Gender Studies

Let’s do a sex/gender post. It’s been a few days.

First, remember that most of my posts on this topic are gathered here. One of my goals for this week is to reorganize and update that page, so if your distressed by the mess once you get over there, come back later and it should be a lot better.

Here’s my Gender Critical Twitter list.

Secondly: you can’t change your sex. You can’t.

Some links. There’s no rationale to the order here. I’m just going to pull them and post them in the order I’ve saved them over the past week or so.

Reminder: I offer these links as a way of reminding everyone that there is no inevitability about this matter, there are dark and complex truths that the manipulative narrative conceaal, and to…not be taken in or guilted into believing that Christian charity demands that you accept a guy’s assertion that he’s a woman or, even worse, address a young person’s mental distress by allowing them to destroy their healthy bodies.

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Kara Dansky offers a free report on her visit to Athens, Ohio, where last weekend protesters gathered at a knick-knack shop owned by a proud TERF. Her report contains glimmers of hope:

Anyway, about 45 minutes after the protest started, it mostly disbanded, with several of the protesters walking up the street to the county courthouse in order to, I assume, continue making idiots of themselves and calling for a boycott of the store. Some of the protesters hung on, just sort of standing around chatting with one another.

Shortly after that, a couple (a man and a woman) entered the store to shop and to express support for Amy’s position. They were quite friendly and criticized the protesters for being “children” who “have no arguments.” So that was nice.

I decided to have lunch at the restaurant that’s located next door to the store. As I left the store, a woman protester came up to me and yelled to her friends, “LOOK! A REAL LIVE TERF IN THE WILD!” I’m not at all sure what point she was trying to make. It’s not at all unusual for me or other TERFs to, well, go outside. She put her camera up to me, and I assume she was filming me. She said, “Your name is Kara, right?” I confirmed that it is, and then she said, “I assume that I can’t listen to your arguments until I see your genitals, isn’t that right, according to TERF logic?” I said, “No, that makes no sense at all.” Then she ran away.

Today, Dansky has another post on a Massachusetts Congresswoman’s offspring being arrested at a protest. The news reports describe the person as the “non-binary daughter” – and the person is a biological male, to boot. The piece is subscriber-only, so of course I’ll respect that, but will simply quote one paragraph:

Jared Dowell is a man, plain and simple. If he weren’t, he would be female. The media is pretending that he is female when it refers to him as Clark’s “daughter.” Again, this is not surprising in today’s climate, where the media routinely refers to men as women if the man in question claims to have a woman identity (i.e., “is transgender”). But they are also saying that he (“she”) “is nonbinary.” This entire episode illustrates just how nonsensical all of the “gender identity” stuff is. 

There is no such thing as a male nonbinary daughter. 

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First, if you haven’t already, check out Glinner’s weekly update on the War on Women. It’s the usual collection of reports of men attacking women for speaking up for women’s rights at public events, a period tracker app allowing men to enter the app’s discussion boards, and then defending the choice; men demanding access to women’s gyms and locker rooms, male criminals deciding they’re women, Scottish politicians (female handmaidens to the cause, of course) being photographed at a trans-rally in in front of signs that say things like “Decapitate TERFS!” You know, the usual. Guys…be kind.

50-year-old Albert Caballero is currently incarcerated in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison. In 2019 he was convicted of abducting and raping his own care worker, a 25-year-old woman who was so traumatised by the attack that she has not been able to return to work.

A senior source at the prison has revealed that Caballero recently changed his name to Claire, demands to be supplied with make-up and is claiming to be a woman. Furthermore, he has bragged to fellow inmates that he intends to move to a women’s prison prior to his release.

Having reached the halfway point in his eight year sentence, it is thought that Caballero intends to apply to the Parole Board for release.

Caballero is the second incarcerated Scottish sex offender to suddenly start ‘identifying as a woman’ in a week. How long before they all start catching on?

The second sex offender referred to up there is a man who was yesterday convicted of raping two women – while identifying as a man, of course – who now “identifies” as a woman, and for the moment is being housed in a women’s prison. (And will his crime be recorded as man or woman’s crime? Hmmm.)

I wish I could put spoilers on potentially offensive material, but I don’t know if it’ possible in WordPress. So sorry, not sorry for this, but you really just have to see it. Remember: most men who “identify” as women are biologically intact males. A percentage have surgery, but it’s horrible surgery (split open the penis, invert it, create an open wound, etc…) plus, of course, for many of these men the “gender euphoria” (aka sexual turn-on) from seeing themselves as a woman is precisely the point. If you chop off your bits, you can’t have that when you skirt-go-spinny or get yourself into a woman’s space with the girlz. Did you know that there’s a whole subgenre of videos of trans-identifying males filming themselves masturbating in women’s restrooms and such? Sorry to be so direct, and you probably don’t want to check my work, but it’s true. Be Kind.

I’ll make it small so it’s not so gross. You can see the original at (of course) the Daily Mail.

Bryson’s attorney used the gender business in his final argument:

‘If you accept that evidence, that she is transitioning, that she is aiming to continue on that path to becoming female gender, that goes a long way to acquitting her of these charges.’

Update (1/26) – the bloke will not be house in a woman’s prison, it’s been announced.

Update (1/26) – Kara Dansky has something to say (free to read)

Second, in his tweet, Sheridan seems to be making the case that the framing of the article is “disgusting” and states that “it’s awful that as a result trans people, in particular male to female, will get backlash from this and in harms [sic] way.” Please set aside any questions about what the phrase “trans people” might mean here and just note that Sheridan specifically refers to “male to female,” which means that he acknowledges that Graham/Bryson was, at least at one point, male. If Sheridan is saying that Graham/Bryson has always been a woman and also that Graham/Bryson was once male, then Sheridan is effectively saying that Graham/Bryson (a convicted rapist) was a “male woman” before “she came out as trans.”

This is the absurdity of “gender identity.” It never stops getting stupider.

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City Journal has an excellent piece on mistakes to avoid in state legislation geared at youths and gender “affirming” procedures – noting several wrong turns in some currently proposed bills. It’s good.

Lawmakers can do much to protect children, restore parental authority, and mitigate the harms of ideological capture in the medical field. One of us, along with Manhattan Institute fellow John Ketcham, recently published an article outlining eight policy proposals states can adopt short of total bans. For states that do wish to pursue bans, the ideal is to limit those bans to minors, use civil rather than criminal penalties, include grandfather clauses for minors already on synthetic hormones, expand statutes of limitations for malpractice liability, and allow for private rights of action (against providers only). These proposals represent a more constructive way to regulate this issue.

You meet more perverts when you’re poor:

There is a whole universe out there that these women have never even conceived of. They’ve watched films about the poors, but no director has ever captured that desperate feeling of being compromised by having no money, no recourse, no authority, no protection.

“Women with money get harassed too!” I’m told, and I know. Because I am a woman with money now. You don’t have to tell me. And I’m not saying poor men are more likely to be perverts and paedos. I’m saying that any man, given the right set of circumstances, could be one. It’s a numbers game.

But the girls who make the rules now, they don’t see any reason why a couple of “bad apples” should prevent poor suffering homosexual men from being able to live their true authentic life in the body they deserve. They don’t believe you when you tell them that men are opportunists. Or worse, they think they know what you mean; they think about that one time at the museum.

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Some Europe-centered news and commentary:

French gender-critical feminists…assemble!

We are angry. We can’t stand the all-pervading hypocrisy. We live in an absurd time where the answer to the question “What is a woman?” does not seem self-evident to everyone. According to some media, academics, activists, political figureheads, and institutions, being a woman is now a feeling, not a biological reality.

Thus, in France, since 2016, the law has stated that any man who demonstrates that he self-identifies as feminine-gendered can become a woman on official paperwork, and vice versa. WTF? In some activist circles, a strange uneasiness sets in if anyone dares to assert that “trans women” are males… while being a male is precisely the prerequisite for being qualified as such.

We have moved from a universal feminism to an Orwellian feminism that is subservient to the gender identity ideology, where women no longer seem to be at the central of feminism, where x-phobia trials become the norm, and identity claims take precedence over living together. In the same way that Orwell wrote that “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”, men are now women.

Britain is becoming sick over the trans debate. Only facts can cure it

For in an age where identity is said to be everything, the identity and interests of women are under unprecedented attack. Just as surely as the failure of the police to root out widespread misogyny and abuses of power, and just as surely as the failure of wider society to confront and prevent violence against women and girls, so the political classes are failing women through this intellectually and legally confused progressive calamity.

To escape it, we need to go back to the beginning, and assert simple facts that many educated people claim not to know. A woman is an adult human female. The difference between women and men is biological. Men are bigger and stronger and can present a physical danger to women. They are more likely to be violent.

We should respect the few people who are genuinely diagnosed as gender dysphoric. We may choose to recognise them, through tightly defined laws, by their acquired gender. But we should ignore the radical activists pushing for more and instead listen to women. A society that tolerates misogyny, violence and threats is suffering a sickness – and only a heavy dose of reality will cure us.

With harsher language, the inimitable Brendan O’Neil at Spiked:

Sexist hate is a daily reality for women who question the idea that you can change sex. Witness those clips in which mobs of masked men yell ‘fucking scum’ and ‘fucking piece of shit’ at Kellie-Jay Keen and her gender-critical friends. See the rape and death threats visited upon JK Rowling every week. ‘You are next’, a lowlife said to her when she expressed sorrow over the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. Or just behold the low-level intimidation that attends virtually every gathering of ‘TERFs’. There will always be gangs of men outside gender-critical meetings; men horrified by the idea of women speaking among themselves about their rights; men who ridiculously believe that their feeling of ‘womanhood’ and badly applied lippy makes them women, too. Better women, in fact. As India Willoughby tweeted at the weekend, ‘I’m more of a woman than JK Rowling will ever be’. That’s misogyny, too. The idea that a man – yes, India’s a bloke – even does womanhood better than women is testament to the low view of womankind that’s been whipped up by the trans cult.

Any movement that attracts so many bigots really should have a word with itself. Any activist set that helps to make it fashionable again to call women witches really should engage in some self-reflection. For here’s the thing: while it might be the outliers of the trans cult who scream witch and issue death threats and say ‘suck my girldick’, their tirades only express with greater ferocity and spite the misogyny that is inherent to modern trans activism. The root idea of the contemporary trans movement – that ‘transwomen are women’ – is itself misogynistic. Its reduction of womanhood from a biological, social, relational phenomenon to a costume that anyone can pull on, even people with dicks, is profoundly sexist. It dehumanises women. It denies the specificity of their experiences. It turns womanhood into a feeling, something flimsy. So, yes, in saying that all it takes to become a woman is three months of wearing a dress, Sturgeon is contributing to the misogyny that motors 21st-century gender ideology.

The mantra ‘transwomen are women’ underpins the resurgence of misogynistic thinking. There is a traceable line from this mainstream chant to the fringe cries of ‘cunt’ aimed at any woman who says transwomen are not women; that there’s more to being a woman than feeling and image. The violent hatred for ‘TERFs’ might mostly come from unstable individuals online, but it expresses the sexism and intolerance that are absolutely key to trans activism more broadly, and in particular to its belief that a man can be a woman. We need a firmer fightback against the hatred for ‘TERFs’ and in defence of the things that are threatened by this new witch-hunt – women’s rights, freedom of speech and scientific truth.

Finally, another from City Journal. Abigail Shrier reports from California on the consequences of a slew of laws spearheaded by the vile Scott Wiener: a Predator’s Paradise.