Canadian PM Mark Carney's child attended Tavistock

I think it's interesting how many prominent figures in politics, showbusiness and media are known or rumoured to have a trans-identified child, niece or nephew.

Not only does it bolster the theory of social contagion, but it also helps explain why trans ideology was adopted so quickly by public bodies and large corporations.

Given that this adoption was explicitly against the wishes of voting publics as a whole, this is a legitimate matter of public debate and should not be swept under the rug by cries of 'privacy for minors'.

If the trans identification of relatives IS part of the explanation for the undemocratic and unscientific adoption of policies which posed a danger to women, then it's not only a matter of public debate, it's a scandal involving abuse of power, and should be publicly investigated.

Modernity has seen more than ever people going to university as a rite of passage...even those who are not particularly academic..and as a consequence degrees have become somewhat devalued...plus now there are simply not enough degree level jobs to go around. And student loans now mean a life time of debt......if the young person ever gets a job which earns them enough to pay some of it off.

It is a hard fact of reality that a woman's most fertile years are in her late teens and twenties, and fertility rapidly goes off a cliff edge, just at the time when many women now feel they are in a position to have or want children. Added to that the ridiculous cost of housing....which now requires two full time adults in work to be able to afford. Women who do have children are having to spend a whole salary on nursery or child care ( ineviatbly it will be other women who look after their children or do the paid for domestic chores) because they cannot affiord to go P/T or even give up work for a few years.

It's all well and good talking about shared childcare responsibilities, but 9 times out of 10 that it is the women/mother who takes on most childcare responsibility ( for obvious reasons). I do see men pushing prams and pushchairs a lot more now than used to be the case, but you can guarantee it is still mainly women.

Having children is now presented as a burden - one that will ruin your life, stop you from doing what you want to do. People now live lives which are very much focused on travelling, eating out, socialising with friends...well into their thirties.....but the older you get the decision to start a family becomes a more difficult one to make. There never seems to be a good or a right time.

Men don't feel the pressure of the biological clock in the way that women do.....and many are more reluctant to settle down ( even though there are still men who very much want to have a family and children). People cohabiting is more normal now than it was...and marriage is seen as an unecessary piece of paper....everything is more transactional and provisional than ever before.

All of the above factors are shaped by social and cultural factors, by social trends and patterns...and if and when those patterns, expectations and trends change then most likely people will make different choices. Getting housing right....housing needs to be decent and affordable...and supporting mothers and the family with tax incentives etc should be a major priority.

Working from home has become more of a possibility now for those in desk type roles.....and this takes off some of the presure too, as well as providing some degree of flexibility.

Not having children because you are terrified of climate change is an unfortunate consequence of our times. Societies do need to have children, you cannot just rely on the children of peole from other countries and cultures to do all of the jobs that need to be done, and at the end of the day...we are sexed creatures and the purpose of of having two biological sexes is for reproduction.

Even those who consider themselves to be the best parents will find that their children hold them responsible for some harm or damage at some point. When children psychologically begin to separate from their parents they can be very critical and unforgiving.

I don’t get the impression that women are not having babies young anymore nor staying at home to look after them because of negative identity politics toward femininity or the like. Talking to my daughter and her friends, it’s about the cost of living, worries about bringing children into a world where climate change is happening and the toxicity of many young men (quite a few of my daughter’s male classmates became followers of Andrew Tate). Jobs those days involve longer periods of training as well, including a stint at university because that’s what employers want for both men and women these days.

Also, there are no guarantees that if you take the risk, get pregnant young and stay at home to look after babies, that the breadwinner will always be around or contribute toward the cost of raising the children. Many breadwinners do leave because they meet someone else and the longer a woman is out of the workforce, the harder it is to get back in. I have seen this happen to two mothers who had five children each in my friendship circle. A smart woman will ensure she is working at least part time so she can always provide if she needs to. It’s a rational economic decision.

The women not having kids at all today are probably personalities who should never have been mothers in the past and that’s a good thing, especially if they have the wisdom to know that. Women can commit a lot of emotional abuse toward unwanted children, which can be worse than physical abuse. Not everyone makes a good mother.

Interestingly in Scandinavia women feel safe enough to be stay at home mothers in decent numbers, knowing that there is a good social security system that had their back and a decent length of paid parental leave.

I'm not religious, and I didn't suggest that women must only be mothers - but most women are mothers and this is a central part of their life, naturally. You know, you can have a family and have individual interests, pursuits, and a job or occupation too.

I had a couple of terminations myself in my younger years; one when I was 15, and one when already a single parent in my early twenties. though i also have had three 'live births' resulting in now 3 adult children, and now also a granddaughter, with another grandchild on the way.

When you live life, over time you encounter many types of experience, and your experience teaches you things and inevitably changes your viewpoint. Just because I no longer buy into progressive identity politics doesn't mean I'm indifferent to women's rights and issues, but now i just have a different take on matters. I was always more of a 'Goddess' type feminsit anyway.......rooted more in the power and strength of being female; of the female body and sexuality etc - rather than in equality feminism which much of the time seems to be trying to escape being female at all...and seeing it just as an oppression. Attempting to merge into a 'masculine' model of being in the world.

For some of us, who have been involved in women's rights and issues since our teenage years, there has come a junction at which we've taken a rest and have looked anew at what passes for women's liberation. Women do now have equal civil rights in law and can be found in every walk of public life in a way that they were not when I was growing up in the 1970s, and yet in some/certain ways women's lives are more diffiucult and compromised than before - and in ways which are certainly not 'liberating'.

Being liberated is being free to make the choices that most suit you....and for many women what suits them is to stay home in the early years of their children's lives ( if they are fortunate to be in a position to be able to do this), for example. And how liberating is casual sex with strangers in which you may be at risk of strangulation or forced anal sex? Or when a rerlationship ends in an unwanted pregnancy, or maybe in an STD?

i'm not suggesting that women may not need access to abortion, but access to abortion is not something that impacts upon the average woman everyday of her life - other things become more pressing or important. And I'm not suggesting that women must stay home and make home and bake cakes if that is not what works for them. It's great that in the west we are fortunate now to have more degree of choice than ever before.

Your thoughts seem to be pretty similar to my religious family members, especially the idea that women are primarily mothers and not separate individuals from their families. They would totally agree with you on that front. Also, they would add in terms of abortion (you also may agree) that a woman is not free to make her own choice but should input her family and husband’s preferences. You must be quite a conservative feminist!

Also, I am not a trans ideology proponent by a long shot, but the same logic that not many women need abortions could also be applied to the number of people who transition? In fact, I’d say looking at the statistics, many more women require abortions. As I said previously, it’s concerning that maternal death rates are increasing in those areas. Does this not need attention?

The Trump presidency is worse for most people regardless of how they identify, with the exception of the wealthy and anyone who “holds the cards”. I see that his approval ratings have crashed in a time that’s usually the honeymoon period. I am also guessing the whole bizarre thing against Canada, the Trump Gaza plan and the way he treated Zelenskyy was too much for people? They already were prepared to set aside that he’s a convicted rapist and would not accept the 2020 election result, which was already setting the bar low.

Gosh, if Wikipedia says this, it MUST be true. 🙄

Hiya la!

Just some things Vance has come out with? That's probably a win by political standards lol

Anyway, trade wars are definitely a Trump thing but culture wars - that's Biden starting them not us. The accusation by transactivists and their associates of culture wars when they get pushback is pure DARVO intended to shame and control imo. But because Biden is on the right team he doesn't get held to account by people on the left, instead it's the likes of Trump or others holding the status quo on that particular issue who get it in the neck.

I can't say I'm sad the Democrats lost. Joe Biden was the worst president ever; an embarrassment long before it came to the election campaign. I could only assume that he was being maintained in office as a puppet of Barack Obama - who was really running the show and dictating the direction of travel.

DEI, Antifa, BLM, Defund the Police, uncontrolled migration, relaxed drug laws, had become monsters and created the bedrock that was ready for Trump.. Kamala was awful - and the idea that people should just vote for her because she was female and mixed race told you everythng you already knew about DEI.

A lot of people have had enough of the type of Feminism that arises out of intersectionalist models of thinking - in which women are always an oppressed group. Equality arguments can only go so far...before they start to seem like being female or a mother is something to be avoided. And that's before we even get on to trans ideology...which has just run amok in the U.S. America may call itself the Home of the Brave, but really it is the Home of the Crazy.

Most women end up being mothers, and we are all part of families - even if they are dysfunctional. Women's interests are not always separate from the interests of their family. Yes, access to abortion is important, but it is not everything ( many women will never seek an abortion), and the 'no limit' laws in some states is just provocative, and certainly in a country as religious as the U.S.A. The U.S is just so extreme - and its politics are shaped by that extremity.

I'm in Liverpool too......😎Some of the things Vance has come out with are plain ignorant and arrogant - especially as that relates to the culture and affairs of other countries. It seems he gets most of his information from social media/ Twitter - just like Musk - who has no natural political instinct, either.

What they are achieving is to unite everyone against them in such a way that the U.S is now perceived as being positively hostile to all previous allies/countries/relationships. That could end up being a necessary and good thing for those countries...as they have to be less subservient to the U.S and more involved with their own cultures and political processes.......but nonetheless Trump's way of going about matters does alienate people and creates new enemies. He may well want to bring peace to the world - and he may succeed in pausing wars in the short term......but he's creating other wars - such as trade wars, culture wars with his approach and style of "doing deals".

Hi Havoc's mother, do you have anything specific to add to the discussion or are you just here to troll?

He’s way worse for women than the previous administration.

The roll back of DEI policies specifically hurts all women. People think DEI is about discriminatory practices favouring black people but in practice, white women benefited the most. DEI included a whole suite of policies that are normal in other countries includes things like parental leave, carer’s leave, job share etc. This is stuff that supports our participation in the workforce.

Also his administration has taken down women specific health websites because it’s too woke. And let’s not get started with Trump’s support behind the erosion of access to abortion, which is leading to maternal death rates increasing in the affected states.

That some feminists were originally hopeful of Trump has me scratching my head. Trump only opposed trans ideology from the perspective of the religious right, not because he cared about women. As someone who is close family with religious right types, they are very very opposed to feminism and believe there is a divine natural order starting with God, then men and women at the bottom. I have been told that the reason DV exists is because of feminism and they bring up feminism as a threat almost as much as trans rights.

Keep trying to hide behind that. 🙄

Not Blanchett, it’s Naomi Watts. Not sure about Sandra Bullock either. That awful Cynthia Nixon (whom I like as an actor), definitely has a trans child.

Oh, Ovarit.... 🙄
Some backstory (fr Wikipedia)
"After r/GenderCritical was banned, several of its users migrated to Ovarit, a trans-exclusionary radical feminism-centered website similar to Reddit.[35]"

Yes JD Vance’s handling of Rory Stewart was satisfyingly deft.

However he has shown himself to inexplicably ignorant , or crashingly careless when he gets carried away with the sound of his own voice. He suggested recently that an American economic stake in Ukraine was a better security guarantee than "20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years", a comment aimed at France or the UK (or both). I am not too young to remember the British coffins that came back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Vance is a disgrace to have dismissed this.

I'm British, from Liverpool actually. I just don't think Trump is particularly worse than the equally awful Biden.

Funny you said about Vance being uncultured. I don't pretend to know anything about him but I do remember seeing him hand Rory Stewart his arse on a plate over some religious spat they were having which was hilarious.

It is highly relevant that a country's leader is all-in on this destructive mind virus. Like any religion, it will influence their decisions & has no place in politics!

Oh for goodness sake, we are talking about a grown woman here, not a child. A grown woman who has clearly spoken about her experience too.

You are right. Charlize Theron, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Megan Fox all have trans kids. So weird.

Oh dear, seems like Havoc's mother has gone shy.

And I was so looking forward to learning the specifics of what I'd said that inspired such outrage - alas!

Are you in the U.S.A? I'm speaking from a European/UK persepective.

If you are not In Europe you may be unaware of how Trump, and now JD Vance, are being perceived. Even those who were understanding of all you say above about the situation in the U.S see Trump as a total loose canon, a bully, and disrespectful of long standing relationships and allies. And what is happening is that all sorts of groupings are uniting in opposition to his presidency, and certainly his style.

We've seen the Liberals in Canada, for example, being given a boost and making up ground in the polls. Before Trump was elected, the Liberals were going to be completely annihilated at the upcoming Canadian election...now it doesn't seem so certain.

If his election represented a re-balancing of matters which had gone too much to the extreme, then the manner of his presidency is creating another re-balancing - because of his extreme nature.

JD Vance comes across as utterly culturally ignorant - which is disappointing. I thought he might be a moderating influence. And Elon Musk is even worse.

All combine to make us realise here in Europe just how foreign the U.S really is, and how we don't share its culture. We always knew that, and resented U.S cultural hegemony.....but now it is becoming impossible to ignore. 'America First' really doesn't give a damn for its allies or its long term relationships.

Yes, I agree about Trump. But so was Biden. He did so many things that were deliberately offensive and divisive and got away with stuff Trump is/was rightly castigated for like migrant kids in cages. Unfortunately, actual behaviour doesn't really matter, it's whether the politician is from their team or not. I don't think opposing for opposing's sake is a worthwhile use of energy and it can often be a nuisance.

My point is that Trump is intentionally provocative. It's his style. And that winds people up; even his own allies, and those who had supported some of the things he might do when in office.

Some of us had hoped his election might mean the roll back of trans ideology not just in the U.S ( where it was born), but elsewhere too; but now find that his election is actually uniting all sorts of people together to actively oppose everything he does. That's disappointing....but is a consequence of his aggressive and dismissive way of approaching things.

The best that can be said is that he's shaking everything up and disrupting old patterns..

Pah! Biden's weird behaviour with Mulvaney and all the rest was as provocative and controversial as anything Trump does. I'm not going to put women's interests at the back of the queue and pretend he wasn't.