Michael Biggs (Sociology Dept. Oxford) "Free speech at Oxford: Do women have the right to meet to discuss legislation?"

[R0wantrees]

Michael Biggs
Associate Professor in Sociology and Fellow of St Cross College writes:

users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/FreeSpeechOxford.pdf

"A meeting was held on 25 April 2018 to discuss proposed changes to the law on gender recognition. The proposed legislation will eliminate sex-segregated spaces and activities, from women’s refuges to competitive sports. In a democracy, people have the right to meet to discuss—and indeed oppose—legislative changes. This should be incontrovertible. I am appalled that a small number of students at Oxford used extreme measures to stop this meeting from being held....
(concludes)
I have entered this debate not because I am a feminist but because freedom of speech is one of the highest values of a democratic society, and the basic foundation of university life.
Transgender activism poses a grave threat to freedom of speech. I think of the young MPhil student who had to disguise herself to attend this meeting because she feared the reaction of fellow students. This is the generation that we have educated."

Michael Biggs' article:
'The Open Society Foundations & the transgender movement'
(extract)
"The transgender movement has transformed cultural norms and social institutions at breathtaking speed. Most of us, becoming acquainted with the trans issue for the first time, are astonished to discover the extent of the gender revolution. The movement has accomplished in a few years what the movements for women’s and for gay and lesbian rights took many decades to achieve.

Part of the explanation is the amount of money behind transgenderism. The Gender Industrial Complex, as we may call it, has many components. Lucrative sponsorship comes from pharmaceutical companies and medical providers. Charities originally established to fight for homosexual rights (like Human Rights Campaign in the United States and Stonewall in Britain) wield large budgets. Last but not least, three American billionaires have bankrolled the transgender movement on a global scale: Jennifer Pritzker, whose activities were detailed in another blogpost, Jon Stryker, and George Soros.

This blogpost focuses on the Open Society Foundations (OSF), funded by Soros. This is not easy to discuss because he is vilified by right-wingers, whose criticism sometimes degenerates into anti-semitism (Williamson 2018). Therefore those of us who are liberal or progressive tend to react instinctively by dismissing any scrutiny of Soros out of hand. This is unjustified, as I will show by providing some facts about how OSF has funded the transgender movement..."(continues)

4thwavenow.com/2018/05/25/the-open-society-foundations-the-transgender-movement/

I really like the term Gender Industrial Complex. It's very apt. People's jobs rely on maintaining an illusion of 'transphobia'.

Always follow the money - it's behind what's happening - I agree with Prof Biggs and he's repeating what many of us have been saying - there's a covert agenda using transgender as a cover for their vested interests. They're using SM as a means to create a cult and when cult members are challenged they become violent an aggressive. The mind control of SM, using money as a weapon to fund research and organisations that promote the agenda of the vested interests as well as creating income for them, need to be exposed.
It's all rigged with some genuine gender dysphoric people being duped

Who is organizing all these protests, I wonder!

For an Associated Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs talks a huge load of bollocks.

The proposed legislation will eliminate sex-segregated spaces and activities, from women’s refuges to competitive sports.

The GRA does not grant anyone the right to enter sex-segregated spaces. So it is impossible that the government's reforms will eliminate sex-segregated spaces. Further, the GRA specifically excludes sports so sex-segregated sports will not be eliminated by the GRA reforms.

Feminists have never attempted to harass or intimidate transgender activists who wish to change the law.

Transwomen and former Liberal Democrat councillor Sarah Brown was subject to so much harassment on Twitter by people claiming to be gender critical feminists that it damaged her mental health.

I have entered this debate not because I am a feminist but because freedom of speech is one of the highest values of a democratic society, and the basic foundation of university life.

Associated Professor Biggs claims not to be a feminist, but his "The Open Society Foundations & the transgender movement" is full of gender critical links. His interest in the trans debate is more than just free speech issues.

The movement has accomplished in a few years what the movements for women’s and for gay and lesbian rights took many decades to achieve.

Transsexual people lost the right to marry in 1971 in Corbett v Corbett and had to wait to the GRA in 2004 before this was restored. Given this took over 30 years, Associated Professor Biggs view is clearly not true. In fact there has not been any progress on the legal rights of trans people since the Equality Act in 2010.

The Gender Industrial Complex, as we may call it, has many components. Lucrative sponsorship comes from pharmaceutical companies and medical providers.

The pharmaceutical industry makes so little money selling HRT to trans people that it does not bother to licence the medications for this purpose; therefore, trans people have to use the medication off licence. Further, Ferring has just withdrawn Testim - a testosterone replacement - from the market for commercial reasons. Testim was particularly useful for trans people, but obviously the trans market was not enough to make Testim viable.

To sum up, more than a hundred women are murdered each year in the United Kingdom at the hands of males, but no day has been set aside to commemorate their deaths. Transgender murders are exceedingly rare—eight in the past decade (Trans Crime UK 2017; Evening Standard 2018)—and yet they have an institutionalized day of remembrance.

Now this part of his article makes me sick. Transgender people are lost not just through murder but through suicide. If the trans community has set aside a day to remember the people who have been lost then this should be treated with respect. If the feminist community wishes to set aside a day for the victims of male violence then it should (in fact I think this would be an excellent thing to do) The fact that trans people have TDOR should not be used to attack the trans community.

Transwomen and former Liberal Democrat councillor Sarah Brown was subject to so much harassment on Twitter

Interesting. An acquaintance of yours?

If the feminist community wishes to set aside a day for the victims of male violence then it should (in fact I think this would be an excellent thing to do)

Transactivists coopt every day/commemoration/event women have. That is disrespectful.

Transwomen and former Liberal Democrat councillor Sarah Brown was subject to so much harassment on Twitter by people claiming to be gender critical feminists that it damaged her mental health.

No, Brown claimed to have suffered harassment and claimed to have suffered from damage to their mental health after Brown became infamous for factually harassing feminist lesbians by telling them to suck Brown's balls, making numerous other lesbophobic comments on twitter, and trying to coin the term 'Bindel' (named after a lesbian feminist) to describe the smegma collected in the male "neovagina".

Sarah Brown is a rich white male who is a raging misogynist and a disturbing and disgusting lesbophobe.

That's a very good point Materialist. And apparently they are also playing the long game by investing in 3D organ printing and so on which would be super lucrative if there was a large market. Such as when GRS becomes as common as having a facelift.

Sarah I have often seen reference to suicide in the trans debate but no statistics - I only see self-reported attempted suicide. Please could you provide reference to a study with robust analysis of suicide rates to rule out confounding variables. If not then at least one broken down by comorbidities? Also as this is such an important (and tragic) outcome any studies showing change rates following transition? Peer reviewed articles preferably.

There is another aspect to licensing a medication (apart from the huge multimillion cost of obtaining the licence for a non-patentable product). That is by proscribing it off-licence absolves the pharmaceutical industry of much of the risk should something go wrong.a

*prescribing

If the feminist community wishes to set aside a day for the victims of male violence then it should (in fact I think this would be an excellent thing to do)

Doesn’t Jean Hatchet cycle hundreds of miles raising funds for women killed by men?

And wasn’t she harassed by a certain women’s officer for centring women in her campaign?

That women's officer announced their attention to do exactly the same.

As well as their intention to work as a volunteer in a woman's refuge.

There is international day for the elimination of violence against women. But every conversation about violence against women is eventually hijacked by trans activists pretending that men who identify as women suffer greater violence than bog standard 'cis' women, and claims that even the phrase 'male violence' is a 'terf dog whistle' and therefore using the phrase is itself a form of violence against trans identifying males. The people most targetted for abuse by trans activists are feminists - women who speak and fight against male violence.

Women aren't allowed to have anything for ourselves - not our conversations or our spaces or our time or our bodies. Trans activism is an attempt at colonisation of women.

Just try to start a conversation about male violence in any lefty space and see how long it takes before the calls of 'man-hating' and 'terfs' come out.

Mossandclover: "Please could you provide reference to a study with robust analysis of suicide rates to rule out confounding variables."

I would really like to see this too. We know that men are much more likely to kill themselves than women, so it would be interesting to see if the rates of suicide by trans people are higher or lower than the average for either group, and also whether certain age groups are more affected than others.

would really like to see this too. We know that men are much more likely to kill themselves than women, so it would be interesting to see if the rates of suicide by trans people are higher or lower than the average for either group, and also whether certain age groups are more affected than others.

YY I would be very interested in this. I'd want it to be able to be looked at in terms of birth sex and also acquired gender, with same sex and opposite sex controls.

Age/sex should definitely be broken down but I was thinking also about separating out autism, depression, and other mental health conditions which come with a higher risk of suicide.

Yes that would be an important study I think.