The loss of freedom of speech, of sidelining women and biology

Let's hope this idea doesn't make its way over from America:

"Children, as young as 14, who question their gender should be given irreversible cross-sex hormones, a global trans organisation has said.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which is based in the United States, also says girls as young as 15 should be allowed to undergo breast removal surgery should they wish.

The organisation claims it is unethical for medical professionals to stop children receiving the treatment if they want to stop developing into the wrong sex.

It believes the age at which children should be able to receive treatment like this should be lowered to 14.

This is despite criticism from some medical professionals and rights groups hitting out at what they see as a leap into the medical unknown.

Dr David Bell, who wrote a whistleblowing report into the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock Centre in London, said there is 'no evidence' to support the claims made by WPATH.

In the UK teenagers must be 16 or over and been on puberty blockers for at least a year before they can take cross-sex hormones, with the NHS saying children who show signs of gender dysphoria must meet strict criteria before being referred for this.

Among those critical of these rules is Keira Bell, an IT engineer who was put on puberty blockers as a 16-year-old girl, before later having a double mastectomy."

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10926295/Children-question-gender-given-irreversible-hormones-says-trans-organisation.html

I dont mind him. I dont agree with some of his views but I like what he says on freedom of speech etc.

Ah, I haven’t followed him closely, so I wasn’t aware. I knew he’d been ‘cancelled’ although he still seems to be vociferous!

He doesnt really understand the debate though so am not sure how helpful his intervention is. He sees it as a concept from the left, it's really not as simple as that. The Tories here held completely the same view as the left on this issue until very recently. Those challenging it are left wing feminists. He was right very early on about the issue of compelled speech though.

An academic in Scotland, Sharon Cowan, has proposed that people should be able to change gender as many times as they like throughout their lives. How convenient for them.

He’s a Marmite figure but Jordan Peterson has an article today in the Torygraph on the trans debate. He’s very critical

I agree, but I'd sooner not have my personal spaces invaded by any male, on a wind up or not, that rocked up, saying he was a woman.

I'm happy for him to keep his "reality", but not if they impede on the rights of biological women.?

To be clear - I don't mean that anyone should have to stick to stereotypes.

No chance! Far too 'intrusive'.

In my view, trans people should own their reality and their biological sex.
If anyone can't face reality, they need psychological help - not for the whole of society to join in their pretence.

Perhaps some sort or card or certificate could be developed for the genuine cases.

In order for me to use a disabled bay, I have to produce my blue badge. To get a Disabled Persons Freedom Pass, I had to prove my disability, to be issued with a card. I have to use the card to travel.

No one suggested my privacy was being invaded by this, so an entitlement card for trans would be no different.?

This is exactly my take on the whole transgender Bill issue. Not that all trans people are somehow inherently wicked and to be hated, feared and hounded , but that the attitude is that anyone who claims to be "really a woman" is automatically 100% genuine and saintly, so there is no need for built-in safeguards against fraudsters, no way to check their authenticity without accusations of invading their privacy and discriminating against them.

Women-only spaces, like the communal changing rooms at a swimming-pool, are, by definition, no-go areas for men. So if 1 % of people with male bodies, appearances, libidos and attitudes are "really women" and have a certificate to prove it, that still leaves leaves 99% of the male population who should not be admitted.

How do you exclude those of that 99% who are using the loopholes to get into a free peepshow if you can't legally ask the 1% who possess a certificate to show it?

And how do you ensure that those who apply for a certificate really DO suffer from such stress at their non-matching DNA and inner desires that they cannot continue as they are? A woman who feels she cannot continue with a pregnancy has to get two separate medical opinions. A man who feels that he cannot continue as a man (or a woman who feels the equivalent) should also have to get two opinions.

This is an interesting article, with special pertinence to Scotland. Didn’t want to start a new thread.

www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2022/06/14/what-finance-can-tell-us-about-the-trans-self-id-debate/

So the NYT has even realised that it may not all be pink and blue and rainbows and has hit on what some have been saying for years. There is a social madness - a social contagion amongst kids. None of this would matter if they weren’t then lopping off the breasts of girls as young as 13 and giving the, chemo drugs as “affirmation”.

“As they wrote in their December draft chapter, part of the rise in trans identification among teenagers could be a result of what they called “social influence,” absorbed online or peer to peer. The draft mentioned the very small group of people who detransition (stop identifying as transgender), saying that some of them “have described how social influence was relevant in their experience of their gender during adolescence.” In adolescence, peers and culture often affect how kids see themselves and who they want to be. Their sense of self can consolidate, or they can try on a way of being that doesn’t prove right in the long run as the brain further develops the capacity for thinking long-term. To make matters more complicated, as a group, the young people coming to gender clinics have high rates of autism, depression, anxiety and eating or attention-deficit disorders. Many of them are also transgender, but these other issues can complicate determining a clear course of treatment.

Without stating them outright, the draft raises tricky questions: Could some of the teenagers coming out as trans today be different from the adults who transitioned in previous generations? For them the benefits are well established and the rate of regret is very low. How many young people, especially those struggling with serious mental-health issues, might be trying to shed aspects of themselves they dislike?”

I agree elegran it is shocking how captured people are, trusting the Stonewall brand through its past legalisation of gay rights. It has now become quite homophobic and misogynistic.
Although misogyny or any insults towards female sex are not considered a hate crime offending a transwoman is. Transwomen just have to report their feelings were hurt for you to be contacted by the police and for you to have a police record for a hate crime. Police are taught at stonewall training seminars where they teach unscientific rubbish, funded by us all.

It costs £2,500 a year to be listed as one of Stonewall's "Diversity Champions". An old list contains 850 of them, and more have probably been recruited by now, so from this one source, Stonewall gets more than £2,125,000 of its income of over £8,000,000 a year. They also charge (in Feb 2021) £210 per delegate to the conferences they run to further their project, and they sell rainbow promotional items for their 850 Champions to distribute to employees, clients and the public.

They are lobbyists, that is their reason for existing, and that is what they do, financed by the organisations that they are influencing to work for them to achieve their aims.

The trouble is Bomogran, the term transwomen is a very big umbrella including transsexuals, people who successfully live as women often having had their penises removed, so deeply has the issue meant. No one I have ever known has ever objected to them, in fact they were most often glorified and feted.

But it also includes men who just like dressing up as stereotypical women and are often autogynophiles. These people are not so easily welcomed into private female spaces where women and girls might well feel vulnerable and at risk. Common sense.

And then there are those male athletes who suddenly change sex, win and deprive female athletes.

I’ve always been for what used to be called gender- bending. Hurrah let’s get away from sexual stereotypes that have so inhibited women who did not want to conform especially to stiletto heeled false glamour… in fact that got taken over by men in drag, they could be better women that we could. And now, if they wish, they can say they are women. They can be what they want, disregarding the opinions of women as that is deemed hateful.

And then of course there is the gender gap, the necessity of help by favouring women and not excluding them in some positions of power, as they have been historically, men should not be using positive discrimination. Quite honestly they are taking the p***.

It’s really not as simple, or fair, or virtuous to say TWAW. They are men that in their individual ways need care and attention but not automatic acceptance as the other sex.

And even that was tolerated by most women until TW’s decided to change language, to change the law to deprive women of their name as adult human females. And whereas no patriarchal institution has included transmen, even maternity hospitals and nhs cervical cancer information sites have avoided using the word woman so as not to offend men. And yet not the word men when discussing prostate problems. Men are never excluded.
You couldn’t make it up.

Source for previous post is www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/01/submission-and-compliance/

There are two points to note here. The first is that the demands Stonewall makes go beyond what the law requires. Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, as is gender reassignment (which doesn’t get a mention in Stonewall’s catechism). But “gender identity” and “gender expression” are not, and it’s far from clear what they mean. If “gender expression” is about performing gender stereotypes – whether of dress, make-up, behaviour, interests, or in any other way – then it is impossible and undesirable to ban all discrimination on grounds of gender expression. Some workplaces will justifiably require long hair to be tied back or covered; high heels will be inappropriate or dangerous in many environments. Interrupting, ignoring and talking over women is a core part of many men’s gender expression, but employers are entitled to – and indeed should – take steps to control it.

The second point is that Edinburgh University publishes all its equality policies, www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/about/policies. What’s striking about that list is that gender reassignment is the only protected characteristic that has its own dedicated policy. There is no “Sex Equality Policy,” no “Disability Equality Policy,” no “Race Equality Policy,” no “Religion or Belief Equality Policy.” There isn’t even a general “LGBT Equality Policy.” But there is a special “Trans Equality Policy.”

I have found a list of Stonewall's Diversity Champions, which shows the extent of Stonewall's influence on Government departments and other national institutions.

sex-matters.org/stonewall-champions-list/

To see what becoming a Diversity Champion involves, and applying to join their the Workplace Equality Index see

www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/01/submission-and-compliance/

"It’s not completely clear from Stonewall’s website how the two programmes interact, but at any rate they explain that one of the benefits an employer gets with membership of the Champions scheme is “in-depth, tailored feedback” on their submission to the Workplace Equality Index. The Champions evidently get their money’s worth out of this feedback, because every single one of the top 100 employers on the Workplace Equality Index is also a Diversity Champion."

" thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request . . . we can see the whole of Edinburgh University’s 2019 submission"

I can't help feeling that such power should not be in the hands of a lay organisation.

BomoGran

I consider trans women to be women. I am quite shocked at the vitriol in this thread. I have come to this opinion after thought, research, and talking to my non-trans-phobic daughter.

There are plenty of non-transphobic people on this very thread, who have no problem with 'genuine' transpeople, but object to the way in which self-id allows people such as the Waitrose driver upthread to intimidate women, particularly when they are in a vulnerable situation, such as undressed in a changing room, in a hospital bed or a prison cell.

Perhaps you could talk to us about how your thoughts and research have persuaded you that the power of 'feelings' can overcome biology to transform one sex into the other?

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202206/medium-565491-screenshot-20220615-121524.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202206/medium-606701-screenshot-20220615-1222142.png

"Good to see Naomi of @SexMattersOrg
getting it on record that some men cross-dress & want to be seen as women for erotic purposes & that women should not be co-opted into their fantasies.

It seems some of the gallery behind her found this smirk-worthy."

mobile.twitter.com/forwomenscot/status/1536686288392400896?s=21&t=CNH97lYZrOLiZFuSqoO-Kw&fbclid=IwAR01ppQDsj8es0Go8jkLqoYoSs7-ZEvpj4jsXO1CBdVfn0FV3DsEY9W8uBA

I consider trans women to be women. I am quite shocked at the vitriol in this thread. I have come to this opinion after thought, research, and talking to my non-trans-phobic daughter.

People can choose whether to shop at Waitrose or not.

I find it more of a problem over someone getting fined for having an opinion on social media.?

I think what chills me most about that account is that when she told him to get out of her house it was after he had made some reference of noting that her daughter would have to get used to the idea of him being in same changing room because he was a transwoman ...and the way he said...'in my own time' that is so creepy. This is a woman's house in which she lives with her teenage daughter being taunted ...and he has the nerve and confidence in the daft ideology to report her...and they took his word..it is so creepy.

They will soon go out of business if they only deliver to people who keep their opinions to themselves.
It seems they only support opinions that discriminate against AHF.
Am I wrong in believing that an AHF is still allowed to refer to herself as a woman?
Or has Waitrose gone so far down the slippery path that they believe it should only apply to males now?

FarNorth

I hope that a lot of people are removing their custom from Waitrose, and advising them why.

Regardless of which view anyone supports, a delivery driver shouldn't be questioning a customer about a poster in their home and Waitrose shouldn't be chastising a customer when they have no idea what happened.

Absolutely, FN.

It's good that they consider their staff, and would support them if they were abused; but would they threaten people who have political party posters (or are wearing T shirts) in their own homes?

They will soon go out of business if they only deliver to people who keep their opinions to themselves.