173 quotes found
"I'd never thought about my gender identity before. It hadn't occurred to me that not being a "girly" girl meant I wasn't 100 per cent woman. The point, I've always believed, is to expand the categories "man" and "woman", to tear down pink and blue prisons. So a little girl can like trucks, spacemen, getting dirty and still be a girl; a boy can put on nail polish, play with dolls and be no less a boy."
"The International Olympic Committee's rule changes on transgender athletes have been applauded as a human rights victory. No longer will trans-females be required to have surgery. To take part in women’s events, they need only declare themselves female and keep their testosterone levels below 10 nmol/L for a year before competing. Arne Ljungqvist of the IOC’s medical committee welcomed this as "more flexible and more liberal". And it is great news — unless you are a woman athlete. Testosterone levels in healthy men range between 7.5 and 25 nmol/L. Normal levels in women range from 0.20 to 3 nmol/L. So a male-to-female trans athlete will be allowed to have more than three times the upper range of this performance-enhancing hormone than a born woman. And while taking female hormones reduces male muscle mass and bone density, many biological advantages remain. Men have bigger skeletons, longer stride, larger lung capacity, and a narrower pelvis — unhindered by female reproductive organs — all better suited for speed."
"TERF stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. But lately the definition has expanded to include any woman worried that permitting men who "self-identify" as female to enter women’s changing rooms or refuges unchallenged makes her less safe."
"So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: "It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her", came the reply."
"[T]rans demands and women’s rights are often in such clear and irreconcilable conflict. Take Martin Ponting, jailed in 1995 for raping two girls, one disabled. After cosmetic surgery, but still possessing male genitalia, Ponting, now called Jessica Winfield, was moved to Bronzefield women’s prison but after making unwanted sexual advances to inmates has been segregated. Are you appalled that a rapist is confined with women prisoners, mainly non-violent offenders and themselves often victims of male sexual abuse? Do you think the Soham murderer Ian Huntley should never be allowed to transfer even if, as reported, he calls himself "Lian"? Then you too are a TERF and deserve to be punched."
"So when is it OK to punch a woman? When she won’t do what you want; when you don’t like what she says. Some things never change."
"[T]he current trans movement is doctrinaire, uncompromising. Led by mainly older trans-women — ie born men — it won’t acknowledge women's rights or feelings. It fights for two principles. First, "self-definition": a person is the gender they "feel" inside, so a trans-woman "is" a woman even without physical change or while retaining male genitalia. Second, "affirmation": everyone must acknowledge this inner gender identity. Hence the right to waltz into women’s private spaces is sacrosanct."
"This craze to expedite gender transition in children goes against all clinical advice for "watchful waiting". The young brain evolves, children change their minds, puberty is troubling for many reasons. Yet the Scottish guidance allows no one to dispute a child's view, maybe acquired on Reddit and Tumblr, that he or she is in "the wrong body". Or to suggest that a child may simply be gay. The apparatus of medical transition, a hormone regime causing sterility, plus surgical removal of healthy tissue, is seen as wholly positive. PE teachers must tolerate girls using binders to strap down their hated breasts "which can lead to shortness of breath and can be painful during physical exertion" because they have "a positive impact on a young person's mental health". We are being ordered to endorse a practice reminiscent of Chinese foot-binding or the Victorian tight-lacing craze where girls fainted to achieve the tiniest waist. Should we also hand out fresh razor blades so self-harm wounds don’t go septic? Or "affirm" anorexics' delusions that they are fat?"
"[On the case of Karen White, born Stephen Wood (and retaining male genitals), a sexual offender against children and on remand as a rapist. White had admitted in court to the rapes committed before being held in custody.] I’d love to meet those who signed off this decision. What would they say to the four women who, within days of her transfer to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire, White had sexually assaulted? Confining a rapist in a women’s prison, among vulnerable inmates including rape victims, is like locking a fox in a henhouse. Yet they merely followed government guidelines "that prisoners should generally be housed in the estate that matches their expressed gender"."
""It never happens," women were told when they worried that losing sex-segregated private spaces might allow attacks by predatory men. Yet, as FoI [Freedom of Information] requests by The Sunday Times last week showed, 90 per cent of sexual assaults in leisure centres are committed in gender-neutral changing rooms and only a tenth in single-sex facilities. It happens."
"This is not a piffling problem. The BBC reality check team confirmed that 60 (48 per cent) of the 125 trans prisoners in jails are sex offenders. That compares with 19 per cent in the prison population overall. Yet, since women commit only 2 per cent of sex crimes, out of 8,000 women prisoners there are only 125 sex offenders. So if the 60 trans sex offenders were housed according to gender identity, it would create a sea change in women’s prisons. There would be 50 per cent more sex offenders; they’d be male bodied, physically stronger and have committed far more serious crimes, including 27 rapes, 13 sexual assaults and seven charges of sex with a child."
"When you write about really difficult and toxic subjects it really helps to have your newspaper behind you and I just want to thank the Times ... who have been completely behind me in dealing with something that is complicated. I have a privilege in being able to write about this difficult subject, which is not something women in universities have at the moment, and I urge that we debate this more thoroughly and freely."
"It is time for every dispossessed Labour member who left because of antisemitism or Momentum bullying to rejoin. If Corbyn’s declared period of navel-gazing is long enough they’ll qualify to vote in a new leader. Let centrist entryism begin. When Johnson toured Doncaster market in August his reception was enthusiastic but stall-holders were puzzled: "He had his head down, he didn’t say hello," some said. For the PM, the working-class north is a dragon he bought drunk on eBay. It scares him, he doesn’t understand it — he knows it’s not really his."
"On election eve, the Guardian journalist and Momentum activist Owen Jones posted a photograph of himself in a grinning thumbs-up with a young woman whose T-shirt slogan read: "Will suck d*** for socialism." I apologise for the crudeness. But reading this filled me (and many others) with disgust and despair. Not just because it took the old Stokely Carmichael notion that a woman’s place in the revolution is "prone" and rebranded it as woke feminism. But because it encapsulated the worst of Corbyn Labour: believing a crass, narcissistic social media clique, which it allowed to act as party proxies on radio or TV, was a useful electoral tool. Here was Jones, a Labour insider with a million Twitter followers and a national newspaper column, writing about women giving sexual favours for votes as Britain went to the polls. I thought of the words on a magnificent Dockers Union banner: "We shall not cease until all destitution, prostitution and exploitation is swept away" and wondered how Labour fell so low."
"At a Notting Hill party the Saturday after the referendum, I had a stand-up barney with a Labour MP. "It’s a disaster!" he cried. "We need a second vote right away." Other guests nodded gravely, but I couldn’t contain myself. Hang on, I said, are you saying a democratic decision is invalid because you lost? "It’s appalling," he wailed. "It can’t happen!" Thus began my life for the next five years. I voted Remain – "with no illusions" as we used to say when I was a student Trot – but I was raised in Doncaster North, a Red Wall seat. I saw the gradual untethering of traditional Labour supporters in my own late father. In 2009, after the local party was discredited by the Donnygate expenses scandal, he voted to make a so-called English Democrat mayor. My father, and millions like him, had little in common with bien pensant London lefties whom I call friends. A reckoning was coming. What surprised me wasn’t the result, but the reckless determination of Remainers to reverse it. Did they think 17 million people would just accept their votes being cancelled? If Remain had won, would they have been cool with Nigel Farage demanding a rerun? The contempt for Brexit voters – that they were thick, old racists, from shitty places – disgusted me."
"In her book Material Girls, Stock asserts that although a person’s professed "gender identity" should be respected, biological sex is immutable and, in some circumstances — prisons, rape counselling, sports — must take precedence to protect women’s rights. This mainstream opinion is protected under the 2010 Equality Act. Yet her persecutors believe trans people literally change sex. They believe that in granting her academic freedom, the university fails to be trans inclusive. "We are not up for debate," they say. That such unscientific, magical thinking has become sacrosanct is calamitous for academics, especially feminist scholars who study how women are historically oppressed via their reproductive role. An Edinburgh lecturer in gender and education tells me she offered students both LGBTQ and feminist reading materials. "As with any subject, I tell them to examine all sides, to think, talk, then form a considered view." For this she was reported to the staff Pride network, which solicits student complaints, and then quietly dropped from lecturing on gender. Across British campuses women academics — and it is always women — face threats, witch-hunts and lost livelihoods for holding gender critical views."
"Stock is no right-wing bigot but a mild-mannered, dry-humoured, left-wing lesbian. An acclaimed philosopher who received an OBE last year, she teaches trans students, respecting their pronouns, and has written repeatedly in support of their human rights. It is bleakly ironic that she is accused of "endangering" others just for holding heretical views, when police have warned her to stay off campus and take security measures for her personal safety."
"When Andrea, a Metropolitan Police constable, was summoned into a room by her inspector he stood up, she assumed, to greet her politely. Instead he lunged, grabbing her breasts and forcing his hands into her underwear. She froze, then aimed a kick at his groin and fled. Andrea hadn't intended to report him — "you shut up and put up with it. If you speak out, you’re finished" — but she confided in a colleague who did. Compelled to pursue a complaint, a 30-month ordeal began which ended in her dismissal for discreditable conduct in 2020. The inspector kept his job."
"Almost daily in the Met, Andrea witnessed what in any other workplace would bring a visit from HR or even instant dismissal. She was paired with an officer who liked to park near secondary schools to ogle teenage girls’ breasts; colleagues constantly watched porn on their phones; a PC, convicted of gross indecency for masturbating on a train, kept his job; men would return from domestic violence scenes saying the victim was mad and deserved a slap. If Andrea failed to laugh at such banter, colleagues would ask: "Are you on your period?" If she left her notebook lying around she'd find a penis drawn inside. Older women were "Dorises" or "white goods" (ie domestic appliances). When a young tourist disappeared, men gathered around the computer to gawp at her photograph, one saying: "She’s locked in my sex dungeon at home." When the station carpet was treated for a flea infestation they joked: "It’s for Andrea’s crabs.""
"Clearly the GRR has far-reaching implications for women. But what happens when they point this out? First, the bombastic know-alls who've ignored every female writer, lawyer and policymaker for five years pull out their manly opinions. Like Alastair Campbell, who chided Laura Kuenssberg for an interview with Sir Keir Starmer in which she dwelt on the GRR, which affects half the population — but not the important half. Or Lord Falconer, who pompously wafts away concerns, tweeting that "the vast majority" of new male GRC holders "are likely to be genuine". So what's a few women facing sexual assault or indecent exposure, an intimidated lesbian or two, or a class of girls unhappily undressing with a teenage boy? These “It might never happen, love" guys don't think women deserve legislation that protects us in principle. We're expected to pray that careless laws, framed for others' benefit, don't hurt us in practice. And if they do, it’s just an "isolated incident". Suck it up. And the next one. There’s no pattern. Let’s ignore the inconvenient truth that males commit 98 per cent of sex crime and 90 per cent of violence, whatever their gender identity."
"Mark it in your diary: the bicentenary of the Gaols Act 1823. The work of the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, this landmark law mandated sex-segregated prisons with female inmates guarded by female wardens. When women were incarcerated among men, Fry observed, they were exploited, terrified and raped. She established a principle which became enshrined in international law, from UN protocols to the Geneva conventions. How, then, was history rewound, 200 years of evidence memory-holed, so that this week the double rapist Adam Graham was remanded in Cornton Vale women’s prison? How could a "robust" risk assessment by the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) conclude he was safe?"
"Even so, would a state-run plan to bump off the old ever be acceptable? Since assisted dying was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002, the parameters have extended far beyond allowing a merciful release from terminal suffering — which most of us support — to include even young people with depression."
"In Canada assisted dying is available to almost anyone able to give informed consent if they first undergo counselling. Critics say euthanasia has been offered to the poor, disabled or just unhappy, including maimed military veterans."
"Yet this dystopian film has one uplifting lesson. The administrators of Plan 75 are young people: they process applicants, listen to their fears and life stories on helplines and finally hand out the death drugs with a benign indifference. They don’t hate the elderly, they just don't see them as truly human. Only when they happen to meet and forge the special bond between old and young do they see the horror of their work."
"The tribunal is a timely reminder to the left that democratic norms are precious. If you try to crush every political opponent or believe intimidation is fine when it happens to the "bad guys"; if you declare that law-breakers you agree with should go unpunished, while those you disagree with don't deserve legal representation, you are no better than Trump or Orban. Stating that a lesbian does not have a penis is an inalienable right."
"I will use female pronouns for some trans women. My rules are personal. I will call no male who commits a sexual or violent offence "she". But those who respect women, like Debbie Hayton, or those I meet in real life, I will respect. This will win me abuse on both sides: Stonewall would say the choice should not be mine; gender-critical ultras will cry traitor. But I reject all compelled speech. Using pronouns doesn't mean I no longer believe sex is real. I use them, in their original sense, as a courtesy. You can hold concerns about youth transition without screaming at a bereaved mother that her child was a boy."
"True, different views on the surge in female-to-male transition were reported brilliantly last week by the Timess Janice Turner, one of the strikingly few women willing, in the face of concerted abuse, publicly to examine complex social and medical changes the authorities seem disinclined to explore. That such women are frequently and correctly described as "brave", for all the world as if they were war correspondents, only underlines the extent to which conventionally abhorrent exhibitions of bullying and hate-speech have been allowed to flourish here – with some of our most trusted adults leading by example."
"Reasonably sitting around waiting for equality while empowering oneself with some silicone implants does not really seem to have worked wonders, does it ladeez? Postfeminism – as personified by the Sex and the City generation – basically confused sexual liberation with shopping: a mistaken strategy even within its own market-driven terms. So we live on a permanent diet of crumbs from the table. A woman over 50 gets to be on TV! Whoopdiwhoop! It's a victory, sure, but is that all there is? It's time to wake up and smell the skinny latte. A woman is murdered in Bristol and the response is to tell women to stay at home?! For their own safety. Though no one thinks it's a woman doing the murdering. A curfew on men would be considered a monstrous idea, even though most women live with internalised curfews anyway."
"Or take comfort from Gideon's [George Osborne] "We are all in this together"? The last election was the most regressive for women I can remember. Women appeared as trophy wives, or not at all. The consequences of that are that this government – this new way of doing politics – is hitting women and children the hardest. Women are suffering most from the cuts that men are making. Just look at the figures. This makes me very angry indeed. Which I know may increase "visible signs of ageing", but it's way too late now. Feminism has been dumbed down into politeness and party-political promises for far too long."
"The sight of the hard left coalescing around Julian Assange is indeed sore. Yet again, those most vociferous about human rights seem somehow not to see women's rights as part of the same conversation."
"They say he has made the mistake of demanding the impossible – and they are right. He has demanded the impossible. But it wasn't a mistake."
"[On Russell Brand a year later] [T]he Jesus Clown is pilloried for being a dreadful influence on young people. If the youth don't vote, then policies that continue to punish them will be waved through by our decrepit politicians. Actually, the Jesus Clown is not what I call a young person, Lydon isn't, and I am certainly not, but the Clown has a reach, that's for sure. My 13-year-old adores him, and the part of me that is for ever 13 gets why. A lot of what he says is sub-Chomskyian woo, but these frustrations with existing political structures – they exist. Somehow it is always assumed that young people are naive idealists who, when they grow up and understand how things really work or don’t work at all, will buckle down and do the right thing. The right thing here means voting Labour."
"Female oppression is innately connected to our ability to reproduce. Women have made progress by talking about biology, menstruation, childbirth and menopause. We won’t now have our bodies or voices written out of the script. The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with. I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed transphobic by an invisible committee on social media. It has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement. I also know that the most vicious stuff takes place online and not in real life. Still, I can’t stand by. As Roman Polanski was being rewarded for his latest film at the César awards, Todd was being silenced."
"If the idea of women organising autonomously is transphobic you are walking into a cul-de-sac, which absolutely traps people in boxes that benefit the patriarchy. Because there is nothing the patriarchy fears more than women who no longer rely on male authority."
"Most people want the tiny percentage of the population who are trans to have the best lives they can. Living your best life would be one free of male violence. It is not feminists who murder trans people, although this might be the impression you would be left with if you relied solely on Twitter for your information."
"The emails then came pouring in from people who wished they could say what I had said. I wished people would stop calling me brave. Columnists are meant to be made of titanium; I felt more like papier-mâché. But the orthodoxy which demands that Mary Beard must refer to an ancient statue with a little penis as "assigned male at birth" is powerful. The no-platforming of feminist warriors like Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel is abhorrent. I like freaks. I like fluidity. I just don’t like one set of rules being replaced by another. I was hurt that so many of my 'colleagues' denounced me, but I suppose everyone needs a hobby."
"Everyone pays lip service to diversity, and the idea of a female leader, but the position of women in the party continues to be that they can be deputies, lovely assistants to the main act. Labour brought in women’s shortlists, overnight upping female representation, but how that would happen now I don't know – as they have tied themselves in ever more ridiculous knots by being unable to define what a woman is in order to appeal to their activists. They are confused about who has a cervix and whether womanhood is biological or just a feeling in someone’s head. At this stage we can surely define "woman" fairly easily: someone who can never be actual leader of the Labour Party."
"Stonewall had successfully captured every organisation and rewarded it for being "trans inclusive." What did this mean? Believing that womanhood was a feeling in a man’s head? Rewriting equality law so that people with male genitalia could now be in female prisons and rape crisis centres? Bad statistics were bandied about concerning suicide - all wrong and based on one tiny study. What has been censored on the Left is actual information, not opinions: information about puberty blockers, information about the number of sex offenders who claim to be women in prison, information about what JK Rowling actually said, information about trans athletes who have gone through male puberty, information about public attitudes. Most people are liberal and sympathetic to trans people, as we should be. When told most trans women retain male genitalia, they become more uncomfortable about females sharing intimate spaces with them."
"Before he died in 2018, a long-term user of the NHS who had motor neurone disease warned against insurance systems run by private companies. Stephen Hawking, for it was he, said the fairest way to deliver healthcare was the NHS."
"Should you wind up in a car crash, private medicine will be as useful to you as homoeopathy."
"I regularly ask these people a few questions. What is gender identity? When was it invented? At what age does it come into being? How is it different from stereotyped gender roles? How much money is to be made through surgery and lifelong hormones? What is the need for men who identify as women to make women feel uncomfortable? What happens when you want to have a child if you have been made infertile or in fact don’t have a womb? Do you just hire one? Is surrogacy the next phase of dehumanising women? I have yet to receive answers. The sheer anger of certain trans activists puts me in mind of men’s rights activists; they want what women have and that means access to us all. In response, there is still huge cowardice. The fear of being called transphobic means silence. Silence = Death, as we used to say when we were campaigning around Aids."
"When I raised the question of the competing rights between biological women and trans women in the paper I then worked for, The Guardian, my world went bonkers for a while. A trans person who worked at the paper (I never went into the office) who had already resigned earlier, resigned again and 338 staff signed an anonymous letter about transphobia in that organisation. I was not named except the person that the letter was leaked to indicated it was clearly about me. It all ended up with me choosing to leave a good job because I could no longer say what I wanted to say there. This is not a sob story. I was welcomed at the Daily Telegraph, who have honoured their promise that I would not be censored."
"At my former newspaper, there was a range of subjects that I and other mostly female journalists were not allowed to write about: what was going on at the Gender Identity Development Service clinic at the Tavistock, the scandal of Mermaids, the takeover of public institutions by Stonewall, the erasing of the word women from public language. In short, instead of having a debate about gender ideology or the attack on women’s rights that some trans activism involved, The Guardian just put its fingers in its ears and for some time refused any discussion. How did The Guardian enforce such censorship? Not by explicitly banning anything but by omission. It simply did not report on stories that ran contrary to its world view."
"The Greens have suspended senior members who were writing a Green women’s declaration which understands that women's rights are based on biological sex. The rejection of biology or indeed reality by those who want to slow down climate change is frankly barmy. But then so is the promotion of fetishistic men in wigs who only recently were in fact Tory candidates. I am talking about Melissa Poulton, Bromsgrove Green Party candidate, formerly Matthew Viner, now declaring "herself" to be a proud lesbian and a purveyor of sissy porn (don't ask). Is Ms Poulton a true trans woman? I cannot possibly say as I don't have the forensic skills necessary. But I can make the comment that what I see is a blatant opportunist."
"There is no women's space or activity, from bathrooms to prisons to rape refuges to sports, that some male-bodied people are not lobbying to enter. The reverse, I note, is not happening. Male spaces remain sacrosanct."
"All evidence shows that there is a pattern of male-style offending in transwomen. This does not mean that all trans people are predatory, but this is not a fact women can ignore."
"I am under no illusion about the Tories' own record. Austerity hit women and children the hardest. We had two more female prime ministers – a win for equality, if only one that proved women can be equally as useless as men. The problem with Labour people though is that they see themselves as anti-sexist, not to mention morally superior, and think they should be considered upstanding feminists even though they actually do nothing to advance the cause of women's rights."
"That we well understand how difficult it is to grow up in a porn-saturated world where the selfie is more valued than actual selfhood?"
"Is there anything that women can have for ourselves alone that certain men do not want to take away from us? Or get access to? Anything at all?"
"Security issues, it appears, are more important to Western countries than women’s rights. What matters is that the region is more stable and opium production is down. This, though, is another insane situation. We pay Turkey to grow poppies. Where do you think codeine and diamorphine come from? It is possible to move from illicit to legal trade and without it Afghanistan will remain cripplingly poor. The other people who see the openings here, of course, are the Chinese who have built roads into the country and want to mine the lithium there."
"Her writing is unafraid to challenge groupthink or ridicule tribes. It can often be infuriating, partly because she's so damn good at it. I have disagreed with many of her opinions over the years. Suzanne, 62, even once had the audacity to make a minor criticism of a book I'd written."
"Like my detractors, The Guardians letter-writers did not explain why Suzanne was mistaken. That poses a worrying question for democracy that neither universities nor The Guardian seem interested in discussing: who gets to decide who is no-platformed or silenced in the supposed interests of "inclusion"? Disagreement isn't tantamount to discrimination: Suzanne was clear she wanted trans people to have the right to "live the best lives they can"."
"[The Women and Equalities Select Committee 2016 report on transgender rights.] The report contains many sensible recommendations that any progressive should support. NHS waiting times for surgery are too long and should be reduced; GPs would benefit from further training; and specialist provision, which is patchy outside London and overstretched within it, could be vastly improved. Police officers should also be given training and encouragement to record hate crimes and to pursue action against perpetrators; schools should institute strong anti-bullying measures."
"[On the issues concerning the jailing of transgendered people.] The second case was that of Joanne Latham, found hanging at HMP Woodhill, also in November. Latham, then Edward, was jailed in 2001 for the attempted poisoning of a woman; he received additional life sentences for attacking another inmate in 2007, then trying to stab a fellow patient at a secure hospital in 2011. He had a history of mental illness and was so dangerous that a court ruled he could be handcuffed to two nurses even when seeing his lawyer. Latham had only recently changed her name and had not requested a transfer; a prison officer told the inquest that it was hard to tell if her plans for transition were serious, as "he went through phases". Despite this, the two cases have been smudged together as examples of the same thing – transphobic prison authorities denying someone the right to define their own gender. It’s not bigoted to ask if putting Latham in the women’s estate (which is ill-equipped for violent offenders) would have been the ideal outcome for her or for any potential cellmate. Yet that is the logical endpoint of Miller's system: prison officials would lose the discretion that they have. (In January, a trans woman who raped a 15-year-old girl was sent to a men’s prison; there was less outcry about her case. Saying that it is obviously transphobic to question housing a sex offender with a penis in a women’s prison would require serious chutzpah.)"
"This debate needs fewer rainbow sprinkles, fewer accusations of feminist bigotry, and more recognition that sometimes there are no perfect solutions."
"Transgender people face discrimination at work, casual abuse in the street and long waits for NHS care. None of those problems will be addressed by the government’s plan to change gender reassignment to a matter of simple declaration."
"The way I see it is this: everyone has a biological sex, and for most of us it’s unambiguously male or female."
"What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now it’s a question of an internal essence — a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a women’s changing room?"
"But you can’t identify your way out of the gender pay gap. Biological females are a class of people who face discrimination too, and there has been little attempt during this process to listen to their concerns."
"[N]othing about that Senate circus was fair on Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford. It was pure theatre. The FBI "investigation" which followed it was a sham. It could not have been clearer that the Republicans wanted to keep the allegations unresolved, and use them as a wedge issue: hasn’t the pendulum swung too far? Where’s the evidence? It’s his word against hers! Perhaps they suspect that a proper investigation would produce evidence that would have disqualified Kavanaugh, or perhaps they believe him to be innocent, but preferred a quick confirmation to a slow exoneration. Either way, their cynicism is demoralising. The vagueness of #MeToo has helped victims come out (it’s easier to say "me too" than the more stark "I was raped" or "this man harassed me"). The phrase has helped the public discussion to stay "polite", avoiding too much talk of brutality and bodily fluids. But that vagueness is also a drawback, smudging together mere thoughtless entitlement with violence and coercion."
"It is still shocking to me that Miller could be so little versed in feminism that she could sign off a report advising a change to the Equality Act, replacing “gender reassignment” with “gender identity” as a protected characteristic, without realising the profound public policy implications of that change. At a stroke, she advised changing our concept of gender from something that is partially socially constructed – how you are treated – to entirely a matter of internal essence. She entered the realm of metaphysics, asserting that everyone has a gender identity, something which no instrument can measure. That isn’t the kind of thing you can casually toss out in paragraph 4.108 and expect everyone to nod through, unless you have no idea what you’re proposing."
"This is a tragic story, from start to finish. The imperial over-reach of a handful of trans activists, in trying to rewrite widely accepted ideas about gender by stealth, has done nothing to improve the lives of trans people. The time wasted by Stonewall and other organisations, which have spent more than a year chasing a legal change that wasn’t even a priority for those interviewed by the inquiry."
"Those two words—values and competence—are key to Starmer's plan to remake Labour. Britain's Jewish community is small—0.5 percent of the population—but the issue of anti-Semitism cut through more broadly in the general election. To many Jewish voters, the party’s failure to expel anti-Semitic conspiracists and cranks has been personally painful, even frightening. To the wider electorate, it sent out the message that Corbyn was either complicit or incompetent. Neither is an attractive proposition when choosing a prime minister."
"Another adjective often attached to Sturgeon is feminist. When the Conservative prime minister Theresa May visited Scotland in 2016, Sturgeon tweeted a photograph of the two women shaking hands, with the words "Politics aside—I hope girls everywhere look at this photograph and believe nothing should be off limits for them." The majority of Sturgeon’s cabinet is female, as is her chief of staff. She is adored by a generation of young female activists: the SNP store once sold EAT, SLEEP, NICOLA, REPEAT T-shirts."
"Sturgeon's second challenge comes from debates over the rights of transgender women—an issue that is also causing disquiet and dissent among progressives across the world, including in the United States. In 2019, she received an open letter from women in her own party who claimed they were unable to discuss their rights without being called transphobic bigots. The other side accuses her of not doing enough to crack down on all those transphobic bigots. (In January, Sturgeon posted an unscripted video on Twitter, begging young activists who "consider at this stage the SNP not to be a safe, tolerant, or welcoming place for trans people" to stick with her party.)"
"Given all the effort feminists have invested in making language more equitable, you might expect that they would welcome use of the term pregnant people. But some, including me, are concerned that it obscures the social dynamics at work in laws surrounding contraception, abortion, and maternal health. The argument for the second wave’s language changes was that women fought fires in the exact same way as men, so one word should cover both sexes. That’s a different decision from whether we should keep gendered language to reflect heavily gendered experiences."
"Perhaps a comparison will help. The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that "all lives matter." Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more "inclusive" also makes it useless for political campaigning. Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament"—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women's bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder. No more "men making laws about women." Instead we get: "Some people who are in charge of policy want to restrict the rights of some other people. We oppose that because people’s rights are human rights!""
"That this play is at the Globe, the home of Shakespeare, only underscores that it is not in the Shakespearean tradition. The great English playwright is still revered today because he drove the possibilities of drama forward, creating characters with psychological depth and ambiguity. I, Joan is part of an older tradition, the medieval morality play. These pitted virtues and vices against one another for the soul of the protagonist: Greed and Sloth raged against Chastity and Patience. In I, Joan, that conflict has given way to one between Cisnormativity and Authenticity. I, Joans supporting characters exist not as people but as conduits for the moral lesson being delivered to the audience."
"[Concerning Harry & Meghan, the 2022 Netflix series about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.] Unless you have a gaping void where your soul should be, you will notice that the couple do seem to be genuinely smitten with each other. Yet—and this is where it gets tricky—they also appear to be in love with the idea of being "Harry and Meghan" (or, as they might put it, "H and M"). There's an uncomfortable Bonnie-and-Clyde, John-and-Yoko, folie-à-deux undercurrent throughout, as if taking on the Royal Family’s racism and the British press's lack of scruples has become their mission. Us against the world. That is a noble intention, but it has the side effect of centering their entire lives on two institutions that they despise. Do they really want to spend the next 40 years as small, angry planets trapped in the gravitational pull of the Windsors? And have they not heard of diminishing returns? This plotline might sustain Harry's book sales and one or two forgettable Netflix projects after that, but it ends with them delivering $150 birthday messages on Cameo by 2030."
"[I]n the Netflix documentary the historian David Olusoga makes the important point that Britain tends to celebrate its role in abolishing the slave trade, with rather less focus on its participation in the slave trade. And I recognize a knee-jerk defensiveness in many of the British reactions to Harry and Meghan, including my own. Culture wars flourish best when two things are simultaneously true, and people must choose which one to emphasize. Does the British press sometimes treat the Royal Family appallingly, and do its white-dominated institutions perpetuate racism? Yes and yes. Do Harry and Meghan love rehashing their grievances, and seem unaware that they are wealthy far beyond anything their personal talents would normally merit? Also yes and yes."
"After being raised Catholic, I became interested in New Atheism in the 2000s, because it was a countercultural phenomenon. Like pretty much everyone else, I would argue that my political beliefs are all carefully derived from first principles. But the ones that I choose to write about publicly are clearly influenced by my own self-image as an outsider and a contrarian. Being self-aware about that helps me remember that my fear of normiedom has to be kept in check, because the conventional wisdom is often right."
"When I think back over the most memorable parts of Dahl's work, it's always the nastiness that lingers. ... The awful married couple at the center of The Twits subject each other to a campaign of relentless psychological harassment. The message of George’s Marvelous Medicine is "Why not brew up all the chemicals you can find in your house and feed the resulting concoction to your grandmother?" This is not an easy fit for an era when peanut packets carry a warning that they contain nuts."
"Dahl's novels share many of their flaws with the books of Ian Fleming, born eight years earlier and a survivor of the same vicious public-school system. The writers knew each other, from their mutual involvement in wartime espionage, and their estates pose the same problem: They are money machines, but the original works embarrass their current owners. Fleming's James Bond was a suave misogynist prone to slapping women and making disparaging remarks about "Chinamen." Today's audiences would recoil from that version of 007."
"With the pistols, my shots pulled down from the recoil or the weight. But the AR‑15 nestled into my shoulder pad, and the shots skipped out of it and into the center of the target. I felt like I was in Call of Duty, with the same confidence that there would be no consequences for my actions; that if anything went wrong, I could just respawn. Later, a friend texted to ask how firing the rifle had been. I loved it, I said. No one should be allowed to have one. This is not a sentiment to be expressed openly in DeSantis’s Florida."
"The immediate consequences are obvious: a Labour government with a commanding majority but a demoralizing inbox, and an opposition that will spend the next few days asking what the hell went wrong, the next few months wondering what to do next, and the next few decades arguing over who was to blame. The only consolation for the Conservatives will be to conclude that this was not a defeat for their ideology so much as a punishment for their incompetence."
"What I am so surprised at is that smart people who I admire, who are absolutely pro-science in other areas, and champion human rights & womens rights are tying themselves in knots to avoid saying the truth that men cannot change into women (because that might hurt mens feelings)."
"From the earliest I can remember, I have understood that there is one sex or the other."
"Males are people with the type of body which, if all things are working, are able to produce sperm. Women are adult human females. Men are adult human males. There are only two sexes in humans. No change of clothes or hairstyle, no plastic surgery, no accident or illness, no course of hormones, no force of will or social conditioning, no declaration can turn a female person into a male."
"It's not a huge thing to ask. It’s only the most egregious, violent, dangerous beliefs that are not protected, such as saying you are a Nazi or you are wanting to overthrow government by violent revolution or that you are a Holocaust denier. Ultimately, what it comes down to is an attack on my right to free speech. Can you really compare what I believe in – that sex is a biological reality – to the truly evil beliefs of the Nazis?"
"This comes with an extraordinary state-sponsored invisibility cloak. It will be a crime to reveal information about a “person’s gender before it became the acquired gender”. This means their sex becomes a secret — or at least an open, unmentionable secret. The invisibility cloak starts working not at the point when a person receives a gender recognition certificate, but when they apply for it. And there is nothing to stop a person repeating the process: returning to their biological sex, with a new identity that has no public link to either of their previous identities. The opportunity for this personal shell scheme to facilitate financial or sexual abuse should not be dismissed. Undermining the organisational record-keeping systems which underpin safeguarding and "safer recruitment" of staff to work with children and vulnerable people is just one area of concern."
"I do feel vindicated. The tribunal found that I was a victim of discrimination, and not a perpetrator, which is the story that has been told about me for the past three years. But it is weird, too. This case took on a life of its own a long time ago. It is both about me, and not about me. The implications of the judgment are going to have a huge impact. The most important thing I ever did, it seems, was to lose my job."
"The Scottish Bill tears up the UK’s criteria for awarding a gender recognition certificate based on medical assessment, and allows anyone to get a GRC based on a declaration, with no medical treatments or safeguards. This means there will be many more people able to get a certificate, and organisations will never be able to feel confident excluding someone who is clearly male from female-only spaces and services. A key question for the UK Government is whether they will accept people who have been through the Scottish system but were born in England and Wales to change the sex on their birth certificate. Scotland would in effect act like a 'haven' of light regulation that would then spill out across the UK. For schools there would be huge problems. Single-sex schools are allowed by law, but now schools would face having to admit a child of the opposite sex, and would be threatened with criminal penalties if teachers and staff 'disclose' the child’s actual sex to other staff, pupils or parents. The UK Government does not have to accept this outcome. It should refer the Bill to the Supreme Court and make sure that the Scottish Parliament only legislates within its own domain, and does not ignore women’s rights and child safeguarding."
"This is a rapist who lied about raping these two women and who was found to have lied about it in court. So I don’t think we can rule out that he might be lying about his feelings of being a woman. But in any case, that is what the policy allows. The policy allows a man who feels like he is a woman or thinks he is a woman to apply to be housed in the women’s prison. So it’s inviting that kind of gaming."
"The centre employed a man who wishes he was a woman as CEO and allowed that to corrupt the whole purpose of the organisation."
"Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill"
"If a family can walk out of the hospital having lost their child and say that they couldn't have been better supported, then I can go home and feel OK."
"It is really difficult to spot a sick child."
"Children are well one minute and very sick the next. So you have much less time than you have with adults."
"Half the kids in A&E outpatients need not be in hospital and, if you come to hospital, you are more likely to be admitted."
"Someone will bring in a baby because the baby has green poo, but grandma could have been able to say 'that's normal'."
"I have been disappointed by the lack of evidence on the long-term impact of taking hormones from an early age; research has let us all down, most importantly you. The reality is we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress."
"We've got it locked into this focus on medical interventions. And certainly some of the young adults said to us, they wish they'd known when they were younger, that there were more ways of being trans than just a binary medical transition."
"Because of the toxicity of the debate, [children have] often been bypassed by local services who've been really nervous about seeing them. So rather than doing the things that they would do for other young people with depression or anxiety, or perhaps undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder, they’ve tended to pass them straight on to the Gids service."
"We've made Freedom of Information requests going back to 2009 about men's fatal violence against women. From this we've identified that 62% of women killed by men are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and that at least a third of these women were in the process of leaving, or had left him; that teenage girls, as well as women in their 80s or 90s, can be killed by men who were supposed to love them; that 92% of women who are killed by men are killed by someone they know. One in 12 is a woman who is killed by her son."
"All women are controlled by men's violence. Whether or not they are the ones on the receiving end, it affects every one of us."
"Young, professional, conventionally attractive, white women who are killed by strangers get the most attention but we must stop perpetuating this hierarchy of victims."
"The figure of eight per cent of women killed by men in the UK being killed by a stranger is consistent with the average since our records began in 2009. So ask me whether anything has changed since Sarah's murder, and my answer is no."
"We learnt that the government decided in 2011 that the census's sex question should be answered according to self-identification, even if the respondent had no gender recognition certificate. This advice was hidden on the website and was never subject to democratic scrutiny. That's shocking when you think that for almost 200 years sex was uncomplicated, binary and biological. For most people it still is."
"Policy capture is at the root of this fankle, as with many issues around gender identity. Officials only take advice from LGBT stakeholders. They never consider that women might have something to say about legislation which erases them as a biological sex class. In this case they didn't consult statisticians either."
"The thing that finally turned me to my current position was the government’s decision to expand the definition of transgender identity to include cross-dressers who are not trans identified ... It will seem bizarre to many people that men who enjoy cross-dressing are protected from hate crime, but women are not."
"The [Scottish] government said its proposal will not diminish the rights of women. However, its own draft equality impact assessment evidenced this by citing Bristol University research which . . . suggests that a woman catching sight of a male body in a changing room should be no more distressing than seeing another woman with a mastectomy. Does the government regret citing this research, and do they agree that the comparison is insulting to breast cancer survivors?"
"It is feminists influenced by this second wave who question transgender ideology. They speak the uncomfortable truth that men have a statistically higher propensity towards violence including sexual violence — no matter how they identify — and our laws and public institutions must recognise that brutal truth."
"There were assertions made during that meeting that anyone who identifies as a woman could be a rape counsellor or join a group session. And when survivors asked how a woman may feel if she unknowingly disclosed details of her rape to a male counsellor on the telephone… No adequate answer was provided. It shocked me then as it still does now, that given 100 per cent of rapes in Scotland are committed by men this appeared to not be an issue for the head of Rape Crisis Scotland."
"There are many of us within the LGBT community who fully support trans rights but who do not support the trans extremism which is currently being advocated by Stonewall and others. I emphatically object to any formal association with Stonewall."
"This win demonstrated the discrimination and aggravated discrimination to which I personally was subjected by a set of barristers who define and present themselves as defenders of human rights, but it also demonstrated the institutional approaches and beliefs that cause that discrimination to arise - as is now being demonstrated in other cases brought by other women against other institutions."
"Any ideology that cannot be questioned is dangerous and yet that is how Stonewall have infiltrated so many of our institutions. In picking on Bailey they have found a woman who has fought her entire life. Is this really a good look, Stonewall? Trying to destroy a black lesbian? We watch agog. Bailey, like any other woman, gay or straight, can think what the hell she likes. Is she really your enemy, Stonewall? Seriously, who do you represent now?"
"Lesbian Visibility Week starts today in the UK. A good moment to salute the resilience and courage of my inspirational friend. #IStandWithAllisonBailey"
"That a gay rights charity stands accused of discriminating against a black lesbian illustrates how wrong it is to assume the rights and interests of all LGBTQ+ people perfectly align. Of course, that has not stopped white men telling Bailey that her concept of womanhood is not only wrong, it makes her a bigot."
"My faith is the centrepoint of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I life my life and I see my life.I believe that life is a gift from God, but it's also a test. I feel like I've been very blessed in my life. But every blessing is a test. It's not just something you bank for yourself. You should almost fear your success because now you have to answer for it. You have to use it for good. And that's how I think about my political career."
"[On her decision not to serve in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet] I don't like anything that smells of fundamentalism in any way, religious or political or ideological, it doesn't really matter what it is, in the end. It's quite authoritarian in nature, and in my own life experience of people that are most intransigent and the most prescriptive about what everyone else can say and think and do tend not to be the best of people themselves."
"Hashtag movements are sometimes used to shut down debate and often many women have had to go to court, usually in employment tribunals, in order to clarify their rights to free speech.To clarify their right to believe that for example because you referenced JK Rowling, clarify their right to say that biological sex is real and is immutable – a position that I also agree with."
"I know what a Muslim looks like. A Muslim looks like me. I know what Muslim values are. Muslim values are mine."
"Mine is the patriotism of Orwell. Pride in a country that is forever changing, while also, ineffably, always the same. It is a love of this country as an open, tolerant and generous place. But that broad vision of who we are is increasingly disputed. Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller. Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British."
"AI and technology can be transformative to the whole of the law and order space.When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we’ve already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there’s big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we’re trying to do."
"Not everyone’s gender identity matches the reproductive organs they were born with therefore you have been reclassified as a birthing person rather than a mother. Now are you ready to try chest feeding?"
"It's terrifying and I've had to navigate it all through nine months of pregnancy. I created a social network for women, myself included, where we can relax on the internet away from death threats and toxic male behaviour."
"We wanted to do equity crowd funding, which would allow women to have ownership in a start-up and have investment in the financial world. No equity crowd funding company would work with us, saying the trans issue was like an open wound."
"It's always been you can't discriminate against anyone except when you can … (because it is) for a positive reason for that group. Female only spaces have existed for such a long time and there has been no controversy in it."
"My goal is not to strip anyone of their rights. My goal is to make everybody's rights clear. If we can get clarity on this hopefully it will stop the fighting between women and trans activists. Let's try and find positives to move forward."
"[Giggle was intended to be] a little corner of the Internet where women from all over the world could have a refuge away from men. It could be for serious reasons, very superficial reasons, or very practical reasons. It would be a place without harassment, 'mansplaining', 'dick pics', stalking, and aggression, and other male patterned online behaviour. A place to vent and get advice from other women and find out what was happening in the real world in a female-only environment."
"[N]ever in my wildest nightmare did I think there was anyone saying men are actually women if they just say it."
"[W]hat's the point of even having a category of woman in law if it's not defined as 'biological adult human female' if it's just a category any man can become. [...] It's meaningless."
"I don’t think it's kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman."
"[From a series of posts on X/Twitter] I'm being taken to federal court by a man who claims to be a woman because he wants to use a woman-only space I created. [...] There isn't a woman in the world who'd have to take me to court to use this woman only space. It takes a man for this case to exist."
"[Statement in court ] I wanted to create a safe, women-only space in the palm of your hand. [...] It is a legal fiction that Tickle is a woman. His birth certificate has been altered from male to female, but he is a biological man, and always will be. We are taking a stand for the safety of all women’s only spaces, but also for basic reality and truth, which the law should reflect."
"Unfortunately, we got the judgement we anticipated. The fight for women's rights continues."
"If Tickle wins, it will establish that males have a legal right, not just to the female sex category, but to all female spaces, including hospital wards, sports facilities, domestic violence refuges, rape crisis centres, and prisons."
"Sex is discriminatory, it always has been and always will be ... biological sex must prevail"
"[A] small group of people have taken it upon themselves to declare that I am not who I know I am, and they have set about making my life miserable. This case, and the unlawful and discriminatory exclusion from the Giggle app, has stolen the last three years of my life."
"While there are a number of trans-only apps and straight women don't demand access to, say, the gay dating app Grindr, activists want Giggle removed from the Apple platform. They claim its software reads black women's faces as male. Grover says her users are women of all races from 88 countries and this is a vicious slur. Their true motivation is her female-only policy. It enrages a movement whose idea of activism is getting domestic violence refuges defunded for remaining single-sex; which can’t abide women having one damn thing."
"[It] would potentially open the door for violent males who identify as men to abuse the process of acquiring a gender certificate and the rights that are associated with it. [...] This presents potential risks to the safety of women in all their diversity (including women born female, transwomen, and gender non-conforming women)."
"[The proposals] do not sufficiently take into consideration the specific needs of women and girls in all their diversity, particularly those at risk of male violence and those who have experienced male violence, as it does not provide for any safeguarding measures to ensure that the procedure is not, as far as can be reasonably assured, abused by sexual predators and other perpetrators of violence."
"What I was saying was that there is no right — and I repeated that again and again — to self-ID and that self-ID also, when it is so unregulated, leads to negative consequences for specific groups of women based on their sex."
"Where there is a contradiction or a conflict we have to give consideration to the rights of women based on sex in these specific circumstances. In the letter I named a few — for example women in prisons, shelters from victims of violence."
"We have seen numerous instances in which the presence of just one male on a female team is enough to knock women and girls off the podium. Moreover, allowing athletes born male to compete in women’s and girls’ sports also dramatically heightens the vulnerability of female athletes to injury. Regrettably, the fear of experiencing such harm can and does result in women and girls choosing to self-exclude themselves from participation."
"[N]ot only disappointed but also very concerned about this dystopian ruling ... which distorts key concepts like sex and discrimination while dodging Australia's international human rights obligations vis-à-vis women."
"Amendments that could have prevented those on the sex offenders register from obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC) and strengthened the law on single sex prison allocation were voted down or withdrawn."
"Violent sex offenders have no place in the women's estate. Women's single-sex spaces for privacy, safety or therapeutic purposes are enshrined in the Equality Act 2010. These important protections will be impossible to uphold when anyone can decide they are a woman and have a GRC to prove their legal status."
"There’s an idea that I wanted to put to you. It’s not my idea but the group that came up with it have said that we should be using it in the campaign. And it’s the idea of a ‘readiness thermometer’. I don’t know if anyone’s seen that idea yet. So, the idea is you can have an actual installation which is a readiness thermometer. We could put it up in Glasgow or in Edinburgh, and it can be outside and it has a dial on it that moves. So when we’ve made all the plans for the currency for instance, or we’ve set up how we’re going to do something to do with defence, or whatever it is, that dial will move and it will inch forward. And the media can look at it, everyone can look at it, and it builds that confidence with the public so that when we get up to the 100 per cent, everybody in Scotland knows we’ve solved all these problems."
"I think it’s welcome, I’m disappointed that unfortunately the Scottish Government has got itself into this mess to begin with, it didn’t have to do that."
"But what I will say, whilst this legislation, which is deeply unpopular with the Scottish public, is blocked for now, what I would like to see is that this legislation is withdrawn and I would like to see the Scottish Government say they will never implement this bill."
"The Minister for Equalities must now report to parliament on what steps will be taken to ensure those at the government-funded Rape Crisis Scotland, who presided over the unlawful introduction of males within their single-sex service, are accountable for their part in this damaging dereliction of duty to service users."
"If you even think for one second, you cannot possibly drive prostitution underground. If you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would the punters get to them?"
"[Representing the pressure group Save Women’s Sport Australasia] Women have fought for decades to have access to similar resources (as male sport), similar media coverage, pay parity in professional sports — and now that we are actually starting to gain some ground, that's all being put at risk [by the admission of transwomen to women's sports]."
"[Asked why transwomen should be admitted to women's sports] Because the feelings of addled and entitled men are far more important than the inescapable, lived reality of little girls, teenage girls, young women and older women."
"The [[Julia Gillard|[Julia] Gillard]] amendments imposed the biggest game of wilful pretend imaginable on women and girls, now forced to suspend their reality and believe that a 'penis-owner' is a woman, because he says so. This would be laughable if it was not so serious. On ABC radio recently, Gillard asked "why aren’t we further along?" with respect to gender equality. She blames the vile sewer of social media and women's difficult balancing act of work and family life. No mention at all of the alarming and increasing impact of her government’s amendments to the SDA [Sex Discrimination Act 1984]."
"Despite ample evidence demonstrating almost all children with distress about their natal sex resolve this during puberty, experimental medical interventions rather than "watchful waiting" are being baked into law and policy as the solution. We are sterilising a generation of gay and lesbian children by turning them into profit-centres. Yet those hiding behind the credibility of the Pride flag have the audacity to attack those raising the alarm as "homophobic" and "transphobic"."
"We didn't want this culture war either. Neither does anyone else, but when women were erased as a legal class, dissenters were punished, and the gender botherers came for our children, we would not be silent."
"There is, in fact, no place in the world that has managed to make prostitution safe for women, despite efforts to regulate the industry and even to form unions of sorts. Under legalised regimes, trafficking and an illegal industry thrive."
"The Canadian Human Rights Act protects women because as a society, we understand that women face discrimination based on their biological sex. But our ability to organize on behalf of women's liberation and to maintain women-only space is threatened by legislation that protects people based on "gender identity" and "gender expression." How can we argue for women's rights, based on the understanding that women are oppressed specifically due to their biological sex, if we simultaneously say that sex doesn't matter, but that "gender identity" and "gender expression" do?"
"What women experience as intimidating, many men read as harmless, not least in part because women are socialised to avoid conflict and respond politely, even when offended or uncomfortable."
"The truth is that, in all likelihood, most men – if not all men – have engaged in behaviour that was inappropriate, made a woman feel uncomfortable, or was even abusive. This is the lesson we should have learned from #MeToo: that the problem of male entitlement and misogynist attitudes towards women is a social one, not a personal one, and certainly not one that will be resolved by more men insisting they are feminists."
"Some of these [beauticians] were women working out of their homes and their names were published in the papers, but [Yaniv's] anonymity was protected."
"I have received countless violent threats on Twitter and I don’t think they’ve banned any of them. My tweets were not violent. I think someone at Twitter wanted to get rid of me — I was one of the most well-known women talking about this, and I wasn’t apologetic. It is scary a corporation [can] start determining what we’re allowed to talk about."
"Women's rights exist because women are born female, not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear make-up. There is an understanding in law that women face oppression and discrimination because they are born female. I think we do need to protect everyone from being discriminated against, but we don't need to say that trans-identifying males are literally female to protect them from discrimination."
"Over a year after a man then-named Jonathan Yaniv filed multiple complaints against British Columbia estheticians who declined to wax his balls, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ruled against the now-named 'Jessica.'"
"What has been revealed since, many times over, is that no one but Yaniv is, in these particular circumstances, guilty of harassment. Indeed, it is the women he attempted to extort money from, by abusing the tribunal system and human rights law, who have felt afraid, bullied, and preyed upon by a man claiming to be a woman."
"A woman is a female. That's it. And if you are born male there is no way to become female. It's simply not biologically possible. [...] And beyond that, why would a male ever NEED to 'become female'? I mean, by all means, be yourself, dress how you like, express yourself as you wish, in ways that make you feel good and authentic. Push back against gender stereotypes. But why that would demand one is literally the opposite sex, I do not know. 'Woman' is not simply a set of stereotypes, an outfit, a feeling. There is nothing wrong with being male or being a male who rejects masculinity. But it is ridiculous to say that if you reject gender stereotypes you are literally no longer male."
"Under current trans activist doctrine we're not allowed to exclude a man from a woman's space if he says that he's female and I find that quite dangerous and troubling."
"[M]ales who wish to identify as women will be offered additional protections under the law; but those born female will not benefit in the same way. Of course, trans-identified people should be protected from abuse and discrimination. But why not women too? Does the SNP think the minority of individuals who choose to identify as transgender are much more at risk than women and girls? Women suffer disproportionally as victims of rape, domestic abuse, FGM, child marriage, and femicide around the world, yet in Scotland this seems to count for little."
"Canada has managed to cultivate a culture that is simultaneously self-hating and self-righteous. We have no pride in being Canadian. Yet we are confident we are better than everyone else."
"Dangerous women are those who challenge the status quo, defy gender norms and stereotypes, often at personal risk, and who refuse to be charming just for an easy life. Now, as in the past, and across cultures, who is deemed a "dangerous" woman is generally decided by those who oppose them."
"[On the emergence of the #MeToo movement since October 2017] Any institution worth its salt should have HR policies to deal with incidents like this. The problem with the arts is that you have a hell of a lot of freelancers, people working for themselves, you don't have a lot of people who you can go to and say "this has happened to me". The idea that this is all some kind of massive revelation is actually quite offensive. Because women have been talking about this for ages. And just because it was all en-masse and at once, everyone thought "Oh God"."
"Nothing exists in isolation, we are talking about a systemic societal issue which is male violence against women, and within that, abuses of power, and hierarchies in the arts. As I have said about the 'not all men [are like that]' theme – I have yet to hear of a women boss forcing a male artist to masturbate: that just doesn’t happen. That just doesn't happen."
"I was also frustrated with what #MeToo and spoken word in general often demands from women, where you’re judged on your trauma, not your craft, your ideas."
"I knew I had to use spoken word to talk about various things I’d been speaking about in pubs, with women online who were all saying: "Oh my God. What the hell is happening to the world?""
"[On Lindsay's experience of being cancelled] My publisher was harassed. People who worked with me were harassed. Now, bear in mind, I'm not a public figure and all of this was kind of bubbling under the surface for about seven months. People trying to get me fired from things, my income tanking and me not really 100 per cent knowing why. And then it burst onto Twitter in February 2020, quite a febrile time just before a lockdown when a young poet I've never met called me a terf and tried to harass a small publisher to drop me from their programme. I retaliated of course, and then the Scottish Poetry Library got involved issuing a statement. opposing calls for no platforming, they fought against other poets, which led to almighty hell and the SPL accused of institutional transphobia and all of the time this has been reported in the papers with my name sort of attached to it, but people weren't 100% sure what I'd done, just that you got to avoid me now."
"Eleven years old my small world lost its roof When I was told the truth of who I was, Where I should remain. Don't let her play with us, a classmate said. Her father comes home filthy."
"So many women have contacted me with concerns about this issue (of trans activist claims on female sport) but they are worried that if they speak publicly, or even internally, they might face consequences at their club or at their work. How do Australians know that they are able to speak freely about women's rights. The idea that someone could lose their job or be banned from the sport they love for acknowledging that [biological] sex exists should be alarming to every fair-minded Australian."
"Being summoned by a quasi-judicial body to appear and explain why I say that males shouldn't be in female change rooms or in female sporting competitions is an indictment on the state of free speech in this country. [...] It is yet another example of the assault on truth and the assault on the very meaning of the word 'woman' by activists who are determined to remove every sex-based right that women around the world have, and allow anyone who identifies as a woman into women's sports and women's spaces. I will not be silenced."
"For several months, Rugby Australia has been in possession of a transgender participation guideline developed by World Rugby in consultation with developmental biologists, medical experts and sport scientists. The World Rugby Guideline runs to 38 pages. It has a reference list of 45 scientific reports. It finds that it is neither safe nor fair for transgender players who are biologically male to play in women's rugby, demonstrating with significant rigour that a situation where a male player tackles a female creates "a minimum of 20 to 30 per cent greater risk for those female players". Rugby Australia is yet to respond to this document or release it publicly. On Thursday, Rugby Australia released its own trans inclusion guidelines. It contains no references to scientific reports and doesn't mention the World Rugby findings of significantly increased head and neck injury risk to female players. It lays out a procedure to allow biological males identifying as women to play women's rugby."
"This decision, however, only further highlights the dangerous absurdity of Rugby Australia, Sport Australia, the AFL and other major sports in adopting the opposite position that 'inclusiveness' is more important than women’s safety. [...] If it is not safe or fair for a professional female rugby player to have to play against biological males, then it isn’t safe or fair for Australian women playing at their local club either."
"[Introducing her "Save Women's Sport Bill"] Women’s sport exists to provide separate competition for females, in acknowledgement that males have numerous physical advantages over females in the sporting arena. When the bill comes to a vote, Parliamentarians will have a simple question to answer: Do you agree that women and girls have the right to play single-sex sport?"