Cambridge Union debate - This House Believes modern LGBTQ+ activism fails its community

[ItsCoolForCats]

I'm starting this thread mainly so I can post this link because Maeve Halligan is a force to be reckoned with:

https://x.com/i/status/2055119527914938412

They lost the debate, which was to be expected given the state of universities on this issue, but Thea Sewell said they got a respectable number of votes. Hopefully they have planted some seeds in people's minds.

Other speakers were Buck Angel and Helen Webberley (for the other side).

Full debate is here https://www.youtube.com/live/wE0JY9d7f-w?si=4ZIVmcxyevo0DQvB

But most straight men are against this.

For the record I am not a tra

See, anytime someone needs to say this upfront, they just set themselves up for failure. Must try harder.

So you don't have evidence?
All you have to do is say so.
As for mine read up on the court case and the way that the question was framed and how a second survey was taken.

As for the celebs that you mention, yes they do support the trans lobby but then they would all be cancelled if they didn't as they have with many others.

As for why TRA orgs are just repackaged LGB orgs, IMO its because it was an easy re[ackage and they gave them easy access to schools, goverment and other areas were they could implement there agenda whilst using LGB people as a cover.

Are you seriously making a statement that most straight men are against the LGB divorcing from the TQ+ ?

But these orgs are run by lgb people and had a history of advancing lgb causes. It's the inconvenient truth!

No, unlike gays, there are anti transgenderism and Tra genderwoo, which would never have gotten as far as it did without constant lgb lobbying

The inconvenoent truth is that people (even LGB) will sell out for money. And the keyword there is history.

Any org that doesn't believe in sex as being binary is homophbic. remember that according to Stonewall those lesbians that won't sleep with trans women and their female penis are gender nazi's.

Does that even remotely sound like a LGB supportive group?

You are confusing LGB people with groups/orgs that are built on a history of supporting LGB people. There is a difference.

And could you rewrite your first line in to English as it makes no sense.

Which organisations specifically? Stonewall obviously, but who else? Many T organisations came straight out of transactivism as far as I can see.

Enter the twerp:

• Our next speaker is ushered in. Sammy McDonald! A ginger student of modern European history, who looks like he's wearing his dad's suit and could have taken an extra five minutes to brush his hair.

• Sammy's claim to fame is that Graham Linehan once called him a twerp on Twitter. I had never heard of Sammy, or the Twitter bunfight in question, but his decision to share this information was probably a mistake. It ended up being like when you say the words "pink elephant" and then tell someone not to think of pink elephants. Once he'd said it, the word "twerp" bobbed along merrily in the background of my mind, the whole time he was talking. Twerp, twerp, twerp, twerp! Unfortunately for me, Sammy's twerpitude would increase at a steady rate as the speech went on, until I ended up pretty much deafened by my own internal voice screaming "Twerp!"

• Sammy opens his speech trading zingers with the debate organisers, then takes a moment to show everyone what great pals he is with all of them. He could have done this during the free chips afterwards, but he chose to do it here, which is how you know a sub-standard speech is coming. Kissing arse is his way of asking the House to go easy on him.

• Sammy is a truly woeful orator, who talks like a human Twitter feed and has a tendency to fall into ranty sidebars about The Daily Mail and lose track of time. He then has to prompt himself to get the fuck on with it and finally make some "progress".

• Conveniently, this means he just doesn't have the time to engage with all the points of information the audience keep attempting to raise with him. Hands go up every ten seconds and Sammy squirrels away from them, muttering about his need to progress. It's truly comical.

• Sammy would first like everyone to know that he knows this is a painful topic, and he doesn't want to speak over anyone or speak for anyone. And he is appalled by gaslighting. Oh, and he believes "the best way to proceed is through respect, civility, and open conversation". Don't worry, none of that will be in evidence when he talks about his opponents. I think it's just his fake, both-sidesy way of wondering why women can't just shut up and play along.

• Having established what a kind and lovely man he is, who just wants open conversations and honest debate, he then tells us how important it is to "proceed in a calm, rational, but also truthful way to describe our experiences".

• I know what you're thinking, and yes. He himself will be 0/3 on those in his upcoming speech! Temper your expectations now. He will in fact be coming across as a blinkered tit in dire need of a digital detox.

• Sammy begins by asking the question of what modern LGBT activism actually is. But this is rather boring and his lot aren't great at defining things, so Sammy never actually does. Instead he hops sideways into a bit of rage bait. He's cherry-picked some newspaper headlines he's sure will rile up the audience, and distract them from noticing when he doesn't answer his own question.

• "The trans threat to freedom" is one headline that gave him the scaries, for reasons he doesn't bother to elucidate. "Gender ideology relies on censorship to survive" is another one. If you're expecting Sammy to provide the context behind any of these headlines, by the way, don't. You'd think that would be the perfect way to show how ridiculous they are, no? The reality of the story, versus the supposedly hysterical headline? And yet, he never does.

• It's not hard to see why. That second one especially would be hard to disprove.

• "We're even talking about someone being turfed out by the trans Taliban!" Notice the device Sammy is employing here. He's pretending he doesn't understand that British tabloids exaggerate in their headlines for comic effect. But he barely gives himself time to draw breath before he does the same thing.

• "Now as far as I'm aware, Joe Biden did not leave behind a bunch of military equipment for the trans people to pick up." Unfortunately for Sammy, this didn't get the laughs he was hoping for. Something about it seems to have annoyed people. Perhaps it's the multiple points of information he's ignoring, while still taking the time to pause for laughter. Perhaps the audience are noticing the glaring lack of context provided, and they don't much like it. Okay, so the headline was hyperbolic. But what was the actual story, Sammy? Was it one of those nasty ones where TRAs bully a woman out of her workplace for knowing what a woman is? I think we can all guess that it was.

• "We're even told that trans activists are little Hitlers." Once again, no context is given and there is no citation of the source. The problem is, those of us listening to him aren't wedged into the same echo chamber as Sammy. We are capable of understanding that sometimes tone is secondary to content. You may not like the Daily Mail, you may not like their choice of words, but if you've got half a brain, you can see what they're trying to say. When they call TRAs "little Hitlers", you know the accompanying article is going to be about the authoritarian, bullying behaviour of trans activists. Sammy is being disingenuous in pretending there's nothing to see here. Every time he quotes one of these headlines, he brings a pink elephant into the room and asks us not to notice it.

• "In fact, in one year alone there were 115 negative articles in the Daily Mail." Okay. How many of them were reporting on actual crimes, Sammy? How many of them were telling the stories of women who'd been bullied by trans activists? How many were drawing attention to harms caused by trans ideology? An article can be "negative" and still true. The Mail are no stranger to rage bait, but I doubt they pulled all 115 articles out of their arse. Frankly, they don't need to. TRAs generate their own steady supply of jaw-dropping headlines, without the Mail needing to invent a thing.

• But Sammy thinks these headlines are very hard to explain, because trans people are such a statistically small segment of the population! I'm not sure he understands how that works. Taylor Swift is one woman, and I'm sure she's chalked up a lot more Daily Mail headlines. The reason is: she does a lot of things. Mind-boggling, I know. A small group can have an outsized impact.

• I also notice that Sammy quotes Census data for the trans population, but not crime or sexual violence statistics. We already know that "trans women" offend at a rate equal to or above their "cis male" counterparts. Women have reasons to be concerned about being forced to share space with these men. It is disingenuous in the extreme to frame that pushback as bigotry.

• Sammy has no problem doing that, of course. He actually draws a direct comparison between today's tabloid headlines, and the blatantly homophobic ones of the 1980s. In his mind, it's the same thing. There is no difference between an article which mocked gay men dying of AIDS, and one in which a woman says "I didn't want to deal with my menstrual flooding in front of my male colleague, actually".

• Remember how Sammy was supposed to be so calm and rational and respectful of true experiences? So far we've seen no hint he even understands what the issues are. Has he ever actually read any of those terrible transphobic articles? Or is he quoting headlines because that's as far as he would allow himself to read?

• Having exhausted the subject of the Daily Mail, Sammy then switches to Graham Linehan. Graham gets the same treatment. His words are presented deprived of all context, and you're just supposed to agree they're terrible. Kemi Badenoch was once in a picture with him, and that is also terrible. Ooh, er.

• Here Sammy makes a vague allusion to "the overreach of trans activists". The fact that they've overreached all the way into women's sports and changing rooms, and overreached into schools, and overreached into women's inboxes with rape and death threats, isn't mentioned, however. Nor is their attempt to overreach through the cotton ceiling of lesbians' knickers. Sammy is more hung up on Graham's impatient response to those men, than on what they might actually have been doing to piss him off so much.

• If you thought this so-called debate was getting a bit Twitter feed, it only gets worse. Having got his tuppence worth in about Graham and Kemi, Sammy then decides the world must know how much he hates Libs of Tik Tok. It's a social media account that mocks woke stuff. Sammy isn't happy because the account calls out grooming behaviour, which is the same as calling all gay people paedophiles, in his mind. I've never watched this account and couldn't tell you if this is true. But I can already guess their content must pull heavily from the likes of Jeffrey Marsh and Lily Tino. If you bring people like that under the umbrella of "the community" and refuse to hold them to account, then it's hardly surprising outsiders think they're representative of the group. This shit is exactly why the LGB want out, Sammy.

• "They called LGBT people a cult." The people individually aren't a cult, but the TQ+++ ideologues act like one. You cannot be surprised outsiders notice this, and if you refuse to distance yourself from the nutters, you cannot be surprised when outsiders lump you in with them. If it pisses you off, it should, Sammy. Wake up.

Thank you Snoopy. Your posts have made me laugh out loud. They've also returned the thread to the subject

@SnoopyPajamas

Your depiction and characterisation is wonderful.

I can't remember if you said you were there or only watching it, but I wish to the moon and back that you could have said it all out loud, through a megaphone, in the room.

At the very least I want it published and put under the noses of all attendees and speakers.

Plus taught in schools.

At the very least I want it published and put under the noses of all attendees and speakers.
Plus taught in schools.

It would make a great resource! Sadly the comedy bits would have to go for use in schools, so I think available for every speaker and attendee would be perfect.

They can laugh and learn. Or "educate themselves", in TRA speak 😀

'a blinkered tit in dire need of a digital detox'.😂
Brilliant, Snoops!

That is now officially my go-to, polyvalent, multifunctional, all-season, all-weather, all-singing, all-dancing, 24/7 put down.
A Swiss Army Knife of a putdown, if you will😃

Agree 100%. Brava Snoopy, excellent work. You have a fantastic way with words.

👏🏼

are these gay men really saying they would be happy to have sex with a woman who identified as a trans man? who a vagina? I don't think so....the whole thing is so homophobic

I'm glad I gave you a laugh 😂

I just decided to ignore that second derail, tbh. There's been a lot of it about lately and I just didn't have the patience. The topic at hand was much more interesting anyway

I wasn't there in the room, sadly! I'm catching up with it all online after the fact.

I have to say, I was shocked at the piss-poor quality of some of the speeches. If I didn't leaven my recaps with a little humour, it'd be too depressing. Is this the standard of debating four years at Cambridge gets you?

I think part of the reason Maeve's speech caught fire the way that it did is because she understood how to debate well. You make a point, explain the point, show how the point illustrates the argument. Bam, bam, bam. And that's what Maeve did. She was tight, focused, and clear. No word salad, no silly games. It was just "these are the harms and these are the failures" all the way through. She should have won the debate.

I have to say, I was shocked at the piss-poor quality of some of the speeches. If I didn't leaven my recaps with a little humour, it'd be too depressing. Is this the standard of debating four years at Cambridge gets you?

This is what 4 years of ideological brainwashing and suppression of critical thought for fear of social ostracization gets you, seemingly.

Thanks also from me to SnoopyPajamas for the absolutely priceless commentary, brilliant work - it really does need to be sent to those who were there, especially the speakers you skewer so perfectly 😂

I’ve only watched Maeve’s clip so far, but am now looking forward to watching the rest with you as my virtual compere.

Is Sammy the ginger twerp the same young man who can barely contain himself during Maeve’s speech and keeps trying to interrupt? Watching him squirm and battle with his desperate need to give utterance to his groundbreaking ideas while being told no was quite entertaining.

And was the word twerp actually bobbing along in your brain to the tune of the Monty Python Spam song, as I’m imagining it was?

Rousing stuff 👏👏👏

Point of order though, I’m not the greatest fan of Les Mis, but it doesn’t deserve attributing to that murderer of the musical artform, ALW.

We have a chap called Claude-Michel Schönberg to thank for that.

But having said that, a woman who can give us such headings as Enter the twerp can be forgiven most things.

It was very funny when he whined about Linehan calling him a twerp and then self identified as one for almost the whole of his speech. I know we must forgive the arrogance of youth when they utter repeated stupidities but sometimes I look at someone and think - this is you. I'm not sure you're going to change at all 😑