The US ultra-right should leave the UK alone!!!

[StandFirm]

I was going to use a rude expletive in the thread title to truly reflect my thoughts on this. I've known about this insidious creeping influence for a little while but reading the article in the link below has made me livid. We are not going to be censored by foreign actors who understand nothing about our culture. I have often observed a false sense of familiarity among Brits regarding American culture but it goes both ways, and this attempt at dragging us along into the dark pit of ignorance should stay the fuck away from here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/librarians-in-uk-increasingly-asked-to-remove-books-as-influence-of-us-pressure-groups-spreads

Wait why did I get a post deleted for asking whether by "gender specific research" you mean "sex specific research"?

How on earth is that against the Talk Guidelines?

I have no idea who he is but he sounds like an obsessed possibly non billionaire.

JKR’s success really rankles for some men.

The problem is not the language itself but that yet again you are not engaging with the core point made in the article (that research is being cut down and women will end up in a medical and scientific limbo). You derail & shoehorn this thread into a gender critical debate which it was not meant to be. You should start your own thread instead of highjacking one which you blatantly don't care about.

That's a massive stretch. It was a relevant point. If you're carrying out medical research then in order for your findings to be of any use for women's healthcare you need to be clear about your inclusion criteria. If you're recording data about people based on their sex, then you may get some useful results. If it's based on "gender", your results are likely to be compromised by male subjects being recorded as female and vice versa.

Frankly I wouldn't trust anyone talking about "gender-specific" research not to fuck up their study by getting basic shit like this wrong.

Just like we can't trust crime statistics anymore because crimes committed by men are being recorded as having been committed by women.

And just like the census balls up.

Why is he an ingrate? Are we duty bound to agree with those who provided us with work?

He played Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor quiddich captain. Another child who got a big break from JK, and throws it in her face.

There's a difference between disagreeing with her and comparing her to Andrew Tate. He's a twat.

Besides the whole sorry bunfight, there is no loyalty or disloyalty here in play - the actors got their big break from Warner Bros who got the rights to JKR's intellectual property. They can say what they like - but more likely if there was any loyalty to anyone, it would be to the studio that cast them in the franchise. If anything, the studio execs are the ones you guys should berate for cancelling JKR when she created the golden goose they've been exploiting to death. But then again, without Warner Bros she wouldn't be a billionaire, would she?

It wasn't that big a break, the character of Oliver Wood gets about 30 seconds of screen time.

JKR gets huge amounts of abuse from anti women males and probably some women too.

Thankfully she’s strong enough to deal with it. But for some reason men think they can hurl online abuse to make themselves feel a bit better.

Ok I'll bite- but really, this is quite draining and the reason I reported the earlier post was because you are constantly dragging the points I am making- whichever they are- back to the one issue!
For me, poor ignorant faux-minist that I am (and suspected Dem-voting US mom aka the worst human beings on the entire planet), woman refers to gender and female refers to sex. Now, it's all a bit circular because we have the definition of a woman being an adult female. My actual point was: if you delete the word WOMAN from research funding applications, you will end up in a complete scientific limbo with WOMEN-specific research being put on the back-burner or cancelled entirely (but it's ok because at least Fuckers Inc also banned the word trans and woman finally means woman)
That also comes off the back of Fuckers Inc declaring that 'religion is back' and that there will be Gilead-style incentives for women to pop out babies (of course: they're throwing all the immigrants out!); considering that everything this regime does is to return to the male-led traditional family unit, this does not bode well.
And why should we care? Because Rachel Reeves is in the US as we speak angling for a trade deal. We know that the US want their big pharma to have access to the UK market, that was one thing they were hoping to achieve through Brexit (I know Americans who work in that industry and that's been said for the last 10 years in those circles), ergo, if US medical research is forced to throw women under the bus, we're fucked here too unless we can send them packing but it doesn't look like that's the direction Labour is taking.

Basically all I want to say with this thread is: I personally love the US, have had ties with the place my entire life, but this administration is the worst kind of imperialist (other Rep/Dem administrations were no angels but anything they did pales in comparison) and their implementation of a deeply toxic, truly backwards patriarchal agenda will be a disaster for us over here unless we push back against it now. And if you don't believe how intertwined we are with the US, I suggest you start researching just how much that's the case and how hard it will be to chart the course in a post-Brexit world. Despite the challenges, I personally would throw our lot in with the European bloc before it's too late (proximity in geography and values) but I fear that's not what's going to happen...

My actual point was: if you delete the word WOMAN from research funding applications, you will end up in a complete scientific limbo with WOMEN-specific research being put on the back-burner or cancelled entirely

I can't believe you've just said this without the slightest trace of irony.

It doesn't matter whether you use the word "woman" or not if you have redefined the word "woman" to mean a mixed sex group based on identity. You can have your "gender specific" research, but the results won't be meaningful.

I agree that this is what should happen. No idea why Labour want to do any kind of deal with the US.

Again not the point!
The word woman was used in scores upon scores of research applications which are now being put aside purely because they refer to 'woman'. It's interesting to note that 'man' remains allowed - that's also a gendered term, is it not? Point is: we know what woman refers to in those funding applications, of course we do! And to say the research is useless because they use the word 'woman' is just bizarre.

The core question: do you not think it's terrible that 'woman' is being purged out of funding applications in US scientific research? Simple yes or no.

There is also a simple fix to the question you raise: SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the US) could easily issue a similar ruling to what we've just had here, right? By all means clarify the definition. But no need to purge the very notion of 'woman' out of science and medicine- unless actual harm is meant to half the population.
Trump's not your friend.

Woman / man & female / male all refer to sex; see the SC ruling on the EA. Gender can be owt you like.

So we all know that woman actually means female people then?

Good, why can't Democrats accept that? They'll be much more competent at defending women's rights as soon as they acknowledge what one actually is.

Literally nobody has said Trump is our friend.

You're making a straw man argument here.

What we're saying is that the Democrats are no friend to women either.

We really just need to build a wall round the US and ignore them completely.

Oh I don’t disagree he’s a twat. He’s not an ingrate though.

You are again completely avoiding the question.

What was the question again?

I see what you mean and think the others miss the point.

It’s the Trump regime’s obsession with being “anti-woke” / “DEI” that is leading to this purge and the refusal of funding anything with (among other things) the word “women” in the title.

People are bringing their gender debate nonsense in miss the point.

I saw the list and the long long list of exceptions and found it not at all surprising that anything focusing on “men / male” were not excluded….

Thanks @JHound
The threat is huge and very real to us here too.
Lol to building a wall of containment when we all know our own government is begging for a deal...

THIS.

Leaving aside that the bulk of my extended family are American / in the USA so I have concerns this way.

This current US administration is showing strongly that they want their world view to be THE world view and so many developed countries are USA reliant I see them folding in part.