Douglas Murray in the Times

I don't think he's objecting to that in itself per se, it's the combination of "sex is now gender" + "gender is a social construct" effectively results in biological sex being a social construct, which is nonsense.

This is what I think he means as well. I think it's a very good piece.

I don't understand his objection to gender=a social construct.

I don't think he's objecting to that in itself per se, it's the combination of "sex is now gender" + "gender is a social construct" effectively results in biological sex being a social construct, which is nonsense.

but I don't understand his objection to gender=a social construct.

I think he is echoing Debra Soh's argument as set out in her book, The End of Gender. There is a recent thread on here about her

To me, is not talking about what trans is, but objecting to the current trans ideology and why it is toxic, and not like the gay rights movement. That is enough for the moment, I think. And frankly where the push has to come from, from gay men and lesbians showing others that trans isn't just like gay was, since pretending it was is part of the reason it has got so far so fast.

He has kept it simple, said rights for trans people are important, but not like this. The current approach is not good. I particularly liked the softly-spoken statements about transing the gay away.

Nearly should be neatly and that should be gay

Meant girl trapped in a boy's body.

I appreciate that he's rejecting that sex= gender (an effeminate boy is not trapped in a girl's body), but I don't understand his objection to gender=a social construct.

It's all more light, from someone who is extremely unlikely to be coerced into recanting.

I liked the article. And evidently so do much of the readership of the Times.

I thought it was a good piece. It also nearly explains how that rights have been used to push a trans agenda and how they are not the same thing.

I like some of Murray's work but I'm not so keen on that. Even though I'm seeing him assert a position on "my side".

He seems to want to tie gender to sex, or at the very least for gender to remain a fixed thing, or presumably fixed things for different sets of people. This can be seen in how he muddles sex and gender in the "between-the-sexes people" which is contradicted by what he writes later on.

Institutions at which they worked were demanding that they said things, and pretended to believe things, they knew not to be true.

This. This is the demand. That everyone say things and pretend things they know not to be true, and in the case of females, including at the cost of their safety, dignity, privacy, and now in rugby their fractured skulls and broken necks.

But the revolt is now on many fronts. The manner in which trans claims disrupt the rights of women is now understood thanks to some high-profile conflagrations. That is because the demands of trans are clearly so different from other rights movements. The successful branches of women’s liberation never insisted on ignoring biological reality entirely. They asked for equality, and demanded that certain realities were accepted but not ignored. And yet today when women, including very famous women, say “We’re happy for you to be trans but that doesn’t make you precisely the same thing as a woman” they find not just abuse but (as happened to Ms White this week) career destruction

This is not about equality. It's about compelled speech, thought crime and the obliteration of women as a distinct, sex segregated class. As Douglas Murray says, the trans lobby is not at the apex of other rights' movements. It is in conflict with them.

It’s good in that he talks up the disquiet of gay men. As he would. But he completely overlooks why this has happened and understanding that is vitally important to understanding why women are so appalled.

It’s a men’s rights movement. It’s about men overruling women. He misses that because it doesn’t affect him. He doesn’t ask why there are no middle aged or elderly women suddenly coming out as trans. We know why there aren’t but cannot say. He misses all of that and views it through the lens of a gay man. Fair enough but it misses the aggression at the heart of the ideology.

Also a couple of copywriting errors. ‘A girl trapped in a boy’s body’ surely? I think the comments are as good as the article itself.