Guardian: weaponised emotional blackmail from 14yo 'trans' athlete

[teawamutu]

The Guardian's rearguard action on reality continues. Apparently the problem is not the parents and authorities who conspired to lie to this boy, coddle his delusions, disadvantage all girls around him in the service of his own wishful thinking etc etc etc: it's definitely the people who pointed it out:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/17/trans-athlete-no-one-should-face-vicious-attacks

I am prepared to feel a little sorry for the kid, who couldn't have been exposed like this if the useful idiots around him had done their fucking jobs. But the Grauniad can fuck off with the tired 'beee kiiiind' shit as a solution. Been there, binned the t-shirt. We want our shit back.

It cares about the brain in so far as it helps achieve viable fertile offspring. Which can be on a group level rather than for the individual, some animals are evolved to behave in highly cooperative manners.

I'm intrigued by the speculation that homosexual behaviour evolved because a few extra non reproducing adults in the group advantage the wider gene line. Though it's also possible it was genetically speaking an unwanted byproduct of high sex drive.

Why evolution would want some critters to think they're the other sex is unclear. It might want /flexibility/ in normally sexed roles, if there is a shortage of females we need the males to chip in with babysitting duties, if there is a shortage of males we need the females to join in defending the territory against interlopers.

But it's never the caring duties, child rearing, cleaning out the fridge bit of 'femaleness' they identify with is it? It's always the bits of femaleness that haven't existed or haven't been female /exclusively female coded for most of human evolution (heels, skirts, long hair etc). It's never since I was 4 I dreamt of working in carehome and I just love clearing the crumbs out of the cutlery drawer is it?

There are behavioural differences between men and women. Some of them are socially driven, some of them are hormonally driven, and some are the result of men taking advantage, consciously or unconsciously, of their superior physical strength. These three things intersect in very complex ways.

I used to think that hormones were just an excuse, but having gone through pregnancy, breastfeeding and the menopause, I'm now convinced that they impact behaviour - I can remember my visceral reaction when my babies cried, and my absolutely instinctive (and astonishingly selfless) responses when one was in danger. And having gone through the menopause, I am so much arsier than I used to be. That one might be driven more by maturity and increasing self-confidence, but my lovey-dovey, maternal, make-it-all-better, oil-on-troubled-waters earth-mother vibe has dialled right down in the past decade.

But the thing is... trans people, until they start taking artificial hormones, have just the same hormonal balance as others of their sex.

So whatever drives trans-ness, it's not hormones. Which leave us with brain structure. Which leaves us with motivated research.

No!
There's lots of enthusing about chatting to 'the other girls' in the loos, and tinkling jewellery.

None of those dreary conversations about how to get grass stains out of clothes.

I don't have a black belt in neuroscience😏but my understanding is that babies' brains are not blank slates, they are actually full of complex interconnections, and as the baby grows, some of those interconnections are strengthened [e.g. I'm guessing: the ones to do with walking upright, and talking]
and less or not used interconnections weaken and maybe even atrophy.

So those 'pink' and 'blue' messages that babies get from day one - as has been shown in experiments where the same baby was interacted with differently, depending on whether it was said to be a boy or a girl - reinforce pathways in the brain.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they found differences between adult men's and women's brains, given the differences in how boys and girls are brought up, as GriseldaandMike says.

Some boys and girls resist the stereotyping more than others, and have experiences that are more related to the opposite sex in childhood - tomboys like me who played with Meccano sets and Airfix kits and learnt skills - and possibly brain connections? - that enabled me to work in a techie field as an adult.

As I write that, I realise that it may be less acceptable for boys to crossover like that in childhood, and have 'non-boy' experiences, because of the lower status of 'feminine' things. Perhaps that's why there is a greater spread of 'gender presentation' in women than in men, some of us are womanly or girly and some of us are not, whereas there isn't such a wide spread of difference in dress etc amongst men.
And perhaps - this is just speculation - fewer diverse interconnections in adult men's brains?

But that's not the same as saying there is a 'male brain' and a 'female brain' and that there can be mix-ups in the assembly area resulting in a male body getting a female brain or vice versa.

There are studies which claim brain differences, and studies which reject this. I tend to believe the ones which reject it, except in so far as the brain is plastic, and shaped by experience from day one. So many studies on small children show that caregivers treat boys and girls differently even when they are tiny babies.

But regardless of the brain studies, let's look behaviour. Suppose there is a difference in male and female brains, and transwomen have female brains - why then is their behaviour aligned with men not women, sexual violence and threatening behaviour in particular? If they have "female" brains but persist in sexual and other violence, it is proof that the brain does not control the body, and that male bodies drive the problem; so even though their brains are female we need women-only facilities and other provision. Suppose now that there is no difference in male and female brains - well, we're back to square one and need women-only provision.

So the "female brain/male brain" theory is irrelevant.

Absolutely, it's far more likely that the brains of people with similar life experiences will look alike because they are firing up the same neurons than that some mysterious process puts sexed brains into embryos but sometimes doesn't match the sex of the brain to the genetics. Occam's razor tells me it's probably 'primary childrearer, mental load carrier, food preparer and working as a nurse' brain rather than lady brain.

It’s the vulnerable gay and autistic children who are on the front line here Evie. Gender Ideology is seriously homophobic. Remember the doctors in the Tavistock boasting about transing the gay away or Susie Green of Mermaids revealing in her TED talk how her homophobic husband destroyed all of her son’s toys when he was four because they were too girly. Of course he wanted to be a girl. Girls got toys. We fought so hard for gay rights and the second we got them people like you worked to destroy them so that men could be happy. Stonewall, once an LGB charity, described homosexuality as a genital fetish and akin to racism. Young lesbians were pressured to have sex with transwomen. What is good about this?

Another thing that blows my mind is the number of people who swallowed the idea that acceptance of people 'being trans' is exactly the same thing as acceptance of people being gay - and never once engaged their brain to think through the glaring differences.

Not least of which, as you point out, that trans ideology is startlingly homophobic.

If you override sex with 'gender' you also invalid the concept of same sex attraction. Seeing young lesbians being pressurised into accepting men into their dating pools on the grounds that they 'identify as woman' is utterly regressive.

Then of course, as you say, the fact that young gay people are strongly over represented amongst those signing up for experimental hormone therapy and surgeries

This. Trans ideology is deeply homophobic. I have seen quotes from people that they would rather have a trans daughter than a gay son.

These delightful messages from the ‘Be Kind’ TRAs.

Oh well now I've changed my mind and I really want to share enclosed spaces with them. Be kiiiind people.

bitches be like, "I'm a trans ally" and then you check their TERF kill count and it's 0

Oh, that's going to encourage people to be trans allies, for sure!

'Same logic as punch a NAZI''

This is an example of the hyperbole that they use to justify violence. Sometimes violence is justified, and being oppressed by Nazis - as in literal Nazis - is one of the best example of justifiable violence I can think of.

But being subjected to the wrong pronouns/not being allowed use the toilet
you'd prefer to use/only getting the same human rights as everyone else doesn't add up to the kind of oppression to which violence is a proportionate response.

I know I'm stating the obvious, but it's obviously not obvious at all to these TRA 'heroes'.

And look they’re all on Bluesky, supposedly a nice platform not like Twitter that lots of MNers have never seen anything problematic on 🙄

Hideous. I certainly don't align with this!

Amd that's before you get to the one about being assaulted by a splintery rolling pin. And they wonder why we don't want men like that in female single sex spaces.

Thank you. I very much appreciate your ability to see that :)
I never meant to upset or offend anyone.....and felt upset that someone had mistakenly thought I was calling them homophobic when that really wasn't my intention.
It's a complex topic to debate as there are so many concepts to consider and I am only at the start of my journey with this. I felt bombarded with all the posts I was receiving yesterday and wanted to fully absorb and understand their message/argument before replying...hence my need to step back for now.

It's not a topic that affects me or my family directly.....but my 16 yr old DD (who claims to be a feminist) has, over the last few months, been negatively vocal about JK Rowling's stance. Believe it or not I've actually been defending the author to my DD saying that women's spaces should be protected etc ....whilst at the same time having empathy for trans people. We've agreed that there should be a "separate space" for trans people....it's the only way we can settle the argument lol. However there is clearly much more to this debate as I'm finding out! I shall be reading more with interest ....☺️
Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts - it has given me much food for thought :)

I can't and don't want to speak for everyone, but most gender critical women would be happy with male, female and gender neutral spaces for trans people, (and the allies who are more than happy to share, and perhaps parents out with opposite sex children of an age where you don't want to send them alone but don't want to take them into the wrong sex facilities either etc).

The people who are not happy with this solution are some trans people and trans right activists. Despite what you will hear we don't hate trans people, or want them dead, we just don't believe people can change sex or that there is something called gender that is more important than sex when it comes to separating humans into groups.

😱

Evie, I think many of us started in the be kind camp, I know I did.

Then I couldn't believe there had to be a case to permit one not to believe in trans ideology, or to define the word woman, started following the tribunals live, where women had been hounded from their jobs, and were punished for not wanting to undress in front of men in NHS staff changing rooms, read the sports data, saw Angela Carini get punched in the face at the Olympics by a man, saw the pictures of the bottles of piss, the placards threatening violence, and that the only good terf is a dead terf, the lack of a single woman only rape crisis centre in Brighton, having a man in a dress say rape victims should reframe their trauma if they didn't want to be in a counselling session with a TiM, the vexatious lawsuits, and....

Well, here we are.

Do you realise you're currently playing a role in a man's fantasy, every post from this poster is a lie, he's cosplaying at being a women (and one from the 1950's at that). 🤢

A reminder of the delightful AidaP who came up with the notion or at least posted it as an option for dealing with the Nazi JKR.

This is another of these immovable points.

My brother did actually have a brain sex and chromosome test when he was transitioning because it was slightly before everything went crazy and there wasn't much understanding.

His tests came back as completely normal for a male. I think he was disappointed by this as it meant he didn't have anything to show that legitimised him as such. Which I get.

But it kind of highlights the problem really. If there was anything substantially different between male and female brains you would have this evidence shoved in your face daily because of the sheer amount of misogyny there is. This wouldn't just be from TRAs. There's a lot of men who think they are superior to women and would want to use it to prove the point.

The fact we DON'T have this, really tells us a lot. More so than the very weak guff that suggests to the counter.

Yes, the incontrovertible proof of a genetic biological explanation for innate “gender identity” is pending. Constantly pending. Like cold fusion.