Dawn Butler and biology

[HDDD]

Clip from GBM interview this morning.
twitter.com/JammersMinde/status/1229439480064610308
She said "Babies are born without sex"
Unless she said something after to clarify what she meant by this or backtracked then I guess this is her starting point....
Astounding. Labour have lost the plot, and me.

Butler's use of impenetrable, arcane language is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the incoherence of her ideas.

YY to this - and to the rest of your excellent post about conformity. One of the things you keep seeing TRAs and their handmaidens repeating is the idea that biology is complicated. That those of us who think that there are just two sexes are foolish and ignorant and out of date. Anyone who really understands this stuff knows that biology is tremendously complex and there are lots of sexes! Or lots of genders! Or no sexes because sex is a spectrum! You even see scientists occasionally parrot this stuff (e.g. Alice Roberts) even though they must know it's nonsense.

This use of the "science is complex" mantra to justify trans ideology runs completely counter to the ideology's other main influence, postmodernism, because postmodernism (as spouted by Butler and her acolytes) rejects the idea of objective scientific truth.

It literally makes no sense at all.

It's almost as if the entire ideology is a hodge-podge of ill-thought-out quackery.

Is it just me - or are female MPs way more likely to be waving the flag here? Am I imagining it?

This use of the "science is complex" mantra to justify trans ideology runs completely counter to the ideology's other main influence, postmodernism, because postmodernism (as spouted by Butler and her acolytes) rejects the idea of objective scientific truth.

Absolutely agree. I have been baffled by how this lunacy has advanced so far, so quickly, but I know one of the things that has enabled its advance is fear. This entire paradigm of # no debate needs to be challenged. This is a battle about freedom of speech and rational debate and those who want to cancel the former and are incapable of the latter.

Al Keir Starmer needs to do is keep his head down, resist the pressure to sign the pledge and the job is his: both women candidates have obligingly shot themselves in the foot.

To complete the circle he can then arrive at Westminster in drag, announce he's been a woman inside all his life and we've to call her Keira.

To complete the circle he can then arrive at Westminster in drag, announce he's been a woman inside all his life and we've to call her Keira

I think Mockers already did that with a memorable name blend...

Men seem to generally know what women are (no ones for guessing why).

Is it just me - or are female MPs way more likely to be waving the flag here?

No, you're right. It seems that women generally are more likely to be sympathetic to trans ideology than men - even though they have far more to lose from it. Who knows why that is - though my guess is that women have internalised the social pressure to be "kind". MPs aren't exempt from that.

They're far more likely to be making arses of themselves waving their silly little flags in "solidarity". Men who support this agenda are more likely to be verbally abusing women on Twitter.

Thanks Sonia for capturing our concerns.

Interesting that the drag queen who was performing in Rochdale (the one the father was concerned about because the drag queen was pictured naked several times and in BDSM gear etc) has been promoted by the BBC, which conveniently ommitted those bits. Once again, parents aren't being given the full facts. Once again, the BBC is complicit in this deception and the broadcaster is complicit in grooming parents and children. It's putting wokeness ahead of safeguarding.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-47720808/drag-queen-story-time-connecting-kids-with-lgbtq-role-models-of-colour

One term I have learned from all these twitter discussions is the term dog whistle. It seems like just another negative phrase to stop debate. Not that I have seen much reasoned debate. Or even sense from those with alternative viewpoints. I saw quite a few violent memes come out with Dawn’s rebuttal ...

Sorry, wrong thread!

It’s only a matter of time before they start wailing ‘stop picking on meeeeee’ it’s only because I’m a woman/ethnic minority/have flat feet/am an Aquarius/I’m so beautiful/ have a wart/it’s part of a global conspiracy to get me etc.

There will never be ‘hands up - I was advised to say this against my better judgement/I was fooled/they bullied me/they kidnapped my tortoise...’

Butler's use of impenetrable, arcane language...

She's a bluffer. A low-energy bulb with limited education who bigs herself up by imitating the sound of educated people around her like a parrot. Livingstone and Corbyn do much the same.

it's actually full of libertarians.

Respectfully cat I don't think that is true at all. Libertarians believe in freedom of speech. Libertarians believe in a small state, low taxes.

Bovary But the idea of self ID is most definitely libertarian and popular among what I would call Silicon Valley libertarian types and transhumanists.

On the other hand, if you look at the root causes of gender dysphoria, they include homophobia and rigid gender norms - these are conservative 'values', if you like.

If you only focus on the attack on free speech in the UK then sure, that side is nothing but authoritarian. I think that has been a perfect storm of wokeism, millennial rage and angry porn-addled men dominating social media combined with the capture of various institutions with the help of Stonewall 2.0.
God only knows why Labour has decided that any of this aligns with its values.

Interesting piece on Unherd regarding the Labour party lunacy on trans issues:

unherd.com/2020/02/the-labour-party-has-chosen-to-identify-as-unelectable/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3

But the idea of self ID is most definitely libertarian and popular among what I would call Silicon Valley libertarian types and transhumanists

ThePurported
I don't know about Silicon valley libertarians. Because most of the dudes dominating Silicon Valley seem to be fully signed up to politically motivated manipulation of social media platforms. Twitter being a case in point. There is nothing remotely libertarian about no platforming people and banning GC feminists from Twitter. The reason the Labour party has adopted these loopy policies is because identity politics is the new hierarchy of oppression embraced by the left. It is an ideology predicated upon victimhood, wealth redistribution, demonisation of anyone who dissents and an increasingly incoherent and authoritarian script which must be adopted and regurgitated without deviation or question. There is nothing remotely libertarian about any of it.

I think that a much better comparison is religious orthodoxy. The new totalitarian doctrine has articles of faith. Its proponents are not interested in debate, they want submission to the articles of faith. Their Manichean certainties are beyond question. Questioning any part of the doctrine results in immediate accusations of heresy and the punishment for heresy can be severe. See Harry Miller, Maya Forstater.

Maybe I am just looking at 'liberal progressives'.

I think the progressive element is probably important in understanding this idea. Because these people believe there is a social movement to some sort of good or complete end. They tend to see history as an increasing of knowledge, of morals, of wisdom, and see us as moving ever more to that point.Typically they see the end as the most perfect freedom for all to self-actualise - that is the libertarian element. It's individualist self-actualisation.

So many of them see conservatism, or any dispute about changes and "progress", as inherently wrong and preventing the pure actualisation of perfect freedom, and of turning back to less enlightened and true ideas. This emboldens them to restrict any discussion or questioning of progress, even if that seems like an authoritarian response they see it as supporting freedom to self-actualise.

Typically they see the end as the most perfect freedom for all to self-actualise - that is the libertarian element

Libertarians might think that you have the right to self Id as a poodle or a goldfish, but no libertarian believes in state enforcement of your delusion. Libertarians don't believe in compelled speech, or criminalization of pronouns or no platforming people or sending agents of the state to check the thinking of those who refuse to participate. The people pushing this ideology which is reinforced by the state are the antithesis of libertarians.

Is it just me - or are female MPs way more likely to be waving the flag here? Am I imagining it?

No, I think it's a thing too. Like at Warren in the US Dem race.

I've followed the Greens here in Canada and was a party member until the last election as the only party that was something like traditionally left or traditionally conservative. I left them as they utterly and completely embraced identity politics and progressive individualism, to the point where they left environmentalism behind entirely.

Anyway, the leader Elizabeth May in the last election posted on FB how proud she was that membership was now something like 60% women, more than any other party. Which I thought, well, is that actually what we want, that political parties have a sex imbalance? It might be good in that it would reflect that the policies were woman-friendly compared to other parties, but in itself I'd not consider it ideal. (Interestingly while other parties say what % of women candidates they ran, the Greens tell us what % of women, trans, and non-binary persons.)

Libertarians might think that you have the right to self Id as a poodle or a goldfish, but no libertarian believes in state enforcement of your delusion.

Ideas don't remain discrete, they tend to be rather promiscuous. Just as identity politics takes some ideas from Marxist analysis but uses them in a way incompatible with Marxism, they take ideas from other thought traditions and use them in new ways. Particularly from libertarian and neoliberal approaches they take a kind of belief in society as atomic, this is where this business of "rights aren't a pie" comes from for instance.

@thecatfromjapan isn’t the ‘strange sexual politics’ and ‘discourse around sex work’ just plain old misogyny that is hardly a stranger to the left? Men’s rights to use women as they wish?

It's the way that so many women are aggressively behind it that is the strange part for me.

Men always wanted to be able to do what they wanted, and there were always women who supported them, usually passively by turning a blind eye. The idea that prostitution is a job like any other, a great lucrative choice for young women, and really fun times across the board, is not a view you would have heard many women pushing even 20 years ago. It's a total sea change, and a strange one.

Me too, FrogsFrogs.

Yes, I think it's misogyny, noblegiraffe - but like FrogsFrogs I just find it odd that so many women seem to think it's feminism. 🤷‍♀️

The problem with the old feminism is that men don’t like it. And men are controlling what women say in the public domain in a way that they didn’t have access to before the advent of the internet.

SWERFs and TERFs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women fighting for women’s rights on two entirely different fronts can not only be easily dismissed, but dismissed as bigots and haters in 3 words.

Women don’t want to be piled on for expressing ‘deviant’ opinions to the aggressively policed view.