Feminism

The New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard is set to make history and headlines, plus a considerable amount of controversy, after being confirmed as the first transgender athlete to ever compete at the Olympic Games.

The 43-year-old will be a live medal contender when she competes in the
women’s super heavyweight category on 2 August.

That’s a decade and more older than most of the other competitors. Which is a useful if very rough guide to that difference in the male physique. To give competitors 10 years and still be competitive?

Gold medallists at this weight have been, since 2000 when the category started, 21, 25, 25, 24, 27.

But of course there’s no such things as sex or even biology, is there?

Needs a bit of a polish this:

The applicants claim that the law contravenes three articles in the European convention on human rights: the right to life; prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment; right to a private life. One of the arguments is that the law puts women’s lives in danger by driving prostitution underground; that they are more likely to face violence from sex buyers because only “bad” punters will take the risk; and that women have the right to make autonomous decisions to sell sex.

There is no evidence for these claims – on the contrary, research in those countries that have adopted the abolitionist model has shown that rates of violence and homicide perpetrated on women by pimps and punters is far lower than in decriminalised regimes.

Note the “s” on “claims” in the second paragraph. And yet the point she doesn’t address is whether adult consenting women do or do not have the right to make autonomous decisions to sell sex.

To which the correct answer is yes, of course they do. Or at least should. Hey, even ring it around with all sorts of constraints. Poor women can’t because they’re being driven into it by economics, druggies can’t because addiction, kiddies certainly can’t anyway and so on. But clean in the addiction sense women who desire to rent out orifices because they desire to? Who in buggery is Julie Bindel to tell them they may not? Should not – just fine, Bindel away at that – but not may not?

But then that sort of skipping over logic is the only thing that allows Bindel’s case to gel……

Ministers are facing demands to explain why thousands of convicted sexual offenders across England and Wales have avoided prison.

An Observer investigation found that adults convicted of sexually assaulting children under 13, or of engaging in sexual activity with underage teenagers, are among those who have not been jailed.

An Observer analysis of thousands of convictions shows that between 2013 and 2020, 14,530 of the 44,721 adults sentenced for sexual offences were given suspended or community sentences – almost one in three. Just over 60% were immediately sent to prison, with the rest dealt with in other ways, such as conditional discharges and fines.

It is fun seeing how “bang ’em up” becomes the mantra when it’s politically convenient to say so and an absolute horror when it comes to the politically inconvenient. Viricide, for example, is to be understood, copping a feel means jail?

Currently, people cannot obtain a full Gender Recognition Certificate to legally change their gender without the consent of their spouse.

But MPs on the Commons women and equalities select committee are holding an inquiry looking at how laws could make changing gender easier, as part of a wider probe into reforms of the Gender Recognition Act.

The LGBT charity Stonewall told MPs it “strongly urges” scrapping the spousal consent provision, citing the 84.9 per cent who disagreed with it in the Government’s recent GRA consultation.

It’s not so much that he spouse can stop you getting the chop. It’s that they get a divorce – a right to one – if permission isn’t granted. This is opposed by Stonewall.

Hmm, OK.

So, another contention is that sexual attraction is concerned with gender, not natal sex. Thus, those lesbians who do not date the ladypenis are being hateful bigots. Because the ladypenis is attached to a woman, look, the certificate says so, the declaration is that this is a woman. So, not dating such, when a woman attracted to women, is bigotry.

But when it comes to marriage this logic doesn’t seem to hold. Because – just to pick an example – a man changing to being a woman in a previously heterosexual marriage turns that former heterosexual woman into a lesbian. Because sexual attraction is to gender, not sex, right?

But people should not have the possibility of the dissolution of the marriage when they are forcibly turned into a lesbian? Or even from into het if it’s a lesbian partner that does a Freddie? And so on through the permutations?

Nice logic you’ve got there Stonewall. Be a pity if anyone bothered to examine it.

When discussing anything it’s important to start from reality. Only then can logic be used to untangle those skeins concerning what we might do:

The figures are stark: the latest Home Office data shows 52,210 rapes were recorded in England and Wales in 2020, but only 843 resulted in a charge by the end of the year, that’s fewer than 1 in 60 cases.

It is not true that 52,210 rapes were recorded in 2020 in England and Wales.

There were 52,210 allegations of rape made in England and Wales in 2020 which were then recorded by the police.

It is not true that every allegation of rape is, or was, a rape.

This error in the starting point leads to such as this:

and a special commission on juries to consider a range of things, including juror education.

These are urgent issues to be addressed, but the review’s answer can not be that rape is just a difficult crime to prosecute. In most rape cases, it is not a question of whether sexual intercourse occurred, but whether there was consent or not. This is what, the review claims, can lead to a focus on the victim and their “state of mind” during investigations and prosecutions.

Well, yes, given that the definition of the crime is what the possible victim’s state of mind was then the focus on defining the crime has to be on the possible victim’s state of mind was, doesn’t it?

Parents will be able to select ‘neutral’ gender when enrolling kids in secondary schools in Belgium this September, under plans designed to combat discrimination.

Eleven-year-olds will be grouped according to three genders – male, female and neutral – in the first phase of a plan expected to lead to a redesign of toilets, changing rooms and sports lessons.

Between 1 per cent and 3 per cent of adults and up to 75,000 children in Belgium are transgender, according to estimates by LGBT groups.

One to three percent? The incidence of the T is greater than that of the L or the G? Te veel, toch?

Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools.

The usual idiocies over language. The distinctions will still be made by everyone just as with the Falklanders. If they can’t be called Bennies then they’ll be called Stills. From Cretin to ‘Mong to short bus rider, the same sentiment, meaning, is there. Stop using one method of marking the classification and given that humans will keep making the classification then another method of marking it will be used.

Then they get really lunatic. What’s the one part of schooling where it’s entirely obvious, plain, simple, that there are the two sexes?

The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport.

Depending upon age and sport that’s between doesn’t matter a damn and murder. Rounders at age 6 it won’t make much difference, boxing or rugby at age 17 and it’s likely that someone will die. And it won’t be one of the lads either.

To be a member of the Stonewall School & College Champion schools, establishments have to pay a yearly fee, starting at £150 plus VAT for those with less than 100 pupils, and rising to £800 plus VAT for those with more than 2,000 learners.

But then this is all about the grift, isn’t it? 32,000 schools in the UK, that’s an awful lot of fees to be collected.

The cynical attack on Stonewall is a reminder of the need to stand up for trans rights
Freddy McConnell

Well, yes. Freddy is the bird who became a man, then stopped taking the drugs, had – as in carried to term – a baby then wanted to be listed as the father, not mother. Also, probably the Guardian worker who claimed that he felt his life was in danger in an unsafe working environment because Suzanne Moore wrote a piece muttering about not being able to change sex or summat.

Good luck to Freddy and how he lives his life. No, really, it’s his life to live and we all wish him well. It’s just that his views on this subject might not be entirely and wholly mainstream. Perhaps, you know?

A woman who poured a mix of boiling water and sugar over her husband to “extract vengeance” after a family row has been found guilty of his murder.

Corinna Smith, 59, attacked 81-year-old Michael Baines while he was in bed at their home in Highfield Road in Neston, Cheshire, on 14 July 2020.

He suffered extensive burns and died five weeks later in hospital.

Smith denied murdering her husband of 38 years but she was found guilty by a jury at Chester Crown Court.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Smith, who was also her husband’s carer, had been involved in a dispute with him and another family member prior to the killing.

Shortly after midnight, she took a bucket from her garden, boiled up two kettles of water and mixed the water with three bags of sugar, the CPS said.

A row, not years of abuse. But of course femicide is always about the women being the victims.

Married men who don’t help out around the house tend to earn higher salaries than husbands who do more domestic chores, according to a new study.

Who would have thought such a thing could happen?

But if you don’t accept that there’s a difference between men and women, then what does it mean to be gay or lesbian? Lesbian friends tell me that 40% of the profiles on lesbian dating sites are male. And it’s like a bad joke — a man saying, “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body”. But they’re being subjected to that in their spaces, and their dating sites and their groups. And they’re being told that if they don’t accept that someone can be a lesbian in a man’s body, then that they’re a bigot.

This idea that gender is what’s in your head, well, fine, OK then. But it does seem off to try to insist that someone else’s sexual response should be driven by what’s in your head.

And that 40% number…..

It’s just occurred to me. This ladypenis thing, the idea that op or not, lesbians should date transwomen.

“The demand is that her sexual desire should be determined by what is going on in your head?”

That is, the madness being caused by a womb not being well used:

The four-week “learning journey” recommends that staff read Me Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism, a book by Alison Phipps, a professor of gender studies at the University of Sussex.

Summarising the book’s central premise, the Oxfam document says white feminists need to ask themselves whether they are causing harm when they fight sexual violence.

It then links to Prof Phipps’s Twitter account and a thread which summarises the main themes of the book, including: “White feminist tears deploy white woundedness, and the sympathy it generates, to hide the harms we perpetuate through white supremacy.”

Not that we could ever do this but an interesting thought. What about if you only ever got to teach grievance studies if you actually had children. Enough so you had at least one of each – that’s two for the hard of thought – and raised them yourself.

There’s a certain thought that actual, long term, exposure to the innate differences would rather explode much of the varied subjects. The people doing the teaching, all this critical thinking, just don’t have much experience of actual human beings.

Amassing “nudes” of female pupils has become a “collection game” in schools, an Ofsted report has warned.

Youngsters see sharing naked images as “part of life”, according to inspectors who were commissioned by ministers to investigate safeguarding in schools in the wake of “rape culture” allegations.

Ofsted found that sexual harassment has become “normalised” for schoolchildren and they often do not report it because it happens so frequently.

Boys are sharing “nudes” on platforms such as WhatsApp and Snapchat,

Or, given that the technology exists, who doesn’t expect this to be common among boys? And girls, for that matter? And whose vision of humanity precludes this happening if the tech is available?

Statistically, it’s been shown that if a woman presents with chronic pain that doesn’t have an immediately diagnostic cause, she’s more likely to be seen as having a mental health condition than to be referred for further tests. She’s much more likely to be dismissed with a recommendation of a sedative or an antidepressant medicine than an analgesic or opioid pain medication, which men would be offered.

What we haven’t done, I don’t think, is looked at those myths and asked, “Well okay, how has this actually interrupted and steered how we understand women’s health?” Those myths perpetuate because we just haven’t spent enough money, dedicated enough research, given enough visibility to representing women in knowledge in the contemporary era of medicine.

There is a logical possibility here. That more cases of chronic pain in women do have mental rather than physical causes when compared to men.

I don’t insist that this is true, only that it is logically possible. Therefore it’s something that needs to be studied in order to decide upon it.

The history of the pill is just one fascinating episode in this richly detailed, wide-ranging and enraging history of how conventional medicine has pathologised, dismissed and abused women from antiquity to the present. A male-dominated medical establishment, influenced by religious, cultural and political ideas about women’s bodies – particularly with regard to sexuality and reproduction – has inflicted immeasurable suffering on women and girls, often with a sense of righteous zeal.

Well, yes, now compare and contrast with when the wimmins are put in charge. Try getting pain relief out of a British midwife for example. Doncha know that pain is natural?

Kamala Harris and a High-Risk, High-Reward Presidential Résumé
For the vice president, another run at the Oval Office is a near certainty. How her current responsibilities help or hurt that bid is an open question.

Sure, powerful men have patronage to distribute, some young women take part in that process.

Shrug.

But it’s going to be an interesting question, isn’t it? Will the American public vote – in their 70 millions or so necessary to win the Presidency – for Willie Brown’s taxpayer fed tottie?

Hmm.

Single parents are no longer a tiny minority: one in four families are single-parent households; about 90% are with a single mother.

That’s a significant change in what, two generations?

Stonewall has advised organisations to replace the term mother with “parent who has given birth” to help boost their ranking on an equality leaderboard, The Telegraph can reveal.

The controversial charity has advised employers wishing to be included on their Workplace Equality Index that they must remove all gendered language, and allow those who self-identify as a woman to use female toilets and changing rooms.

Sure, there will be some who do this and hope to move up the leaderboard. There will be others who look at this and shout “Sod it”.

And the more the push grates against common mores the more will say sod it. This being a general truth of course. Whatever might be just and righteous is one thing. How far you can push people toward what you claim is such depends upon what other people think is such already.

That is, what people think is barking mad depends upon what they currently believe, not what might actually be true. Reach too far and it becomes counter-productive.

Of course Stonewall is barking mad on this subject but that’s a different point from the one I’m making.

I can’t begin to tell you the utter heartbreak I feel some days as I watch my children playing on the monkey bars. Statistics flash through my brain and I plead with the universe: please don’t let my kids be one of them.

Ninety-two per cent* of adolescent girls will have period pain and a third miss work and school because of it.

One in nine women will have endometriosis and will suffer an average of 6.2 years before being diagnosed.

They will be more likely to suffer from a myriad of pain conditions just because of their gender.

Their pain won’t be believed or treated in the same way that it would be if they were boys.

They will only earn 87 cents to the dollar of the boys when they grow up.

Feminists – actually, just realists – shouted for decades that sure, periods happen but they’re just one of those things. They may incommode but they don’t incapacitate. So, stop with this patriarchy of not allowing women to go to work, give us economic liberation now.

So, now that economic liberation is largely here – sure, we might whine a bit about a few rough edges but what is left is near entirely a matter of personal choices by individuals – we get the feminists of this new generation whining about how periods are the most appalling thing ever and why aren’t you all paying attention and making allowances?

I still remember my first really painful period. I was 15 and literally thought I was dying. The GP told me it was just retrograde menstruation and sent me home. It was the beginning of 17 years of being fobbed off, not heard, not understood. I was told that maybe the pain wasn’t that bad, I was told to have a baby (which does not cure endometriosis).

Well, here’s a thing. No one has said it does cure it. But endometriosis is uterine tissue – that lining that reacts over the cycle – appearing in bits that aren’t the surface of the uterus. It is also often enough true that having a baby reduces the impact and or severity of periods and or period pain. The having a baby doesn’t move around those misplaced uterine bits but it might well reduce the pain of them therefore.

But back to the major point here. Feminism used to be about shut up and get out of the way, bastards. Now it seems to be about how poor little me deserves special attention. It’s not entirely obvious that this is a change for the better.