Dedicated Follower Of Fashion by Les May

I STARTED reading the then Manchester Guardian in 1960 when I started work and for the first time had the money to buy it. For forty or so years, during which it changed dropped the Manchester bit, I was a loyal reader, but somewhere around 2000 I finally tired of its increasingly uncritical feminism and stopped buying it.

The final straw was an article about a couple of women who claimed to have ‘taken on’ the builders. It turned out that one was an academic and the other a student and they had worked on a site for all of a fortnight in the middle of summer. In other words not exactly a lifetime working outside in the middle of winter. More like a fortnight in the sun and then back to a nice warm office or lecture theatre for the cold wet weather.

Though Suzanne Moore, with her ever so predictable man bashing columns, has never been one of my favourite journalists, but I certainly warmed to her comments; ‘the cult of righteousness that the Guardian embodies’ and ‘lately it has been hard to define what the Left consists of beyond smug affirmation’ in a piece entitled Why I had to leave The Guardian.

Moore had written an article which, as well as being in her usual man bashing style, complete with references to ‘the patriarchy’ and ‘who the real enemies are’ (a.k.a. Men), included the comment that some women ‘were uncomfortable with people being able to self-declare as a man or a woman – whatever their biological sex – for all sorts of reasons.’. It also referred to the ‘disinviting’ of Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at the University of Oxford, who was due to give a polite two-minute speech of thanks at an event at Exeter College, on the grounds that she had addressed a meeting of the group Woman’s Place UK, which was formed in 2017 after proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

This was too much for the sensitive souls at The Guardian and 338 of them took exception to it in a letter to the editor.

So long as the fashion amongst those who like to call themselves ‘of the Left’ was that women, however privileged, were to be seen as the most oppressed creatures in the world, Moore was never short of a market for her wares. But then being ‘trans’ knocked women off the top spot and suddenly Moore found some of her views were unfashionable. Hence the letter.

A friend recently suggested that Labour’s poor showing in the recent election might be because working people had no time for the world of identity politics which has become the go-to issue for many would be activists on the Left. Is it just coincidence that when they were Labour leadership candidates Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey signed up to a pledge put together by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights? Perhaps working people just have different priorities.

You can find Moore’s original article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced

And her version of the spat at The Guardian here:

https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian

For a quite different take on The Guardian look here;

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/05/the-ugly-truth-about-the-guardian/

NV can no longer embed links in the text of articles. To use these links copy the full text of the link into your browser (Startpage, DuckDuckGo or Google) and search in the usual way.

I May Have Gender Dysphoria. But i prefer biology

Published on February 2, 2020

I May Have Gender Dysphoria. But I Still Prefer to Base My Life on Biology, Not Fantasy

 written by Debbie Hayton on Quillette Circle

Feelings and opinions have displaced facts and evidence in many areas of the liberal arts. This is nothing new. A more recent phenomenon, however, is the extension of this trend into the realm of biology, which has fallen victim to the idea that men can become women—and vice versa—merely by reciting a statement of belief. It is an insidious movement that combines the postmodern contempt for objective truth with pre-modern religious superstitions regarding the nature of the human soul.

The subordination of science to myth was exemplified in the recent British case of Maya Forstater, who’d lost her job after pointing out the plain truth that transgender people like me cannot change our biological sex by proclamation. “I conclude from…the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate,” concluded Judge James Tayler at her employment tribunal. “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

I’m not sure where that leaves me, a British transgender person who agrees with Forstater. As I know better than most, sex is immutable. I may have transitioned socially, medically and surgically, but I am as male now as I was the day I was born (and the days I fathered each of my three children). As a scientist, I know this to be a fact. It’s Judge Tayler who’s the absolutist here: Under the guise of tolerance, he’s put the force of law behind a cultish movement that treats biological reality in much the same way that the Catholic Church once treated Galileo and his heliocentric ideas. Just like its medieval forbears, this neo-religious crusade demands that adherents chant an absurdist liturgy—in this case, “Transwomen are women. Transmen are men.”

written by Debbie Hayton

READ MORE:

https://quillette.com/2020/02/02/i-may-have-gender-dysphoria-but-i-still-prefer-to-base-my-life-on-biology-not-fantasy/

What’s a ‘Real’ Woman?

by Les May

IN recent days the ‘Twitterati’ have been busy tearing into each other about this question after an author of books for children ‘tweated’ a comment on the subject.

As anyone who reads NV will know I am a critic of the ‘Cocks in Frocks’ brigade who expect to declare they are ‘trans-gender’ and insist that everyone else accept it without question. But, as I have made clear previously, I am happy to treat any ‘trans-sexual’ person who has had gender reassignment surgery and the hormone treatment entailed, as a woman. For me the bottom line is whether they have shown the level of commitment to being a woman which is needed if they are required to lose their wedding tackle.

Is a trans-sexual woman a ‘real’ woman? Take a blood sample, send it to a cytologist, and he or she will tell you it came from someone with a Y chromosome, indicating the person was born a male. So as a biologist I must answer ‘No’ to this question. But that does not mean I cannot choose to treat the person as a woman both legally and socially, ‘real’ or not. I choose to do so because such a person would pass the ‘duck test’. (If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.) In this I differ from people like the author Germaine Greer and some of my friends.

This is a situation for which there is already at least one precedent.

Between 1965 and 1967 someone I have known all my life adopted three small children, all under 4 months of age. Three times he stood in court whilst the judge made it very clear that from the moment the Adoption Order was made he was responsible for every aspect of that child’s welfare and well being.

Is he the ‘real’ father? A DNA test would show that he is not related to any of the children, nor they to each other. So as a biologist I must answer ‘No’ to this question. (He simply says he’s their Dad.)

From the moment the adoption order was made he was treated by the state, and the organs of the state, as that child’s father. Legally that is what he now was and still is. The child acquired a new identity, its birth certificate was changed and it took his surname.

Not only is he considered for all legal purposes as the children’s father, socially he passes the ‘duck test’. For 50+ years his family and his friends have accepted that he is the children’s ‘father’, not withstanding the DNA evidence to the contrary. His children and grandchildren accept it too.

So what has this got to do with trans-sexual people? A Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) is the legal equivalent of an ‘Adoption Order’. Discriminate against people with a GRC and, to be consistent, you should declare your willingness to discriminate against people who adopt children and the children themselves.

But there is a wider lesson to be learned here. Some children are ‘difficult’ to place for adoption, wrong age, wrong abilities, wrong colour, spring to mind. Demands for amendment of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to allow ‘self certification’ centre around the stringency of the procedure and the time it takes. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever suggested that adoption law be changed to allow the procedure to be made less stringent and permit potential parents to ‘self certify’. This would no doubt make placing ‘difficult’ children much easier. It won’t happen because we recognise the potential for abuse of the system. The fear is that changes to the GRA would lead to similar abuses of the system.

If you are an adoptive parent and anything I have written above about ‘real’ parents has made you a little uncomfortable, that was not my intention. There’s more to being a mum or dad than sharing a few thousand base pairs of DNA. Families are made not born.

**************** 

A Rat’s Nest of Contradictions

by Les May

SOMETIME this month draft guidelines drawn up by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are expected to be sent to English and Welsh schools.  The Scottish government cancelled what are assumed to be similar guidelines in June.

A leak of the new guidelines suggests that schools would be advised and sometimes required to open areas of school life that have previously been treated as separate on the basis of sex to children who identify as that gender.  A boy who identifies as a female would be allowed to use girls’ changing rooms and on school trips could legally be placed in the same bedroom as a girl, and vice versa.

A women’s advocacy group, Fair Play for Women, has argued that whilst the EHRC guidelines consistently protect children who identify as ‘trans-gender’ equal weight has not been given to protecting girls. They go on to say it must be made explicit that sex and gender identity are different, and that it is important that girls to be able to recognise and name the male sex as otherwise the right of girls to assert their boundaries, e.g. with regard to touching, is taken away.

See also:

http://data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/Women%20and%20Equalities/Enforcing%20the%20Equality%20Act%20the%20law%20and%20the%20role%20of%20the%20Equality%20and%20Human%20Rights%20Commission/written/90972.html

Under the guidelines if a girl feels uncomfortable that a child she identifies as a boy, but who self identifies as a girl, is using a girls’ changing room then it is the girl who feels awkward who must go and change elsewhere, not the boy.

In 2018-19 the number of children, some as young as three (3), identifying as ‘trans-gender’ was 2,590 according to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) of the NHS.   This is 30 times (3000%) more than ten years ago. A governor of the NHS trust under which GIDS operates resigned this year concerned about the ‘affirmative model’ used by GIDS too quickly leads to the prescription of puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.  He also suggested that in some cases the difficulties which some children have, and which become identified as being about gender identification, may in fact be because they have become aware of their sexual orientation. In common parlance ‘they are gay’. This suggestion deserves serious consideration.

When the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee took evidence for their report, Enforcing the Equality Act: the law and the role of the Equality and Human Rights Commission it received submissions from members of the public. Two of these were:

‘We desperately need legal clarity on the terms ‘transgender’ ‘transsexual’,

and ‘gender reassignment’—I think [the] way they are currently being

used, and the way the [Equality Act] interacts with the GRA 2004, is being

abused, misused, misapplied and misrepresented.’

‘The combined effect of the [Gender Recognition

Act] and the [Equality Act] is to conflate sex and gender irretrievably, and what remains is a rat’s nest of contradictions, where sex-based rights cannot be properly invoked.’ (My emphasis)

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/equality-act-role-of-ehrc-report-published-17-19/

I agree entirely with the two submissions quoted above. The media use the word ‘trans’ and ‘trans-gender’ interchangeably and with no clarity about what is meant when they are used. Ditto when ‘non-binary’ and ‘gender fluid’ are used. This makes the situation more opaque when clarity is what is needed.

As the law stands schools have to provide lunchtime meals suitable for Muslim children. If the guidelines soon to be issued by the EHRC are enacted Muslim girls could find themselves sharing a bedroom with someone they, and their and other parents, identify as a boy.   Expect trouble!

My apologies to rats everywhere for dragging them into the ‘trans’ argument. You deserve better.

***************

NOT the Page 3 Girl!- 'Shit Wigs & Steroids'

For years Northern Voices has had its flatterers at 

Freedom Press, who have claimed we represent 'The Sun'

of the North.  Today we have pleasure in publishing

our first 'NOT the Page 3 Girl', and we know those

sleek Southerners who love us will be delighted. 

The NV Editors 

**************

Justifying Reviews on the NV Blog

We have taken the unusual step of publishing two reviews of the controversial booklet 'Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion'.  We have done this because in the current climate we believe this publication, whatever its flaws, offers a valuable insight into developments on the strange shores of the British political left and beyond.  It needs to be read, because too many people are what we would call 'skedaddlers', ducking and dodging all requirements for moral compass in a social context like the current trends and fashions encouraged by the Gender Recognition Act.

The authors of the two reviews on this Blog offer different perspectives in their approach to the text.  Both are experienced reviewers; Les May reviewed 'Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith'* and Chris Draper wrote 'Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history'**.  

In the past Freedom newspaper would have had the courage to run alternative assessments together with follow-up correspondence, always encouraging controversy.  Nowadays, Freedom in all its forms offers a less challenging body of work both intellectually and in propaganda terms.  One might have thought that Milan Rai, the editor of Peace News, who was at the Liverpool Bookfair when the incident described in the book occured, and its author was accosted, detained and roughly expelled, would be willing to review it, and certainly it might be expected that it would be a worthy subject of debate on a thread on Libcom?

Any problems in the contents ought to be left to the readers to access its value.  Whatever it shouldn't be censored by the supercillious southern anarchists who think they can decide what is suitable for us northerners to consume.

**********************

* 

N.V. Review of 'Smile for the Camer - Northern Voices

northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/10/nv-review-of-smile-for-camera.html

**  Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history 4. - Northern Voices

northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history_7.html

Trivial Pursuits!

by Les May

MY wife and I live a gendered life.  The rubric in my head which I work to is, ‘I’m a man, so when shit needs shovelling, I shovel it’.  Occasionally that crude way of expressing it is literally true, as on Christmas Day 2003 when the drain blocked downstream of us and sewage backed up on our garden path.  I wasn’t alone, the husbands from the other houses affected got stuck in and we eventually cleared the drain.  Our wives left us too it. Usually it just means my wife is better at ironing than I am and I’m better at hanging wallpaper, putting up shelves etc.

My wife wasn’t born good at ironing or folding newly ironed clothes; I wasn’t born with the ability to put up shelves or wield a shovel.  They are skills we learned.  Why did we learn them?  Because we were gently pushed in those directions by the society in which we lived and the expectations it placed upon us.

My grandfather’s generation of men were expected to be ready to ‘go over the top’, cross a few hundred yards of open ground festooned with barbed wire and raked with machine gun fire, and kill any Boche they found in the trenches if they got there.  My father’s generation of men were expected to be ready to be ready to storm the Normandy beaches, fly the bombers to Berlin or man the merchant ships in the Atlantic.  I am happy to record that I just missed the dubious pleasure of National Service and that I’m extremely glad I did. I certainly did not want to have to accept the soldiering role even though it is what society would have expected of me.  Was I suffering from ‘gender dysphoria’ or was it just a personal preference of not wanting to be stuck in a uniform and bullied?

Before you rush to complain that I am poking fun at gender dysphoria, as I shall show later,  I am not.  What I am trying to point out is that the notion of ‘gender’ is to do with Society’s expectations of what it means to be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ and that these expectations are likely to change through time.  In other words our notion of gender is temporally fluid.

But to build an identity around that notion of temporal fluidity by saying you are ‘non-binary’ is trivial.  To demand that others in society abandon the rule of thumb of, ‘if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck’, which we operate when choosing the pronoun to address you with, is arrogant.  Would you be happy with ‘it’?  Putting on a frock, a wig and some lipstick, and trying to insist we call you ‘she’, won’t work either.  You may delude yourself that you’ve ‘transgendered’ yourself into a woman, but the rest of us aren’t so gullible.  If dressing up like a woman is what ‘floats your boat’ go ahead with my blessing. Just don’t think you are making a political statement by doing so or try to impose upon me how I should regard you. Telling you so isn’t ‘hate speech’.

And don’t think that your personal preferences merit your being given special protection under the law.  They are just that, personal preferences, and are about as important as having a punk hair style, carrying a Gucci bag or wearing Clarks shoes.

The argument against making people who claim to be ‘transgender’ a protected category or suggesting they should have ‘safe spaces’ or even taking them very seriously, is perhaps best made by looking at what transgender advocates actually say.

‘A transgender person can be anyone who feels some incongruence with the gender identity they are socially (or culturally) expected to conform to’.

On that definition my own reluctance to go soldiering would qualify me as transgender in 1960.  It also covers men who like to wear their wife’s knickers under their business suit.   Using this same definition just how many people fall into this category in the UK?  This is what the same source has to say.

‘Based on all the information we have, combined, the observations of 25 years, I personally felt a starting point should be 10% of the population. This would equate to 6 million.  This was quickly debated-out based on simply being unrealistic.  We had the starting point of 2 million, we have agreed to take this number to over 3 million people who are transgender to some degree in the UK’. (my emphasis)
So there you are.   A figure of 3,000,000 transgender individuals has been plucked out of the air, presumably to inflate their significance, and it seems you can be ‘transgender’ just a little bit.   You couldn’t make it up!

(You’ll find the quotations above and a lot more at the link below.)

http://blog.transgenderzone.com/?p=1011

A group of people who I think have a much greater claim to be a ‘protected category’ are those who are transsexual.  In a recent review I accepted the figure of 5,000 for the number of transsexual people in the UK.  I have not been able to check this figure, but I am going to take it as correct. By transsexual I mean people who feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such.  

Functioning as the opposite sex means in the case of men surgically losing their primary (testes) and secondary (penis) sex organs.   Speaking as a man I consider this suggests a very high level of commitment indeed.  Such people have my full support and I am happy to treat them as women, though biologically they are not.

I recognise that there is a degree of inconsistency in the view expressed above.  I accept the ‘gender’ argument for transsexual women, but pour scorn on it when the ‘cocks-in-frocks’ brigade try to use it.  That’s because real life is messy. For me the over riding argument is my shared humanity with transsexual women.  Even an atheist understands ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.

My attitude to transsexual women is not shared by everyone, Germaine Greer being one person who does not share it. In 1997, she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist Rachael Padman, arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.

Apart from occasional murmurings of dissent from people like Greer it seems to be true to say that in the past transsexual people have been allowed to lives their lives ‘under the radar’.   The purpose of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 seems to have been to clarify their legal status.   Amongst other things at that time women received their State Retirement Pension at the age of 60.  The activities of the ‘cocks in frocks’ brigade and their noisy supporters, the failure of the media to distinguish between transsexual people and those who sail under the flag of ‘transgender’, and above all the use of the word ‘trans’ as an all purpose label, seems likely to have a negative impact on the lives of transsexual people.

To give but one example. I am not aware that natal women have raised objections to transsexual women using female toilets, changing rooms etc.  The demands of those who claim to be women because they are ‘transgender’ a.k.a ‘cocks in frocks’ to access to facilities normally reserved for women may cause consternation from those who are natal women, some of whom may suddenly become aware of transsexual women sharing the facility and react against this.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/not-all-transsexuals-think-trans-women-are-women/

Had the ‘transgender’ brigade not been taken under the wing of an organisation like Stonewall which promotes the interests of people who choose sexual partners from the same sex, it is unlikely that they would have made much progress.  The shallowness of the arguments presented at the link below may be enough to convince thoughtful people that the claims of the ‘transgender’ brigade are rather trivial and need not be taken too seriously.

.

http://blog.transgenderzone.com/?p=1011

The opinions in this article are entirely my own and should not be attributed to any other person.

************

Review: Transsexuals vs Cocks in Frocks?

 by Les May

 _________________________________________________________________________

 "Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion" 

 'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

This booklet is an A5 size 24-page critique of identity politics which challenges what it sees as the dominant politics of a 'wannabe' London based elite who are setting themselves up as a mouthpiece for current anarchist thought in the UK.  It claims to be rooted in a northern working-class perspective based on anti-authoritatianism.  It is a collective project that questions what it sees as the 'bogus claims of the transgender headcases' ; it entitles itself under the e-mail address:  newoffensive01@gmail.com

 Price £2 including postage & packing.

_______________________________________________________________________

I WAS asked to review this booklet by someone who had erroneously been identified as the author.  When this came to the attention of the real author he initiated contact with the supposed author, which led to me receiving a review copy.  Any opinions in this review are entirely my own and should not be attributed to anyone else.

Reviewing this booklet is not easy.  It is difficult to discern a linear sequence and it can be read in a number of different ways.  At one level it is one episode of an anarchist soap opera in which the horny handed sons of toil from the gritty north take on the effete, never done a proper day’s work in their lives, London scribblers and their acolytes.  The title says it all ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids. Anarchism’s and the left’s Tolerance of Delusion.  Bookfairs & Bullshit’.

Eager to wash anarchism’s dirty washing in public we get three pages, or should that be six pages, I said it was difficult to discern a linear sequence, of ‘What Happened at the Liverpool ‘Anarchist’ Bookfair 2018’.  Certainly nothing for the bookfair organisers to be proud of.  At this point you realise that the author’s way of expressing things is, shall we say, OTT.  Here’s a sample ‘… his gang of ponces have supported violence against women through attempting to stop free speech in a public environment’.  So far as I am concerned their ‘crime’ is nothing to do with violence against women, it is attempting to stifle debate on transgender issues.  At this point I began to wonder if the author had swallowed the whole of the feminist lexicon.  Here’s another sample which is the title of a booklet the author encourages us to read, ‘Gender is not an Identity, it is a Tool of Patriarchy a Feminist View of Gender Identity Politics’.  Patriarchy, Feminist, Gender all in one sentence, pass me the sick bag please!

Usually when I read this sort of stuff I assume the writer is what I call one of ‘The Leg Over Brigade’, i.e. a man who spouts feminist pleasing language in the hope of being viewed favourably in the amorous stakes.  I don’t think this is the case here, the author seems to genuinely believe what he is writing and I doubt that his overuse of the slang terms for female genetalia as descriptions for people who views he disagrees with, will endear him to many feminists.

Anarchism he says ‘has pretty much become a wendy house for children to play in’.  He means of course the ‘London effete’ version of anarchism and lays at its door ‘authoritarian behaviour, censorship, bullying and (yawn) misogyny’.  These charges are not unique to anarchism, ‘the Left’ is riddled with similar exponents.  ‘The transgender arguments are at best nonsense, at worst (yawn) misogynistic, indulgent and delusional’, he tells us.  Well that’s a point of view, an opinion, an assertion.  This is anger talking.

But if you first strip away the anger, then all of the feminist rhetoric, you realise he has a point, you’ve just got to unearth it.

What this booklet is all about is the proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which could move away from medical assessment to ‘self certifying’, and about the people who refuse to engage in discussion about the implications of such a change and want to bully the rest of society into accepting it without question.

I’ve written previously about what I see as the absurdity of a man with a full set of wedding tackle being allowed to claim he is a woman and be housed in a women’s prison, the ‘Cocks in Frocks’ syndrome as the author rather nicely puts it.

What I had not considered is how the 5000 transexual women for whom the 2004 GRA was created, might view self certifying.  It’s an interesting perspective.  The rational, understanding, empathetic way the 14 contributors to this piece have structured their argument and their recognition that whilst it is women who will be most affected, changes to the GRA will affect the whole of society, is an example of how this debate should be conducted.

I found this so striking that I was initially tempted to quote it in full.  I won’t; you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the booklet and read it for yourself. Significantly some of the contributors to this are older women who ‘transitioned’ up to 50 years ago.  Almost all the noise comes from those of university age,

Much of the author’s anger is directed at the politicisation of identity, of irrelevant lifestyle choices, of ‘Look at me, me, me I’m non-binary’ or the way that some people portray individual decisions as somehow taking a radical stance, and think we should all take notice. I’m inclined to agree.  My wife, my sister, my sisters-in-law, my daughters, my granddaughters, couldn’t care less. 

*********** 

TINA'S TRANSGRESSIVE TEA-TIME!

by Christopher Draper

I'VE just come back from a fascinating trip to Bury Museum and was particularly amused by my visit to the first floor cafe, or 'TINA'S TEAROOMS' as it is now denominated.  I was initially impressed by the non-gender-binary signage marking the location of "TINA'S TOILETS", regrettably not quite as positive or joyful as the sign illustrated above but nonetheless adequate and appropriately enlightened.  Less enlightened however was Tina's binary-gender-specific afternoon tea menu! (illustrated below)

Whilst GENTLEMEN (for £15) are offered 'Doorstopper Sandwiches' and 'A Big Wedge of Cake', LADIES (£13) get 'Finger Sandwiches' and 'Mini Cakes and Fancies'.  Are us NON-BINARIES expected to starve?

***********

Emperor's New Gender & Liverpool Leaflet

Left click on above leaflet to get clear image.
Last April the above leaflet got a lad thrown out of the Anarchist Liverpool Book fair for distributing it.  Readers must make their own judgement about the issues and intricacies of gender politics.  British Anarchists these days are fragile plants who can't cope with criticism even when it is badly written and poorly produced as above.  Northern Voices stands up for free speech and doesn't take sides in this knock-about stuff.  Life is hard enough without having to obsess about all this trivia with the drama Queens of anarchism.

On Listening To Woman’s Hour

by Les May

ON Tuesday morning a friend telephoned me to suggest that having recently written about problems with the Gender Recognition Act, I might like to listen to BBC Woman’s Hour where the proposed changes were to be discussed.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/ask-about-wedding-tackle.html

I assumed that the ‘Karen White’ case in which a man called David Thompson, who had previously been jailed for life for rape, had been housed in a women’s prison after claiming he identified as female and had gone on to sexually assault two female prisoners, would be discussed.  It got a mention.

I assumed that someone would point out that the prison service had a duty of care to the female prisoners.  No one did.  Nor did anyone point out that the decision to move him to a women’s prison was made by an anonymous ‘local transgender board, though much was made of the fact that under the current Gender Recognition Act (2004) the decision about whether a certificate is issued is made by an anonymous board.

I assumed that someone would point out the absurdity of the prosecutor continuing to refer to White as ‘she’, as in ‘Her penis was in her hand and she was winking at the victim.’  (There may be a spelling mistake here.) No one did.

The problem it seems is MEN! No woman is safe on the streets. We men don’t need to use the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to find Machiavellian ways to assault women. We’re at it all the time.  That’s why they need ‘safe spaces’ like the ‘snowflakes’ who inhabit our universities.  And there was me thinking that in the context of the GRA what women need is ‘privacy’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_%28slang%29

The women taking part in this programme all wanted to sound ‘cool’.  They did not want anyone ‘calling them out’ for voicing an unpopular opinion such as, ‘We cannot let the demands of individuals who identify as trans override the need for others to maintain their own sense of privacy and dignity.’ Or ‘A person’s sex still matters.’

That’s what you are going to get when the only people giving their opinion are happy to say that their contributions are ‘academic’. These women were drawn from too small a stratum of society. Perhaps this was intentional. It wouldn’t do to have have some random woman saying things that would generate complaints.

Why has any discussion of possible changes to the GRA by Woman’s Hour been left until three days before the consultation ends? Must be a male conspiracy.

**********