Author: Mick Hartley

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Culture for young people since post-war until very recently had a multitude of varieties and spaces where you could safely express your individuality, your tribe and your unique beliefs. There was music, which had its own fashion, there was the fashion world itself, the UK famed for its ‘street’ wear culture that was unique in Europe. Mods, rockers, punks, goths, new romantics, emo’s, ravers and chavs, Britain’s youth culture was something to be proud of. Entrepreneurial, unique and style conscious, some had a political point, all had a raison d’etre to express new forms of style and sound.

So what do they do now, these culture-bereft youngsters? They protest.

The protest movement has all the hallmarks of a youth culture. Check out the pink or blue hair, the mullets, the undercuts and the straggly bleach ends. Check out the nose rings and the piercings. Check out the slogan t-shirt, the baggy jeans (again) and the hi-vis jackets. But instead of music, a culture or a tribe, the protest culture has an ideology you subscribe to, opinions you hold as if only you are justly correct.

Studying ‘Just Stop Oil’ protests I see all the panache of an early 1980’s O-level drama course taught with the enthusiasm of the PE teacher. Awkward youths gambol towards the fine stone pillars of the establishment or landmark they seek to assault, clutching aerosol cannisters of orange spray paint, unfurl a banner of a pre-approved slogan with logo ™. The finale is gluing themselves to a painting or the floor and then sitting or standing together, reciting with all the depth and enthusiasm of the school swot at form assembly, a liturgy of wrongs humans are doing to the planet, which they alone can save us from with their performative amateaur-ville stagings of agitprop activism. Perhaps in a deliberate move to be un-screen savvy, which the rest of the youth treat Tik Tok and Insta as their private reality-style show, their pallor and deadpan delivery reminds me of all the sexiness of a Sunday school teenage jumble sale.

Ouch.

If young people have no creative outlet, no way to shine or fail or experiment in reality, with each other, with their minds and bodies in space and time together, then this is the appalling culture we are left with. Empty, performative, dopamine addicted little activists, smug in their superiority, but bereft of their own creative destiny.

Here's the catch. A sop to the gender lobby, no doubt – perhaps to "counterbalance" the puberty blocker ban – but it would be disastrous in practice. From the BBC's Key points in King's Speech at a glance:

• A draft Conversion Practices Bill will introduce new restrictions on "abusive" practices intended to change people's sexual orientation or gender identity.

It’s a therapy ban. Therapists who ask kids why they hate their bodies will be criminalised. https://t.co/aVvju7LAeA

— Kate Barker-Mawjee (@KateBMwriting) July 17, 2024

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It used to be California leading the way, bearing the light of progress – then the rest of the US, then us. Not any more. Well, let's hope not any more:

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1995 into law. The so-called “Safety Act” is the first in America that prevents schools from adopting any policy that would require teachers and staff to inform parents when their child wants to be referred to and treated as a member of the opposite sex or as “non-binary”.

Schools in the state were already performing secret social transitions of students in large part because of guidance from the California Department of Education that advises schools to hide this information from parents. AB 1995 is an attempt to codify these practices, empowering gender activists against their local critics.

California’s schools are going to extreme lengths to maintain this secrecy from parents. The Golden State’s Roseville Unified School District, for example, has a gender policy that assigns parents a score between 1-10 depending on how “supportive” they are predicted to be of their child’s transgender identity. A low score presumably means that the parents aren’t to be trusted with that sacred knowledge. And, of course, parents have no due process right to contest or even be made aware of the score they are assigned.

Governor Newsom has acknowledged that parents have a right to review student records, but he conveniently didn’t mention that he meant only the official records. Lawyers advising districts such as Roseville instruct schools to create separate, unofficial records for the students with “gender identities” to avoid parental detection — even when the parents employ their legal rights to obtain their student’s records.

Progressive activists frame secret gender transition policies as a simple matter of protecting student privacy and, by extension, safety against “abusive” parents. But the argument about privacy only makes sense if one subscribes to the dubious philosophical anthropology of the “transgender child”. That is, only if one assumes that some kids simply “are” trans, rather than seeing transition as a coping mechanism for underlying mental health issues, neurocognitive challenges, social adjustment problems, internalised homophobia, or identity confusion. AB 1995’s framing of these struggles, as a matter of “authentic” personal identity to be kept from parents in the name of privacy, is pointless or worse.

Worse. Apart from the vital issue of parental rights, it's taking away the most important brake on a troubled child caught up in a dangerous social contagion. This is how cults work. This how grooming works. "Let's keep it ourselves, OK? Your parents might not understand." And it's the schools doing the grooming.

The SNP saga continues:

A former SNP activist who once tweeted how he wanted “beat the f**k” out of feminists has been jailed for six years for a series of sexual assaults. Cameron Downing, 24, preyed on six victims at locations across Scotland during a course of conduct which began when he was just 16-years-old.

The man who sent these tweets has just been sentenced to six years in jail for domestic abuse, & assaulting multiple women.

The sentencing remarks say that his risk profile is raised by his “hostility to women”.

The SNP made him an equalities officer AFTER he sent the tweets. pic.twitter.com/4tTRuwTFQz

— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) July 17, 2024

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If only they'd had some way of knowing he was a violent misogynist before they hired him…rather than just a somewhat enthusiastic follower of the party line on gender.

the source said. “After that, [the party officials] made everyone participate in the discussion and got them to pledge that they would unconditionally carry out the tasks assigned by the party, even if they had to sacrifice their lives, just like the protagonists in the movie.”

Some people, however, were negative about this demand for loyalty. One person asked who would take care of his children “if we sacrifice our lives to carry out revolutionary tasks. Well, I really hate to hear talk about giving up one’s life.

People were particularly unhappy with the film screenings in the workers’ district and at the downtown cultural center, which charged KPW 1,200 per person for admission.

“People said it was nonsense to charge money to see a movie that we even memorized the lines from, and now we’re being charged for political study sessions,” the source said.

It's a losing battle.

Korea,” he told the conservative Chosun Ilbo. “Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection.”

He is the most senior figure known to have abandoned the regime since Thae Yong-ho, the deputy ambassador at North Korea’s embassy in London, defected in 2016.

From the Chosun Ilbo interview:

Ri Il-gyu, 52, a former elite counselor who worked at the North Korean Embassy in Cuba, said in an interview with the Chosun Ilbo on July 14, “Once the article is published, the North Korean authorities will attack me as human trash, just as they always do with defectors.” Despite this, he agreed to the interview because he felt that “exposing the horrific human rights abuses and reality in North Korea is the way to help the North Korean people.”…

How did you feel about the nuclear and missile tests?

“Initially, the announcement of successful nuclear and missile tests was met with a sense of pride. However, as people realized the immense financial resources being diverted to these programs, their support waned. Under the false pretense of preparing for a U.S. invasion, Kim Jong-un’s regime has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to nuclear and missile development. This expenditure has crippled the country’s economy and reduced 25 million people to modern-day slavery. Older citizens have remarked that ‘it wasn’t this hard during the Japanese occupation.’ They question the rationale behind defending such a harsh and impoverished system. In response to losing popular support, the regime is escalating its politics of fear.”…

What are your plans for the future?

“For people like us, it’s hard to live without believing in the possibility of reunification. We hope to return to our hometowns someday and seek forgiveness from our families. If reunification happens, I want to introduce advanced culture, science, and technology to North Korean society. When I was in North Korea, I thought I was worldly because I had traveled a lot, but after coming to South Korea, I realized how naive I was. I didn’t know anything about banking, finance, traffic regulations, or automated systems. President Yoon Suk-yeol said in his Memorial Day speech this year, ‘South Korea is now one of the brightest countries in the world, but North Korea behind the armistice line is the darkest land.’ He was absolutely right. I want to think about how we can bring light to that dark land.”

Well, good luck with that.

Significant, I think. From the Telegraph:

Companies can legally block trans women from taking jobs intended only for women, the equalities watchdog has ruled.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that if an employer wanted to advertise for a woman-only job, that must only mean biological women or those who have received a gender-recognition certificate.

It would therefore be discriminatory to extend the definition of “woman” to men who self-identify as women.

Baroness Falkner, chairman of the EHRC, warned that her watchdog would take action against employers who breached the guidelines.

How about starting with Mridul Wadhwa, the man installed as head of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre in a position advertised as for women only?

“As Britain’s equality regulator, we have a duty to promote and uphold Britain’s equality laws,” she said. “Those publishing job adverts must be familiar with their obligations under equality law. They can feel confident that our updated guidance will help them to comply with the law.

“Employers should also be aware that the EHRC will take action to uphold the Equality Act. Where we are made aware of potential misapplication of Schedule 9 provisions, we will continue to assess and take action to resolve these on a case-by-case basis.”

The guidance was welcomed by women’s rights campaigners, including Nic Williams, director of Fair Play for Women, who said: “We welcome this new guidance that makes clear that men who self-identity as women are not female and should not be recruited as such.

Perhaps Baroness Falkner is getting this done and dusted before – as rumour as it – she's replaced by gender-friendly Harriet Harman.

At The Critic, Jo Bartosch on the BBC and its reporting priorities:

BBC audiences might be surprised to learn that the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, is committed to upholding the ban on puberty blockers. That is because on the same day as the puberty blocker story broke, our national broadcaster instead ran an interview with Venus Wailer, a trans activist who performs drag in a provincial city.

Bizarrely, this is the second BBC puff piece on the same Bristol-based performer in the past few months alone. The article, which twangs on the heart strings with much the same effect as a Hallmark greeting card, describes Wailer as “developing a drag act to help mentor transgender youngsters.”

The 32-year-old man, who identifies as a woman, reflects: “It gives me hope for the future because [the children] get it and I just want to lead the way for them.” No alternative viewpoint was offered about the existence of “transgender youngsters”, nor of the dangers of affirming a child in a cross-sex or nonbinary delusion. Tellingly, Wailer himself recalls that at his school in Venezuela, “there were kids in my school who were very flamboyant and getting bullied,” presumably these proto gay boys will today simply opt out of manhood by identifying as girls.

Granted, it takes skill to lip sync and dispense sarcasm while wearing skyscraper heels. But expert analysis of paediatric policy isn’t part of the drag package. So why did the BBC not opt to probe a little more deeply with an article on Streeting’s policy announcement? Why, instead of covering a major and controversial policy pledge did editors distract readers by digitally dangling a man in sparkly clothes in front of their eyes?

To many, drag queens are a sneering parade of gay male misogyny; of what feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys referred to as men who perform “woman face” in the same way as white people once “blacked up” for popular entertainment. Yet because Stonewall died for our sins (or something to that effect) drag has now been recast by the BBC as progressive, as fun for all the family.

And by now it seems clear that someone senior at the BBC has a thing for drag queens, or at the very least shares in bouffant wigs. It goes without saying that some of those paid from the licence fee will have children who identify as trans, making impartial coverage tough.

And some of those in high places in the Beeb have family connections with a company with a lucrative trans connection, as Graham Linehan showed a couple of weeks back. It's all part of the pattern of gender-friendly news they're only too happy to dish out to us poor licence-fee payers.

New York State Attorney General is going to sue a county because they dared to have women’s sports.

She says it is ILLEGAL for women to have their own sports in New York.

Illegal.

Let that sink in.

ILLEGAL. pic.twitter.com/CZnPRF3HgP

— Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 (@babybeginner) July 16, 2024

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A Female Genital Mutilation ban has been upheld in Gambia:

Lawmakers in the West African nation of Gambia on Monday rejected a bill that would have overturned a ban on female genital cutting. The attempt to become the first country in the world to reverse such a ban had been closely followed by activists abroad.

The vote followed months of heated debate in the largely Muslim nation of less than 3 million people. Lawmakers effectively killed the bill by rejecting all its clauses and preventing a final vote.

The procedure, also called female genital mutilation, includes the partial or full removal of girls’ external genitalia, often by traditional community practitioners with tools such as razor blades or at times by health workers. It can cause serious bleeding, death and childbirth complications but remains a widespread practice in parts of Africa.

Activists and human rights groups were worried that a reversal of the ban in Gambia would overturn years of work against the centuries-old practice that’s often performed on girls younger than 5 and rooted in the concepts of sexual purity and control.

Religious conservatives who led the campaign to reverse the ban argued the practice was “one of the virtues of Islam.” 

So the ban remains – good news of course, but it seems that it's not been widely observed.

In Gambia, more than half of women and girls ages 15 to 49 have undergone the procedure, according to United Nations estimates. Former leader Yahya Jammeh unexpectedly banned the practice in 2015 without further explanation. But activists say enforcement has been weak and women have continued to be cut.

The first prosecutions occurred last year, when three women were convicted for bringing their daughters to be cut and performing the practice. The cases sparked a public debate, and some said the prosecutions inspired the attempt to reverse the ban.

Gambia’s Islamic body in 2023 issued a fatwa, recommending the lifting of the ban of what they defined as “female circumcision,” as opposed to female genital mutilation or cutting. Following Monday’s vote, top members of the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council (GSIC) declined to comment.