My tiny baby brother
has never read a book
Knows one sex from the other
all he has to do is look
Doin' a-What Comes Naturally**, from Annie Get Your Gun
Well yes. And we get there in the end (if I may use that phrase) as the Supreme Court makes an intelligent ruling on a key aspect of the trans nonsense. It remains to unhook the NHS from that lunacy.
There are two aspects to this I find very interesting. Firstly, not so long ago the mainstream progressive left had been wholly captured by the "Self-ID Trans" madness, so that it was de rigeur to mouth "some men have a cervix / some women have a penis" etc etc. I had this down as a shibboleth, a marker of progressive belonging, being so deliberately crazy that it took a major effort of intellectual self-abasement to adopt it - like any uncomfortable initiation test. Yes, in order to be a Catholic in the Middle Ages you had to sign up for literal transubstantiation; and to be one of the Progressive gang, you are obliged to pretend you believe that a trans woman is literally a woman. Well, make that "are" into a "were", because I don't detect any of that on the mainstream left just now (though still perhaps amongst the Greens?) Mercifully, it evaporated some time over the last 12 months or so - something to do with the General Election, I'm guessing. A very big relief to many, we may be sure.
Second, however, is something that seems to be taking its place, and might possibly be around a bit longer. There seems now to be a reaction of, well, the Supreme Court's ruling is what it is, but the whole matter is so complex and "granular", it doesn't resolve the myriad of practical questions. The efforts made to make the waters seem as muddy as possible range from the properly nuanced to outright sophistry.
Armed with the SC ruling as a thoroughly commonsense-affirming breakthrough, we can cut through this second-tier crap relatively easily by noting that society often has annoying problems when willful, sometimes rather unfortunate people are determined to behave oddly, noisily and angrily in public. Can these ever be resolved by the Supreme Court? Well, no. It's not the SC's job, but rather, the thankless task of unfortunate school teachers, policemen, NHS staff, HR directors etc etc. As with stroppy children, be they genuinely disturbed or just playing up, the key is to steer them gently but firmly and confidently into some sensible, pragmatic, quietist outcome. Easier said than done, I know - but it's the eternal (and hopefully only occasional) lot of responsible adults.
ND
________________
** The film version of this song is slightly bowdlerised: the original contained some fruitier verses
24 comments:
"I don't detect any of that on the mainstream left just now (though still perhaps amongst the Greens?)"
And the Lib Dems I imagine. Definitely the Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose head was pontificating this morning.
"in order to be a Catholic in the Middle Ages you had to sign up for literal transubstantiation"
It was in the last few years that the Vatican made a pronouncement on whether the ex-bread Jesus contained gluten.
"As with stroppy children, be they genuinely disturbed or just playing up, the key is to steer them gently but firmly and confidently into some sensible, pragmatic, quietist outcome. Easier said than done, I know - but it's the eternal (and hopefully only occasional) lot of responsible adults."
Good luck with finding any responsible adults in the State sector. Thats where all the blue hair crazies hang out.
My guess is that the State sector will studiously ignore this ruling. It will continue on with all the pronoun nonsense, and keep calling male rapists 'she', and allow trans people to do whatever they like, and stick two fingers up at the public, and say 'Well what are you going to do about it?' And rightly so (from their perspective) because they know that everyone within the State sector who is responsible for enforcing the new paradigm doesn't agree with it either, so won't bother. Rather like the State bodies that are openly discriminating against white men. Is anyone doing anything about this? Of course not because those tasked with policing discrimination law agree entirely that white men should be punished, so they do nothing. The same will happen with trans issues within the State sector. Occasionally someone will win a court case (after being fought all the way by the State's lawyers) and gain some compensation, but most will just put up with it.
Not so sure about that. The state is not omnipotent. It has finite resources. It, like everyone and everything else, has to pick its battles lest it weaken itself trying to do too much, too soon, with too little.
To make this a little more abstract, the energy cost (“energy” being used broadly to encompass manpower, resources, budget, mental bandwidth, willpower and so on) of pursuing the trans agenda has got higher. Perhaps much higher. There are bigger fish for the ideology which brought us “trans rights” to fry. Open borders, degrowth, depopulation, collectivism — these are the big prizes. While the trans agenda dovetailed in with these, or some of them, it isn’t core. If it becomes a distraction, it’ll be bitched and memory-holed, PDQ.
edit: “it’ll be ditched” (not bitched; LOL)
Being bitched sounds about right for the troons.
The point is it won't be enough for those on high in the State sector to decree 'X is the new policy', they are going to have to enforce it, all the way down to the PC on the beat, and nurse on the ward.. To the extent of doing something to any of those on the front line who refuse to implement the new edicts. Given the State sector doesn't do confrontation over anything towards its employees, and certainly is loath to tell its staff anything they must or must not do, I can see that we will have a myriad of different practical outcomes across the entire State sector, depending on the attitudes of managers and shop floor staff in each department. One hospital will implement the new rules, others won't. One police force will do one thing, its next door neighbour another. Or there will be an 'official' policy, and what happens on the ground, the latter being nothing like the former.
I just don't see the entrenched ideological interests in the State sector just accepting this and rolling over. There will be mass attempts to get around the SC decision.
They won't take this lying down. The finagling and whining will continue, well paid people's jobs depend on it.
It was, I suppose, inevitable that all the 'analysis' would be done from a tranny viewpoint. Mine is that if a biologically female child or adult enters a space designated 'Women Only' then they should be confident that they will encounter only other biological females. And, at last, the Law agrees. So, F off, granulars and complicaters.
It’s a hard one to know for sure. I’m constantly revising my view and it never happens I see something that fixes it permanently. Let’s see I can elucidate my current notions.
One the one hand, a great deal has been invested in trans ideologies. No-one will simply want to write off all that sunk capital. Maybe indeed it’ll regroup, reform and reorganise — and start up anew.
That said, what makes me wonder the opposite is that all of these identity politics malarkeys are not, in reality, what they purport to be. Black lives don’t really matter. The climate catastrophe isn’t something that they want to solve (hence climate change fix denial is a big thing for the climate activists — we can’t have solutions to problems, can we?), trans rights are a zero sum gain against other protected characteristics’ rights… and so on.
What these things are is pegs to pin a deeper, more profound ideological driver onto. My hunch is that many of the people and groups behind such ideas are motivated by a notion of “humanity as a disease” (as explained in articles such as https://blogs.bard.edu/cepblog/?p=11973). In order to bring about their movement’s ideal, they need to weaken the whole of humanity itself. This is not an aim which you can easily trot out and have people flocking to sign up to. So, a little subtly is needed and they are in this for the long game.
Humanity is made strong by people. People are strengthened by their groups. Groups are strengthened by their cultures. Cultures link people to places, objects, things to their beliefs.
Hence the “culture wars”. Of course, in any war, you open up multiple fronts — it is rare indeed just one, head-on, battle is all that is required. And sometimes, one front proves to be flawed and not worth attacking (or defending along). There’s plenty of potentially far more advantageous fronts to be opened, if your battle plan is to attack culture. Maybe the conclusion will be that trans rights are too obvious an undermining of widely-held “deal breaker” beliefs. We’ll know soon enough if the next minority/victimhood activism magically appears on our screens and in our social media timelines or whether you’re right and there is still some life in the old trans rights dog yet.
Certainly no shortage of whining going on
Clive - "a great deal has been invested in trans ideologies. No-one will simply want to write off all that sunk capital"
Agreed, but sunk-cost fallacy remains a mistake and many investors have very promptly bailed out. I guess the jury is out on my assertion that the mainstream left have deserted this cause for good, & it'll just be a progressive rump holding this particular failing stock
This Scot Nat site has a selection "of the more measured and thoughtful responses from transactivists across the UK to today’s Supreme Court judgment".
https://wingsoverscotland.com/learning-to-cope
Interesting that much of the worst abuse is on the "safe space twitter", Bluesky.
That WingsOverScotland site is well worth a glance. Unless all those trans trolls are one and the same person, that's a lot of bile out there. Such a pleasant crew. By their tweets, ye shall know them.
Looks like I was wrong about the State/Private sector divide, seems there's as many ideologues in the private sector as the public one:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/17/britains-biggest-bank-pledges-solidarity-with-trans-staff/
OT but is there demand for this?
"Pubs in England and Wales will be able to stay open until 01:00 BST to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the government has confirmed. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said pubs and bars that usually close at 23:00 will be able to keep serving for an extra two hours on Thursday 8 May. "Keeping our pubs open for longer will give people the opportunity to join in celebrations and raise a glass to all of the men and women who served their country, both overseas and at home," Sir Keir said."
Those few who fought and are still with us, or whose parents fought, hit the pub at six and are home by nine!
I welcomed, if not celebrated, the Court's ruling. As someone who has known, indeed dated, trans people, I'm well aware of their fears and the danger they can sometimes find themselves in.
My view on the whole subject is something that has evolved over time. The government should have always clarified that legally "woman" meant biological, and then started carving out the exceptions. Relying on the UK state to apply any form of sense is a million-to-one bet, perhaps we should have adopted Code Napoleon for the internal organs of state, and left Common Law to the rest.
Biological sex, physical appearance of the exterior sex organs, and gender, should always have been regarded as distinct properties of a person, and that would allow a granular and nuanced approach. Nobody much cares about a transwoman in the ladies loo as any nudity is expected to be confined to the cubicles, whereas with open changing rooms, it would make sense to distinguish between pre-op and post-op.
That way you can distinguish between single sex and single gender spaces too, legislate that sports that involve expected physical collisions between players *will* divide between sexes post-puberty, and those that don't will be left to figure it out for themselves.
A bit more education and studies would be good too, always entertains me the face on some people when they realise they spent their first trimester as a proto-woman, before various genes kicked in to help slim and the twins along. If you're a biological male, nature has already given you a sex change. Studies would be good too, as I have a suspicion that quite a lot of the oestrogenic chemicals we pump into the environment have a bearing on it all, if there's many a slip twixt cup and lip, imagine the potential for chaos when migrating from proto-female to male in the modern womb.
"Nobody much cares about a transwoman in the ladies loo "
I think you'll find that a lot of women care quite a bit that they shouldn't be sharing their ablutions with biological men.
@ Caeser Hēméra
The part you are missing is that the vast majority don't want to accommodate a shrinking minority of people. The idea that we provision 3 separate toilets (Male, Female and Undecided) to accommodate these mentalists is total nonsense.
Now someone will go on about the disabled toilet and it's a good example - that just adds another under-utilised space that needs to be taken into account in buildings. How far do we allow the delusion to go - one for every imagined gender?
@Sobers - given women have been content to use the men's cubicles as an overflow for a long time, I very much doubt it's a "lot" of women.
I mean, a few of the Jam and Jerusalem set I know aren't bothered, and they're usually bothered by anything dated after 1850.
@Matt - how much accommodation is needed?
You don't need third toilets, transwomen can use the ladies, transmen, the men's, as I stated.
You find the majority of concerns revolve about nudity and safety, which minimises the friction, and you're looking at places like refuges, hospital wards, prisons, etc. there, that are generally versed in separating out groups already.
As for the proliferation of genders, we can generally approximate. No one is going to seriously suggest we set up whole areas across the nation for the one person in Hoxton who identifies as an asexual panda. Are you male-esque, or female-esque? Furry? Hmmm, try again.
For the majority of the last few years, we've mostly muddled by fine, right up until the SNP decided to see how batshittery went with the electorate with having GRC certs equate to sex, popping male rapists into women's prisons, and having a loon run their rape centres.
You're never going to please everyone, so it's about maximising women's safety, whilst ensuring Trans people also feel safe and engaged, and without pandering to the extremes of either group.
@ Caeser Hēméra
If women (and girls) encounter men in their toilets or changing rooms etc that's too much accommodation.
Now we have some sanity in definitions (thanks to the Supreme Court) then "men" (male sex) includes transwomen.
So, to be clear, no transwomen in the women's single sex spaces. They can use the men's or hold it in otherwise.
My (current) attempt at nuance:
- There are 'genuine' cases of trans women (I defy anyone to read 'Conundrum' [James / Jan Morris] and think otherwise; and one of my old soldiering colleagues is another)
- But self-ID alone as a criterion is utterly crazy, for at least three excellent reasons:
(a) we don't allow anyone to self-ID anything without there being scope for society at large to tell them they are wrong. This is true even for the most 'subjective' things, e.g. if I say my favourite colour is red, but upon inquiry it is found I have no red possessions nor anything that anyone can identify as a bias toward red, it is entirely fair to challenge my assertion, and if no satisfactory answer is forthcoming, to reject it. Still more if I claim to be Chinese, or a tree, or the reincarnation of Napoleon; which leads to ...
(b) a great many claims of being trans come from people with self-evident 'other problems' (I believe it is a clear majority) - so that pathology is in play: and they deserve a more comprehensive response than "of course you are, dear, you just go ahead and be whatever you like"
(c) the evident scope for, nay, actual incidents of, malicious and potentially dangerous abuse
(We might also add the ad hominem observation of the sheer nastiness of the militant pro-trans lobby.)
- What do we say & do about the Jan Morris's of this world? My observation is, they are not at all militant in their attitudes. It's not at all wrong to approach the matter with kindness. The best model I have heard advocated is by analogy with foster parents. They are not birth parents, and for very good reasons, society withholds certain of the privileges accorded to birth parents. But for some purposes, not least kindness to the feelings of foster-families, society does - as a courtesy - afford others of those privileges, including such simple things as referring to them as "your Mum and Dad", if that's how the family would like it. And, society strictly reserves the right to confer 'foster parent' status only on those it has examined extremely carefully, and considered suitable.
Once Guardian readers started wetting themselves, it took 6 weeks for a Conservative govt to ban plastic straws.
I predict about 6 weeks for the current Parliament to reverse this.
Well, I'm HUGELY relieved that I am a woman after all. When they started chanting Trans Women Are Women several years ago I started to wonder how so many people have suddenly gone mad. Having been a vocal Terf for years, (ever since Maria MacLachlan got punched by a massive tranny and the judge ordered her to address the thug as "she".) I can now simply reply to people "It's the law" when people idiotically argue that sports should be played based on gender not sex. The compo claims are going to go on and on (prisons, hostels, sports, loos etc etc) until someone somewhere says "Stop spending taxpayer money defending the indefensible"...the Sandie Peggie case just got stronger against NHSFife.
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