Author: Mick Hartley

the rest were either worthless or inconclusive. An awful lot of people who spent years insisting not just that gender-confused kids should be chemically castrated with puberty blockers and speedily prescribed cross-sex hormones, but also that women can have penises and all the other trans articles of faith, are now looking for a face-saving way to recant.

Amongst them is Keir Starmer. In 2021 the Labour leader said backbencher Rosie Duffield was wrong to say that only women have a cervix; post-Cass he admits that “biologically, she of course is right”. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, who used to say “trans women are women, get over it”, now says the next Labour government will “work to implement the expert recommendations of the Cass review”.

Why did two clever men ever believe that men could become women? Or that little children could discern their innate gender identities before they could tie their shoelaces?

Streeting, like so many gay men, was presumably misled by some gay campaign groups’ adoption of trans ideology despite its incompatibility with gay people’s rights. As for Sir Keir, he’s a lawyer, and lawyers are prone to believing that laws can overwrite reality.

His insistence pre-Cass that “99.9 per cent” of women don’t have penises makes sense if you think a government-issued piece of paper determines your sex (the 0.1 per cent are men with gender recognition certificates stating their “acquired gender” as female).

Funny how many people fell for this when they have no trouble understanding the concept of a “legal fiction” when the government declares Rwanda safe.

Streeting surely understands that the more that is done to end the scandal of sterilising gender-confused children before he picks up the health portfolio, the better for him. Sir Keir no doubt wants to avoid questions about women’s penises at every press conference he gives as prime minister. As John Maynard Keynes nearly said, when the incentives change, I change my mind.

The hope now is that many of the cowards who remained professionally deaf and blind to the downsides of pretending sex can change, join the rush for the exit. The self-proclaimed sceptics who used to be so scathing about homoeopathy but swallowed the ludicrous claim that it was possible to be “born in the wrong body”. The New Atheists who genuflected to a godless neo-religion. The civil servants supposed to uphold impartiality in public life, who put their pronouns in their email signatures….

ice: they cannot get away. They cannot avoid sharing intimate spaces. They cannot “reframe their trauma”, as one prominent Scottish activist outrageously suggested to rape survivors uncomfortable with males in single-sex spaces.

Women prisoners must live in close, sometimes very close, proximity to whoever the prison service decides. They must say nothing while a man with an erection, visible through his tight leggings, enjoys their obvious discomfort. They must say nothing while an aggressive man punches walls, triggering adrenaline rushes of fear as women relive the male violence and abuse that they have suffered in the past. They must say nothing while a man, masquerading as a woman, describes in detail what he plans to do to his girlfriend with his penis when he gets out. And they must remain silent when a “trans woman” tells them he has no intention of living as a woman in the community.

These all too common incidents, all ones I have witnessed or had reported to me, are compounded by the fact that in the UK, but not only the UK, a disproportionately high number of trans-identified males in prison are convicted sex offenders….

Update: amended, as The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht is not just a Rowling book – it's a collection of essays, with JKR being one of the contributors.

e telling children they can self-identify their gender, an investigation has found.

In a report, For Women Scotland, the campaign group, claimed that an “unscientific contested belief system” had become “deeply embedded” within classrooms as a result of controversial SNP government guidance and the influence of radical activist groups.

In findings based on freedom of information requests from hundreds of schools, the group discovered nine in 10 Scottish secondaries taught pupils that humans have a gender identity that may be different to their biological sex.

At least 95.4 per cent are operating gender self-ID policies, meaning schools consider the gender of the child to be whatever they declare it to be.

The situation means that biological males are being allowed to participate in female sport classes and share toilets and changing rooms with girls in a majority of high schools, the report warns.

The SNP government has kept controversial guidance, which calls on teachers to “be affirming” to children who say they are trans and endorses “social transition”, in place despite the recent findings of the Cass review.

The Celtic fringe, eh.

A reminder of another war…

8-year-old Mykhailo waits in vain for his father come home from bombed supplies store in Kharkiv

Now he has to undergo DNA testing himself, as his father is likely among the victims.

Authorities fear they’ll have to sift through ashes to find remains and identify the deceased. pic.twitter.com/X0PVmpeJnm

— Tymofiy Mylovanov (@Mylovanov) May 26, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

e are not in the Moscow of my youth, where one’s career depended on pretending to buy the Soviet credo hook, line and sinker! Yet the more students I met, the more I heard of similar, stifling concerns. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I knew very well how catching and pervasive self-censorship can become. No one will need to “occupy” the campuses physically if the Jewish students will carry out their own occupation themselves by growing too afraid to speak their own truths….

Of course America is a free country and not a totalitarian regime. However, it was impossible to miss the resemblance between the culture I encountered in the American academy 20 years ago and the Soviet worldview of my youth. Like the Communist party (following Marx), more and more people started dividing the world into oppressors (read: always bad, always in the wrong) and oppressed (read: always in the right), and claiming that whoever belonged to the first camp wasn’t worthy of the same rights, freedoms, and protections as the latter. Since Israel and successful “white” Jews elsewhere were a priori classified as oppressors, hating and indeed abusing them became less and less taboo.

In the past 20 years, the ideologues of this new antisemitism continued to pour their fervor into demonizing Israel, and to use every tool at their disposal to press the majority of American Jews who don’t believe their lies into becoming doublethinkers. They made it more and more difficult to get a public position in a student body for students who supported Israel or even visited it on a Birthright trip. They gaslighted Jewish students who spoke about their personal experiences of antisemitism by telling them that what they experienced was really “only” and “legitimate” anti-Zionism, putting them on the defensive for their so called “alarmism” and “rejection of legitimate criticism.” More and more Jewish students found that standing up for their beliefs marked them for discrimination and harassment. Jewish students found themselves unwilling doublethinkers in the very places that are supposed to be the bedrock and bastion of free society.

After Oct. 7, the campaign to vilify Israel and scare its potential supporters on campuses has exploded into the open. Explicit antisemitism became legitimate and accepted on many American campuses, as so-called “anti-Zionism” revealed itself to be a flimsy cover for unadorned antisemitism….

The occupation of the campuses, which 20 years ago was but a metaphor, has become a real movement with funding, leadership, and physical presence. Young Jews no longer face ostensible threats against their professional futures; they face daily threats against their physical safety and the core of their identities as Jews and as human beings.

Sharansky was inspired by the letter published at the beginning of the month from Jewish students at Columbia – Proud to be Jews, and proud to be Zionists – which he sees as a possible "turning point in the struggle for American Jewry’s future".

When I was a dissident in the USSR, my friends and I knew well that a revolution can only start when a critical mass of doublethinkers stops being afraid and crosses the line into open dissent. Only when the masses lose their fear and drop the mask of pretense, can they lead their society into a different future. It was true in the USSR, and it is true today: The ideological regime of antisemitism that has entrenched itself in America’s universities for decades will only collapse when enough Jews stop being afraid. It will only collapse if they stop unwillingly aiding it by hiding and self-censoring, and instead speak their truths openly and loudly.

I felt unsafe, my supervisor brushed it off and told me to read the work of a US academic known for their strong anti-Israel views.

“There is no breathing room or escape. Only one narrative is acceptable.”

Anonymous, University of Exeter:

"It’s been very difficult. A member of staff said during a webinar that Israeli women weren’t raped on October 7 because they were inherently the oppressor so could not be a victim. I was also denied the right to write in our campus paper about October 7, despite pro-Palestinian pieces being on the front page every week.

“Me and other students were surrounded and harassed by hundreds of people at our stall on campus. They claimed we were responsible for their families dying and that we weren’t real Jews. The university took no action.” 

Harry, University of Oxford:

“My great-uncles were tied to train tracks in Egypt before being expelled. Israel was their only sanctuary. My great-grandmother was born in Jerusalem. Yet there’s no room for narratives like these in Oxford. Rather, the myopic focus is on Israel as a uniquely European project.

“Even soon after October 7, I heard people say, ‘We only let them [Jews/Israelis] get away with it because of what happened during the war, meaning the Holocaust.’

“The mentality of the encampment is to sideline opposing views as mere political disagreements. For them, the allegation of genocide is enough for it to be real. For me, my lived experience of antisemitism is erased.”

The number of students unwilling to give their names tells its own story.

t of her college committee, claiming that “Jewish people are not welcome on campus” after allegations of antisemitism.

Madeline Bryant, 20, quit St Hugh’s College’s JCR, a student committee, and said that the pro-Palestinian protest encampment at the university was part of a “growing tide of antisemitism” on campus….

Bryant, who is Jewish and from New Jersey, had put forward a motion on Saturday night condemning antisemitic incidents that have occurred at the university since the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.

However, she said that her motion was sidelined to a working group while a motion put forward by Oxford Action for Palestine demanding the university cut ties with Israel was approved for a vote.

On Monday night she sent an email to about 400 of the JCR members announcing her resignation.

The human sciences student wrote: “I have watched my peers at this university chant to ‘Globalise the Intifada’ — a call for violence against Jews — but I was not prepared for it to come to St Hugh’s College.

“It is clear to me that some of the students last night did not come in good faith. I will not serve a JCR that has treated me so cruelly. A JCR that laughed when I spoke. A JCR that refused to engage in productive debate and instead decided to shut down peace and progress.”…

This month Jewish professors and students at the university presented a dossier to the vice-chancellor with more than 70 allegations of antisemitism on campus in eight months.

Bryant told The Times: “Antisemitism has become very bad recently so I put forward a moderate motion calling for peace and a two-state solution.

“But I soon realised they were not interested in dialogue. People have targeted me and attacked me for being a Jew. I’ve received a hate message online. The people behind the camp claim it is a safe space for Jews, but that is not the case.

“There’s a big problem across the entire university. When I saw the protests going on in America I thought British students would be more reasonable, and engage in civil debate, but I was wrong.

“My ancestors fled this continent less than 100 years ago amid violence and my family were scared that I was coming back to Europe to study but I told them I would be OK.

“Sometimes I feel it was a mistake. The one thing I’ve taken from this is that Jews are not welcome on campus.”

Well that's depressing. No doubt we all hoped that "British students would be more reasonable", but no, the American example of progressive antisemitism has proved just too compelling.

Marjory Collins, February 1943. "New York, New York. Italian-American fruit stand at First Avenue and Tenth Street."

[Photo: Shorpy/Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information]

The same old grump seen here.

;, ie pretends to be a man who pretends to be a woman. Here she's acting out her double mastectomy for entertainment purposes https://t.co/pFmLj1Or9F

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) May 27, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Pink News is very excited:

During the most recent episode (24 May), Gottmik, who, in 2021, became the first trans man to compete on Drag Race, appeared with a look inspired by her top surgery.

Adding her own creative spin to the category of “A Tail and Two Titties”, the Arizona-born drag artist appeared on the runway with an Ariana-Grande-style ponytail, and glittering red threads covering her surgery scars.

A cast of her own arms was wrapped around her chest, with a scalpel in each hand, as though completing the medical procedure. She accessorised the look with a clear plastic bag holding two bloody balls, aka her breasts.

While Drag Race fans have praised the look as “one of the best runways in the history of the show”, the clip also made its way into the hands of furious right-wingers.

Because only right-wingers could possibly object to this tasteful celebration of double mastectomy.

But Gottmik has the last laugh.

Some social media users tried to misgender the drag star, using he/him pronouns after assuming Gottmik is a trans woman.

Considering the star is a trans man who only uses she/her pronouns while in drag, the haters unintentionally managed to affirm her gender in the process.

Responding on X/Twitter, Gottmik playfully wrote: “No one affirms my gender like the TERF community hating my art. Talk about crashing the cis tem. Lmaooo.”

Ha ha!

Women taking testosterone – it's not a good idea. From the Telegraph:

Transgender men are suffering from “postmenopausal” problems like incontinence in their 20s because of taking testosterone, a study has revealed.

Experts analysed 68 transgender men who were taking the cross-sex hormone to change their identity from female to male and found that 95 per cent had developed pelvic floor dysfunction.

The participants, who were as young as 18 and had an average age of 28, had bladder and bowel symptoms that medics would expect to see in a woman after the menopause.

Experts said the impact of the sex-changing drugs on bodily functions are under-researched and under-reported, with people “not being informed of the risks at gender clinics”.

Around 87 per cent of the participants had urinary symptoms such as incontinence, frequent toilet visits and bed-wetting, while 74 per cent had bowel issues including constipation or being unable to hold stools or wind in. Some 53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction….

Kate Barker, chief executive at the LGB Alliance, said the group had “consistently spoken out about the damage done by these experimental surgeries, the overwhelming majority of which are carried out on LGB [lesbian, gay and bisexual] people”.

“Our annual conference has heard testimony from detransitioners who live every day with the consequences of actions they took when they were very young – sometimes in their teens – including permanent sterilisation and loss of sexual function,” she said. “This has finally been officially confirmed by the Cass Review.”

You can't help wondering how many of these unfortunates were influenced by the likes of the Pop’n’Olly books, so freely distributed to primary schools.