Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

[Emily's Cat]

Well, I'm interested in how this insanity came to capture so many public and private bodies in just a few short years. Other movements seeking to gain rights for disadvantated groups took many decades and their struggles are well documented. They also took public opinion with them, so that when, for example, same-sex marriage was made legal, the majority of the public were broadly sympathetic.

In contrast the trans movement infiltrated below the surface, often moving in secrecy, and yet achieved an enormous amount of favourable legislative changes in approximately no time flat. How? While at the same time failing to take public opinion with them, so that now, when daylight is being shone on their activities for pretty much the first time, public support is turning sharply against them.

The possibility that there has been money involved in all this seems better than remote.

On the one hand, the influence of moneyed interest in the trans narrative is fairly well documented. There's certainly been some concerted efforts by a small number of extremely wealthy individuals (Pritzker ferinstance), as well as some pharmaceutical corporations, to fund and further nominally charitable organizations like WPATH, Amnesty International, ACLU, etc.

On the other hand, I think the article also underestimates the influence of social media, and the way it amplifies ideas without any consideration as to whether those ideas are good or bad or completely nutty. This amplification isn't limited to trans stuff, it's wound throughout a ton of stuff. It only takes a relative few people liking and reposting and viewing and re-viewing each other's posts for it to end up appearing as if there's far more support for a topic than there actually is. And well... a lot of people don't look any further than that - if something is presented as well-liked, especially if there are notable icons or popular people liking it, then people simply assume that it's worthy of being liked. It's more or less how fashion works - how else do you explain bell-bottoms and tube-tops?

On the gripping hand, trans got an added bump by showing up in a period of time where social justice was already presented as fashionable*. Amplifying messages around gender identity, paired with a narrative of oppression and risk, can very quickly lead to millions of dumbfounded ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ jumping to the defense of people they've been told are attacked and killed and oppressed and abused for no good reason because they're just being themselves and it's horrible that society in this day and age doesn't just accept and embrace differences like this, it's all bigotry and bigotry is bad, right? What right-minded person is going to stand athwart such clearly well-intentioned support and inclusiveness... only evil bigoted people could possibly oppose it.

So basically, yes - money was undoubtedly a driver, but I think the entire thing was accelerated by social media and the particular social environment of the times in a way that made it a bit of a perfect storm.

 

[Rolfe]

Employment tribunals are generally tilted towards the employee, unless the employer has clearly documented everything and can demonstrate they have acted fairly.

NHSFife has been very aggressive in their legal strategy, requiring all 3 family members of the claimant to testify and be cross-examined about her level of distress. They have been very poor in disclosing relevant information and Dr Upton has been very long-winded under cross-examination, insisted that because of his gender identity he is entitled to use a female changing room, and used the full range of activist arguments including disputing use of language. It is likely we will have a witness from NHSFife as to the meaning of sex.

This is going to be a precedent setting case in the UK, and I suspect whatever the initial judgement is, it will be appealed.

They certainly haven't documented anything adequately! Did you see today's farce? Judged her to be at fault and decided on suspension before even hearing her side of the story, before even knowing who it was who was being complained about. Attempts to smear her as a "Trump supporter" - because she'd stayed at one of the Trump hotels. And painted her as an unsympathetic character, stern, strong opinons, "she lets you know", in contrast to Upton being indulged at every moment as a fragile flower. They're on a hiding to nothing. And anyone who hasn't been aware of the trans debate will have been listening slack-jawed to the assertions that sex is a nebulous dog-whistle (from a doctor), and human bodies are all the same unless one of them is pregnant. From a nurse.

It's so obvious that the alleged patient safety issues were someone (Upton) trawling back looking for things to complain about so that they had some reason to suspend her other than her expressed discomfort at his presence in the changing room. Nothing was complained of or documented as a concern at the time. The NHS witnesses have been embarrassing. Dire. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.

I hope they do appeal it, because that's how the legal precedent gets set. But if this goes on the way it's going, what have they to appeal? And they haven't even got to the legal reality that everyone has the right to a single-sex changing room at work, if required to change clothes there. NHS Fife doesn't have the authority to tell any employee that they can't have that. (Dying to hear how they try to repair the train wreck of nebulous dog-whistle and no difference in haematology reference ranges without crashing and burning their case completely. They're going to be asked, soon, if there's no difference between the sexes and the whole thing is entirely nebulous, why have two changing rooms labelled M and F in the first place.)

I see the "treats for Sandie" fundraiser has stalled at about £32,000.

ETA: I'm just back from a performance of an updated version of G&S's Trial By Jury (new title The Jury Is Out) in Dunfermline - which is in Fife, for the geographically challenged out there. I was laughing like a drain for slightly more reasons than the director probably had in mind.

 

[Brainster]

Here's an amazing story out of Berzerkley about a cult of murderers. As you can imagine, this is a huge scoop, but it has some unfortunate aspects that need to be reported delicately.

A sprawling web of violence across America, which has left at least six dead, has been linked to a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals known as the Zizians. Investigators across the country are piecing together connections between the double homicide of a wealthy married couple in Pennsylvania, a deadly shootout in Vermont and two brutal knife attacks on a landlord in Vallejo. Four people who are allegedly Zizian cult members are in custody facing homicide charges, despite multiple escape attempts. Three members of the fringe group are missing and wanted, including the leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, who faked their death in the San Francisco Bay.

See the little clue? "Their" death? The article dribbles the information out:

Around a dozen individuals appear to have in-person links to Ziz, some of whom worked at NASA and Google before the arrests began. Many of them advocate for veganism and identify as transgender.

When you are talking about a dozen individuals, and you say "many" of them are transgender, I'm guessing that has to mean at least four or five; less would be several and more would be most. Let's keep track:

They also practiced “unihemispheric sleep” or “partial sleep,” a scientifically dubious technique apparently developed by Danielson, in which one half of the brain rests while the other is active. A later anonymous blog post accused Ziz of using the technique as a form of sleep deprivation to manipulate followers. The post alleged partial sleep was used on a Zizian in Poland named Maia Pasek, who was born Chris Pasek and transitioned later in life.

One.

Borhanian was born in South Carolina in 1991 and grew up in North Carolina. She was diagnosed with Asperger’s in her youth and transitioned to female at the age of 21.

Two.

Ophelia Bauckholt, 26, was born in Germany and was named Felix before transitioning to female later in life.

Three.

Also in Solano County jail is Alexander “Somni” Leatham. Although jail records identify the 29-year-old as male, Leatham identifies as female. Leatham was present at the Westminster Woods camp protest and is responsible for stabbing Lind in the torso with a sword, investigators said.

Four.

Danielson was arrested at the Westminster Woods rationalist protest in 2019. She was then 25 years old and listed as “transient,” according to news reports at the time. Named a plaintiff in the subsequent court case against Sonoma County, Danielson accused sheriff’s deputies of anti-trans abuse while she was in custody.

Five at least and that's excluding Ziz, who is not specifically mentioned as trans.

The group is implicated in a several murders/deaths, including the parents of a cult member and an unlucky landlord. In addition, at least three of the members have been killed; one in a failed attack on the landlord and two in a shootout with Border Patrol agents.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Berzerkley

 

[smartcooky]

Here's an amazing story out of Berzerkley about a cult of murderers. As you can imagine, this is a huge scoop, but it has some unfortunate aspects that need to be reported delicately.


See the little clue? "Their" death? The article dribbles the information out:


When you are talking about a dozen individuals, and you say "many" of them are transgender, I'm guessing that has to mean at least four or five; less would be several and more would be most. Let's keep track:


One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five at least and that's excluding Ziz, who is not specifically mentioned as trans.

The group is implicated in a several murders/deaths, including the parents of a cult member and an unlucky landlord. In addition, at least three of the members have been killed; one in a failed attack on the landlord and two in a shootout with Border Patrol agents.

OMG, this reads like a Craig DiLouie novel

 

[Aber]

It's so obvious that the alleged patient safety issues were someone (Upton) trawling back looking for things to complain about so that they had some reason to suspend her other than her expressed discomfort at his presence in the changing room. Nothing was complained of or documented as a concern at the time.

The nurse's barrister got Dr Upton to confirm that these incidents were logged on his phone at the time, and is now asking for a forensic examination of the phone.

Good barristers NEVER ask questions where they are uncertain as to the answer; if there are contemporaneous notes they would severely harm the case, so the expectation is that there are no records.

 

[Rolfe]

OK, I missed that point. How come he was unable to state the dates of the incidents then? He says he made a note but he can't just check the date of the note?

I also wonder if there are other creepy notes about other women who did (or maybe didn't) look at him funny.

I repeat though, that no complaint or concern was officially documented at the time, irrespective of what's on that phone. Very strange, if patients were indeed put at risk. In contrast he's emailing everybody in sight in the early hours of Christmas morning crying about being called a man.

So he could have been caught in a flat-out lie under oath. Not good. I still can't understand why he would claim to have made a note but also claim that he had no idea of the date, though.

 

[theprestige]

OK, I missed that point. How come he was unable to state the dates of the incidents then? He says he made a note but he can't just check the date of the note?

I've seen this in US court proceedings as well. Apparently there's a subtle but important evidentiary nuance, between a witness testifying to what they remember, versus reading a written record that tells them what (allegedly) happened. Both have value, but it can be important to get both on the record, and to get the memories on the record before refreshing those memories with the written material.

I also wonder if there are other creepy notes about other women who did (or maybe didn't) look at him funny.

I repeat though, that no complaint or concern was officially documented at the time, irrespective of what's on that phone. Very strange, if patients were indeed put at risk. In contrast he's emailing everybody in sight in the early hours of Christmas morning crying about being called a man.

So he could have been caught in a flat-out lie under oath. Not good. I still can't understand why he would claim to have made a note but also claim that he had no idea of the date, though.

Probably because he couldn't see past the "gotcha" of claiming to have noted all these other "incidents".

 

[Rolfe]

I've seen this in US court proceedings as well. Apparently there's a subtle but important evidentiary nuance, between a witness testifying to what they remember, versus reading a written record that tells them what (allegedly) happened. Both have value, but it can be important to get both on the record, and to get the memories on the record before refreshing those memories with the written material.

Probably because he couldn't see past the "gotcha" of claiming to have noted all these other "incidents".

But, there was a whole carry-on about the date of the peanut allergy incident, with Upton(ogood) absolutely unable to recall when it happened between something like August and November. He was flat-out accused of being deliberately vague so that the claimant's team wouldn't be able to find anyone who could give an independent account of what they saw happen. And he couldn't just say, if I may consult the note I made on my phone at the time, that will give us the date?

 

[Aber]

The NHSFife case has taken an even more extraordinary turn. They have invited the nurse to a NEW disciplinary meeting on Friday regarding the misgendering and alleged patient safety issues.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...d-trans-nhs-doctor-threatened-with-sack-fife/

Comment from a specialist lawyer:

It has now been revealed that NHS Fife is pushing forward with its internal disciplinary process. It cannot be underestimated how shocking this is from a legal perspective. If there is an ongoing disciplinary process, it would be a flagrant breach of natural justice and of Ms Peggie’s right to procedural fairness for NHS Fife to pre-judge that process. Yet despite officially having come to no conclusion as to allegations that Ms Peggie harassed Dr Upton, this is exactly what counsel for NHS Fife is arguing in defence of the lawsuit that Ms Peggie has brought.

 

[angrysoba]

Here's an amazing story out of Berzerkley about a cult of murderers. As you can imagine, this is a huge scoop, but it has some unfortunate aspects that need to be reported delicately.


See the little clue? "Their" death? The article dribbles the information out:


When you are talking about a dozen individuals, and you say "many" of them are transgender, I'm guessing that has to mean at least four or five; less would be several and more would be most. Let's keep track:


One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five at least and that's excluding Ziz, who is not specifically mentioned as trans.

The group is implicated in a several murders/deaths, including the parents of a cult member and an unlucky landlord. In addition, at least three of the members have been killed; one in a failed attack on the landlord and two in a shootout with Border Patrol agents.

It’s a story that is bizarre in many ways. Also included is the “Rationalist” movement and an offshoot of “Effective Altruism”. There was a BARpod episode about it. You may need a pencil and paper to keep track.

Episode 247: The Zizians' Reign of Terror (with Tracing Woodgrains)

The Bay Area's very own rationalist trans murder cult.

www.blockedandreported.org

 

[TomB]

The struggles for racial equality and against anti-homosexual prejudice took a very long time. They're still not done - racism and gay-bashing are still happening and acceptance is still grudging in many quarters. Conversely, the pro-trans movement came from nowhere in about five minutes, to the point where just about every organisation in the western world is fawning over them, legislating special privileges on demand, and painting rainbows on its walls and any other available surface. To me, this is odd.

I don't think the pro-trans movement "came from nowhere in about five minutes."

In the early 90s, drag shows became fairly popular among young heterosexual women where I lived at the time. (Peoria, Illinois.) I think it was kind of an offshoot of gay culture becoming cool. (A few years earlier ('86), when I was in college, the "best" dance club was the local gay bar, which started having "straight night" every Wednesday or Thursday.)

Fast forward a few years to 1995, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came out and was a mainstream success. Ru Paul and Drag Race followed shortly after.

My point here is that trans or trans adjacent people became more visible in a positive light as acceptance of gay culture progressed. This likely encouraged people who had previously stayed mostly out of the spotlight to be more visible and vocal and, importantly, realize that they don't have to live in the shadows. (This is not a bad thing.)

So why the "sudden" appearance of more trans people?
Again, I think it is a delayed parallel to what I saw with the acceptance of homosexuality. In the late 80s, it seemed to me that there were a lot of high school girls who came out as lesbian. For most of them, I think it was a phase of social and/or sexual experimentation. It had become more acceptable to explore. (Oddly, it was (is?) not as acceptable for boys to experiment. Similarly, I suspect there are some young people who are experimenting. Not all, of course, but it's hard to tell one from the other.

So, no, I don't think there is some kind of conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies.

 

[Ziggurat]

Fast forward a few years to 1995, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came out and was a mainstream success. Ru Paul and Drag Race followed shortly after.

We suffer from the linguistic crime of conflating transvestites and transexuals into a single term "transgender", but they're two different things. Ru Paul was a transvestite. Drag is transvestitism. Transsexual is a very different kettle of fish.

So why the "sudden" appearance of more trans people?

It's not simply the sudden appearance of more trans people. It's the sudden move to accommodate the trans activists, even the most extreme demands, with basically no public debate and often no public support. That's very weird, and your examples don't really do anything to explain it.

So, no, I don't think there is some kind of conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies.

I'm not sure I believe the pharmaceutical conspiracy either, just because it's too simple and pat an explanation. But something very strange happened, and it cannot be explained by ordinary social change mechanisms. Maybe it's got something to do with the rise of social media, I don't know, but it's definitely weird.

 

[angrysoba]

We suffer from the linguistic crime of conflating transvestites and transexuals into a single term "transgender", but they're two different things. Ru Paul was a transvestite. Drag is transvestitism. Transsexual is a very different kettle of fish.

If you say so, but Eddie Izzard used to be very adamant that transvestites and drag queens were very, very different, and insisted he was a male lesbian. Fast forward twenty years and he is now calling himself transgender. But of course, if true, then this clip would be "problematique" no?

 

[Brainster]

OMG, this reads like a Craig DiLouie novel

Reminds me of Helter Skelter.

 

[smartcooky]

I don't think the pro-trans movement "came from nowhere in about five minutes."

In the early 90s, drag shows became fairly popular among young heterosexual women where I lived at the time. (Peoria, Illinois.) I think it was kind of an offshoot of gay culture becoming cool. (A few years earlier ('86), when I was in college, the "best" dance club was the local gay bar, which started having "straight night" every Wednesday or Thursday.)

Fast forward a few years to 1995, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came out and was a mainstream success. Ru Paul and Drag Race followed shortly after.

My point here is that trans or trans adjacent people became more visible in a positive light as acceptance of gay culture progressed. This likely encouraged people who had previously stayed mostly out of the spotlight to be more visible and vocal and, importantly, realize that they don't have to live in the shadows. (This is not a bad thing.)

So why the "sudden" appearance of more trans people?
Again, I think it is a delayed parallel to what I saw with the acceptance of homosexuality. In the late 80s, it seemed to me that there were a lot of high school girls who came out as lesbian. For most of them, I think it was a phase of social and/or sexual experimentation. It had become more acceptable to explore. (Oddly, it was (is?) not as acceptable for boys to experiment. Similarly, I suspect there are some young people who are experimenting. Not all, of course, but it's hard to tell one from the other.

So, no, I don't think there is some kind of conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies.

I will tell you what IS happening all of a sudden...

1. People who are clearly biologically male claiming they are women merely on their own say so, and
2. Demanding absolute right of access to women's safe spaces such as toilets, restrooms, changing rooms, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centres and
3. Demanding inclusion in women's sports, and
4. Demanding to be housed in women's prisons, then
5. Transgender activists screaming blue murder when they don't get their way, and
6. Calling anyone who disagrees with them "transphobes", and
7. Organising Social Media outrage mobs to publicly attack those who disagree, and
8. Organising phone and letter writing campaigns to get anyone who disagrees with them fired or sanctioned by their employer.

But the worst aspect of this is the number of organizations, including political parties and actual governments, that have been captured by this froot loop ideology. I consider myself to be Liberal, but I HATE the way the left wing liberal progressives have hijacked my party and turned it into a party of whackjobs in full denial of objective scientific reality - i.e. the claim that an individual with with a prick, balls, a beard, XY chromosomes (with NO DSD) who has a reproductibve system that is arranged to produce small gametes can be anything other than a biological male.

Now, none of this crap was happening in the 1990s! None of it!

 

[angrysoba]

Now, none of this crap was happening in the 1990s! None of it!

I'm not sure. I know that there were issues happening back in the 1990s. It was probably pretty fringe back then, but the actual feminists who were always considered extreme in their day - the radical feminists - had already been in the trenches on this one.

Germaine Greer, who is a member of the college's governing body, is horrified at the decision to admit Dr Padman as a Fellow of the college because the statutes insist that all fellows must be women. She is considering calling an emergency meeting of the governing body to discuss the controversy. Only Newnham's principal, Dr Onora O'Neil, knew that Dr Padman had undergone a sex-change operation to become a woman in 1982. Dr Greer and other fellows had had no idea of Dr Padman's history. "We have driven a coach and horses through our statutes and I can't believe we did it," she said. "It's disgraceful that Dr Padman has been placed in this situation. I makes me very angry."

Dr Padman, like Dr Greer born in Australia, is said to have considered resigning if "a significant number of women" at the college were unhappy with her position, but did not want to lose "something I love".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html

Pretty sure Greer's views were the same from the 1970s onwards.

This is more recently (nine years ago), but her views have always been this way.

 

[smartcooky]

I'm not sure. I know that there were issues happening back in the 1990s. It was probably pretty fringe back then, but the actual feminists who were always considered extreme in their day - the radical feminists - had already been in the trenches on this one.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html

Pretty sure Greer's views were the same from the 1970s onwards.

This is more recently (nine years ago), but her views have always been this way.

I stand by my claim.

Those bullet points 1 to 8 were not happening until very recently. I see nothing in this video to contradict that claim

 

[Rolfe]

The one I'm really talking about is 9. The captured organisations. The army of people who are mostly not themselves trans, but who are insisting on pronouns in email signatures and attacking women as transphobes if they dare to object to men in their toilets or changing rooms and writing actual sex out of policies and legislation in favour of gender identity.

The pervasive attitude that, at its peak, saw a judge rule the belief that sex is binary and immutable and sometimes important as "unworthy of respect in a democratic society". That has removed the words "mother" and "woman" from the vocabulary of maternity hospitals, to be replaced with "birthing parent" and "pregnant person". Oh, and "chestfeeding". That has banned lesbians from having female-only social events and dating apps.

The "progressive Pride" lanyards and flags everywhere. Company logos dressed up in these colours for the whole of June (at least). A nurse with 30 years unblemished service being faced with dismissal for referring to an obviously male junior doctor as "he". Writers and artists losing their jobs, their publishers and their agents because they liked a tweet by J K Rowling. People getting visits from the police about "hate crime" because they put up a poster reading "woman: adult human female" or "I J K Rowling". Police doing the work of vexatious litigants who allege transphobia everywhere.

People like J K Rowling being sent the most vile insults and graphic death threats (usually involving rape with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire) for not slavishly bowing to the ideology. Drag queen story time.

We've seen it in this thread, especially in its early iterations. People being called vile names with impunity on the principle that it's fine to call someone a bigot if they're on a particular side of the argument, and these people having their own speech policed.

None of that ever happened with the gay rights movement, and certainly not to this extent with the civil rights movement. Attitudes changed slowly, legislation was debated and introduced slowly, and genuine bigotry gradually decreased and became less and less acceptable. There is still institutional racism and homophobia in the police, but they will fight to the death for a male police officer's right to carry out an intimate search on a female prisoner if he says he's trans (or a male prisoner's right to be searched by a female police officer if he says he's trans). I could go on but I'd be typing all day.

This has come out of nowhere in the last ten years and I'm not insisting on the "Big Pharma" explanation, but it's completely bizarre.

 

[Emily's Cat]

OK, I missed that point. How come he was unable to state the dates of the incidents then? He says he made a note but he can't just check the date of the note?

I also wonder if there are other creepy notes about other women who did (or maybe didn't) look at him funny.

I repeat though, that no complaint or concern was officially documented at the time, irrespective of what's on that phone. Very strange, if patients were indeed put at risk. In contrast he's emailing everybody in sight in the early hours of Christmas morning crying about being called a man.

So he could have been caught in a flat-out lie under oath. Not good. I still can't understand why he would claim to have made a note but also claim that he had no idea of the date, though.

I'll be happy to see Upton run through the wringer on this entire crap show...

That said, depending on how they took notes, there may not be a date stamp. If it were a text, it would be there. I think the same is true if it were a voice recorded note. On the other hand, the simple little app I use for my to-do, grocery, reading, and random thoughts lists doesn't have any dates associated with them, unless I manually type it in.

That said... there might very well be associated dates under the hood in the app, even if Upton can't see them. That could be very enlightening. At this point after hearing some of the things Upton has said in testimony, I wouldn't be surprised to find they added trumped-up patient concerns AFTER complaining about being accurately identified as a male.