Organisations adopt the idea that men can be women out of kindness or pragmatism. But the illogic breaks them. They end up contorting themselves around the contradictions and the double-speak, until their core principle snaps, and with it their integrity. Scientists pretend they don’t understand evolution, left wing organisations say don’t listen to the masses, conservatives say don’t worry about liberty and and the rule of law. Venerable feminist organisations tell women to pipe down and stop being so difficult.
I joined Fawcett Society for their AGM yesterday. Make Woman Visible said the title.
Make woman faceless, eyeless and mouthless…
Making women disappear from the law, one one word at a time
Last week the government introduced a Bill to enable female ministers and shadow ministers to take maternity leave without having to resign their posts. The legislation is being rushed through because Attorney General Suella Braverman is due to give birth soon.
As many have commented, these provisions are long overdue.
Joeli Brearley, chief executive and founder of campaign group Pregnant then Screwed said it is “total insanity” it has taken 103 years for the government to recognise women cabinet members may have babies. …
Václav Havel, dissident, and later President of Czechoslovakia wrote The Power of the Powerless in 1978. It is an essay about how totalitarian regimes turn ordinary citizens into dissidents. And about how individuals ‘living within the truth’ can break the spell of a totalising lie.
Excerpts….
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite! Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm…
A year ago — on December 18 2019 — I learnt that I had lost at my employment tribunal.
I can’t remember much about that day. I know I had conversations with my legal team about the next steps in appealing, and I know I read the awful judgment over and over: “unworthy of respect in a democratic society”. I know I posted an update. I know I cried.
The next day my world tipped again when JK Rowling tweeted #IStandWithMaya.
My case became an international story. Suddenly I was not just being called names on twitter in the UK…
As JK Rowling famously remarked there used to be a word for female people.
From CNN, to Proctor and Gamble to the Labour Party, to charities including the stillbirth charity Sands, and Friends of the Earth the rush to erase the word women when talking about female people has only accelerated since she said this.
Its not inclusive you see.
Index on censorship is intervening in my case, and I am grateful for that, but I am also worried about the turn of their recent statement on the issue.
Index on Censorship is one of the few established organisations that has stood up for freedom of speech around sex and gender.
It gave evidence in the case of Harry Miller v Humberside Police and has condemned the abuse faced by JK Rowling, first in June on Twitter:
And recently it reiterated condemnation of the abuse of JK Rowing in a blogpost by CEO Ruth Smeeth “We need to end the…
Rosie Duffield liked a tweet by Piers Morgan…And then went on to tweet in her defence that female people have a name.
For this she was mass reported, and publicly condemned by the ‘bad cops’ of Labour Campaign for Trans Rights , while the ‘good cops’ of Labour LGBT+ worked privately to extract an apology. The bullying ended in Duffield taking a twitter break and issuing one of those awful hostage-note apologies.
As the CEO of the Equality and Human Rights Commission you said in a corporate tweet yesterday said that the best way forward in the debate over trans rights and women’s rights is for “both sides to improve the level of discourse”.
You said “We need clear conversations and proper debate about what the law and policy actually mean in practice, and what would be the practical effect of any changes — dialogue must be constructive, tolerant and based on the facts.”
Your tweet got a lot of response, mainly from women pointing out the contributions to constructive, tolerant, fact…
International development organisations are in the habit of saying “gender” when they mean “sex”. They use it as a polite euphemism, and to reflect that it is social norms, not biology itself, that holds women back. As UN Women says:
Gender: refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men.
But this leaves organisations vulnerable to a bait-and-switch move where recognition of sex is erased altogether in favour of the idea that everyone has…
Barrister Sarah Phillimore has blogged about an email she received from a supporter of Action Aid UK who wrote to the organisation to ask about the problem of conflating “gender” and “sex.
“Women and girls are being discriminated against and abused on the basis of their sex. Words are important and it needs to be crystal clear who is being subject to the violence so we can help those most in need”.
Action Aid UK‘s reply included the utterly gobsmacking statement
’ActionAid UK understands there is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’
A reminder:
- 200 million women and…
Maya Forstater
This is mainly where I write about sex and gender
