I 💛 bookshops and libraries. Amazing feeling to have my own window for a day. Thanks so much
@Dauntbooks
& everyone who came to celebrate publication with me
@LittleHardman
@politybooks
If you think the paedophile who abducted & repeatedly sexually assaulted a primary school girl - who trusted him because she thought he was a woman - ought to be allowed to choose what pronouns he is called by, in court or wherever, trans activism has broken your moral compass
Hamilton was dropped because of her gender-critical view that women's sport should not be open to males.
These things are really happening & the more people nod along, the worse it gets for girls & women
Rip Curl - a famous surfing brand - have dropped Bethany Hamilton (who lost her arm in a shark attack) from their ad campaigns.
They have instead used Sasha Lowerson to advertise women’s surfing.
Their total contempt could not be more clear.
"I look forward to a time where awards shows can be reflective of society we live in" -Sam Smith at the Brits , 2021
Wish granted? this year our sexist society is reflected so brilliantly that no women are nominated for best artist
Bravo genderists 👏👏
People full of contempt for safeguarding-fixated mums could do with reading up on how hard Victorian feminists fought, despite not being able to vote - and against determined and vicious opposition from the men in charge - to get the age of consent raised from 12 to 16
You can't show solidarity with JK Rowling while denying her right to define the sexism/ misogyny against her as being rooted in sex (not gender). I'm sorry but you just can't. That's how she understands it. That's how millions of other women understand it.
I had no idea til
@BBCWomansHour
interview today that Jo Phoenix was raped as a teenager & went through a trial. So like Allison Bailey, a lesbian with very serious sexual violence in her past. It is unbelievably grim that these women were vilified for thinking sex is important
I was going to say this ad (the sports one is nearly as bad) is mindblowingly stupid but actually it's malign.
A govt that instructs women to suppress any discomfort they might feel in enclosed space with a male - no matter what clothes, identity - shd be kicked out of office
There are posters all over the tube telling people off for STARING (as sexual harassment).
& yet it's apparently not that big a deal for someone with a criminal record for serious violence to call at a rally in Trafalgar Square for feminists to be PUNCHED IN THE FACE
@Oxfam
I can't continue supporting a charity that vilifies women in this horrible way. Especially for
#Pride2023
: you must know lesbians get called "terf" too.
I've donated to you monthly for 20+ years, will switch to another anti-poverty charity in the morning
I'm in Edinburgh, was going to see this film tonight.
I know many people would rather pretend this isn't happening but universities across the UK are failing to uphold women's rights to freedom of assembly and speech
If
@jk_rowling
had put this in a novel she'd have been denounced for evil bigoted scare-mongering. I imagine books would've been burned. Emma Watson would've been very very angry.
But it's the news.
And
@nytimes
,
@bbc
call the suspect "she" 1/2
I wrote a comment piece (so my view not the Guardian's). About the escalating attacks on women whose ideas don't conform to the current gender orthodoxy 1/2
Here is a piece I wrote about
@JoPhoenix1
, Rachel Meade,
@MForstater
& some of the other
women discriminated against by employers for their gender-critical beliefs
1/Reading about Great Ormond Street Hospital cancellation of child psychiatry training event including gender-critical speakers (
@HJoyceGender
&
@cwknews
) it seems clearer & clearer that staff/student networks set up under auspices of Diversity & Inclusion are..
It's obviously false to claim puberty blockers are "reversible" - as Mermaids has done yet again today - because you can't turn back time.
If the changes that would have occurred in a child's body at a particular time/age are blocked by drugs, you don't reverse the blockage 1/2
Solidarity with
@RosieDuffield1
. This continual bullying of women who want to talk about their bodies in the language they know is unbearable and deeply sexist.
I'm proud to be
@suzanne_moore
's colleague & think the
#notadebate
tactic of trans/self-ID activism has been an absolute disaster, not tactically (tho that may be true) but politically, for the left
On a dreadful day for women in London I've watched Scottish feminists make a brave stand against shameful SNP decision to leave sex/ misogyny out of hate speech bill
#iamthestorm
It appears a Labour MP thinks it's possible there's "no such thing as biological sex" (when i woke up i had to check again this really happened).
This is science denial. Sex evolved over billions of years & you don't have to claim otherwise to recognise people's trans identities
Kemi Badenoch: Materials in schools were teaching nonsense like “there’s no such thing as biological sex”
Kate Osborne: Who says it’s nonsense?
Truly terrifying from a member of the
Women and Equalities Select Committee
I can't believe
@BBCNews
ran this piece in which a contributor (not a medic) asserts that drug-induced lactation from male nipples is as good *or better* for babies than breast milk from mums.
I know we liberals prefer not to criticise the BBC but this is offensive, irresponsible
Agree with this & wish this awful trend would stop. I support single-sex toilets alongside gender-neutral for all but it's bordering on abusive to make girls share intimate spaces when they are getting used to menstruation (which means upper primary as well as secondary).
Really shocked by this. Scottish Labour backed an amendment to stop sex offenders self-id'ing as women - but SNP and Greens blocked it.
Incredible disregard for women's safety. Self-id trumps everything. And a woman wearing suffragette colours ordered to leave. What a disgrace
This young woman had double masectomy at 15 & calls social transition a gateway.
This is the affirmative treatment model for gender-distressed youth that feminists including
@jk_rowling
oppose.
The trans/self-id social movement is tied to a body modification industry
No disrespect to anyone, I'm a pluralist & feminism is a big tent. But all this talk of heels & makeup being liberating (or is it empowering?) makes me want to burn a bra or something. Also:
#IStandWithSashaWhite
because sex matters & women shouldn't be punished for saying so
The word "breasts" is not mentioned here. Nor "masectomy".
Major surgery is being promoted to young women all over the world as a route to liberation ("a freeing freeing experience") while medical, anatomical reality vanishes into euphemism
The glaring dissonance of Allegra Stratton joining in PM's defence of Priti Patel 6 days after telling
@tobyhelm
that 'the country does not want to be run by people in No 10 who treat people discourteously and unpleasantly' 👀
I'm going to say something else about
@suzanne_moore
. It's that after 300+ of our colleagues signed a letter attacking her in March (it didn't name her but the story about it given to Buzzfeed did) lots of us offered support, on here or by telling the editor what we thought.
6/ That Susie Green CEO of Mermaids thinks NHS Camhs staff should read only what she approves should ring every alarm bell there is.
Story is in the Telegraph by
@ewansomerville
I wrote last year about my gender critical feminist views. I explained them as clearly as I could & also tried to explain how my ideas - rooted in socialist materialist feminist tradition - differ from gender identity ideas & activism 1/3
I can't imagine how i would feel if i were one of the victims/ survivors involved in the child sexual abuse inquiry.
Tory chaos completely taking over the news, again, on a day that ought to have been one of national reckoning with decades of child protection failure. 1/2
👏👏👏Estelle Morris. A Labour woman in the Lords making the case for data that separates sex from gender identity. This is a prerequisite for feminist/ anti-sexist public policymaking and women in 2021 shouldn't be having to fight for it
@Tanni_GT
Estelle Morris "Simply what the amendment asks is we collect two pieces of data, one is sex at birth and two is acquired gender. Without that I don't know how we go on to develop public policy" /2
.
@stonewalluk
is an anti-feminist organisation. It really is as simple as that. Encouraging & incentivising employers to be "gender neutral" is encouraging & incentivising them to ignore the sex-specific protected characteristic (Equality Act 2010) of pregnancy/maternity
Beg to differ.
Mexico is a femicide capital of the world (10 women & girls murdered every day).
Feminists in UK should not be 'ashamed' to dissent from 'international human rights norms' of its mostly male supreme court.
We shd keep fighting for sex-based rights of women & girls
Powerful judgment on gender recognition from the Supreme Court of Mexico "trans children understand their place in the world". It is crystal clear that the UK public conversation is wildly adrift from international human rights norms. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
with gender politics) worse.
But I now wish we had done it differently, that our support had been more visible.
I don't find it easy to imagine how I'd have felt if I'd been attacked as Suzanne was. But i now think that's what I'd have hoped for in her position. So I'm sorry.
Disagree with their stance on women's/ trans rights, fine, but for
@AngelaRayner
to condemn
@Womans_Place_UK
as a 'trans-exclusionary hate group' is appalling. Those I've met are lifelong feminists/ campaigners & they have every right to campaign for single-sex sports/ spaces etc
Please read and sign to show your support to our trans and non-binary community🌈 Our solidarity is long overdue - The Labour Party should always be an open and safe space for all
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
One of reasons
@BluskyeAllison
's essay (on her crowdfunder) about her life & opinions - following
@jk_rowling
's - is so welcome is it demolishes the idea that gender critical feminists are all or mainly conservative stooges/bigots in disguise (*I'm not saying none are).
2/.. running a campaign against knowledge/ideas that don't fit with gender-activist, affirmation-only model of treatment for gender dysphoria.
Based in part on spurious comparison to homophobia -since being gay/ lesbian does not require medical treatment or surgery - ..
How anyone who isn't a raging misogynist authoritarian can think this is ok is completely beyond me.
It's disturbingly illiberal that well-known feminists with long track records as campaigners/ writers/ service-providers are being denied such a basic service
We are astonished that
@Eventbrite
has cancelled our book launch for
@K_IngalaSmith
's Defending Women's Spaces due to take place on 24 Nov with
@bindelj
, unbelievably citing violation of their policy on Hateful, Dangerous, or Violent Content!
#DefendingWomensSpaces
This is all utterly mad. Sex differences in sport are blindingly obvious to anyone who watches Olympics for 10 mins.
The women are fit & fantastic but men throw further, jump higher, swim & run faster, etc.
The idea we're supposed to deny or ignore this really is Orwellian
My piece on
@JoPhoenix1
& other women discriminated against for their beliefs is in today's
@guardianopinion
section for print early birds & will be online later this morning. Thanks so much for interest. &
@BBCr4today
for the mention 🙏
Anyone who thinks they are on the side of the marginalised, who also thinks a lesbian philosopher such as
@Docstockk
shouldn't *write about the redefinition of the word lesbian to includes males* has made a category error about themselves. They are on the side of patriarchy (1/2)
i've done the All About Trans training with Juno Dawson & spent hours with Ruth Hunt. I'm all for people expressing themselves however they like, and being protected from discrimination. But i agree with Allison Bailey: the erosion of sex as a category harms women.the end.
3/.. they block discussion & accuse anyone with different perspective of being a bigot. It's unconscionable. These are children's bodies & no one knows longterm outcomes for current, unprecedented cohort of adolescent/ young adult females with dysphoria.
I think ubiquity of online violent pornography and lack of safeguards over recent years has been a kind of institutional-societal and tech-capital-led child abuse. Wilful disregard of growing minds, amounting to cruelty /neglect
"I've had female weightlifters come up to me and say, 'what do we do? This isn’t fair, what do we do?'. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do because every time we voice it we get told to be quiet."
So much wrong with this law but leaving sex out while including age, disability, race, sexual orientation, trans identity is just disgraceful.
Especially when women's trust in policing is so broken, & evidence galore about online misogyny. It's chilling
What is coming out in this Edinburgh Rape Crisis court case is truly shocking.
The idea that a service for raped women ought to 'wash' or 'clean' off its feminist/ women's movement past is seriously misogynist
Full transcript of the shocking comments from Mridul Wadhwa yesterday.
Including repeating the notion that a movement built by volunteer women needs to "wash and clean" itself of the past female activism./
4/ Female reproductive systems are *internal*. We won't know for decades what happens over a lifetime when these systems are shut down in adolescence.
And it's devastating (as someone supportive of equalities initiatives in principle) to observe that..
@arusbridger
@ayeshahazarika
Hello Alan. Yes it's difficult for everyone but last year Fawcett's chief exec (who has since left) wrote "I identify with gender-critical feminism" yet org didn't make any statement supportive of Maya Forstater's right to hold the same belief and not be sacked. How is that ok?
5/.. "diversity, inclusion" setups appear bound up in an ideological project committed to restricting thought, discussion, evidence.
When you consider everything we know as a society about vulnerability of young people at the moment, esp teenage girls, it's shameful.
I support trans people's right to live free from discrimination & prejudice. As do all the gender critical feminists I know & respect.
At its most basic, our belief is that sex & sexism are politically important. It's appalling that Stonewall regards this as a form of hatred
3/3
For anyone who doesn't get it I think this is a good example of what legal protection of gender-critical belief in UK means: that we are allowed to believe that in some situations a person's sex is relevant, can be pointed out; we aren't always obliged to ignore it
It's not 'equal opportunities' to allow trans women to play women's rugby if evidence shows it is dangerous.
It is saying trans players' interests & feelings shd trump female players'.
These govt & lottery-funded charities are saying,out loud: we don't care about women's safety
Standing with all trans people who are feeling let down by this decision.
We believe everyone, including trans people, should have equal opportunities in sport. This was a missed opportunity to uphold their own values that rugby is a “sport for all”.
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
I wonder how the victims' families feel about this?
What if it matters to them to identify and describe these crimes as what we are (just about, and thanks to
@MForstater
's fight for gender-critical belief) still allowed to call them in the UK: male violence against women? 2/2
The details of new Afghan laws are horrifying.
Fawzia Koofi (formerly of Afghan parliament) says international attitude that "this is normal", & general lack of reaction, has emboldened Taliban.
So depressing that internationalist feminism is so weak
I don't think rightwingers started sex/gender culture war in UK - though they are coopting resistance to sex denial into "anti-wokism".
i think trans rights activists started it: trying to replace sex with gender id - & condemning objections as transphobic - *is* culture war
Standing up for women's and girls' rights and resources, including rights to single-sex spaces and sports - as allowed for in the Equality Act 2010 - is not "culture wars" or "war on woke". It is feminism. 1/2
in other gender-critical employment case news, a judge has rejected Hachette's request for 2 authors who asked to be moved away from
@suladoyle
's imprint, on grounds of her views, to be granted anonymity in her tribunal
The misogynist hyperbole on this topic is so out of hand that it's hard to know if/when/why to react (or ignore) but in case it means anything to
@jk_rowling
or anyone else that journalists like me speak up: I think Strangio's is an absolutely appalling, libellous remark
Struggling for right words to congratulate
@JoPhoenix1
. Fantastic she has won her case but so dismaying that a lesbian, feminist criminology professor was put through this hell *by the Open University* because she doesn't believe and won't pretend biological sex doesn't matter
have received the Tribunal’s judgment in my case against the OU today: I won! The Tribunal found that I was discriminated against and harassed because of my gender critical beliefs, and that I was constructively dismissed.
I'm extremely pleased
@AdrianRamsay
has been elected as Green MP in Suffolk. He's only one of party's new MPs to have offered clear, unequivocal backing for Cass Review
@arusbridger
@ayeshahazarika
Wouldn't you be angry in Maya F's position?
Meanwhile people who didn't stand up for her and feel bad about it project all sorts of feelings on to her - so she's the bully.
But Maya is the person who lost her job & an employment tribunal - for the sake of feminist ideas. Hero.
This is biology denial. I think is related to climate change denial. Both ideologies are very strong in US & other rich countries with huge CO2 emissions (Australia, Canada). Both are powered by fantasies of human omnipotence, determination to deny boundaries imposed by nature
The American Civil Liberties Union, arguing before a U.S. federal district court in California that there is no such thing as the material reality of biological sex.
Additional information here:
Brilliant to see
@ShabanaMahmood
, shadow justice sec, crediting
@jk_rowling
for "leading the fight in this area" [sex-based rights & free speech for women] - because it's true. Along with
@MForstater
& others that's exactly what she has done
Just been no-platformed from this event commemorating 50 yrs since Ruskin WLM conference because of my connection w
@Womans_Place_UK
.
My mum and dad met at Ruskin. My mum is a proud feminist. So am I. My first academic article was about the WLM.
It's crazy but this is really happening, just as the article says. Makes me furious but also really sad. Love being a mum, daughter, sister, hope to be a grandma one day. I do not believe that the denial of sex has anything to do with justice or progress
I am horrified to see Nancy Kelley of
@stonewalluk
likening these views to anti-semitism - widely understood as an explicitly murderous prejudice. My father & one side of my family is Jewish. I'm a committed lifelong anti-racist. 2/3
The thing is that while some people honestly think women sticking up for our rights are "useful idiots" other people - me included - think gender identity activism in its current form & political demands that go with it (eg inclusion must trump single-sex privacy & fairness) are
It's blindingly obvious to anyone with cursory knowledge of sex offending (& the centuries-long male entitlement to female bodies, now fashionably dubbed "the right to sex") that self-ID rules will be exploited.
The vilification of feminists who oppose it is viscerally misogynist
The thing that never happens, and women are bigots/idiots/hysterical for raising concerns about, has just happened again. Male sex offender identifies as a woman to gain access to vulnerable female victims, this time in a women’s shelter.
I could not personally agree more with this editorial from my Observer colleagues.
"Sturgeon's reforms would allow any man who signs a declaration to have enhanced legal rights to access spaces where women undress and are vulnerable."
Yes it really matters that neither Biden or Harris dares point out that it's WOMEN & GIRLS who have lost the right to abortion in Texas.
Gender ideology has done this, by insisting trans inclusion takes priority over female people's right to name ourselves.
It is a disaster.
But this glossy Hollywood promotion of a "having your breasts removed could save your life" narrative (with children's lives referenced explicitly) is disturbing.
What I see (among other things) is capital looking for places to flow and finding human bodies =natural resources
90% of nurses are women. yet their Royal College is revealed by inquiry to be “a misogynistic environment in which loud and abrasive male voices dominate"
I am really sad that the brilliant Suzanne is leaving us & I'm proud to have been her colleague and one of her editors. I will miss her voice and arguments and wonderful way of putting things alot
and while i'm on the subject it was a woman in a long skirt who got sale of alcohol to children banned as well - Nancy Astor, a Tory. First private member's bill by a woman to become law (1923).
And why was that?
Because historically, the *humanity* of bodies with vaginas was neglected.
And by refusing to call us women you are guilty of that same neglect
Our new issue is here! On the cover—'Periods on display' and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and
#PeriodPoverty
.
Plus,
@WHO
air quality guidelines, low
#BackPain
management, community-acquired bacterial
#meningitis
, and more. Read:
Standing up for women's rights & resources, including women-only spaces valued by women, isn't "culture wars". It's politics in a democracy. Ever since uk women were allowed to vote on same terms as men less than 100 years ago, politicians have sought to attract them...
Bronzefield, the private women's prison where a teenager gave birth alone in a cell & her baby died.
And now where a male trans murderer, 43, has reportedly had drunken sex with a "much younger" woman.
Prison thinks it's "forward-thinking".
How about institutionally abusive?
Male trans prisoner has been caught having sex with female inmate. The *inevitable* consequence of a mixed sex prison policy
“This inmate had free rein to move around, mingling with the other women, even though she had her functioning male parts.
1/2 The superiority complex of US feminists (and not just this one) is something to behold. Their country elected an abuser, has no federal entitlement to maternity pay, has never elected a female leader (unlike India, Brazil, Pakistan, UK etc), is restricting abortion rights
@HelenTime
@LordPhilofBrum
@EHRC
Honestly whole states in the US have what the UK benightedly calls "self-ID" as if that's something that every human does not have a right to do by virtue of inalienable liberties, and literally NOTHING has gone wrong. But equality under law protects trans people from violence.
This is absolutely right.
And it's grotesque.
Women and girls (in Afghanistan & elsewhere) are oppressed on the basis of sex, by men who believe it is in their interests - as a sex - to be in control.
The American-led project of imposing "gender identity" on the whole world is a
From the Amnesty website. It's just insulting to the women and girls of Afghanistan - and actually everywhere - to even hint at their oppression under the Taliban being due to 'identifying as a girl' rather than being born female.
@amnesty
Sharron Davies is a hero. The victim of cheating herself (she got silver at Olympics, losing out to a swimmer who later admitted doping) she's spoken up again & again on behalf of younger female athletes. Including at a huge public meeting organised by
@Womans_Place_UK
#feminism
I believe the courts are the only place where we will be ‘allowed’ to show all the actual scientific proof that male physical advantage under present IOC rules are not eliminated (in the slightest) thus not giving equality in sport, our human right, to females
#sexnotgender4sport
🙌 It's taken 6 years but this grassroots feminist group & allies have smashed it - overturning consensus (led by Stonewall + Tory govt but backed by many) that sex-based rights (based on recognition of discrimination against female people) are old-hat & could be overwritten by
STATEMENT: Labour signals key changes in policy:
Congratulations to
@LabWomenDec
and all the individual members of
@UKLabour
for their persistence over many years in winning this significant change in position from Labour. /1