I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

The Left is not feminist. I concluded this ages ago (I'm old). Nor is it especially anti-racist. Basically, the Left is about centering white working class men. Actually, quite often it's about centering white middle class men but they'd like to pretend that it's not!

I have never yet voted anything other than Labour but I'm not hopeful about JC given the way that Jess Phillips was treated: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jess-phillips-labour-under-corbyn-feels-like-i-ve-been-locked-out-of-my-home-laura-pidcock-amber-rudd-maria-miller-stella-creasey-jacob-rees-mogg-gs5xp8mh7

I'm not sure the Right are any better - it's Miller and Greening who are trying to drive through the GRA after all

Ever since I started thinking about how the trans ideology has been picked up, I've been wondering about feminism and the Left.

If the Left really was feminist then it would be able to see that woman are being thrown under the bus in order to centre men and be willing to do something about this.

We can rationalise this by talking about group-think or whatever but I'm coming to the view that the Left isn't really that bothered about women's rights. The more I read about history the more I'm struck by stuff like trade unions forcing out women where they can. The Left certainly aren't in the clear over the recent disclosures of Weinstein and the fall-out.

I have no doubts that over the past decades feminism has been much more aligned with the Left than with the Right. By I'm less sure now that the Left is feminist in any meaningful sense.

He's called Fr Simon Rundell and it was an exchange with Crimson Flax. Sorry no link but if you google it should come up. Obviously I paraphrased somewhat but it was extraordinary how he wouldn't believe it was possible that saintly trans folk could ever be mean (actually CF said it was the ideology that was misogynist and homophobic) and he demanded "citations please"; when CF then obliged with a long list of the requested citations and said something like "there are so many I could go on all night" his only response was a PA "and you are" [sic] and "just because some trans people are horrible doesn't give you an excuse to be horrible too" - just a complete swerve of the issue, total denial that this is something that is real and needs to be addresssed. Just evil. These people who pretend to be good (or even godly) and they are propping up an ideology which is so harmful and toxic and when you challenge them on it and give them the evidence they just shut you down. They don't want to hear.

How the hell did feminists become the new bogeyman among the liberal left? How was that even possible? When did we ever take over the world and run it? When have we ever called the shots, set the agenda, held power? How much of a voice have we ever had? Why is it suddenly so easy for liberals to see feminists as the arch oppressors? The "cis-privileged shitlords" as one young woman so eloquently put it? WTF? Demonising women. Blaming us for all the ills of society. Patriarchy in action.

Ooh who was that Talking?

Actually, "leave me and my cognitive dissonance alone" is pretty much the battle cry of the whole transactivist ally movement

I am raging that the crimes of a man like that are reported as being committed by a "woman", the victim's "girlfriend".

But yeah, this never happens.

Did anyone else see a twitter exchange between a right on lefty (male) priest and a gender critical feminist a couple of weeks back? It went something like this:

Him: all trans people are lovely and gentle and probably saints and you're such a horrible bigot for being against them in any way
Her: actually some trans people are violent misogynists who hate, threaten and hurt women so we'd like to be able to keep them out of women only spaces
Him: I don't believe you! Show me the evidence
Her: provides loads of examples of violent, misogynist TIMs
Him: shut up! Why are you telling me this stuff? I don't want to hear it! You horrible bigot for focusing on all this nasty stuff and not participating in the collective delusion like I do! Leave me and my cognitive dissonance ALONE!

And then oc he went straight back to his nice comfortable place of all trans people are lovely and harmless and probably saints, and it's just these wretched bigoted women who after all are THE most privileged people society has ever known and just want to hold onto their privilege at all costs, the power crazed harpies that they are, who are the problem.

It's so fucking depressing.

Does that get recorded as an act of sexual violence against a child by a woman? I suppose sooner or later it does...

Yes, that'll be recorded as a crime committed by a woman and 'she' and her penis will be moving to a women's prison...

Does that get recorded as an act of sexual violence against a child by a woman? I suppose sooner or later it does...

He's also into domestic violence.

trib.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-says-girlfriend-beat-him-with-metal-broomstick/article_c8f9fac4-e15e-5a0c-afab-2cdb349ff30b.html
trib.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/casper-police-charge-assault-suspect-with-felony-domestic-battery/article_158fe28c-62b6-5331-9c19-8819de9b9102.html

Trans woman attacks 10 year old girl in toilets and penetrates her with his penis:

trib.com/news/local/casper/trial-begins-for-casper-resident-charged-with-sexually-assaulting-/article_16c71547-9ea8-53ca-843b-ea9f19628ae3.html

So it never happens.....

There was a very good article in the Mail about James Caspian this weekend: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4979498/James-Caspian-attacked-transgender-children-comments.html

How did they manage to come up with a form of intersectionality in which intersection with being male trans trumps all the others and yet still believe they are feminist?

Partially about Mary and partly after a French feminist movement Les Barbes apparently: www.varsity.co.uk/features/5940

A feminist society which rescinds an invitation to a black lesbian for fear of upsetting people who were born male can't really consider itself as women-centring

Thanks for that link @borntobequiet

Crikey.

I’ve just posted this on the debate thread, but it perhaps fits here too. It’s from Lily Maynard’s latest blog post. It focuses on the silencing of the parents of trans kids and the repeated fact that kids are pushed to transition without proper care and counselling. It’s an upsetting read.

lilymaynard.wordpress.com/2017/10/01/my-mother-heart-bleeds/amp/

Naughty rum!

Presumably the Beard Society at Peterhouse is named for Mary Beard?

I assumed it was to acknowledge that some women have beards and that they need to be centred in our feminism...

Bloody hell, my numbers were waaay out. Thanks, Born.

So there are five times as many referrals at primary age as there were in 2010, but 20 times as many in the mid-teens?

And some poor child was referred at 3?

Presumably the Beard Society at Peterhouse is named for Mary Beard?

I wonder what she thinks about no-platforming?

Look at the crossover point between 2010/11 and 11/12. Suddenly far more F to M than before. What happened?
I still think the main driver of F to M transitioning is hormonal, rather than ASD.
gids.nhs.uk/number-referrals

Sorry, I realise that, first, that sounds flippant, whereas teenage suicide stats are anything but; and also, I'm trying to compare numbers referred in one year to numbers attempting suicide at any point in their lives, so the answer is probably not straightforward.

There were about 700 referrals to the Tavistock last year (not sure if that was teens or a wider age range. So, assuming this is a real reflection of typical numbers, presumably there used to be around 300 gender-related suicide attempts before it became acceptable to come out. Is that roughly what used to be seen, pre-Tavistock days?

I'm asking because although I know that the 40% figure based on 27 cases is widely quoted and debunked, I've seen similar statistics from US studies of larger numbers.

I think there's a real danger that with looser regulation and monitoring, there will be no way to collect relevant data for the sake of all concerned.

The phenomenal increase in referrals - and this year's drop - strongly suggests fashion is a big driver. Now it's become more mainstream, young people are less interested. And perhaps explains the ramping up of pressure from older TRAs? They're losing traction

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news/stories/gids-referrals-increase-slows-201617/

Yes that struck me Roly. I was trying to compare it to say lesbian/gay pupils - as in they maybe didn't necessarily come out and it maybe wasn't spoken about (over the last 40 years) but I imagine some teachers would have a clue that some of their pupils were gay. Obviously in more recent times with the change in society etc, hopefully more pupils are able to come out whilst they are at school, but it's not a new thing, it has always been there. Does that make any sense?! I don't feel I've got across what I want to say there at all.

It would have been very rare indeed to have come across a transgender pupil before 2015. I worked in single-sex schools for 40 years. This issue never arose

Proof, like we needed it, that this is an Internet-driven phenomenon, rather than a genuine medical issue affecting a small percentage of teens.

And the next piece is:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/linda-bellos-barred-in-cambridge-university-row-0pbdq5sm9?shareToken=6899308d20a7f249087b145bf1e4729d