Welcome New Advent readers! Please check out some of the many posts I’ve written on this issue here.
And oh…consider my books, too!
If you follow these things, you’ve seen the photo:
So yes, J.K. Rowling (I wrote about her first TERF missive here a couple of years ago) hosted a lunch with several women who have been on the forefront of fighting misogyny trans activism in the UK. Of course it’s not everyone, and as is the case with any social and political movement, there are tensions, but this is a good representative picture of the current situation.
Here’s Suzanne Moore’s account of what happened and why.
The lunch coincided with the announcement of a new UK campaign, spearheaded by Maya Forstater (3rd from left in the leopard-print dress) called “Respect my Sex if you want my X” – which is oriented toward the UK political scene.
Local elections are due on 5th May 2022. And local authorities are also adopting policies that deny the importance of sex. They are ignoring science and undermining language. They are spending thousands of pounds on training that misrepresents the law. In schools, single-sex facilities such as toilets and changing rooms are being replaced with ‘gender-neutral’ ones – which means mixed-sex. Boys who identify as girls are being allowed into girls’ sporting competitions. In public libraries, adult material such as ‘drag queen story time’ is being presented to children. In municipal sports facilities, women’s changing rooms are being opened up to members of the opposite sex on the basis of self-identification.
From now, until the 5th May, we need to send politicians a message. We will tell political parties, and the candidates and campaigners who knock on our doors, that sex matters. Women matter. Single-sex spaces matter. Female-only sporting events matter. Child safeguarding matters.
I offer this to you not assuming you are particularly interested in politics over the pond, but because it’s a guide and a warning for the American scene. There are people talking out loud about these issues, articulating them clearly and refusing to be rolled over and gaslight by “be kind.”
I will have more about the US political situation, particular the Biden administration’s proposed changes to Title IX, which will be coming up for public comment very soon. You can predict what the changes are centered on: adding “gender identity” to the non-discriminatory wash, and there friends, is a disaster.
Anyway, in the Mail the women at the lunch are identified.
Now, of course, the trans activists, always known for their tolerance, responded to news of a few women having a great time at lunch with grace.
Hahahaha.
Of course, there was a Twitter meltdown – which is what Twitter is made for, yes, I know – much of it taking the form of insults about the appearance of the women at the lunch, insults which reveals the truth of how many trans activists view womanhood as performative skinwalking of mostly porn-inspired gender stereotypes.
I’ve said for a long time – ever since Caitlyn Jenner graced the cover of Vanity Fair, that you could get a bunch of the most diverse females in a room – a mother of ten kids, an ancient celibate nun, a dreadlocked college student, an elite athlete, a butch lesbian, a southern tri-Delta, a midwestern farmer – of all races, shapes and sizes – and Caitlyn Jenner or India Willoughby could walk in and there would be no problem playing the “which of these is not like the others” game.
If you read through the responses to this lunch, an enormous number of them are misogynistic attacks on these women’s appearance – even Rowling’s very normal middle-aged breasts.
These people – the activists – are vile. And remember – it’s the activists who, being activists, drive things.
#Resist.
Anyway, a few more links for you:
This summer, Oxford University Press has scheduled for publication the book Gender Critical Feminism by Australian philosopher Holly Lawson-Smith.
Some OUP employees and authors are upset and would like the mean book to be stopped.
These days, it’s secular ideologues who demand that science yield to dogma. And while the phenomenon has become common enough, it’s still something of a shock to see a nursing organization reject plain truths about human biology. For something like 300,000 years, human beings have known that they are a sexually dimorphic species, with men being men and women being women. It’s how we make babies. Nobody should have needed me, or anyone else, to come along and point this out. And it’s a disgrace to the BCCNM that one if its members has been put in the farcical position of having to prove that it’s okay to say that two plus two makes four, and not five.
But if I win my case, I believe that the dividends will accrue to nurses and midwives all across my province, and maybe even the whole country. The precedent will help ensure that we can call out gender-identity ideology without fear of reprisal or loss of livelihood. And I have it on good authority that there are many nurses who will be watching my case closely. Even if most haven’t raised their voice publicly as I have, they’re tired of watching ideology trump science, while the real concerns of women are ignored, or even attacked, by the professional organizations tasked with protecting our interests.
Cracks appearing – a few – in the MSM. The Washington Post ran a short piece by Corinna Cohn, born male, transitioned at 19, now turning 50. He has regrets, and a much clearer understanding of what was going on at the time in his life. I am not on board with everything he says, especially via Twitter, but it’s a useful piece.
Along the same line – this is long, but important as well – a Benjamin Boyce (someone gender critical feminists have issues with) interview with Cynthia Breherny, who did not get to the point of transitioning, but experienced dysphoria from a young age. She speaks of the complexities of the psyche, especially when trauma and abuse have been experienced, and the necessity of patiently dealing with that and mystery and ambiguity of human existence in the world in the reality of a sexed body, rather than slapping the traumatized, abused, anxious person in a “obviously wrong gender” box.
(Why slam such individuals in the “wrong gender” box? Because money, that’s why. “Transition” is a single word that covers subsequent lifelong medicalization. )
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