Peak Trans in the Sunday Mail: Liz Truss and detransitioner Charlie Evans

[Lamahaha]

Two great articles today in the Sunday Mail:

'Pick your own sex' plans are shelved: Equalities minister Liz Truss abandons drive to relax laws around changing gender

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7542003/Equalities-minister-Liz-Truss-abandons-drive-relax-laws-changing-gender.html?fbclid=IwAR3ZOW9Y0raeCTvscZzUkVXmEyDx2t_GkKbDDzsgfzLQFcNWR1PhmnrZmWk

and:
Hundreds of transgender youths who had gender reassignment surgery wish they hadn't and want to transition back, says trans rights champion

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7541679/Hundreds-youths-gender-surgery-wish-hadnt-says-head-advocacy-network.html

In older news, the Times, has an article on the Old Vic loos (possibly already posted!), with a fantastic comments thread, (actually 3 days old, but going viral now on Facebook; I've seen it three times on my feed by various people:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dispute-grows-over-old-vics-gender-neutral-toilets-hm0hznkrp

"And today in statistics that I'm making up as I go..."

There will be too many questions from the public now, too much scrutiny from the press and no doubt the beginnings for requests of proper research and evidence into ROGD and detransing etc. There’s no way Self ID can be passed in law in secret as they wanted.

Mermaids might be talking their usual flannel but asking to see evidence is a dangerous game if you’re relying on the fact that nobody has been allowed to do any yet.

Oh Pascoe, prayer won't distract from the experimentation on children, any more than gendered souls or affirmations.

We argue with facts, evidence. The public won't get on board with child abuse, no matter which altar you kneel at.

It looks like Liz Truss has confirmed that the GRA reforms are still going ahead? inews.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-denies-abandoning-transgender-reforms-644734

inews needs to do some better fact checking by the looks of it, there are some big and obvious clangers in that.

It looks like Liz Truss has confirmed that the GRA reforms are still going ahead?

That's a bit of a stretch, given what she's quoted as saying in that article. She's committed to publishing the results of the GRA consultation. At some point.

Owen Jones:

Hi anti-trans brigade, congratulations! Your political allies - which is who they are - Dominic Cummings, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson have scrapped moves to reform the bureaucratic, medicalised, demeaning Gender Recognition Act.

You must be so proud!

twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1180855435076755457?s=19

Yes we are Owen, but not for the reasons you think. Tosser.

Owen Jones is a bit silly isn’t he.

Firstly these aren’t allies- they haven’t done anything for women, or children by saying any of this- they are making common sense noises because were getting close to an election and the Tories are worried about all the women who are telling others that they are politically homeless as all the main parties have abandoned women on this issue and have been ignoring women’s concerns for years. Everyone else with a vote, the Tories already know, will reject experiments on kids outright as soon as they understand what it happening.

But even if Owen Jones was right and this was active support for the government then does he not understand what being political allies is- you agree on one thing for one purpose and work on that temporarily to resolve something, the rest of your politics is separate and left aside because you only agree on the current purpose and want to achieve that one goal.

Otherwise if you agree on everything, you wouldn’t be allies, you’d be people in the same party?

Like many of his ilk Owen thinks that "ally" means "servant", I think.

Hi Owen!

"I’ve learned the hard way - but don’t engage with anti-trans activists.

If you do, your timeline is likely to be flooded with other anti-trans activists who don’t follow you, coordinated via huge Twitter DM groups (a lurking member of one has just alerted me) and Mumsnet (!)"

twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1181136229477289984?s=19

Ooh when did he engage? Must have missed it.

I do love (not) that people are still saying 'Mumsnet (!)' as if it's cute and ditzy that parents have political views.

Loving the sexist memes on that thread too.

He denies he is addressing left-wing lesbians, or indeed women at all, and says most of the transphobia is coming from middle-aged men. And then bangs on about mumsnet - you know, that well-known bastion of middle-aged men?

He's not making any sense.

Hi Helen! We loves you!

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1181173619323482114?s=19

"Every time I hear someone express surprise that women are organising politically on Mumsnet, all I hear is them saying: “why aren’t the support-humans sticking to discussing lunchables and Peppa Pig, as nature ordained?” "

"Having a baby can be a really radicalising experience. It’s when some women realise - with a gut-punch of unfairness - that the world has been built to suit men’s lives and male bodies."

"Of course some of the opinions there will be ones you disagree with … just like Twitter and every other open forum, ever. Why on earth would you expect a female-dominated space to be pedestrian, bland, and full of soggy consensus?"

What a brilliant comment - "support humans"

It's true there is something powerfully radicalising about being pregnant and giving birth. Trigger warning - I'm going to talk about childbirth problems

For me it's starts with the realisation that you are not in control of your own body, despite how much autonomy you've enjoyed as a western liberated independent woman.

Not just the "control" that means you can decide whether to have sex, or not, or whether to have an abortion etc but that presuming you do plan on a baby it's going to come out at some point, it's going to hurt, nope you don;t know how or when and you might die or end up with damage to your genitals and EVERYONE IS ABSOLUTELY FINE ABOUT THAT. Oh and you have to start mothering instantly. Wounded or not. And you probably can't have the strong painkillers because your breastfeeding so nope still no control.

And once the baby is there you cannot control its how or when or how much it feeds, or sleeps, or cries, and as it grows you cannot control its pops and pees, its tantrums, its allergies etc. You can only do your best.
And somehow, throughout all this, you end up stronger and more determined and more passionate about its wellbeing (and that of all other kids) than ever before.) And less able to tolerate male-ordained bullshit.

It was the aunties who radicalized me as a child, the women who my mum was friends with and who would visit each other's homes and sit around talking about their lives and their frustrations. Tiny me sat there like a sponge taking it all in.

totally agree about childbirth and child rearing changing my views, I am nodding along to all these posts

Your political allies

Sick of hearing the word 'allies'. I don't have 'allies' political or otherwise. There are people who agree with me on a particular issue and we may make common cause on that issue. That is all. To my knowledge neither Johnson nor Cummings have indicated an opinion on the issue of trans privileges, and Truss has flip flopped so I'm not convinced she really understands the depths of danger trans privileges represent to vulnerable people either.

As for Mumsnet, it is full of women who have actually squeezed honest to goodness human beings out of our fannies. Of course we've noticed biology is real. I mean, most people know that anyway, it is only a tiny, cult-like minority that are confused on the matter, but the whole growing an entire human being thing does bring the wonder of it all to the front of ones mind.

Owen Jones really needs to grow up. You're a man in your 30s, Owen, time to start reconciling what is with what you fantasise should be.

Remember when Owen got Owen's mum to intervene in a Twitter argument with Julie Bindel? Good times.

I missed that one Kittens! Sounds on a level with stroppy Harrop being put in his place by Posie.

It does make me feel again that all feminists and all trans people should be in sympathy. The experience of pregnancy and birth was of my body not being under my control, that forces that didn't give a shit about me as an individual were in charge of my body and my mind, and that the two weren't separate. That might be the nearest I have got to sex dysphoria (oh that and my utter loathing of menstruation and everything connected with it, all my adult life). So I can at least find something in my own experience that sheds a bit of light on what being trans might be like. But it also causes me to reject utterly the narrative that 'transwomen are women'. No, you really really aren't. Fuck off with that. No. And from that refusal, I am put in the t**f camp and told I'm a bigot. Even though even Dr Harrop cant actually make that sentence work, he doesn't really think transmen are men, even so, it is me who's the bigot.

I think it was at the pushing stage I realised my body was absolutely designed to do this thing, a thing unique to women's bodies. Not all women will give birth of course, or get those contractions but everyone who has, is a woman. Those powerful visceral surges to get the baby out are like nothing else. It's like your body becomes even more alive, as your uterus flexes and contracts. It's such an insult to regard women's absolutely awesome biology as irrelevant to their "sex", or to think neo vaginas are in any way comparable. You don't get to opt in to womanhood. You just don't. It's not possible.

TemporaryPermanent I think our experiences of birth might have been different but also similar in terms of the shock of biology taking over.

It was the aunties who radicalized me as a child, the women who my mum was friends with and who would visit each other's homes and sit around talking about their lives and their frustrations. Tiny me sat there like a sponge taking it all in.

We really are (evil) twins, you know.

when Owen got Owen's mum to intervene in a Twitter argument with Julie Bindel? Good times.

Seriously? Is there a link?