Jolyon Maugham’s Glorious Failures

[CrocsNotDocs]

Enjoy.

www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/25/the-glorious-failures-of-jolyon-maugham/

That Bluesky post of Jolyon's is an odd attempt at a gotcha. Even his usual supporters seem perplexed by it.

"You are a predatory cis man and walk into the women's showers at the gym. You are challenged and pretend to be a trans man. You are disbelieved because your penis is erect but you claim to be post-op and 'biologically female'. What then happens? And how does any of this protect women?"

That's revolting!

Transmen are legally excluded from women's spaces anyway if they are male-looking enough, so that's the end of it.

If a transman is stood there facing you with a pumped up bit of surgically attached forearm sticking out of their vulva (unlikely) that is sexual assault and you can get them arrested and removed from the premises.

Why would your thinking even go there? !
That is such a typically male thought trajectory
-It's why we don't like you in our spaces!

That is indeed odd.

I remember his very public Twitter U-turn early on in the trans wars. Tht was also distinctly odd.

Hopefully someone will be able to explain in the morning.

Jolyon seems to have an awful lot of fantasies doesn’t he?

Anyone able to explain this to me in simple words? Is it a hacking? A set up? A breakdown?

He certainly seems to be able to slip into the mind of a predatory man very easily.

It’s a really odd argument.

JM would prefer that the man had a right to use the facility on the basis of self ID as in Wi Spa incident, regardless of his sex.

However in the ‘claiming to be a transman’ example, it is clear that there is a right to remove him because he is male.

Ahahaaaa, great article. Loved this: ‘And like a dying star, or a sitcom soaring effortlessly over a flotilla of sharks…’ 😂

And another one who uses the revolting term cis.

Does he mean an adult human male?

I don’t get it either? TW are male so if they still have their tackle they can have erections - but in his world it’s okay for them to use the women’s changing room. Instead he thinks a man, who is pretending to be a woman, who is identifying as a man is going to be the problem. Sounds pretty stupid to me.

Jolyon's mind goes to some strange places, doesn't it?

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, Jolyon currently seems to be orbiting Pluto, or even on the way to the planet Goofy.

I’ve known a few people very like him and they’re notoriously egotistical, sexist and actually nowhere near as bright as they consider themselves to be. They get to where they are through a kind of Jedi mind trick, they’re so full of misplaced confidence that few people around them really challenge or second guess what he’s saying. He pushes the trans suicide myth time and time again despite zero evidence. Well, he says there is evidence, which the government is covering up. How convenient.

No, he's talking about a man pretending he's a (female) trans man as a gotcha.

It's very confusing isn't it?

He must have some mental agility. He’s a KC. You don’t pass the bar on a YTS scheme. It must be the arrogance that stymies original thought.

The Bad Law Project are crowdfunding again - a general fund for TRAing and a specific effort to overturn the SC judgment at the ECHR (I think on grounds that it conflicts with Goodwin).

Hoping his usual success rate will apply and the resources and time will be diverted as usual.

“Asking for a friend”

It's such a weird and convoluted scenario, the effect on me is to think "Can it all just stop? Do we have to have this? Can people just be the sex they are and not have extreme body modifications that give rise to mad, squalid puzzles like this?". Basically - tired of trans. I think I'd feel that way even if I was a supporter. Like, I think even if I were a trans man I'd read that and think "nah, fuck this, it's not worth the headache".

You’d think so - but honestly, being well spoken/presented goes a long way and being a legal thinker does not in any way make you broadly intelligent, empathetic or well balanced. Legal thinking is a little bit like maths, it’s one style of thinking which doesn’t necessarily indicate intelligence in other areas. And KCs are often quite ruthless individuals who are used to focussing on themselves, their personal aims and so on. You don’t get there if you don’t.

For some reason this squalid scenario brings to mind that excruciating scene in Withnail and I* where a drunken Withnail provides the police with an uncontaminated urine sample. It involves a Fairy Liquid bottle and a tube sellotaped to his old chap. It does not end well.

*Best Film Ever

He’s not right in the old bonce is he? He doesn’t care about the woman in that situation, she’s just there for garnish and as a prop for his ridiculous ponderings, in fact he’s hoping it will happen to some poor woman. Although god knows how it could.

It's a particularly kind of ivory tower mentality too, missing the wood for the trees. The idea that, in the event of a naked man advancing towards the ladies showers with his erect cock out, what naturally follows is a patient academic debate about the Equality Act.

I now actually want to hear Jolyon's take on the Wi Spa incident, since part of the flasher's defence was "I wasn't actually erect, it's just that these silly women thought I was because they were so impressed by my enormous cock."

How would a KC with an unblemished record put the case for the defence?

"How do they know the defendant wasn't a transman?"