’s throats over the definition of “women”.
The reason Lesbians are often made fun of or even attacked is because of their lack of attraction towards men , in a male dominated society even sexuality have to center males but the only community that doesn't center males is the Lesbian community and we would like it to stay that way , so if you like males kindly fuck off and stop calling yourself a lesbian .
Where did patriarchy come from? Did it always exist? Is it inevitable because of women’s reproductive abilities?
As you can probably tell from my last few days of posting, I have read and enjoyed Gerda Lerner’s “The Creation of Patriarchy” and I highly recommend it for any woman, but particularly those who want a valuable, very well researched and historically based but deeply engaging and woman centred read. If you enjoyed Who Cooked the Last Supper? but want something that goes into more depth and analyses prehistory and ancient history in more detail and a more structured way, this is the book for you. It articulated the problem I had with several other books from a feminist (and anti feminist) perspectives where the idea was unless a matriarchy existed , then patriarchy must have been an inevitable natural event (and with matriarchies being based only on very tenuous evidence, this leads to wishful and ahistorical theories), that or women had little to do with creating their own societies.
Instead, Gerda Lerner offers a convincing explanation that grants women agency without relying on tenuous evidence of matriarchies, she also rejects the Marxist explanation that private property emerged and then patriarchy emerged as a result of that. Most importantly, Lerner consistently emphasises that patriarchy’s creation was not natural but historical, based on conditions that no longer apply and can thus be ended.
I can’t do her theory the justice it deserves here but a brief summary of it is:
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
