It’s summer. J K Rowling has a new book to flog. So, newspapers and social media alike are once more warming the tired old trope of “trans rights activists” abusing a harmless middle-aged author — while simultaneously ignoring the actual violence that has been enacted with ever greater ferocity this year on the bodies of real trans people.

Both sidesing? No. This is a piece about asymmetry and hypocrisy, and a commentariat that will twist the facts every which way to preserve their own victim narrative.

Bottom Line

Let’s start with a thing that shouldn’t need saying. But because it is now…

The recent onslaught on trans people has seen self-identified feminists taking on board some dodgy politics. In bed with the far right and Christian fundamentalists, they re-assure themselves — and friends — that this is an alliance of convenience, to be ditched when the “trans menace” is eliminated.

Defining women as mothers, and going large on motherhood is quite another matter.

It is wishful thinking, that overlooks the plans these groups have for women as a class. It ignores the fact that fascism is for life — and not just for Christmas (other seasons are available).

Now read on.

That old pianist joke

Ah…

Anti-trans campaigners claimed “victory” in the most recent Maya Forstater hearing. But it’s not much of a victory, and the next step is the crucial one. A lot of legal folks are betting it will be far harder than the first. As for the court of public opinion, campaigning for the right to harass one’s work colleagues is not a great look.

Last week was, on the surface, a bad week for trans people. Various media stepped up to report that a woman who had lost her job for saying trans women were not women had won her appeal, thereby…

…and it’s time to get worried

Cold springs are nothing new. This year, though, bad weather in the UK has been balanced by exceptionally hot weather in the Arctic. It may be an anomaly: but it’s the sort of anomaly our planet could do without.

Now I don’t want to worry you. Honest! But if you are at all concerned by climate and climate change, this Spring is a time to get worried. Very worried indeed. Scared, even.

I know: Spring has been a bit of a damp squib, UK-wise. A prolonged cold spell. Frost, still, in May. Plus, loads of wet and windy days that…

Back in the halcyon days of 2017, the UK press and media were not yet ready to pile in behind the anti-trans panic. Still, they liked the idea of “concerns”. So what, if those concerns were promoted by a bunch of politically motivated, privileged cis women far from representative of women as a whole? It sounded plausible. And concerned women made good viewing.

The problem was: they weren’t asking the next question. That was: if we do grant these concerns to be valid, what is the solution? If they had, they might not have liked the answer.

Now read on…

Reasonable concerns…

…

Gender crits have been arguing lately that rights are neither universal nor inalienable, but contingent on people behaving themselves. This may play well with a reactionary and populist press, and is music to the ears of a government that wants to rip up the Human Rights Act. In the end, though, this is about entrenched privilege for a small segment of already doing well-enough middle-class women. No more, no less.

Now read on…

No recognition

Trans women, according to one gender critical giving evidence to parliament recently, should not be allowed legal gender recognition if they have committed a crime against another…

Gender crits in the UK think they are winning. Certainly, they have had a few little local victories. But across the world, the picture is very different. Trans rights are coming. Those so loud, so desperate to erase us from existence are losing.

Shitty Britain

Let’s not mince words. It is a shit time to be trans and living in the UK. On the one hand, we are blessed with a supine press and media that imagines it is supporting trans people by running a new story about the “first” trans man to give birth every six months or so, or the…

Debate is one thing. But when discussion of trans healthcare is regularly sidetracked by out and out falsehoods and misinformation, there can be no meaningful exchange of views. Here I tackle a couple of the worst examples that keep coming back, despite having zero basis in fact.

The abominable vagina!

Did you know that the trans vagina — or, as the medics like to call it, the “neo-vagina” — is in fact an open wound? A bloody unnatural abomination that can only be sustained by daily dilation? No. Me, neither. …