Cambridge Union debate - This House Believes modern LGBTQ+ activism fails its community

• I also notice that Sammy quotes Census data for the trans population, but not crime or sexual violence statistics. We already know that "trans women" offend at a rate equal to or above their "cis male" counterparts. Women have reasons to be concerned about being forced to share space with these men. It is disingenuous in the extreme to frame that pushback as bigotry.

• Sammy has no problem doing that, of course. He actually draws a direct comparison between today's tabloid headlines, and the blatantly homophobic ones of the 1980s. In his mind, it's the same thing. There is no difference between an article which mocked gay men dying of AIDS, and one in which a woman says "I didn't want to deal with my menstrual flooding in front of my male colleague, actually".

• Remember how Sammy was supposed to be so calm and rational and respectful of true experiences? So far we've seen no hint he even understands what the issues are. Has he ever actually read any of those terrible transphobic articles? Or is he quoting headlines because that's as far as he would allow himself to read?

• Having exhausted the subject of the Daily Mail, Sammy then switches to Graham Linehan. Graham gets the same treatment. His words are presented deprived of all context, and you're just supposed to agree they're terrible. Kemi Badenoch was once in a picture with him, and that is also terrible. Ooh, er.

• Here Sammy makes a vague allusion to "the overreach of trans activists". The fact that they've overreached all the way into women's sports and changing rooms, and overreached into schools, and overreached into women's inboxes with rape and death threats, isn't mentioned, however. Nor is their attempt to overreach through the cotton ceiling of lesbians' knickers. Sammy is more hung up on Graham's impatient response to those men, than on what they might actually have been doing to piss him off so much.

• If you thought this so-called debate was getting a bit Twitter feed, it only gets worse. Having got his tuppence worth in about Graham and Kemi, Sammy then decides the world must know how much he hates Libs of Tik Tok. It's a social media account that mocks woke stuff. Sammy isn't happy because the account calls out grooming behaviour, which is the same as calling all gay people paedophiles, in his mind. I've never watched this account and couldn't tell you if this is true. But I can already guess their content must pull heavily from the likes of Jeffrey Marsh and Lily Tino. If you bring people like that under the umbrella of "the community" and refuse to hold them to account, then it's hardly surprising outsiders think they're representative of the group. This shit is exactly why the LGB want out, Sammy.

• "They called LGBT people a cult." The people individually aren't a cult, but the TQ+++ ideologues act like one. You cannot be surprised outsiders notice this, and if you refuse to distance yourself from the nutters, you cannot be surprised when outsiders lump you in with them. If it pisses you off, it should, Sammy. Wake up.

• Sammy begins by asking the question of what modern LGBT activism actually is. But this is rather boring and his lot aren't great at defining things, so Sammy never actually does. Instead he hops sideways into a bit of rage bait. He's cherry-picked some newspaper headlines he's sure will rile up the audience, and distract them from noticing when he doesn't answer his own question.

• "The trans threat to freedom" is one headline that gave him the scaries, for reasons he doesn't bother to elucidate. "Gender ideology relies on censorship to survive" is another one. If you're expecting Sammy to provide the context behind any of these headlines, by the way, don't. You'd think that would be the perfect way to show how ridiculous they are, no? The reality of the story, versus the supposedly hysterical headline? And yet, he never does.

• It's not hard to see why. That second one especially would be hard to disprove.

• "We're even talking about someone being turfed out by the trans Taliban!" Notice the device Sammy is employing here. He's pretending he doesn't understand that British tabloids exaggerate in their headlines for comic effect. But he barely gives himself time to draw breath before he does the same thing.

• "Now as far as I'm aware, Joe Biden did not leave behind a bunch of military equipment for the trans people to pick up." Unfortunately for Sammy, this didn't get the laughs he was hoping for. Something about it seems to have annoyed people. Perhaps it's the multiple points of information he's ignoring, while still taking the time to pause for laughter. Perhaps the audience are noticing the glaring lack of context provided, and they don't much like it. Okay, so the headline was hyperbolic. But what was the actual story, Sammy? Was it one of those nasty ones where TRAs bully a woman out of her workplace for knowing what a woman is? I think we can all guess that it was.

• "We're even told that trans activists are little Hitlers." Once again, no context is given and there is no citation of the source. The problem is, those of us listening to him aren't wedged into the same echo chamber as Sammy. We are capable of understanding that sometimes tone is secondary to content. You may not like the Daily Mail, you may not like their choice of words, but if you've got half a brain, you can see what they're trying to say. When they call TRAs "little Hitlers", you know the accompanying article is going to be about the authoritarian, bullying behaviour of trans activists. Sammy is being disingenuous in pretending there's nothing to see here. Every time he quotes one of these headlines, he brings a pink elephant into the room and asks us not to notice it.

• "In fact, in one year alone there were 115 negative articles in the Daily Mail." Okay. How many of them were reporting on actual crimes, Sammy? How many of them were telling the stories of women who'd been bullied by trans activists? How many were drawing attention to harms caused by trans ideology? An article can be "negative" and still true. The Mail are no stranger to rage bait, but I doubt they pulled all 115 articles out of their arse. Frankly, they don't need to. TRAs generate their own steady supply of jaw-dropping headlines, without the Mail needing to invent a thing.

• But Sammy thinks these headlines are very hard to explain, because trans people are such a statistically small segment of the population! I'm not sure he understands how that works. Taylor Swift is one woman, and I'm sure she's chalked up a lot more Daily Mail headlines. The reason is: she does a lot of things. Mind-boggling, I know. A small group can have an outsized impact.

Enter the twerp:

• Our next speaker is ushered in. Sammy McDonald! A ginger student of modern European history, who looks like he's wearing his dad's suit and could have taken an extra five minutes to brush his hair.

• Sammy's claim to fame is that Graham Linehan once called him a twerp on Twitter. I had never heard of Sammy, or the Twitter bunfight in question, but his decision to share this information was probably a mistake. It ended up being like when you say the words "pink elephant" and then tell someone not to think of pink elephants. Once he'd said it, the word "twerp" bobbed along merrily in the background of my mind, the whole time he was talking. Twerp, twerp, twerp, twerp! Unfortunately for me, Sammy's twerpitude would increase at a steady rate as the speech went on, until I ended up pretty much deafened by my own internal voice screaming "Twerp!"

• Sammy opens his speech trading zingers with the debate organisers, then takes a moment to show everyone what great pals he is with all of them. He could have done this during the free chips afterwards, but he chose to do it here, which is how you know a sub-standard speech is coming. Kissing arse is his way of asking the House to go easy on him.

• Sammy is a truly woeful orator, who talks like a human Twitter feed and has a tendency to fall into ranty sidebars about The Daily Mail and lose track of time. He then has to prompt himself to get the fuck on with it and finally make some "progress".

• Conveniently, this means he just doesn't have the time to engage with all the points of information the audience keep attempting to raise with him. Hands go up every ten seconds and Sammy squirrels away from them, muttering about his need to progress. It's truly comical.

• Sammy would first like everyone to know that he knows this is a painful topic, and he doesn't want to speak over anyone or speak for anyone. And he is appalled by gaslighting. Oh, and he believes "the best way to proceed is through respect, civility, and open conversation". Don't worry, none of that will be in evidence when he talks about his opponents. I think it's just his fake, both-sidesy way of wondering why women can't just shut up and play along.

• Having established what a kind and lovely man he is, who just wants open conversations and honest debate, he then tells us how important it is to "proceed in a calm, rational, but also truthful way to describe our experiences".

• I know what you're thinking, and yes. He himself will be 0/3 on those in his upcoming speech! Temper your expectations now. He will in fact be coming across as a blinkered tit in dire need of a digital detox.

Which organisations specifically? Stonewall obviously, but who else? Many T organisations came straight out of transactivism as far as I can see.

You are confusing LGB people with groups/orgs that are built on a history of supporting LGB people. There is a difference.

And could you rewrite your first line in to English as it makes no sense.

The inconvenoent truth is that people (even LGB) will sell out for money. And the keyword there is history.

Any org that doesn't believe in sex as being binary is homophbic. remember that according to Stonewall those lesbians that won't sleep with trans women and their female penis are gender nazi's.

Does that even remotely sound like a LGB supportive group?

No, unlike gays, there are anti transgenderism and Tra genderwoo, which would never have gotten as far as it did without constant lgb lobbying

But these orgs are run by lgb people and had a history of advancing lgb causes. It's the inconvenient truth!

Are you seriously making a statement that most straight men are against the LGB divorcing from the TQ+ ?

So you don't have evidence?
All you have to do is say so.
As for mine read up on the court case and the way that the question was framed and how a second survey was taken.

As for the celebs that you mention, yes they do support the trans lobby but then they would all be cancelled if they didn't as they have with many others.

As for why TRA orgs are just repackaged LGB orgs, IMO its because it was an easy re[ackage and they gave them easy access to schools, goverment and other areas were they could implement there agenda whilst using LGB people as a cover.

For the record I am not a tra

See, anytime someone needs to say this upfront, they just set themselves up for failure. Must try harder.

But most straight men are against this.

...that they're all men?

Do u have evidence that LGB alliance is supported by any significant faction of lgb people rather than just being a loud minority? Why is it that all the TRA orgs are just repackaged LGB orgs?

For the record I am not a tra but I think lgb get off too easily for their role in this!!! Russel T Davies, Graham Norton, Stephen Fry, Ben Bradshaw, all have one thing in common!!

That most LGB alliance members were hetrosexual was debunked in the court case. Next.

As for the rest evidence please.

Most lgb alliance members are heterosexuals. The organisations that promote trans ideology like stonewall etc began as lgb organisations and lgb people are the ones who bankroll the trans agenda. Next!

There are quite a few LGB groups that would like to devorce from the TQ+
The LGB Alliance being the most vocal.

It would be interesting to see how many times we see posters and media saying that support for the LGBTQ+ community has gone down when they actually mean that support for the TQ+ is reducing and the LGB is being dragged down with it.

Do lgb actually want to divorce from the t, or is this just your imagination like usual?

@SnoopyPajamas I stand in awe of your surgical dissection of the less well thought through arguments. Chapeau.

Lgbt has been like this since the very start...

Kink-shaming is so twentieth century. Genital Fetishists should be heading every Pride parade, out, loud and proud!

Grifter of the house, doling out the charm
Ready with some hormones and an open palm
Tells a two-faced tale, makes a little stir
Customers get their bodies damaged by her

🎶

Oh yeah, 100%. Two of the (many many) ironies/inconsistencies of Genderist activism:

Intersectionality matters but no one can talk about being marginalised, disempowered or abused based on their sex, which is probably the oldest and most consistent source of injustice through time and culture.

Everyone should be openminded about the huge human variety in sexuality and never kink-shame until it comes to anyone whose sexuality is sex-based, in which case it's a terrible failing they must never mention and try to get past.

There is a castle on a cloud
Supreme Court says no men allowed
There in my castle on a cloud . . . 🎶

I don't know why he came over all Andrew Lloyd Webber then, but it did give me a chuckle