Deleted tweets by Kathleen Stock

docstockk-deleted.md

Deleted tweets for Docstockk

The list below includes 5587 deleted tweets by Docstockk.

Note: GitHub's rendered view of the Gist truncates the list. You can see the full content here, or by cloning the Gist locally.

There are also 6 tweets that are indicated as not currently deleted by the Twitter API that have been scraped from pages of deleted tweets (as replies, etc.). These possibly undeleted tweets are included for context and are indicated by a (live) link.

This report was generated by ✨cancel-culture✨, an open source project by Travis Brown.

You can create your own updated version of this document by checking out and configuring the repository and then running the following commands:

$ cargo build --release
$ target/release/twcc deleted-tweets --report Docstockk

Please note that all tweets quoted here are sourced from the Wayback Machine and were not directly accessed through the Twitter API or any Twitter client.

• 16 January 2021: Is this really happening? (serious question, not rhetorical)
• 14 January 2021: (also not so big-name faculty, obviously - don't get excited, Chris ;) )
• 14 January 2021 (live): Another brilliant thing is that for 2.5 years, a small alliance of students plus big name faculty have loudly trashed me, made up versions of what I think, and made an embarrassing show of themselves - unaware of it, as no-one they respected said so out loud. Well, now they know.
• 14 January 2021 (live): What an amazing cross-disciplinary list. Students looking for supervisors fair-minded about different views about sex/gender identity relations, might want to check this list out, & cross-reference with academic specialities 👇👇
• 8 January 2021: The Scottish Government, everyone. Either Scottish women must gained a lot of upper body strength since the last time I was up there, or the men must have shrunk.
• 7 January 2021: The implied conditional is right. Academic feminism is not serious. It’s a charade. Middle class people (of which I am one) mostly ruin every left-wing thing they touch.
• 5 January 2021: What the fuck are you talking about? How is that analogy consonant with conversations like this?
• 17 December 2020: Have deleted the whole Daniel Lavery thread because I just really can't be arsed. Let people think what they'll think about me. Happy Christmas everybody.
• 17 December 2020: hyped-up American teenagers furious with me on the Laverys' behalf. Get off your computers, I'm going to.
• 17 December 2020: I know how everyone likes catfights at dawn but pls don't continue this nonsense on my account- don't be rude about them under the line, don't go over there to argue. Am just putting this here now because I don't fancy spending festive season having to defend myself from various/
• 17 December 2020: And now DL is tweeting like I am godmother to their cat. Daniel: A) I didn't know about the family stuff; and B) why would you think that knowing that stuff made any difference to what I thought about Grace being arsehole to detransitioners?
• 17 December 2020: Also, I once stuck up for Grace after Graham Linehan instigated a pile-on on here - I asked him to delete a tweet (which he did). And Grace and I corresponded again once after that. But that was it, til the email this morning.
• 17 December 2020: Don't follow Grace any more, have never seen a tweet by Daniel before today. In past: GL & I corresponded briefly after she wrote hit piece about me, I was civil, but then our budding correspondence cooled, to indifference of both parties, after about two emails apiece.
• 17 December 2020: I got strange unsolicited email this a.m. from GL about it but that's the first I knew. I live in UK, am not obsessed with US queer culture, am blocked by nearly anyone who would have known, and besides which.. I really just don't think about the Laverys that much, you know?/
• 17 December 2020: detransitioners, "melon-balling" young women, etc? Yes I definitely do. Do I "hate queers on terrifying scale"? No, I definitely don't. Don't I KNOW what GL has been through this year re Daniel's family/ pedophilia? Er...are you confusing me with someone else?
• 17 December 2020: Daniel Lavery is seriously defaming me over on US twitter today in a thread, after I tweeted twice in a thread between @jessesingal and partner Grace last night. Briefly, and with very little energy: Do I disapprove of Grace Lavery's cynical recent takes on blockers/
• 17 December 2020: Fantastic!
• 17 December 2020: Yes it will be up tomorrow
• 17 December 2020: Me too - really looking forward to this later
• 17 December 2020: Yeah I did!
• 16 December 2020: Don't apologise for thing. Way beyond cool crowd gloss and knowing eye-rolling, this stuff matters and you're one of few US people drawing attention to it. The spectacle of adult males urging puberty blockers for what are mostly young females with complex conditions is revolting.
• 16 December 2020: Madame Lovary's main interest here is not logic
• 16 December 2020: yeah - woe betide the plebs who didn't do the training, and who then unwittingly use outdated words handed to them by the wider culture at one point, and who then get held up for ridicule and shame by the cognoscenti in the name of virtue, no matter what the speaker's intentions.
• 16 December 2020: Social justice-speak is now effectively a speech code of the relatively rich. You learn it at University. You then get to use it to yr advantage, both to further propel you, like a Freemason's handshake, and as weapon against those not in your club.
• 16 December 2020: I am delighted to say that there has.
• 16 December 2020: I truly don't know what unconsciously self-destructive trip the authors of hyperbolic op-eds about terrible TERFS are on, but please keep going: every time you write one, people come and check us out for themselves.
• 16 December 2020: Tomorrow
• 16 December 2020: Thanks, that's nice of you. I just saw one being liked from Dec 2018- I've seen others from before then.
• 16 December 2020: "An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the city in which a warlord took over a leftist commune. We regret the error" :D
• 16 December 2020: Actually I think I meant tweetdelete, not tweetdeck! You can see I'm not exactly technologically-minded. That's what I try to do but it must be a cache (whatever that is).
• 16 December 2020: The no-true-Scotsman fallacy A: "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge". B: "But Donald, who's a Scotsman, eats sugary porridge?". A: "Ah but Donald isn't a REAL Scotsman!"
• 16 December 2020: Have question: every now and again I try to delete old tweets, to protect account from vexatious offence-mining (I use tweetdeck). And I think I succeed, but then I see someone liking something of mine from 2018 - why is it still there? Do popular tweets stay around anyway?
• 16 December 2020:
• 16 December 2020: Also, not exactly the point but we're not straight!
• 15 December 2020: .@fairplaywomen nail it here
• 15 December 2020: I don't give a toss about my title and don't use it in non-work life, but have to agree that the difference in approach and tone was marked, throughout. Almost as if they wanted to underplay our expertise. (Weird - you'd think we were the ones trying to change the laws).
• 12 December 2020: It would also be helpful to the readers to indicate in the introduction whether you yourself a) are a woman b) have ever played sport c) have ever enjoyed watching women's sport d) have ever heard of sport.
• 12 December 2020: To the people looking at Tulsi Gabbard women's sports bill, and proudly suggesting sports should be organised by "body type" but not sexed body type: I'd like a fully worked-out 100 page report about how exactly this gets implemented at every sporting level, on my desk by Monday.
• 11 December 2020: I find it staggering. The defence citing "persistent dysphoria" for why nearly all went on to cross-sex hormones is about as convincing a retroactive explanation as phlogiston was. Surely Russell Viner's position is not tenable.
• 11 December 2020: Thanks :)
• 11 December 2020: Yes I hope they keep it up. People not massively invested for self-interested reasons tend to see through that stuff.
• 11 December 2020: I hadn’t noticed that.
• 11 December 2020: This is happening next week! Book now to avoid disappointment. Attendance wearing a Christmas jumper is optional but encouraged.
• 11 December 2020: Thanks
• 11 December 2020: Equality Network is permitted to intervene in @ForwomenScot Judicial Review of Scottish Government’s Gender Representation on Public Boards Act. @ForwomenScot funded by ordinary people at grassroots. Equality Network 90% funded by...rubs eyes... the Scottish Government.
• 11 December 2020: Brilliant!
• 11 December 2020: In every case where we are confidently told prioritising gender identity over sex makes no difference - in medicine, education, the development of young lesbians and gays, women's spaces, women's resources, sport, etc - we need evidence that this is so, not a wing and a prayer.
• 11 December 2020: Good grief. We saw this attitude of complacency at #wesc session too, where the trans activist academics interviewed talked a lot about feelings but had very little data to present, nor even general claims as opposed to individual anecdotes; and MPs made no attempt to drill down.
• 11 December 2020: "There has been no research as to why, in 2011, the gender split among children presenting at the clinic was roughly 50/50 between natal girls and boys but by 2019 the split had become 76% in favour of girls"
• 11 December 2020: "It has no data on the number, if any, of young people assessed suitable for puberty blockers where the drugs were not prescribed because they were not Gillick competent."
• 11 December 2020: "Tavistock had not collated data on the age distribution of those prescribed puberty blockers. It had kept no statistics on the number or proportion of children referred to Tavistock with an existing autism diagnosis and then prescribed puberty blockers."
• 11 December 2020: It couldn't be clearer how atmosphere of moral complacency allowed evidence-gathering protocols to be ignored by Tavistock. Across academia, evidence of harm of gender identity ideology is just not looked for, because people feel sure it's right or are scared to say otherwise.
• 11 December 2020: Thank you!
• 11 December 2020: Me too
• 11 December 2020: My second Labour was textbook - an hour from start to finish - but the pain was unlike anything I’d had, I couldn’t handle it at all, and the midwife left me on my own on grounds that I’d “done this before”. I wish I’d vomited on her feet tbh. (Most MWs great, of course)
• 11 December 2020: Jesus, Mary. That’s shocking. The NCT cult was strong when I was pregnant and there was huge emphasis on “natural” birth, I found it quite sinister in its religiosity. I also knew the age-linked stats on likelihood of interventions.
• 11 December 2020: Thank you Posie Parker for your magnanimous recent video on the wesc hearing. I really appreciate it. (Hope you see this).
• 11 December 2020: Ta Selina. Yesterday’s news now 💪 Onwards! Etc.xx
• 11 December 2020: That’s brilliant
• 11 December 2020: Happy birthday! 🎂 🥳 🎉
• 10 December 2020: A v good point!
• 10 December 2020: Well there you have it
• 10 December 2020: Amazing news. Thank you @JohannLamont! #sexnotgender
• 10 December 2020: Ta, I need em!
• 10 December 2020: TLDR: in academic series on oppressive speech, a trans speaker in zoom session in Feb complained about my session in April, saying they were "uncomfortable around" me. Talk was then pulled, claiming argument that woman =adult human female disparages "particular group of people"
• 10 December 2020: Thank you David. In academic philosophy, as you see from this incident, I'm popularly construed as an evil witch so it's always nice to be reminded that other views of me are available.
• 10 December 2020: Urgh. So cowardly and so unfair. DM me if you think I can do anything (that wouldn't make it worse).
• 10 December 2020: yes, am sorry, I realised afterwards you must have meant that! It is SO TEDIOUS. As I've said on here before, I didn't foresee I'd go down in history as the one that argued that women are females and gays are homosexuals.
• 10 December 2020: here, and have argued in past with me in aggressive way, then it is possible I was insulting, but I would never do it without provocation and I rarely do it anyway even when provoked. But this is scarcely the point. (I went to look at the thread and found was blocked, naturally).
• 10 December 2020: to organisers because in past I had been "personally insulting to them" and they felt "uncomfortable" around me (around? we wouldn't have been in the same session or same country!). I have, to repeat, never heard of them or ever to my knowledge interacted. If they have a sock on/
• 10 December 2020: Further update - have just been sent a screenshot of tweet thread currently up by an invited trans speaker in same series, but completely different zoom session to one I would have been in (different day, different month), who I have never heard of, saying they complained/
• 10 December 2020: Well he is the linguist, apparently.
• 10 December 2020: Wow, you are on fire. Thank you!
• 10 December 2020: Am aware i sound sarky. Sorry.
• 10 December 2020: Yes Stephen, I find it fucking tedious too. But here we are, having basic rights eroded, being told sex doesn't exist or matter or both, and worrying about the future for women and girls. So unfortunately I have to keep banging on and so do the others who care about this.
• 10 December 2020: I'm afraid the small but intrepid band that dare speak out about this stuff aren't going to sort this on their own, philosophers. It's too big. You can look away all, tell yourselves we're nasty or stupid or whatever helps you sleep, but this isn't going away. It won't end well.
• 10 December 2020: So just so we're clear, I just got no-platformed from a university talk for proposing to argue "woman"=adult human female, because this "can and perhaps must" be understood as disparaging "a particular group of people". Cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 10 December 2020: Follow up from Director here. On a): the theme as offered to me was "Bodies, gender identity and misogyny" so I was scarcely off topic. On b) it seems clear that the real reason was offense and the rest is confected nonsense. So much for academic freedom.
• 10 December 2020: Thank you Miroslav, that is very kind of you. The topic as originally offered to me was "Bodies, Gender Identity and Misogyny" so I was scarcely off topic. I think it's obvious the second reason is the most pressing one.
• 10 December 2020: Thanks Alice - you know how it feels!
• 10 December 2020: I really appreciate your integrity. Thank you! (Not for me, particularly, but for the good of philosophy, which needs this stuff to stop).
• 10 December 2020: /and clearly, pressure was being brought to bear by those higher up in the organisation. But is quite funny - in completely unhumorous sense of "funny" - that I can defend my views, held by most people, to MPs in Parliament, but can't get gig in an academic series on free speech.
• 10 December 2020: Other pro-gender-identity speakers remain on programme 🤔 Originally was told it was because talk was too far from theme of the series, but eventually organiser confessed it was due to politically controversial nature of my talk. It's not the organisers' fault - they are junior/
• 10 December 2020: In other news, yesterday I got no-platformed from this philosophy series at @ZASBerlin on "oppressive speech". (You just could NOT make this shit up). Til yesterday, this title and abstract were published under theme 5, but I've now been told to withdraw.
• 8 December 2020: Best of luck in the new role, Lachlan. Sounds exciting and they obviously know a good thing when they see it. And a heartfelt thank you from me, for your amazing support x
• 8 December 2020: If she's looking to criticise small mutually reinforcing groups, she may want to look closer to home.
• 8 December 2020: It's yet more proof that surrounding yourself with people who agree with you on an issue, and blocking out all dissent as hate, eventually makes you look like a smug, vicious idiot to anyone not similarly placed.
• 8 December 2020: I hesitate to send it the clicks but it's in the Atlantic.
• 8 December 2020: Like everyone that passed eyes over it just thought it was perfectly normal to be pillorying and ostracising a whole bunch of people based on normal beliefs they themselves held til 2015. Like they don't see it. It's only TERFs! Our normal standards just don't apply.
• 8 December 2020: These articles always stand out from other pieces in the same publication by the sheer bloody oddness of their vituperative tone.
• 8 December 2020: I see there's another hit piece out about TERFS in an otherwise reputable publication, once again harnessing that uniquely destructive combination of the trans woman that resents females, and the female who is desperate to not be resented like other females.
• 2 December 2020: I think biggest role of academics is to fight nonsense other academics have been spouting for years about this, which will then hopefully filter out to places where recent university graduates are working. But majority of people don't need academics to point out reality.
• 2 December 2020: @libertyhq have completely lost the plot. Credibility utterly destroyed. As Magdalen Berns would say: their minds are so open, their brains have fallen out.
• 2 December 2020: What a weird offshoot of liberalism-on-steroids is all this guff about "freedom from the body as determinative".
• 2 December 2020: Consultant psychiatrist David Bell raised the alarm at Tavistock GIDS and they then launched disciplinary proceedings against him - I just supported his legal fund here
• 2 December 2020: That time when the director of Tavistock Gender Identity Service Polly Carmichael went on children's channel CBBC to tell kids who were watching that puberty blockers were great and had no lasting effects whatsoever
• 2 December 2020: Yes, I have written about that in my book. Constant switching between different meanings of "gender" gives the impression of a unified phenomenon, when it is not
• 2 December 2020: So many women I know - and especially gorgeous lesbian women, feisty women, rambunctious women - would have "failed" this test and counted as having gender dysphoria in childhood, but thank God their parents weren't handed this nonsense by medical professionals to worry them with
• 2 December 2020: A disaster for our bottom line, more like.. does this mean the National Lottery will stop giving Mermaids enormous grants to spread untruths about child suicide?
• 2 December 2020: The DSM-5 is the main US diagnostic handbook for mental health/illness. Their account of gender dysphoria in children (2nd page) is so obviously based on societal unease at sex-non-conforming children. It's hiding in plain sight. Girls who like boys' clothes, toys, playmates...
• 1 December 2020: Do your Guardian-reading mates a favour and share this tweet. Most of them still have absolutely no idea.
• 1 December 2020: When a star like Elliot Page becomes a trans man, they don't stop being a lesbian, because lesbianism is same-sex attraction, not identity; but they do stop being a visible, proud symbol of lesbianism for younger lesbians; and in a culture with v few of them, that's a real shame.
• 1 December 2020: Or Sunday even! God.
• 1 December 2020: You are a star
• 1 December 2020: Apologies for misspelling #KeiraBell (long day)
• 1 December 2020: If you watched the #womentalkback webinar on Saturday, then you heard from Michele herself the heavy toll that it has taken - though equally you heard her commitment to keep going. Michele and @brunskellevans are tireless in this fight and totally inspirational.
• 1 December 2020: Just a reminder that the brave academics who laid the groundwork for today's decision at the High Court in the #KieraBell case are still hounded by other academics. In particular @michelemooreEd faces constant attack even within her own institution, and no Union protection.
• 1 December 2020: Keira Bell's victory in court was a victory for lesbian and sex-non-conforming youth. Stonewall wants the verdict to fall at appeal, and will invoke ever wilder and more febrile rhetoric to try get their way. Morally bankrupt organisation.
• 1 December 2020: Lol yes, usual disclaimers apply, but I basically think of NIA as honorary grassroots!
• 1 December 2020: The grassroots is where real, meaningful feminism is at now. People like @cwknews are free of the circle-jerking, group-thinking, corporate-friendly nonsense that goes on in the third sector and mainstream women's orgs. They Do The Work, carefully, patiently, and never give up.
• 1 December 2020: Please read this. The solid arguments and evidence-based approach of @Transgendertrd in intervening in this case, versus the lazy rhetoric of Stonewall and Mermaids (both denied as would-be interveners by judge) could not be more obvious.
• 1 December 2020: You got in there first.. I do expect that as response from others. And of course it's absolutely true for many. But when stakes involve kids' future fertility, and therapist is the gatekeeper/ procurer, it's reasonable to ask for a therapist who isn't a passionate activist.
• 1 December 2020: There are also clinicians at Tavi GIDs trying very hard to work professionally and sensitively, and question rather than automatically affirm. But I know their work has been made much harder by some colleagues and what they have felt is perpetual unofficial oversight of Mermaids
• 1 December 2020: Please do not name this therapist in discussion - it will distract from the more general point which is about politicisation of a supposedly medical service.
• 1 December 2020: If I had child with gender identity disorder I'd go to @TaviAndPort GIDS service hoping to be given impartial, evidentially-informed advice, sensitive to whole picture. Am not confident that this (former? current?) therapist can provide that (anonymised - PLEASE keep it general).
• 1 December 2020: Ok will do!
• 1 December 2020:
• 1 December 2020:
• 1 December 2020:
• 1 December 2020: A couple of citations (not exhaustive) below for those who need them #IStandWithKeiraBell
• 1 December 2020: The fact this is a controversial ruling in some quarters shows how far those quarters are from planet Earth. Yet another example where certain academic elites have constructed a house-of-words to convince themselves of the indefensible.
• 1 December 2020: Not again
• 1 December 2020: Brave academics Heather Brunskell-Evans, Michele Moore, Susan Matthews, and Michael Biggs have a lot to say about this, and their work now deserves the widest possible audience.
• 1 December 2020: Their sources were not medical, but Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler.. they provided an intellectual rationale that wholly obfuscated the harms they were permitting in the name of progress. And wider philosophy and academia let them #IStandWithKeiraBell
• 1 December 2020: One day soon, the full story will emerge about what exactly has happened at @TaviAndPort Gender Identity Service - how therapists with backgrounds in post-structuralist philosophy, at the Head of the Service, came to believe they were forging new "meanings" with kids bodies.
• 1 December 2020: Does the @IrishTimes not care about disadvantaged women in prison, with histories of poverty and abuse, housed with male sex offenders? Is it not a story their middle-class readers care about?
• 1 December 2020: everything crossed for you all
• 1 December 2020: I wasn't criticising him, I respect both him and his work. It was the point that people don't ask The Question in the context of research on men.
• 1 December 2020: Will there be a recording? Or slides? Really interested in this topic but unfortunately can't make the webinar. Hope it goes well!
• 1 December 2020: Fantastic!
• 1 December 2020: Fabulous news
• 1 December 2020: lately though that one reason most academics don't write for general readerships is because they can't.
• 1 December 2020: @LyyPerr I think in the UK (we don't have tenure but we do have promotion etc) writing for general readership officially doesn't help your reputation, and possibly unofficially harms it, in the sense that you aren't considered "serious" and it's thought of as a cop out. I have realised/
• 1 December 2020: yes, it is where all the action is, probably unsurprisingly..
• 1 December 2020: Ha, I've actually written an entire book about how intentionalism is a great position and DOA mad, but I still think that views that have nothing to do with what author was trying to communicate in work are irrelevant to success of work.
• 1 December 2020: Looking forward to hear the outcome of Keira Bell's brave Judicial Review later today.
• 30 November 2020: I'm guessing that, though millions of vulva-owners do indeed enjoy sex, not many of the people that consciously think of themselves as vulva-owners do.
• 30 November 2020: Thinking about how hard it is to get unashamedly female-focused Phds funded in UK Universities right now, and dreaming about setting up a charitable trust for that purpose (any shy millionaires that follow me, now's the time for the DM - I'd do it in a heartbeat if I had backing)
• 30 November 2020: Here's my talk on the death spiral of academic feminism, from the #WomenTalkBack webinar last night @womentalk_back (give them a follow, they are one of the few female-focused student societies in the country)
• 29 November 2020: @helensaxby11 I only said it, I didn’t do it..
• 29 November 2020: Glad he's not my lawyer
• 29 November 2020: Oh, so like: "women were kept out of male institutions (like the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and the Garrick Club) and now men are kept out of female institutions (like.. er.. changing rooms and women's football teams) so.. um.. men will have to set up their own? Er... ok!
• 29 November 2020: I have stared at this tweet for ages and am still totally stymied as to a) why this bloke thinks any feminist doesn't already know this; and b) what he thinks is the supposed gotcha that follows for a justification of male-free spaces and resources. Anyone got a clue about b)?
• 29 November 2020: Thanks Caroline!
• 28 November 2020: Waiting is horrible. You aren’t alone though it probably feels like it. Hang in there.
• 28 November 2020: Me too
• 28 November 2020: And yet you now regularly slander fellow GLF member @BevJacksonAuth as a hatemonger for wanting to stick up for lesbian rights (same-sex attracted females - you know the ones). Some solidarity there, eh, Peter.
• 28 November 2020: That is, indeed, the tweet. I've never cared that much about the views or even the deeds of artists if their art, detached from those views, inspires me, and I'm not going to start now. Atwood is a literary goddess.
• 28 November 2020: I fell off my chair to find myself quoted in this (p.215 as I now know by heart). V proud moment. It’s brilliant. Buy it for any difficult women you know.
• 28 November 2020: RT @ruthserwotka: I am still really proud to be a founder of this fantastic grass roots women's rights campaign, funded, as you can see her…
• 28 November 2020: (Philosophical Studies, if anyone wants to know)
• 28 November 2020: 8 month wait, single anonymous referee report, rejection. The academic publishing game is a right laugh, innit.
• 28 November 2020: Whoops, here is the link
• 28 November 2020: I'm told that this draft paper of mine on concept of WOMAN is ranked #229 for total views out of 2.3 million papers on @PhilPapers_CDP. An interesting juxtaposition with its recent rejection from journal on basis of single referee report: "in vicinity of some interesting ideas".
• 28 November 2020: Astonishing isn’t it?
• 28 November 2020: Blocked by @LondonLGBTPride for this tweet.. cowardly AND touchy I see.
• 27 November 2020: Really looking forward to reading @PaulEmbery's new book
• 27 November 2020: You'll never believe what they said!! Watch the @ALLIANCELGB Shocking Video that Caused OUTRAGE. (then marvel at how humane, moderate, reasonable people can be so easily vilified for absolutely nothing these days)
• 27 November 2020: Stats here, all impeccably referenced
• 27 November 2020: And talking about truthers, here's another one.
• 27 November 2020: That last tweet was about victims. This, from the ONS Sexual Offences data, is about perpetrators.
• 27 November 2020: If that's not causal significance I don't know what is.
• 27 November 2020: "birth sex is a useless proxy for risk". These people are the Left's truthers.
• 26 November 2020: Your feelings of embarrassment are not my immediate concern
• 26 November 2020: If you're a gay person who quietly follows me and is sick of the flattening of discourse, deadening of eyes, and the zombie-like mantras masquerading as equality - and worried about the kids, the women, or the transsexuals - please support @ALLIANCELGB
• 26 November 2020: Hey cowardly LGBT organisations! Don't do this. Keep on being silent if this is your only other option. There are gay people out there who will cling to your words like a liferaft for the hour they are up there, and feel like they are drowning again when you take them away
• 26 November 2020: The desperate self-flagellation going on on that page right now is turning my stomach.
• 26 November 2020: I'm sorry. But you are right
• 26 November 2020: There has been a changing of the subject on an epic scale.
• 26 November 2020: UK corporates tweeting about Trans Day of Remembrance based on 0 UK murders; Law Commission proposing "hate crime" category for asexuals; Boyz mag for gay men recanting same-sex defence when business threatened. Equality juggernaut now powered by self-interest and💰. That's it.
• 26 November 2020: Fourth act:
• 26 November 2020: Let the headshaving commence
• 26 November 2020: @SimonFanshawe @Lachlan_Edi and @HumanGayMale - along with @TwisterFilm they are heroes, to a man. Grateful for their sane, humane, thoughtful but determined takes.
• 26 November 2020: Ah well. Loving the chat at @ALLIANCELGB #GaySpot from four brave, intelligent gay men who really are the opposite of those self-interested cowards at @PrideInLondon
• 26 November 2020: No there’s no cancel culture here. A play in three acts. Fuck sake @BoyzMagazine you very nearly did a good thing for gay young men then.
• 26 November 2020: Careful, Naomi Wolf might write a book about you
• 26 November 2020: Welcome @BoyzMagazine to the grown-ups in the LGBT room. You will find the rest of us next to the drinks table, clutching martinis, looking a bit tired.
• 26 November 2020: Question: how can you tell which LGBT organisations genuinely represent the interests of gay men, as opposed to the ones answering to straight, queer-identified kids in order to milk the cash? Answer..
• 26 November 2020: Question: how can you tell an LGBT organisation that genuinely represents the interests of gay men, as opposed to answering mainly to queer-identified kids with aspirations of being annoying to their parents, and heterosexual marriage in their futures? Answer..
• 26 November 2020: Me too
• 26 November 2020: Alternatively: we are shocked and disappointed to see that our own cynical, hypocritical stance on this (gender identity on the streets, same-sex attraction in the sheets) has not been replicated by @BoyzMagazine, when we assumed no other organisation would have the guts we lack.
• 26 November 2020: Now then JB, you know how this one ends, and my mentions are enough of a shitshow as it is..
• 26 November 2020: Nice one!
• 26 November 2020: 👏
• 26 November 2020: I think Ayishat gave the clue to that in the original tweet
• 26 November 2020: Laugh now, Rachel, but in our glorious future you might get a police report for that tweet.. Best rephrase. Not so much "failed" as "differently successful".
• 26 November 2020: Obviously I say "news" loosely
• 26 November 2020: This juggernaut has now officially left the tracks and is careering out of control.
• 26 November 2020: Two sources cited: one an Independent news article solely citing first-personal anecdotes
• 26 November 2020: here it is
• 26 November 2020: It’s in the current law commission consultation on hate crime, as a proposal.
• 26 November 2020: True. Also to create new “problems” to solve, even given lack of independent evidence of their existence. See: new push to make a category of hate crime against asexuals (and no I’m not kidding).
• 26 November 2020: That must be the new EHRC Equalities Commissioner
• 26 November 2020: In response to recent suggestions that people chuck food at their mothers for being "TERFS", comes this brilliant video suggesting strategies for the mothers, and any other relatives afflicted by ideologues at the dinner table.
• 26 November 2020: Yes it could. @NadiaWhittomeMP tweeting support for her "trans sisters" on a day marking violence against women - I thought her constituents were in UK but apparently they include lots of South American trans women in the sex trade (two significant factor for trans murder rate).
• 26 November 2020: yes, it did!
• 26 November 2020: Have followed you.
• 26 November 2020: To wit: no UK trans murders for 2 years. Average of 1 a year for decade previously. European rates very small. The entire problem based in the Americas. Why on EARTH is the UK police force prioritising this? Because it is easy.
• 26 November 2020: Yes I will keep banging on about this. This is a great point. The more complex, pressing, and serious the problem, and the more policing failures surround it, the less likely it is to feature on a flag outside a police station or on a lanyard or a virtue-signalling tweet thread.
• 25 November 2020: Why, do you have a lot of twitter followers from South America?
• 25 November 2020: Case in point: Sussex Police HQ few days ago. We may cut foreign aid but at least our police care about South American trans murder rates.
• 25 November 2020: So much easier to strike a pose, wear a lanyard, raise a flag outside your station, list your pronouns, and go on a parade.
• 25 November 2020: Powerful statement from @CarolinejGoode in today's @FemicideCensus, on lack of police resource/training and relation to #femicide. Feel so furious at resource-strapped police forces dicking about with purely cosmetic causes e.g. #TransDayOfRemembrance (no UK murders for 2 yrs).
• 25 November 2020: Or was that a guess? In which case, 10 points (probably)
• 25 November 2020: NOOO YOU ARE RUINING IT
• 25 November 2020: (No screenshots please, I beg you)
• 25 November 2020: Really should make it a party game for blocked feminists - like Jeopardy - If this was the response by Sarah Ditum to Marie Le Conte, what stupid thing did Le Conte actually say?
• 25 November 2020: I also just managed to reply to quote of a tweet by Roz Kaveney without even going incognito - I just looked at context, mentally rehearsed each of the ten hackneyed child-like manoeuvres available, and took a punt (and was right).
• 25 November 2020: I can see people I follow getting furious at their hot takes and quote tweeting, but where the fatuous trigger should be, there's just a beautiful void.
• 25 November 2020: Feeling particularly grateful that most the Righteous Ones at the Guardian have me blocked me today
• 25 November 2020: Ah you see, though, when you (e.g. you Hadley, or Suzanne) say general things about women's rights, or the sex of trans people, you're being highly personal and offensive, but when Suzanne's colleagues time a petition to coincide with an article of hers..
• 24 November 2020: Yes it does sound a bit Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I grant you.
• 24 November 2020: Great!
• 24 November 2020: I learnt about it from seeing him talk about it here.
• 24 November 2020: Not sure - but you can buy it if you have a spare 3 mill knocking around
• 24 November 2020: Are you intersectional enough?
• 24 November 2020: I know I should stay away but he. makes. it. so. goddamn. difficult...
• 24 November 2020: "if the people you find yourself agreeing with are overwhelmingly comfortably off and from an empowered class you should ask yourself whether your analysis.. is intersectional enough". OK I ADMIT IT my analysis doesn't intersect with blokes who own windmills as second homes.
• 24 November 2020: Spluttering
• 24 November 2020: Holly Lawford-Smith describes her digital deplatforming from Medium and Twitter. Holly isn't an extremist. She just won't agree with progressive orthodoxy on women, or their rights and interests. This should send shivers up your spine - if it doesn't, check you still have one.
• 24 November 2020: 😂
• 24 November 2020: Yes.. thank god for the bit about rugby, we'd have thought he was a right preening fop otherwise
• 24 November 2020: These people "casually" describing their days never add the real stuff, eg. "sitting on the bog, thinking about which details of my day so far can be composed into a tweet"
• 24 November 2020: Not to mention @BluskyeAllison @bkgrossman @Julian_Norman1
• 24 November 2020: .@legalfeminist @AudreySuffolk @RadFemLawyer @anyabike @jodrant @HWistrich @centreWJ I'm sure you are on to this but just in case
• 24 November 2020: An epic read with lots to think about. Was mildly disconcerted to read that Singer is a deontologist though.
• 24 November 2020: "In effect, liberalism’s categories of majority and minority cultural identities were plugged into socialism’s oppressor-oppressed terminal, filling the blank slots left by the bourgeoisie and the pro­letariat."
• 24 November 2020: Also @dsdfamilies
• 24 November 2020: (@ClareCAIS headsup for the stuff on intersex, which needless to say is lumped with trans and non-binary).
• 24 November 2020: this legislation is supposed to be doing, and how we got from worrying about brutal racist crimes to appeasing the anxious feelings of asexuals.The potential sprawl of this worries me, as well as its apparent changing of the subject.
• 24 November 2020: To my eyes, though some of this might be right, having e.g. asexuality as a protected hate crime characteristic would be a reductio ad absurdum of the legislation - what history of hate crimes towards asexuality has there ever been?? - and raises bigger questions about what/
• 24 November 2020: It asks, among others, whether sex/gender, asexuality, being intersex, being non-binary, sex working (their terminology) & having philosophical beliefs should all be newly protected as possible grounds for hate crimes. It also has a lot about enhanced sentencing/ aggravation.
• 24 November 2020: This Law Commission consultation contains proposals to consolidate/ ramp up hate crime legislation in a number of areas. Have the legal people that follow me responded to it yet? Deadline Christmas Eve. Some brief info to follow:
• 24 November 2020: 👏👏
• 24 November 2020: Me too!
• 24 November 2020: Starlet gasp! 🤩
• 23 November 2020: Anytime you want help with a tricky line ending, Rach, just let me know ;)
• 23 November 2020: Possibly my finest rhyming feat ever.
• 23 November 2020: Still crickets
• 23 November 2020: So Jolyon is outsourcing critical thought to teens, and ignoring dissent from older women. And Jolyon also wants us to outsource our critical thought to.. puts on reading specs.. um.. Jolyon. What about if we all just thought about stuff ourselves & told JM to shove it?
• 23 November 2020: Jolyon Maugham has apparently completely lost the plot and is now sounding like Q Anon. Very 2020.
• 22 November 2020: Their future parents will have to get a bit more enthusiastic about it first!
• 22 November 2020: I can't find much to argue with (admittedly because I've only read about five of them)
• 22 November 2020: Elena Ferrante names her 40 favourite books by female authors
• 22 November 2020: Exactly!
• 22 November 2020: 4th down is suet; Sunmaid raisins is a brand of californian raisins, am guessing they were just moister than the dried up things we used to get; yes, it's stout; and I think it must be zest! Let me know how it turns out if you do..
• 22 November 2020: TBH Olivia I think they still have about three knocking about from 2005..
• 22 November 2020: I'm not an organiser but am positive you would be v welcome.
• 22 November 2020: This looks great - this Thursday, @SimonFanshawe, @TwisterFilm, @Lachlan_Edi, @DreyfusJames and James Roberts on "are gay men getting lost in the gender identity debate?"
• 22 November 2020: Have a great day Suzanne. Breathe easy x
• 22 November 2020: Fair point, though iirc it always got doused in brandy and set on fire at the end
• 22 November 2020: Yes, I was relieved to see that too
• 22 November 2020: Yes - you should probably monetise this and hire yourselves out to make parties go with a swing 😅
• 22 November 2020: There was no music, no disco lighting, no dance floor, and no one else dancing, which made it even more impressive!
• 22 November 2020: My dad does, so I’ve eaten quite a lot of them. Am about to try it for 1st time myself
• 22 November 2020: It’s #StirUpSunday, so here’s my great granny Linn’s recipe for Christmas pud, which apparently won a Daily Mail competition in 1920. A light and delicate affair, as you can see.
• 22 November 2020: Congrats @ProfAliceS!
• 22 November 2020: Thanks Raquel!
• 21 November 2020: "when Suzanne’s colleagues complained about “transphobic” writing, they were referring to a column she wrote defending me. Now it’s my turn to defend her." .@selina_todd on the Guardian's disgraceful treatment of @suzanne_moore, in Sunday Times.
• 21 November 2020: Also contains genius line "My use of relevant case material is seriously hampered by concerns about confidentiality (UKCP 2009, 3.4). But fortunately, the central theme of this paper was already addressed by the Roman poet Catullus as early as 50 bc"
• 21 November 2020: Really valuable piece - all the more valuable because research like this is often suppressed after protest.
• 21 November 2020: I loved pretty much all of it but especially loved seeing @K_IngalaSmith and @HWistrich having a cheeky boogie in the bar (and was even more full of respect for Harriet's stamina when I saw her the next morning on live telly).
• 21 November 2020: A strikingly perverse thing about some high-horse academics is their quickness to take the low road without shame. Also striking is how LGBT staff networks in Unis are now used in partisan fashion, often against other LGBT staff.
• 21 November 2020: It doesn't matter whether they literally mean it or not, it's a limited-character hashtag, noone else is going to have a clue what they mean and will naturally take it at face value. It is ripe for misuse and misunderstanding.
• 21 November 2020: No, I do not.
• 21 November 2020: Thank you v much - from an editor, I know that this is high praise indeed! :)
• 21 November 2020: Great news
• 20 November 2020: That's really lovely
• 20 November 2020: He said it! The internet has eaten their brains.
• 20 November 2020: I haven't, to my shame - should do so.
• 20 November 2020: Very!
• 20 November 2020: Just look at all this amazing work. These three women @mbmpolicy are powerhouses. They need some financial support to keep doing it. If you care about women and girls in Scotland and the UK, it's imperative to keep these three doing their brilliant thang. Crowdfunder at end.
• 20 November 2020: No nothing. It's just Transgender Day of Remembrance and that's apparently enough to unleash a renewed campaign against Rosie Duffield for sticking up for sex-based interests.
• 20 November 2020: Of course she isn't
• 20 November 2020: And as usual, no-one can be bothered to examine the impact of generally high murder rates in South America, or the intersection of TW working in the sex trade, and what that might mean, or how we might actually help those people, because the important thing is to slag off Rosie D
• 20 November 2020: Yes - where average trans murder rate in UK is 1 a year, and where thankfully have been none at all for the past two years, some UK Labour members spend all day emoting about trans murder rates in South America and slagging off Rosie Duffield. Political irrelevancy unlocked.
• 20 November 2020: #IStandWithRosieDuffield against the utterly confected accusations she is still subject to, made by vituperative morons in her own party; and against the cowardly MPs and office-holders who basically agree with her, yet who bite their tongues and look away.
• 20 November 2020: Never worn?
• 20 November 2020: Or Nokes even?
• 20 November 2020: It's really not that far away from sharts, is it.
• 20 November 2020: Do you mean Caroline Noakes?
• 20 November 2020: Yes, in the Uk there is a pandemic of kindness-advocacy at the moment - in Oz too?
• 19 November 2020: How lovely.
• 19 November 2020: Eyes roll back in head
• 19 November 2020: (They did this thing called safeguarding afterwards)
• 19 November 2020: Caroline Noakes of the Woman & Equalities committee giving some big hints that the new gender consultation will be taking a startlingly old and hackneyed direction. Get your terrible analogies here. (And she should probably google the Shipman Inquiry)
• 19 November 2020: Why are these people so dense? Tons of safeguarding was put in after Shipman! And the analogy is terrible anyway. Male prisoners in a female prison is not like doctors with patients.
• 19 November 2020: No that's exactly what it is.. a live colorectal examination.(Now that I've typed that twice I'm doomed).
• 19 November 2020: Oh wow. My synapses are going mental.
• 19 November 2020: Twitter is advertising something called ColorectalLIVE to me. The algorithms strike again.
• 19 November 2020: Moralising already.. not a great sign. I'm sure every consultation gets ignorant and offensive submissions, but they usually just get ignored, not primly made capital out of.
• 19 November 2020: I tried to make my kids watch this but they lost it at the giant rats
• 19 November 2020: Let us know if she does..
• 19 November 2020: I'd suggest nothing less than rictus grins in case of appearance of lack of enthusiasm.
• 19 November 2020: Oh no Kristina, just saw this. So sorry to hear it. Take care x
• 19 November 2020: Absolutely brilliant work from @Mforstater, surveying 744 women on their concerns about replacing sex with gender identity in law and policy. If you want this stuff doing, apparently you can't rely on mainstream feminist orgs to do it, so thank God for Maya (again).
• 19 November 2020: Thanks
• 19 November 2020: As I was saying..
• 19 November 2020: Thanks very much
• 19 November 2020: How "institutional values" can be used to quash freedom of expression
• 19 November 2020: I've experienced quite a bit of kindness and quite a bit of the opposite, but in both cases having kindness as an explicit institutional value has nothing to do with it (except that it further emboldens the latter to depict me as the thing a woman should never be, unkind).
• 19 November 2020: Also a core value for my employer
• 19 November 2020: One more time around the block for luck
• 19 November 2020: Love how they are proud of supporting what is mostly the sexual exploitation of financially-insecure, drug-addicted women and girls - since 1973, no less!
• 19 November 2020: Sorry Jamie I probably can't help anyway but what was the question? (am being bit dense).
• 19 November 2020: Ok thanks. Sorry - this is my last q (I have to get kids out the door!) - I thought there would be vagueness because you were mapping sex by distinctive drug-induced causal profile; and there will be a lot of people on the way to that state, plus hormones have variable effects?
• 19 November 2020: Yes I can see that. No taxonomy imposes social rules by itself, I guess. What's the background motivation for this taxonomy btw? Is it that it better fits the metaphysics, independently, or is it to do with identity-matching?
• 19 November 2020: If this is the proposal there is going to be a LOT of vagueness between categories... just as much as now, arguably, or even more - is that a problem for the view?
• 19 November 2020: Not denying the causal profile would be different, and it might be different enough not to insist on a difference for many domains, but for e.g. medicine and sport it would still be relevant that body was male. Though on your taxomony I suppose there could be shared aspects..
• 19 November 2020: But I agree that their thinking is pretty pedestrian - your suggestion definitely has the virtue of creativity! :D
• 19 November 2020: I don't think that would work tbh - to be a sex it has to have the right sort of causal powers, otherwise it's not a sex. I don't think there's anyway of getting around the fact that we need the concept of sex as it is, for explanations across hundreds of domains
• 19 November 2020: Oh yeah, and is this the very same Dembroff who authored the amicus brief affirming sex and its importance a few months ago? How does the saying go? Realist in the court submission, sceptic in the Boston Review submission?
• 19 November 2020: I just saw this on @SwipeWright's feed, lol
• 19 November 2020: Not to mention - if anything is vague, "being non-binary" is. So does that mean non-binary people don't exist?
• 19 November 2020: That would apply to pretty much anything though wouldn't it. Goodbye biological species! There are no tigers because we can't decide whether a ligon is a tiger or a lion. It would also apply to planets - Pluto isn't clearly a planet, or not a planet, so goodbye planets.
• 19 November 2020: I really don't know why feminist philosophers who spout their rubbish don't get this. Do they never read any philosophy of biology? Hell, have they never heard of Wittgenstein? It's just so bloody boring to see same strawmen reproduced over and over again. *strawmen are not men
• 19 November 2020: 😂
• 19 November 2020: This is shocking Andy
• 19 November 2020: I regret to inform you that in my forthcoming book I use AHF and I laugh in the face of word-order policing. In fact, I consider word-order-policing even worse than the dread offence of tone-policing.
• 18 November 2020: Very nice!
• 18 November 2020: Thanks James
• 18 November 2020: oh FFS! 😂
• 18 November 2020: New blogpost: I wrote a thing about how "be kind" is a terrible mantra for the Left (or the Right, for that matter) to adopt.
• 17 November 2020: I don't - but it is a shorthand for an easily identified-set of values, intentions, self-image, etc. and this is fucking twitter.
• 17 November 2020: yes that's exactly what I thought - I think X only said it because he felt perfectly sure my friend agreed, was basically showing off.
• 17 November 2020: Yeah I don't think they should do for this for editorial decisions - but if an org is going to try and reach a decision by consensus (which may in itself be a mistake) then they should at least accurately record what the consensus is, and not confuse it with awkward silence.
• 17 November 2020: yes I agree. but I still think there is room for further probing on the part of bystanders there - "people feel uncomfortable about lots of things, illegitimately, so what specifically are you saying was the legitimate grounds for discomfort?" etc.
• 17 November 2020: So, again, free expression is chilled in progressive orgs because i) open discussion is encouraged ii) culture of "kindness" also encouraged iii) a few sanctimonious loudmouths moralise away. If I were the bosses, I'd invest in anonymised voting app for staff decisions pronto
• 17 November 2020: In a nutshell, my guess wd be because institutions like Guardian are run on feelings: who is most loudly upset, cross-referenced against quick projections about who is most likely to get sympathy for being upset. So stuff like "we're supposed to preserve press freedom" come 2nd.
• 17 November 2020: Yes about strong leadership. What I took from @SusannaRustin's discussion is that staff loyalty can be a double-edged sword: as soon as a few won't observe it, and publicly attack colleagues, the others that will observe it by not rocking the boat too much compound the problem.
• 17 November 2020: Spot the two incompatible sentences on this page.. (Clue: one is about valuing "diverse ideas, open debate and perspectives that challenge prevailing wisdom". The other is about being a Stonewall Diversity Champion).
• 17 November 2020: Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme strikes again.
• 17 November 2020: But yay, freedom to choose, etc.
• 17 November 2020: That perennial question: whether it's Hollywood or trans activism, why is it always women's bodies that get crushed, cut, stitched, stretched, and surgically padded, and men's that stay intact?
• 17 November 2020: confrontation on my behalf. Am so very grateful (if you are reading this). If more acted like this, we wouldn't have the near total capitulation we currently see
• 17 November 2020: could so easily gone another way - British awkwardness, bitten tongues, and X sailing off unimpeded on his righteous crusade. I don't know whether it stopped him for long but I cherish the thought of this encounter as one of the few times I know of that there was real, decisive/
• 17 November 2020: he just said - that is, to find evidence of my transphobia. X, looking less confident, backs away. My friend then immediately follows up with an email, challenging X to put in writing what was transphobic about my views. Clearly aware of possible ramifications, X declines. This/
• 17 November 2020: He met senior member of my institution X by chance in supermarket, and as they knew each other, asked him how he was. "Fine, but we are dealing with a transphobic member of staff at the moment" says X. My friend guesses it is me, gets his phone out, challenges X to evidence what/
• 17 November 2020: So what actually works in progressive institutions, when trying to stop witch-hunts, reputational smearing, chilling of free speech, management outgrouping of the "troublemaker", & so on? I can't say I have much but I do have one story. The person concerned is now a dear friend.
• 17 November 2020: No room for a loom.. That sounds like a Julia Donaldson book. Are you sure you have no room, no room for a loom?
• 17 November 2020: Problem imo is worse where institutions have lots of women in them - make of that what you will. Women zealots love to slander ideological enemies in same institution to anyone who'll listen (and men will listen); women moderates tend to find it alien to tell them to fuck off.
• 17 November 2020: Brave and principled of Susanna to write this. This is nub of why dogmatic immoderates are setting agenda in progressive institutions. Team-playing moderates try to seek consensus in response, think of institution. What's needed is vocal, decisive, unambiguous opposition.
• 15 November 2020: Great stuff!
• 14 November 2020: Delighted to get this beautiful package in the mail today. Congratulations to all the team at @Radical_Notion for producing such a fantastic and genuinely exciting thing.
• 14 November 2020: I didn't think that was how obituaries worked. And even if it is how they work, I don't think they should work that way. What is the point of reeling off a banal potted history of a hideously destructive life?
• 14 November 2020: Yeah I really don't understand what the hell this is.
• 14 November 2020: Conversation in our house just now. "What the hell, the Guardian has run an obituary for Sutcliffe? Why has he got an obituary?" "What they going to say, that in prison he became a keen reader and developed his needlework skills?" Reads obituary
• 14 November 2020: Not sure - though I agree with the premise. Will RT.
• 14 November 2020: Civil liberties only for those we agree with, apparently.
• 13 November 2020:
• 13 November 2020: Some women hate other women, and if the zeitgeist gives them a cost-free excuse to put the boot in, they'll do it. (Same as men).
• 13 November 2020: When prioritising wokeness actually makes you psychopathically detached
• 13 November 2020: "Instead, he tracked down several organizations that I have or had worked for as a freelancer and sent them the following letter, re-printed here in full: I am writing concerning one of your occasional writers and panelists, Jen Gerson...."
• 13 November 2020: This week's tinyletter from @glosswitch is a stonker.. if you haven't signed up, you should.
• 13 November 2020: Powerful film about the recent The Witches film’s use of limb difference as a sign of evil/otherness
• 13 November 2020: Great piece @bindelj. Someone should write dialogue describing the thoughts of Phyllis Chesler. Presumably they will involve lots of dosh.
• 12 November 2020: WOOHOO indeed!
• 11 November 2020: Yikes!
• 11 November 2020: Chuffed to bits with this!
• 11 November 2020: So sorry Allison, that's very very hard to bear.
• 11 November 2020: Wow..
• 11 November 2020: No
• 11 November 2020: There's a billboard in my town that hosts a new advert every week, which then automatically gets defaced by local Extinction Rebellion members. It doesn't go down too well with everyone.
• 11 November 2020: I used to worry there was still an argument out there I hadn't heard of, revealing sex categorisation to be actually mistaken, or irrelevant, or both. I now think that unless it involves brains-in-vats being fed misinformation about the structure of reality, I'm fairly safe 😃
• 11 November 2020: yes isn't it. Spread lies and put fear into people about your opponents' intentions - not really that benevolent.
• 11 November 2020: Bloody hell I suppose I have to read that now
• 11 November 2020: Useful concept - thank you!
• 11 November 2020: It is well-known that I personally mastermind marauding hoards of TERFs, roaming bathrooms to ruthlessly throw out butchers.
• 11 November 2020: Don't fear the truth, Dave.
• 11 November 2020: While many onlookers avert their gaze in embarrassment at the self-deception and naked stupidity, a vocal few remain to cheer on the stupidity, and the author basks in the adulation. Basic Flaubertian irony - every day a new Emma Bovary to laugh at.
• 11 November 2020: There are whole parts of twitter where academics perpetrate lies/ distortions about my views (see my corrections under line). I used to feel outrage but now am just bored. If people over age of 25 believe this crap without checking, joke's on them, the credulous fools.
• 11 November 2020: You are brilliant
• 11 November 2020: "defending terfs kicking butches out of bathrooms" then there's a worrying problem with comprehension there at this point - maybe Berkeley should introduce critical thinking 101 for its faculty.
• 11 November 2020: clearly they are not the only choices. It is perfectly possible to lobby for third spaces. However what I will not do is demote the interests of women in this discussion, for reasons summed up most recently here If Lavery wants to reduce all that to/
• 11 November 2020: whether to a) make access to facilities (which of course are not just bathrooms) mixed-sex, in order to accommodate the needs of trans people or b) leave them as they are to accommodate the needs of (most) women, then if those were only choices, I would prefer the former but/
• 11 November 2020: It is misinformation by Lavery, which is not surprising in the context of past interactions. I have discussed this issue in a couple of places - letter 6 here is one I have argued there that third spaces may benefit passing trans men. In a decision about/
• 10 November 2020: "was" not "is"
• 10 November 2020: Er.. it's based on their being hardly any of them, relatively speaking? If entire tradition of male representation is dominated by naked bodies (and bodies typically presented in sexualised ways, which many of these aren't) then we would have parity.
• 10 November 2020: Ha, great minds
• 10 November 2020: We do!
• 10 November 2020: Also: not that it's the main takeaway from clichéd naked everywoman statue but "after a 10 year slog of fundraising"?? Should have asked the terven to get involved, would have been done in 8 hours.
• 10 November 2020: I think she is great too but that statue is a clunker
• 10 November 2020: Sorry - I see now it is supposed to be an "everywoman" - but point remains. You can't just say "oh I didn't put clothes on so it would be universal archetype" and ignore the cultural connotations of women's nudity, which are vastly to the detriment of women generally.
• 10 November 2020: I don't get your point. Maggie Hambling is lesbian artist. This has nothing to do with pronouns.
• 10 November 2020: Yeah -or maybe national statues should just be like Michael Craig-Martin's Oak tree, which is really a glass of water on a shelf.
• 10 November 2020: Prepare for the naked statues in two hundred years time
• 10 November 2020: yeah that's another way of putting it. It's just so.. dull.
• 10 November 2020: We can't read contemporary visual art except against weight of contemporary visual meanings. Women's bodies are now objectified on rampant scale. So I think it's a mistake to have feminist Wollstonecraft represented naked, no matter how naturalistically.
• 10 November 2020: This was supposed to happen in March but Covid got in the way - looking forward to being on the same screen as these fantastic women #FeministAcademicsTalkBack
• 9 November 2020: Agreed @Samsmethers - why exactly is it a good time to retweet this? What's the context? Are you just supporting your friend, or is a wider principle in play? What is that principle?
• 9 November 2020: Yes, it was when you were thirty-three and a third, and you had exactly one week.
• 9 November 2020: This looks great!
• 9 November 2020: These three @mbmpolicy are outstanding performers in fight to retain #sexbasedrights. Their work is informed, lucid, technical, and they get results. Latest one is invite to give evidence on Scottish Hate Crime Bill. Please donate here to keep them going - we need them.
• 8 November 2020: Last chance tonight to add to this brave, brilliant woman’s crowdfunder here.
• 8 November 2020: yes.
• 8 November 2020: I saw what happened yesterday
• 8 November 2020: What?
• 8 November 2020: If it appears that way to you, you haven't read me properly.
• 8 November 2020: Yes, absolutely.
• 8 November 2020: That's fine of course. Tbh I don't get how being argued with on twitter by few who disagree with you is some kind of affront. Seems like people are operating two standards here: when I argue with others I am stating my boundaries. When they argue with me, they're undermining mine
• 8 November 2020: For similar reasons, am just not going to get into the whole "radfems versus GC" as if that was two monolithic tribes, signed up to some concrete holy scrolls. Every tradition is fluid, every group has internal disputes and points of agreement with others.
• 8 November 2020: In case it's not obvious, I don't take any texts as holy ones. Not TRA, not liberal, not libfem, not radfem, not marxist, not gender-critical. I don't get the whole "but it's the radfem tradition" or "it's the analysis" as if that's the end of the conversation. I'm not in church.
• 8 November 2020: Women can take ideas from men. It's self-harming not to (some men have good ideas). It can scrutinise them, nick them, adapt them, mould them.. and of course reject them. It depends on idea not who had it. As I just said, those men's ideas shouldn't be taken uncritically.
• 8 November 2020: Me too
• 8 November 2020: Yeah of course, it's twitter. And of course I know that. That's partly my point.
• 8 November 2020: As the woman once said:
• 8 November 2020: However, plenty of decent people I know do vote for them and its the assumption that the Left have the monopoly on decency which I literally cannot stand.
• 8 November 2020: interested in developing, with others, a feminism which thoroughly rejects liberalism both on left and right and articulates women’s interests (which are badly represented by these authors). None of that means I would join Tory party or even vote for them
• 8 November 2020: conservative in some sense: John Gray, Michael Oakeshott, Michael Walzer, Patrick Dineen, Maurice Glasman, . So roughly: Blue Labour/Red Tory/ post-liberal territory - anti elites, pro working class, anti-individualist, critical of capitalism, more culturally conservative. I am/
• 8 November 2020: Something about that "and I'll wait" suggests you might not be that interested? The point is much wider than my politics. But if you are interested, the writers that currently speak to me - with many reservations and points of dispute - are eclectic but many are/
• 8 November 2020: 😎
• 8 November 2020: Don’t forget the twitter header. (Also - If darkness is subjective does that mean it’s not real darkness? 🤔)
• 8 November 2020: This must be so difficult. Thinking of you.
• 8 November 2020: Am Making A Point
• 8 November 2020: (This is the Guardian btw)
• 8 November 2020: Sorry, this is the Guardian! (I didn't make that clear)
• 8 November 2020: Thank you!
• 8 November 2020: Thank you so much, that means a lot - and likewise. Have a good one yourself x
• 8 November 2020: I see that a national UK broadsheet is talking about an American female politician's beauty routines again 🤔
• 8 November 2020: My basic function on here seems to be to say things other people feel they cannot! :D
• 8 November 2020: And yeah, am aware that this sort of line is probably the fastest route to annoying basically everyone. Unfortunately though, it's true (whether or not we/I am right about our political views) and it might be good to keep it in mind.
• 8 November 2020: Quietly whispers: as the triannual skirmish between left and right feminists breaks out on my TL, some of us (ok, then, me) no longer feel that either of these labels fits very accurately, and there are bits of both traditions we reject, and bits of both we want to keep.
• 8 November 2020: Queer theory finally gets the subtle critic it deserves.
• 8 November 2020: Wow is it?
• 7 November 2020: We should all get them together sometime for a really shit tournament (with drugs)
• 7 November 2020: 😂
• 7 November 2020: So far it has pretty much nothing but chess in it. I’m a bit worried for the heroine’s personality - she literally hasn’t uttered one word not about chess in two episodes.
• 7 November 2020: It’s fun so far, tho I’m only on episode two
• 7 November 2020: Not yet!
• 7 November 2020: As it happens, mine has gnaw marks up the side, from when the dog ate one side of several stacked board games..
• 7 November 2020: Not saying I’m old, but as a child, I had the same chess set that the girl covets in the Queen’s Gambit
• 7 November 2020: the finger of shame will eventually point at them. They also tend to target women more than men. Both have in common an absolute refusal to agree that sex could be a relevant causal factor in anything, though they refute this with every petition they sign or complaint they make
• 7 November 2020: position themselves as queer or edgy. They are really concerned to get things right, and ricochet between ostentatiously moralising about others and collapsing with guilt and shame at their own flaws. Finding someone else to blame is a welcome relief from the fear/
• 7 November 2020: on the other hand, their path is easy and unconflicted - ostracise and shame away! Weirdly these men always know who to target at least personal cost. The women who do it tend to be different - they are often very serious girl guide types, though they don’t know it and often/
• 7 November 2020: A few more thoughts on this, from observations in the field. The men who do it tend to have daddy issues. In presence of a powerful man, they either suck up ostentatiously or sulk passive-aggressively muttering but not loud enough that daddy can hear. With dissenting women/
• 7 November 2020: I can tell you all about the cancellers, no-platformers, petitioners.. I work in a Uni (and I'm not talking about the students). They're high on their own supply. They're in a bubble, so they say/ do ridiculous things with no pushback from their own tribe. That's their kryptonite
• 6 November 2020: Thank you Sasha
• 6 November 2020: Good question
• 6 November 2020: Shandy? I'll have you know I've occasionally been known to have a lager top.
• 6 November 2020: So sorry. How infuriating.
• 6 November 2020: Thanks Bev
• 6 November 2020: Just stop with the excuses and do it already
• 6 November 2020: "very methodologically difficult" sounds like an excuse a pompous teenager might give for not tidying his room.
• 6 November 2020: This bit made my eyes roll.
• 6 November 2020: Superb: kudos to the authors.
• 6 November 2020: Yes exactly... this incredibly self-unaware extract from the Goodin and Pettit intro to their Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, as related by Gray, literally made me splutter
• 6 November 2020: Don't show me the screenshot, Leonora, I'll guess! Now, let me think.... who could this be? screws up face, gets vague images of foxes
• 6 November 2020: I'm just reading John Gray Enlightenment's Wake, and after years of being subjected by Kantians/Rawlsians to various ponderous attempts to smuggle parochial values into "universal" moral structures it's very cathartic.
• 6 November 2020: I'm so sorry that awful assault happened. I wasn't meaning to suggest trying to protect ourselves means we will succeed - often it doesn't, and won't, and that's the terrible realisation many women have. But I don't see any alternative to continuing to try.
• 6 November 2020: Thanks JB - I learnt from the best xx (Also, am glad we can put that dispute about Schitt's Creek behind us).
• 6 November 2020: 😂
• 6 November 2020: If by "is always addressed in fragmented ways" you mean that as a description of inadequate present practice - then precisely! But if you mean there are no significant causal patterns or trends, that's exactly what I'm denying. You'd have to be blind/in denial not to see them.
• 6 November 2020: Maleness is significant causal factor in sexual violence against women (and also against other men). They perpetrate -on any count, and on any credible definition - a significant majority of it. Saying "human" glosses over and obfuscates, obscures potential sex-specific solutions
• 6 November 2020: I don't think you have understood my main point.
• 6 November 2020: Plot twist...
• 6 November 2020: And if anyone wants an example of the sort of magical, not-joined-up thinking I'm describing, and a refusal to consistently hold in mind and prioritise women and girls at risk, I give you this exhibit (hundreds of others are also available)
• 6 November 2020: Happy birthday to both of you 💫💫
• 6 November 2020: Thank so much to all of you who responded so positively to this yesterday. Am pleased I pressed “publish” (very nearly didn’t). It’s here ICYMI - 5 min read.
• 6 November 2020: Ta x
• 6 November 2020: Fair enough. Interested to hear your thoughts
• 6 November 2020: Cheers!
• 5 November 2020: Ethical obligation who dis?
• 5 November 2020: Yes I was reaching for that, I think. That's the motive I blame least - I recognise it more in sorrow than in anger.
• 5 November 2020: Thank you - that's v gratifying to hear (though sorry about the subject matter).
• 5 November 2020: Thanks Shelley
• 5 November 2020: Thanks Dan
• 5 November 2020: Thanks. I'll RT this. I have always assumed it can't hurt for women to know how to do it, though even if when you do know how to do it, it is not always wise to use the knowledge. So sorry to hear of your experiences.
• 5 November 2020: Haven't written an angry blog post for a while, but today the spirit moved me
• 4 November 2020: Brute-al
• 4 November 2020: Maybe start by not defining the liberal/ left as having “good values and a big heart”?
• 4 November 2020: if your idea of a feminist is someone who can't make a politically relevant point without checking herself to ensure she's expressing all the appropriate male-sanctioned feelz, so that randoms on the internet can't accuse her of unfeminine callousness -yeah I'd say that's skewed
• 4 November 2020: Here's prediction which of course could be wrong, but I'll take a punt. He doesn't understand because he has no idea what it's like to be physically overwhelmed or otherwise assaulted (flashed at, touched) by larger stranger who wants something from him sexually. Most women do.
• 4 November 2020: .@bindelj on top form here
• 4 November 2020: Hello Socialist bloke. Devastated as I am to lose your sympathy, do you actually know what a gender neutral space is?
• 4 November 2020: (Responses saying “it happened in the street” “it will happen anyway” and “my bathroom at home is gender neutral” will be ridiculed as moronic jokers.)
• 4 November 2020: The video of the attempted abduction of a young girl is beyond upsetting but I hope it reminds the cossetted, financially insulated performance artists arguing for gender neutral public spaces think twice about what they are giving away in the name of “social justice”.
• 3 November 2020: Fantastic thread about how girls' use of public space shrinks while boys' expands, and on implications for health and social life.
• 3 November 2020: Thanks!
• 3 November 2020: It's from the video - sorry, I don't.
• 3 November 2020: If that's your idea of fun that is (admittedly niche)
• 3 November 2020: In an event for WHRC Aus/NZ last weekend, Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) and I gave our takes on questions like "are you a radfem?", "is gender abolition a coherent goal?" and "is there any use for academic feminism?". You can watch the fun here
• 3 November 2020: Yes - that's some nose-cutting and face-spiting.
• 3 November 2020: Barking mad US case - great grandparents prohibited from fostering their 4 month old great-grandchild (already removed by state from mother) because they gave the "wrong" answers to the state's questions about possible future gender identity and sexual orientation.
• 3 November 2020: Maybe am grumpy - but is there way of muting accounts going for "please, America, vote for truth, beauty, decency, morality, light out of darkness" & similar bullshit lines? How about just hold your noses and vote for the one that isn't obviously a narcissistic psychopath.
• 2 November 2020: yeah that whole tweet screams feeling comfortable. Smug, even.
• 2 November 2020: Agreed. There's nothing wrong with "both sideism" in many contexts. It's not a cop out, it's the truth.
• 2 November 2020: Yes I may not be scientifically trained but I definitely got that feeling too :)
• 2 November 2020: Did you know concepts are inclusive now? They let everyone in. No nasty barriers for concepts making people feel left out. Which means.. um.. they are totally meaningless and can't pick out the original category they were designed for.
• 2 November 2020: Thanks
• 2 November 2020: I don't know either - does that make a difference @ewinsberg?
• 2 November 2020: It's not particularly relevant to say that 2 billion poor wouldn't be faring well without the virus, though is it? Almost like a rhetorical trick. It's built into the description - "poor". But there will be a hell of a lot more of them, and many will be a hell of a lot poorer.
• 2 November 2020: TLDR- the current SAGE predictions are still partly relying on an old, discredited paper (the "Verity paper"), extrapolating from a grand total of 6 people.
• 2 November 2020: Well this seems kind of important!
• 2 November 2020: Struck anew by how twitter is really really shit at noticing how most things have both beneficial aspects and undesirable side, and how discussing one doesn't mean dismissing other or implying it isn't important. Today's relevance: Covid's effect on artists; militant secularism.
• 2 November 2020: Agreed! I didn't object as much as most did but even if I had it would still be an odd sight seeing a piece arguing that secularism/FS is covertly quasi-religious dogma being withdrawn for checks notes offending secularists.
• 2 November 2020:
• 2 November 2020: 100% with @BluskyeAllison and @ALLIANCELGB on this one.
• 2 November 2020: Nothing is automatically hardwired into a country over centuries. And even if the ideal is hardwired, there's always room for a bit of constructive ambiguity around the edges. If there isn't, conflict with multiculturalism is inevitable.
• 2 November 2020: I thought its pretensions to explain the whole phenomenon through one factor were ludicrous, granted. The causal back story will be complicated presumably.
• 2 November 2020: And now, a new episode in our millennia-old series, “Guilt Trips For Women (As You Were, Men)”
• 2 November 2020: Times story confirming today that orgs are paying Stonewall for all that branding (not to mention paying them to be told to break Equality law)
• 2 November 2020: Surely not “had to go” - you can’t suppress pieces for less than optimal clarity! (Even subs.. ;))
• 2 November 2020: Is also fairly unshocking in political philosophy to contemplate legitimate relaxing of liberal absolutes in face of multiculturalism. But weirdest of all is praising of suppression of piece from liberals. Starts to look like author had point about secularism being religion.
• 2 November 2020: I read that Politico piece and didn’t read it way everyone else seems to. I thought was about strategy - roughly, don’t make secularism/ FS fanatical absolute if you don’t want confrontation with religious. Was not justification of subsequent confrontation I thought.
• 31 October 2020: Thank you for writing this Lucy
• 31 October 2020: Yes it was recorded I think - I’ll post a link when it’s done
• 31 October 2020: I cannot get over this story from @JakeBerry in Times today. What the actual??? What happened to “First do no harm”? Was this common during lockdown?
• 31 October 2020: That’s a good idea, I’ll ask Holly if we can have some links with the recording
• 31 October 2020: Thank you! I enjoyed it
• 31 October 2020: It's all very well @KemiBadenoch saying Equality Act "makes clear" there are single-sex exemptions, but nearly every major UK org has been briefed by Stonewall - repeatedly - that they can't use them, and company policies reflect this. Massive corrective info campaign needed.
• 31 October 2020: ha - well if all else fails at least the wallabies will be happy!
• 31 October 2020: In an hour's time...
• 30 October 2020: Thanks!
• 30 October 2020: And yet numerous studies suggest girls quicker to talk than boys, and more adept at language earlier on. So something obviously happens in between. Wonder what that is?
• 30 October 2020: Sorry to hear this, Karen
• 30 October 2020: This is one story. There are many other stories. But this one deserves a hearing, as do others - and moreover there are grave consequences for women and girls if we pretend this sort of story isn't out there too, alongside more positive ones. Incredibly powerful and painful.
• 30 October 2020: No I don't think so. Registration link is in the embedded tweet - Holly is organising it so am a bit sketchy on those details I'm afraid.
• 30 October 2020: Looking forward to this tomorrow
• 29 October 2020: I don't know much about it but it seems obvious that moralised, sexist conceptions of how a woman should or shouldn't behave in sexual encounters, and after them, are going to affect what the judicial system counts as "circumstances of extremely grave character" and "justifiable"
• 29 October 2020: Trying to get head round idea that texting a man's wife to say he's having an affair with you could count as "circumstances of an extremely grave character", causing the man "to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged", & so meaning you weren't legally murdered after.
• 28 October 2020: Alternatively - it's like that Eddie Izzard sketch: various leaders steaming optimistically into Russia saying "I'm going to kill them, I'm going to kill them" then immediately exiting, saying "ooh it's a bit cold".
• 28 October 2020:
• 28 October 2020: And and and! - this is a brilliant opportunity for transsexuals to get involved and say what they think about gender recognition reform and related issues, without having politicised organisations like Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence speak for them.
• 28 October 2020: The cross-party committee have decided it is needed. I hear that some on committee may feel they owe it to trans people, after gov rejection of trans activist demands re GRA. I fear once again they are confusing what trans people want with what trans activists want but we'll see.
• 28 October 2020: This is a great thread from @MForstater about the context and how best to get involved
• 28 October 2020: Additionally relevant information is that the original Trans Inquiry was pursuing- with the goals apparently set in advance - the agenda set out by Stonewall in their "Vision for change" document and programme, described here
• 28 October 2020: Today a new Trans Inquiry was announced by @Commonswomequ The last one was - in technical terms - a total and utter stitch up. This talk by me at @Womans_Place_UK in House of Lords in 2018 explains why. Let's hope this one takes account of all affected parties and not just some
• 28 October 2020: Congratulations! Wishing you and the family all the best.
• 28 October 2020: Nope!
• 28 October 2020: It is. She should never have been banned from Twitter, and she should not be banned from Medium. Her articles are great. There's clearly a small group of people persistently out to get her - totally vindictive and undeserved. They are deeply pathetic people.
• 28 October 2020: Since the last trans inquiry, many, many more women and girls with relevant expertise and life experience have entered the fray. Quite a lot of them follow me (am lucky enough to say). If that is you, please consider submitting evidence - your voice counts. 27th November deadline
• 28 October 2020: The origins of totalitarianism = the new chicklit
• 28 October 2020: Picked a good day for it too, as the judicial review into trans women in prisons launches. Women prisoners faced with the likes of Karen White should presumably just.. um.. focus on the real problems facing feminism today?
• 28 October 2020: Apparently addicted to the pain, @Commonswomequ are launching yet another trans inquiry. Affected parties (which - yes- includes women and girls) have until 27th November to submit evidence answer these questions. Please spread the word.
• 28 October 2020: V good point
• 28 October 2020: Alice Thomson in the Times today failing to realise a) feminists talk about redefinitions of women AND sexual violence AND maternity services b) without the former you can’t do the latter.
• 27 October 2020: “In” not “I’m”
• 27 October 2020: It’s doubly infuriating as the ban is then cited against the person in their absence - “banned from twitter” as if no 💨 without 🔥. When I’m fact they just said cervical cancer only happened to females or whatever.
• 27 October 2020: There was a big fuss the other day when Bret Weinstein got suspended from Facebook. Yet for months - years! - gender critical accounts have been quietly disappeared from twitter, FB and now Medium. This is latest - 35 great essays gone.
• 27 October 2020: They won't go into Goldman Sachs (immediately anyway). They'll go into third sector jobs, take charge of twitter accounts, posture at team meetings, and sign petitions against older women in their orgs who think gender ideology is harmful nonsense. (Then they'll go into GS.)
• 27 October 2020: A kerfuffle is when the cat brings a mouse in, or your gran drops the gravy boat, or you're in a standoff for the last toilet roll in Sainsbury's. It's not a hulking bloke compressing a much smaller person's windpipe til they die.
• 27 October 2020: Today: a strangler successfully cites a "kerfuffle" in manslaughter defence. Yes, the victim may have just threatened to expose him to his wife, but really, it was just a sea of flailing arms and legs, who could tell what was really going on? Next up: "it was shenanigans, m'lud."
• 27 October 2020: Presumably he was just accidentally trying to get you out of the room and his arms sort of slipped upwards and he fell on top of you?
• 27 October 2020: You're an inspiration x
• 27 October 2020: This Saturday! - 8am UK, 7pm Australia - philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne, radfem) and I (Sussex, not radfem) will be giving our hot takes on gender-critical feminism. Registration here (Here's my seamlessly altered advert after ⏰ went back)
• 24 October 2020: RT @Lionessque: @SandsUK The 'birthing parent' is the mother. I was that mother, twice. I'm a bereaved mother, twice, I'm the mother who ca…
• 24 October 2020: Michael not Isabel - and lol.
• 24 October 2020: Yes Aristotle, absolutely - but am looking for explicit discussion of what can count as natural facts, and whether ordinary folk ways can detect them, and how etc (and not McDowell, which I think I've got covered).
• 24 October 2020: Thanks Fiona, that's great.
• 24 October 2020: My mate @Leechalmers - once described by some bloke at the Guardian as the most charismatic woman in Northern Europe (all true) - is running a FREEEE minicourse for mid-life women next week
• 24 October 2020: Thank you
• 24 October 2020: Also, I misspelt Oakeshott
• 24 October 2020: Thanks
• 24 October 2020: Thank you, I will
• 24 October 2020: I wasn't talking about postmodernism though :)
• 24 October 2020: Thank you very much David, they look really interesting.
• 24 October 2020: Er.. righty-oh. Thanks :D
• 24 October 2020: Thank you! I don't tend to think of intuitionists as naturalists except in some sort of extended sense, but maybe I should.
• 24 October 2020: Thanks Russell. I assume Neo-Aristotelians like Foot would agree that natural facts as not just available through technical scientific means, but I'm after some kind of explicit discussion of that point, I suppose.
• 24 October 2020: Oh sorry, I thought you were remonstrating! (I'm also fragile, at least some of the time).
• 24 October 2020: Hi #philosophytwitter can anyone point me to discussions, within ethical naturalism, of whether science is only way of accessing natural/ethical facts, or whether there is a non-technical, non-rationalist knowing-how in relation to natural facts in ethics, Oakshott-style? Thanks.
• 24 October 2020: Quite - and not to mention - how the hell do you "other" a tweet, for gawds sake?
• 24 October 2020: Perhaps you'll understand, Frank, that when it comes to prioritising the feelings of someone who constantly depicts me and other with views like mine as transphobes who shouldn't be published, and indeed should be drummed out of academia, I struggle to access my sensitive side.
• 24 October 2020: Reasons Mary!
• 24 October 2020: Also works with "illocutionary" FYI
• 24 October 2020: 👏
• 23 October 2020: Also yet another one to add to the pile for the "whoever said you couldn't talk about sex?" gang.
• 23 October 2020: Kate Manne representing mainstream academic feminism's total bankruptcy on this issue once again
• 23 October 2020: Yes that sounds about right
• 23 October 2020: Ha. If only there were other words for the made-up words in philosophy, that weren't also made-up words...
• 23 October 2020: yes, just answered!
• 23 October 2020: I am now spending about four hours a week correcting "non-cuban tourism" to "non-cognitivism" and "elocution-free" to "illocutionary".
• 23 October 2020: Got new proposal for how gov can save millions of pounds during REF - judge impact factor of academics on how many corrections they need to make to autocorrect on recorded lectures. Direct relation to how many made-up words their discipline uses. (Philosophy would tank however).
• 23 October 2020: I fear that you've just gone way over Peter's head with technicality there, Helen.
• 23 October 2020: My eyebrows were raised at the way the women prisoners were brutalising the warders, but then reflected that maybe they were trying to stop the warders from saying their next lines
• 23 October 2020: I haven't seen that argued but it would be absolutely bonkers to think that the sex trade wasn't led by men.
• 23 October 2020: Sounds pretty right to me. She didn't imply that consent was unimportant - clearly it isn't - but only that it's not the only important value in sex, which is effectively the way it's treated by populist liberal feminism.
• 23 October 2020: Louise is now arguing that feminist proponents exhibit incoherency when they condemn sex at work (eg bosses and employees) but not "sex work" - because if sex were just a consensual transaction like any other, there would be no real ethical fault in either case.
• 23 October 2020: Now listening to @Louise_m_perry at @res_publica on #postliberalism webinar, arguing convincingly that under liberalism and liberal feminism, sex has been damagingly "disenchanted" and stripped (eek) of meaning, with focus only on consent.
• 23 October 2020: Listening to the @res_publica seminar on #postliberalism: @moveincircles giving a stirring argument about how "Hilary Clinton" liberal feminism is for the elite 10%, and that the workplace is not the source of liberation for most other women.
• 23 October 2020: Congratulations!
• 23 October 2020: Commas often are! :D
• 23 October 2020: Mary says she will be discussing that (there's a comma). She has plenty of expertise. I don't think it's implicit the others are.
• 23 October 2020: Harold McGee!! I have his Keys to Good Cooking, it's great.
• 23 October 2020: As I said to someone else on here last night, the scene with Carey Mulligan as a posh cop taking charge in a kebab shop still haunts my nightmares. Not to mention the lesbian vicar. With every new Hare series, more UKIP voters are born..
• 23 October 2020: Incidentally- in case anyone thinks legal fictions about women have always been benign - here's a slide from my Feminist Philosophy lecture this week
• 23 October 2020: I think HL is good in it - but there's a strange effect where we are clearly (I assume) supposed to hate him, but he is the most sympathetic character by a mile. Combination of his charm and the preposterousness of other characters.
• 23 October 2020: People go for this analogy with good intentions, desperate to find a median way to reconcile actual reality with what some trans women wish was the case. But this isn't it either. There's no such thing as womaning (unless it's whatever females do - which rules TW out).
• 23 October 2020: Haven't heard this @TheBARPod episode yet, but a major and fairly obvious flaw in the analogy between "trans women are women" and "adoptive parents are parents" is that adoptive parents parent (verb) but TW do not "woman" - there's no such verb or activity (dresses won't do it)
• 23 October 2020: That’s the one! Brilliant synopsis 💫
• 23 October 2020: What??? We will have to have words
• 22 October 2020: Lol lol lol
• 22 October 2020: Yeah it was so weirdly retro- the jazz sax when Hugh was getting it on with his mistress.. a prison riot in a women’s prison the savage like of which has not been seen since Prisoner Cellblock H
• 22 October 2020: Haha!
• 22 October 2020: Agreed - as was the creaking inevitability that Julia the haughty Tory spad would end up being a top in bed.
• 22 October 2020: Yes I did (the 1st episode) and I swore I’d never go back. Carey Mulligan’s hardnosed posh cop routine in a kebab shop still haunts me.
• 22 October 2020: What about the two having sex literally minutes after meeting at an AA meeting (and not really getting on at that)
• 22 October 2020: Just watched Roadkill. Blooooody hell. I struggle to single out worst bit of dialogue but MP boasting of his daughter’s “1st class maths degree from Leeds” to a woman prisoner he’s just met who’s trying to blackmail him is definitely a contender.
• 22 October 2020: Sorry I missed this. Happy birthday @ALLIANCELGB, thank goodness you’re out there.
• 22 October 2020: Absolutely!
• 22 October 2020: I think it was Nigella - that's where I saw it first.
• 22 October 2020: Ouch! (Congratulations @SashaLPC @LisaMarchiano and fellow authors)
• 22 October 2020: "[Turban et al's] analysis is compromised by serious methodological flaws, including the use of a biased data sample, reliance on survey questions with poor validity, and the omission of a key control variable... Further, their conclusions are not supported by their own analysis"
• 21 October 2020: To be a pedant, I guess it depends on context though. There are presumably circs where you don't want your disability disclosed because it might disadvantage you. That seems to be the model used, though no consideration given to those disadvantaged by non-disclosure.
• 21 October 2020: "in that unsettling scenario, we might discover that far from ‘free love’, the pro-women position is once again ‘no sex before marriage’." - was just cavilling about which kind of sex would be verboten come societal collapse.
• 21 October 2020: A pedant writes: in the absence of welfare states and reproductive healthcare, lesbian sex will do just fine though 😀
• 21 October 2020: I agree. "Privacy" meaning non-disclosure has been uncritically assimilated for years as overriding goal. I also agree sex is often knowable- but in some cases it isn't (or at least not til clothes come off). I worry that those who say "you always know" give succour to Sharpe etc
• 21 October 2020: "The proposed research has the potential to benefit a number of organisations and communities outside the academy." says project blurb. I'm going to take a massive punt and tell you I don't think the beneficiaries of this ideologically-driven AHRC-funded project will be women.
• 21 October 2020: "The project will involve investigating ..why contemporary discourse about criminalising these kinds of deception has come to be structured around certain core themes (e.g. that victim autonomy is paramount) .. often to the exclusion of others"
• 21 October 2020: Relatedly - seems that Edinburgh Uni Law School are currently running AHRC-funded project on "Identity Deception: A Critical History". It's leader Chloe Kennedy is on record as saying "to speak of gender deception is.. to deny the self-identified or lived gender of the defendant.
• 21 October 2020: TLDR- biological sex matters to people, and so it should - for sexual orientation, as much as for sport, medicine, the provision of social structures to mitigate sexual violence, and so on.
• 21 October 2020: "privacy" to hide sex doesn't automatically override other considerations. Here's Prof Alex Sharpe arguing victim of convicted Gayle Newland must have wanted sex with Newland all along, despite court finding she didn't. Not hard to see where this is going
• 21 October 2020: with people they thought were men but were trans men, and who were too embarrassed afterwards to say anything for fear of looking transphobic. In the current climate, this is entirely predictable. Yet it's an obvious violation of consent and yet another case where trans person's/
• 21 October 2020: Something which doesn't get nearly enough attention IMO is Stonewall's stated intent to lobby the judicial system to "ensure trans people's privacy is protected" around what they euphemistically call "sex by deception". I have heard several anecdotal cases of women having sex..
• 20 October 2020: Definitely should have gone to specsavers..
• 20 October 2020: I assume the "Ohh you said ELECTION" joke has been made a lot today
• 20 October 2020: I await with baited breath the suffixing of every BBC news bulletin with "some people believe that the BBC is in the grip of the metropolitan liberal elite".
• 20 October 2020: I can't believe @BBCWomansHour did this, even if @janegarvey1 sounded like she was in hostage situation. The piece was not on trans issues. There was no need for repeating an unevidenced slur about some great organisations. Many people think lots of false things. No need to list.
• 20 October 2020: Ha yes, sorry
• 20 October 2020: It is online tonight - and am reasonably sure it will be recorded too.
• 20 October 2020: As a Labour member, am looking forward to this webinar tonight. If you're #sexbasedrights-curious, registration closes in hour (6.30) so still time to grab a ticket. Women and girls should be allowed their own things - yes, even in the Labour party! #labourwomensdeclaration
• 20 October 2020: RT @FreeKylieMG: Hi, my name is Colin Wight. I'm a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney. You can find me tweeti…
• 20 October 2020: Seems really strange and unprofessional to go into such detail about gender-critical views from detractors but not actually ask her (or @ProfAliceS whose views are also discussed) what she thinks.
• 20 October 2020: .@JohnRoss49 Did you offer Holly Lawford-Smith a right of reply before allowing this bloke free reign to malign her? You have misrepresented the details of her view, and quoted someone who also severely misrepresents it. She is pro trans rights and has many trans supporters.
• 20 October 2020: @colwight It's ok I've managed to get through their byzantine system. Can't believe they didn't ask for a right of reply.
• 20 October 2020: I can't see it - what does it say?
• 20 October 2020: In breaking news @fawcettsociety appear to have a campaign for sex-based rights on. Obviously, they don't have much recent experience in this domain, so they need us to give them a hand. Can you help? @MForstater altered their MP letter to spell out what they apparently can't.
• 20 October 2020: Nicola Williams @AskNic does brilliant strategic work for @fairplaywomen - on women's representation, on sport, and generally sticking up for the female sex when well-funded organisations will not. Please consider donating to keep this going.
• 19 October 2020: She defined this route!
• 19 October 2020: ICYMI - if you care about data, this seminar from @ProfAliceS @lnmackenzie1 @janeclarejones @selina_todd and @Womans_Place_UK is everything the gender identity lobbyists regularly fail to provide - evidenced, sober, balanced - and, by the way, absolutely terrifying. Please watch
• 19 October 2020: Happy happy birthday @Martina
• 19 October 2020: Judith Butler vs The Radfems via @YouTube - the latest from radfem philosophers Holly Lawford Smith (Melbourne) and Kate Phelan (RMIT) on their new channel.
• 18 October 2020: It really is
• 18 October 2020: Very striking!
• 18 October 2020: This question from an anon attendee to #wpukcensus seminar sums up the situation across the country for so many people - and yet politicians, and indeed many data-collectors themselves - seem oblivious.
• 18 October 2020: Another jawdropper slide at #wpukcensus from @janeclarejones - @ONS attempts to “clarify” sex and gender concepts by ..um.. calling them the same thing.
• 18 October 2020: First of what I suspect will be many jawdropping slides from Prof Alice Sullivan at the #WPUKCensus seminar.
• 18 October 2020: I'm sure you are aware of something called passive-aggression. Saying you are "sad" about someone's "transphobia" in a public forum is a disingenuous way of saying - stay away from her, not in our gang, let's shame her ! I'm sad you can't see that Bex. (<<<< not really).
• 18 October 2020: Really looking forward to this
• 18 October 2020: Unless of course you spoke hastily and want to take it back?
• 18 October 2020: I know that accusations of "you're transphobic" are like the air you breathe, Bex, but weirdly enough, laying into someone out of the blue to say they must hate or fear trans people, as the only possible explanation for wanting female-only sporting categories, is a witch hunt.
• 18 October 2020: If Stonewall think having divisions in sport, pitting roughly similar shapes and sizes together to avoid unnecessary harm, are unfair, let them campaign against the rules separating welterweight from middleweight and heavyweight. Strangely though, they don't.
• 18 October 2020: In what should be a glorious moment for lesbians - not to mention for black lesbian representation - current and former employees of Stonewall actively work to smear and malign Adams, for expressing a view that the majority in the country can see is basic common sense.
• 18 October 2020: Former Stonewall Head of Trans Inclusion, instigating witch hunt against lesbian boxer for arguing trans athletes should have separate category so - in Adams' words - "everyone can compete". What's hard to understand about "women shouldn't get unfairly pulverised" Bex?
• 16 October 2020: Congratulations to @ForwomenScot and you three too - fantastic work.
• 16 October 2020: Anxious as I am about wading into this thorny subject with you of all people, still the kamikaze in me feels compelled to point out that a lot of Scottish people pronounce it that way (or at least, a lot of my Scottish teachers did). Is it possible it's dialect, not mistake?
• 15 October 2020: Thanks Sophie! I got the time wrong, it's at 8am London time (gulp).
• 15 October 2020: Correction - this is at 8am London time! (didn't notice clocks go back)
• 15 October 2020: Holly Lawford-Smith (University of Melbourne) and I are doing a webinar on Sat 31st October - ask us about gender/sex/feminism and we'll each give our opinionated answers. 7pm Melbourne, 9am London. Register here
• 14 October 2020: Maybe. I don't feel very reasonable right now.
• 14 October 2020: I know my rep on here is as mrs reasonable pants but sometimes I just want to scream and cry "AARGH AARGH AARGH YOU FUCKING MORONS WHY CAN'T YOU JOIN YOUR OWN DOTS???"
• 14 October 2020: I'm honestly starting to fear that the magical thinking will survive any contact with reality whatsoever.
• 14 October 2020: What kind of fantasy are we dealing with, where professionals, under guise of "allies", ignore evidence of experts, and of their own eyes and professional instincts? Signing up to gender ideology requires you to forget what you know. And women players bear the cost.
• 14 October 2020: This is the level of nuance that should be involved in thinking about hate crime legislation imo - not just crude "abolish it so I can retweet limericks" etc. Have the gender-critical people keen to get rid of it really thought about what else it was and is supposed to do?
• 14 October 2020: That's a great article, thank you.
• 14 October 2020: Even so, doesn't seem like a worry that's exactly gone away
• 14 October 2020: Just realised my contribution to International Encylopedia of Ethics is now out, on sexual and other forms of objectification. Sadly it's behind a paywall, but here it is for those that can access it
• 14 October 2020: Lol. Me too. It's borderline existential.
• 14 October 2020: I've not said that in public before either, nobody would have been remotely interested either way.
• 14 October 2020: Demeanour in blended seminar teaching is increasingly becoming that of a slightly panicked Eurovision song contest host - "Come in Slovenia..can you hear me, Slovenia?"
• 14 October 2020: Urgent change is needed to hate crime law - get rid of "hate crime incident" (based on perception); stop categorising misgendering as such - but category itself was brought in after Lawrence Inquiry, and cries of "abolish!" look myopic about violent racism
• 13 October 2020: Fab women!
• 13 October 2020: Collapse in, more like.
• 13 October 2020: It may be difficult but it's still true and needs to be in the mix for a) mental health protection of many; and b) proper balancing of health versus economic risks (which also impact health in serious ways).
• 13 October 2020: No, there is - there's lots of people with no long covid, and who if they get reinfected (assuming T-cells don't protect them) won't suffer long term effects - which is still most people. I get how no-one wants anyone to minimise. But over-egging disaster isn't helpful either.
• 12 October 2020: This sounds even better than I had anticipated.
• 12 October 2020: This isn't to minimise the experience of those who are not fine. It's to say the news prioritises a certain kind of story and others are out there too.
• 12 October 2020: Leaving aside complex issues around masks/no masks, lockdown/nolockdown, etc. it would surely be good for some kind of balance and antidote to anxiety, if MSM could feature more stories about (the vast majority?) of people who had Covid and are now fine. #IhadCovidandamnowfine
• 12 October 2020: Couldn't agree more; thank goodness for @RosieDuffield1, showing more cowardly Labour MPs - who know fine well she is right - how it's done.
• 10 October 2020: BTW this isn't me covertly offering to take this on - am swamped. Just looking for reassurance that people are on it!
• 10 October 2020: Yeah well, deferring to what the average person sees or thinks hasn't worked so well in the field of women's rights up until now. :D
• 10 October 2020: That was Munroe Bergdorf being invited as a keynote speaker to an event at the BFI, ostensibly celebrating, promoting, and inspiring women filmmakers, having never made a film (either). Personally I think there's a difference.
• 10 October 2020: Summary of consultation here
• 10 October 2020: and to extend "stirring up hatred" offence to transgender identity. This obviously needs careful handling to protect sex protections, and also free speech around sex protections.
• 10 October 2020: Are any who follow me co-ordinating or otherwise submitting a response to current Law Commission consultation, proposing making misogyny a hate crime? Apart from rights or wrongs of that move, the proposal is to extend protected characteristic "sex" to "sex or gender"/
• 10 October 2020: Some people will go to any lengths to get into the Stonewall Top 100 Employers index
• 10 October 2020: Fanks
• 10 October 2020: 😂
• 10 October 2020: Lol. I just delete four days later when no one’s looking
• 10 October 2020: 90 years after Virginia Woolf gave her feminist Cambridge lectures, asking for A Room of One’s Own, 500 Oxford students are persecuting @selina_todd and Senia Paseta for having a view of their own.
• 10 October 2020: I hear you
• 9 October 2020: (and as I'm sure someone will remind me - it's not just self-Id - though that's most bonkers stance- even medical reassignment doesn't undo sporting gains a testosterone-driven puberty originally gave male, on average. e.g. denser bones, larger wingspan, bigger lungs etc)
• 9 October 2020: There are two areas in this whole mess where you can really distinguish the sociopathic fanatics from the merely confused. The ones who don't care about women at all -under any description - who don't even seen them. Namely: supporters of self id in A) prisons B) sports.
• 9 October 2020: IT'S RUGBY. What part of having a 18-stone slab of muscle, fat, and aggression, running toward you on the pitch, intent on knocking you over, does Stonewall not get?
• 9 October 2020: This week from Stonewall: a misogyny bootcamp. Coming soon from Stonewall: a boot-on-the-neck camp. Followed after that by a boot-on-the-neck-of-the-old-boot camp.
• 9 October 2020: Thanks!
• 9 October 2020: Yes that was disappointing. I was asked repeatedly about my views on that in the pre-record, and answered unambiguously, but I guess some views are too shocking for listeners to hear!
• 9 October 2020: This is not part of their remit so why do it at all if not to manoeuvre and ostensibly gain a seat at the feminism table? The misogyny they should address, given remit, is towards lesbians and trans men. And they perpetrate the former themselves.
• 9 October 2020: No, Stonewall shouldn't @stellacreasy
• 9 October 2020: I definitely know who you are and was really happy to see you back after a hiatus a while back. I had missed you. If you ever think I'm quoting your stuff without crediting you, let me know.
• 9 October 2020: Don't worry Sal, I'm in this Guardian podcast out today for a start And my book's out in Spring. Not going anywhere :D
• 9 October 2020: If you fancy a listen of this Guardian podcast with your morning coffee, I'm in it alongside a few others. First part was yesterday.
• 8 October 2020: I'm sorry
• 8 October 2020: The testimony coming out of NHS Tavistock case is something else. One day soon, I hope social psychologists (if any remain who aren't themselves taken by the gender rapture) can explain how the confidence levels of professionals about children's future decisions can be so high.
• 8 October 2020: Um.. just no. Goodbye
• 8 October 2020: The Guardian Today in Focus podcast is doing a two part series on the issues around the Gender Recognition Act and Equality Act, and related matters. This is today's edition, featuring an extended interview with Stephen Whittle - I'm one of the voices featured in tomorrow's part.
• 8 October 2020: What's most blatantly wrong with this defence by the NHS (of putting children on a course which destroys future sexual function) is the assumption that 12 year olds "having sex" means they "understand sex" in a sense rich enough to cover future adult lives. Absolutely bonkers.
• 7 October 2020: "Index on Censorship.. is saying nothing because it now wants to build bridges with trans activists". Your job isn't to build bridges @IndexCensorship, it's to stop people being censored for writing about bridges. So disappointing after @jodieginsberg's great work on this.
• 7 October 2020: Hello!
• 7 October 2020: Tweet thread from RCJ today, as the Keira Bell vs NHS Gender Identity Development Service case unfolds. Use of puberty blockers in dispute.
• 4 October 2020: (And yes - I am saying what I think about other feminists and feminist allies! Imagine that. Watch me do it. Hopefully by now, I've muted all the people who find my temerity an inconceivable outrage, but if not, that's easily sorted 😃).
• 4 October 2020: gender-critical people start dehumanising their political opposition, they instantly lose any highground. It's wrong. Full stop. There are lines not to be overstepped. And (if you don't care about it being wrong) it also looks hideous to outsiders.
• 4 October 2020: Incidentally, since memories on here are understandably short, that's not first hit piece they've published. The piece on Stephen Whittle (not going to link) is equally dehumanising and over-personalised, with details of family life etc. I don't know why people don't get it - if/
• 4 October 2020: Can't believe Virgin Atlantic isn't already all over that idea
• 4 October 2020: Just been reading the comments on yesterday's poison pen letter from Uncommon Ground, and I'd like to thank Dan Fisher for bringing the GC movement together for once.
• 4 October 2020: Excellent, thank you - quick google suggests just up my street.
• 4 October 2020: You must. Immediately.
• 4 October 2020: His autobiographies are absolute gold too.
• 4 October 2020: #bemorerosieduffield
• 4 October 2020: This is a bit of a luvvy-ish tweet but can't think how else to do it. I haven't been on campus since Jan (research leave/book-writing, then lockdown). Went in this week and found some really lovely letters and even presents from supporters. If that was you, thank you very much.
• 4 October 2020: See footnote 1, Tom. This is science, dontchaknow
• 4 October 2020: Mine's a pint of heavy and a packet of wingnuts please
• 4 October 2020: A correspondent points out that this charming page full of bile on @RationalWiki says, among other complete falsehoods, that I co-founded @Womans_Place_UK. I bloody wish! Never has a website name aimed so high and fallen so short.
• 4 October 2020: Me!
• 3 October 2020: Lol!
• 3 October 2020: so much this. There are people on "both sides" of gender issues who literally can't bear that other people's minds are different to theirs. I'm not talking healthy criticism. I'm talking relentless, obsessive dragging, sometimes over years. You. Look. Bonkers.
• 3 October 2020: if all they aspire to be is "a Medium without censorship" that's a pretty low bar - basically no judgement required - in that case Dan Fisher should stop calling himself an editor, because it really doesn't take much to upload something you've just been sent.
• 3 October 2020: I don't know what's in it for author, but am assuming the publisher is just desperate for clicks at this stage. Sad to see publication that used to aspire to lofty ideals adopt the Pink News (TM) model of journalistic integrity.
• 3 October 2020: That's some dehumanizing, bitter crap. Solidarity to the brave trans people who this piece targets for cheap laughs. My only advice is to treat it as noise - that's what I do (most of time, barring weak moments!). They look like total losers without any help from others.
• 2 October 2020: @MarshadeCordova @trussliz Thank you for saying this
• 1 October 2020: I've logged this as a query but on the offchance- my login from my mac is now asking me for a "server" before I can log in - any idea what should I put? I need to upload recordings I did offline. Screenshot attached.
• 1 October 2020: Thanks
• 1 October 2020: @ITServices Hi there, is Panopto down at the moment? I can't log in, and when I go to Canvas to click on previous recordings I've uploaded, they don't appear. Just trying to work out whether it's me or the system. Thanks.
• 1 October 2020: Yes thanks, I saw it. I too remain unconvinced.
• 1 October 2020: Like you, I've no interest in repealing the GRA- rather, in clarifying its existing nature as a legal fiction, which doesn't apply in several circs; and its relation to the Equality Act so that important women's spaces, resources, and activities are genuinely single-sex.
• 1 October 2020: Thanks Julia
• 1 October 2020: Yes - standard response. Depends on ready availibility of the woman-as-mean-bitch trope (original authors), as well as the women-as-soothers-and-pacifiers trope (second letter authors). Otherwise would look totally random.
• 28 September 2020: Important vote tonight for any Lib Dems that follow me
• 27 September 2020: "Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who authored the bill, said he doesn't expect that exception to be used very often." What is it about this issue that turns politicians into naive simpletons about the innate goodness of the human heart?
• 27 September 2020: Lol. that reminds me of this classic passage, still available in a Medium article by a philosophy Phd student. Comfortingly, the author tells fellow TW to "cut that shit out"- so that's OK.
• 27 September 2020: You seem nice.
• 27 September 2020: Anyone know?
• 27 September 2020: I don't know - am no longer in UCU due to their stance on towards those who disagree with them on self-ID. Will RT
• 27 September 2020: Julia is a very talented author and journalist, consistent in bravely standing up for fellow lesbians in her work (for years now), and who has recently been dropped by her publisher for writing in support of @jk_rowling (and told not to talk about it).
• 27 September 2020:
• 27 September 2020: (It's a sign of Dr Grady's keen understanding of the culture wars that she thinks anyone currently vocal about free speech in universities would have a problem saying something about this.)
• 27 September 2020: Well done Stella!
• 27 September 2020: Er.. yes. This is outrageous. Along with all the other outrages currently being piled up for these poor students: locked down, many ill, isolated, lonely, worried, without easy access to food, threatened with fines or having to stay there for months.
• 27 September 2020: It was great wasn't it. I've watched it twice before. What a talent.
• 26 September 2020: Yes, very
• 26 September 2020: That is some fascinating fact @AndrewDavies62 ! Inquiring minds will be following this up.
• 26 September 2020: No news is good news with VAWG, right? And actual news is no news. Or something.
• 26 September 2020: That Alexander McQueen documentary on BBC2 tonight is brilliant
• 26 September 2020: Roxy Music and 10,000 Maniacs - More than This.
• 26 September 2020: I enjoyed this. I thought original article was beautifully written and powerful, disturbing tale, but these things operate on several levels simultaneously and the sexualisation-of-beautiful-clever-woman aspect was part of why it got traction. Not author's fault. Ours probably
• 26 September 2020: Ah yes. Must be my ivory tower. Basically I never leave it, you know. Plus the fact I went to oxford and watched people get thirds and yet end up as city bankers. Plus the.. oh never mind, have a good saturday.
• 26 September 2020: (Because this is twitter and my audience is my audience - "proles" is supposed to be ironic).
• 26 September 2020: What worries me about this is that on average, kids from Eton and St Pauls could do without GCSEs, do without A Levels, do without Honours degrees and most would still probably end up earning a shedload later; so I really hope they've thought this through for the proles.
• 26 September 2020: So sorry to hear this
• 26 September 2020: And three years! That is unbelievable. Is there any pushback?
• 26 September 2020: Yes, no statistics whatsoever seems to mean "everything's probably fine" - cos we all know that VAWG is so accurately reported generally, every time it happens it gets recorded (sarcastic voice).
• 26 September 2020: You win all the prizes
• 26 September 2020: I assume all those gender studies profs who hate the phrase will be writing stern letters, yes?
• 26 September 2020: I've learnt a shedload from watching you all do your thing, and continue to be inspired. Without you and @fairplaywomen we wouldn't be here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 26 September 2020: fondly remembers that time two years ago when I started talking about self-ID in the UK and was pompously lectured by male academics who'd done a quick google that "self-ID is already in Ireland and it's all fine"
• 26 September 2020: I haven't seen this but the review I read said that the director was signalling to the audience that there was something over-invested and unbalanced in the mother's attitude.
• 26 September 2020: Wow, Rachel. What observational power.
• 25 September 2020: .though of course b) was completely omitted in any discussion of what should or shouldn't happen to kids. Hence the spectacular result of adult trans women with no hormones or surgery supporting children and teens having both.
• 25 September 2020: And it's not that they were critical for reasons shared with gender-critical feminists btw. It's more that a) it was supposed to be "exclusionary" of trans people yet to make any medical adjustments; plus b) if womanhood is entirely socially constructed, why do we need surgery?
• 25 September 2020: Re. recent demurrals by gender studies profs: I can confirm that quite a lot of gender studies is critical of the "born-in-the-wrong-body" narrative. Of course, you may have missed this fact because they were so busy wildly celebrating organisations like Mermaids that used it.
• 25 September 2020: Gosh, sounds v useful but waay beyond my area of expertise! @HJoyceGender?
• 25 September 2020: Don't be confused. You're making a lot of the term "synonymous" there, the objection doesn't have to be that strong. It's blindingly obvious mainstream TRA orgs have used perception of sex-non-conformity as a - if not the - main explanation of gender identity self-attribution.
• 25 September 2020: Critic in the seminar room, enthusiast in the grant funding application. I think that’s how it goes.
• 25 September 2020: Idly wondering whether the Dept of Education’s new prohibition on working with external agencies supportive of gender ideology will cover their own large contribution to Stonewall’s coffers every year
• 25 September 2020: Academics should be committed to hearing from a wide range of experiences. So this account is important. The media don’t represent this perspective very often either. They should.
• 25 September 2020: Yes, me too
• 25 September 2020: Have now! 👍
• 24 September 2020: Indeed!
• 24 September 2020: A kid saying "I'm trans" is still being treated as some kind of infallible miraculous sign, like children seeing Our Lady of Fatima or something.
• 24 September 2020: Mermaids' response to new Dept of Ed guidance on teaching gender identity. Note: a) noticeable backpedalling (they used to say sex-non-conforming toys/ clothes were A Sign); b) total lack of curiosity about where kids like Lisa's could possibly get idea they're trans from.
• 24 September 2020: That's some balls on whichever recent gender studies grad was running the twitter account that day - promising a ban for a national publication, on behalf of your employer, without asking them first. Got to admire the youthful confidence.
• 24 September 2020: 😻
• 24 September 2020: I think Glinner is great too but this wasn't a roll call of all the great people who have ever spoke out - that would take forever. It's about Stephanie and Rachel, passionate educationalists, and what I am sure is TT's special role in getting this outcome through hard graft.
• 24 September 2020: All sounds very healthy to me!
• 24 September 2020: Another absolute star is @RooneyRachel - and Jessica Ahlberg too - for their absolutely beautiful children's book, My Body Is Me, with proceeds to TT - still available here.
• 24 September 2020: Outbreak of common sense reported at Dept of Education! I am so pleased for @Transgendertrd, this all they've ever been asking for - and have received nothing but grief for it, from public figures that really should know better. Stephanie Davies-Arai is proper hero for our times.
• 24 September 2020: Honestly, having ploughed through about 8 of her books recently, this is her on a good day.
• 24 September 2020: (at least, I think it's her latest - hard to keep up).
• 24 September 2020: Some excellent takedowns of the Butler New Statesman interview are floating about (have just RTed @questingvole's) but if you're still looking to discharge massive irritation via medium of reading, here's my review of her latest book
• 24 September 2020: Thanks!
• 23 September 2020: RT @KLBfax: PLEASE SEE CASE UPDATES https://t.co/pwYCqbisKc The NHS has just announced an independent review into the treatment given to…
• 21 September 2020: Pretty much
• 21 September 2020: In fact you were born to it!
• 21 September 2020: I think they want you to save your tears for the poor misunderstood fox-batterers.
• 21 September 2020: "We should resist the drive to normalise and regulate the commissioning of babies. Treating children as consumer goods is an attack on all our humanity." Well said.
• 21 September 2020: That's it Todd, you're dead to me.
• 19 September 2020: That video I just tweeted by @emmakennytv makes the point more eloquently.
• 19 September 2020: Is our top priority to protect the affluent from health anxiety, or the poor and working-class from mass unemployment, hunger, and generally shortened lives from (more) poverty? There are no cost-free choices here so as society, we have to choose responsibly and not selfishly.
• 19 September 2020: Re 2nd lockdown: it's not about freedom versus totalitarianism. So bored of that. It's about: who do we care about more? The poor - who'll be much more affected by economic downturn, in terms of work/ health/ death/ everything else they care about - or the rich, who mostly won't?
• 19 September 2020: Pretty much agree with every word of this
• 19 September 2020: This is genuinely terrible. It is also defamatory of @Transgendertrd @Womans_Place_UK and @ALLIANCELGB Such simplistic magical thinking. Critical thinking/dissent = "hate". I'd be so embarrassed to be a signatory and I hope they eventually will be.
• 19 September 2020: Love A Squash and A Squeeze. And I found it quite deep by the 400th reading.
• 19 September 2020: The word "democrat" isn't looking too proud of itself either
• 19 September 2020: "Fourth wave feminism is just reading Buzzfeed and pretending that you've read bell hooks" And that's a subscription from me...
• 19 September 2020: "where an individual repeatedly does things which might be viewed as transphobic, it is unlikely this is in genuine error. This is especially true if they have been challenged by others, and have been pointed to resources to help them learn". The word "liberal" is blushing here
• 19 September 2020: There might be sexed brains in the sense of sex-specific general trends in brains (with lots of exceptions). That's an empirical question. But there isn't a female brain in a male body or vice versa. That's what I would mean by that, anyway.
• 19 September 2020: (There are some honorable exceptions to this btw. Too few. But #notallacademicphilosophers)
• 19 September 2020: Or at least say something about the reputational smearing the philosophers who are saying something about it are getting. That would be a start. Or even - just stop the reputational smearing. Baby steps...
• 19 September 2020: Calling all academic philosophers. You know that discredited Cartesianism ghost-in-machine stuff, that you've been telling first years is a load of hokum for the past several decades? You'll never guess what's happening now. You might even want to say something out loud about it.
• 19 September 2020: In the rest of that bit of the piece, HF goes on to say she has lost friends, but doesn't care (paraphrase).
• 19 September 2020: She most certainly is
• 19 September 2020: "I am an innate people-pleaser, and for a long time my greatest fear, aside from being forced to go camping, was angering people. But then the latest version of gender theory took off and it turned out I had a greater fear: denying the bleeding obvious."
• 19 September 2020: Thank you (and yes, huge thanks to Nigel and @DavidEdmonds100 too)
• 17 September 2020: Tonight’s fascinating watch @bindelj @BellosLinda @pinkfemi (and loads of other brilliant women) -
• 14 September 2020: I predict a grouse shortage.
• 14 September 2020: Anna it's v hard to see you post like this and I feel awkward making suggestions. But I get enormous inspiration and solace from listening to the podcasts here (@ThisJungianLife) May not be your thing but I do hope you find some help that "takes" for you.
• 14 September 2020: Ah ok - though 17th Century mores being what they were, I fear the relief may be only temporary.
• 14 September 2020: Off top of my head, yes.
• 13 September 2020: Having said all this about the Hume tower debacle (and meant it), it's arguable that Hume would have happily cancelled himself.
• 13 September 2020: (Just because no-one dares to argue with your sententious grandstanding at a departmental meeting doesn't mean they aren't arguing with you in their head)
• 13 September 2020: Not my situation thank goodness but I see it often enough
• 13 September 2020: Observation: University staff development programmes should include mentorship/confidence-building training for those many junior academics - many of them women on temporary contracts - stuck, muted and miserable, in departments with loud, woke, evangelical senior males
• 13 September 2020: Missing the virtual presence of the great, original, brave, and funny Magdalen Berns today, on the anniversary of her death, and sending love to all who loved her.
• 13 September 2020: Actually, in (apparently) welcoming this you've chopped your legs from under you when it comes to arguing for the positive preservation of those named scholarships in the medium future. Or any other unequivocal full-throated celebration of some aspect of his work.
• 13 September 2020: Really sorry to hear that.
• 13 September 2020: The David Hume tower is to be renamed as "40 George Square". Not sure they've really thought this through.
• 13 September 2020: I'm teaching Hume's contribution to ethics this term. Also teaching week on racist and misogynist assumptions in Aristotle, Hume and Kant and what it means for their respective moral systems. Possible to examine both simultaneously without reducing them to "genius or racist?"
• 13 September 2020: David Hume tower to be renamed: "the 18th century philosopher whose comments on matters of race, though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today". So much easier to symbolically flagellate dead 18th century geniuses than meaningfully work on structural issues now
• 9 September 2020: You guys need to focus more on the term" a much-needed gap".... 😃
• 8 September 2020: Sorry - got bumped! see my later tweet.
• 8 September 2020: For some reason, I'm now humming Living On A Prayer (wo-wo- wo- womksn)
• 8 September 2020: Helpful.. and the 'xn' as in Exxon Valdez?
• 8 September 2020: On the plus side this will give me extra time to work out how to pronounce it.
• 8 September 2020: Obviously I shouldn't have broken my golden rule and tweeted about it in advance, because the discussion of the beknighted "Womxn" on Good Morning Britain has now been bumped for something Covid-related - but may be back sometime later in the week. More news as I have it😃
• 8 September 2020: yep!
• 8 September 2020: All going to plan, I'll be on @GMB tomorrow around 7.50 am, discussing the word "Womxn" and why it fills a much-needed gap.
• 7 September 2020: Another enjoyably excoriating take on the Osterweil book
• 7 September 2020: As it happens I know this one
• 6 September 2020: Understandably. This lot are more like the ones that saw an opportunity for personal advancement and took it, though.
• 6 September 2020: When as XR spokesman, you describe Times and Sun as "Murdoch trash" and sound gleeful, you aren't conversing profitably with their readers, you're outgrouping them. There's a huge swathe of socially conservative people who care deeply about the environment, who you've now lost.
• 6 September 2020: Pretty much, yes. And of course they are the most dangerous ones.. or something.
• 6 September 2020: God yes
• 6 September 2020: Yes, with a side order of inner dialogue: "she sounds so reasonable.. her ideas seem to make sense.. CAST THEM OUT BAD THOUGHTS BAD THOUGHTS".
• 6 September 2020: What in other contexts would look like wildly intemperate language for an academic has become so absolutely standard when it comes to this area and the dreaded "TERFS" that I genuinely think they don't see how it looks. Anyway it's required. Anything less might suggest doubt.
• 6 September 2020: I agree the line has been more than unhelpful. But the way it is repeatedly harked back to as indicative of a general position, no matter what has been clarified or complicated since, and how varied the routes to the conclusion that trans women aren't women, is v telling.
• 5 September 2020: Yes it's identikit writing.
• 5 September 2020: Oh, just seen.. extra points for the obligatory inverted commas for "gender-critical" (adopt scathing tone). The way some academic feminists can dive with glee into a Cruella de Vil caricature for their intellectual opponents is always good value.
• 5 September 2020: Anyhoo, here's the book
• 5 September 2020: Can't you be totally wrong in a NEW WAY for gawds sake?
• 5 September 2020: "TERFS" are nasty stupid women who haven't read Julia Serano! Trans people are exceptionally vulnerable and its feminists' job to save em! (insert dodgy stats here). etc. Even if I was mad for trans activism, as philosopher I would die of shame to rehearse points this hackneyed./
• 5 September 2020: Just skimming the new "Think Like a Feminist" book by philosopher Carol Hay and yawning head off at predictable moves and lazy ad hominems. It's usual checklist of facile gotchas. Sex is fluid because two-spirited people exist and also cos Anne Fausto-Sterling says so!/
• 5 September 2020: Don't think so - I thought it's from Norman invasion of Ireland
• 5 September 2020: Can't agree with you on this, Rupert. Dangerous precedent and you sound far too sure you are right.
• 5 September 2020: You've done a brilliant job, Tim; hope you're rightly proud. So sorry to hear this.
• 5 September 2020: Good luck
• 5 September 2020: That's very sad for your readers, though I admire you knowing when to get out.
• 5 September 2020: Hey! :D
• 5 September 2020: Thanks! Ditto.
• 4 September 2020: No longer UCU due to idpol takeover, but am 100% behind this letter @DrLeeJones. Students need face-to-face contact. Not to mention that UCU stance - with absurdly panicky rhetoric & care home analogy - risks worsening tension between students and other residents of Uni cities.
• 3 September 2020: Someone give that man a non-looted medal
• 29 August 2020: For another staggeringly irresponsible open letter on suicide from Mermaids, see this from last year
• 29 August 2020: Mermaids is not a responsible organisation, on any level. It’s constant use of the child suicide trope is so outrageous, it’s hard to know what to say.
• 28 August 2020: - there's a ton of work to be done offline.) Thank you to all who follow me in a positive enquiring spirit, whether or not we agree on a lot, or a little - you are hugely appreciated. Er.. that's it! Thank you Wembley, etc.
• 28 August 2020: recentre myself, remind myself what I'm doing here and why, and also do lots of yoga (which is why I'm talking like a bloody hippy). I'm back with lots of energy and focus, determined to keep doing my thing my own way, and to avoid distractions. (Also not to be here that often/
• 28 August 2020: Don't get personal very often but want to (briefly) today. It's probably obvious to those who check in with me regularly here that I've been a bit all over place recently. We're all dealing with pressures on multiple fronts and I'm no exception. I took some time off to/
• 28 August 2020: Holly Lawford-Smith: "What is Gender Critical Feminism? (And why is everyone so mad about it?)" via @YouTube
• 28 August 2020: (You may also say it's because David Isaacs, former Stonewall Chair was EHRC boss for past four years.)
• 28 August 2020: .@AnnMSinnott is applying for a judicial review to examine the EHRC's thoroughly dodgy interpretations of Equality Act. They had one job and they fluffed it. You may say that this is because they are a Stonewall Diversity Champion. I couldn't possibly comment. Crowdfunder here.
• 28 August 2020: Thank you so much to you lovely people - if that doesn't do it, I don't know what will.
• 28 August 2020: No I've never tried!
• 27 August 2020: Please report this account if you have a sec - it is not mine
• 27 August 2020: I mean I held the team banner, wore a team t-shirt, and flinched like a startled deer every time the ball came anywhere near me
• 27 August 2020: I was in London Pride parade six(ish) years ago. Seems like another lifetime now. (I was also masquerading as a member of a volleyball team but let's gloss over that).
• 27 August 2020: Merci
• 27 August 2020: ""God, I miss that allyship. It’s long gone now. Stonewall. Act Up. All of it. Progressive misogyny has blown it all apart in its denial of women’s reality, experience and voices. It makes me sad. But it does not make me quiet". Well said @suzanne_moore
• 27 August 2020: (Of course I meant pangender here - apologies to the gender dictionary gods.)
• 27 August 2020: That's part of what she describes, yes. They might not know. Partly it's to do with the role of enhanced fantasy and the internet. Anyway, you should read the book, it needs more than a twitter precis to do it justice.
• 27 August 2020: not hard to see how also relevant to idpol practices of announcing who one prefers, for consciously political reasons or for unconscious social approval (cf pansexuality; agender; political lesbianism etc).
• 27 August 2020: She's explicitly concerned with rationalising choices in internet dating: "I like this sort of person not that.. I only date people within this strict list of characteristics" (etc.) & how "verbal overshadowing" can interfere with intuitive judgements to their detriment. But is/
• 27 August 2020: It must be really frustrating when you attempt a pile-on and get the wrong twitter handle..
• 27 August 2020: Many thanks to twitter correspondent who recommended it.
• 27 August 2020: I just read this, by Eva Illouz - it's v smart. Last chapter ("On Romantic Webs") has lots of stuff about online political fantasies of who we’re attracted to, or not, versus reality of encounters in flesh. V relevant to futile attempts to make sexual desire a political choice.
• 27 August 2020: The exclusive purpose, mind you. The @ACLU is currently orbiting somewhere around Mars
• 27 August 2020: If your bag is academics, being hosted by incredibly rich private US university, competitively free-associating to dehumanise millions of ordinary women on basis of their accurate beliefs about biology, this thread is for you. Future satirical novelists, get it here 😂
• 21 August 2020: Thank you, that's nicer than I deserve. Sorry I told you to F.O, I was rattled, but shouldn't have taken it out on you.
• 21 August 2020: should understand the professional pressures faced by academics tweeting under their own name. Two weeks ago a casual tweet of mine produced an article critical of me in a newspaper. The pressure is immense. If I want to make that point, why go out of your way to misunderstand?
• 21 August 2020: I'm having a go at you because of your subtweet. (And yes I fully anticipate the "it's not all about you". Timing is totally coincidental I'm sure). And because you, like many others, are deliberately misunderstanding my perfectly obvious meaning to have a dig. You of all people/
• 21 August 2020: (I note that you don't do much mocking there. Why is that?)
• 21 August 2020: Very glad to hear it wasn't response to my tweet, because "being told to be nice and perfect" would be complete distortion of what I obviously meant. If you want some sense of what I meant, please do encourage people to post mocking pics of TW under your main professional account
• 21 August 2020: Is this in response to my tweet? How do you know "that is not what is happening here"? Are you looking through my mentions? My tweet was in specific response to the replies and tags I get. And why only "masculine" males? Isn't that proving my point?
• 21 August 2020: Sigh. So far my tweet has been interpreted as "be kind", "don't ever point out they are male", "looking feminine makes you a woman" and now "all mockery is bad". I hate this place.
• 21 August 2020: People want to get outraged, pretending they don't understand when it was obvious. Let them.
• 21 August 2020: Ok bambi, let's agree to part.
• 21 August 2020: Oh do fuck off dear
• 21 August 2020: Thank you
• 21 August 2020: God, stupidly, I took it as read I wouldn't be understood as asking women not to notice or even say that someone is male. Since I in fact point that out in relevant contexts a lot. I was talking about specific examples of people posting pictures simply to mock. Urgh twitter.
• 21 August 2020: Yes I take it that this is what they think. Allow one thread to hang loose and the whole tapestry will be unwoven. But they don't seem to see that the further they push it, the more likely this is to come about anyway.
• 21 August 2020: You could just understand that you know absolutely nothing about my professional livelihood and to what standards I'm held accountable.
• 21 August 2020: You must have a very limited circle then.
• 21 August 2020: Always interesting how when I ask people to stop doing something, I'm "policing", but when I get the inevitable "stop policing women!" back, you aren't doing exactly the same thing. In fact neither of us are. It's twitter not Scotland Yard.
• 21 August 2020: First bit of your sentence is exactly my point and I'm on record as saying it repeatedly. The second doesn't follow - if people are only mocking masculine-looking trans women for looking masculine then it exactly indicates something about (their conceptions of) womanhood.
• 20 August 2020: That’s not what I’m talking about at all
• 20 August 2020: My dear friend Charlotte's obit for her wonderful mum
• 20 August 2020: There is not an extreme, oversimplified, ethically negligent position that these people won't leap into, to chase cash and an appearance of consistency. Women's prisons, women's rugby.. if I had anything to do with Stonewall I'd be begging them to draw some distinctions pronto.
• 20 August 2020: When anon Twitter followers rudely mock a trans woman's non-feminine appearance under one of my tweets, or tag me in, you a) implicitly reduce womanhood to an aesthetic b) make yourself look bad c) make me look bad too. I walk a tightrope everyday on this stuff. Just so you know.
• 19 August 2020: Anyway, I've registered for the seminar. Since you are using me to get attention for it, I see no reason why I shouldn't be there. See you then.
• 19 August 2020: Our last correspondence was when you were unfairly targeted for innocent tweet about Zoom privacy and teaching. I defended you and afaik, was instrumental in getting deletion. You thanked me for my "principle" effusively in email. Yet here we are. Your ad hominems are noted.
• 19 August 2020: Just seen this, Grace. Really odd. I guess I'm philosopher of literature. As you know, I'm a lesbian who has no truck with Section 28, nor for that matter X-tian purity culture. As you also know, you and me have corresponded in what I took was friendly fashion as recently as May.
• 19 August 2020: dissenters to sign up and freely participate. Who knows, maybe they'll even let some actual radical feminists defend their ideas in public from the criticisms being offered, in the Q&A. Fingers crossed!
• 19 August 2020: I've just checked statutes on academic freedom at @Stanford and they say Stanford "assures the fullest protection of freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication, and peaceable assembly at Stanford University." That's great - presumably then organizers will be happy for/
• 19 August 2020: The feminist @Clayman_Inst at Stanford is hosting this event, open to the public. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems a bit biased against those who don't buy into gender identity and believe that women are adult human females
• 19 August 2020: Yes I wouldn't want N. Wolf near any cause of mine these days, but back in the day she used to be a thing. Rightly or wrongly my 17 year old life was changed by The Beauty Myth!
• 19 August 2020: Thanks!
• 19 August 2020: If you are right about MacKinnon et al, I think at least they shd be clear-eyed about their motivation, and see they are concerned with limited legal fiction not an absolute fact. In MacKinnon's case, she always did argue sex was constructed, so was on a sticky wicket from start.
• 19 August 2020: I'm sure it's right that US/ UK people talk past each other based on assumptions abt own legal systems. Those in US talking about awful UK terfs don't understand gender reassignment already protected; US system impenetrable to most UK. I found this helpful
• 18 August 2020: Fraid so
• 18 August 2020: The revelation that former feminist icons like Solnit (and Wolf, and MacKinnon etc) have bottled it when faced with crunch question of what a woman is, is disappointment but also opportunity for new voices. Their time is done. They wrote themselves out of their own scripts.
• 17 August 2020: There are two new vids up at Holly and Kate's channel - this time on Shulamith Firestone
• 16 August 2020: "Celebrate the history of pride and the kinksters that drove change" Move over, fictional black trans woman who threw the first stone at Stonewall. You're about to be replaced by a bloke dressed as a puppy.
• 16 August 2020: The thought-crushingly banal language of "diversity and inclusion" can be used for literally any cause. "Some felt that not all kinks were represented and there was a lack of diversity within the groups that were present"
• 14 August 2020: Philosophers Holly Lawford-Smith and Kate Phelan have started a youtube channel - their first vid is on radical feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson (and their second is on her political lesbianism). Check it out here
• 14 August 2020: Thanks
• 13 August 2020: Thanks
• 13 August 2020: That's on my kindle! Though as yet unread. Thanks.
• 13 August 2020: Thank you
• 13 August 2020: Thank you!
• 13 August 2020: Thread
• 13 August 2020: Ta
• 13 August 2020: Thanks
• 13 August 2020: Brilliant, thanks
• 13 August 2020: Thank you, that's great
• 13 August 2020: No I haven't and thanks - good tip
• 13 August 2020: Great, thank you
• 13 August 2020: Thank you
• 13 August 2020: Thanks
• 13 August 2020: Thanks Piers - any further clues or keywords?
• 13 August 2020: People who read - are there recentish popular essays/books I should know about on connections between progressive liberalism and sentimentalism/ sentimentality? I know about Haidt on emotion (not quite what I'm looking for). Am writing on topic but don't want to reinvent wheel.
• 12 August 2020: Please consider signing
• 11 August 2020: Yes sorry - I meant in UK and should have said that. (And my source was a sociologist, I have no idea about sociology journal rankings generally). Still..
• 10 August 2020: Sadly I can. It's absolutely par for the course in this area. It's aimed at ideologically sympathetic readers, so in that case there's no need to make a real attempt at making convincing arguments, or observing ordinary academic standards re evidence and balance.
• 10 August 2020: Please don't make me
• 10 August 2020: I propose some kind of bingo card for future academic pieces devoted to caricaturing those nasty old TERFS.
• 10 August 2020: I"m afraid Sally Hines has beaten you to it in the very first article.
• 10 August 2020: It is truly embarrassing, I agree
• 10 August 2020: Another stellar example of high quality intellectual argument there - "let's call people 'trans-antagonistic', in passing! Basically, let's depict those bitches as cartoon villains, so we can avoid the details of their arguments!" (See also: "anti-trans"; "trans-hostile").
• 10 August 2020: I find it hilarious how intellectual opponents of gender-critical feminism can't actually say the word without putting inverted commas round it. OOH SICK BURN. (A recent philosophy piece used inverted commas for gender-critical 15 times.. think Alan Rickman, spitting word out).
• 10 August 2020: Disclaimer - I haven't read the articles yet -that delight still awaits me (nothing I like better of a morning than reading about how I'm a racist, stupid, insensitive moron who wants death of trans people) - so I'll be totally delighted to be proved wrong. I'll let you know.
• 10 August 2020: From look at titles of articles, it's business as usual in the "all TERFs are Nazis" vein - feminists who think, for whatever reason, that women are adult human females are "panicking"; dehumanize TW; are racist; are dangerous. Hyberbolic propaganda in journal form! Get it here.
• 10 August 2020: The 3rd ranking journal in Sociology, @TheSocReview has just published this special issue "TERF Wars: Feminism and the fight for transgender futures". No gender-critical feminists seem to have been invited to submit.
• 9 August 2020: Thanks for that link, that looks really interesting
• 8 August 2020: (doctor's surgery, I mean).
• 8 August 2020: Depends on context though. In surgery tact can be used. Public health messaging needs to be about women though. It is the only concept that does the job effectively. It's comprehensible to people who don't know much about anatomy, and those people matter (as you know).
• 8 August 2020: I think institutions have forgotten that tact is an art that can be encouraged, without mangling concepts. Simply not mentioning something distressing to someone, is still an available option. Is not lying. (Some radfems could also remember this)
• 8 August 2020: What I think there are, are good reasons to sometimes fictionally extend the concept, temporarily and for some limited purposes, to people who aren't women. But that isn't to make the concept more inclusive, as far as I can see.
• 8 August 2020: "Inclusivity" with respect to concepts is a self-defeating goal - it just makes for useless concepts. Inclusivity is a goal for institutions not concepts.
• 8 August 2020: (Though as @mary_leng knows, I don't think there are good reasons to make the concept WOMAN more "inclusive". The concept WOMAN, as is, is essential - it picks out adult human females. Not non-human females. Not children. And we need a concept for that for multiple reasons).
• 8 August 2020: Great thread from (gender-critical) philosopher of maths @mary_leng on 2+2=5
• 8 August 2020: As you were :D
• 8 August 2020: Philosophers don't have different understanding of "recognition". Some have additional, more technical uses of term in specific contexts, but they certainly know what "recognition of sex" means generally - and they also know (in sense of knowing how) to recognise it most of time.
• 8 August 2020: We don't.
• 7 August 2020: Beware propaganda self-identifying as dictionary.
• 4 August 2020: Me too @RosieDuffield1 - thank you so much for being brave.
• 3 August 2020: Cheers!
• 3 August 2020: I see no problem of groupthink here
• 3 August 2020: Senior academic denies there's any problem with freedom of expression in universities, then feels free to mock small number of Brexit-voting academics (not to mention huge number of Brexit-voting non-academics) as friendless boors who chew with their mouths open.
• 3 August 2020: True imo. When Brexit vote announced, Vice-Chancellors didn't think twice before denouncing result and those who voted for it - little aware that some academics in their own institutions supported it. Not to mention students, parents of students, etc.
• 31 July 2020: Congratulations to you all!
• 30 July 2020: Congratulations!
• 30 July 2020: Great thread
• 26 July 2020: It's unbelievably grim isn't it. But she didn't get to that conclusion on her own. A massive raft of so-called progressive atheists helped her.
• 26 July 2020: Well you probably had a lot on
• 26 July 2020: Best time of life yet! (or something)
• 26 July 2020: Says it all really, doesn't it. Are you enablers seeing it yet? Any small slivers of light permeating the old craniums?
• 26 July 2020: Small boys wearing dresses, liking glitter & sparkle -genuinely great. They should enjoy it. Small boys being told - by TV programme or otherwise - that therefore they're "really" girls in boys' bodies is MAD. You people going along for a quiet life really need to start shouting.
• 26 July 2020: Nope Netflix - what's traumatic is that every grownup in your life - including your doctors - have encouraged you to take fantasy for fact, justifying it with an absolutely bonkers theory of who you "fundamentally are", retrofitted to small kids, to keep things tidy for adults
• 26 July 2020: It's this one, run by my brilliant mate Lee
• 26 July 2020: What do you say then, @JolyonMaugham? Longform interactive public discussion potentially much more productive than Twitter ...
• 25 July 2020: And “Marxism” now I come to think about it (doh). I still wonder tho: in that case do you get quite the simultaneous double hit of a) destroying your enemies b) looking like a hero, that you get when you’re a progressive, loudly calling out privilege or homophobia or whatever.
• 25 July 2020: Yeah I didn’t mean to imply it only happened there, just couldn’t think of a good conservative example where there was particular capital in calling out the perceived transgression. That’s a good example.
• 25 July 2020: Yes absolutely. Why read up on British law when you could rapidly scan an explainer from Vox about the British TERF problem?
• 25 July 2020: Interesting read. Am thinking critique drift mostly happens in contexts where critic can get social currency for calling out supposed flaw - ie highly moralising, puritanical ones (like liberal-progressive culture now). Maybe he said that already.
• 25 July 2020: Lots of love xxxxxx
• 25 July 2020: That’s an amazing offer and I wonder if @Womans_Place_UK want to take you up on it - would be v useful for all, I’m sure
• 25 July 2020: Hope it gets recorded
• 25 July 2020: Am listening along. It is so helpful to hear differences between UK and US equality law - differences completely ignored by many context-free Americans steaming in to call Brits “transphobic”. Also would be good for legally clueless UK academics taking cue from American response.
• 25 July 2020: Looking forward to watching this, this evening.
• 25 July 2020: But if my joke has upset you, I apologise. Let's not let it stand in the way of what could be a very instructive discussion for all. Please consider - and the offer remains.
• 25 July 2020: I'm offering to take you up on your professed desire to discuss publicly. Personal trust is not normally a prerequisite for that, especially for a QC? And my first two offers, 8 hrs previously, were completely straight-faced & made no mention of my sex.
• 24 July 2020: Happy to do live discussion or @LetterWiki - no playing to gallery involved in either. Twitter obviously not place for extended discussion. But you seem to have a lot to say about GC views on twitter, and you said today you wanted to discuss publically, so now’s your chance
• 24 July 2020: Let’s discuss then, not debate. Publically. You can trust me, don’t worry.
• 24 July 2020: Jolyon, Jolyon, Jolyon, Joly-oh-oh-on I'm begging of you please don’t blank these tweets Jolyon, Jolyon, Jolyon, Joly-oh-oh-on Please don't ignore me cos I’ve large gametes
• 24 July 2020: "a cartoon show about cops"
• 24 July 2020: Have you got a link to any corroboration of that?
• 24 July 2020: Yes - that bbc headline is totally misleading. It was “hate crime incidents” that had shot up - technical term used by CPS to record subjective perception of crime.
• 24 July 2020: Great piece
• 24 July 2020: False statistics are being leveraged by elected politician to keep women quiet about policy and law changes that affect them. That matters.
• 24 July 2020: No, not reasonable. No evidence that sex-misaligned gender identity is innate. It’s a narrative that develops, given exposure to triggers. Sending child to Mermaids, an organisation which only “affirms” and seeks medical intervention on behalf of kids, is profoundly irresponsible
• 24 July 2020: That appears to be the size of it
• 24 July 2020: Am quite serious. We have conversed privately in reasonably friendly fashion before @JolyonMaugham. You’ve never offered to discuss publicly with me, at least. I’d be delighted. Let’s do it. What format - zoom debate? @LetterWiki exchange?
• 24 July 2020: Just to update this post - phrasing in the survey is slightly ambiguous (at least. to me) but 51% figure in fact refers only to trans and non-binary respondents, not total sample (which also includes LGB)
• 24 July 2020: I’ll debate you Jolyon. Just say when and where.
• 24 July 2020: Yes you are right - I was wrongly reading it as half of entire LGBT sample but it is only “trans and non binary”
• 24 July 2020: It’s a really striking figure. Various explanations possible I guess.
• 24 July 2020: UK average 19% working age adults according to Scope.
• 24 July 2020: Am RTing this because I hadn’t noticed it before and can’t quite believe it. This is the survey that’s being cited (and badly misrepresented at that - see thread) by MP and many others as evidence of the state of trans life in the UK. 51% of respondents ticked “disabled”.
• 24 July 2020: It’s from a Stonewall survey for LGBT people generally. (If you want some quick evidence that the sample wasn’t random you just need to look at the staggering stat that 51% of all respondents said they were disabled)
• 24 July 2020: But do facts even matter when massive exaggerations (moreover - massive exaggerations of data that wasn’t randomly sampled in first place!) are wielded like cudgels by elected politicians, to get dissenters to shut up about laws and policies that profoundly affect them? Guess not
• 24 July 2020: As we all should know by now, “hate crime incidents” are not transphobic crimes but mere perception of transphobic crime (not a massively high bar these days) and relatively few are prosecuted.
• 24 July 2020: For an article keen on banishing “misinformation” it’s quite funny to see the gross misstatement “According to a recent Stonewall report, 41 per cent of trans people have been a victim of a hate crime in the last year”. Actual report says - crucially - “hate crime or incident”.
• 23 July 2020: Thank you
• 23 July 2020: Thanks Joanna!
• 23 July 2020: Don't see why not!
• 23 July 2020: Here is one place
• 23 July 2020: Thank you
• 23 July 2020: Thank you James!
• 23 July 2020: Wow Jane, thank you! (totally OTT but what the heck, I'll take it)
• 23 July 2020: Apparently you can pre-order now! e.g.
• 23 July 2020: Thanks Mary!
• 23 July 2020: Thanks Helen x
• 23 July 2020: Thanks Helen - will be perfect companion piece to your own much-anticipated tome, I reckon!
• 23 July 2020: It was leisurewear. And the joke's on you both, because actually I wear a three piece suit to bed.
• 23 July 2020: Yes it is @leechalmers project here - recommended
• 23 July 2020: All good, I expect.. most emails sent about me are
• 23 July 2020: Thank you Caroline, for all your wise and tenacious support!
• 23 July 2020: Ta JB xx
• 23 July 2020: Popular!
• 23 July 2020: Very happy to say that my book on the modern phenomenon of gender identity theory - Material Girls: Why Reality Matters For Feminism - will be out next Spring with @FleetReads
• 23 July 2020: Love the momentary blind panic in his eyes on the third repeat
• 23 July 2020: (Plus a lot of other completely batshit, evidence-free stuff.)
• 23 July 2020: Whether or not they should be banned, this is incredibly over-charitable take. Makes them sound like heroes. In fact they believe ""there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything" .
• 23 July 2020: What a shero @HWistrich is
• 23 July 2020: I'm not saying Kant would agree with QT! I'm saying it takes an element in Kantian moral philosophy and amplifies it.
• 23 July 2020: That's brilliant! Well done. That makes me v chuffed (And thank God your marker wasn't a zealot..)
• 23 July 2020: Congratulations!
• 23 July 2020: Eek. I've seen Terminator 2, I know where this goes.
• 23 July 2020: Imo: excessively individualistic; promotes disruption of social bonds between groups (e.g. women, family, class, religion) to advance goal of self-expression/ self-definition; denies material world (selectively) and prioritises subjective perception = Kantian autonomy on steroids
• 23 July 2020: Read Isaiah Berlin's "The Pursuit of The Ideal" yesterday and thought it was brilliant. I offer it here as a recommended antidote to polarising twitter political madness
• 23 July 2020: "It is paradoxical but the left which describes itself as a post-colonial left is currently colonising Latin America with neoliberalism’s most elaborate product: queer theory." Fantastic interview from inspirational @AAlvarezAlvarez. This fight is truly international.
• 23 July 2020: You won't regret it, Lee is brilliant at what she does
• 22 July 2020: Two years ago it was all #nodebate. And now look, would you Adam and Eve it, there's a debate! So happy to see this - and props to @AlexSharpe64 for also participating in the debate, and publishing critical discussion of my work in the piece to which this new piece is response.
• 22 July 2020: Yes this was Angus
• 22 July 2020: Chickenelly
• 22 July 2020: Thanks
• 22 July 2020: Yes, ahem, I need to work on that.
• 22 July 2020: Thank you Matthew
• 22 July 2020: Not daft, it took me a minute too. You have to click on the segment 11-11.30 then go to around 11.05 - or that's what I did.
• 21 July 2020: "We know that political bias warps cognition, sometimes catastrophically, and this is, I think, an example of that in action. Lepore read Feldman’s research and she misunderstood part of it, despite being an exceptionally intelligent person." Good detective work @Louise_m_perry
• 20 July 2020: I mean the lack of impact analysis (or any apparent foresight/curiosity) about how different age groups might answer sex question given leeway to answer in terms of gender identity, and what effect this might have on sex data for those groups (feeding into lots of other data)
• 20 July 2020: This is amazing(ly terrible)
• 20 July 2020: This is awful news. So sorry
• 20 July 2020: Huge congratulations to @AskNic for her instrumental role in this achievement; and to @FondOfBeetles and @runthinkwrite too
• 19 July 2020: "Last year saw the first sex offender with a GRC in court. He was moved to Limerick Women’s Prison..Robert Purcell, chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee is reported as saying.. the Act has placed the State in an impossible position with regard to transgender prisoners"
• 19 July 2020: Here's the link to my discussion earlier on @talkRADIO with Kevin O'Sullivan about self-identification as a woman, and working in rape crisis centres - around 11.05 I think
• 19 July 2020: I'll be on Kevin O'Sullivan's show on @talkRADIO at around 11.05 am, talking about self-identification as a woman, and working in rape crisis centres - background below.
• 19 July 2020: "Being able to dismiss concerns about censorship? Now, that’s the voice of privilege."
• 19 July 2020: "My erstwhile comrades now seem to believe that to be free thinkers there are some things that must not be said. Academic circles, made up of those paid to think and debate are following a ‘no debate’ line." Great piece, including discussion of @ucu's lamentable stance.
• 18 July 2020: ta, have just tried again.
• 18 July 2020: I've listened to this @res_publica seminar twice, and have many questions/ disagreements (specifically about role of women and gay people in socially conservative post-liberal society) but there are a lot of rich ideas here to think about and digest
• 18 July 2020: They think saying X is bad must mean stigmatising X in your head; "reducing" people to the having of X, as if that's all they are, or the most important feature. They can't understand causal explanation about discrimination or disadvantage, in other words. It's bloody weird.
• 17 July 2020: As I just said by mistake on a totally different thread, making me look like a lunatic - on it like a bonnet.
• 17 July 2020: Sorry I just deleted my reply there - wrong tweet (I thought I was answering one about gin 🙃)
• 17 July 2020: I do cover some history but I think @HJoyceGender might be doing more in her book
• 17 July 2020: 😂
• 17 July 2020: It is! "Misogynist child with column in major left-wing newspaper: Blocks all the women objecting WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY BITCHES. Woke bros and assorted leftie-misogynists: Jumping up and down with excitement WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY UPPITY BITCHES." (Plus ca change etc)
• 17 July 2020: I just read this and loved it. I am now on her Paper Houses
• 17 July 2020: It's funny cos its true.
• 17 July 2020: "Two-spirit people burble burble sex is a spectrum burble clown fish burble burble intersex people burble burble some women don’t have ovaries burble social construct burble Judith Butler (Academics with cool-girl syndrome and assorted edgelords and wokebros: JUDITH BUTLER!!!!)"
• 17 July 2020: It's a tragicomedy. "Prequel: A long time ago in a lesbian bar that no longer exists..."
• 17 July 2020: (Presumably that's at least partly because historical reality in this area is so close to satire)
• 17 July 2020: It's Friday and I'm a bit fed up but I just re-read this by @janeclarejones and it really made me larf.. Quite brilliantly it manages to accurately convey recent history in the trans/feminist culture wars, whilst hilariously taking piss at same time.
• 17 July 2020: 😂
• 16 July 2020: it's going to take it hours to count them all
• 16 July 2020: I don't run the bot Julie
• 16 July 2020: I've got to beat her at something
• 16 July 2020: I feel my competitive spirit surging @unblock_list What blocklists am I on?
• 16 July 2020: So which comes first I wonder - attraction to gender identity ideology produces attraction to good/bad simplistic splitting, or vice versa.
• 16 July 2020: I think you're right about 3 (also 1,2). But question still nags me - why they let themselves off so easily on assumption of good motives and why they collapse all disagreement with bigotry. Because e.g. you also have good motives, and you (as shown by this blog) don't do that.
• 16 July 2020: Update on Krafft-Ebbing: lesbianism = "the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom" (about 87% of the time approx)
• 16 July 2020: I am genuinely saddened by the fact this means I now have to read the whole thread
• 16 July 2020: He signed the Suzanne Moore letter, I believe. What (a) cant.
• 16 July 2020: Thank you
• 16 July 2020: I saw that. It was obvious you were talking about a bloke. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone neutral reading to think otherwise. The whole thing's so mad.
• 16 July 2020: Thinking of you Nicole. Grief comes in waves, all you can do is hang on tight.
• 16 July 2020: Puerile dickhead. Here's the Ally-in-Chief RTing a parody of me and Helen Pluckrose's Letter exchange a while back (amazing how that group knew how to find it - it took me ages to find it on the Letters Wiki. Almost as if one of them wrote it 🧐) Sorry they're twats @JeanHatchet
• 16 July 2020: Quite a lot of people, as it turns out!
• 16 July 2020: Such a fantastic prose-writer too. I love her.
• 16 July 2020: I'm so sorry Hadley, and for all the great work still done in those sections - all my favourites.
• 16 July 2020: You obviously didn't see the cake!
• 16 July 2020: That's very lovely of you, thank you.
• 15 July 2020: I didn't have any (but that's a good tip, ta)
• 15 July 2020: Hindsight is a marvellous thing
• 15 July 2020: Oh shit
• 15 July 2020: I hope mine has got rear parking sensors
• 15 July 2020: This is not a metaphor
• 15 July 2020: If I could pass on only one piece of advice to the universe, it would be to never, ever believe the internet when it tells you that you can make a cake with only one egg
• 15 July 2020: How to Be a Free Speech Absolutist and Be on the Left, by philosopher John Collins (UEA)
• 15 July 2020: If you're dropping screenshot of a private email or DM "just for fun" or saying "I'm just going to leave this here" or "whistles innocently" (etc.) then you'd better have something of Watergate-style moment in order to offset the archetypal class-sneak vibes pouring off you
• 15 July 2020: You would think that, but only if you thought women victims' feelings were a thing, I guess, and clearly they do not.
• 15 July 2020: It was entirely my stupid fault!
• 15 July 2020: I will!
• 15 July 2020: Thanks JB x
• 15 July 2020: Thank you very much, that's much appreciated
• 15 July 2020: Thanks Will
• 15 July 2020: There's a major story in the Brighton Argus today about me - nah, only joking, I made a flippant tweet in the course of a Twitter conversation, and someone sent it to the paper. Anyway here's the background, if anyone cares (feel free not to!). https://t.co/lIrCahw4Sl
• 14 July 2020: Ha, I have never thought of that!
• 14 July 2020: And here too Who gains from this way of reporting male crime? Not women, nor public understanding, nor statistics.
• 14 July 2020: IPSO @IpsoNews guidelines followed to the letter ✅
• 14 July 2020: At which point the character limit will be exceeded before anyone can get to the verb. Which will be handy.
• 14 July 2020: Hehe
• 14 July 2020: I know it's not the main question here but I'm still confused about how bleach is figuratively the best disinfectant. I think figuratively speaking, sunlight is much better. Bleach is far too literal.
• 14 July 2020: Thanks!
• 14 July 2020: Oh God
• 14 July 2020: ".. a lot of my friends are young freelance journalists and critics. Many of them avoid writing about things they believe in or giving their true opinion on books for fear of what the online backlash might do to their careers (and precarious finances)."
• 14 July 2020: Very nice!
• 14 July 2020: And nor will you hear me say they are all fabulous, brilliant, upstanding moral citizens. (I dunno, I guess I'm just evidence-responsive like that. It used to be a thing. Shrugs.)
• 14 July 2020: Things you won't ever hear me say, as academic or otherwise: "Of course {massive group of people unified only by one or two core beliefs about importance of X} are all {terrible thing} and {further terrible thing}."
• 14 July 2020: "Ahm the ain whae breenges oanward Through the oorlich and chitterin' nicht'" - you've captured a mood right there.
• 14 July 2020: Bloody hell
• 14 July 2020: xxx
• 14 July 2020: Because they can't tell the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions! If only they had done philosophy... (sorry Eva).
• 14 July 2020: Good luck Teresa. You'd be an asset anywhere.
• 14 July 2020: Was this during the Acid Years?
• 14 July 2020: The list isn't going to work for Bragg because he's made his disqualifier: "being censured for discrimination against minorities". Never mind on what (slim) evidence, or what the context was. All public figures will satisfy that incredibly low bar. Corbyn satisfies it. Bragg too.
• 14 July 2020: I'm very glad too - and it's a testament to you and Nigel's work. (On the other hand, what an absolutely excruciating vision of heaven.)
• 14 July 2020: I'm so very sorry x
• 14 July 2020: Congratulations!
• 13 July 2020: Put it in a paperbag?
• 13 July 2020: I'M GLAD YOU ASKED
• 13 July 2020: If I've got you right, you seem to think that footling around with other people's words to make them pass some kind of semantic purity test with ever shifting goalposts, will make a difference to actual incidence of rape. I don't. Let's leave it there.
• 13 July 2020:
• 13 July 2020: Oh come off it. People get raped, get murdered, get shot, get bullied, get swindled,.. none of them are asking for it and that's in no way implied.
• 13 July 2020: If you think this is good you should hear my lifehack involving an avocado and a red onion
• 13 July 2020: @Alliewhowrites @ClaraenSc @suzanne_moore Yes, admittedly it probably helps with this tip to have the wingspan of a condor. And yes I get cold feet.
• 13 July 2020: I hate to be this person but it seems I am - turn cover inside out, put your hands in corners of cover from the inside, grab the corners of the duvet and shake. It is done in seconds.
• 13 July 2020: Every one of these decisions, considered on its own, looks like an outlier til you add them all up and realise what's happening.
• 13 July 2020: .@Change is censoring factual claim about causality in rape. Who mostly gets raped? Women. Why do women get raped? One factor - being female, in conjunction with heterosexual orientations of male attackers plus facts about average strength disparities. Not inner identities.
• 13 July 2020: yes though there are tricky Ian-Hacking-style questions about justification, when the category being identified is a human one to do with having certain mental states: mental states interpretable according to narratives, and narratives being provided by new categorisations.. etc.
• 13 July 2020: Hi. Winged monkey here. You're expressing solidarity with someone who has only just admitting perpetuating damaging falsehoods? Odd decision.
• 13 July 2020: Yes, and once it becomes sufficiently embedded as norm for others, seems you might be personally disadvantaged if you don't.
• 13 July 2020: I dunno if better identified, that's the q. But assuming they are, they're not better dealt with. Few resources to help individuals with mental health problems in systematic way, so alterations to assessment system used as proxy (plus dog-stroking sessions, mindfulness apps etc).
• 13 July 2020: Nearly every student who seeks an accommodation has a professional diagnosis of something, at least in the sense that they went to a GP and got a letter. The systemic problems of over-diagnosis/over-accommodation go further than just university counselling services imo.
• 13 July 2020: I think there's danger in these convos of losing middle ground. Severe cases exist. There might even be v good reasons for asking that a student not be asked questions. But when it's used repeatedly by student support, at early resort, I do question it and that's my point here.
• 13 July 2020: Some replies suggesting perhaps I don't take severe anxiety in young people seriously. I do. I also think it's on rise. But - not to extent suggested by numbers registered with student support units. This by @SashaLPC is part - part - of puzzle, I think.
• 13 July 2020: If it's any consolation, I ignore it
• 13 July 2020: Fraid so
• 13 July 2020: Well, yes. But this accommodation wasn't decided by teachers.
• 13 July 2020: I do recognise a lot in this article though. I was shocked when I first read in a student's notes that they should not be asked questions in seminars by me. Now I'm used to it.
• 13 July 2020: Unlike this author I don't think students set out to game system. I think system pretty much invites them to treat anxiety - a part of life for most teens and early 20s - as a disability for which university must compensate. Systems are now overwhelmed & cost is to seriously ill.
• 13 July 2020:
• 13 July 2020: "If Christmas pants never woke you up to a life of letdown you’ve never dreamed." You're a genius.
• 13 July 2020: 2 days to go for this crowdfunder. If I had magic wand I'd get them to their target in heartbeat. They put in a TONNE of highly effective work, talking to parents, the media, and teachers. Unlike Mermaids, there is no National Lottery cash for them. Please help if you can.
• 13 July 2020: As I understand it, desister is the umbrella term for people stopping identifying as trans, detransitioner is a person stopping or trying to reverse medical transition. The Sunday Times article was on detransitioners, so I probably should have said that.
• 13 July 2020: (Needless to say I have a few problems with that narrative, in case anyone thinks otherwise)
• 13 July 2020: Most of the stories here describe a narrative of something innate, emerging really early on in childhood (through the medium of things like Fireman Sam trucks and bracelets)
• 13 July 2020: This is on their website for instance (parent testimony)
• 13 July 2020: Mermaids are committed to "born in wrong body" narrative, with emphasis on born, not made. This is what they tell kids and parents - you were like this in the womb, nothing could have changed it, let's get you some drugs. So stories of desisting lesbians = awkward for them
• 13 July 2020: Did I see those during composition? Wow.
• 13 July 2020: Quite right too
• 13 July 2020: I don't know! I think maybe (highly unfairly) @mary_leng's tweets are labelled "sensitive content".
• 13 July 2020: I don't know where it comes from but I've heard quite a few practicising psychoanalyists say it - a defence against hurt or sadness or uncomfortable feelings or thoughts. Anger can be really buoying to the ego, giving it lots of energy, blocking out self-examination etc.
• 13 July 2020: Thank you
• 12 July 2020: It also contains the genius coinage "the Reverse Voltaire": "“I agree completely with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to prevent you from saying it.”
• 12 July 2020: This is a great piece. @mary_leng puts her finger on the double standard of many academics, philosophers or otherwise, who acknowledge the existence of binary sex and even are happy to state it, but equally would criticise @jk_rowling and no-platform me for saying the very same.
• 12 July 2020: Enjoy yourself x
• 12 July 2020: Very sorry to hear this.
• 12 July 2020: People like @tryingattimes can explain better than me but basically as I understand it - tweets expressing strongly negative emotion tend to get more RTS and likes. So system incentivised to promote them - or at least, not incentivised to calm system down.
• 12 July 2020: Thank you!
• 12 July 2020: Thank you
• 12 July 2020: Thank you
• 12 July 2020: Thank you
• 12 July 2020: Thank you!
• 12 July 2020: Excellent thank you
• 12 July 2020: That's a great piece.
• 12 July 2020: That looks really good, thanks
• 12 July 2020: That seems part of it too, I agree. Am thinking that when you are angry you're extra disincentivized to pay attention to anything that might counter your view.
• 12 July 2020: To be clear - it's acknowledged that Twitter increasingly puts people into epistemic siloes but I wonder if it's acknowledged that the anger that is intentionally built in, as fuel for the whole system, is partly responsible.
• 12 July 2020: Not a rhetorical question - am interested to know.
• 12 July 2020: Anger's a psychological defence. Anger hangs onto its current object - makes you less able to believe evidence presented that you're wrong (wrong about whatever's currently making you angry). And Twitter's algorithms thrive on anger. Has anyone written on this connection?
• 12 July 2020: This is a new survey from @RethinkIME (a new org which involves @LisaMarchiano, Jenny Cyphers, and Jane Wheeler, and with a v solid advisory board). It aims to assess the needs of detransitioners and desisters. Please fill in if relevant, and share widely in your groups.
• 12 July 2020: It's really strange to be in a world where academic historians like Dr Matt Lodder can casually lie about what's an easily checkable matter of public record, but I guess that's where we are, and most of the people that follow him will never find out the difference.
• 12 July 2020: If you're talking about Janice Turner, she said specifically in her column that she hadn't been cancelled, and was talking about those who had. Another brilliant feature of modern life: history rewritten within seconds according to prejudices of tweeters who catch your eye first.
• 11 July 2020: Extension of this line:"the only evidence we're prepared to accept of someone's cancellation is hearing nothing whatsoever about their cancellation".
• 11 July 2020: Keep hearing daft "if they're so cancelled, why do we keep hearing from them?" line. Cancellation works within particular social circles: your name can be mud in circle A & fine in circle B. But if circle A is livelihood, or political allies, or friends, it's still v damaging.
• 11 July 2020: Grandiosity is off the scale
• 11 July 2020: In that case, consider yourself an honorary philosopher and get stuck in - you can say I sent you! desperate
• 11 July 2020: Excellent, thank you
• 11 July 2020: I think part of problem in my academic area is there are so few trans women in philosophy that the ones there are, get a free pass to talk nonsense and no-one dare argue. (If only you were a philosopher not a geographer @ramblanista....)
• 11 July 2020: there is heavy gatekeeping of adoption, yet same author is constantly harping on about how TW are all very nice people who women should trust in their spaces. No-one (sensible) would accept same argument for adoption of children.
• 11 July 2020: There are several obvious disanologies completely ignored there (though repeatedly pointed out to author, who just ignores them), including: a) adoptive parents actually parent; so do TW "woman" (verb)? - obviously not, as womaning isn't a thing you do; b)in context of GRA/
• 11 July 2020: @nina__power
• 11 July 2020: It's D.C. Miller I think.
• 11 July 2020: Actually no - that's not true. I'm retweeting it because I've just read a fawning interview with this person in the Guardian.
• 11 July 2020: Retweeting this today for no particular reason
• 10 July 2020: Congratulations!
• 10 July 2020: Hoping to be able to announce some exciting news about my book next week..
• 10 July 2020: (Rogue quotation mark got in there at start - typo mine this time)
• 10 July 2020: (in sport)
• 10 July 2020: "Further gem amongst many: "Avoid the terms.. “biological sex,” “biological woman,” “biological female,” “biological man,” or “biological male.” These terms are inaccurate and often offensive."
• 10 July 2020: (Typo theirs). The evidence they cite? "Trans women have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003, yet as of June 2020, no trans woman has ever won a gold medal". What a genius argument.
• 10 July 2020: This guide for journalists from @TransJournalist is really quite something. Lots of stern words about not reporting "disinformation" - and then it says "there’s no evidence that trans women who are recieving transition-related medical care have an advantage over cis women".
• 10 July 2020: That's hilarious. Top marks to Matt for verbosity at the expense of integrity.
• 10 July 2020: This looks great - only t'other day I was saying companies need to develop guidance on how to deal with a sudden flood of demands for cancellation of an employee. Pass it on to your HR depts..
• 10 July 2020: RT @8RosarioSanchez: Dear everyone, I want to let you know that on 18 June 2020 we lodged my claim against @BristolUni & submitted my Lette…
• 9 July 2020: Bloody fantastic!!
• 9 July 2020: Robin is a non-binary female. Preferred pronouns "they/them". But apart from that, on all available evidence you have it right.
• 9 July 2020: That sounds like a fairly complicated argument for @RDembroff to get head around tbf. Best stick with the easy, guilt-by-association, cartoon stuff. Robin Dembroff was involved in a case harming trans rights, pass it on. (This is how it works, right?)
• 9 July 2020: I said usually?
• 9 July 2020: (This is of course leaving aside the whole guilt-by-association schtick you've got going on there, which I realise is standard for members of your tribe and probably seems as natural to you as breathing, but by reasonable epistemic standards is a pile of witchfinding horseshit)
• 9 July 2020: That would be exactly as true and fair as claim you've made about us.
• 9 July 2020: I repeat: when are you going to ask for correction to yr article? How about "a high-profile court briefing opposing trans rights in the UK cites blog posts by philosophers such as Robin Dembroff as evidence that trans persons are dangerous and deluded"? /
• 9 July 2020: /cited by @MForstater in same case! Basically, she gave judge a bundle of stuff to read, to defend her claim that that belief that biological sex can't change should be protected philosophical belief (as presumably should its denial). That's extent of both our involvement. So/
• 9 July 2020: In your footnote, you cite a central source of "evidence" as follows: "In addition, Maya Forstater’s Witness Statement in a recent U.K. case cites Kathleen Stock, Alex Byrne, and Jane Clare Jones" (Forstater 2019). But strangely you omit to mention fact you yourself are also/
• 9 July 2020: While I'm at it @RDembroff, when are you going to turn yourself into journal Transgender Studies Quarterly for wrongthink? In yr forthcoming paper there - "Cisgender Commonsense and Philosophy’s Transgender Trouble" - you make highly misleading claim about me and @byrne_a, to wit
• 9 July 2020: Er.. couldn't it just be that Robin is usually a male name in the UK, and brains in general - not just TERFbrainz ™️ - use heuristics like that? Yale Philosophers, huh.
• 9 July 2020: Now I just stay home and enjoy the fireworks
• 9 July 2020: (Mid July = ☀️ = total blindness)
• 9 July 2020: Yeah it's definitely not good when driving. 1st time it happened to me, NHS direct told me to go to hospital to see if retina was detaching. They put drops in my eye to make pupils dilate then released me into Brighton in mid July to try and find my ride home solely by touch.
• 9 July 2020: I find it fascinating what it does to faces when I look at them - they just decompose, won't stay as familiar single units. Bit like Picassos but weirder.
• 9 July 2020: I get those. It's like a disco in your head.
• 9 July 2020: Clever campaign running across several sites e.g. @Filia, @fairplaywomen, @Transgendertrd, @4th_WaveNow. Balanced reporting on trans activism & repercussions not yet taking place at Guardian or NYT (BBC is getting better though still way to go). Let's tell them #HappyBirthdayJKR
• 9 July 2020: ... read this - @beatrixcampbell's latest, describing the current Green Party's toxic relationship to trans activism and why she is leaving the Party as a result
• 9 July 2020: I've heard at 1st hand the story @beatrixcampbell leads with here - how during 80s radfem versus socfem wars, when @bindelj was caught skipping the bus fare, she used to give the name of Bea Campbell to the inspector. Anyway read this! They are both such inspirations. Then..
• 8 July 2020:
• 8 July 2020: Thinking this through properly, I've now hit upon a cunning plan to reduce the signatories of the next open letter against me
• 8 July 2020: I had a similar confusion, about why so many iconoclastic writers I admired were writing for Catholic newsletter The Tablet
• 8 July 2020: Pretty much
• 8 July 2020: of course you won't meet much real disagreement, but that shows nothing. Another possibility is that your substantive views are on topics nobody outside your discipline cares about - which goes for the majority of academic philosophical debates - again, this shows nothing.
• 8 July 2020: C) I also see - even from those I otherwise admire - constant downplaying of cancel culture and threat to free speech, especially in universities. At this stage, it's either a defence mechanism, or just complacent. If your own opinions are currently fine for the bubble you're in/
• 8 July 2020: B) This is the sort of response I've received from other academics when we've been jointly invited to contribute on some project - they've objected to "non-consensual co-platforming" with me. No wonder students emulate if this is the model.
• 8 July 2020: Why aren't academics telling students that being in close proximity to those you disagree with doesn't mean their thoughts are contagious? I'm not optimistic they're out there, for 2 reasons: A) They surely would be leading by example and I don't see much of that; and..
• 8 July 2020: lol
• 8 July 2020: RT @jk_rowling: Yes indeed. And to quote the inimitable Lillian Hellman: ‘I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashio…
• 8 July 2020: Thank you!
• 8 July 2020: I think I did but it didn't grab me as much... I should try again.
• 7 July 2020: You're cancelled
• 7 July 2020: Obviously I hope so, but even if she doesn't, she's still more than ok by me
• 7 July 2020: Me neither. I absolutely love her.
• 7 July 2020: Reading @MargaretAtwood's Cats Eyes changed my life. Felt like her mind reaching out to mine. Artistic legacy is immense: Surfacing, Edible Woman, Alias Grace.. the wisdom, mastery of form, wit, vision. Sad she doesn't get trans activism problems (yet) but still a goddamn genius.
• 7 July 2020: 😂
• 7 July 2020: I don't gush that often, but I honestly could NOT be prouder to know @cwknews and rest of sheroes at @Transgendertrd. They work so hard to give evidence-based guidance for schools, parents & media, gratis - for years now. Pls listen & support funder if you can #couragecalls
• 6 July 2020: Sorry I didn't mean that to sound self-pitying! More hilarious. What strange times we live in.
• 6 July 2020: Sociologist Michael Biggs has updated LGBT facts/ figures here Includes new info on grants for trans research. A lot of it has activist agenda 💰💰💰. Meanwhile I persist in quest to get an academic article published saying woman=adult human female.
• 6 July 2020: Twitter is very tricky animal.. Supportive people can project onto you the thoughts they want to have, and can feel very let down when you say something that's off their preferred script. Most of the time they get over it (and ones that don't, you're honestly better off without).
• 6 July 2020: I don't really want to keep commenting on this issue, so this is my last, but Fionne is last person to discourage disagreement - basically whole MO is polite disagreement with TRAs plus pictures of elves - and I don't mind it either but that isn't what I've objected to.
• 6 July 2020: Thank you, that's fantastic to hear
• 6 July 2020: Thanks Angi x
• 6 July 2020: Hope she's ok x
• 6 July 2020: Deleted my earlier aggro tweets in response to attacks on me, because I know there's no point in fuelling fire. But I still want to say this: If I blocked you ages ago, and yet you still go incognito to stalk my TL, get worked up into fury, and then tweet about me anyway..
• 6 July 2020: Yes to all of that.
• 6 July 2020: (I am not speaking for "movement" though. As usual, am just saying what I think. Am increasingly allergic to talk of movements as if they were hiveminds)
• 6 July 2020: Seems to me that from all sides people want to reduce its complexity. Medical model seems uninterested in its potential fluidity, relation to narrative. Radical feminism seems to want to treat it as same as other more familiar kinds of body discomfort. And yes, some dismiss it.
• 6 July 2020: I dunno. I can only speak for self on this and would prefer to do it in longer form. In brief tho - I take dysphoria seriously. Range of approaches seem to work. I think surgery/ hormones should be last one to try, not first, and never for minors. Prolonged talking therapy first.
• 5 July 2020: Thanks Pam. I blocked J. Vigo a while ago. Not one of my top ten life regrets, as it turns out.
• 5 July 2020: Lol
• 5 July 2020: More here...
• 5 July 2020: I watched this film yesterday and I think it's a big tick under all those headings
• 5 July 2020: Bloody algorithms are always getting me in the shit! Don't want you to fuck off obvs.
• 5 July 2020: Anyway - twitter isn't place to convey complexity or explain why I'm moral particularist not a generalist. I'm fully aware that this will just go down (for others) as another Stock's a hypocrite or whatever. Off to enjoy my day, hope you do too.
• 5 July 2020: Honestly? Not for most cases, maybe for some. It would depend on the case. I don't blame individuals for wanting the non-optimal choices society offers them - preference adapt to circumstance. I just don't believe in moral absolutes. I prefer to target structures not individuals.
• 5 July 2020: Are you seeing the stuff I'm seeing about this? Overtly picking on someone who is already obviously unhappy, unneccessarily. That's what I'm talking about. If you aren't doing that, I have no problem.
• 5 July 2020: Good for you.
• 5 July 2020: Exactly. I'm not donating cos of a big principle - I don't suppose I'll ever donate to a crowdfunder for cosmetic surgery again in my life. I'm donating because I really like and respect F a lot and I want to help. People who don't like it can fuck off frankly.
• 5 July 2020: Of course we should be able to discuss it.
• 5 July 2020: And Fionne can work for women (or support women) and still have projects of own. It's allowed.
• 5 July 2020: You wouldn't ask, good on you. Lots of women ask for what they need. So what? People donating to F will donate to them too. You've set this up like F is literally taking from women's shelters.
• 5 July 2020: It doesn't have to be either/or
• 5 July 2020: I'll donate Fionne. I wish we didn't live in a world where you felt like this. But you're an absolute star, one of the bravest out there, and I'm sure you've thought it through. Wishing you nothing but happiness and all the best.
• 3 July 2020: This would be a lot more convincing to me if Jay Hulme didn't use blocklists to avoid conversing with disliked people (I just went to look at profile, see I'm blocked)
• 3 July 2020: Not sure I'm following
• 3 July 2020: This seems like a fairly defensive response to a tweet that wasn't addressed to you specifically and is doubtless inapplicable but.. ok?
• 3 July 2020: Microaggression against the underconfident. Again.
• 3 July 2020: Hard to assess others' behaviour patterns without making some assumptions of intentions behind it though. And assumptions about others' ideology (or some other word you like better) can inflect interpretation of both intentions and behaviour. That's all I meant.
• 3 July 2020: I can't see this tweet. Is it recent?
• 3 July 2020: So it's relevant that yours was in context of a "debate"? Is that the relevant context that makes what you said OK? Interesting.
• 3 July 2020: My point is we don't know. Either background context is relevant or it isn't (and strangers don't have it in either case). It's really easy to conclude opponents must have meant something evil, whilst friends must have meant something less-than-evil.
• 3 July 2020: Even if I can't always put this into practice I know it's true.
• 3 July 2020: It's easy to fix ideological opponents into neat boxes. They're evil, transphobe, misogynist. Look what they said! Look who they follow! Look what they like! I've had this done to me for 2 years. I get it. Have done it back. Is a defence. But gains small, loss to culture large.
• 3 July 2020: You know best I'm sure
• 3 July 2020: My point is - if you are going to be this sure about a strangers' intentions, don't be surprised or shocked when the same crude logic ends up hoisting you. (Same goes for Barr of course).
• 3 July 2020: Sorry my mistake - you called her a "member of the church of penis". They thought you were nasty and offensive. Is context relevant there? Am curious.
• 3 July 2020: How about this one?
• 3 July 2020: I know what linguistic context is, I wrote a book on it. You don't seem to though? My point is, you don't know if nasty. Other day I saw lesbian radfems calling you homophobic because of tweet. You told lesbian they must worship dick (or similar). Context relevant there?
• 3 July 2020: Not bending over backwards. Many people have black humour about dark things. It helps people cope. Again, no idea whether this is actual context - am pointing out it could easily be. Point is not to defend Barr. Point is about flexibility of interpretation of 280 characters.
• 3 July 2020: That's not context though, that's tweet. The context is: who was intended audience? Was it injoke with a few followers before he was well-known? Was it intended to be ironic/parodic? I don't know answers. I've no interest in particularly defending Barr - my point is larger one.
• 3 July 2020: You've never enjoyed Seinfeld then. Or any other black comedy that mocks taboos. That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about. So sure of yourself and what people must mean. "Hatred" used at drop of a hat, as if it was nothing to accuse someone of it on basis of tweet.
• 3 July 2020: Yes I think that's the problem. It's not that I don't want to highlight hypocricy, I just think it has to be carefully done or else all of a sudden you find you've got a pitchfork in your hand too.
• 3 July 2020: Am not saying don't resist! I resisted too. Am addressing claims he is obviously transphobic, not claims he is hypocritical. And also - separate point - general tendency on both sides of wars to dig up tweets like their meaning was obvious.
• 3 July 2020: Well that's one construction of what I meant. It's totally wrong. But it's a construction, I'll give you that.
• 3 July 2020: Not sure we should go down without fight. Tweets taken in isolation show little. Need to know - who was intended audience? What was context? Is it ironic, playful? etc. I don't see why we should play game according to rules we are given, victories will only be temporary.
• 3 July 2020: I agree with all of this
• 3 July 2020: I don't mind pointing out hypocricy, I just think there's a fine line between "he's a hypocrite" (for jumping on tweets as if they showed everything about a person) and "he's a transphobe" (i.e jumping on tweets as if they showed everything about a person)
• 3 July 2020: Two possible gameplans re Damian Barr and offense archaeology done on his tweets: a) Shows we're all fallible and complex; characters can't be assessed by tweets. Wry smile at Barr's hubris, there but for grace of God go us all.. b) Let's destroy Barr for wrongthink too.
• 2 July 2020: Sorry to hear that
• 2 July 2020: Lol! Well obviously, I can see why we differ on the tinned fruit cocktail thing - I'm Judy magazine 4EVA. Had letter printed and everything. (Amusing anecdote about pushing my sister on a swing as I recall.)
• 2 July 2020: Well that's what they want you to think I assume, but the timing obviously suggests desire to get rid of the association with the Baroness came first (and not because of her views on same-sex marriage either), and idea to get rid of the position second.
• 2 July 2020: That's just crazy talk
• 2 July 2020: Personally speaking, I'm not defending her views so much as her right to have them, without special or unusual sanction - and saying it should have no bearing on her connection to the Booker Prize, especially when other current officials have same views.
• 2 July 2020: Butterscotch Angel Delight and tinned pears... (goes misty-eyed).
• 2 July 2020: Fantastic!! Congratulations!
• 2 July 2020: Wow! I know you can't say but I'm v curious to know what company this is now (I'm guessing it's not the Guardian)
• 2 July 2020: Oh yes.
• 2 July 2020: That's good to hear. Has it been used?
• 2 July 2020: Maybe when the rainbows have worn off..
• 2 July 2020: The university sector mostly can't do it either.
• 2 July 2020: ..basically get wise to the generation we seem to have produced, who think activism = accusing someone publicly of something unspeakable, without good evidence, but with a tone of high moral outrage. I don't see any evidence tho. All I see is kneejerking, capitulation, panicking
• 2 July 2020: I keep waiting for major institutions to start developing guidance for staff about how to deal robustly with public calls for sackings - how to support staff throughout investigative process, assume no guilt, keep it totally private, put out neutral holding message in meantime..
• 2 July 2020: There's a name for this as you possibly know - moral self-licencing.
• 2 July 2020: It's the sheer arbitrariness of the rules bodies invent on the spot to get what they want (i.e. difficult women to go away) that always enrages me the most. And the blindness to their own biases.
• 1 July 2020: I'm so angry on your (and all of our) behalf Allison, I can't even think straight. So thank you so, so much for having the moral clarity, strength, and resilience to keep your head in the face of this outrage, and come out fighting. You will not be defeated xx
• 1 July 2020: Please read this right through.
• 30 June 2020: Of course they are
• 30 June 2020: @nina__power
• 30 June 2020: No, thank God. Somedays there's only so much of this total and utter bullshit I can take.
• 30 June 2020: Where is the iconography for Storme DeLarverie? Just wouldn't sell, would it.
• 30 June 2020: One of the really eye-opening and depressing things about getting involved in this whole gender war thing is realising that academics - who basically have ONE job and that's chasing the evidence - will go along with utterly false popular narratives for quiet life.
• 30 June 2020: See for instance
• 30 June 2020: Been angry all day (again) about Marsha P. Johnson - who was 1) not at Stonewall and 2) not trans - being constructed into Stonewall trans folk hero by corporations who don't give a fuck either way as long as it sells. Plus academics MIA as usual. Historians? You out there???
• 30 June 2020: Not sure it was me? (though I often am..). Not sure. If you complain at session itself, you may be treated as troublemaker and run risk of being investigated it seems
• 30 June 2020: So well integrated into the mainstream, we no longer need to refer to them by a comprehensible name.
• 30 June 2020: It's voluminous, luminous pink towelling hoodie that reaches down to my knees. I once walked from local pool to my house in it and stopped traffic, not in good way.
• 30 June 2020: Not just a dryrobe but I now have two pairs of acqua shoes... that's how badass.
• 30 June 2020: Sorry, Cátia
• 30 June 2020: Shouldn't that say "no longer says puberty blockers are reversible"?
• 29 June 2020: Thanks, I will definitely read this
• 29 June 2020: Rereading Susan Wolf's 'Moral Saints' as an antidote to Twitter purity spirals
• 29 June 2020: The HR candidate pack for applicants to Chair of EHRC gets two protected characteristics in Equality Act wrong. The EHRC is also in charge of.. interpreting the Equality Act. It's also a Stonewall Diversity Champion. And the mistakes mirror wording Stonewall would prefer to see.
• 29 June 2020: Great essay. These days it increasingly feels to me like the real radicals are in the centre (which applies to both @helenlewis and @VictoriaPeckham)
• 29 June 2020: Barbara Pym is such a joy. A Glass of Blessings next?
• 28 June 2020: Curses. Art imitates life once more.
• 28 June 2020: Yeah but the column name.. Alex in Wonderland?
• 28 June 2020: Also, don't worry, I have plenty of male options
• 28 June 2020: I wasn't seriously proposing it
• 28 June 2020: Given success of Karen, I'm thinking of proposing "Sophie" for public-school lefty who gets to write about radical ideas in NYT and NS before popping out to Wholefoods because she's run out of matcha. Or maybe a spoof column: "Sophie in Utopia".
• 28 June 2020: Here's the new orthodoxy, in plain sight on BBC: Gay people not wanting to date opposite sex is transphobic (See also: Hetero people not wanting to date same sex is transphobic)) Majority have yet to realise this. Lesbians have been aware for while (can't think why)
• 28 June 2020: Fantastic @charmalotta xx
• 27 June 2020: From bad to worse..Allison Bailey @BluskyeAllison 's crowdfunder, launched today, suspended. She has every right to fund pursuit of employment tribunal against her Chambers. Subject access requests apparently reveal extent of collusion between Stonewall and them.
• 27 June 2020: Me too.
• 27 June 2020: Agreed. You just have to go down the rabbithole of porn tweeting, incel tweeting, or - let's face it - apparently unbannable tweeters from Ohio sending people like me gifs with revolvers aimed at my face - to see how unjust this decision is.
• 27 June 2020: Graham Linehan shouldn't have been banned from twitter. He doesn't put things sensitively, he's pissed people off, but he's also done his best to stick up for women against encroaching trans activism. For which he has paid disproportionately. Cowardly blue ticks walk on by.
• 27 June 2020: I've just said as much in my book as it happens. It's important people understand the phenomenon of AGP imo, but equally important it doesn't become overemphasised as the defining cultural image of being trans, which is multifaceted (not least because it includes females).
• 27 June 2020: I just supported this case! via @CrowdJustice
• 27 June 2020: "Stonewall were involved in eliciting complaints against me from third party organisations and directing them to my head of chambers." The disconnect between Stonewall's public moralising and private conniving is truly outrageous. Please support Allison's very important case.
• 26 June 2020: I've decided to instablock anyone I see using the term "Rainbow Reich" (though in this case I already had, because funnily enough, people who say stuff like this tend to talk a lot of offensive crap generally, it's a pattern)
• 26 June 2020: That sounds about right
• 26 June 2020: I don't like the posters! I think they are vacuous. But if you don't see the difference between "they are vacuous" and "they are subliminally inciting paedophiles" then I don't know what to tell you.
• 26 June 2020: No. Strangely enough I haven't. I've read the Detectives Handbook, if that helps. However what I have done is a child safeguarding course and I don't recall Pride posters being the chief worry.
• 26 June 2020: Do you think a breast cancer campaign to "coppafeel" has to specify they don't mean, sexually assault women? People understand poster's restricted meaning, to adults. Not everyone is obsessed with what radfems are obsessed with. Most haven't heard of ASDA booklet or MAP so..
• 26 June 2020: Actually I just got on with it and made some for myself earlier today. Which is, in a way, also my advice for the asexual community...
• 26 June 2020: Talking points I'm seeing atm: Pride flag; also statements that LGBT people should be "free to love whoever they want to love". Daft implication this somehow reveals pro-paedophilia agenda (rather than being obviously implicitly quantified to adults). e.g.
• 26 June 2020: Ever since I read this I've had mad cravings for scones with rhubarb jam..
• 26 June 2020: (This is most immediately inspired by seeing responses to a Pride poster, but has been on my mind for a long time).
• 26 June 2020: Upshot.
• 26 June 2020: Exhibit B
• 26 June 2020: In my continued quest to keep speaking my mind on here, even when it goes against elements of my support base: a spot the difference exercise. Exhibit A.
• 26 June 2020: 😆
• 26 June 2020: I'm talking about seeing intimations of a pro-paedophilia attitude in a Pride poster.
• 26 June 2020: I meant this one
• 26 June 2020: See my second tweet straight afterwards.
• 26 June 2020: Are you saying that response to the Pride poster is OK? And that we are naive for thinking otherwise?
• 26 June 2020: (And before your mentions blow up, by "occasionally", I mean within the contexts in which they talk about paedophilia, not generally - I know CSA is not occasional)
• 26 June 2020: (And before your mentions blow up, by "occasionally", I mean within the contexts in which they talk about paedophilia, not generally - I know CSE is not occasional)
• 26 June 2020: I agree. There's a section of GC/radfem twitter that treat paedophilia the way Mermaids treats child suicide - as the go-to fear. In both cases, it happens occasionally, but discussing it requires sensitivity, and the repercussions of getting the conversation wrong can be grave.
• 26 June 2020: The defining question of our age
• 26 June 2020: Lesbians?
• 26 June 2020: Ye Gods. "Lesbians will be forced to explain their lesbianism"
• 26 June 2020: Ha!
• 26 June 2020: Modern life is unsatirisable
• 26 June 2020: This also happened to friend of mine
• 25 June 2020: Really enjoyed chatting on the current lamentable state of trans activist politics with Emma @Brompton_Road and Sian @ramblanista - can be watched via this link.
• 25 June 2020: I know what she did. I can't stand her. But let her stand/fall by what she actually did and actually meant - stuff there's real evidence for.
• 25 June 2020: Acting in anticipation of what mob will say just as bad (worse?) than reacting to it. Let her stand/fall by stuff for which there's evidence. I've no fondness for her, but this RT/share is not smoking gun. Sacking doesn't suggest serious about AS, more like a handy scapegoating
• 25 June 2020: Her there, not here there
• 25 June 2020: If he thought she was definitely anti-semitic, he shouldn't have put her in shadow cabinet to start with then. Fact he put here there suggests he did not. Question here is not about whether "far-Left" (obviously some bits are) is anti-semitic, but whether she is.
• 25 June 2020: You either hate #CancelCulture or you don't. Rebecca Long-Bailey or Emma Nicolson, the mob should not get to decide what they "obviously" meant within moments of them tweeting. If you are in danger of being cancelled yourself, don't celebrate it happening to enemies ffs.
• 25 June 2020: As if by magic, about 3 mins later, Long-Bailey gets sacked for endorsing person with many opinions, some true, some false, in single tweet. Didn't say "she's right about Israel", did she. Still sacked. If you're celebrating this cos you hate Long-Bailey you're dancing with devil
• 25 June 2020: Why can't some on the Left see that using "homophobia" "transphobia" "misogyny" "racism" as first resort, to apply to everything from using wrong word in tweet, to physical attacks/maliciously ruining life chances, devalues terms' currency & is trivialising of latter ordeals??
• 25 June 2020: I know. Doublespeak. Newspeak, even.
• 25 June 2020: Did she?
• 25 June 2020: I disagree with Baroness on same sex marriage. But it's reasonable disagreement. She's entitled to think what she thinks, it's not "hateful". That word has got so elastic. This public humiliation - worse, carried out by cowards who probably even agree with her - is something else
• 25 June 2020: Agreed
• 25 June 2020: I guess the message @DavidWilletts3 must have got from student attempts to cancel his chancellorship at Leicester University is - always capitulate to the mob, unless it's you.
• 25 June 2020: I fully expected the SJWs to come for @Baroness_Nichol eventually but I really didn't expect this particular lot to sign the cancellation order. Scary.
• 25 June 2020: Oh god. They look lush. Am craving my annual fix of Angus strawberries.
• 25 June 2020: Amazing! Well deserved, many congrats
• 24 June 2020: I've always wanted to be Rizzo and now it seems I might be.
• 23 June 2020: Thanks!
• 23 June 2020: My brilliant pal @leechalmers, one of the most inspiring, effective, let's-get-this-shit-done women you'll ever meet. She's running a brand new project for women in mid-life, sign up here for email goodness.
• 23 June 2020: I wrote this
• 23 June 2020: New followers - assuming you're here for stuff on sex/gender identity (why else), I encourage you all to also follow @mbmpolicy for patient, careful, and illuminating work on how data on sex is being undermined, right now, in Scotland and UK more widely. Below: the justice system
• 23 June 2020: I'm looking forward to having a chat with @Brompton_Road and @ramblanista this Thursday.
• 23 June 2020: Thank you!
• 23 June 2020: Can't cancel me twice 🥳
• 23 June 2020: Thanks!
• 23 June 2020: Thanks!
• 22 June 2020: Well now I feel absolutely fine about it! 😆
• 22 June 2020: Yes!
• 22 June 2020: Having spent a lot of time reading Hansard lately I think I'd nuance what I say about GRA and sex a bit differently. Half the time the gov representative (Filkin) talks as if sex is literally changed; the other half (usually after stern questioning from Norman Tebbit) he doesn't.
• 22 June 2020: Lol, thanks. There's a few details I'd change - I've learnt a lot since then - but I'm relieved to say the basic jist is the same as what I think now.
• 22 June 2020: I haven't watched this for a very long time. I see I called the EA the "Equalities Act" 😳 Nowadays of course I relentlessly mock anyone who does that.
• 22 June 2020: Co-author of "The Trans Teen Survival Guide" with partner Owl. (Basically: "Chapter 1: Realising you're trans. Chapter 2: Telling your parents. Chapter 3: Ruining TERF careers. Chapter 4: Outfits and make-up")
• 22 June 2020: Lol. Too good. No-one should ever tell you anything then fall out with you, JB. (Note to self).
• 22 June 2020: This was the speech btw - for full disgust experience, better watch it.
• 22 June 2020: Somehow it doesn't surprise me to hear that Fox Fisher has quit their literary agency in disgust over @jk_rowling's tweets.
• 22 June 2020: What do you mean by "gender critical"? This is crucial. Earlier you tweeted that no law should mention 'gender". This would suggest you are "critical" of gender in the sense that you think it politically irrelevant. This is not what "gender-critical" usually means.
• 22 June 2020: This isn't private matter between you and me. It's about your public face. Just state who you are, what yr credentials are, what yr general political values are, and what you'd replace GRA with. And where you stand on Equality Act. Then people can judge whether to support you.
• 22 June 2020: Yes, I'm fine with critical constructive discussion of GRA and EA and their interaction and do so myself. My point is about the extremely minimal content this bloke is presenting, and its compatibility with a range of aims - some of them positively destructive for trans people.
• 22 June 2020: People can do what they want but I'd avoid like plague. Could be person who is anti-discrimination law generally (some tweets suggest this). Could be false flag TRA. Who the hell knows?
• 22 June 2020: This account is accepting donations with no credentials. Has no detail on associate site about what they'd put in place of GRA. From other tweets, seems to want to repeal Equality Act too. Also keeps talking about "gender identity" in law instead of extant "gender reassignment".
• 22 June 2020: This guy is saying that there is no need for laws with "gender" in them. He doesn't want the other legislation either.
• 22 June 2020: (I should add because that was truncated - idea of gender identity as general feature of human life incoherent.This is what trans activism pushes. I think misaligned gender identity is a thing for some people. But it's not what makes you trans or not, or basis for discrimination)
• 22 June 2020: and reason' but you aren't even bothering to back up your campaign to repeal the GRA with arguments on the site.
• 22 June 2020: that doesn't mean trans people have no genuine need for anti-discrimination law. I repeat - who is running this account, why are you accepting donations, and what are your credentials? I don't think you are "apolitical" as your site claims. Your bio talks about 'truth, science/
• 22 June 2020: protection in law because they are especially prone to certain forms of discrimination e.g. in employment, healthcare. Current trans activism wants to protect gender identity - i.e. change law - and that's a mistake for various reasons. Idea of gender identity incoherent. But
• 22 June 2020: You are missing point I think.(Strange that you are running a campaign on the law but apparently don't know it!) Current law (GRA, EA) is not about 'gender identity". It is about gender reassignment. That is different. Look up definitions. To second point - trans people need
• 22 June 2020: In UK we don't have legal protection of gender identity. That's what trans activism is pushing for. We have legal protection of 'gender reassignment' in Equality Act - different. Gorsuch seemed right result but legal system is different.
• 22 June 2020: Gender identity is not currently protected. Gender reassignment is. They are different (or should be). Your second and third sentences suggests to me you may be coming at this from a more generalised position against Equality Act. Yet your site says you are "apolitical"?
• 22 June 2020: This is an exceptionally strange looking campaign. I see your website has barely any content, yet you're seeking donations. Your only stated objective I can see is to repeal the GRA yet you don't recognise that trans people need protection in law. Who's running this account?
• 22 June 2020: On the contrary, there is every need to protect trans people in law. "Gender reassignment" is currently protected in the Equality Act for instance. The wording may be badly drafted, but it needs to be there, or something equivalent.
• 22 June 2020: Not sure!
• 22 June 2020: Steady on
• 22 June 2020: Not that I'd complain but I'm thinking more like Maggie Smith
• 21 June 2020: Oh god the pressure 😅
• 21 June 2020: Finished #MaterialGirls book manuscript today and sent it off to the publisher. My book on sex and gender. Announcement coming soon...
• 20 June 2020: Happy happy birthday @HWistrich from both of us xxx
• 19 June 2020: I always knew we were all kindred spirits ❤️
• 19 June 2020: I've screenshotted. Despite this senior person's frequent identifiable personal verbal attacks on 2 individuals on various public/quasi-public fora, were the targetted individuals to respond in an identifying way, they would instantly be construed as "victimizing" this person.
• 19 June 2020: Bloody McCartney. Happy birthday for yesterday! xx
• 19 June 2020: 390 votes so far... keep them coming.
• 19 June 2020: REF is the government exercise by which research quality is judged in Universities. Panel are responsible for judging each department/ subject area, which feeds into how much money University will then get.
• 19 June 2020: Senior academic, on REF Panel (i.e. is powerful), habitually makes false/ distorted accusations about 2 specific academics on FB to hundreds of mutuals, without evidence; magnanimously deletes because accused then "deny it"; but doesn't apologise or leave up permanent retraction
• 19 June 2020: "The documents also revealed that within 30 seconds of encountering Sheku, three officers discharged their irritant spray into his face, and batons were used, even though Sheku had not been violent towards them."
• 18 June 2020: Lol!
• 18 June 2020: .@LisaMarchiano is one of wisest most compassionate voices on here (check out @ThisJungianLife to hear her and two other brilliant humans dissect psychological challenges for our time). She is a therapist for detransitioners among others, and she knows what she is talking about.
• 18 June 2020: Thank YOU
• 18 June 2020: yes! Drat that l'esprit d'escalier. I believe in essences only in the limited sense that they potentially work for some concepts, not for people or things.
• 18 June 2020: I second this. Make no mistake @Transgendertrd is forerunner of the movement we see today. @cwknews has been out there taking unbelievable crap for saying sensible, compassionate, balanced, evidence-based things - for years. For free. Please check out site. And donate if you can.
• 18 June 2020: I'll forgive you, though had I turned out to be Slytherin on Wizarding World, things could have been very different.
• 18 June 2020: Me too
• 18 June 2020: Won't someone think of THE LITERATURE?
• 18 June 2020: No idea what this means but I feel my point is made
• 18 June 2020: I got sorted into Ravenclaw in the official @wizardingworld Sorting Ceremony. #HousePride HA
• 18 June 2020: I thought it was v funny til I found out that Make More Noise think I'm a Hufflepuff too and now I don't know what to think
• 18 June 2020: This is great article by @JayneEEgerton on why no feminist should be celebrating Orban's war on "gender ideology" - they do not mean what you think they mean. Trans rights are genuinely under attack in Hungary too, despicably.
• 18 June 2020: That's weird cos I thought all the people who wrote like this were Hufflepuff (H/t @Woman4W)
• 18 June 2020: The Keepers isn't radfem but I don't think you'll see much that's more feminist (or shocking, or inspiring).
• 18 June 2020: Thanks Debra
• 18 June 2020: Thank you!
• 18 June 2020: Thanks Debbie
• 18 June 2020: Cognitive dissonance. Also inability to join up their own dots. Also evidence that they don't even believe half the nonsense they spout themselves.
• 18 June 2020: Not that I know of, but there is a strong chance that Professor Alex Sharpe will argue that the victims must have really "desired" it really, even where there was a criminal conviction e.g.
• 18 June 2020: Thanks, that's fantastic. I didn't know it had a name.
• 18 June 2020: It's also on the agenda in the Stonewall 2015 "Vision for Change" document which kicked off new agenda fo politicians, resulted in Trans Inquiry, Theresa May's LBGT Action plan, GRA reform plans etc. .
• 18 June 2020: Now updated to add a further sentence about Rachel McKinnon, because why not.
• 18 June 2020: Wrote an irritated blog post about academic philosophers' selective admission that biological sex materially exists (in which I also defend myself from the latest scurrilous claim by Robin Dembroff, not that those convinced by them will read it)
• 17 June 2020: I agree the comparison is overblown and doesn't help
• 17 June 2020: Helen- one thing - Katharine Jenkins isn't a trans woman
• 17 June 2020: Thanks
• 17 June 2020: Je suis vraiment ravi de voir ce lettre dans Le Figaro! Est-ce qu'il y a ceux parmi les auteurs qui me suivent? Si oui, je vous invite de vous reveler et je vais vous suivre moi aussi.
• 17 June 2020: Woohoo!
• 17 June 2020: arrangements, access to quotas, mentoring, and shortlists. Here is just one easily found example of cheating. Generally the whole "calm down dear" thing is galling and lazy
• 17 June 2020: is of access to woman-only resources rather than spaces: but it seems crazy to deny human nature generally includes the capacity to use new opportunities to cheat. Woman-only resources around world include sporting scholarships, prizes, lower insurance premiums, different pension
• 17 June 2020: criminal law know that there are many reasons generally why males might take advantage of increased contact with females in places where they undress, sleep, or might have their guard down. The criminal cases of Karen White and Katie Dolatowski confirm this. Finkelstein's example
• 17 June 2020: It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this." Those who work in/
• 17 June 2020: claim that the chances of someone pretending to be a woman for nefarious purposes are "effectively zero" - it's just lazy not to look for countervailing evidence. At the 2015 Trans Enquiry, for instance, this submission from British Association of Gender Identity Specialists:/
• 17 June 2020: introduced the original distinction (e.g. Ann Oakley) meant. They meant a difference between a) femaleness/womanhood and b) social stereotypes of femaleness/womanhood. You don't get from that to "trans women are women" without a lot of extra shimmying. Second, on Finkelstein's/
• 17 June 2020: taken up by activist groups such as Gendered Intelligence. A second sort of activist will say (in certain moods) that OF COURSE there is a difference between sex and gender but will also say that womanhood is defined in terms of gender. This is not what the 70s feminists who/
• 17 June 2020: It really isn't hard- an entire poststructuralist tradition, most obviously connected with Judith Butler, dominates some parts of humanities. Butler claims precisely that there is no difference between sex and gender, both are culturally constructed and immaterial. This approach/
• 17 June 2020: Have followed @Dannythefink for while and often get a lot from his takes, but this is not best of them. The very least he could do is look into countervailing evidence. First, on claim it's 'hard to find anyone who thinks there isn't a distinction between sex and gender"/
• 17 June 2020: I'm not bothered about lack of attribution - after all, the idea that sex is relevant to sexual orientation and gender nonconformity is what most people have taken for granted for centuries - but I am fairly outraged that the very same people call me transphobic for saying same.
• 16 June 2020: (Apologies to US readers for generalisation, obviously that's an overstatement made in anger - just borne of endless misrepresentation from US academics and journalists, and total indifference to my repeated attempts to explain differences)
• 16 June 2020: I think it's partly kneejerk positioning for performance-related reasons, and partly Americans having absolutely no capacity to understand any political situation but their own. So see everything through that lens regardless of detailed differences in laws, policies, environment.
• 16 June 2020: Yes I really must stop expecting better. I know this. I have this crazy residual hope that people trained in the art of reason will take arguments on their own merits, and I'm constantly disappointed.
• 16 June 2020: I've no idea. Laugh I guess. Else I'd cry!
• 16 June 2020: Feels like I am going mad sometimes. I guess context really is everything.
• 16 June 2020: And now Dembroff is repeating arguments I used. And being celebrated for it by Justin Weinberg on the Daily Nous website, naturally - who has done nothing but disparage my work. I dunno what to call this... "Radical in the classroom, realist in the courtroom"? Gaslighting?
• 16 June 2020: Even more fantastically, in that paper I was partly taking issue with Robin Dembroff's prior arguments about sexual orientation. Dembroff (sometimes) argues we should take reference to "same-sex" or "opposite-sex" out of sexual orientations. I disagreed.
• 16 June 2020: When I tried to give those very arguments at the @Aristotweets there was a no platforming campaign against me, shared on social media by many of the very same people who signed the amicus brief
• 16 June 2020: Am struggling to process fact several philosophers with history of calling me "transphobic" in print have repeated published arguments of mine, in amicus brief to supreme court, defending claim that sexual orientation & gender nonconformity make ineliminable reference to sex.
• 16 June 2020: Thanks Owen. Appreciated
• 16 June 2020: Nor fot me
• 16 June 2020: Nope. I think you're in the elite tradition though. And I disagree with your stance on prison abolitionism (also Davis's) These are separate things but can see why you would try to run them together. BTW why aren't you engaging with any of the black women arguing with you?
• 16 June 2020: Do you mean "disagreeing with them"? So dramatic. I'll let you into a secret.. women can disagree with other people without it being a personal slight. Pass it on.
• 16 June 2020: For someone who wants a civil conversation you seem oddly angry. I wasn't saying she came up with the idea. I was saying that she endorses the idea. Do you see the difference? Whereas I do not endorse the idea. This is called a disagreement. I disagree with Lewis. And Davis.
• 16 June 2020: See my last one 😃
• 16 June 2020: Is consistently bemusing to me how feminist academic tradition (which I'm mostly gleeful outsider to - thank Christ) is constantly deferring to parts of past literature/ criticising others for failing to do similar, whilst mocking other bits. Why not just discuss the damn ideas?
• 16 June 2020: Can't work it out for sure, but do I deduce from your cunning use of quotation marks that this is supposed to be a criticism? Can't really parse your last tweet but I live with a woman and two kids myself. I see some middle ground between "nuclear family brilliant" & "abolish it"
• 16 June 2020: Delighted for you
• 16 June 2020: Mine's an Elan actually. This is basically me
• 16 June 2020: Much exclamation marks
• 16 June 2020: Woman's a stone-cold genius. I can see why the NYT commissioned her. Much finesse, much subtlety.
• 16 June 2020: Yes I lolled.. "I wrote my thesis in the antiwork tradition". Didn't we all, darling, didn't we all.
• 16 June 2020: She's right, feminists have argued for abolition of the family before - Shulamith Firestone for one. They have also argued against the abolition of the family - bell hooks for one. So I guess appealing to feminists isn't going to solve this one. Might have to use the old brainbox
• 16 June 2020: I don't understand the nuances of the US system and it's hard to find any explainer on it which isn't saturated with propaganda either for or against. But if this is right by Maya then it seems like a v good thing.
• 16 June 2020: @rageclit @VICE I'll live with myself.
• 16 June 2020: From what I understand of it, it seems like a great thing.
• 16 June 2020: It's Ok, he didn't know I meant Pink News and that's fair enough!
• 16 June 2020: No. This is about Pink News.
• 16 June 2020: No need, I already have one obviously
• 16 June 2020: In similar vein, can I take this opportunity to suggest two hashtags which I for one will be using copiously from now on #NoViewsForPenisNews and #DontClickOnPrickNews
• 16 June 2020: As a foremost evil British TERF (etc etc) I no longer click on or share pieces about why evil British TERFS are evil (clue: answer is always cos they are evil. And British). I've realised most of the money they generate is generated by evil British TERFS outrage-clicking.
• 16 June 2020: Very good
• 16 June 2020: Lol!
• 16 June 2020: I hope they had a mop
• 16 June 2020: Spot on. Also to add: academics are amongst most exploited.
• 16 June 2020: And no I am not here for your amniotic becomings, not without handwipes anyway
• 16 June 2020: Message for young feminists from this fed up University prof - avoid this crap in Unis like plague. Do: apply to programs dealing with evidence/ data/ actions. Avoid: academics sitting around smugly saying "this is a bit like that, is a bit like this, is a..(continues forever.)"
• 16 June 2020: Thank you
• 16 June 2020: Think I'll just retweet this once a week until the next generation of young women rises up, gets angry, and boots the current ideological monstrosity masquerading as feminism out the park
• 16 June 2020: THINK NOT THING.
• 16 June 2020: I wonder whether she talks about bell hooks' critique of 70s white feminists that wanted to abolish the family - how for those who experience racism habitually in workplace/ outside the home, the family is a source of safety, warmth and pride.
• 16 June 2020: Always glad to provide a teaching moment
• 16 June 2020: Whereas our lass Sophie has has it rough obvs - 2 degrees from Oxford and one from the New School in New York. The hypocricy and self-invention as a prole is staggering
• 16 June 2020: I like how, in response to my last tweet, I'm getting DMs asking me what "hydrofeminism" is, but not what "eugenic feminism" is. This is where we are now. "Eugenic feminism? Ah yes, must be us she's talking about - the ones who thing women and girls are an actual thing."
• 16 June 2020: I'm sure S. Lewis thinks that in a meaningful way, we are all inventions. Isn't everything? (soooo deeeepp). But no, she's real. Very real and there are hundreds like her taking up the airwaves with their pseudo-radical, shallow blethering.
• 16 June 2020: No idea but I'm tempted to say - how a disproportionate number of women and girls in the Global South have to walk for miles to get water for their families? - but surely that can't be right. Too TERFy. Must be about how smart water embodies big non-binary energy.
• 16 June 2020: generation of smart as a whip female feminist authors skewer this stuff in campus satire and show it up for the parodic shell of meaning it really is.
• 16 June 2020: I mean, come the fuck ON. "Her work focuses on eugenic, bioconservative and imperial feminism, queer and trans social reproduction, Black feminist family abolitionism, hydrofeminism, postgenomics, and Marxist-feminist accounts of care". I personally cannot wait til the next/
• 16 June 2020: There's a certain kind of white middle class radical these days that can take full advantage of what "imperialist" institutions have to offer (like Oxford - for 2 degrees) before moving on to write for capitalist publications about how shit whiteness/capitalism/ imperialism are.
• 16 June 2020: Women and girls deserve so much more from feminism than this flashy, attention-seeking crap. It all sounds so radical on the surface but it's so superficial & reactionary. It leaves all the old structures in place (like males not going to prison for harming women with "biococks")
• 16 June 2020: Tell me why I should take seriously latest @VICE explainer for US market on "British TERFS" when it quotes Sophie Lewis as authority - she who wants to abolish the family, says there two kind of penises ("biocock" and dildos), and wants to abolish the police and prisons?
• 15 June 2020: Longer link here to @GMB discussion this morning, with India Willoughby, Nicole Gibson, and me.
• 14 June 2020: Looks like I'll be skyping into @GMB tomorrow to discuss the backlash to @jk_rowling's essay with Susanna and Piers and other guests. Should be on at 7.45 approx.
• 14 June 2020: Yes, I agree - took the memory of Death Wish away thank God. But Fonda is the highlight for me, with Robards coming a close second
• 14 June 2020: Luckily we still have boiling water
• 14 June 2020: Ha
• 14 June 2020: I've been doing it with my kids as part of History classes. I am not sure it's helping our lockdown mood.
• 14 June 2020: (Especially the first 8 minutes - injoke)
• 14 June 2020: Once Upon A Time In The West. Pretty much know it verbatim.
• 14 June 2020: Ta
• 14 June 2020: @teaforpterosaur do you make/sell masks or did I imagine that? Can you post a link if so? x
• 14 June 2020: Yes exactly. This is what a moral panic looks like (from Stonewall's published guidance to Universities)
• 14 June 2020: This is #RadicalGirlsss, official account of the Young Women Movement of the European Network of Migrant Women @ENoMW - give them a follow, they rock.
• 14 June 2020: Been wondering if new Stonewall Chief Exec would take opportunity to draw a line, seek rational dialogue with many gay and trans people who disagree with Stonewall stance, look for creative ways to bypass culture war standoff, and just.. .. Oh.
• 14 June 2020: Lowrey, sorry
• 14 June 2020: Great read from academic Kathleen Lowery, cancelled from role at @UAlberta because of gender wrongthink. I appreciated the honesty: "I’m 49 years old. As already noted, my 39-year-old self would almost certainly have been part of the campaign to get me fired."
• 14 June 2020: (Holly is in Australia; second correspondent is in the US)
• 14 June 2020: Meanwhile another correspondent wrote this, which I think sums current situation for many lesbians on lesbian dating sites well
• 14 June 2020: My friend (philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith) just got banned from lesbian dating app @hinge for answering "what is your most controversial opinion?" as ""i agree with jk rowling, it's not "people" who menstruate or experience period poverty, it's women. #homosagainstpomo"
• 14 June 2020: Yes I hope so too. The relation between Stonewall and the judiciary also needs to be carefully scrutinised
• 14 June 2020: So this is interesting.. Stonewall aren't updating their (v flashy, prestigious list) of Diversity Champions as some withdraw? How many of these are still in the scheme?
• 14 June 2020: This is a scandal, since it leaves same-sex attracted minors & those with ASD (both documented as disproportionately represented in gender clinics) without a professional service which they would normally have. Hamstrings professionals who want to sensitively explore background.
• 14 June 2020: Stonewall-sponsored "Memorandum of Understanding" signed by many professional medical bodies including RCGP, outlawing "conversion therapy" of gender identity, and so leaving only "affirmation" as professional option.
• 14 June 2020: c) Will new attention to "conversion therapy" focus only on outlawing gay conversion therapy (✅) or will it also cover what is now misleadingly ALSO called "conversion therapy", and which involves the therapeutic questioning of people with gender identity issues? See this/
• 14 June 2020: for instance, is transcript of a Mermaids training session )
• 14 June 2020: How is this widespread misunderstanding going to be corrected? Equally, who will monitor misinformation in "training sessions" given by Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids & other bodies to many organisations? Info given is not fact-based or fit for purpose. (This/
• 14 June 2020: b) At the moment, Stonewall "Diversity Champions" include Labour Party, EHRC, CPS, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Guardian, most Universities, police forces, gov depts, local authorities (check out link, it's mad). These are being wrongly advised by Stonewall
• 14 June 2020: V pleased government has decided to drop self ID and bolster the provision of women-only spaces and resources. Few questions: a) will they promote, alongside M and F, unisex ("gender neutral") bathrooms/ changing rooms for sex-non-conforming people who want to use? V important
• 14 June 2020: RT @transwidows: Well done to all #transwidows who have spoken out. 💐 https://t.co/HNQca2QwDZ
• 14 June 2020: 💯 In particular, Labour/Guardian people still completely in dark or misinformed about what's at stake in gender wars, who are affected parties, and why. Stonewall and other LGBT orgs are propaganda machines. They don't care about facts. Proper journalism on left is needed now.
• 13 June 2020: If you liked that, you might like this...
• 13 June 2020: Judith Butler in the UN. Concept use seen as "exclusionary", and as "erasing identity"- rather than as neutrally describing two naturally different groups (trans women, women), for explanatory purposes over range of domains. Tell me again that (bad) philosophy has no impact?
• 13 June 2020: It's a lot! Thank you so much
• 13 June 2020: Yes the whole series is absolutely brilliant and was a massive boost to the public conversation, with eternal gratitude to you @HJoyceGender for commissioning it
• 13 June 2020: One more thing if you'd rather listen than read: me on @BBCWomansHour having an argument with Gender Studies prof Sally Hines about sex and gender
• 13 June 2020: The Subtle Wife
• 13 June 2020: Thanks, that's fab. Discussion is always good.
• 13 June 2020: (And if you're wondering why I don't write for left-wing publications, the basic answer is that, strangely, they don't commission me or acknowledge my pitches.)
• 13 June 2020: More stuff here and at my website linked in profile
• 13 June 2020:
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• 13 June 2020: I've had 500 new followers since my BBC5 interview a couple of days ago (hello). If that's you, and you want to read some things by me on sex, gender, and academic freedom that are longer than 280 characters, here are some links:
• 13 June 2020: Channel 4 FactCheck: Rowling right that hormones or surgery not required for legal gender change via @Channel4News
• 12 June 2020: Haha (and phew, and ditto) x
• 12 June 2020: Yet another stunning sub-editing decision. Yes, "trans equality" is exactly what all the nasty old ladies don't want.
• 12 June 2020: Was just a manner of speaking, no offence intended, sorry. I meant - the list doesn't just repeat mindless trans activist mantras as many do on here. Certainly no GC supplicants on the list (whatever that means!). And polite disagreement no problem at all with me.
• 12 June 2020: thank you!
• 12 June 2020: Main thing was you wrote. There are no shoulds after that. Well done! It's hard to raise stuff like that.
• 12 June 2020: This is powerful. "When we try to enter the world of publishing, a lot of us already have so much on our shoulders. Black writers know that every word we write, every story we tell, will be taken up as speaking for every single black person that ever lived."
• 12 June 2020: It's not serious. But is treated like some kind of revelation by salivating fellow philosophers.
• 12 June 2020: I've been at conference with author a year ago where all same points were made and then rebuffed by others. The programme is not updating. Whole approach to complex issue apparently based on conviction others must be idiots, personal anecdotes, and light dusting of made-up facts.
• 12 June 2020: Ah there you are!
• 12 June 2020: Excellent. I think I used to follow her, glad to do so again
• 12 June 2020: Evidence-free zone
• 12 June 2020: I did not know that. Am sure that, within the terms set by the game of philosophy, it is "great". Thing is, no-one else in the world will give a fuck.
• 12 June 2020: (And now this thread has been RTed by Martina Navratilova, but by all means, philosophers, carry on talking only to each other, who cares about what the wider world thinks eh? Am sure you know best 🤨)
• 12 June 2020: I'm not into abject apologies on behalf of my tribe but in this case I'll make an exception - I'm really really sorry about the idiocy and arrogance of some philosophers on here.
• 12 June 2020: Academic philosophers on Twitter wading into the gender wars, on the basis of a feeling in your water, plus the arrogant assumption that you are the cleverest, and all other academic disciplines are a bit infra dig. UP YOUR FACTS GAME, you look like total fools.
• 12 June 2020: Thanks to @AudreySuffolk for reminding me
• 12 June 2020: OH YES and - on that trans toolkit that SGC says is so wonderful - the Allsorts one that was the model for lots of councils and is now being withdrawn all over the place because of legal errors? THIS is what due diligence looks like, by @helensaxby11
• 12 June 2020: Oh god yes. I forgot the bit about the toolkit. AARGH
• 12 June 2020: rather than harm reduction? Further q- why does SG Chappell never engage with multiple times I/ others have raised these points, but return constantly to the same strawpeople, and why do philosophers continue to ostentatiously applaud such terrible reasoning? It's a mystery.
• 12 June 2020: f) Insinuating that women are sometimes attacked in woman-only spaces anyway so we should let any male with the right feelings into those spaces, is like saying women sometimes get pregnant anyway so we shouldn't bother with condoms. Why pretend the aim was total eradication/
• 12 June 2020: e) No-one is treating TW as "uniquely culpable" for violence against women. They're treating males as responsible for lions share of violence against women and trying to put in place measures to protect women in situations where they undress & sleep. What part of that is unclear?
• 12 June 2020: d) Of course people "don't ask for papers" when they go into these spaces. The spaces operate by virtue of institutional policies, which give rise to social norms about who goes where. If you change policies in the way Stonewall wants, you sooner or later change the norms.
• 12 June 2020: And women in that space will not be able to challenge you according to the terms of the policy. c) Simply repeating that you/your mates aren't threats to women is lovely, but if you seriously expect national policy on woman-only spaces to be based on you/ your mates, you're mad
• 12 June 2020: one of those we would have perpetrator's details. But in any case, point about policies in favour of inner feelings of gender identity (see above) is that you don't need to do any dressing up at all, as woman or toilet attendant. You can walk in as a masculine-presenting bloke.
• 12 June 2020: b) Re point about "male sexual predators could disguise themselves as toilet attendants"(oh Christ why do I have to do this stuff, why me, oh god)-the obvious thing to say there is - so that's potentially TWO ways women could get attacked, then? Lucky us. And at least in/
• 12 June 2020: Patronising the hell out of JKR for supposedly misunderstanding things, when she has clearly read more Equality law than you have, and understands that activists are simultaneously lobbying for change of EA and GRA, is not a particularly endearing trait.
• 12 June 2020: Equality law. Women also have right to question [absence of] laws not in their interests). Below is tendentious Stonewall guidance on EA, adopted by many national orgs in policies about facilities, saying it should be inner "gender identity" not sex that is criterion of entry
• 12 June 2020: exemptions for genuinely single-sex changing rooms, dormitories, prisons, bathrooms. That is the controversial question (though in any case, where question is about rectitude of a law, saying "it's a law!/ it's not a law!" is hardly relevant. Stonewall is trying to change/
• 12 June 2020: V briefly because I've said it a hundred times before, and the fans wildly celebrating it don't read me anyway: a) re. it not being offence for man to be in Ladies: this is red herring; salient question is whether i) Equality Act already does ii) whether EA should permit
• 12 June 2020: I've heard these thoughts before from philosophy prof SG Chappell and they don't get better. It's bizarre (sociologically) how closed world of academic philosophy trundles along, in isolation from relevant facts, applauding same old hackneyed stuff because it came from TW.
• 12 June 2020: Yes, it's a lamentable slip given that "gender" is defined so vaguely
• 12 June 2020: Thanks, followed
• 12 June 2020: Haven't seen it. I don't particularly get on with SG Chappell since she started vilifying me to mutuals on Facebook, so these days I mostly steer clear.
• 12 June 2020: Thanks, have followed x
• 12 June 2020: Excellent thanks
• 12 June 2020: Two more: @NewgentTGA @_mars_F
• 12 June 2020: (who am I missing? - please add..)
• 12 June 2020: If you're looking for trans people with questions about trans activist orthodoxy & minds of own, these v good follows: @FionneOrlander @Rose_Of_Dawn @Brompton_Road @Jenny_Randles @tranwithnoname @ramblanista @KJ_Harrison @DebbieHayton @iamtranssexual @katoi (loads of others too)
• 12 June 2020: My timeline is full of a) trans people happily discussing their biology; b) non-trans people furiously saying we shouldn't discuss anyone's biology in case it upsets trans people.
• 12 June 2020: As churches go, it's up there in the bonkers stakes with scientology.
• 12 June 2020: Fantastic to see female-centred academic work, proudly and unapologetically done in a University setting. Sadly this is increasingly rare. Let's try to change that. (And read @annalouiseadams dissertation!).
• 12 June 2020: Women can't have minds or relevant experiences of their own, apparently. Little ladies in a constant state of dazed cognitive dissonance just to prop up their own prejudices, god bless em.
• 12 June 2020: Only to keep saying yes to scary things, and after you do the scary things you said yes to, ignore the inner critic who tells you that you did it wrong. After a while, the scariness lessens and the inner critics fucks off.
• 12 June 2020: The sad truth is, they probably didn't even notice
• 12 June 2020: No idea whether this thread is right or not, but given the state of the argumentative moves of some big name leftie men at the moment, it definitely seems worth an RT
• 12 June 2020: So sorry to hear this
• 12 June 2020: Oh alright then
• 12 June 2020: Yes, absolutely
• 12 June 2020: I'd give anything to persuade younger women on here that you're allowed to have your own things. Just yours. Nobody else's. All for you. The constant displacing of self-interest is pathological. Nobody's doing it in return. It won't come back to you four-fold.
• 12 June 2020: "She made her bed" would have been a lot less words.
• 12 June 2020: I think he read it. I've stopped underestimating the callousness of the performative left when it comes to women. Plus there's the phenomenon of moral self-licensing - the more good you think you've done in the morning, the less moral you'll be in the afternoon. But what a prick.
• 11 June 2020: Meta-meta
• 11 June 2020: Just did a bit on @jk_rowling blog for @BBCWales - from about 17.55 onwards I think
• 11 June 2020: Fantastic stuff
• 11 June 2020: (this is going to be grist to the mill for the guy that runs my parody account )
• 11 June 2020: Oh. Well obviously I knew that.
• 11 June 2020: Good feeling isn't it
• 11 June 2020: I've just RTed one
• 11 June 2020: Thanks!
• 11 June 2020: The chem trails will get you in the end
• 11 June 2020: God Louisa, how horrible
• 11 June 2020: Fucksake Bindel, this is how rumours start 😡
• 11 June 2020: Yes, me too
• 11 June 2020: Here's the link to the live @bbc5live show, you can go back to my discussion of the @jk_rowling blogpost at around 7.23. I'll put up a better link later if I can find one.
• 11 June 2020: I'm on @bbc5live in a minute talking about @jk_rowling's blogpost
• 10 June 2020: I would gladly boycott them but I haven't felt the need for a bottle of white musk since 1988
• 10 June 2020: Don't forget the stuff about female skeletons being invented in the 17th Century; and how 1.7% of the population area actually intersex. Please for the love of God keep going.
• 10 June 2020: Bring it on, trans activist academic twitter. Show the world your frankly astonishing repertoire. Some saying not to read the nasty lady's words. Others saying biological sex was invented by colonial invaders, before that people just banged into one another randomly & got lucky.
• 10 June 2020: Details details Lisa!
• 10 June 2020: Oh ye gods I hadn't seen that. Thanks x
• 10 June 2020: Cannae wait!
• 10 June 2020: Because they can't make their synapses join up?
• 10 June 2020: Anyway if everybody thinks it, you brave philosophers presumably won't mind saying it, loud and clear, on your twitter feeds, no?
• 10 June 2020: Meanwhile on planet Earth
• 10 June 2020: I'm delighted to hear that the latest missive from the cutting-edge world of progressive academic philosophy is that (paraphrase) "nobody is denying sex exists or matters politically"; and that this is being received as a sophisticated riposte to JKR. Lol JKR, you hopeless noob.
• 10 June 2020: He's read it, he just thinks his feelings about it are facts.
• 10 June 2020: Brilliant woman
• 9 June 2020: To paraphrase Wittgenstein, language has not only gone on holiday, it's got a pair of fetching bermuda shorts on and is hitting the minibar.
• 9 June 2020: Brilliant thread, you wise wise woman
• 9 June 2020: Anyway point is I wasn't arguing with Emma.
• 9 June 2020: I bet you don't apply those standards in real life. For one, you don't even apply them in this tweet.
• 9 June 2020: It can be both, can't it? The people who compelled Radcliffe (if she is right) are doing it out of the motive of being helpful, not being truthful. The compelling has to start somewhere.
• 9 June 2020: 😂
• 9 June 2020: Aha. I don't mean to be rude but that slug is a bit penis coloured.
• 9 June 2020: (Also its my turn to apologise for use of the term "stiff")
• 9 June 2020: And nor should you. But anyway, now I see his mistake. Cotton thread was never going to work.
• 9 June 2020: It's a stiff competition but I think the thing I understand least about this story is "slugs in a little cotton harness".
• 9 June 2020: How difficult is it to say "no, I disagree"?? God almighty this preposterous cowardly shiftless self-serving git.
• 9 June 2020: Don't be sorry
• 9 June 2020: And not neccessarily good values.. I was thinking about this today, listening to yr podcast Lisa. You were discussing "the incel community". It's not that I think there isn't a community or they don't share values, but was striking how usual folksy warm glow of word was lacking
• 9 June 2020: Genius
• 9 June 2020: I think you are in agreement with the person you're replying to?
• 9 June 2020: Yes very!
• 9 June 2020: Not just men though. Helps trans people generally (or so they believe).
• 9 June 2020: This also makes it absolutely obvious why many non-trans people say "trans women are women" so enthusiastically. Not because they think it's true (if they thought it was true, they'd give reasons, and also be more relaxed about disagreement). But because they think it helps.
• 8 June 2020: "We need the stats". Yowsers.
• 8 June 2020: This is a good (bad) example: increase is in flagging not in prosecutions or conviction, and flagging explicitly defined as "subjective" and not enough for prosecution. Doesn't stop Stonewall saying figures show "transphobia is everywhere".
• 8 June 2020: Also, there's just the sheer amount of propaganda thrown at trans people by organisations that pretend to speak in their interests. Self-selecting questionnaires presented as relevant to whole populations; misrepresentation of data. I don't blame people for feeling scared.
• 8 June 2020: The really weird thing is that I'm not yet blocked..
• 8 June 2020: I don't mind AGP men posting pictures of themselves on Facebook and Insta in sexualised outfits, I just wish they didn't present themselves as brave heroines advancing the cause of women's rights when they do it.
• 8 June 2020: RT @ClareCAIS: And blocked by another professor of gender studies, for asking that intersex people are not used as ‘gotchas’ in debates abo…
• 8 June 2020: No of course they don't, their hair might fall out.
• 8 June 2020: If you're worried about effects of trans activism on medicine, and how some trans-identifying kids are conceptualised as "innately" trans then put on medical pathways that will alter them for life, this is great group of international experts to donate to
• 8 June 2020: Misleading title, good piece. "Property speculation, asset stripping, tax avoidance, share buy-backs, taxpayer-subsidised low wage business models — there are many ways in which the rich can financially engineer and lobby their way to further riches without creating value"
• 7 June 2020: Nobody is saying that's the suggestion. It's the construction of the mass gatherings as "selfish" etc, ignoring why people were there.
• 7 June 2020: How is that relevant?
• 7 June 2020: How about: "yes, I'm of the female sex, that's what makes me trans. When it comes to public health messaging of relevance to 51% of the population, I understand why clear communication is important, and I'm not self-involved enough to take general statements as a personal slight"
• 7 June 2020: Yeah people just wandered about bumping into each other in the night, then half of them somehow got pregnant, had to stay at home, do the childcare and cooking, tend the hearth, stay sexually available, stay out of public debate, and generally prostrate themselves. But no women
• 7 June 2020: Erin, I've now read the literature. Nearly all of the literature. It's exactly that.. literature. Not sacred texts left on a mountain by the gender gods. Ideas by people, some of them good, some of them terrible. And I didn't become an academic to go to church...
• 7 June 2020: Solutions are difficult, I agree, but in an environment where so many seem so blind to the problems, I'm more than OK with someone with a lot of reach pointing them out unambiguously (and then facing the reputation-trashing that inevitably follows).
• 7 June 2020: "Lifestyle choices" is a pretty misleading term for people with few other economic options.
• 7 June 2020: (Bit is from draft of my forthcoming book)
• 7 June 2020: Yet all we hear about the cause, all day long, is "transphobia", specified so vaguely that it includes tragic brutal murders of trans women in the Brazilian sex trade, and J.K. Rowling objecting to language which erases mention of the word "woman" when talking about menstruation.
• 7 June 2020: Figures on trans murder are constantly misrepresented for political ends by trans activist organisations btw. If people were really interested in helping victims, they'd try harder to work out complex causal background, not use them as gotchas in twitter game. Here's bit on it:
• 7 June 2020: It's so odd, this sort of response. Every time someone prominent (this time @jk_rowling) specifies that biology matters politically, an apparent non sequitur follows - the tragic murders of trans people. Implication: if you talk about biological sex, trans people get murdered?
• 7 June 2020: She's not belittling them, that's projection on your part. She's very careful and respectful. She just disagrees, not the same. You obviously feel highly defensive on behalf of others but projecting your protective feelings like this doesn't help an already toxic situation
• 7 June 2020: Says it all really 😃
• 6 June 2020: Interesting that is seen as remotely relevant!
• 6 June 2020: RT @bariweiss: The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging in…
• 6 June 2020:
• 6 June 2020: That's great. Good luck to him.
• 6 June 2020: No it's about @byrne_a and article written by Robin Dembroff the journal published, which crossed many (former) lines. Holly Lawford-Smith summarised the insults here
• 3 June 2020: And here's Gillian Anderson reading it too
• 3 June 2020: Here's Tom Hardy reading her beautiful "The Problem with Problems"
• 3 June 2020: Rachel Rooney is outstanding children's author, with particular interest in fellow ASDers. She expresses her concerns about medically transitioning ASD children responsibly. What a messed-up world it is where other authors persecute her for this rather than congratulate her.
• 3 June 2020: "Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, was asked to resign from her role.. All Professor Lowrey has been told is that she is somehow making the learning environment “unsafe” .. because she is a feminist who holds “gender critical” views." Christ.
• 2 June 2020: Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with Sam.
• 2 June 2020: If it's vitamin D, people affected need to know about that pronto.
• 2 June 2020: Lol. Is that a victim narrative for white feminism I see emerging or what?
• 2 June 2020: 😂
• 2 June 2020: Of course! Completely different. Four legs good two legs bad. Etc.
• 2 June 2020: Casting will be morally impeccable, natch
• 2 June 2020: Will tell of profs sitting in meetings talking about "vaginal privilege" before daily chore of signing open letters in praise of non-platforming before lunch. Then after lunch, an open letter in praise of academic freedom to support a friend. But no sex. With anybody.
• 2 June 2020: Yes I've read it. I'm thinking of writing a 2020 version called "The Gender Studies Non-binary Person".
• 2 June 2020: .@selina_todd it seems that some of the academics who signed an open letter arguing for your no-platforming at Kent are now big fans of academic freedom...
• 2 June 2020: That campus novel really does write itself 😂
• 2 June 2020: Also delighted that the Department to which the author of this belongs, is now keen to protect that author from "attacks against personal and scholarly integrity" and declares itself "against bullying in any form"
• 2 June 2020: Obscure academic subtweet: am delighted to find that the very people who wrote these things about a gay colleague on social media have newfound appreciation of free speech and are now against "orchestrated smear campaigns" 👏👏👏
• 31 May 2020: Was a joke
• 31 May 2020: Toddlers learn to do better when they fall over but I'm not sure I'd call it science
• 31 May 2020: Lol. Other philosophers are available.. Get that @janeclarejones to do it, she's better at swearing than me anyway.
• 31 May 2020: Lol, not sure mine can either tbh
• 31 May 2020: Something not joining up, I agree
• 31 May 2020: If he can support universal gender identity I guess he can support pretty much anything...
• 31 May 2020: Kant thought that heterosexual sexual desire was a degradation so god knows what he thought about gay sex. He also thought rationality was the fundamental source of personhood not gender identity. Very curious to see how this interpretation is supposed to work..
• 31 May 2020: retrofits being "cis" and even being "cissist" to an 18th Century German.
• 31 May 2020: I think it goes: you start with Foucault and historical specificity of cultural categories. Then Butler who says sex and gender both socially constructed all the way down, and utterly contingent. Then about thirty yrs later analytic philosophy thinks, oh that sounds cool, and
• 30 May 2020: I've read On Bullshit, yes, a long time ago. Maybe I should revisit
• 30 May 2020: Saluting back
• 30 May 2020: That's lovely thank you
• 30 May 2020: Do you think I'm mad
• 30 May 2020: Thanks both. I hope not too, obviously, but as you probably know the whole Uni sector is facing millions of pounds of deficit. It's a volatile time and redundancies are in the offing.
• 30 May 2020: telling to make your point. In short, I recognise it wouldn't have made for such an attention-grabbing article had you acknowledged these things but I think it would have been fairer to the situation on ground, which is mixed. However as I say, you diagnose the problems well.
• 30 May 2020: in the influence of race/gender stuff on thinking, and in using the idiom that tends to go with it, some departments much woker than others and even in those, no uniformity; c) the Tuvel story ignores big pushback from many philosophers who protested, seems a bit like one-sided/
• 30 May 2020: Probably not served by twitter format but: a) agree diversity as end in self is not goal but equal opps is essential, and can legitimately include affirmative action I tend to think: b) the take seems quite North American to me but purports to be general, depts in the UK differ/
• 30 May 2020: Sorry Hannah. That is horrible. I hope you find something soon.
• 30 May 2020: Thanks. I liked that til about half way through then started disagreeing. I think you've diagnosed some big problems with philosophy in the first half well though.
• 29 May 2020: By all means, work email is on my uni page. Thanks.
• 29 May 2020: Oh I see, it's the great seitan vs tempeh culture war now is it.
• 29 May 2020: Aw thanks Louise!
• 29 May 2020: Yes. A bit like this exhibit in Brighton Museum, that had two detached breasts in a jar of formaldehyde, presented as an empowering choice
• 29 May 2020: Very Baudrillard 😎
• 29 May 2020: I have a can of "mock duck" in my cupboard that I bought in 2011. I think that sums up my attitude to your tweet.
• 29 May 2020: "Still"?
• 29 May 2020: Oh god, will someone spare a thought for the Pink News journalist who is just sitting down to a nice vegan barbecue as their phone pings
• 29 May 2020: Touche. You're right. Shrug, better pack it all in then.
• 29 May 2020: She cut and pasted something by mistake. What bit of that process eludes you?
• 29 May 2020: You seem a bit intense. Ever wondered whether you have an unhealthy relationship with celebrity? Clarity could clear that up!
• 29 May 2020: Modern life eh? I genuinely can't tell whether you're a trans woman who wishes you had a uterus to throw in my face, or a trans man who wants to get rid of your uterus and figures you could kill two birds with one stone. Either way I'm sorry you're feeling so crap but am blocking
• 29 May 2020: I know you know. Solidarity.
• 29 May 2020: Yeah I'm afraid I do mainly because there is such a poor evidence base about long term effects, and what people do know looks worrying.
• 29 May 2020: Yeah, and I'm thinking you really could have made your one chance to make a snarky point about me better than this one. Bye.
• 29 May 2020: Just remembered Kate Manne (Cornell). How could I have forgotten? Kate Manne. Author of "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny"!! There aren't laughs hollow enough in the world.
• 29 May 2020: You fight the same battles to the same or worse costs, so I hope you're saying that to the mirror too. xx
• 29 May 2020: Lol
• 29 May 2020: They aren't. At best they make up strawmen, mischaracterise arguments simplistically, then argue with that. At worst they conclude my motives are evil and leave it at that. That's not philosophy as I know it. Don't know what your discipline is so maybe it's different for you.
• 29 May 2020: I know from experience how cognitive dissonance will go on this. Will be positioned as about "butthurt" and victimhood. Yes, my butt is hurt. But that's not point. Point is: when you scapegoat someone, it sends message to others wanting to discuss: Shut up or we'll do same to you
• 29 May 2020: Yes, am aware. I would say the odds of me losing my job are as great as they have ever been. And I won't get another one given my, ahem, new found "difficult reputation". (But it will still have been worth it)
• 29 May 2020: Please, don't do bitchy asides. They only give this lot an excuse to discredit me. This isn't about teaching.
• 29 May 2020: Congrats. You have just used up your one chance to comment directly on my threads.
• 29 May 2020: may have completely scuppered my career chances but I will never regret talking about this, and nor will I cease to think you are hypocritical, weak-minded, and self-serving.
• 29 May 2020: I especially mean Sally Haslanger (MIT), Jennifer Saul (Waterloo), Quill Kukla (Georgetown), Justin Weinberg (South Carolina), Jonathan Ichikawa (UBC), Robin Dembroff (Yale), Mark Lance (Georgetown), Shannon Dea (Waterloo), Ray Briggs (Stanford). But there are lots of others. I/
• 29 May 2020: was your big shot - an actual chance for you to have made a difference, to stop ACTUAL harms, not just "illocutionary" ones - and not only did you shirk it, you positively tried to stop other people like me from tackling it, by outgrouping them. You are contemptible. And by "you"
• 29 May 2020: weak-mindedness, your naivety, your foolish desire to be popular or look "cool" (you're an academic - you really don't), your cognitive dissonance, your narcissism, and above all your failure to do your fucking job, which is to scrutinise ideologies for their incoherence. This/
• 29 May 2020: So I just want to be clear for any academics hate-reading me (please feel free to share in your facebook groups). I'm sure you righteous fools think the moral disapproval is flowing in one direction. But please be in no doubt: I disapprove of you. I disapprove of your/
• 29 May 2020: Yesterday I discovered that Helga Varden (Illinois) has felt forced to distance herself from views like mine in preface to new book for OUP, describing people like me who hold them as "thoughtless" and as "undermining the reality" and "criticizing" "people who are trans". Etc./
• 29 May 2020: (Yale) has forthcoming publication with following actionable claim: "a number of high-profile court briefing opposing trans rights in both the US and the UK cite blog posts by philosophers such as Kathleen Stock..as evidence that trans persons are dangerous and deluded"./
• 29 May 2020: an anon grad published open letter saying they're leaving the profession because of me (It couldn't possibly be because the job market is terrible, could it??), it was shared enthusiastically by senior people & on blogs for the profession. Recently I discovered Robin Dembroff/
• 29 May 2020: amongst the worthies in academic philosophy that I'm a pariah or should be. According to Quill Kukla (Georgetown), I shouldn't be rationally engaged with. According to Sally Haslanger (MIT) my book review (on subject nothing to do with trans) shouldn't have been published. When/
• 29 May 2020: find solace in portentous cliches about "listening to trans lived experience". WHICH trans people? They have minds of own! They differ. There's nothing more transphobic than way you people treat trans people as infantilised pets. Anyway..there's now an established view in US/
• 29 May 2020: or it says sex doesn't exist as we used to think it does. This has HUGE ramifications for policy, on children, on gay people ("gay" and "lesbian' now defined by GLAAD in terms of same-gender-identity-attraction not same-sex attraction), on women's rights... yet you prefer to
• 29 May 2020: And this is only the effects of Gender Identity Theory on children! Gender Identity Theory says your inner "gender identity" is fundamental determinant of rights and dignity, and determines your legal and political status. For EVERYONE. It says talk of sex should be suppressed/
• 29 May 2020: If your looking away from this terrible stuff depends on a fantasy of no-one ever regretting it, don't kid yourself. My feed is full of detransitioners who regret it. Some have had mastectomies or hysterectomies, barely out of teens (not going to invade their privacy by linking).
• 29 May 2020: There's a lot of other evidenced, disturbing stuff on Olson-Kennedy's views here, in course of this attempt by @briejnm to work out what the effects of putting a child on cross-sex hormones might actually be.
• 29 May 2020: Here is Olson-Kennedy saying on camera that if a child who has had a mastectomy regrets the loss later, they can just get breast implants, NBD
• 29 May 2020: This is Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. She refers girls as young as 13 for radical mastectomies because they identify as boys.
• 29 May 2020: I've read the "research". It's appallingly bad. Here's Ehrensaft talking about cross-sex hormones for kids. Does this not raise ANY red flags for you? (The reference to suicide risk is propaganda. Suicide rare and causation always hard to establish)/
• 29 May 2020: An angry thread directed towards North American "progressive" academic philosophers. This influential psychologist, Diane Ehrensaft, works with children. She thinks gender identity is expressed pre-verbally. There's no good evidence for this - and yes/
• 28 May 2020: It wasn't me, I was quoting...
• 28 May 2020: If the child isn't speaking, what "gender identity" the child is expressing is highly likely to be a projection of the onlookers.
• 28 May 2020: "Observe, listen to and understand how each child or young person expresses themselves. This is especially important for pre- or non-verbal children or young people. Make sure that each child or young person has opportunities to express their gender identity.." This. Is. Nuts.
• 28 May 2020: Happy anniversary to you both
• 28 May 2020: Best wishes to you and him
• 28 May 2020: Best wishes Amy
• 28 May 2020: It means a great deal to me! That Taylor article about sex crimes lives on in memory as one of most staggering extensions of social constructivism I've ever seen. Right up there with Sharpe's "my privacy is more important than your right to know who you are going to bed with"
• 28 May 2020: Or at least, if you do, the forms of argument will be pretty tortuous and won't match standard disciplinary norms - which is in fact what we are seeing with gender-identity-affirmative philosophy, I think.
• 28 May 2020: I also have theory which I'm pursuing in my book that that sort of response (which I agree is very typical) is because the implicit point is not the pursuit of truth, but the maintenance of a fiction, and that's completely different. You don't keep fictions going by argument.
• 28 May 2020: Yeah I'm not worried. Just bemused at how this all works these days.
• 28 May 2020: Thanks Debbie
• 28 May 2020: Excellent, I will
• 28 May 2020: Put it this way - I really don't think it's me with the problem, mate.
• 28 May 2020: I'd love to know what disturbing images of cross-dressing and sexual ambiguity haunt their dreams, such that they have to make an enormous effort in public all the time to say what a stupid, thoughtless, evil person I must be.
• 28 May 2020: Been reading Jung lately. He'd say: if you want to know what's in someone's "shadow" (i.e. subconscious stuff they can't bear to admit) look at what they project onto others. Increasingly convinced that right-thinking academics' obsession with my "transphobia" tells its own story
• 28 May 2020: Wow that is gorgeous
• 28 May 2020: Hang in there @maitlis we need you.
• 28 May 2020: Ah ok, thanks. I couldn't really face the video. As they say, one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens...
• 28 May 2020: Yes - what they actually mean is "listen to the histrionic fantasy version of an oppressed minority, collectively projected by guilty white people." Strangely enough that version always says what they expect it to.
• 28 May 2020: Here's the book
• 28 May 2020: In other news, Kant can be used to validate polyamory, who knew.
• 28 May 2020: Just been sent the preface to Helga Varden's new book on Sex, Love and Gender for OUP. Varden is big deal Kantian scholar. Extract from preface below. Translation from the High Moralese: "I just want to make sure you all know I have no truck with those nasty bitches"
• 28 May 2020: That's ok but what video are you talking about?
• 28 May 2020: I haven't seen a video.. this sort of tweet always stresses me out. What fresh hell etc?
• 27 May 2020: Yes, if he only knew the illocutionary and perlocutionary atrocities committed in his name..
• 27 May 2020: "Too dangerous to engage with on Twitter but not too dangerous to quote-tweet."
• 27 May 2020: I see now that my future until death is to have non-philosophers publish their "Philosophical Problems" with my views in non-philosophy journals, talking about the "illocutionary harms" I do, citing my tweets as evidence whilst blocking me on Twitter.
• 27 May 2020: Yes thanks I've just been told about it, though the big brave author has blocked me so I can't see it.
• 27 May 2020: I've looked him up, he's a Professor of Law and Policy at the University of Reading. Terrified by a philosopher...
• 27 May 2020: Seriously @a_zanghellini this is truly cowardly and pathetic. What are you scared of?
• 27 May 2020: No I hadn't thanks. He has blocked me preemptively.. must be terrified I might actually see it.
• 27 May 2020: ""I also argue that gender-critical feminists’ enthusiastic use of social media and allied online platforms may be implicated in generating some of these problems." How would you know, mate?
• 27 May 2020: Lol. Never before interacted with or heard of this author, who has blocked me preemptively then tweeted out his article about why I'm wrong.
• 27 May 2020: "I asked questions at a training event at a leading UK university which resulted in a number of very serious allegations being made against me. I was subjected to a disciplinary process lasting six months. I underwent a two-hour-long investigation interview & two formal hearings"
• 27 May 2020: Yes me too.
• 27 May 2020: It's SO good. I used to force my students to listen to it in the first lecture of the term. I think I probably enjoyed it more than they did.
• 27 May 2020: Yes I read them a few years ago. Do you know this short story? I think it's perfection.
• 27 May 2020: Yes and I can tell, because I don't think bots are as nice as you!
• 27 May 2020: I think Nabokov will do that to you.. if I was a novelist I'd have to stay well away from him, otherwise I wouldn't dare write a word.
• 27 May 2020: I just think it would be real shame if half the time feminists were arguing with shadows to fuel clicks.
• 27 May 2020: 😂
• 27 May 2020:
• 27 May 2020:
• 27 May 2020:
• 27 May 2020: Short thread of evidence that bots and troll farms get involved in culture war stuff. I see no reason to think they wouldn't be present in issue as divisive as feminism/trans rights. I try not to give anon TRAs much attention for this reason.
• 27 May 2020: Oh god, how tantalising!
• 27 May 2020: I think it takes practice.
• 27 May 2020: I find it constantly amazing on here how people brought together in praise of female boundaries can get annoyed when you actually demonstrate some.
• 27 May 2020: Agreed... tribalism is a killer for any political movement.
• 27 May 2020: I've recently blocked fair few people on GC side for being pass-agg, snipey arses who can't seem to stop subtweeting. Life's better for me that way. I don't owe them shit! And sometimes I unfollow people if their approach to tweets isn't my thing. Not personal, it's only twitter.
• 27 May 2020: (In a good way)
• 27 May 2020: Pretty devastating I think!
• 27 May 2020: "This places Manion, who is clearly a conscientious scholar, in a dilemma. She knows the women she is studying were not men. Their experience was predicated on being women (men who married women were not afraid of being found out)" Bracing from @selina_todd
• 27 May 2020: I don't think I know you are? But I can assure you that for me, respect and following are different. I follow lots of people I don't respect, and unfollow lots of people I do. It's about Twitter styles, what works for me on my own feed. It's not a character ref.
• 27 May 2020: Can't imagine what is really behind Weinberg's laboured faux incredulity there.
• 27 May 2020: I haven't pulled support, I just unfollowed you (and you brought it up, otherwise I'd not say). It's only twitter. I don't even know your name! I hate idea that following on here should be tribal. If people don't want to follow me they shouldn't feel compelled, I won't mind.
• 27 May 2020: I'm afraid I unfollowed because of broadbrush statements like this.. nothing personal, I just don't find it helpful. I'm aware of QT and origins but its tiny part of what academia is, and arguably you can't fight either QT or other incoherent doctrines without academics onboard.
• 27 May 2020: Bit broadbrush, no? There's a lot more to academia than Gender Studies departments.
• 26 May 2020: True
• 26 May 2020: My methodist preacher Granny regularly used to tell me with great enthusiasm that she had made love to her grocer to get a good cabbage.
• 26 May 2020: Dammit
• 26 May 2020: NEVERTHELESS. Can't even get my own joke right
• 26 May 2020: Neverless she pers
• 26 May 2020: Gorgeous
• 26 May 2020: You're lovely!
• 26 May 2020: It's not trivial. He broke the rules he himself was largely responsible for instigating. Meanwhile he produced messaging that said it was absolutely imperative people obey the rules. Most have done so at personal cost. This isn't just smoking in a no-smoking area.
• 26 May 2020: People of all political allegiances know it's not right, either from perspective of hypocrisy and contempt, or from perspective of ineptly undermining own messaging, or both.
• 26 May 2020: I don't buy line that ordinary people not on twitter/in media don't care about Cummings. 87 year old Tory Brexit-voter in my family - never knowingly said word against Johnson or looked at Twitter - totally exasperated: "Cummings is inept, which makes Johnson doubly inept".
• 24 May 2020: Every day is Boar on the Floor time on here..
• 24 May 2020: Ha, yes, I'm definitely in
• 24 May 2020: Oh god, such beautiful cringe
• 24 May 2020: I particularly love the fact that scene was both filmed and set in Dundee
• 24 May 2020: What a thread 😍
• 24 May 2020: I know it wasn't for me but I love this! Good old Kendall.
• 24 May 2020: And that's a follow from me..
• 24 May 2020: Deleted my original comment, because if you really think that response somehow changes things, you've missed my point and repeating again probably won't help.
• 24 May 2020: Bet you've steered clear of Peebles ever since though
• 24 May 2020: Ace! Thankyou!
• 24 May 2020: Not the point, I know, but I really want to know how to do the font thing
• 24 May 2020: Good grief. Though the fact they can do that is because the option was already there. Inadvertently whole groups can descend into bad behaviour collectively, each one pushing the boundary a little further each time, telling themselves it's not individually their responsibility.
• 24 May 2020: I agree
• 24 May 2020: I admit some of it looks like infiltration. There are couple of accounts I'm pretty certain are bad faith provocateurs in disguise. But that doesn't account for all of it sadly. Either way, undermines public view of cause to neutrals, though thankfully mostly confined to margins.
• 24 May 2020: Ta. I'm not cool either, natch (as is clear by fact I say "natch")
• 24 May 2020: It's weird and stalkerish. Seems like some GC groups on here treat others as dehumanized without feelings of their own - just there to be gossiped about, speculated about in public, laughed at etc. Popcorn fodder for a bit of drama in life. Not cool. Bad as TRAs in some cases.
• 24 May 2020: This will be opaque to most followers (and thank yr lucky stars if so) but GCdetective account doesn't help anyone or anything. It looks like GC equivalent of LedByDonkeys going to Cummings' house - i.e. overreach, generating sympathy. People acting badly doesn't mean you have to
• 24 May 2020: Ha
• 24 May 2020: This thread about Denis Johnson is great. If you also feel like taking half an hour out from today's mundane horrors to be transported to somewhere appropriately savage, funny, and profound, listen to this, you won't regret it
• 24 May 2020: Thread. Save a bit of outrage over Cummings for what's happened at @NatCen
• 24 May 2020: That looks deelish! I can't do bread. However yesterday I made a mango, pineapple, coconut and rum cake, I'd put a picture up if there was any left.
• 24 May 2020: Make no mistake - Stonewall is at the heart of this approach. They now need to turn the tanker around or founder on the rocks. Trying to use their muscle behind the scenes to suppress expertise because it doesn't fit their political agenda is not acceptable in a liberal society.
• 24 May 2020: Any hope incoming raft of new Stonewall officials would take more reasonable line than predecessors now looks slim. New CEO Nancy Kelley deliberately sought to have @ProfAliceS removed from crucial ONS meeting on sex-based data for previously expressing moderate views. Outrageous
• 23 May 2020: Thinking of you and your daughter and family Andy. Their hypocricy is an outrage.
• 23 May 2020: Haha! Tbh me neither but don't tell anyone I might have to give my membership card back
• 23 May 2020: She's livestreaming into many lesbian homes as we speak!
• 23 May 2020: Wow! Your books really do bring all the A-listers to the yard these days RR.
• 23 May 2020: Quite. But context is everything, apparently..
• 23 May 2020: I wandered in with my kids, also in 2017, when visiting Brighton Museum. Woman's breasts suspended in formaldehyde as part of an exhibit uncritically, enthusiastically representing "empowerment" and "authenticity". Not shocked by much but I felt like I'd accidentally gone to Mars
• 23 May 2020: Ha, yes, it's common refrain from some radfems (I don't mean Lily). Has been for years. Must Have Clean Lines... Either With Us Or Against Us. Etc. Anyone in big FB groups knows about it. Lots of mocking of/fuming about "moderates".
• 23 May 2020: I'm not bestowing womanhood on anyone. I couldn't, I don't control concepts. Either TW are W or not, and I'm happy to argue that not. I hope to explore all this in my book (which I'm sure you'll hate, that's fine!). Still reject implications of cowardice/ stupidity/ "lying" tho.
• 23 May 2020: Thanks - says it doesn't exist now so maybe it's been reported already.
• 23 May 2020: Yes, my mirror also showed me a genuinely disgusted person.
• 23 May 2020: Sorry, my mistake - twitter is hard to understand re tone. I apologise for misunderstanding you.
• 23 May 2020: Er......yeah? Not sure why you think they don't have my support and understanding? I feel like you really really want to put "using preferred pronouns" and "not supporting women" automatically in same box, and my point is precisely against that kind of zero sum opposition.
• 23 May 2020: The ideal world I'd like to see is where full public discussion was had about consequences of using preferred names & pronouns, on all affected parties, inc women generally & wives/families; organisations stopped coercing, & people could freely decide what they wanted to do.
• 23 May 2020: Ah yeah, sorry, I forgot for a second 😆
• 23 May 2020: Again I agree!
• 23 May 2020: Their family's, I mean.
• 23 May 2020: And just to add - one of most outrageously coercive things I saw a few years back, that contributed to me wanting to talk about all this stuff in public, was leaflet for trans people produced by a US LGBT org, listing as example of "abuse" a family's failure to use pref pronouns.
• 23 May 2020: Completely agree about that!
• 23 May 2020: by Stonewall, that should say
• 23 May 2020: @transwidows @leafylike @LilyLilyMaynard I agree. I spend a lot of my time these days fighting against the coercion of organisations of Stonewall in the workplace. But not being coerced into representing somebody else's reality works both ways.
• 23 May 2020: Of course. But they don't all think alike about this either. Some choose to use pref pronouns in interpersonal contexts. Some don't. I don't judge the choices of those that don't, I understand them. But equally I'm not going to tell those that do that they are cowards or stupid.
• 23 May 2020: Plus my point was also - and maybe this doesn't apply to you Isabelle cos I don't know if that's yr real name or not (and if it is, good on you) - plenty on here will mouth off about the "pandering" or "cowardice" etc. of other women's choices, whilst using anonymous accounts.
• 23 May 2020: My original point was that there might be lots of reasons for using pronouns (just like diff reasons to use preferred Christian names, some do, some don't.) Some choose to freely, some are coerced by their employers into it (not same as being coerced by individual trans people).
• 23 May 2020: Brilliant idea. I think you'll like this.. from @ThisJungianLife
• 23 May 2020: "pandering" is one word for it but others are available. They aren't coercing your speech if you freely choose to do differently. Some do, some don't.
• 23 May 2020: I think it's complicated. I"m not pretending its simple, that's what others are doing. Also whatever decision you make extends to trans men as well presumably. They always get left out.
• 23 May 2020: That's not the explanation though.
• 23 May 2020: They aren't always easily avoided. Not e.g. if you are talking in 3rd person about trans woman ally. It's weird to keep repeating their surname several times in same sentence. Hostile. Also stupid given character limits. Could use "they" but you've ruled that out too.
• 23 May 2020: that sex-incongruent pronouns must be used or else it's a disciplinary. I respect Lily & her writing a lot but am fed up of seeing black-and-white/all-or-nothing/ with-us-or-against-us narratives about choices of others from people who themselves are tweeting under pseudonyms.
• 23 May 2020: Thanks. There's lots of reasons you might choose to use sex-incongruent pronouns, harassment included. Also if you work with trans people day to day and make a decision that its best. Also if your workplace's HR policies have been Stonewalled so that it's built in to the policies
• 23 May 2020: People with actual names attached to accounts could be severely censored for using sex-congruent pronouns. It may rattle your cage that people do differently to you, but it rattles my cage when I see judgement for other choices as if all contexts were same.
• 22 May 2020: Pretty much sums it up.
• 22 May 2020: This is imo a great organisation which genuinely has the interests of people with DSDs directly at heart of it, plus lots more expertise than me!
• 22 May 2020: has to do with trans people, vast majority of whom are phenotypically/ chromosomally unambiguous. Intersex histories have been politically hijacked by orgs such as Gendered Intelligence, as shown by fact that trainer doesn't know or understand origin of stat cited in training.
• 22 May 2020: Genuine "intersex" is people whose phenotype/chromosomes genuinely causes problems for categorisation as either m or f - more like 2 in 10,000 births. Other DSDs only affect m (eg Klinefelters) or f (Turners), or affect both (CAH) but with no ambiguity. Further issue is what/
• 22 May 2020: Do you know I think it might be
• 22 May 2020: Good thread from one of the best
• 22 May 2020: Well since you've used this to make a point.. this isn't socialism. Don't kid yourselves. There's nothing remotely rooted in materialism here. On the contrary, liberal ideas of autonomy and self-individuation have taken steroids and run amok.
• 22 May 2020: I think that's at least part of what drives me mad about this. Endless phds between them yet presumably will sit nodding and frowning and pretending to make notes about 1% of population being intersex, 100s of genders, and how "all genders are valid". Is preposterous charade.
• 22 May 2020: I"m sure they'd do it for free, too.
• 22 May 2020: Just wondering whether @UniversitiesUK are also going to invite @Womans_Place_UK or @ALLIANCELGB or @Transgendertrd or @marcusevanspsyc in to hear some alternative perspectives on the Equality Act, sexual orientation, child safeguarding, or irreversible surgery on young people?
• 22 May 2020: In short: you could not get a more blatantly politicised, fact-negligent, safeguarding-careless trans activist organisation than Gendered Intelligence. Calling what they offer "trans awareness training" is to stretch concepts of "awareness" (and "training") to breaking point.
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence, hosts of this twice-monthly trans swimming event for age groups 8-25: "Wear what you want to swim, so long as your bottom half is covered."
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence: authors of the "Trans Youth Sexual Health" booklet, containing memorable phrase "A woman is still a woman, even if she enjoys getting blow jobs."
• 22 May 2020: GIDS NHS evidence base: "suicide is extremely rare"
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence: sponsors of this @Tate resource for teachers "I want to show you a body". Representative - demonstrably false - quote: "There is an extremely high rate of suicide amongst transgender children in schools." (see next tweet)
• 22 May 2020: Representative sample: "I asked about the source of the statistic for “1 in 100” people being born intersex. Dex said he had no idea where that statistic had come from and that it would all be in the PDF pack that was going to be emailed out later."
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence: as in the organisation that ran the teaching event "Talking to Pupils about Gender" at the Hayward Gallery, described by an attendee in the blogpost in next tweet
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence: as in the organisation who published this blogpost about a week ago: "We need to do away with the false dichotomy of ‘reversible’ and ‘irreversible’ when talking about young trans people and decision making."
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence, whose own signage you can download, print off, laminate and stick on toilet doors when you want to demonstrate a "higher standard of inclusivity" - saying "ALL GENDER TOILET - CONTAINS ALL STALLS"
• 22 May 2020: Gendered Intelligence: as in authors of this highly tendentious advice about Equality Act "Under no circumstances should an organisation treat the exceptions as something it should do. An exception is a last resort".
• 22 May 2020: Oh look it's @UniversitiesUK (body representing 137 UK Universities/ VCs) advertising the fact they will receive "trans awareness" training from Gendered Intelligence later today. Here's the description of what's being paid for. Short thread below.
• 22 May 2020: Well if you will go ranking ethnic groups into a top five...
• 22 May 2020: I'm sending you lots of swearing, easy access to the mute button, and a box of wives by same-day delivery.
• 22 May 2020: Bloody hell!
• 22 May 2020: Lol. Amazing fact-checking, would expect nothing less.
• 22 May 2020: And FWIW I think, whether or not Drummond is well-intentioned person, there's something profoundly confusing about visiting schools potentially saying the things said in the Buzzfeed interview about "bringing out the inner lesbian in others" etc.
• 22 May 2020: It's ok to doubt me 😀 I got told about it by someone working at relative senior level in Welsh education who said they'd seen press release but then couldn't find it. I never did get corroboration of school visits when I asked Twitter so am impressed to see you found it Malcolm
• 22 May 2020: All I know is, like the grain and the grape, never mix em :D
• 22 May 2020: lol yes I seem to have woken up spouting them
• 22 May 2020: Yes it’s like a house - foundations have to be laid first (You and Helen were doing it well before me!)
• 22 May 2020: Yes. It’s different to 30rock obvs but they both have in common that the writers and actors know their characters backwards, likes them, and they understand how to do farce. Plus hardly ever mawkish which I appreciate in us telly.
• 22 May 2020: Inspiring to see how if you create a solid enough, easily grasped baton, lots of other people can then run with it.
• 22 May 2020: I hope @helensaxby11 is giving herself a massive pat on the back and large gin for her brilliant foundational work on the original toolkit. Not bad result eh H?
• 21 May 2020: The Bluetooth image seems like a nice antidote to the Pram in the Hall.
• 21 May 2020: 👍
• 21 May 2020: Pretty much everything
• 21 May 2020: Then you can start in Brooklyn99 if you haven’t already...
• 21 May 2020: I completely love it.
• 21 May 2020: I wish!
• 21 May 2020: Oh Christ good point
• 21 May 2020: They see so much
• 21 May 2020: @selina_todd @JoLippers @fiflippy @bindelj It's ok, I had her experiment on the kids first. (As I told them afterwards "it's only hair, it'll grow back".)
• 21 May 2020: My future wife material is about to unleash the clippers on me tonight. May need Bindel's services if it all goes wrong.
• 21 May 2020: Thoughts and prayers!
• 21 May 2020: Don't ask Djuna, don't ask
• 21 May 2020: It makes you good balanced human imo.
• 21 May 2020: That child has jaundice for a start
• 21 May 2020: I can only imagine she was discovered doing something shocking like paying for her date's dinner or wearing flats or something.
• 21 May 2020: Are we supposed to now? Because for once, I do. She is..... very good.
• 21 May 2020: I don't really get this but partly because I don't think I understand how you're defining "religious"
• 21 May 2020: They are. And there are swallows nesting in the eaves of houses near me. And very cute ducklings on the pond.
• 21 May 2020: I'd really like to know who these apocryphal people are who feel they will have failed lockdown if they haven't learnt Swahili or read Moby Dick.
• 21 May 2020: You know that thing in life when people are lashing out & trying to drag others in, and others are finding it really difficult to witness, & you look into their eyes warmly and meaningfully and chat about the weather, & together you manage to pay it no mind? Lovely weather innit.
• 21 May 2020: Yay Janice! Hope you win. What a stonking writer you are.
• 21 May 2020: You neither?
• 21 May 2020: No
• 21 May 2020: No castanets, no entry
• 21 May 2020: I just feel sorry for non-American Jewish people. Sick burn or what.
• 21 May 2020: @leachf 👀
• 21 May 2020: So sorry this is happening Jean.
• 15 May 2020: No, there was only ever three planned each.
• 14 May 2020: So how do you suggest they be held to account? They went on the offensive with one of the only MPs in the country prepared to raise this issue, and are calling her "transphobic" to an unsuspecting public. Doesn't sound like they are in listening mood.
• 14 May 2020: I don't think my tweet will cause them to lose funding. But I think they should be held to account for their use of public money when they blatantly are not promoting their own charitable object - namely "to promote the good health of those in doubt of their sexual identity".
• 14 May 2020: It's not all they do, but they shouldn't be doing this at all, given their charitable objects. It's not in lesbians' interests to be lumped in with different group like this by a charity purporting to represent them, where the main thing in common is a shared attraction to women.
• 14 May 2020: Full accounts here
• 14 May 2020: Just been checking out the last accounts of the @LGBTfdn. It receives over £2million from local authorities, NHS, Dept of Health, companies such as Smirnoff, etc. to tell world that males are lesbians. Their Charitable Objects described ironically below..
• 14 May 2020: That is not an implausible hypothesis, Oliver.
• 14 May 2020: No chance. I heard she went onto greater things. Probably roleplaying with Russell Group academics as I write.
• 14 May 2020: Thanks Nat x
• 14 May 2020: I once had to do a training roleplay thing at work with Mandy Jordache from Brookie.
• 13 May 2020: And if she can't bend reality, given her prior commitments, who can?
• 13 May 2020: Fantastic!
• 13 May 2020: My review of Judith Butler's latest book The Force of Nonviolence, for the @TheTLS
• 13 May 2020: Ha. Hope it won't be a letdown in terms of drama!
• 13 May 2020: Yeah, and Bev was there!
• 13 May 2020: Hey @BevJacksonAuth did you see this?
• 13 May 2020: Horrible.
• 13 May 2020: Whiff whaff? Whatever the fuck that actually is.
• 13 May 2020: As someone who in primary 7 won a school "mastermind" competition, with Helen Keller as my specialist subject, I can confirm this. (I was insufferable child obvs).
• 13 May 2020: Yeah, what makes you think it isn't?
• 13 May 2020: Evolution is belief. Climate change is belief. They are true beliefs. They aren't mere beliefs. They map on to pre-existing facts. Could be wrong but feel that in fight to get people to acknowledge reality, telling them to stop calling views "beliefs" won't be killer blow.
• 13 May 2020: Again, this is not where the conversation started or what most of the thread was about.
• 13 May 2020: Out later today, I'm reviewing Judith Butler's latest book for the @TheTLS
• 13 May 2020: Or yours?
• 13 May 2020: I wasn't talking about single sex spaces. I was talking about freedom of belief and expression to question their rationale. Not same thing at all. If you're talking about single sex spaces then we are at cross purposes. As you know I am a vocal arguer for their being maintained.
• 13 May 2020: I don't think it's same thing. Not denying there are good reasons for enforcement of driving rules. To go from there to "insisting" people generally behave as if sex is real, sounds fascist to me. Public bodies should behave that way. Individuals free to believe what they like.
• 13 May 2020: How do you propose to stop "tolerating" people who believe differently to you about the materiality of sex and gender identity? What should we do? Not rationally engage with them? No-platform them? Complain to publishers? Maybe fine them? What's your thinking here? I'm all ears.
• 13 May 2020: We differ on the quality of that analogy.
• 13 May 2020: No idea who you are arguing with half the time. It's not me though. What part of my published work suggests to you (wrongly) I don't think sex is a material fact? Or that I think that gender identity is material fact like sex is? I'm writing a book saying exactly those things.
• 12 May 2020: Seriously, if anyone thinks I'm personally thrilled with fact my major lifetime contributions to the philosophical world are likely to be a) men can't be women b) gay people are homosexuals you really underestimate the ambitions I used to have for myself.
• 12 May 2020: I could be offbeam here, but I'd probably suggest you do yourself a massive favour and unfollow this philosopher 🙂
• 12 May 2020: Oh god, you know I can't resist any opportunity for a definition, they're like crack to me.
• 12 May 2020: I've always assumed my place is recumbent on a chaise longue, brow furrowed, smoking a pipe, crafting the perfect syllogism before taking my pet lobster for a walk on a lead. Is that about right?
• 12 May 2020: Grumbling away about "academics" as some kind of attempt to discredit what I'm saying, is the same move TRAs make when they say I'm playing "abstract intellectual games with people's lives".
• 12 May 2020: are much more important than the academic one. But to go from that true statement, to the implication that academic philosophers have no worthwhile role at all to play in fighting to maintain sex-based rights, and a grip on sex-based realities, is just plain wrong.
• 12 May 2020: I've seen this line quite a bit lately from people who don't like the argumentative line I'm taking. (Some of them really didn't mind academics being involved when I said what they wanted me to say but I digress). Point is.. I don't think academics play the only role. Other roles
• 12 May 2020: It's funny, must be all that weird fun freethinking stuff I do, but when I disagree with something a lawyer says, I don't tend to think "we must not allow lawyers to speak about this any longer".
• 12 May 2020: Narrator: "At this point an alternative explanation occurs..."🤔
• 12 May 2020: (Except that this time "social role" will be replaced by "feelings", or "lived experience" or whatever) Plus there's no way the concept of man as traditionally conceived will end up having anything like a similar extension with this version and that's a problem for communication.
• 12 May 2020: I also love Holly, but fear if she takes this route she'll face rerun of the whole "there's no single social role that all women have" debacle, which left Spelman ingeniously arguing that there was no such thing as a woman because there was nothing they had in common as such.
• 12 May 2020: What a beautiful thoughtful tribute (words and object). Sending love to you and the family at a difficult time.
• 12 May 2020: It's a very lovely thing!
• 12 May 2020: I'm happy to have the compliment, no need to dissect the wording imo :D
• 12 May 2020: No
• 12 May 2020: Ah crap Katie, so sorry to hear that
• 11 May 2020: Hollow laugh...
• 11 May 2020: (That isn't a picture of the trans athletes, in case any such tender-brained academic makes it through the blocks they've carefully set up to avoid sight of any mention of me. Those are the women who have been edged out of competition by the trans athletes.)
• 11 May 2020: Gazes into middle distance, fondly recalls a time (which is actually still today's time because they don't read the National Review, God forbid) when US academics would tell me scathingly that nobody is trying to erase mention of biological sex, you stupid transphobic fool.
• 11 May 2020: "Data analysis stands or falls by the quality of the data. Without data on sex, we cannot develop evidence-based policy to tackle inequalities between men and women." From @ProfAliceS in the Spectator
• 11 May 2020: Hi, is it this one?
• 11 May 2020: Lol!
• 11 May 2020: Oh Lord. Glad you got out!
• 11 May 2020: Can't hurt to try? (..which is a lie, it can hurt very much, but still worth it).
• 11 May 2020: Am glad v you've reconnected with your right to tell the truth about yourself.
• 11 May 2020: Aw thanks v much. Not that I do this for agreement you understand.. but it's still nice when people I think are compassionate and sensible think I'm sensible back.
• 11 May 2020: Thanks Colin, that's v nice of you.
• 11 May 2020: You can believe AND know the very same thing. Not an opposition. I know the sky is blue. I also believe it is blue. My belief is true, and that's part of what makes it knowledge.
• 11 May 2020: With respect, Alessandra, you shouldn't confuse "she doesn't agree with you" with "she is uninformed". She clearly isn't uninformed. And she wasn't talking about how law is. I recall no claim about actual law. She was talking about how things might or should be in her view.
• 11 May 2020: No, it's still a belief. Belief is, roughly, a mental representation of how world is. Fact is in the world. Beliefs are about facts. They can get them wrong or right, true or false. I admit people talk about beliefs as opposed to facts, but HP wasn't doing that I don't think.
• 11 May 2020: Beliefs can be true or false, but just because a belief is true doesn't mean we can force other people to believe it, and I take it that that was Helen's point.
• 11 May 2020: So sorry! He was so clearly a lovely dog.
• 11 May 2020: Helen Pluckrose @HPluckrose and I have now written our third and final letters to each other, which you can read here Many thanks to Helen for initiating and participating in this stimulating exchange, and to @LetterWiki for hosting.
• 10 May 2020: Brilliant, I'm going to buy that...
• 10 May 2020: Once left my bag in a tearoom in Ullapool and took the Calmac to Stornoway, and when I phoned to ask the tearoom if they had it, they put it on the next ferry and the captain handed it over to me on the pier.
• 10 May 2020: Like I say, I hope you raise these points explicitly in your next letter so I can address them.
• 10 May 2020: Anagram! Looks triumphant
• 10 May 2020: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in... Squints hard for an hour
• 10 May 2020: I saw what you wrote. Very good. Tbh it's a relief because I'd have never got that in a million year, and I've got banana loaf to make :D
• 10 May 2020: right NOBODY SAY ANYTHING I'm going for it.
• 10 May 2020: Lol. No, smartypants :D
• 10 May 2020: generally are whining brain-addled idiots and are very happy to see what they take to be confirmation of this, won't help.
• 10 May 2020: that the points you are making on behalf of women are being glossed over in favour of strong criticism of the differences, and that's a shame. However I also think that in the project of mutual understanding, quote tweeting to thousands of followers, many of whom think feminists
• 10 May 2020: Obviously I agree you are allowed to have different views, no argument from me. And I'm a bit shocked at the personal nature of some responses to you, as if you had suddenly got a job as Director of Bathrooms for the EHRC or something. It's been an eyeopener all round. I agree
• 10 May 2020: Lovely quote!
• 10 May 2020: What I will say is - being forced to witness all this in my mentions is making me mentally commit in future, to not make overhasty attributions of a big ideological worldview as an explanation for hostility, when there are much nearer explanations available.
• 10 May 2020: That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. I would say at least half the women you're currently arguing would have no sympathy with Marxism at all. This isn't about background ideology, it's about feeling powerless, angry, goaded, etc. Quote-tweeting a lot doesn't help.
• 10 May 2020: Sweetie exhales, cleverly. 11 letters. S_____________s
• 10 May 2020: This is the motto I live by, basically.
• 10 May 2020: Lol. Me too. I now spend a wonderful hour on a Sunday staring crossly at the Jumbo in the Times and sometimes I come up with as many as five answers before I crack and start looking them up.
• 10 May 2020: "No sooner had I read that part of the work that I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes. I then, for the first time, learned to call the cause of the people the cause of Virtue. Stay alert".
• 10 May 2020: No, its not something you get, unless you have the kind of mind that can see a reference to "sailor" and think, ah yes, Able-Bodied, that must mean "AB". Which I am not. There are tons of rules (of thumb). So yes, buy a book! I am fairly crap at it but I love having a go.
• 10 May 2020: Yeah - dehumanizing and disrespectful for such a towering figure.
• 10 May 2020: I find this stuff sinister when offered as some kind of rule. Sometimes half-hearted apologies are better than none, and sometimes apologies aren't helpful at all, especially when only offered to socially conform with others' expectations of behaviour.
• 10 May 2020: Thanks, have followed
• 10 May 2020: The more obvious way to represent her is as talking about group distinguished by its Twitter behaviour. And that group is in every political movement, left, right, feminist, TRA, whatever.. so to make it repeatedly about some kind of tribal "she hates you!" thing is inflammatory.
• 10 May 2020: People fall into several categories at once. I too have no great fondness for people that pick away hostilely, expecting your mind to be the same as theirs, misrepresenting your views to followers unfairly. They are in every group. Some are GC. Does it follow I "hate" the GC?
• 10 May 2020: Please don't.
• 10 May 2020: I'd have liked that article better if it said in more detail what Greece actually did do, or how circs differ, because I'm fairly sure avoiding showmanship and Imperialism weren't the decisive factors, medically speaking...
• 10 May 2020: But she wasn't calling one of the "groups" that, Maya. That was my point.
• 10 May 2020: say what everyone wants me to either - indeed it's pretty much guaranteed I won't, because people think differently from one another about these difficult issues.
• 10 May 2020: I haven't seen that but I assume it was said in anger, especially if she has since deleted. She's still speaking to me, for one. And is going to write a letter where hopefully some of these disagreements can be raised in longer format. Though obviously I won't necessarily
• 10 May 2020: I'm sorry you were upset by the exchange. I hope you're feeling better now.
• 10 May 2020: I agree with you, just saying it's hard in practice sometimes.
• 10 May 2020: I agree quote tweeting is aggressive. I really try not to do it. I'm not here to defend HP from every criticism. I'm just arguing with Maya suddenly announcing the whole thing is in bad faith before it's even finished.
• 10 May 2020: I'm not saying she doesn't block people undeservedly - I don't know. I'm not here to stick up for HP no matter what. (Though I also think it's totally up to a tweeter who they block, when you're getting high hostility it can save your sanity).
• 10 May 2020: "These people' doesn't mean GC people! Obviously! And it's completely uncharitable to suggest to your thousands of followers that it does, in a way that they can't easily check, because it will result in yet more flak from some of them.
• 10 May 2020: It's not fair to quote tweet pictures of what she said without context. I've seen the context of some things being said to her. And if she's touchy about some things - so what? It's twitter! Tempers blow under pressure. Noone could say that's not also true of many GC feminists.
• 10 May 2020: People are acting like she's in charge of social spaces in the UK! She isn't. She has no particular power to effect anything she's advocating. She's expressing her view, just like you do. It's a discussion. Accusing HP of "bad faith" looks to me wrong. I don't agree.
• 10 May 2020: Maya why do this now? The letter exchange isn't even finished yet. I've been tagged into the responses to HP, and there are at least a hundred. Some of them are out of order, furious with her for not having the same thoughts as feminists. She's not a feminist & never said she was
• 9 May 2020: Talking of
• 9 May 2020: I don't know why they're bothering with pedagogy at all. Can't Elon Musk just mainline received truth into brains via a chip or something?
• 9 May 2020: I am hoping you can raise some of these points in your next letter Helen, so we can discuss them there! (Am starting to think three letters won't be enough..).
• 9 May 2020: Lol!!
• 9 May 2020: What is the "this" you disagree about? Again, Sonia you seem to want to make my words about something they are not, and I wonder why you keep doing it. Please explain the link in your mind between between University seminars & "child abuse", and avoid "feelings". Facts please.
• 9 May 2020: I'm not denying that. But call it something else. (And even then, as accusation it wd need to be accompanied by reasonable evidence of specific teaching practices). Casual insinuations of paedophilia are dangerous. I know you all know this really. You know how mobs form.
• 9 May 2020: Yes. And I taught the Dialectic of Sex in Feminist Philosophy last year. Not that chapter, but I told students it was there, and I explained relevant historical context. I believe French literature Depts still teach Gide. English still teaches Nabokov. It's University, not school
• 9 May 2020: I also think for record (and this is widespread problem): when people rhetorically inflate language to make things that are obviously NOT literally abuse/grooming count as such, you devalue the words. And so you do disservice to genuine victims. We need to keep the words for them
• 9 May 2020: Being in a parental home is a completely different vibe.
• 9 May 2020: I've answered this offline. But in a nutshell, it's not secrecy, it's privacy, autonomy, and space to explore new thoughts without feeling overheard or monitored. University seminars provide that. It's a transitional period into full adulthood (though obviously they are adults).
• 8 May 2020: Great stuff
• 8 May 2020: Yes, also true.
• 8 May 2020: Um.. "grooming" in a metaphorical way I guess? But not literally. Teaching something uncritically at University isn't literally grooming. And the difference does matter when it comes to insinuations of paedophilia, no?
• 8 May 2020: Yes, that's exactly what I mean, ta.
• 8 May 2020: Yeah - see rest of the thread! It's funny, because I could swear people were projecting on me some kind of view I didn't actually hold :)
• 8 May 2020: Yeah great you found a Tatchell screen shot but you seem to be having a different conversation to me. If you check me out you'll find I'm pretty clear about what I think about teaching that stuff uncritically in schools.
• 8 May 2020: And if we're going down the route of saying we shouldn't be mentioning it in academic context at all, I'm obviously out, because I for one discuss it with my students. A separate issue is whether Zooming students in parental homes inhibits honest conversations. I'm sure it does.
• 8 May 2020: This has the capacity to spiral off. So to clarify: QT is bad philosophy. Putting QT into policy is nuts and will cause harm. Discussing QT in academic context of teaching seminars, with adults, isn't "grooming".
• 8 May 2020: I don't know if we're talking about same thing. I"m talking about responses to professor (who afaik didn't even mention queer theory)expressing concern about teaching of adults via Zoom, in parental homes. But in any case QT discussed in academic context isn't "grooming".
• 8 May 2020: No disagreement from me obvs
• 8 May 2020: Sorry - just to add that's a typo. I'm not sure I've Ever... it should have said. On substantive point - I don't think e.g. Yogyakarta Principle 3 makes sense re gender identities
• 8 May 2020: I like the criticism of rigid models of identity and the acknowledgement of a role for social context in the production of meaning, including self-interpretation. I think the thought that everything is linguistically constructed is fairly mad.
• 8 May 2020: Thanks Maya. I'm not sure I've never interpreted "trans rights" as rights that only trans people have. I agree it would be good to raise this, if not in this format then somewhere else.
• 8 May 2020: I think QT is nonsense on stilts, mostly, though I like some bits of it. But it would be much better to argue with the ideas than slander those who want to teach it.
• 8 May 2020: Taking stuff out of historical context as if this was sole agenda of QT all along is absurd. Connecting it to a professor rightly worrying about having open academic conversations with students in their parents' homes and implying intentions must be nefarious is also absurd.
• 8 May 2020: Not going to link to what prompts this, but FWIW I strongly disagree with crude equation of teaching Queer Theory with "grooming". In the 70s many were arguing for "sexual liberation" of children including Shulamith Firestone & other radfems.
• 8 May 2020: So sorry to hear that. Best wishes.
• 8 May 2020: RT @afsanalachaux: If public taxes are funding this then we have a right to know. 👉The Judicial College declined to identify the external e…
• 8 May 2020: .@HPluckrose's 2nd letter to me is now out, as is, just, my reply to that. One more each to come. Please enjoy/ hate/ feel indifferent to/ use as tealeaves to read your own fears and biases into (delete as appropriate) 😃
• 8 May 2020: Fantastic, thank you
• 8 May 2020: You're absolutely one of the last people I'd ever want to upset about that. You're one of my faves on here, I always want to see what you've written and I find it comes from a place of unwavering compassion for the nonconforming. So v sorry if I unwittingly upset you!
• 6 May 2020: Correction: strictly speaking @HPluckrose started a Letter exchange with me! Thank you Helen.
• 6 May 2020: Sorry, I don't know how to change that - I also find the text too small but can't change that either. Apologies.
• 6 May 2020: I've started a Letter exchange with Helen Pluckrose @HPluckrose (right tag this time). You can follow and see it unfold here
• 6 May 2020: Sorry wrong tag for Helen! I'll do another one.
• 5 May 2020: Two blog posts in two weeks, what??
• 2 May 2020: Sorry Susan. As I'm sure you know, it's not actually about who you really are, projection doesn't work that way. And yes.
• 2 May 2020: Oh my god. Nice piece but.. oh my god.
• 2 May 2020: Yeah but in this case it was. The idea that people are all stupid or all wise and nothing in between is one I'm trying to get away from.
• 2 May 2020: To be honest, it isn't, as you can probably tell..
• 2 May 2020: Excellent, I'll be watching.
• 2 May 2020: Ta Anna. It's good to walk your own line and I admire you for it. It's not radfems as such I have problem with tho. It's more about toxic people generally, who don't recognise their own issues and project them onto others, then go about whipping up resentment and calling it noble
• 2 May 2020: Congratumiserations.
• 2 May 2020: You've just reminded me of A Bullet in the Ballet and I now want to read it again, and this one.
• 2 May 2020: I tell you what's bizarre. You've spent about 6 tweets defensively doubling down on your mistake about what I originally said and trying to show the "fault" was mine all along. FOR A TWEET. Get a grip and please @ me out.
• 1 May 2020: As I understand you - you think the original point (which you misunderstood) was unfair. And now you think me pointing out you misunderstood it is unfair. OK. Hope you'll understand if I don't stick around to argue about this.
• 1 May 2020: Are you putting in a comma after people? Or what?? If it helps "This will annoy ALL THOSE people who want it to be simple."
• 1 May 2020: Are you reading the same sentence I wrote?? "This will annoy people who want it to be simple". How does that apply to you, if you don't think its simple? This is like watching Chinese whispers but without the whispering. Next: STOCK SAYS YOU ARE ALL SIMPLE.
• 1 May 2020: Nice
• 1 May 2020: Well done Maya
• 1 May 2020: OHH. Right. God knows...
• 1 May 2020: Yeah I have no idea either.. Another One Bites the Dust?
• 1 May 2020: I think it's a mix of sexualities tbf :D
• 1 May 2020: Well if it helps I spend the first half of the book saying sex is real, immutable, and sex-based spaces and resources are non-negotiable
• 1 May 2020: Maybe partly because it's unusual for younger people to be politically active in a way that rocks their social boat. Having said that I know a fair few younger radfems.
• 1 May 2020: Inspired by some recent events I wrote a blog post
• 1 May 2020: I'm steering clear of narratives that make people with non-sex-aligned gender identities out to be dupes, or fools, or self-indulgent narcissists. I think that's all deeply unfair and alienating and I don't blame trans people or detrans people for being revolted by it.
• 1 May 2020: It's not a choice, though it can be indirectly affected by self-interpretation, and it can change over time. And it's not inevitably maladaptive, though minors shouldn't act on it irrevocably. I"m going to try to explain and justify all this in book. In meantime though/
• 1 May 2020: of gender identity by trans activists. No it doesn't make you female/male/woman/man/neither. No, not everyone has one. But equally no, its not just "personality"; nor is it sign you're stuck in regressive tropes about womanhood or manhood (or no more than most of the planet).
• 1 May 2020: This is spoiler for work to come but something I'm increasingly aware of in writing my book is how unhelpful it is to for feminists/others to be scathing about gender identities non-aligned with sex. The fact some are scathing is no doubt reaction to overreaches made in name/
• 30 April 2020: Yes sorry, got that wrong
• 30 April 2020: Sorry - Chair not CEO.
• 30 April 2020: Whoops, my mistake. Ta.
• 30 April 2020: It would be amazing if Sheldon Mills, new CEO of @stonewalluk and Director of Competition and Strategy at the Financial Conduct Authority, interceded with GoFundMe to vouch for this fellow LGB organisation.
• 30 April 2020: I think its true you can't understand all of them. But that probably goes for anyone located in a particular sociocultural position. And obviously you can understand at least some of them!
• 30 April 2020: Thanks. It's all good. Black and white thinkers with anger management issues all sound the same, no matter what the doctrine.
• 30 April 2020: Cheers! (although you do know this is exactly the sort of thing that winds some people up 🤨)
• 30 April 2020: Relatedly: I'm Philosophy professor (at least, til my university goes bust). Yam what I yam. Yes middle class. Unsurprisingly. You don't get much more middle class than a philosophy professor. I also use long words. Complaining about it is a waste of your temporal existence.
• 30 April 2020: These tweets were brought to you courtesy of a much longer, more worthy thread but I could hear the eye-rolling as I wrote it and anyway, that's the main jist.
• 30 April 2020: Both are bad. Set yourselves free from female socialisation. You are not a number.
• 30 April 2020: There are different ways to treat someone as leader. One is to hang on every word. Another is to obsess, screenshot posts, rant about them on FB & whatsapp, hatefollow so you can wind self up. Then say they're "self-appointed leaders' & deserve the attention you're giving them.
• 28 April 2020: RT @K_IngalaSmith: That thing when a generic organisation that bids for and wins contracts for services that we specialists say should be d…
• 28 April 2020: Aha, course, you quote tweeting me snidely is just par for the course but you get to intone about "fractures" and "harm" and "us"... Sad face 😿 Good grief.
• 28 April 2020: Terrible, obviously. Too big, too long, too fat, too uneven.. etc.
• 28 April 2020: Thanks, will have a look
• 28 April 2020: I can see from other responses to me that this is going to be go down as "All Anonymity Bad". Obviously it isn't. I totally understand need. But if you're anon you can be less inhibited w/t cost. And there's something ironic about anons telling named accounts to "toughen up" etc.
• 28 April 2020: With inspiration from you and @marstrina obvs!
• 28 April 2020: That's interesting - have you written about it anywhere? I'd also be v interested to see how many of the fights that go on involve bots or bad actors goading GCers. It's clearly happening in other culture war debates, so why not this one.
• 28 April 2020: Please
• 28 April 2020: No that's not it, try again. If we're going to go all Rumpole of the Bailey - do you recognise role of linguistic context? And that sometimes saying x can be pointless, and in another case, have a point? And do you understand how obsessively attending to perceived inconsistency/
• 28 April 2020: Ah ok. I see. "Pious hypocrite" FINE. "Sounds like a mentalist" NOT FINE. What could possibly explain this difference? Must admit I'm stumped
• 28 April 2020: See my last post. (Or, alternatively, continue going on about it like a gotcha because its much easier to make out I'm hypocrite than address my main point.)
• 28 April 2020: Yeah I know, obviously - was making point to person who said it. As in -it's easy to ignore the effect of words and excuse them until someone says something similar to you. As you are now also demonstrating by immediately making a huge deal about that but excusing the other stuff
• 28 April 2020: I'll say what I want Ella. (Don't worry, I'm not in this for the popularity).
• 28 April 2020: Ah but I thought that was in the eye of the beholder? Or something.
• 28 April 2020: Alright. Well in that case, since you are taking a "public" stance too (admittedly not under your own name) you won't mind me saying you sound like a mentalist.
• 28 April 2020: But fact remains that the reason she pulled it was not because TRAS somehow piled on her and told her off. GC people did. And she was saying something good.
• 28 April 2020: Well, if you mean by "explore it publicly" "being repeatedly insinuated that you are a moron, a hypocrite, a flake, to be laughed at, mocked for inconsistency, railed against" and so on, then yes she "gets" to do this.
• 28 April 2020: You must be well hacked off. I would be.
• 28 April 2020: Personally am totally over the endless bitter goading of the traditional GC folk devils and if I could get it out of my feed I would. It doesn't help public discussion move forward in any way.
• 28 April 2020: Presumably Jameela deleted her endorsement of @DrJessTaylor book because of the crowing shit she was getting from GC-ers. I've looked and I don't see much else. And now she's getting crap for deleting. Minds can change & good things can happen, you know.. can't we just let them?
• 24 April 2020: Huh, didn't know that.
• 24 April 2020: 😆
• 24 April 2020: That second one with the GIF is a troll account - no idea how they can have the same handle but if you look at the profile you'll see it's different. @AllianceLGB are you aware?
• 24 April 2020: To be clear, Fae is one of the authors of the piece, not the person described. As in this Jane Fae:
• 24 April 2020: Three cheers for feminists and lesbians like Jane, and thank goodness they are out there representing us.
• 24 April 2020: "Sexual liberty" sounds good doesn't it? Like being free to publish "work of violent sexual fantasy involving the mutilation and murder of each member of the Girls Aloud pop group, whose body parts are then sold on e-Bay."
• 24 April 2020: Yeah, and the way at one point her thumb raked gently but sensuously across the stamens was 😳! (Thank you, yes).
• 24 April 2020: Me too. Bit random but have you watched Twin on BBC4? The scenery is of beautiful North Norway and it's shot so well, it's a pretty good substitute for being on the hills.
• 24 April 2020: Watched Gardeners World last night - I've never seen a woman have such nakedly Sapphic carnal feelings for flowers in my life as this woman had for peonies. It was borderline filthy.
• 24 April 2020: Twitter poll now! (Yes)
• 22 April 2020: Congrats to @BluskyeAllison @TwisterFilm @BevJacksonAuth @simonjedge, Kate Harris and Fatina Liza (and all the others!).
• 22 April 2020: HAPPY 6th MONTH BIRTHDAY @AllianceLGB! What a fantastic start. You're all awesome and thank God you're there 👑🔥💥(Great video too)xx
• 22 April 2020: Lachlan, that's horrible - really sorry to hear. Hope you and your OH hanging in there.
• 21 April 2020: Bloody hell, well done. At this point we part company..
• 21 April 2020: I feel ya
• 21 April 2020: TLDR: @Byrne_a is very very stupid and should go sit in the corner and think hard about their pronouns.
• 21 April 2020: Holly Lawford-Smith summarises the top-level academic snark in Robin Dembroff's latest Phil Studies reply to @byrne_a. (It's times like this I remember this is a turf war between academics, and not just a TERF war..) https://t.co/WnekHpqZeD
• 21 April 2020: Or @janeclarejones!
• 21 April 2020: You're welcome Karen
• 21 April 2020: Allow me to be the first of the day to call you Karen, and everyone after this is just copying me
• 20 April 2020: But tbc I'm not saying "oh the dictionary definition sorts it all out". Obviously it doesn't. I'm saying: don't get creative with the truth about the dictionary definition.
• 20 April 2020: Er.. it's not indisputable. I dispute it 😀
• 20 April 2020: These days in published academic philosophy -if you don't find a dictionary definition you want, just make it up & no referee will question it. (I fear if we carry on like this, in one of the few areas ordinary people care about, we'll ruin philosophy's public reputation further)
• 20 April 2020: What an image
• 20 April 2020: Sure!
• 20 April 2020: Spellings approximate
• 20 April 2020: Wee sleekit cowrin timrous beastie Oh whit a panic's in thy breastie Thy needna stairt awa sae hastie Wi bickering brattle I wud be laith to come and chase thee Wi murderin pattle I doubtna whiles that thou may thieve Whit then? Puir beastie thou maun live A damon icker in a thr
• 20 April 2020: I'm thinking of piece clearly laying out potential axes of responsibility and conflicts between them. Not a hot take. Philosophy should take lead in alerting people to variety of ethical considerations to be taken into account. Policy makers seem too narrowly focused, seems to me
• 19 April 2020: Congratulations and happy birthday to Victoria.
• 19 April 2020: Thanks
• 19 April 2020: (In writing for the general public, I mean)
• 19 April 2020: Question - any academic philosophers out there doing careful laying out of all the potential intersections of responsibility (personal/governmental, acts/omissions, health/economics, nature/culture, national/international) around Covid? If not, should be.
• 18 April 2020: The irony of using 'clueless cranks' is strong with that one
• 18 April 2020: Thanks, that's useful
• 18 April 2020: Nice. There seems to be a very high correlation between blokes that follow me and a history of band membership, and I completely approve 👍
• 18 April 2020: Anyway I'm sure your teeth, septum, and brain cells are all the better for it now.
• 18 April 2020: Even better!
• 18 April 2020: I have now!
• 18 April 2020: 👏👏 Fabulous.
• 18 April 2020: Or this (etc) So it's not true that there's a consensus that karyotype/ sex chromosomes have no effect on immune systems.
• 18 April 2020: See also which discusses the effect of sex chromosomes on MS
• 18 April 2020: See for instance
• 18 April 2020: I never see trans activist GP Harrop's drivel directly these days, and don't miss it, but occasionally it floats past my retinas & I feel forced to intervene. I'm writing a chapter on sex at the moment. What he says here is false. See here for instance
• 18 April 2020: You played the Hacienda. That's one for the grandkids.
• 18 April 2020: You'd never have guessed it. And I still remember with admiration the way you handled The Question Designed To Put You On The Backfoot (you know, that question) like a pro.
• 18 April 2020: There's a band on wikipedia called Oi Polloi.. are you or were you ever in a Scottish Gaelic punk band? Or is that a different one? They still seem to be going.
• 18 April 2020: I'm a bit worried about the phallic imagery of the cava'n'two cruets.
• 18 April 2020: @helensaxby11 is amazing
• 18 April 2020: Wow that's an adventurous 20 yr old, how cool Debbie.
• 18 April 2020: Tbh I have absolutely no idea
• 18 April 2020: You look very sweetly serious
• 18 April 2020: You're on!
• 18 April 2020: The French ones, maybe?
• 18 April 2020: Fairly sure you're a bit of stunner too.
• 18 April 2020: Cap sleeves are agelessly cool imo. Is that a band?
• 18 April 2020: Very cool pic. You have a head start on most of us.
• 18 April 2020: Jon Moss!
• 18 April 2020: I first went here with you @Edwinters38 and @DerekMatravers
• 17 April 2020: Still got it 😎 Among many other mistakes of his there, you are obviously not gammon. You're metropolitan liberal elite, son. You're pineapple not gammon.
• 17 April 2020: So did you make the cut? which scene are you in?
• 17 April 2020: That's a brilliant look, and t-shirt.
• 17 April 2020: Just as I always pictured you @MatthewGreenf11
• 17 April 2020: Bet he looks brilliant!
• 17 April 2020: Always
• 17 April 2020: Class
• 17 April 2020:
• 17 April 2020: BTW I am fairly sure that wasn't champagne..
• 17 April 2020: 😆
• 17 April 2020: Exactly. All set up for an ambassadors reception for one.
• 17 April 2020: Very brooding!
• 17 April 2020: #MeAt20. Off my head by the looks of it, but with some snacks handy.
• 17 April 2020: Nice! Did the make up go on before or after the mushrooms?
• 17 April 2020: Very cute
• 17 April 2020: Very nice!
• 17 April 2020: Aving it large there. Nice.
• 17 April 2020: I haven't seen one. Haven't felt so seen by social media algorithms since Facebook advertised a lesbian walking holiday to me.
• 17 April 2020: Maybe I just don't follow enough men!
• 17 April 2020: Is this #MeAt20 thing being done by any men?
• 17 April 2020: Very sorry to read that x
• 17 April 2020: If it's good enough for Celebrity Masterchef.. (I believe, goes the thinking).
• 17 April 2020: That's nice of you. For my part, I hope you start understanding that "diversity" is compatible with a) acknowledging the existence of two sexes (you know, the ones that have different prognoses in Covid); b) diversity of thought; and c) not rewarding wife-beating homophobes.
• 16 April 2020: Kindness is "institutional value" at my employer. What it's supposed to do: attract students; tweak consciences of old school male profs. What it actually does: cues up anxious women to do more work. Gives other people reason to criticise them when they step out of stereotype
• 16 April 2020: I'm writing about some of them in my book. I"m afraid I don't think they're very good though.
• 15 April 2020: Doing a bit of reading for the book #strangebedfellows
• 15 April 2020: Nice one!
• 15 April 2020: Thanks. I appreciate this. I've suffered from HA on & off - and it is kind of suffering, though with big shame attached. I've found that for me its connected to fear of being self-indulgent & weak. When I accepted weakness, perversely it went/ I was stronger as result. Minds, cuh
• 15 April 2020: I like the ones with chilli already in the can best - them plus curly pasta and any green veg handy is a really quick comfort meal. But adding chilli also works.
• 15 April 2020: They're good with chilli sauce and pasta. Also lemon if you have it.
• 14 April 2020: I couldn't even stop my own Wiki page from saying I'm 69 so I don't think I'm necessarily the right person to ask.
• 14 April 2020: It's lovely. Good believable narrator too.
• 14 April 2020: Am listening to Deborah Orr's Motherland and nodding away at her affectionate, eagle-eyed descriptions of the 70s smalltown Scotland I also grew up in. It's brill.
• 14 April 2020:
• 14 April 2020: The opportunity to boast on social media with relatively little time/effort compared to beer? #callmecynical
• 14 April 2020: Stop trying to fire people for saying false and stupid things. Use the opportunity to show with authority that they are false and stupid. If you fire prominent people who say these things, other people won't stop saying them, and arguably they will say them more.
• 14 April 2020: PS was being facetious in case it wasn't obvious.
• 14 April 2020: Well naturally. Let's chat about this sometime?
• 14 April 2020: No it really didn't pass him by, he was here before most of us. Adrian, I think Jane might be referring to my paper here
• 13 April 2020: Ta.
• 13 April 2020: I think blank slatism probably false too, but seems to me if you were a blank slater, "femininity" could still get meaning through directly referring to a set of named specific traits which then get associated culturally with the female?
• 13 April 2020: Spammed again by Lloyd Russell-Moyle. Here's hoping he's better at social media than he is at email. Oh.
• 13 April 2020: Respect
• 13 April 2020: Sorry, correction, not blocked, just can't see what he said.
• 13 April 2020: Obviously I'm blocked by this bloke but is he saying I'm the founder of Woman's Place? I bloody wish!
• 13 April 2020: I'm convinced their main revenue stream is outrage. If we all stopped clicking, they'd probably fold. I mean, come on, nobody could possibly be reading it for information..
• 11 April 2020: And how important is the discipline, even? Yikes.
• 11 April 2020: Yes it's pretty perfect.
• 11 April 2020: I assumed the repetition of 'nor woman neither' was about Withnail's suppressed homosexuality. Anyway I'm glad they didn't kill him off in the film, it would have ruined it.
• 11 April 2020: Yeah it's putrid mate. Can't think what Wordsworth was banging on about.
• 11 April 2020: Are we criticising Johnson for watching Withnail now? I also watched Withnail when ill and found it fitted pretty well: grim, decaying landscapes and disgusting interiors leavened by glorious hysteria, anarchy, wit and charm. It's a pretty good film for a pandemic imo.
• 11 April 2020: RT @AnnaMTuckett: Matthew Parris reflexively using the phrase “low-skilled and unskilled workers” in The Times today is proof that unless t…
• 11 April 2020: Yesterday as I approached couple standing in the middle of the path, they split and went one either side.. rather than doing my usual inward tutting but outward smiling, I forced myself to politely suggest that they stand on the same side and they looked baffled.
• 11 April 2020: We had one job..
• 11 April 2020: Seems quite encouraging.. did you audition in the end?
• 11 April 2020: What was your Roxy club rejection letter like then?
• 10 April 2020: Wow!
• 10 April 2020: Good Plath poem for this particular Good Friday
• 10 April 2020: Lol we're screwed
• 10 April 2020: You too x
• 10 April 2020: Small suggestion - people standing on either side of (say) a 2 metre wide path to chat to each other, thereby forcing walkers to walk between them and be 1 metre away from 2 people simultaneously, could innovatively consider standing 2 metres apart on same side of path 😬
• 10 April 2020: It's Glen Esk. Slowly getting there, thank you (too slowly!).
• 10 April 2020: "Ten weeks later and there is no evidence that Stonewall have done anything to stop the redirection of these domains. For a company that receives between six and eight million pounds a year of funding - thirty percent of which is publicly funded it is astonishing"
• 10 April 2020: A brief insight into contemporary dating as a lesbian, in the original sense of a same-sex attracted female. (And when you complain about it, you get told by your queer overlords/overladies/overNBs that you're a bigot, so shut up).
• 9 April 2020: Yes!
• 8 April 2020: That's beautiful.
• 8 April 2020: Checks clocks...
• 8 April 2020: @Bryterlayter1 is lovely
• 7 April 2020: Guardian readers love to talk about microagressions but are blind to their own darlings' infractions.
• 7 April 2020: Yes, thanks. Going for walks and everything.
• 7 April 2020: It's a rollercoaster alright..
• 7 April 2020: And now for today's newspaper. On page 2, find out what Covid 19 does to the body and on exactly which day death is most likely to come. In the Lifestyle section, explore mindfulness techniques and the importance of relaxation.
• 7 April 2020: Where I come from, it's a close. Where I live, it's a twitten.
• 7 April 2020: It's a shame the papers (that I saw) just extracted the gruesome details because that's the least interesting thing about it.
• 7 April 2020: Duffy's new statement is harrowing but also so brave and full of wisdom. Really worth reading, as a powerful statement about trauma and regeneration. I admire her a lot.
• 6 April 2020: I'm so very sorry Gita. Heartbreaking.
• 6 April 2020: V glad you are better.
• 6 April 2020: Thanks!
• 6 April 2020: Karens, you do what you want, but I have a strong feeling you aren't going to come out of this piece well. Dunno why, it's just something in my water.
• 6 April 2020: Great gif game
• 6 April 2020: Excellent, thank you.
• 6 April 2020: I had that for a couple of days. Felt like a cat was sitting on my ribcage. It passed. The uncertainty is a killer. Hope you're feeling better now.
• 6 April 2020: I thought I was already following you - did you go somewhere?
• 6 April 2020: Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb 😬
• 6 April 2020: It's amazing isn't it.
• 6 April 2020: Haha. Obviously has form then. I need to send him my book.
• 6 April 2020: I just wish I'd read it. Joking obvs. (Or am I).
• 6 April 2020: He also said he wished he'd written Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
• 6 April 2020: Bit of a niche tweet but I did a double-take when I read this at the weekend: Scritti Politti and Christopher Norris mashup.
• 6 April 2020: If UK commentators spent as much time thinking about how to constructively improve our systems for the future, as they do recriminating, fingerwagging, eyerolling, and making political capital out of inevitable missteps in the dark, we'd be.. a very different sort of nation.
• 6 April 2020: How weird!
• 6 April 2020: They do. Why have you got your email address as your name? Am curious. (I did it accidentally the other day, as it happens).
• 6 April 2020: Thanks, that's kind and gratifying.
• 6 April 2020: That's a wonderful book. Love the tomboy in particular.
• 6 April 2020: Thank you - hope yours gets better.
• 6 April 2020: @SwipeWright is a sad loss to academia. I may be biased but I'd have thought people with demonstrable brains and backbone were the ones we wanted to keep.
• 6 April 2020: This is how it works btw.
• 6 April 2020: Sounds tough. x
• 6 April 2020: Hang in there, dear Hussy. Hope you're ok x
• 6 April 2020: Take care x
• 6 April 2020: Glad to have seen your work, generally - and this piece is one I know I'll come back to when I need it.
• 6 April 2020: Thank you. This moved me enormously.
• 6 April 2020: Academia's loss, Colin. I'm sure you'll be a success wherever you go next.
• 6 April 2020: Brooklyn 99; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Poirot; 30 Rock; Miss Marple (with Joan Hicks); Fawlty Towers. No tags though 😁
• 6 April 2020: Hang in there.. x
• 6 April 2020: @edwardlucas
• 5 April 2020: Lovely
• 4 April 2020: We've been watching it too. Preferred kids' order in this house: 2, 4, 3, 1. I think they must like it cos I find them rewatching it on their own.
• 3 April 2020: Fwiw I don't think you changed at all Jo. I think we all just got more hysterical.
• 3 April 2020: Glad you are being seen. Gall bladder stuff is the pits.
• 3 April 2020: Thanks D. Hope you and yours are chipper and thriving despite it all xx
• 3 April 2020: I've been doing that anyway to see if it has come back yet. A little known side effect of covid is having to extract actual coffee grounds from your nasal cavity.
• 3 April 2020: Thanks Mary- you too.
• 3 April 2020: My sense of smell/taste has half come back now, and though I know it's small in relative scheme of things, I'm so relieved - my main source of daily joy was missing for a while.
• 2 April 2020: Absolutely not a scooby, I'm afraid - my German is a distant memory. I'll RT.
• 2 April 2020: I'd like to pretend I did this in German but it would be a lie 😬
• 2 April 2020: Ooh I haven't got there yet. Sounds good.
• 2 April 2020: Have you got to the bit where she rescues a British bloke from ECT by hiding him in her shower, whilst on holiday with her toyboy in Antigua? 😁
• 2 April 2020: Mute for relentless bores, block for needling nasty fuckers who clearly want to get a rise.
• 2 April 2020: No, but I now will, thanks!
• 2 April 2020: This wasn't a subtweet.. just enthusiastic!
• 2 April 2020: I think the movie will be very fun. Particularly the feminist party where a woman takes all her clothes off, and starts masturbating with a dildo through a towel.
• 2 April 2020:
• 2 April 2020: Am reading Phyllis Chesler autobio & it's a hoot. TLDR: "I was at every feminist party in 70s. I knew every famous feminist. They all admired me and were my dear friends. Gloria Steinem came late, was try-hard. Many jealous women trashed me. I forgive them as they were oppressed"
• 1 April 2020: Thanks. And sorry x
• 1 April 2020: I thought the phrase referred originally to the blackhearted devil. If you think I somehow secretly knew it referred to race and used it anyway cos I don't give a toss, you're wrong. I'm sorry I caused offence to Allison, you, & anyone else reading. That's about all I can say.
• 1 April 2020: Always assumed it referred to black-hearted. And also assumed when people said it in 16th century they weren't referring to race. Certainly I didn't intend to cause offence by it, whatsoever. Will delete because I can't face the argument.
• 1 April 2020: 😂
• 1 April 2020: It's utilitarianism applied to a no-clean-hands-either-way situation. I'm not a utilitarian, but find it irritating how people who mentally seized control of the careering trolly to save the cancer-curer in 1st year philosophy are now performing shocked and appalled.
• 1 April 2020: Who can forget the seminal tabard and cravat combination? 😃
• 31 March 2020: Totally agree, love a bit of Poirot. I've also been enjoying the Ian Carmichael Peter Wimsey series, all on youtube free.
• 31 March 2020: Thanks. I'm just at the knackered stage. Don't think I've ever felt so tired.
• 31 March 2020: Chalmers I don't want to tag people as I'm too repressed but my 5 jobs: - tennis court attendant - supermarket assistant at Gateway - chambermaid in a hunting lodge - backroom clerk at Dixons in Dundee - carehome worker
• 31 March 2020: Taking news apps off is good idea. This place can be terrible too because you've no control over the information (or hysteria) you're exposed to. Youtube has a lot of great old detective series, and the BBC Sounds app has some lovely books and stories. Glad you're feeling better.
• 29 March 2020: I think pretty much all parties in this endless, painful, feud are acting badly and I am totally sick of being dragged in inadvertently. I have nothing to do with it and it's none of my business. Just leave me out of it.
• 29 March 2020: This is my only intervention in this grotesque shitshow. I have absolutely no idea who wrote this or what they're smoking. I literally don't know anyone who would talk like this! Certainly don't correspond. Nor in million years would I agree to transactionally "tear anyone apart'
• 29 March 2020: That's lovely, thank you
• 29 March 2020: Only in sense that Dan's subtweets, about someone different, have formed brilliant projection screen for others like Vigo, with parallel axes to grind, to get involved.
• 29 March 2020: Sounds about right.
• 29 March 2020: Thanks SF, your payment is in the post
• 29 March 2020:
• 29 March 2020: Why do you defensively assume that? I've no time for people who always assume that poisonous TRA tweets are representative, but equally always assume that apparently poisonous GCs are false flags. That's cognitive dissonance. As it happens I now know who it is.
• 29 March 2020: @bindelj @Astro_Terf @TransGendrBendr We may have made many mistakes, JB, but at least we can console ourselves we've never had to promote our own work by sock puppet.
• 29 March 2020: Not sure how "Linda" has "witnessed" anything, since I only heard of her this week. But that very month Vigo was sending me furious deranged emails. Am sure it's just a coincidence.
• 29 March 2020: Re my recent tweet - gentle readers, there's been a plot twist. It looks like @Astro_TERF and @TransGendrBendr are the same poisonous person. Hates: me and @Bindelj. Loves: promoting Julian Vigo's work. Sometimes on same day, even. Am sure it's just a coincidence.
• 29 March 2020: They really are
• 29 March 2020: Thank you v much KH, I really appreciate this. I don't think i'm half as good as you say btw! But maybe not as black as sometimes painted either. I know you get constant sniping too and I'm sorry for it. xx
• 29 March 2020: I've often thought so
• 29 March 2020: Isn't it. Perhaps by calm online discussion, she means sending long emails telling the recipient how much she dislikes them.
• 29 March 2020: She looks quite relaxed about it, I'd be livid
• 29 March 2020: Fraid so. Unfortunately, since my ruse has been exposed by these geniuses, I've had to let them go back to their day job in Billy Elliot, hardly seemed worth the fees. Gotta admit they were good though.
• 29 March 2020: your local looks better than my local
• 29 March 2020: Because about year ago, I tweeted critically about Posie Parker and so did few others. Personally I tweeted twice in a row. I've never mentioned PP since. But people like Julian (and there are a good few of them) cannot let it go. Is obsessive. She writes articles about it! 😂
• 29 March 2020: I've blocked. Wherever there's bunch of discontents sitting crouched in their corner of twitter, whispering, insinuating & subtweeting away for months, winding each other up with their various obsessions, best strategy for rapidly diminishing personal sanity is to block.
• 29 March 2020: That's so strange, because it sounds quite like a yet more unhinged, disinhibited version of the sort of thing Julian Vigo would say in one of her many interminable articles about "elitist" academic "leaders". Surely it can't be though.
• 29 March 2020: Surely even her poisonous hatred of me wouldn't push her to stoop this low. Because that would be disgusting.
• 29 March 2020: Please stop tagging me like this Clare.
• 29 March 2020: Ah yes, the old 'you must be the bigger person" routine. Am familiar.
• 29 March 2020: We are on the mend now, thanks.
• 29 March 2020: Redoing tweet to avoid lectures. These nasty bastards are self-described gender-critical feminists, not TRAs. If anyone thinks by definition G-C feminists are immune from criticism and good people, this is useful reminder. Being GC doesn't give you a free moral highground pass.
• 29 March 2020: Well I would say, not much in the true sense. But these are self-described proud "feminists".
• 28 March 2020:
• 28 March 2020: tagging me, getting me involved in your fights, treating me like saint, treating me like villain, using me to fuel your grudges, and any other projection you feel like throwing at me. I'm can't take the pressure. Literally. Find someone else to do it. It's been blast but I'm out.
• 28 March 2020: case - I officially resign. From now on I choose freedom. I speak only for myself. I disagree with about three quarters of what passes for feminist shibboleths anyway. And some gender critical feminists are total arseholes (Private opinion TM). So: please feel free to stop/
• 28 March 2020: 2) Something else I also need to say. I see grumbling about academics who think they're "leaders". I could say I don't think I'm leader (absolutely don't, there are much better ones about & I never applied anyway) but this won't satisfy those who think I do. Never mind. In any/
• 28 March 2020: speaking at feminist events in future. I've done my bit, met some brilliant people & am nothing but grateful. Happy to step back to let others in. Still writing book & will, as is normal for twitter, promote my writing in future plus do academic talks. Am academic and is my job.
• 28 March 2020: This week I've had lots of time to think about stuff. 1) I'm increasingly hearing that academics are disproportionately dominating feminist events currently, drowning out other voices. I think that's fair point. I don't want to contribute to it. So have decided to bow out of/
• 28 March 2020: When the state (rightly) forces women & children to stay home, it incurs extra responsibility to protect those in danger at home from things far worse than covid. Domestic violence services have been chronically underfunded for years. Please consider signing.
• 28 March 2020: Wow! I know what you mean. I've listened to it thousands of times.
• 28 March 2020: That's great too. I think it's definitely in my top three DM songs.
• 28 March 2020: Terrible video, admittedly
• 28 March 2020: Brilliant song, in a pandemic or not
• 28 March 2020: We are on the mend, thank you Dan.
• 26 March 2020: That's very you Jayne
• 26 March 2020: I know I know
• 26 March 2020: It's very good comfort reading. The Radio 4 dramatisation is brilliant too. Hours fly by.
• 26 March 2020: Thanks, I'll check that out. For your professional information, I have no sense of smell or taste now - like, none. Not even sweet! Only texture. Is bonkers.
• 26 March 2020: Yes don't worry, I knew what you meant, I was just teasing. Thank you.
• 25 March 2020: I'll try to read that in a positive light..
• 25 March 2020: Thanks
• 25 March 2020: they'll never take my qualifications...
• 25 March 2020: Hope you feel better soon.
• 25 March 2020: Sorry to hear.
• 25 March 2020: Here's hoping
• 25 March 2020: Well obviously I don't know. But my version of self-scanning last week was to think my lungs felt "burning" and then read mumsnet threads in which apparently half the country felt the same. And from what I have read it starts in the nose, so couldn't have been in my lungs then.
• 25 March 2020: I've never knowingly not wanted a hot toddy but my desire for alcohol is completely nil right now - clearly another sign I'm gravely ill..
• 25 March 2020: Nice, thank you
• 25 March 2020: You're right! More things to live for...
• 25 March 2020: Makes more sense than a lot of my feed tbh
• 25 March 2020: Thank you. Doing ok for the moment. Stay well! Let's have a party when this is over xx
• 25 March 2020: Thanks -at this time I'm accepting American love, tho first converting it into more manageable British currency.
• 25 March 2020: DENIED :D
• 25 March 2020: Thank you. Hope you are feeling better too xx
• 25 March 2020: Lol
• 25 March 2020: Yes, several! Hope you're keeping well xx
• 25 March 2020: No test in Uk, see my last tweet.
• 25 March 2020: Coffins Clare? Really? Please don't tag me again.
• 25 March 2020: Sorry - mean to say - unlike any cold I usually have. Not making any general medical claim.
• 25 March 2020: Thanks for kind wishes, they're a tonic to read. To those asking, I haven't had test - Uk doesn't test - so is educated guess. Is really unlike any cold. Fever intermittent, sore lungs, pains in arms and legs, strange cough, no sense of smell etc. Son has it too. Doing ok tho.
• 24 March 2020: /since 2006 but maybe that's just me. G) Am either unable to finish my food or absolutely starving. H) Whatsapp is great. Cats are great. I) We're literally all in this together and there's some comfort in that. You're not on your own (even if you are actually on your own).
• 24 March 2020: E) Unsolicited medical advice, even from very kind and well-meaning people, is absolutely not my thing and please stop. F) They/say it puts everything in perspective. Personally I've spent a lot of time (when not staring slack-jawed into space) mentally rehearsing grudge held/
• 24 March 2020: /nothing at all. C) Listening to podcasts with a fever at 2am when world is asleep has its own pleasure. Personally it's taking me back to childhood when I had ear infections and used to lie awake listening to the World Service - good times, good times. D) People are very kind
• 24 March 2020: /you think you have it; just trying to reassure perpetual self-scanners that feelings don't always translate to reality). B) When you do actually get it, it's actually a lot harder to be anxious because you're too busy staring out of the window with your mouth open thinking of/
• 24 March 2020: I've got #covid19 at moment and here's my experience so far fwiw. A) Last week was sure I had it, minutely scanning for tiny bodily signs, and this week am feverish, coughing, sore chest, can't smell, etc. and realise before it was just wasted anxiety. (Am not saying go out if/
• 23 March 2020: Yeah, I don't mean nudge would help at this stage, I just mean they clearly sign up in theory to idea that relying on unmanipulated individual conscious decisions aren't necessarily optimal.
• 23 March 2020: 😆
• 23 March 2020: I just cannot understand how government with nudge unit- a NUDGE UNIT for Gawds sake - seems to be leaving management of covid so heavily up to individual conscious decisions. People will stockpile, once others start. They'll go to parks, if others do. Not hard to work out.
• 23 March 2020: My mum, probably.
• 23 March 2020:
• 23 March 2020: Fraid not - Jah Jah Binks all the way.
• 23 March 2020: This is the very shortened version but it's nice and calming. I have read the whole thing though, it's so good.
• 23 March 2020: Thanks Christos! Hope you stay well too.
• 23 March 2020: I know that getting into weeds with Covid medical theories online is coping mechanism for many but it's honestly not my thing. My preferred strategy is: take twitter off your phone, stop reading news for a bit, and get lost in things like this
• 23 March 2020: Thankyou very much for the good wishes, & sending carefully disinfected elbow bumps of solidarity to those with it in the hoose right now. Patient zero had much better night. I've got it too now but am managing well so far apart from all the Star Wars I'm being forced to watch 😬
• 23 March 2020: That's lovely Linda, thank you. I thought I had two children but am sure you know best. Am relieved to find they were all figment of my narcissistic mind, will cut down on a lot of work and worry in future xx
• 23 March 2020: LOL! I'm nicking that.
• 23 March 2020: Am sure they loved them! My mum has been writing excellent coronavirus poems (and she reads my twitter feed), you could ask her to send you one. Love to you and all of the crew xx
• 23 March 2020: Hang in there T. Love to you all. xx
• 22 March 2020: Hope you stay well Debora - best wishes x
• 22 March 2020: Oh dear, did I get the wrong wording in my anxious tweet about a sick child? Headache, aching limbs, sore eyes, fever, cough. What the hell is wrong with you?
• 22 March 2020: Best wishes to you and yours. Here too, the least anxious one is the actual patient!
• 22 March 2020: It seems we very possibly have Covid 19 as houseguest chez Stock (one child so far, all the classic symptoms). Shits all got a bit real. So far everyone's basically ok, but I don't think I've ever wiped as many surfaces in my life.
• 22 March 2020: 🙀
• 21 March 2020: I find when you defrost and refreeze it about 18 times, that does happen😆
• 21 March 2020: I know. Sad!
• 21 March 2020: Ah, same old same old then
• 21 March 2020: I'm forcing the family to be frugal and clear the freezer. I just made my partner eat two defrosted potato waffles from 2015. She said they tasted of packing material. She still seems to be alive, which is good.
• 21 March 2020: What fresh hell is this?
• 21 March 2020: Or alternatively - if WTH you could WWB. (I'm not sure at this point if I'll ever see a structured fabric again.)
• 21 March 2020: Brilliant thank you 👍
• 21 March 2020: @marstrina do you (or anyone else) have a link to some piece about Tutenkhamun being trans? I seem to remember you taking it down - did I dream this?
• 21 March 2020: This I heartily agree with. It's a classic. And she's a tragic loss. They Don't Know is brilliant (as is her lesser known but transformational contribution to Hallelujah by the Happy Mondays)
• 21 March 2020: 😊
• 21 March 2020: It's lovely how people keep tagging me into convos with Billy Bragg and telling him to follow me, like I might be one to change his mind, but a) he follows 25 people in total so guessing he won't; and b) I've always found him insufferable bore. So I don't mind if you stop 😀
• 21 March 2020: Genius 😆
• 20 March 2020: It's really wonderful
• 20 March 2020: Just watched @BerrymanHannah's Miss World documentary Beauty Queens and Bedlam on Iplayer & it's really fantastic: jawdropping, warm, funny, sad, dramatic, complex - and the women, whether Queens or feminist protestors or chaperones, all shine. Don't miss
• 20 March 2020: RT @bindelj: My gorgeous and formidable mother-in-law: Enid Wistrich obituary https://t.co/Wr9okelqyH
• 20 March 2020: I'll try anything once
• 20 March 2020: Kids' school just sent email saying as I'm essential worker I can send them in, and I'm now worried they think I'm a real doctor.
• 20 March 2020: Who had no particular owner
• 20 March 2020: That Karen and Susan thing is so snide. Imagine congratulating yourself for having parents who gave you an edgy name. (Also, wait till history catches up and the nursing homes are full of people called Quill and Dylan).
• 20 March 2020: It's a tragedy of the commons thing, isn't it? If I knew everyone else was going to use x resource moderately, I would too. But I know they won't, so it's in my rational interests not to either.
• 20 March 2020: Completely agree with this. I hate "they all..." narratives, & I hate habit of taking some mad anonymous avatar in Iowa as indicative of entire group. For me the fight is about legal structures and powerful institutions, and ideologies that make no sense. Not ordinary people.
• 20 March 2020: Thanks, I'll have a watch. Who is he?
• 20 March 2020: Excellent!
• 19 March 2020: Get well soon James.
• 19 March 2020: Some people are triggered by idea they might espouse a doctrine or an ideology, rather than reading facts raw from the world, straight from eyeballs to brain, infallible and God-like. Wait til he hears what I'm writing a book about.
• 19 March 2020: I don't care whether it's me or someone else but if that's true, and you compare that fact to the dozens and dozens of pro-gender-identity, pro-self-ID, pro-affirmation-model comment pieces published in last few years, that really is shocking.
• 19 March 2020: It was suggested to me a while ago by Guardian writer that Guardian has never had comment piece about lesbian concerns, specifically, about gender identity doctrine. So I pitched to Editor of Comment is Free via address given to me. Can you guess what happened next.....?(Nothing)
• 19 March 2020: Thanks!
• 19 March 2020: Sorry Suzanne. I know what a kick in the teeth it can feel to see people you actually thought you liked joining in with this stuff. I think signers of letters are usually divided up into the pressurisers and the pressured. I actually have more contempt for the pressured.
• 18 March 2020: Very sorry to hear this.
• 18 March 2020: Wow congrats!! That was fast.
• 18 March 2020: One of the upsides of self-isolation is that I get more time to work on this book. Material Girls - out next year.
• 18 March 2020: I think you should send it in for analysis by @ThisJungianLife, they can wring some excitement out of it if anyone can.
• 18 March 2020: Gwyneth Paltrow dies early, what more do you need?
• 18 March 2020: Actually I think it's kind of perfect. Then again, I cheer myself up by watching The World At War. I do like an external manifestation of my inner turmoil.
• 18 March 2020: Nice one
• 13 March 2020:
• 13 March 2020:
• 13 March 2020:
• 13 March 2020: Occasional thread of life-enriching alternatives to aimlessly, anxiously scrolling
• 13 March 2020: Thank you
• 13 March 2020: A fantastic barnstormer of a speech!
• 12 March 2020: With great regret I've decided to pull out of the Women Talk Back event in Bristol tomorrow. Someone close to me is vulnerable to lung illness and I don't want to risk travelling/being in a group/hotel etc. I'm very sorry to the organisers, and all the women I'll miss talking to.
• 12 March 2020: Very sorry to hear about your mum Jo x
• 12 March 2020: You're all very sweetly taking this seriously 😊😁
• 12 March 2020: Am trying to think of good things about pandemic. So far I've got: - people who are pan will have to rebrand. - masturbation will be known as self-isolate and chill. That's it. What else?
• 12 March 2020: “My dear boy,” replied Olivier, “why don't you just try acting?
• 12 March 2020: Damn, no case-knife. Oh well.
• 12 March 2020: I've just donated to the fund for this Judicial Review. Please consider doing so if you can. The shockingly low rates of rape convictions needs looking at, and the CPS are fighting all the way.
• 12 March 2020: PS Ballsy is a metaphor
• 12 March 2020: Brilliant @suzanne_moore. Most of time I try to be all balanced and reasonable and non-partisan and all that shit, but every now and again I feel need to point out our side has all the clever, funny, ballsy people who are most fun at parties.
• 12 March 2020: She's actually a philosopher not a politician - but yes I agree!
• 12 March 2020: Redone as I got the wrong Parliament the first time
• 12 March 2020: Holly Lawford-Smith’s speech in the Australian Victorian parliament today, about why gender identity should not be a legally protected characteristic
• 12 March 2020: Ah will redo
• 11 March 2020: I thought so
• 11 March 2020: Thanks.
• 10 March 2020: Thinking of you and yours Andy. Best wishes.
• 10 March 2020: Wha...wha.. huh.. wha..??
• 10 March 2020: Oh wow Lauren 😍
• 10 March 2020: SHE WON! By a stonking majority too. Very good news for academic freedom to discuss gender and sex. Look @DrJoGrady, seems your repressive and intolerant stance on this is at odds with that of members in London and the East (thank God).
• 10 March 2020: Interesting. There's a lot of stuff on whether "water" and "H2O" co-refer, though never in this context I don't think.
• 10 March 2020: (Am sure this joke has already been made but what the hell)
• 10 March 2020: Maybe someone said the dress code was rainbows, and he got it slightly wrong
• 10 March 2020: Have uploaded new improved version of this paper in response to some comments - same link as before. Thanks to all who sent them.
• 10 March 2020: RT @wwwritingclub: Hear @tiffanyjenkins make an uninterrupted argument for free expression for 'J'accuse on BBC Sounds' Front Row. Artists…
• 10 March 2020: @SAshworthHayes After I complained about masked activists in way at WPUK meeting last year, got affronted email saying they were masked because neurodiverse & find sensory stimulation difficult (yeah, with all the screaming, flashing lights, throwing water & megaphones, I can totally relate..)
• 10 March 2020: I like this a lot. By the scarily erudite and very lovely @DonovanCleckley
• 10 March 2020: "We could instead refer to “gender dysphoria” as sex stereotype disorientation (SSD). This .. could potentially clarify more than obscure the relation of alienation between self and society central to the engendering of the psychosocial condition itself."
• 10 March 2020: Here's my attempt to make sense of this stuff which you're also welcome to read if it interests you. I'm told that many trans people have read it and survived the experience. Some even agree with me though still proudly and gloriously trans afterwards
• 10 March 2020: Finally, I have solidarity with all gender-non-conforming people and especially the homosexual ones because the world isn't built for them. I also have sympathy for younger people believing what they've read on sex and gender (which is mostly terrible and makes no sense).
• 10 March 2020: Not sure about "inflammation" but if you're going to compare smoke bombs versus this speech and still conclude it was the speech that was inflammatory, I think you'd benefit (as we all would) from looking up "cognitive dissonance". It's natural to do but confuses things.
• 10 March 2020: Misgendering may be hurtful but I'm sorry, the words aren't yours to control (or mine). You can say what you like about e.g. me or speakers last night; we can say what we like about you. Best defence against this is resilience, not futilely attempting to control speech of others.
• 10 March 2020: "Gender essentialism" can mean different things. Saying woman=female doesn't mean individual women are defined by biology (that's claim about individual essences). And it doesn't mean "determininism" - that's something empirical (probably false), doesn't come out of a definition
• 10 March 2020: 😂 Only at weekends.
• 10 March 2020: I just hope this is what philosophers call restricted quantification.
• 10 March 2020: Christ, are we in the Matrix after all?
• 10 March 2020: Mwah, love you too honey xxx
• 10 March 2020: Talking of history, read this - I dare you & your followers to. Speech from tonight. Then if you’re feeling especially brave check out some @Womans_Place_UK videos. What harm can it do? You can even do it in secret. Challenge your thinking.
• 9 March 2020: Everyone who walks through this is brave but a special shout out to @bindelj who was attacked in Edinburgh, blocked on staircase by masked protestors in Bristol, and still shows up knowing she’s enemy no 1👑 It takes a special kind of guts and she has it in ♠️♠️♠️
• 9 March 2020: Very sorry to hear this, Jeremy.
• 9 March 2020: It’s true. I can’t deny it.
• 9 March 2020: Ha!
• 9 March 2020: Wish I was there! Have a wonderful time #expelme
• 9 March 2020: No I have not. Read back.
• 9 March 2020: Cheers!
• 9 March 2020: It's about diversity - they're all wearing the same outfit (and are young). It's about feminism (allegedly) -they're all wearing highly sexualised, teeny outfits. I agree it's not a literal read-off, but still think the implied symbolism matters.
• 9 March 2020: I got told the other day that friend of friend had expressed surprise, on watching one of my videos, that I didn't seem as evil as he had expected. I think it's because we take things on trust all the time, for efficiency, and can't get out of habit, even where falsehood is high.
• 9 March 2020: I agree with you about sides. As for "elitist", that accusation usually comes from people who want attention and can't get what they want. No-one is owed my attention but my family and friends. It's twitter not a public service🙂
• 9 March 2020: Funnily enough, when I criticised academics earlier for implying there are things you aren't allowed to say, I meant in journals. I didn't mean not being clapped for calling someone an "epic narc" because she had annoyed a friend of yours. Happy to block; life too short for this.
• 9 March 2020: This is great. Any chance those at other Universities could do something similar?
• 9 March 2020: I knew I ran the risk of looking like a cold-hearted bitch when I posted this! I do get it.
• 9 March 2020: Absolutely no idea, mate, sorry.
• 9 March 2020: Not sure. Quite possibly! It's a bit jarring given the Telegraph's archetypal customer is a retired red-faced Colonel from Hampshire.
• 9 March 2020: I do get it. Just think it's incongruous. Also not a good idea generally.
• 9 March 2020: Ha I was just getting to that punchline!
• 9 March 2020: Safe spaces at the Telegraph, ffs.
• 9 March 2020: Don't confuse "one side is keeping a stoic silence in face of constant drip of partial information, hinting, drama, and self-justification" with "I know all relevant facts". If we're trading cod-psychological diagnoses, I'd say you are projecting wildly on basis of v limited fact
• 9 March 2020: The only accusation is that she believed what she was told by a troll. The very same troll who LM was also taken in by!? Hypocricy much? She wrote private letter to solicitor defending herself; LM published it. The screenshots accompanying weren't hers but LM implied they were.
• 9 March 2020: I'm glad respect for HLS is acknowledged by you, Laeti. I wish there had been more of that from Louise supporters e.g. when HLS was being called an "epic narc" or being slandered by many on other platforms after Louise posted her version there. It's primary-school level tribalism
• 9 March 2020: I rarely comment as don't want to exacerbate what should never have been online. And that's what most responsible people do. But I've seen HLS unfairly demolished by those with no idea about complete story. There are two sides to every story, tho Twitter isn't place for any of it
• 9 March 2020: There are plenty of people who loyally piled straight into that particular escalation fairly viciously on behalf of Louise. (Also, just as a matter of epistemic caution, I don't know how you could guarantee that about anyone).
• 9 March 2020: There's petty, grudgeful dickheads on both sides.
• 9 March 2020: People don't get banned for talking to him. They get banned because vindictive arseholes report them.
• 9 March 2020: Why would that be "a reason"? Do you mean: that justifies someone reporting her to twitter?
• 9 March 2020: Whoever went out of their way to get Holly Lawford-Smith's Twitter account suspended is risible. She was suspended the first time for no good reason, has been back for a while in a low-key way, and now someone with a grudge has presumably decided to settle a score. Petty as hell.
• 9 March 2020: I'm sure you've thought about it, and I'm no data specialist, but I'd have thought doing it this way both exposes- which is good - and reinforces- which is bad - the tendencies of academics to follow only those whose political views fit with theirs.
• 9 March 2020: Thanks
• 8 March 2020: That account does all sorts of rankings.
• 8 March 2020: Both very good points
• 8 March 2020: Correction: I wouldn’t be 2nd, Kate Manne and I would both be smashed by the huge follower count of @CHSommers. Am interested - why do you do it this way @TrueSciPhi? Is it to keep the nasty women out of sight, so the nice anodyne bubble isn’t burst, or what?
• 8 March 2020: (There are honourable exceptions of course, who know who they are - and I’m so grateful to em.)
• 8 March 2020: Despite many academics’ attempts to put them off, neverthless they persisted.
• 8 March 2020: Thank you for your immense work too.
• 8 March 2020: You are very welcome; delighted to know you.
• 8 March 2020: I don’t mind this crap anymore, tho it used to sting, because I realised that I now have much more productive conversations about sex and gender than I ever could with the academics - who are either ideologically captured or terrified to death of any public association with me.
• 8 March 2020: If you want further insight into the tribalism and insularity of academic philosophy, check out this list of “highly followed women philosophers”. I’d be number 2 (by a mile) if it was based on actual follower numbers. But it’s based on “peer followers” so I’m.. 54th.
• 8 March 2020: Me three! 😁
• 8 March 2020: It’s a bunch of old Tumblr cliches that don’t get any more convincing in the retelling. Lazy and weak. Dominant figures in the sub-field like Saul don’t seem to understand that they can no longer grandstand or morally browbeat their opponents into submission. Things have changed.
• 8 March 2020: It’s not just a TERF war, it’s a turf war. They’ve had the discussion sewn up for years and they can’t believe outsiders have the nerve to question what they all mutually decided could not be questioned. Well guess what - this is philosophy 😄
• 8 March 2020: The problem with academic feminist philosophy is that it’s run like a fiefdom, not like a normal open philosophical discussion. There are things you are just not allowed to say, and people you are not allowed to offend. Quality suffers, and to rest of world, it shows.
• 8 March 2020: Certainly is round at mine.
• 8 March 2020: Wearing a bustier and miniskirt and femme hair doesn’t make you a woman, you eejits.
• 8 March 2020:
• 8 March 2020: Now on Iplayer, from 9.46 on. Brief appearance from me, live discussion with Nicola Williams from @fairplaywomen and Stephen Whittle. Excellent opening segment from @JennyKumah; really can’t get over the relief of now seeing balanced BBC reporting in this area, as it should be.
• 8 March 2020: That would be for the “amazing friends” list 😍
• 8 March 2020: (Also, someone should do a Steely Dan tribute band called Steely Gran)
• 8 March 2020: On , too many inspiring fighters to thank, so I’ll focus on some women closer to home who I love v much and who each forge ahead in their own way: my much missed steely gran Mary; mum Jane, who reads my “twittering” avidly; inspirational sis @sarahjestock; & my gorgeous L
• 8 March 2020: Thank you so much, Francis. (If I could tell my 20 year old self about this, her brain would explode! 🤩)
• 8 March 2020: If you’re in the Southwest, the BBC Sunday Politics Southwest show is (I think) going to do an item on self ID and impact on women’s rights. Show starts in 5 mins.
• 8 March 2020: Thank you India
• 7 March 2020: Damn!
• 7 March 2020: Looking forward to being with these amazing women in Bristol next Friday
• 7 March 2020: Ex Machina.
• 7 March 2020: Heroine. You are, that’s not a suggestion xx
• 7 March 2020: But what’s in the letter? Who’s it written by? What are they trying to do to a free press? Still, glad you got your point in.
• 7 March 2020: Just brilliant. Gives me hope!
• 7 March 2020: 😂
• 7 March 2020: Of course you don’t agree with all my views. It would be an incredible coincidence if you did. But the fact we have to keep prefixing defences of free speech with that sort of disclaimer shows how fraught it all is.
• 7 March 2020: How?
• 7 March 2020: Wow that’s brilliant! I had no idea. Has put massive grin on my face. Thank you for all you do too.
• 7 March 2020: “Utterly wonderful”...😳 When fascism goes luvvie.
• 7 March 2020: And I won't be here for inevitable "he did, oh no he didn't" stuff. Your missing of the point and getting distracted into "he did, oh no he didn't" is the problem. Point is: what publishing is for, what relation it should have to current vagaries of public opinion.
• 7 March 2020: Feminists celebrating book pulping caused by staff walkout aren't doing themselves any favours for future. It's v bad precedent. (There's also no court conviction. Redemption narratives by convicted criminals get published all the time). This isn't wise, just, or brave decision
• 7 March 2020: Once again - academics who try to shut down discussion of this are in breach of their fundamental responsibilities as academics.
• 7 March 2020: See also: data-gathering or data-monitoring services who now interpret “sex” as “gender identity” (with obvious consequences for corruption of information): - the Office of National Statistics (in the 2021 Census no less) - Athena Swan.
• 7 March 2020: I don’t want them fired either tho I do think they should probably reflect about what their job is supposed to be, and whether they’re cut out for it, or whether they wouldn’t be better off working for Pink News or some Russian propaganda machine.
• 7 March 2020: Not being a proto-fascist, unlike many of my critics I’m not into taking names, but if I was policymaker or SPAD, I’d be having serious look at those academics who signed Guardian letter against Suzanne Moore, and mentally crossing them off as dangerously unserious poseurs.
• 7 March 2020: Same goes for discussion of single-sex spaces. If you’re proposing to radically alter the social norms around entry to spaces where women get undressed, and as an academic you don’t even think that should be critically discussed, you’re a joke and a disgrace.
• 7 March 2020: When the charges are as serious as this - an unexplained 700% rise & life-changing medical consequences -then academics saying “No debate! No platform!” show themselves to be reckless. They should be left out of policy-making as obviously unfit for it. (See also: academic life).
• 7 March 2020: Very sorry to hear this @EPoe187
• 6 March 2020:
• 6 March 2020: Isn't that a song by Charles Aznavour?
• 6 March 2020: I know, it's a nightmare!
• 6 March 2020: Er.. yes. But that doesn't seem to matter to official data collectors in the UK these days.
• 6 March 2020: I am bothered about both. The academics give this stuff a veneer of credibility for policy-makers without doing any serious analysis of the ideas; referee each other's grant applications; and slag off/ try to ostracise critics instead of actually using arguments.
• 6 March 2020: Slow handcap for the academic feminist theorists who painted us all into this corner whilst saying it was for our own good; and now prefer to no-platform their critics rather than face the embarrassment of having their crimes against philosophy and women pointed out.
• 6 March 2020: Christ, I've just looked it up and seen that it was directed by Jarman. Now praying "one of the crew" wasn't Jarman.
• 6 March 2020: I was once in KX with my mum when Pet Shop Boys were filming Rent with Margi Clarke. Chris Lowe and her were standing about looking glam. I was obsessed with PSB so my mum marched up to one of crew and asked where Neil Tennant was while I died of shame. (Your story is better).
• 6 March 2020: Thank you Lee. You’ve inspired me for 25 years!
• 6 March 2020: Why not do both?
• 6 March 2020: Signed!
• 5 March 2020: Imagined witchiness is contagious. Worse than imagined itchiness in fact. Particularly affects those without spines.
• 5 March 2020: Thank you so much, Joanna. You're a proper inspiration and I wish the House of Commons had more like you.
• 5 March 2020: Trans activist feminism 101: Go for the females first, whilst pretending you don't know what a female is.
• 5 March 2020: Happy birthday!
• 4 March 2020: Gross
• 4 March 2020: I know, I'm annoying!
• 4 March 2020: Also - like feminism, gender-critical feminism is pretty ill-defined. Sometimes just means belief in biological sex. It's totally conceivable that someone "gender-critical" wrote that, unless we're veering into equating political position with purity test.(Just keeping us real..)
• 4 March 2020: Happy birthday!🍷xx
• 4 March 2020: I can't read Foster's tweet because she uses blocker (never interacted) but I get gist. Generally - and crucially, including when gender-critical people do it - equation of extreme individual response with whole movement is bad idea, on both sides. Bad actors & bots everywhere.
• 4 March 2020: I don’t. I meant individual version of fulfilment. Touched a nerve obvs.
• 4 March 2020: I repeat: fuck off.
• 4 March 2020: Happy birthday Philip! x
• 4 March 2020: I tweeted twice. Over a year ago. Never since. Vastly outweighed by number of critical tweets back in my direction since. How many references now? How many articles by Vigo? How much bitching below line? Bet it feels great to vent that spite and pretend it's this. Just fuck off.
• 4 March 2020: That is, stuff I suppose you might file under "freedom", even if you won't file it under "equality".
• 4 March 2020: Well since you ask, some want: financial security of their own especially in case of later split; that subsequent life choices aren't determined by being smaller/ non-wage earner thus expected to give way e.g. in location moves; to experience their own version of fulfilment etc.
• 4 March 2020: Cracking speech from @JoanMcAlpine in the Scottish Parliament defending women's right to organise in the cause of sex-based rights and explaining exactly why.
• 4 March 2020: Ok I admit, I did some light alteration.
• 3 March 2020: Thank you Joan!
• 3 March 2020: It’s a dilemma alright.
• 3 March 2020: “The worker confirmed to HuffPost UK she had handed in her notice a few weeks earlier, but chose to speak out in the busy news meeting on Tuesday over what she called “the straw that alerted the camel to maximum possible publicity"
• 3 March 2020: Thanks to you too, Jenni.
• 3 March 2020: That always bugs me. As if a newspaper is just a very inconsistent person who can never remember what it last wrote.
• 3 March 2020: Sex is irrelevant but they ALWAYS know who to report.
• 3 March 2020: No I wouldn’t agree.
• 3 March 2020: Classically selfless reaction.
• 3 March 2020: You seem quite easily distressed by an idea.
• 3 March 2020: Let's hope a braver publishing house stepped forward #fingerscrossed (or maybe just a commercially savvier one, who properly understand how huge the public interest is here)
• 3 March 2020: "free speech is a bourgeois occupation" says person intent on liberalising extreme pornography.
• 3 March 2020: Yes that was my point.
• 3 March 2020: In words of someone in know to me just now "the guardian is total chaos". A free press requires free reporting by the left as well as the right, so let's help @guardian do right thing by writing in support/ buying today. #supportsuzanne
• 3 March 2020: Seconded.
• 3 March 2020: Occasionally I do some Philosophy :D
• 3 March 2020: The problem with evaluative thick concepts - as David Hume knew in Of the Standard of Taste - is that everyone can agree they are good, but disagree about how to apply them. In institutions it's then a race to the most performative, shallow version of e.g. "kindness" available.
• 3 March 2020: In @Policy_Exchange report, @epkaufm does empirical research showing students tend to be less supportive of controversial speech after being exposed to such messages (versus being exposed to texts supporting pursuit of truth). (Seen this @JoWolffBSG?)
• 3 March 2020: Yes. Also bolstered by Universities publicly espousing vague value statements as branding exercises, which emphasis emotional safety over truth. Sends its own stifling message (which moreover is excessively heard by women not men given programming). Here are my institution's:
• 3 March 2020: You seem to have missed the point about freely expressed opinions.
• 3 March 2020: Like minds appoint like minds. People learn to self-censor quickly for self-interest. When they don't, they are socially ostracised in lots of small ways. Sometimes big ones. Social media and the braying chorus of "they're a bigot!" from colleagues doesn't help.
• 3 March 2020: Thank you
• 3 March 2020: Please RT
• 3 March 2020: .@guardian has terrible biased record on trans activism because of a commercial bottom line: fear of losing readers & advertisers. So: even if you have avoided it for ages - let's #supportSuzanne #buyaGrauntoday Let's send @KathViner and the publishers a message.
• 3 March 2020: I don't know, I didn't write it! Seems like good points though.
• 3 March 2020: Thanks JCJ. This myopia puts Universities as a whole on one particular side of culture wars, when actually they need all sides to be having robust discussions on equal terms inside the house, for the public good (and for own good, since Unis are funded by public one way or other)
• 3 March 2020: Ditto!
• 3 March 2020: Sorry - to be clear - I'm talking about "the majority" in Universities. Most academics are LW. They are politically out of whack with the majority in this country but it doesn't stop them acting like certain views are beyond the moral pale, and enacting that in their own fiefdom.
• 3 March 2020: Yet the Left should have just as much interest in free speech as the Right. More so, in fact, given its appalling past and current record in this area.
• 3 March 2020: academics go out of their way to say worries about free speech are right-wing plot. That's in itself a chilling effect too. It says to people like me speaking out about it -" you are a lackey of the Right". It encourages yet more mockery and smearing. It looks defensive.
• 3 March 2020: Now imagine that there are University policies in place to stop you saying at least one of those things, even though the speech is lawful. You don't have to imagine it - there already are (i.e. trans policies). That's chilling effect too. In this context, I really don't know why
• 3 March 2020: If you recoil from thought, even though you know you could recant - that's the chilling effect. Now imagine arguing for those views in article and getting referee after referee dismissing on grounds of transphobia or racism. That's the chilling effect too. Same with grant apps.
• 3 March 2020: An experiment for academics huffing that this is all nonsense: Go into School meeting and sincerely say to big group "trans women are male-bodied and shouldn't be in female changing rooms" or "I voted to Leave; immigration should be controlled". Or say here. You can recant later.
• 3 March 2020: Continuing my friendly argument with @JoWolffBSG. If your academic views about genuinely controversial matters like feminism or Brexit are those of majority, you won't notice the chill. So imo you have special duty not to undermine those who do, by saying this is right-wing panic
• 3 March 2020: Here not hear obvs
• 3 March 2020: When Mary Beard said she cried, the very same people shouted “toxic white woman tears!” 😂
• 3 March 2020: I don’t think “universities” should speak out much on substantive matters. Academics should be empowered to, whether or not views fit with peers, as long as lawful. Nothing-to-see-hear and it’s-all-right-wing-panic makes things worse.
• 3 March 2020: /make sure other voices aren’t discouraged. I’m always very sceptical of those academics in the political majority saying there is no free speech problem because honestly, how would you know, unless you had a view that was strongly out of whack? Seems complacent.
• 3 March 2020: /seems perfectly obvious That most universities are compositionally Remainer. When VCs send out commiserating emails blithely assuming everyone voted Remain, that’s a chilling effect right there. Those academics in the political majority have special duty to/
• 3 March 2020: Odd that you play down the free speech issue universities Jo, since you know from your own experience with hosting me at the Arist Soc that there are strong repressive forces out to shut down certain views, and that others, unlike you, don’t stand up to them sufficiently. Plus it
• 3 March 2020: Talking of people freely expressing opinions, here’s @DebbieHayton and me in @thetimes today, talking about the election of a transwoman student as women’s officer at Leicester Uni & the renaming of IWD to International “Womxn”’s Day.
• 3 March 2020: .@guardian employees saying they’re crying about the fact a woman columnist respectfully expressed a different opinion to them, and other columnist names cynically whipping up that same emotion in readers, remind me of children holding their breath til they get what they want.
• 3 March 2020: “I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed transphobic by an invisible committee.. It has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement.. Still, I can’t stand by.” Thank you @suzanne_moore
• 2 March 2020: Sorry - I tagged you in error. Sardonic tone entirely and justifiably reserved for the people running the branch.
• 2 March 2020: .@FondOfBeetles and @runthinkwrite give their expert academic views to @WorldRugby. Meanwhile their union leader @DrJoGrady undermines and smears them by implication. Academic questions are academic questions. Get over it.
• 2 March 2020: Would that be Feminist Fightback?
• 2 March 2020: That’s great. Now please can your members and exec stop harassing fellow member and stellar UCU activist Shereen Benjamin for her legitimate, lawful academic views? Love, people who value a ucu branch supporting academic freedom and its own members over cutesy twitter signalling.
• 2 March 2020: In my professional capacity as someone philosophically interested in linguistic context, including prior statements, and how that context relates to interpretation of individual statements - as well as how certain statements can do two things at once - I’d say OBVIOUSLY BOTH.
• 2 March 2020: That's ok, Ken Dodd's back too.
• 2 March 2020: My best hope is that now I'm not member, Grady will put me back on a block, as she used to, so I don't have to see that stuff. Academics who want to be cool embarrass the shit out of me on their behalf.
• 2 March 2020: I don't know. Genuinely.
• 2 March 2020: Personally I think if aim is that someone is "told" something (which seems to be argument) then it's possible to judge that other people have already said whatever it is, multiple times, and it doesn't need saying yet again. As this dynamic continues, it tends to get more angry.
• 2 March 2020: PS Sanctimony/ insults below line from posturing pretend-radical academics (or students trying to impress them) will be completely ignored as contemptible.
• 2 March 2020: And in fact, I've just left. I'm no longer going to pay subs to, or strike with, @ucu when leader actively colludes in academic women's harassment and no-platforming. I'm tired of being a mug. @DrJoGrady sets standard for other weak-minded members to follow.
• 2 March 2020: There you go, @LisaMarchiano, you're actually the height of fashion - just don't think too hard about the last ten years.
• 2 March 2020: Yes, I've basically had enough. Various @UCU members at my institution incite student harassment on here (and so effectively, on campus too); don't care about consequences. Meanwhile our leader performs to her in-group, endorsing no-platforming and defamation of member (again).
• 2 March 2020: No, I think they're actually back!
• 1 March 2020: Aren’t you supposed to do this before you go to print?
• 1 March 2020: Sorry but what does that mean? She’s a black woman from an inner city comprehensive who got into Cambridge and by all accounts went through some racist experiences there. Everyone has their own story.
• 1 March 2020: I’m not saying she’s not responsible for her actions. (Reading replies/making rough guesses, it seems a lot of those disagreeing with me are in 20s. I get that feeling - probably feels like I’m infantilising you by implication. I really am not.)
• 1 March 2020: And for our old ones.
• 1 March 2020: I don’t really get the “I would never have done this” thing. I wouldn’t either but that’s cos I was a nervous wreck thruout my 20s who used to shake when I had to speak in public, and who cravenly rule-followed at all times! 😬
• 1 March 2020: You have no idea whether she cares. Come on.
• 1 March 2020: Well I personally don’t send teenagers to war. And generally I think of wisdom as something that comes on (for some)with age so I’m being consistent. Nor am I making excuses, but I don’t equate “being held accountable” with increasingly bitter pileon by anons. So we differ there.
• 1 March 2020: Yes I think she’s realised that now.
• 1 March 2020: I know that. It’s not my point. I don’t decide how I should treat someone based on how they would treat me.
• 1 March 2020: You are right!
• 1 March 2020: Good point. I think we should remember this when we get misty-eyed about how we had standards the youth lack. Maybe we just lacked technology they now have. Plus it’s in the air now. It’s part of a newly available vocabulary of protest (unfortunately).
• 29 February 2020: Have just unfollowed a couple of people who imo have completely lost plot. Didn’t you used to spout nonsense in your early twenties? I know I did. If you absolutely have to vent ire then what about Feminist Fightback? At least they’re org, not individual.
• 29 February 2020: I type this groaning in anticipation at my mentions, not least because neither side will thank me for it but -Lola Olufemi is young, undoubtedly still trying to work stuff out, and after seven hours of it I think at this point you could give it a rest? The organisers did this.
• 29 February 2020: Caroline’s done her time at this coalface, way before me. Personally I’m very happy for her to continue making her own massive contribution in the way she thinks best.
• 29 February 2020: Also bit where, after she sat down, stood up again as if just remembering sth, came to lectern, & said you had warned them you would need security, as if this explained something - then trailed off because even she couldn't go straightfaced thru with victim-blaming this implied.
• 29 February 2020: The fact that Tracy Walsh kept saying in their defence that the organisers had "allowed you to attend" as if this was incredible, generous concession, and why couldn't audience see that, was.. something.
• 29 February 2020: Fact is, doesn't matter whether it was 2 minutes or 45. The humiliating symbolism of no-platforming cuts deep. It says publicly "we're not with her". It's a humiliation. And it tells the proto-fascists within feminism that they've won. Shout loud & threaten, and we'll capitulate.
• 29 February 2020: Redoing cos I tagged wrong Selina. Thread picks up here.
• 29 February 2020: If feeling rage at @OxIntWomensFest decision re @selina_todd, some catharsis in watching @bindelj tear strip off at 2 min approx. But also eyewatering history rewriting (irony klaxon)- e.g Selina "asked if she could say thank you on behalf of History dept"
• 29 February 2020: Sorry, wrong tag! @selina_todd of course
• 29 February 2020: It's adding insult to injury for the organisers to now depict @selina_todd as someone whose presence was totally incidental to the event especially after her prior work in helping it succeed. Really cowardly. I have honestly nothing but contempt for this spineless idiocy.
• 29 February 2020: You can't simultaneously have it that she was important enough to be put on programme, presumably because of role and expertise (they didn't just randomly pick someone!) AND that she was totally dispensable and what are you all going on about in complaining.
• 29 February 2020: She was on programme as listed speaker (why else have her there?), hastily erased this morning with sticky tape, she helped organise funding and other organisational aspects, and her intended contribution is here
• 29 February 2020: Shocked and appalled is common currency round these parts but this time I really am. They "asked me if I would decide on my own part not to attend". For gods sake.
• 29 February 2020: God almighty!
• 29 February 2020: 1991 intake here. Think you’ve missed point. It’s fine not to take stance on speaker selection. That’s academic freedom. It’s not fine to be neutral on noplatforming of invited speaker. That’s suppression. You’re academic institution. This happened at event with your imprimatur.
• 29 February 2020: Disappointing @ExeterCollegeOx. Fine not to take a stance on the selection or views of the speakers. That’s called academic freedom. Not fine not to take a stance on the noplatforming of an invited speaker. That’s called collusion.
• 29 February 2020: Astounding. @selinatodd helped with organising, including financing of WLM event. Warned organisers well in advance of possibility of trouble. Organisers at @OxIntWomensFest then disinvited her the night before. Absolutely pathetic.
• 28 February 2020: What should I read? I've got Nothing Mat(t)ers.
• 28 February 2020: Yes I definitely didn't mean them!
• 28 February 2020: I think it goes: some of the individuals are oppressed, but never as women, as such. (Funny that).
• 28 February 2020: Not as such, no, though that doesn't mean there isn't one.
• 28 February 2020: Still think you are brave. Certainly more brave than most.
• 28 February 2020: 🍷👄Most of modern feminism is ridiculous. It either uses post-structuralist trickery to claim women don't exist as actual category at all, or says they do exist (phew) but that they need to conform to a polite, self-sacrificing, apologetic norm. Oh. Some liberatory vision 👏👏
• 28 February 2020: But fair
• 28 February 2020: Probably makes it easier to slip under gates.
• 28 February 2020: (Contrary to popular belief, it's not a wholly social construct and you do have one. Somewhere.)
• 28 February 2020: Am thinking that after I've written my book, I'm going to write a small pamphlet for feminist conference organisers - How To Locate Your Spine.
• 28 February 2020: Selina has just found out she is disinvited.
• 28 February 2020: I am willing to bet quite a lot of money that the majority of these participants would not be happy with this decision - have you asked @SamiraAhmedUK, Sheila Rowbotham, and Jeri Johnson what they think @OxIntWomensFest? You are participating in a defamatory bullying narrative.
• 28 February 2020: Here's the eventbrite - Selina still listed.
• 28 February 2020: .@ExeterCollegeOx I'm an alumnus of yours. Do you think it's OK that an Oxford faculty member @selina_todd has been no-platformed from an event held on your premises?
• 28 February 2020: Giving in pathetically to a small number of controlling bullies, and depriving listeners of hearing a woman prof's expertise on working class women's history - not particularly liberating is it? @OxIntWomensFest
• 28 February 2020: .@OxIntWomensFest why have you no-platformed @selina_todd from your event tomorrow because of her view that sex is politically important? Why are you capitulating to bullies? What message does that send to young women? Held at @ExeterCollegeOx & partly funded by @UniofOxford too.
• 28 February 2020: For some reason that GIF seems very very apt.
• 28 February 2020: I'm going to say..... yeeees?
• 28 February 2020: Yahuh
• 28 February 2020: I dunno Judith, you tell me!
• 28 February 2020: “Is the failure to acknowledge the specific cultural operations of gender oppression itself a kind of epistemological imperialism, one which is not ameliorated by the simple elaboration of cultural differences as examples of the selfsame phallogocentrism?”
• 28 February 2020: She is the mistress of the argument by way of asking leading questions. To wit:
• 28 February 2020: Yes, the fact that she keeps raising problems for her own view, pretending she will address them, and then failing to do so has been noted..
• 28 February 2020: Sussex
• 28 February 2020: I'm reading Butler's Bodies That Matter and I found a bit that made me splutter @janeclarejones. DARVO or what.
• 28 February 2020: Hang in there xx
• 28 February 2020: Would be fantastic if staff at @UniofExeter would speak out in support of @EvaPoen's right to voice her views, and not leave it to brave students like Sian here to do heavy lifting. Failing that, please at least support Eva in private. I know how isolating this treatment feels.
• 27 February 2020: 😂
• 27 February 2020: Cheers!
• 27 February 2020: Thanks Anna. Benefit of doubt is not the game though is it. The game is to keep watch, resentfully muttering amongst yourselves but unable to do anything, until you see an opportunity to pounce and go "AHA, LOOK, SHE"S REALLY EVIL AFTER ALL, WE ALL TOLD YOU! MUM.. MUUUUUM" etc.
• 27 February 2020: Yeah. Totally. So childish. Thanks Mandy.
• 27 February 2020: In breaking news, the pathetic dickhead academics who leapt on my inadvertent crossing of digital picketline the other day don't do it to others! Would you Adam and Eve it.
• 27 February 2020: Yeah, that's probably right.
• 27 February 2020: Thanks Asteroid, but this guy is obviously selectively using prior dislike of me/my views and dressing it up as something else, and as such I reserve right to not give a shit about his smug hypocritical performance for the gallery.
• 27 February 2020: RT @FinneElizabeth: @Docstockk I mentioned you in this article, citing your evidence to the court in the Miller case. Thought you might be…
• 27 February 2020: Thanks for passing that on
• 27 February 2020: Funny that! Thanks.
• 27 February 2020: 2617 views within 3 days.. Not bad for a first draft! There is SUCH a public appetite for this kind of stuff. In recent times, has there been another blatantly philosophical issue about which people feel so strongly, both for and against?
• 27 February 2020: German-speaking followers: you can catch a long conversation between me and Vojin Saša Vukadinović about Butler, gender and related matters in Cicero Magazin @cicero_online this month.
• 27 February 2020: RT @f_k_campbell: The Scottish GRA consultation paper is extremely poor in terms of research quality. Generalised statements without suppor…
• 26 February 2020: This is a brilliant speech from @JoanMcAlpine but also a blatantly self-indulgent share for reasons that are apparent if you watch it. But oh well, what the hell.
• 26 February 2020: ..We would do better to honour the long English tradition of linguistic rough and tumble."
• 26 February 2020: Raphael: "Legislation which enforces repression of the vernacular is a neo-Puritanism with dubious benefits for civilised culture. Its side-effect is to exempt absurd ideas from derision on the grounds that we are all entitled to our opinions...
• 26 February 2020: Lyochat: "when it comes to sporting prowess, transgender.. athletes have typically “cherrypicked”, poorly contested, relatively modest standard, age-group events to compete in; for reasons known only to themselves" and "McKinnon is not, in performance terms, an elite cyclist."
• 26 February 2020: Two cracking, very quotable letters in Standpoint, one from athletic coach Tony Lycholat and the other from Frederick Raphael.
• 26 February 2020: RT @carolinefff: Judicial guide does not accurately reflect law. “A person... issued with... GRC is entitled to be recognised in the gender…
• 26 February 2020: Random.
• 26 February 2020: PhilPapers.
• 26 February 2020: They did!
• 26 February 2020: It's not a well known academic. Or not one that googling has revealed to me anyway.
• 26 February 2020: Perfectly normal email to get.
• 26 February 2020: It will if they go out of business
• 26 February 2020: Also, when Pink News do their next piece '"Gender-Critical" Academic in favour of "Free Speech" tells followers not to click on Pink News' don't click on that either.
• 26 February 2020: So sorry.
• 26 February 2020: They wouldn't have it if we didn't click
• 26 February 2020: Thank you. 2. is shocking, but I also know (because they tell me) that plenty young women in Universities feel that way, largely through the public intolerance and social policing of opinions performed on Twitter by a small number of academics. It's a revolting state of affairs.
• 26 February 2020: Don't click on Pink News. The number of actual non-outraged readers is surely tiny. Their headlines increasingly aim to trigger people sceptical about trans activism and keep them rolling in revenue. Algorithms don't care whether you click in outrage or joy. Just don't do it.
• 25 February 2020: Deleted, because I know that what I tweeted just now will eventually be used against me by those concerned as further proof of something bad. Because everything I do is, eventually is. But thank you very much to those who were/are supportive. I really do appreciate it.
• 25 February 2020: One more: to be clear. This is the stuff that spews from students whipped up by the sneering, barely veiled subtweets (and no doubt, conversations) of my esteemed, fellow colleagues & union members. This. I repeat: FUCK YOU. Much moral. So ironic.
• 25 February 2020: Anyway it's ten to nine so will be logging off. But before I do, let me break my own rep as the sensible restrained one, and say I fucking despise you, you utter twats.
• 25 February 2020: I am shaking with rage. These academics crouch like passive-aggressive toads waiting for me to fuck up so they can pounce self-righteously. They will use ANYTHING to have a pop at me. They have no morals yet they think they are the most moral people on earth.
• 25 February 2020: I am on research leave. I am therefore not on campus. Yesterday I broke the ditigal picketline twice inadvertently because I genuinely thought that the strike was the second part of the week. Faculty in my own fucking School sending children to harass me as a scab is unacceptable
• 25 February 2020: For the avoidance of doubt (twenty minutes to go.. tick tock) Gertrude Stein would think you were an incomprehensible puritanical moron.
• 24 February 2020: I'm writing a trade book at the mo (news coming soon!), and one of the things it will definitely do is to reassert basic compatibility between feminism and science/ materialism/ evidence-responsiveness.
• 24 February 2020: I want a credit
• 24 February 2020: I always hoped the Archers would have a drag act upstairs at The Bull called Polly Tunnels.
• 24 February 2020: I live to serve
• 24 February 2020: Yeah exactly. Go for someone a bit less terrifyingly sexually aggressive, maybe.
• 24 February 2020: Just a thought
• 24 February 2020: Speaking as one who as kid would have benefited from gay visibility in my Scottish primary, is it, I dunno, possible for society to find middle ground between "kids shouldn't know what gay is" & "let's get drag queen called Flowjob in to read em stories"?
• 24 February 2020: Fraid not 😬 Courage! 💪
• 24 February 2020: The link is working fine for me but you might have to click on 'find other versions' apparently
• 24 February 2020: Any academics that follow & are interested, please send comments (if you have 'em) to my work email. #philosophytwitter
• 24 February 2020: Finally put my money where my big mouth is, and written an academic sex/gender paper for a philosophy audience. Link below. (Spoiler: women are adult human females after all)
• 23 February 2020: Yes it’s wonderful
• 23 February 2020: Brilliant episode. Particularly recommended for nearly everyone on Twitter (me included).
• 23 February 2020: It’s just the usual “think of worst possible connotation of word and say he definitely meant that”. So boring. But destructive of reputation nonetheless.
• 23 February 2020: Righty-oh. I assume you yourself take great care never to point out that systems are flawed, in case credulous listeners take that as reason not to engage with said systems under any circumstances. You must spend lot of time biting your tongue (ps aggression isn’t that monkish).
• 23 February 2020: (And no, I'm not saying women can't do former or men be victim of latter - just making empirical generalisation).
• 23 February 2020: Also - I hope all those keen to uphold justice and presume innocence in this sort of case - by its nature, nearly always involving a man- are equally vocal about revenge porn, where innocent women are also filmed against will in way that also causes reputational damage and shame.
• 23 February 2020: I see someone just tweeted “what happened to #believewomen?” then deleted. For record I think that phrase, taken at face value as general idea you should suspend own critical faculties simply on someone else’s say-so, is ridiculous. Happy to say so 😬 Not why I posted that vid.
• 23 February 2020: You both have faith in criminal justice to deal with this sort of thing effectively, which I currently lack.
• 23 February 2020: Deleted vid of alleged masturbator. Have mixed feelings. Can see point of argument that people shouldn't be tried by I-phone footage, in absence of definitive evidence. However I also hate fact that only alternative is women putting up with it. "Take it to the police" is a joke.
• 23 February 2020: A) these women are magnificent. B) this has happened to me & to loads of others C) I wish sheltered academics going on in twee fashion about political irrelevance of “dangly bits” etc & how feminists are unhealthily obsessed with genitalia would say that to these women’s faces.
• 22 February 2020: Receipts
• 22 February 2020: He’s @evanishistory apparently. Anyone else? 😬
• 22 February 2020: Just discovered that the guy that wrote this story has blocked a fellow academic on Twitter without any previous engagement between them (me) 😂
• 22 February 2020: Desperately trying to interpret this in a way that suggests you haven’t been Butlered Up to the point of losing all contact with reality (not to mention my actual view). Also - if I’ve understood you right - hoping you’re not in charge of any actual kids’ welfare anytime soon.
• 22 February 2020: I assume that on present showing the Graun will introduce the concept to its readers in about a decade’s time.
• 22 February 2020: I get that we’re all supposed to be delighted that @guardian is gently initiating its innocent readers into the trans kids scandal by focusing on Sweden but God it’s annoying: ditto the piece saying it’s “surprising” trans people don’t all feel same about it. No shit, geniuses.
• 22 February 2020: Cathartic watch from @ArielleScarcell
• 22 February 2020: Do you mean 1 per year?
• 22 February 2020: How can they be interesting when they don't exist? Ironic we're told that we're "denying existence of trans people" (which makes no sense) when at same time, antagonists are literally denying existence of detransitioners by arguing they were never really trans in first place!
• 22 February 2020: More stuff on Mermaids from @fharris2011 here
• 22 February 2020: A while ago, I met people working with Mermaids. Well-intentioned. Total denial of any problem when I asked them. I'm intensely curious - as terrible story unfolds, with evidence (see thread), what are they thinking now? Any crack in the armour yet? How bad do things have to get?
• 22 February 2020: Roz was also one of the first to tweet my employers to argue I should be sacked.
• 21 February 2020: Great. This was original article. I was quite pleased with my quotes 😀
• 21 February 2020: "They're out there in Universities" - two recent cases in point in links below.
• 21 February 2020: Which side is that? Don't tell me, I love a guessing game.
• 21 February 2020: What a weird cult this is. Love the homely placing of the mug of tea, as she makes up prison policy on the hoof and sells female prisoners down the river to satisfy the imaginary voting demographic in her head.
• 21 February 2020: See also item 4., and look at Anthony Watson's twitter feed right now.
• 21 February 2020: We wrote this as a general rebuttal to this sort of thing. There's a section specifically on the analogy from immigration.
• 20 February 2020: Everyone hates world book day. My eldest’s best effort was the Top Gear annual, and going dressed as his favourite character Clarkson. Very low maint.
• 20 February 2020: As lesbian & proud supporter of moderate compassionate socialist feminists @Womans_Place_UK - not to mention the brilliant @AllianceLGB - I'm horrified you've signed this defamatory statement. You don't seem to understand how exreme trans activist demands impinge on other groups
• 19 February 2020: Me talking about Stonewall hate crime guidance and the statement “trans women are men” in Manchester a couple of weeks ago at Make More Noise #mmnhatecrime
• 19 February 2020: Depends on the day..
• 19 February 2020: It really is. In plain sight.
• 19 February 2020: Couldn't possibly be a conflict of interest when it comes to issues such as whether sex of defendants should be recorded, whether female victims are made to use female pronouns for certain male defendants in court, and other such negligible matters. Rainbows! Feelings! etc.
• 19 February 2020: Nothing to see here! Only Stonewall giving "Star Performer Award" to the Crown Office and Prosecutor Fiscal Service i.e. Scotland's Prosecution service. #policycapture @HJoyceGender @mbmpolicy @ForwomenScot @WeAreFairCop
• 19 February 2020: No fraid not
• 18 February 2020: (But I suppose it’s just easier to prat around acting like protofascists in public, patting yourself on the back for your pretend-radicalism. Well done, that twitter header must have taken minutes).
• 18 February 2020: Also - and if I sound exasperated, it’s cos I am - 3 likes in 5 hours? Seriously? Ever think you might get more traction from the average UEA student, if you stopped performing for your mates in other SUs, and addressed genuine inequality issues on your campus? Cos I’m not one.
• 18 February 2020: Ask him if we’re in one
• 18 February 2020: "One of the things that binds the left is our tolerance for other views and opinions, but if we cannot do that for one another, our movement will collapse. The uncompromising way in which we apply purity tests to each other is a betrayal of our own values." Great from @Mocha_Soul
• 18 February 2020: I'm the target of this petition. I reject claims that my views are transphobic or that I pose any harm to students at UEA (or staff). Please read all my stuff here before signing - seems the least you could do in making such a serious charge. Thanks.
• 18 February 2020: You first
• 18 February 2020: Thanks v much Jonny
• 18 February 2020: On one level low-decoupling looks like failure of comprehension of a conditional, but more charitably seems possibly related to what Rae Langton calls the phenomenon of “leaky quotes” and hate speech - where effects of slur aren’t totally insulated by quoting not using it.
• 17 February 2020: Run For Your Non-Binary Ace
• 17 February 2020: "Sex farce" used to refer to Alan Ayckbourn plays and Woody Allen films, but henceforth refers to the 2020 Labour Leadership and Deputy Leadership election.
• 17 February 2020: Here's an idea that doesn't involve handing personal information to unscrupulous commercial behemoth. Teach kids (and adults): a) critical reasoning & argument; tolerance of disagreement; debate. b) self-confidence, self-belief, self-control, resilience to criticism.
• 17 February 2020: Yes, it's a very good reminder.
• 17 February 2020: Amazing.
• 17 February 2020: Lol!
• 17 February 2020: I don't agree with the premise at all. But am pointing out that it's not consistently applied, even by those who argue for it (and in fact couldn't be in principle, wherever two distinct group's interests are simultaneously at stake in some argument).
• 17 February 2020: If you care about academic freedom, here's who NOT to vote for, when voting in the @ucu UCU elections. #ucu
• 17 February 2020: Talking of which: "Talks — defended in the name of ‘free speech’ and ‘academic freedom’ — by neo-fascists and transphobes will suit that agenda very well. As trade unionists we must stand firm in denouncing such manufactured controversies."
• 17 February 2020: Premise here is aimed at pursuit of power (shut up, dissenters!) rather than pursuit of truth, and is always selectively applied. Further evidence: straight women/gender studies profs with husbands, telling lesbians (like me) to stop talking about interests of lesbians.
• 16 February 2020: Great thread from @fharris2011 about who funds the juggernaut that’s now Stonewall (answer: UK taxpayers, indirectly); and to whom they’re accountable for their extreme & divisive stance (er.. apparently no-one. Certainly not government departments that help line their coffers)
• 16 February 2020: Trying to work out culpability in a particular interpersonal situation based only on Twitter evidence is like cutting your own hair wearing boxing gloves. It’s bound to go wrong and responsible adults don’t do it.
• 16 February 2020: "Feminism is a proud movement with clear aims and objectives: to overthrow male supremacy and liberate women from our underclass status. No amount of stripping, choking, wolf-whistling or porn will help us."
• 16 February 2020: Too kind, but thank you very much!
• 16 February 2020: Ridiculous and defamatory, @ArielleScarcell. If it’s possible to explain your real view to eg @Bernard_Lane or some other Australian journalist, I think you should do that: horrible as it is, it’s opportunity to educate public on what you really think.
• 15 February 2020: I think I read that!
• 15 February 2020: The "manhandled" reference is me. Specifically I was tapped on back of head twice as I tried to find entrance (blocked), with masked others filming, screaming, shouting into megaphone. Was chaos. Police a foot away, looking bored. Talks were brilliant. Only hate I saw was outside
• 15 February 2020: Definitely completely false. I don’t know about “lie”. Maybe that’s really what Lisa thinks we think. Often makes mistakes like that. Not a great interpreter of others’ minds or arguments, I would say.
• 15 February 2020: Sounds bang on to me
• 15 February 2020: Yeah, should have styled it out I agree
• 15 February 2020: (Initials may have been changed to spare the innocent)
• 15 February 2020: I’d love to credit them for this genius observation but them’s the breaks
• 15 February 2020: Heading home after great workshop on gender in a UK University. I can’t name it, for fear of complications nobody needs. As fellow participant says “It's like 19th century Russian attempts to beat the censor: it was great to have a meeting with T, E and R in the city of F.” 😂
• 15 February 2020: Thank you.
• 15 February 2020: Con trick, even
• 15 February 2020: In an age where UK public policy has been almost completely captured by biggest metaphysical con truck since “discovery” of phlogiston, it’s quite funny to see #philosophytwitter getting heated over..... panpsychism v materialism 😂
• 15 February 2020: Author is sci-fi writer apparently
• 15 February 2020: “Evidence” about suicidal ideation is from a survey conducted by lobbyists @ScottishTrans in 2012. Self selecting participants, no statistical analysis
• 15 February 2020: Here’s the NHS resource described in the Times today. Enjoy …https://bnssgccg-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/attachments/govbody_5Nov19_item6.4.pdf…
• 15 February 2020: …https://bnssgccg-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/attachments/govbody_5Nov19_item6.4.pdf…
• 15 February 2020: You too! (whoever you are...) xx
• 15 February 2020: When I say “early treatment” I mean early affirmation obvs
• 15 February 2020: Representative quote: “When Western science first considered sex and gender it assumed there were only two types of human: men who were masculine and attracted to women, and women who were feminine and attracted to men". Eh? What about the Ancient Greeks?
• 15 February 2020: I’ve seen this NHS guidance and am quoted. It was one of weirder things I’ve seen lately. Really odd descriptions of sex/ gender, referring to lobbyist surveys as evidence, pressurising for early treatment for kids... Disputed trans guide gets NHS nod
• 14 February 2020: Yes, absolutely :D
• 14 February 2020: Many congratulations to Harry and family for pursuing this stressful case at personal cost.
• 14 February 2020: Thanks Francis!
• 14 February 2020: Was pleased to contribute two witness statements to Harry Miller's @WeAreFairCop judicial review. Even more pleased to see Justice Knowles acknowledge: "expressions ..often described as transphobic are not in fact so". Here's second witness statement:
• 14 February 2020: Infantilising sexist judgement in #KateScottow criminal case, blind to its gendered expectations and favouring of special interests, wasting resources which could have been used to target genuinely dangerous or harmful speech. Yet entirely in keeping with recent CPS direction.
• 14 February 2020: All will be revealed soon hopefully, God and referees willing.... I think that - on de Beauvoir - she’s a bit contradictory on that.
• 13 February 2020: I’m talking about the founders, needlessly aggressive person.
• 13 February 2020: An academic working on obscure topic, only interesting to handful of others, reassuringly explains: “there’s no problem with a lack of #academicfreedom in universities”
• 13 February 2020: Yeah that was a weird touch!
• 13 February 2020: I really thought she was great. Incredibly, genuinely disappointed by this weak-minded idiocy.
• 12 February 2020: Insofar as both dualism and thinking of womanhood as a social role were catastrophic mistakes, it sounds good. (Tho argumentatively I’m not planning to eliminate womanhood only reduce it to biology, so not sure about last bit.)
• 12 February 2020: 😂😂
• 12 February 2020: @garyjamespowell Ha, thanks for your honesty. I think it’s okay, it’s not the Eurovision Song Contest!
• 12 February 2020: I would have also added, if room had permitted: “waiting for those mouthy women to make it acceptable to talk about it, at which point I’ll swoop in and clean up the publications”
• 12 February 2020: This is for academic philosophers who don’t get involved in publicly disputing idea that inner feeling of “gender identity” partly or wholly determines womanhood/manhood/lesbianism/heterosexuality (etc). Why? #philosophytwitter
• 12 February 2020: If you've recently asked @UKLabour to defend women's rights to talk about what matters, or #ExpelMe then please get behind this declaration and consider signing it.
• 12 February 2020: Excellent!
• 12 February 2020: On March 13th, I'll be at Bristol Uni talking with these brilliant people about (talking about) women's rights in academia. Tickets here.
• 12 February 2020: Well at least I'm helping you get things done!
• 12 February 2020: I know followers are probably completely bored of my examples of major Universities getting law completely wrong, and tbh so am I - does it even matter? We'll all die soon anyway. But fwiw here is @LSEnews just making shit up in their EDI policy
• 12 February 2020: "Stonewall is a recognised brand and we encourage all departments to use the logo in all communications" says @UniofOxford. Yet Stonewall promotes rigid, intellectually contestable views about gender identity: transwomen are women, are lesbians etc. This hampers #academicfreedom
• 12 February 2020: "Sign this petition and ask them not to change the Census to hurt trans people". (by "forcing them" to answer sex question) This is hysterical propaganda. When one side is prepared to stoop this low, it's hard for other to get a foothold. @ScottishTrans's funded by @scotgov
• 12 February 2020: Lovely man.
• 12 February 2020: And yet you appear to have left the defamation of your fellow socialist feminists @Womans_Place_UK as originally worded? Weird decision.
• 12 February 2020: And @DavidEdmonds100 also interviewed me for this, taking quite a bit of flak for it. He and @philosophybites are definitely doing their bit to open this up.
• 12 February 2020: PS #ExpelMe
• 12 February 2020: "Join us to find out where candidates stand on issues like homelessness, conversion therapy, reforming the Gender Recognition Act and international LGBT+ rights." "Conversion therapy" = therapist failing to affirm gay child or teen's gender identity. Please do ask about that.
• 12 February 2020: Hi same-sex-attracted followers. You'll be delighted to know LGBT+ Labour is holding a Labour Leadership Hustings presented by Pink News and supported by Diva in Manchester on Feb 20th. Get a ticket and put those difficult questions to the candidates..
• 11 February 2020: No
• 11 February 2020: The @BBC hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory either. Some outputs seem like press releases for Stonewall without benefit of middleman. Sentimental, unevidenced, one-sided. No wonder kids think resistance to self-ID = hatred of trans people. They read it on @bbc & @guardian.
• 11 February 2020: It’s obvious that huge number of people horrified by #Expelme don’t have clue what issues are. They have a ludicrously misogynistic caricature of “TERFS”, like Wicked Witches of West or something. I really do blame @guardian for allowing misinformation to flourish @KathViner
• 11 February 2020: Big man
• 11 February 2020: If you have any interest in evidence-based public policy, or the lack of it, please read this ("SG" is Scottish Government; "GRA" is Gender Recognition Act; "EA" is Equality Act; "FOI" is "Freedom of Information request").
• 11 February 2020: I support @Womans_Place_UK and @AllianceLGB against this horrible public defamation. I also support my own and other women's right to talk about the erosion of their protections, spaces, and words to refer to themselves in the face of narrow, controlling trans activism. #ExpelMe
• 11 February 2020: UEA rearrange talk by academic accused of “transphobia” via @ConcreteUEA
• 11 February 2020: They were still doing this in at least one pub in Dundee in the early 1990s. There was also a pub in St Andrews that wouldn’t serve women pints, only half pints.
• 11 February 2020: @jackiecassell @susan_bewley @Doctor_Az_ @SianGriffiths6 @ewansomerville @SusanMatthews @hannahsbee @brunskellevans @juliansavulescu @ZaneEmma @MLaidlawMD @will_malone @ElleSmithereen @Bernard_Lane @TwisterFilm
• 11 February 2020: ".. from a medical standpoint, it is illogical to say that two separate individuals of the same reproductive category, who experience alterations to equivalent biological parameters, should now be classified differently."
• 11 February 2020: MUST READ: De-sexing the Medical Record? An Examination of Sex Versus Gender Identity in the General Medical Council’s Trans Healthcare Ethical Advice by Sara Dahlen.
• 11 February 2020: I met @djandyhealey in Manchester at the weekend. AC is Aimee Challenor. I can't believe this is still going on.
• 11 February 2020: I met young working woman at @Womans_Place_UK Women's Lib conference who wants to meet other like-minded feminist young women in London. Not at Uni. Please send me suggestions for groups and I'll pass them on? DM/ ask to follow if you have intel or even want to start one. TIA.
• 11 February 2020: Probably has really really really expensive shower gel
• 11 February 2020: Yes, unfortunately.
• 11 February 2020: University LGBT staff network yet again witchhunting female academic daring to dissent from trans orthodoxy. This time it's @KentLGBTStaff & @selina_todd. If you're at @UniKent, whether LGBT or not, speak out & say "not in my name" - if not for Selina, then for academic freedom.
• 10 February 2020: RT @Transgendertrd: WPATH guidelines underlying the NHS/GIDS rules on child gender transition are compromised by pressure from activists ac…
• 10 February 2020: Hello Canadians. Please check out this forthcoming event addressing the rights of incarcerated women in Canada. “Women’s Prisons: What are They Really Like?”, February 15 at Ottawa Public Library, Main Branch from 2-4 pm. Tickets are here @Mason134211f
• 10 February 2020: You can respond to the consultation - you don't have to be a Scottish resident.
• 10 February 2020: 10) only one making them)then I predict: women (females) - the physically weaker sex- will be the ones who most often turn out to find themselves in sexual acts where their bodies somehow "know" what their conscious minds do not. And that will be treated as entirely coincidental.
• 10 February 2020: 9)"experience the contours of her body, feel her breath upon our skin, the timbre of her voice? And are we not undone in such moments, irrespective of the eyes?" etc. If these arguments, made by influential trans legal scholars, ever get off the ground (and Sharpe is not the/
• 10 February 2020: 8) identical argument about a trans woman deceptively having sex with a woman, pretending to be a lesbian. But then, perhaps, the odd sexualised language in this piece might have seemed a bit more obviously self-interested. e.g. "Do we not breath her in, feel her touch/
• 10 February 2020: 7) trying to undermine belief in agency of women victims in sex by deception cases of this kind, effectively saying "they wanted it all along". Because the public interest of Newland's case was partly its unusualness: a female deceiver. You could, of course, run structurally/
• 10 February 2020: 6) victim believed, throughout, she was with a man. Wrong: yes, she was actually with a woman, but that doesn't mean she sensorily constructed her lover as a woman. She didn't. That's the point. Anyway: it's interesting to note who benefits from this sort of argument, isn't it;
• 10 February 2020: 5) .. ignorance of participation in lesbian sex when the presence of a female lover has taken the form of sensory overload?" Sharpe asks of Newland's victim. That is: victim was engaging knowingly in "lesbian" sex, because her senses had "presence of a female lover" even though/
• 10 February 2020: 4) Quite apart from bending the idea of "agency" there to the point of breaking it, Sharpe also has naive account of sensory experience, ignoring the fact that theorists of sensory experience often think of it as at least somewhat cognitive/ conceptual. "How can we claim/
• 10 February 2020: 3) Sharpe tries to argue that in deceptive but enjoyable sexual acts, the aroused body still "knows" the "object of desire" even if the brain would reject the partner, knowing their true biological sex. So "ignorance is a form of knowledge, one which implicates human agency?" EH?
• 10 February 2020: 2. It discusses the Gayle Newland case, where a woman pretended to be a man, to have sex with a heterosexual woman, her friend. The piece pretends it doesn't intend to question the "veracity" of the traumatised victim's story, but clearly does anyway (para 4-nice victim blaming).
• 10 February 2020: 1. This thing by @AlexSharpe64 got drawn to my attention again. The argument seems to be: where person of given sex (e.g. m) is having sex with you by pretending to be the other sex (f), if you're enjoying it, it must be what you really wanted all along.
• 10 February 2020: I could be wrong about the argument though. Best ask Alex I guess.
• 10 February 2020: I don't read it that way.. I think it says that, even blindfolded we can "tell" or "know" what we "really want" -e.g. sex with a TW (which may be different to what we say we want - e.g. sex with a female). I admit it's hard to understand because it relies on not spelling it out
• 10 February 2020: Let's make sure democracy works here, and they hear a full range of perspectives from stakeholders. You don't have to be gay or lesbian or trans to be a stakeholder in changes to gender recognition laws. @ForwomenScot @WG_Scotland @mbmpolicy
• 10 February 2020: TLDR: it's quite rape-friendly. No plausible notion of consent I'm familiar with would fit it.
• 10 February 2020: It's Alex Sharpe: says desire isn't directed at biological sex, and attempts to alter laws against sex by deception. If someone gets aroused by trans woman, thinking they're woman (female), then claim to have been deceived is cast as mere "retrospective disappointment"/ denial.
• 10 February 2020: Banned for stating UK rape law?? @TwitterSupport this is wrong.
• 10 February 2020: "The same people who argue that Ansari shouldn’t have made advances on Grace because she was obviously uncomfortable will defend the right of a man to buy sex from a woman who is only consenting because she needs to feed herself. How do we explain this contradiction?" V good.
• 10 February 2020: Glad you got there eventually! x
• 10 February 2020: Have done.
• 10 February 2020: Helen how did I not see you there?? So sorry, I was bit dazed. I wish I could have said hello.
• 10 February 2020: Arguably, major LGBT institutions' redefinition of gay and lesbian to omit reference to same-sex attraction is foundational: if you can't name who gays and lesbians distinctively are, you can't argue for any of their interests at all. It's not a bud or a branch issue, it's a root
• 10 February 2020: Racking my brains here
• 10 February 2020: That should say: are NOT "natural" to woman..
• 10 February 2020: All my stuff here @astroehlein. Feel free to have look I try to use "gender identity ideology" myself. Nonetheless, your focus on guilt-by-terminological-association rather than substance of what @Glinner is saying seems to me telling about your priorities
• 10 February 2020: Define "naturally occurring social pattern". Also widen examples to avoid those partly based on body capacity - in mechanised/ digitised society, most jobs aren't. I'm no blank slater but you don't need to be to think nursing, & associated pay conditions, are "natural" to women.
• 10 February 2020: New unisex book prize announced.
• 10 February 2020: Why say "the real story" rather than "a story" (in some limited cases). Can't there be more than one story? Because there's also now the story of social structures severely limiting women's career opportunities making them financially far worse off than men on average. Big story.
• 10 February 2020: @MForstater @TybilAlper @jonnnybest @GitaSahgal Obviously the process has its limits. Some fascist and right wing terms are so well-known as to be fixed. But not all.
• 10 February 2020: I say "gender identity ideology" these days. But what I generally don't understand about criticism of left for using terminology used by right is: why so sure we can't give their term better connotations, rather than have ours corrupted. Meaning doesn't flow in only one direction
• 10 February 2020: Yes I do realise that. And if you read the article again you'll see I also say it.
• 9 February 2020: I did!
• 9 February 2020: 8 hours Helen so far. 8 hours. And now I’m in a safe space I can say that I didn’t ever give Bindel my sandwich, she stole it. Traumatised
• 9 February 2020: I’m on a southern train not the orient express
• 9 February 2020: Obvs
• 9 February 2020: Yes, excellent to meet you!
• 9 February 2020: Actually, although you know how I hate to ruin a good victim narrative, I’m sitting on a fairly empty train to Brighton eating a nice ham baguette.
• 9 February 2020: Still on boiling hot train moving at glacial speed. Formerly sisterly attitude now wearing off. If @bindelj makes a move for my remaining Werther's Original, I won't be responsible for consequences.
• 8 February 2020: Thanks v much for having me, Manchester #MMNHateCrime and thanks to all the amazing women I spoke to and heard from. I've published text of my talk here - on hate speech and the statement "trans women are men"
• 8 February 2020: More tickets released for Make More Noise: Hate Crime tonight in Manchester.
• 8 February 2020: You have patience of a saint.
• 8 February 2020: @FondOfBeetles @SVPhillimore @durham_uni @HJoyceGender @fairplaywomen I’ve never seen it written down that explicitly in a uni policy but maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. This is insane.
• 8 February 2020: It seems literally inconceivable to some modern day philosophers that agreeing with something someone says doesn’t mean agreeing with everything else that person says. How these people ended up in philosophy departments, I’ll never know.
• 8 February 2020: Reading @epkaufm & Thomas Simpson’s @Policy_Exchange report on #academicfreedom. Having observed chilling effect of extreme Stonewall-sponsored uni trans inclusion policies at first hand on my research, I could not agree more with this bit. Full thing here
• 8 February 2020: Every time you see academic huffing that fears about academic freedom are greatly exaggerated, look up their research area. Either a)no public interest in it; b)it’s too incomprehensible to be controversial; c) it’s queer theory & they’re defending their patch. Or all of above.
• 8 February 2020: @TheNorthernEcho
• 8 February 2020: Hey @durham_uni, Martina Navratilova thinks your extreme sports trans inclusion policy is unfair on women. The lawyers I know think your policy is illegal. You aren’t sufficiently safeguarding female players either. You’re surely heading for a lawsuit unless you sort this.
• 8 February 2020: Thank you!
• 8 February 2020: Letter from me in @thetimes today following @GavinWilliamson warning on academic freedom in universities. Times letters: Protecting academic freedom at universities.
• 8 February 2020: Yes, thanks. And see letter above it!
• 7 February 2020: (Nice to see they've changed their twitter header for me too. Touching).
• 7 February 2020: Nice normal, non-hysterical response from UEA Student Union @unionuea to my forthcoming talk there. ONLY JOKING it's defamatory & scare-mongering as usual. I feel bad for @UEA students who agree with me; shame they are being vilified by their own union.
• 7 February 2020: Lol!
• 7 February 2020: Excellent
• 7 February 2020: If you'd both like to join an academic discussion about who to vote to along these lines (and you're not already in it), DM me
• 7 February 2020: Political ideals as rules of thumb are useful heuristics. Ideals as fixed monomaniacal targets, in rigid value hierarchy independent of context, will be death of us as society (I sometimes fear). Can only result in historical pendulum swinging between extremes.
• 7 February 2020: A good thing in Blue Labour & Red Toryism is nod to Aristotelian idea of common good. But given Aristotelianism, what I dislike about either/or framing of Freedom!/Anywheres! v. Conservatism!/Somewheres! is the generalism. Can't we have both as defeasible ideals to be balanced?
• 7 February 2020: Funnily enough, about a minute ago this landed in my inbox: "Evolution built men to pack a punch" - big difference in m and f punching power (plus theory that evolution has selected for male punching - obviously terrible news for women but I digress)
• 7 February 2020: Also tagging @fairplaywomen and @FondOfBeetles
• 7 February 2020: Well... it does say hormone levels will be tested. Whatever that means in practice. But as we now know, reduced oestrogen is compatible with, and accompanied by many sex-derived performance advantages, not least being built like a tank and tackling like a beast.
• 7 February 2020: Glad to see this - though also amused that, in piece about free speech, Gavin Williamson couldn’t bring himself to mention the other subject where there have been recent high profile cases of cancellation and suppression..
• 7 February 2020: So you endorse Dr Lloyd’s defamation of me? Have you actually read my writing, or do you say that lightly? All here I look forward to seeing you at my lecture where you can pose your objections in the standard academic manner
• 7 February 2020: Talking of which, I was looking at @durham_uni trans inclusion policies the other day, and was staggered to see this completely bald-faced abnegation of concern for women players’ safety or success on field. @HJoyceGender
• 7 February 2020: For law to get involved, the bar for what counts as “hate” has to be high. As I’ll say in Manc this Sat, this policy came out of Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Compared to what Eltham residents went thru - repeated slurs linked to concrete violence - “stupid” is ludicrously slight.
• 7 February 2020: Uh oh..
• 7 February 2020: I don’t doubt that as society we seem exceptionally protective of TW feelings (disproportionately so in relation to other groups) and I think it’s an interesting question why. I get called all sorts on here yet I don't think it’s a police matter and no one else seems to either.
• 7 February 2020: There surely has to be a very high bar for criminalisable speech and “stupid” isn’t it. We aren’t asking whether it’s rude.
• 6 February 2020: It communicates that they are happy to have lesbian to speak who has a different perspective to that of Christopher Lloyd, presumably. Seems ok to me
• 6 February 2020: Calling someone stupid is indicative of irritation not hate. If the police got involved when x called y stupid it would be massive waste of resource. Ditto to "prurient" refs to synthetic breasts, if really prurient - looks factual to me.
• 6 February 2020: Not saying Harry is wrong but that's not the point of the piece. The point is that even IF he was wrong that TW aren't W, that's irrelevant because being wrong, especially about a belief which nearly everyone shared 5 years ago and most still do, can hardly be construed as malice
• 6 February 2020: (By the way - I do know @WeAreFairCop Harry Miller is a former not current officer - that got edited out somehow - hopefully being fixed.)
• 6 February 2020: Flash mobs are well scary, I agree. All that dancing and singing and choreography. Best stay indoors.
• 6 February 2020: Ahead of @WeAreFairCop's judicial review verdict next week: I write in @unherd on Harry Miller's tweeting of a poem, and whether it counts as "hate".
• 6 February 2020: No, not exactly, but I think I just made it clear I wasn't going to go along with it and they changed tack. Which is fine by me, we got there in the end!
• 6 February 2020: Would you mind sending me a copy of that? I'd be really interested to read it.
• 6 February 2020: I don't think so
• 6 February 2020: .@UniofHerts now confirm lecture will go ahead as planned, as part of day of events with range of speakers. Sincere thanks to all who supported me on this- it really matters for knowledge-production in Universities that gender-critical research doesn't face suppressive conditions
• 6 February 2020: I have no idea why twitter unfollowed me from @DrLeeJones but it is now rectified!
• 6 February 2020: Congratulations!
• 6 February 2020: That's arguably true that academics have reinforced protections which is why it is so important that they speak out - because they can do it when others cannot.
• 6 February 2020: I don't know if she went to Goldsmiths as well but she went to Edinburgh, yes.
• 6 February 2020: If you know academic at @EdinburghUni please draw this matter to their attention privately & say they can get in touch either with Shereen or @LaetitiaPichev1 to explain the background. We really need a groundswell of common sense from academic majority here, to combat extremism.
• 6 February 2020: Let me know if you'd like to join a group of academics discussing this - have followed so you can DM
• 6 February 2020: The harassment to which faculty member Shereen Benjamin is being subjected, by members of her own union, plus staff LGBT network, is unbelievable. If you are at @EdinburghUni & sympathetic, please start sticking up for Shereen/ academic freedom to senior managers & union members.
• 6 February 2020: And this is about Universities in particular
• 6 February 2020: I think a big difference with US (at least for your sake I hope it is) is the extent to which trans activist organisations have ideologically captured major UK public institutions through various branding schemes (plus other factors). I write about it here
• 6 February 2020: Just heard @ucuedinburgh motion to protect academic freedom to discuss gender was thoroughly defeated. This is happening because the many members at @EdinburghUni that would agree with motion were either too lazy to vote, or too cowardly. The room is then left for extremists.
• 6 February 2020: To be fair we don't know that's why she deleted - maybe she just couldn't be arsed with what would follow - and personally I'd prefer to leave the door open for positive interaction rather than decide we know a stranger's mind. Hope we can leave this here.
• 6 February 2020: I don't equate boring with sane, Helen
• 6 February 2020: I love her. She's the sanest Mitford, admittedly not saying a lot.
• 6 February 2020: Oh right. Sorry, I didn't get that, I thought you were being sarcastic about her supporting me at all. Get it now.
• 6 February 2020: Actually I was very pleased about that, and am grateful to her.
• 6 February 2020: Paul, thanks for your timely intervention. Needless to say I disagreed with much of your recent piece in Pink News about academic freedom (interesting venue..). I wonder what @jamesmurray_TV thinks.
• 6 February 2020: @jeffreyketland @ElectricAgora @Fox_Claire @JamesHeartfield You can apply for a judicial review about university policy. eg. if it seems that an Uni environment which led to a restriction on academic freedom was partly a result of university policies.. that's an option currently being explored in a range of cases.
• 5 February 2020: (To be clear - I refused to alter the format. As far as I'm concerned, invitation still stands and I intend to be there)
• 5 February 2020: This has never been the case with any other Francis Bacon lecturer, as is clear here . Anyway, will keep you all posted.
• 5 February 2020: Despite issuing invitation to me to do Francis Bacon lecture over a year ago, today Uni of Hertfordshire senior management (not philosophy department) proposed to change lecture format so that my time would be cut in half and a critic would be platformed with me. I've refused.
• 5 February 2020: Yes I think so
• 5 February 2020: 😂
• 5 February 2020: (In contrast, how NOT to do student journalism...)
• 5 February 2020: Refreshing - some balanced, un-sensationalised student reporting from student newspaper @ConcreteUEA. Take note @Cherwell_Online - this is how you do it (unlike screenshot below). And I'm pleased to say my talk at UEA has been rescheduled for May 7th.
• 5 February 2020: 2..."pile-on", locks down, tells followers how yes, "TERFS" are all nasty, talks about their mental health, completely ignoring own role in starting it. d) After few days of performative sympathy from others, unlocks because vanity & need for self-aggrandisement is killing them
• 5 February 2020: 1. Just going to predict how today will go, based on endless experience. a)Academic I've never heard of launches attack on me, calls me transphobic, tries to get support for action against me. b) Gets robust but non-abusive pushback from followers. c) Academic complains of../
• 5 February 2020: Yeah, oeuvre has gone downhill since then, apparently
• 5 February 2020: Thanks. Adam quotes Nathan Oseroff there, who has repeatedly libelled me on Twitter & elsewhere for year and half. He is totally demented - tinfoil hat territory. Attacks relentlessly, then performs victim when very occasionally met with pushback. (😘to philosophy screenshotters)
• 5 February 2020: Thanks for letting me know. I wondered why my ears were burning. (Probably the stake and the bonfire.)
• 5 February 2020: Anyone reading this defamation who hasn’t already decided either way should check out what I say here (20 mins) or see
• 5 February 2020: Jane - I use my “platforms” “daily”! Presumably he means Twitter, and possibly teaching! Can you believe the gall of me?
• 5 February 2020: The main driver of trans anxiety on campuses isn’t me. My relations with trans people I meet are completely normal. Problem is hysterical faculty like this one, telling students & colleagues who trust him that I’m dangerous to them. And so another “open letter” begins
• 5 February 2020: Don’t be anxious mate! Just read what I’ve written here, carefully. Then circulate this link to anyone else made anxious because of your ludicrous hyperbole. Then try to understand “academic freedom”
• 5 February 2020: That’s “gender reassignment” not “gender”. Not same thing. Legal wording matters. And sex is also protected in EA.
• 5 February 2020: Excellent! Please let us know if you get a response (or don’t)
• 5 February 2020: If you’re a #ucu member following me who is outraged at the way our union has repeatedly failed on #academicFreedom PLEASE vote for Holly Smith @hollysmithhere for London & SE rep, and Shereen Benjamin for HEC. Turnout traditionally low, this could make big difference.
• 4 February 2020: Yes that's a common feature of Uni policies. They explicitly seek to "go beyond" existing law, or say that existing law is outdated. They are getting this from Stonewall guidance.
• 4 February 2020: Please RT to send a message to this University that they have an obligation to quote the law correctly.
• 4 February 2020: .@portsmouthuni I hear that your Dignity and Respect policy misquotes Equality Act as protecting "gender" not "sex". I also hear this has been raised by staff but ignored. You are a University quoting the law incorrectly. This affects staff and students.
• 4 February 2020: Cult thinking, and I'm not being facetious.
• 4 February 2020: Great to meet you too
• 3 February 2020: I fancied Anna but didn’t realise so spent most of the 90s trying to be her instead, which was terrible for my lungs and liver.
• 3 February 2020: Not the same man
• 3 February 2020: Yes twice. Once in Paris metro, once on a Scottish train.
• 3 February 2020: That’s rubbish. You’re so considered and considerate. Sounds like it’s about them not you. X
• 3 February 2020: It's standard move tbh. They're making up hostility, they only want attention... Luckily we keep receipts on hostility. There's such a thing as evidence. And even if attention-seeking was true, we'd be no different from Alex (who I thank for the uplift!).
• 3 February 2020: What the HELL?
• 3 February 2020: Let women speak.
• 3 February 2020: yes, it's pretty amazing
• 3 February 2020: What happens on train journeys stays on train journeys..
• 3 February 2020: More tickets now released - next Saturday, if you're in Manchester come and hear @BindelJ, @SVPhillimore, Kate Harris of @AllianceLGB and me talk about hate crime, chaired by @selina_todd
• 3 February 2020: In gratitude towards #WomensLib2020 and @Womans_Place_UK I broke open the blog function on my website and wrote a very short thing.
• 2 February 2020: Blimey
• 2 February 2020: Thank you, that’s lovely. They’re all great.
• 2 February 2020: Yes yes, you can have an award too Julie
• 2 February 2020: I think some kind of award for stamina has to go to @HWistrich - throwing dramatic shapes on impromptu dance floor with @K_IngalaSmith last night, and first thing this morning on @bbcbigquestions. Respect 💪
• 2 February 2020: Yes sorry we missed each other!
• 2 February 2020: Was brilliant, wasn’t it
• 2 February 2020: That was very unexpected and special and I’ll honestly remember forever!
• 2 February 2020: Screenshots in right order this time
• 2 February 2020: Two letters from me and from Michael Biggs of Oxford Sociology about impediments to academic freedom to analyse gender identity in @thesundaytimes today
• 2 February 2020: Order of screenshots messed up, soz
• 2 February 2020: Had an absolutely beautiful time at #WomensLib2020 yesterday. Thank you so much to all the women I met and talked to. It was properly special. Thank you too @Womans_Place_UK and @ucl for hosting. They’ve showed the way for other universities and I hope they take note.
• 31 January 2020: I said left-leaning. And I don’t bash trans people online! I get you don’t like me, that’s fine, but don’t lie about me.
• 31 January 2020: Yeah obviously I knew it would annoy. I think it’s true of some, albeit with highly mixed feelings no doubt. And I don’t subscribe to definitions of left or right that means as soon as you approve of something other party does, you’re no longer left or right, by definition.
• 30 January 2020: I think we shouldn’t get too complacent.. we’re all susceptible. If “women’s rights” is so ill defined as to have no clear object, and no limits, we could get there too. And arguably some already have.
• 30 January 2020: @cateother @cps @HJoyceGender Hiya @fharris2011 see above for link issues (and thanks Cate)
• 30 January 2020: If you want snapshot of long reach of Stonewall on public institutions, then check out hashtag #StonewallTop100 right now. You'll see government departments, universities, LEAs, NHS bodies, companies.. Then read this
• 30 January 2020: Lily, that is lovely.
• 30 January 2020: Thanks, Janice.
• 30 January 2020: Yes, I found it comforting reading that piece to see examples coming from across the political spectrum.
• 30 January 2020: Thanks Gary
• 30 January 2020: Alongside my piece, please read (or even read instead) this big-picture piece by @HJoyceGender, brilliantly synthesising how the (intellectually empty) ideology of gender identity has changed social landscape, & how it affects women & girls in particular.
• 30 January 2020: More visible link here:
• 30 January 2020: Serendipity! On #stonewalltop100 launch day - not to mention day news breaks of unbelievably bad @CPS hate incident guidelines, co-authored by Stonewall - read about what is wrong with Stonewall schemes, and reach they have on our public institutions.
• 30 January 2020: How did that make her feel, girl-child? Think very hard about how this person might feel! Think not at all about how you might feel, or else the CPS might record it as a hate incident!
• 30 January 2020: Online version here:
• 30 January 2020: This is hard copy of @cpsuk (that is - Crown Prosecution Service) new guidelines for teachers about "hate incidents" in schools. Photos removed in online version tho message remains. Girl children being taught - as rule - to positively project onto strangers in woman-only spaces.
• 30 January 2020: Thanks, I missed that.
• 30 January 2020: Doesn't it depend on what your consumption was to start with? #clutchingatdrinkingstraws
• 30 January 2020: Grief, laughter.. in any moment of extreme emotion, always think of your breasts first
• 30 January 2020: I don't see that picture in the original document on the website?
• 30 January 2020: It's launch day of Stonewall's Top 100 Employers Index. So far I've seen @MoJGovUK, @welshgovernment, @tradegovuk, and @NewcastleCC tweeting triumphantly. Read my @StandpointMag article this week on how institutions are being influenced illicitly & why it matters #StonewallTop100
• 30 January 2020: This is great. @boodleoops @jessesingal think you’d both enjoy this for different reasons (or if Jesse likes crafting, same reasons, who knows)
• 29 January 2020: @wekatweets Thanks
• 28 January 2020: I'll be on @GMB tomorrow around 8.30am discussing/ defending the value of academic freedom to discuss controversial topics
• 28 January 2020: .@milicapesic is this you? Why don't you make this defamation under your own name, I wonder?
• 28 January 2020: On the day philosopher Dr Jon Pike @runthinkwrite publicly urges @DrJoGrady and others at @ucu to do their jobs and protect academic freedom to discuss gender identity.. he gets a death threat.
• 28 January 2020: "Diversity and inclusion" is increasingly a convenient fluffy-looking cover for aggressive thick puritans with axes to grind.
• 28 January 2020: "Cowardly" because they are doing this anonymously. I find the word accurate and am happy to leave it. If you don't mind me saying, you seem a bit naive about observable deeds versus nice shiny words.
• 28 January 2020: Selina Todd? "Bullying trans people"? She's one of the kindest, most respectful people I know. Unlike this cowardly tweeter, she can easily tolerate disagreement without personalising it. And her social media is impeccable, as she is, generally. I hope she sues, I really do.
• 27 January 2020: I'd love to see the tweets of @Lastpositivist but despite never having met the bloke or interacted in any way, he blocked me for thought crime. Aw, sounds like I'm missing loads of great stuff wistful.
• 27 January 2020: David, sorry but you're really very behind. A commitment to advancing the political cause of gender identity (inner feeling) in some form was in the manifestos of the LibDems, the Labour Party and the Greens - and up til recently was a priority of the Tories.
• 27 January 2020: Bowing out now - nice talking.
• 27 January 2020: No idea. Contrary to popular opinion I don't control the minds of my followers, David. You know - it's Twitter!
• 27 January 2020: And I know it's really tempting to confuse this with me "telling you what your sexuality is" in a way that is offensive. But what WOULD be offensive is if I said you were straight, when it was fact that you were gay (or vice versa). And that is actually what Stonewall is doing.
• 27 January 2020: Actually, as I write in this, I think you're right that a one-off partner who is trans man wouldn't make you straight. But that's nothing to do with how you "identify". And its different point to claim that a trans man is gay, or a trans woman lesbian.
• 27 January 2020: I'm not policing. That's rhetoric. I'm categorising accurately. There's a distinct group there, and we need to be able to give it its own name, so we can argue for its particular interests. Do you think that calling a table " a table" is "policing tables"?
• 27 January 2020: (Tbf, he says he doesn't remember his kids' friends names - he's a straight man not a psychopath).
• 27 January 2020: I'm afraid it's every gay person's business when main charity nominally in charge of their interests doesn't recognise same-sex attraction as a thing anymore. Being gay or straight is a fact, not an identity to be put on like a costume. There's nothing wrong with being straight.
• 27 January 2020: My long answer is here
• 27 January 2020: Yes, true. I shouldn't underestimate that brilliant contribution. Definitionally, straight men don't remember their kids' names. Simples.
• 27 January 2020: (There is literally nothing intellectually credible behind the curtain here. This doesn't come from logic/ reason/ science/ argument. It mostly comes from entitlement of a few influential trans women, who want the back story to be complete, so have to retrofit. So here we are).
• 27 January 2020: If you're a man, and all your female partners announce tomorrow that they have male gender identities, then you could well be a gay man without knowing it.
• 27 January 2020: PS Please also remember, if it makes any difference to you, that gender identity is totally in the head, by everyone's admission including Stonewall's. You don't have to dress anyway, change your body in any way, or get a legal certificate. Put it this way:/
• 27 January 2020: Wow, yes, I am. That's great.
• 27 January 2020: redefined same-sex attraction out of existence, or at very least moved it completely out of their political focus. Yet this same organisation trades off its reputation for advocating for same-sex people. It's absolutely batshit. Please, straight people, send help.
• 27 January 2020: a "straight woman", and a trans man (f) attracted to a woman is a "straight man". With me? Now, perhaps you don't think it matters - can't we all just get along, etc. But seriously - think. The main UK charity set up to checks notes fight for the same-sex attracted just/
• 27 January 2020: trans women (m) attracted to women are "lesbians"; as are women (f) attracted to trans women (m). Since at this point, minds tend to melt, I'll put it in these terms: trans men (f) & men (m) who get together are both "gay men"; a trans woman (m) attracted to a man (m) is../
• 27 January 2020: ""A person’s sexual attraction to other people, or lack thereof." (Yes - it turns out that all that fighting was for the rights of people to be sexually attracted to other people). Worse, in "The Truth about Trans" page on their site, they make clear that:/
• 27 January 2020: The Equality Act protects orientation, & defines it as either same-sex attraction (m-m, f-f), opposite-sex attraction (m-f), or both (bi). As result of change of direction towards trans activism, @stonewalluk now define orientation in their glossary, completely uselessly, as/
• 27 January 2020: /one thing about the whole gender identity debacle, it is this. (I think it's so very surprising that the mind just tends to slide off it, thinking it must have misunderstood). Here goes: Stonewall has redefined "sexual orientation" to mean same-gender-identity-attraction. /
• 27 January 2020: Short thread prompted by this great one by @twisterfilm.. Because progressive straight people largely want to be nice, and also as time's short, they reasonably trust @stonewalluk to have all the gay stuff covered. But if I could get my straight followers to understand just/
• 27 January 2020: "LinkedIn: Lipstick, lattes, liberal feminism! 💅👠💋✌️ Twitter:
• 27 January 2020: In good news, my Wikipedia page and related Google crawl thing, no longer say I'm 69! Many thanks to those who helped me. Am relieved, not least because - no joke- I went for coffee with new acquaintance the other day, who kept urging upon me the benefits of flexible retirement.
• 27 January 2020: Not enough, even so. You can only attain Operating Puri-tan VIII if actively performing humiliation of a TERF at least once daily. And actually, if only once daily, you're exhibiting worryingly dilettante tendencies & probably harbour secret sympathies, so off with your head too.
• 27 January 2020: Didn't you hear? She's a "fascist" now. (At this point various conspiracy theorists who follow me may well pop up to "explain" why, but I can explain true picture in DMs if they do - in DMS only because any attempt to publicly rebut just draws more attention and more lunatics).
• 27 January 2020: In more hilarity, I'm told that person publicly castigated in screenshot above for sharing stage at an event with A TERF etc, in fact refused to eat with other speakers, stood at edge of stage so as not to interact, & left immediately after talk for fear of cross-contamination 😂
• 27 January 2020: Looks misty-eyed at inspirational feminism
• 27 January 2020: I know people often follow me for glimpses into darkly farcical contradictions of life in progressive institutions. So they might find it fun to hear, as I do, that person with Roald-Dahl-villain persona who runs charming @TERFSoutofart account also works for @CherieBlairFndn
• 27 January 2020: Yum
• 27 January 2020: I'm a bit late to this party but ICYMI - the appeal is ON!
• 27 January 2020: Unfortunately we didn't miss that.
• 27 January 2020: LOL Mary!
• 26 January 2020: Sorry if you already knew this! I write a bit about sequence of events leading up to GRA consultation in Standpoint article forthcoming this week.
• 26 January 2020: Don't know who did actual drafting. It followed recommendations from Stonewall 2015 "A Vision for Change" pretty closely. Teresa May launched it . It followed earlier committee inquiry overseen by Maria Miller.
• 26 January 2020: Disgusting account. Hiding behind anonymity & delusions of ethical grandeur, they live to smear and intimidate. Already responsible for getting @rachelara cancelled at Oxford Brookes. @wondersbec is asset to @GSofA. I hope they support this relatively junior member properly.
• 26 January 2020: It's amazing!
• 26 January 2020: I've probably been listening to too much @ThisJungianLife lately - but the article made me think of this. Even when masquerading as reasonable people, evil lurks beneath 🧙
• 26 January 2020: Only just seen this by @LJFinlayson . Calls for civility in discussion, made by "gender-critical" feminists (author's inverted commas, not mine) are in fact - you guessed it - transphobic. Well of course they are - isn't everything?
• 26 January 2020: And that should say E&D!
• 26 January 2020: (Essex is home Uni of Lorna Finlayson, in case my massive sarcasm wasn't clear)
• 26 January 2020: The University of Essex is committed, in official policy, to protecting those "with an infinite number of genders". No other protected group has such detailed E&I policies. But not even they could foresee claim that calls for civility are coded transphobia. Better update policy!
• 26 January 2020: @LucyHunterB @hollysmithhere @dkernohan @GoonerProf @JoPhoenix1 @Wonkhe @selina_todd Urgh. My trigger is feminist philosophers constructing bogeywomen while gaslighting real women. Would be good to see @Wonkhe cover a different perspective. Do the gender-critical feminists referred to in disdainful inverted commas (natch) here get a right of reply?
• 26 January 2020: Thank you. This is nub of issue. It's not just individual stress/ personal injustice we complain about (or as antagonists would put it, without any apparent sense of irony, "developing a victim narrative"). It's that knowledge-production is impeded when public desperately need it
• 25 January 2020: Excited this will be on newsstands soon - some real talk from @HJoyceGender and me. Thanks to @edwardlucas for the opportunity.
• 25 January 2020: Thanks!
• 25 January 2020: Sending love to you, Selina. Academics publicly scoffing & minimising show themselves up for the partisan fools they are, particularly when coupled with near constant hyperbolic representation of our position as dangerous and harmful bigotry. Transparently stupid and biased.
• 25 January 2020: This is marvellous interview with @selina_todd at 1.42, articulating important stuff about why Universities need to foster sensible discussion between opposing views generally, & insisting women as sex class have a place, on equal terms, to discuss & challenged trans ideology.
• 24 January 2020:
• 24 January 2020: I feel like this (to me) always-shocking information tends to get lost in libfem mental fog of "oh you know women, always having boob jobs, what's wrong with self-improvement?" etc. So to clarify, this visiting Prof to @BristolUni means: after she chopped them off the first time
• 24 January 2020: Worth wheeling this out again - Visiting Professor at Bristol Uni, & practitioner of surgical & pharmaceutical intervention upon children, Johanna Olsen-Kennedy, tells audience "If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them":
• 24 January 2020: Wrong tag - should be @GalopUK
• 24 January 2020: Oh whoops
• 24 January 2020: Just in case anyone wonders, I'm fine with no-one answering that.
• 24 January 2020: It's point made by many before me, probably including you two, but isn't it amazing how, as males move to "demedicalise" being trans and make it an inner state independent of outward appearances, females keep chopping themselves up. In no way related to wider patterns I'm sure.
• 24 January 2020: Also - don't mean to be bore but if you wouldn't mind explaining what need this is supposed to meet for non-binary people, that would also be amazing. If someone feels female on Tues & male on Wed can't they just change toilets accordingly? And if neither, how does this help?
• 24 January 2020: .@DarwinCollege no matter yr stated intention, I think you'll find you're "de-gendering" toilets (or as I'd quaintly say, "making unisex"). Did you do Equality Impact Assessment for this, given effectively it removes toilets from use for e.g. religious groups, female survivors?
• 24 January 2020: Just think of it as a fair-trade, low carbon-footprint, biodegradable sex doll.
• 24 January 2020: Point is NOT that I think this is conspiracy theory. Point is that I think this is unfair. It's a public consultation, and yet public money is going into slick promotion of one side of the argument, while obstacles are placed in the path of dissemination of alternative arguments.
• 24 January 2020: New hobby: every time I see a pro-self-ID advert from LGBT organisation, emotively urging people to support self-ID in the Scottish government consultation, I check their accounts and see if they are getting public money to do it. @Galop ✔️ @LGBTIScotland ✔️@Scottishtrans ✔️
• 24 January 2020: What does @OxfordUCU have to say about what their member faces? What about @ucu? Will General Secretary @DrJoGrady continue to gaslight & denigrate those who, like @selina_todd, wish to speak about sex-based rights, or is she going to do her job and stand up for academic freedom?
• 24 January 2020: Google is your friend (etc.) Yes it's nonsense -on that we agree.
• 24 January 2020: This is tale of multiple moral failures (and one shining example) but I mostly reproach, not students, but cowardly colleagues with prestige and power who could easily unite to take a firm public stand beside @selina_todd and say - this intimidation is NOT OK. But don't.
• 23 January 2020: or Kira 😍
• 23 January 2020: Oh Anna
• 23 January 2020: "If you have any knowledge of early-years undergraduate philosophy, with its emphasis on metaphysics and mind-body problems.. you’ll realise how frankly bizarre it is that philosophers struggle to analyse and discuss the idea that a person can be born in the ‘wrong’ body."
• 23 January 2020: Thank you
• 23 January 2020: "Something close to proof"? I'm always saying scientists don't talk like that about single studies, so please don't let me down.. Also, the alleged similarity is prevalence, not type of violation, victim injury, etc. And the comparison is between "same sex" & "het".
• 23 January 2020: Gotta link?
• 23 January 2020: Another breach is by Athena Swan, funded by @AdvanceHE established to monitor career outcomes of women in Higher Ed, and which now defines gender equality, and captures "gender" data, in terms of self-defined identity
• 23 January 2020: Speaking as someone with established credentials in weirdo dept: if @OdysseanProject wants really good idea, I'd get government bodies, including but not limited to @EHRC, out of Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme
• 23 January 2020: There are about a million other examples but you get the point. Stonewall advises organisations that it's absolutely within terms of Equality Act to admit into single-sex space, anyone self-identified as that sex. Here, for instance, is Cardiff University, another Diversity Champ
• 23 January 2020: From Stonewall's document for Diversity Champions "Inclusive Policy Toolkit"
• 23 January 2020: From Stonewall's main website
• 23 January 2020: Anyone else find it really quite surprising that the @EHRC, in charge of interpreting Equality Act, is a Stonewall Diversity Champion? i.e. effectively they pay Stonewall to lobby them to interpret the Equality Act in a particular, highly tendentious direction.
• 23 January 2020: I dunno. Philosophers discovered the internet, maybe? St Andrews got decent broadband? I'm only half joking.
• 23 January 2020: It was. But people who came out of it effectively made splash in ethics and politics on the back of hot reputations as "hard" philosophers. And my supposition is, generalising with exceptions, that cognitively speaking, they are last people who should be doing ethics and politics
• 23 January 2020: Yes, this is what I mean - glad to hear I didn't imagine it.
• 23 January 2020: Well, we've all got personalities. And probably disorders. But e.g. Arche in St Andrews in 2000s seems to have produced several puritans now intoning sententiously about morals, from tenured positions, yet who started investigating numbers or hinge propositions or whatever.
• 23 January 2020: Plus there is other stuff going on in Tuvel case, like the unholy alliance of Butlerian post-modernism and analytic feminist philosophers in same field, which means the latter end up repeating absolutely barking things because they want to stay pals with the influential former.
• 23 January 2020: Philosophy right up.
• 23 January 2020: the Zeitgeist, then you can get most attention by constantly outperforming others in how your thought exemplifies the trajectory of the trend. Plus there's a high correlation between these people and narcissists, because their motive was originally to get attention. It has fucked
• 23 January 2020: .. For some of these, since main motive psychologically was mainly, though implicitly, to catch wave of already popular political movements, and more importantly to be seen to, the philosophy produced mainly tried to rationalise existing progressive trends. If the game is fitting
• 23 January 2020: My pet explanation fwiw. In last 10 years, people who made early names in fields like metaphysics/phil of lang became dissatisfied, wanted to do more "meaningful" work so started doing ethics, political philosophy, yet w/t social understanding or empathy required to do it well...
• 22 January 2020: Wow, your mum sounds fabulous! Lolling.
• 22 January 2020: Robotica Long-Bailey, taking instructions from two different churches at once.
• 22 January 2020: You're new round these parts, aren't you.
• 22 January 2020: Anyone @SociologyGold fancy inviting me to give a talk? Go on. I dare you. You're supposed to be rebels, aren't you? I'd come.
• 22 January 2020: Part of what I find shocking about this, apart from fact this apparently stays up, is the "our turf" bit. Since when did an academic department get to explicitly be counted as "our turf", proudly? Whose turf? Aren't sociologists supposed to be all over outgrouping & othering?
• 22 January 2020: Well of course they did
• 22 January 2020: Sure
• 22 January 2020: gender identity in simplistic, biased fashion, without deep analysis, get institutional support, grants, & lots of publicity - because Universities think message is on-brand with students & applicants, thought of as potential customers. It's a total fix. END. @wornoutmumhack
• 22 January 2020: Either way - do people wonder that public organisations & policy-makers only hear one side of trans story from University researchers? Those who want to criticise the idea of gender identity get external threats & internal institutional obstacles. Those who want to celebrate/
• 22 January 2020: Aside: I could be wrong but suspect this "safe space policy" at a University event - if it indeed means people can't ask questions about gender identity or mention biological sex in any context - violates Scottish law on Universities and academic freedom.
• 22 January 2020: It hasn't been rescheduled yet! Meanwhile, however, THIS event, also on gender & schools, is going ahead there without problem. Amazing, no? No requirement for "balance" on the platform. No threats. A "safe space policy" operates at event as well..
• 22 January 2020: Remember the cancellation in December at @uniofedinburgh of this important research event about teaching gender in schools? "The organisers were told that there was going to be too hostile an environment to hold the event"? Well, guess what..
• 22 January 2020: A tale of two research events at @uniofedinburgh . THREAD. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of reason, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the age of incredulity, (continues for some time..)..
• 22 January 2020: They're such a joke publication
• 22 January 2020: Aw. Obviously I mostly posted for this sort of ego-stroking. Mwah dahlink. And ditto, obvs.
• 22 January 2020: Well at least you got my good side.
• 22 January 2020: Seems like @UniofOxford saw sense. Great news.
• 22 January 2020: Agreed.
• 22 January 2020: Yes. This. The anxiety just mounts and mounts.
• 22 January 2020: Could you have a look at the link and message me if you think it applies to you? Ta.
• 22 January 2020: ""Gender-Critical" professor thinks picture editor deliberately picks unflattering pictures - but in they are picked at random, there are no others available, and she's really narcissistic! Also ugly!" You. Are. Welcome 😘)
• 22 January 2020: started careers with good intentions and yet later find themselves collaborating with Pink News to gaslight gay women and project All The Sexist Stereotypes onto them. What a journey 👏 (There you go, PN, there's another article for free:/
• 22 January 2020: Not going to link, obvs - but am absolutely fascinated by some picture editor from News of the Penises (aka Pink News) trawling thru videos of me to find what they hope is least flattering still of evil TERF, etc. Even more fascinated by gender studies profs who no doubt/
• 22 January 2020: Disagree so strongly that I'm going to quote tweet.. Students don't need yet more alone-time in bedrooms. They need to get into seminars, meet new people, hear views they disagree with (maybe even communist ones!), learn how to argue & think for selves, see teachers face-to-face.
• 22 January 2020: Grim reading about state of academic freedom to critically discuss gender identity at Simon Fraser University in Canada @SFU. By @profmarkcollard and Rachel Altman. (Particularly love detail of the "Academic Women" email list censoring any discussion 👏)
• 22 January 2020: This - the idea of centralising teaching in big super-universities, who can rapidly increase their capacity (or at least, pretend to, while taking the fees thank you very much) disadvantages kids whose home or financial situation makes moving across the country not an option.
• 22 January 2020: Clink on link, there's an email
• 22 January 2020: Lol
• 22 January 2020: Yes exactly. Him - your views cause harm! Public - we are tired of being told normal, observably true views "cause harm"! Him - not only do your views cause harm, but you are now responsible for the public backlash to my totally OTT criticism of your views! Muppet.
• 22 January 2020: Really? that's so odd!
• 22 January 2020: Really. You're not a teacher? Cos you sound like a teacher 😀
• 21 January 2020: Yes, there's now backlash to yours & others' teeth-grindingly stupid woke antics. Yes, responsible critics will try to manage the overcorrection & see people don't get hurt. But no, it won't be critics' fault. It will be yours for overreaching so catastrophically in first place.
• 21 January 2020: And just to add - if you have similar policies at your Uni, and are affected by them, please get in touch too. This list isn't supposed to be exhaustive. Uni trans policies are nearly always available on the web, so it's easy to check.
• 21 January 2020: Another glowing testimony for Allsorts, the Brighton-based youth group for trans kids whose leaflets are - for some inexplicable reason - in the reception of the main children's hospital..
• 21 January 2020: Thanks in advance (and please RT).
• 21 January 2020: If so, or even if not, please have a gander at this: Links is to arguably illegal current Uni policies on single-sex facilities. If your use of facilities is inhibited/ prevented, or you have other relevant experience, pls get in touch at address given.
• 21 January 2020: Attention! Are you a student, staff, or member of public local to any of the following Universities? Bristol Uni Cambridge Uni Cardiff Uni Leeds Uni Leeds Beckett Uni Manchester Uni Nottingham Uni Roehampton Uni UCL University of Kent
• 21 January 2020: He's a lawyer. He's offering a professional opinion based on his understanding of the law, as I invited him too. In the vast scheme of strategic battles, I would say this wasn't the obvious one to go for, but you probably know best, Steve.
• 21 January 2020: Thank you.
• 21 January 2020: Hey young radfems that follow me, secretly or otherwise - ⬇️⬇️⬇️.
• 21 January 2020: What do you think @jamesmurray_TV?
• 21 January 2020: I just looked at @amnestyusa's profile and it literally says "We've been fighting the bad guys since 1961". When a major organisation dealing in massive amounts of real-world ethical complexity starts representing themselves as John Wayne, it's time for a rethink.
• 21 January 2020: A "code of conduct" which you are consenting to by booking, and which includes: "Refrain from using language or putting forward views intended to undermine the validity of trans and gender diverse identities".
• 21 January 2020: Another day, another draconian attempt to suppress gender-critical thought at a British Uni - this time @UniofOxford no less. This is "Perspectives on Trans Intersectionality" at University of Oxford. Note in particular last two lines, as conditions of attendance/ participation:
• 21 January 2020: Half of them have redefined "woman and femininism" to include male people, and the other half have redefined "brave and principled" to include cowardly people.
• 21 January 2020: Or alternatively: lalala, we can't hear you, go away ancient cervix-havers, haven't you heard of clownfish anyway, why can't you just be kind, here have a free tampon.
• 21 January 2020: Don't tell me.... they acknowledged competing views and strong feelings in this area, but reiterated their commitment to representing the interests of the 51% of the population they were originally set up to represent - a task which requires being able to name females, as such?
• 21 January 2020: Gracias!
• 20 January 2020: Agree 100%
• 20 January 2020: Thanks!
• 20 January 2020: Whatever tickles your fancy! There are no wrong choices..
• 20 January 2020: @berylperrol Er.. no, that day is definitely not coming. These are kids with a lot of issues to work through, and the last thing they need is a politicised circus, in either direction. That can't be the right way. (I know you were being facetious but I worry that people might actually do it).
• 20 January 2020: Oh no! Sorry to hear this. Sending you our good wishes xx
• 20 January 2020: This is Shereen, writing last year on the clusterdebacle going on with @ucu and academic freedom, or lack of it, at the moment
• 20 January 2020: Join the awesome Shereen Benjamin of Edinburgh Uni, the legendary @8RosarioSanchez, and me, for participatory workshop on freedom of expression in Unis. Or go to one of many other brilliant workshops on offer, we won't hold it against you! Whole event looks fantastic- can't wait.
• 20 January 2020: Brilliant news
• 20 January 2020: Here's bigger piece in today's @elmundoes, of which interview with me is smaller part: "War between feminists.."
• 20 January 2020: Me in @elmundoes - talking to @olgarsanmartin about what I think is at stake in the legal and social prioritisation of gender identity over observable physical facts.
• 20 January 2020: This is not normal for evidence-based medical practice. It is, however, sadly normal for anything to do with gender identity.
• 20 January 2020: Should clinicians at UK's only Gender Identity Service for children have access to academic critiques of the affirmation model of therapy, written by professionals? Or should they be withdrawn from clinicians' library, following mysterious "serious complaint" about book content?
• 20 January 2020: loyalty, or because of their own inner stuff, who knows, despite the fact they only know one highly partisan side of the story. And yeah, sometimes that can be completely fucking crazy-making and leaves you engaging in stupid pointless low stakes arguments like this.
• 20 January 2020: And yeah - that often leaves you effectively stuck in limbo, having to silently witness the frequent digs of particular grudge-filled strangers, for whom you are a handy projection screen for all their inner conflicts. Or those who want to be publicly seen to support them out of/
• 20 January 2020: Don’t confuse “there’s no explanation” with “I choose not to explain self on Twitter, in order to avoid fuelling yet more arguments, uncharitable takes based on limited information, personal vendettas, glee for TRAs, and reproduction of the bad politics/ optics I seek to avoid".
• 20 January 2020: It's too easy to ascribe dark motives to those you're in dispute with. I could easily say: you don't like gobby women either, you're clearly trying to shut some up by misdescribing their motives like this. But we need to stop the endless DARVO cycle. Women can disagree. It's fine
• 20 January 2020: The disagreements aren't about women not being "polite". That's not credible explanation given personalities involved. They're about other perceived things: racism, or homophobia, or bad politics/ optics. Maybe wrongly perceived. But why not discuss that, not misdirect like this?
• 20 January 2020: Also, even earlier, Clara Thompson, I see .
• 20 January 2020: De Beauvoir made same point I think: "if the little girl feels penis envy it is only as the symbol of privileges enjoyed by boys"
• 19 January 2020: don't think GW is right, or don't like GW, then you have right to say. And so does she. You don't take a vow to stop saying what you think over 25K followers.
• 19 January 2020: Gobby women (GW) sometimes criticise other GW. And - blindingly obviously -vice versa. But if GW has over certain number of followers, at that point lots of other GW (and GM) will start muttering about elites, tall poppies, authoritarianism, middle-class rank-pulling etc. If you
• 18 January 2020: What do I think of that phenomenon? I think of time my child said to me: "Mum, when do I become an adult? And I said, "I dunno, around 18 I suppose". And then child said, with a kind of sad puzzlement/ longing: "So when do I become a dog?" I didn't buy a kennel though.
• 18 January 2020: Not to mention the name at the bottom of the final page
• 18 January 2020: It is surprising, til you see the names on the front page of this document
• 18 January 2020: All fuelled by the @BPSOfficial ban on "conversion therapy" for trans kids, of course. Shame on them, seriously.
• 18 January 2020: Yes - weird hyper-vigilance. Completely daft that society is permitted to psychoanalyse parenting in every other capacity, but as soon as it comes to parents with trans-identifying kids, suddenly we revert to pre-Freudian innocence & self-interpretations become authoritative.
• 18 January 2020: Phillips sounds like just another charming, funny demagogue-in-waiting to me. Politics need more rationality and proper argument, not less. Voters aren't stupid, they can cope.
• 18 January 2020: Hey, people who say they don't understand this "complicated" area... Can you see it yet? What do you think makes a child that first "seems gay" to a parent "really trans"? I'll give you a hint: they don't turn out to have "really trans" going through middle, like a stick of rock.
• 18 January 2020: Ha, good point.
• 18 January 2020: It's lucrative, see. Literally.
• 18 January 2020: I suppose that depends on how you define Butlerians. There are demonstrably people in UK Gender Studies who will, one minute, help themselves unquestioningly to Butlerian claims, and in the next, set up a research event with Susie Green to talk about the "trans child" or whatever
• 18 January 2020: Hey J, nice to see you round these parts. I might have to watch that one on my own but I'll definitely put it on the list. Hope all is good with you xx
• 17 January 2020: Am total newcomer to Aaron Hernandez story on Netflix - totally gripped by twists & turns, and can't look away from the complicated story about gender (in traditional sense), internalised homophobia, transphobia, inherited trauma, American machismo,& all the rest of it. Recommend
• 17 January 2020: Thanks Selina.
• 17 January 2020: Thanks both
• 17 January 2020: I'd rather stick red hot pokers in my eyes
• 17 January 2020: See my forthcoming book :D
• 17 January 2020: If you're going to be very disappointed in me, you could at least try to get my name right 😄
• 17 January 2020: A great film, and a great line, which occurs to me very frequently these days.
• 17 January 2020: I suppose so. But I just want to believe some queer theorists/ gender studies have intellectual qualms, given that none of it makes sense, even according to their own starting points.
• 17 January 2020: No, I don't think so. Some post-modernism is interesting and insightful. It's a huge area, hard to generalise. But even the Butlerian version - which is not either of those things - is not compatible with the populist essentialism about gender identity adopted by lobbyists.
• 17 January 2020: Are there paid-up academic queer theorists out there prepared to criticise the idea you can be born trans, or that you innately know whether you are a gay or trans child? C'mon - you MUST have some doubts. You know it doesn't work. DM me. Tell me. Give me hope. I won't tell.
• 17 January 2020: This is central question. I'm genuinely fascinated to know the answer. What on earth stops the "everything is permeable, contingent, constructed, all norms express power relations" crew from coming out hard against "gender identity is essentially, innately, permanently in head?"
• 17 January 2020: Stock deactivated her membership from group Stock set up, after a lot of demonstrable antagonism towards Stock online, in print, & in personal correspondence, a long time ago, & which is mostly forgotten, except when brought up by shit-stirrers who love a bit of drama? Boring.
• 17 January 2020: No - to be clear - at least some in the Philosophy Department strongly disagree, but their hands are tied. This came from higher up.
• 17 January 2020: Thanks, that means a lot!
• 17 January 2020: Original email I saw, claimed among other things that venue was unsuitable - since then I've seen evidence that several other large lecture theatres are available at same time. I've also seen student complaints sent in. It seems clear what the real reason for cancellation is here
• 17 January 2020: 24 hours and I've heard nothing directly from management who "postponed" this talk. I thought postponing normally meant rearranging with apologies for inconvenience? Plus talk was for next Thurs - seems total nonsense they couldn't organise alternative venue and security in time.
• 17 January 2020: Thanks so much, Graham. That is immense of you.
• 17 January 2020: Sorry Andrew.
• 16 January 2020: Thank you Catharine
• 16 January 2020: Yes
• 16 January 2020: Quite honestly, I don't think it is the students - or only a few. I think it is (some of) the faculty not knowing how to cope, not hearing from silent majority, over-estimating numbers of protestors, worried about brand management etc etc.
• 16 January 2020: Thanks Jonny. Funny old world, isn't it.
• 16 January 2020: Quite
• 16 January 2020: No-one would do it, Mary. They all know I'm right.
• 16 January 2020: Head of School - so line manager I guess.
• 16 January 2020: The talk that UEA just cancelled citing security risk was going to be an expanded version of this dangerous, dangerous stuff
• 16 January 2020: Amazing how narrative can simultaneously be: a) there's a threat to your safety, so we have to postpone in your interests; BUT ALSO b) your talk, independent of content (which was actually about diversity), is disrespectful to "transgender community" so you're still bad guy here.
• 16 January 2020: Obviously it would be too much to ask that they tell me directly before sending out message to the Philosophy Department (this came from higher up than Philosophy Dept). Hope I can get my ticket reimbursed! No such demand for "balance" is EVER exerted the other way round.
• 16 January 2020: because of "security and health and safety issues" and because talk (which they haven't read) "raises issues of academic freedom", suggesting that a "transgender speaker" should be invited the following week, thereby "respecting the views of members of the transgender community".
• 16 January 2020: Have spent past two days writing paper for research seminar next Thursday at @uniofeastanglia. Have given many such seminars over years. Was looking forward to it, I used to work there. Have just been ccd in to email from a senior manager to others, saying talk is postponed/
• 16 January 2020: (I still have it and will consider passing it on for large sum to right person.)
• 16 January 2020: Nice. RS was complicated person but apart from clever, I found him to be kind. Also anarchic. He once sent me short story in which Derrida, dressed as a ballerina, spanked a thinly-disguised Pierre Boulez character whilst engaging in ludic play in his ear. All dialogue in French.
• 16 January 2020: Toolkit itself is here -
• 16 January 2020: A very good analysis of the Trans Toolkit - a publication by @BrightonHoveCC, used throughout schools in region - can be found here, by @helensaxby11
• 16 January 2020: I was at Royal Alex children's hospital yesterday - amazing place where good people make sick kids well. Jarring to see leaflet on reception desk, potentially sending "questioning" kids on path to medical transition. Extract from same organisation's schools Trans Toolkit below.
• 16 January 2020: Are the Equality Act 2010 and CEDAW working for the women’s voluntary & community sector in England? Good blog from @whywomen
• 16 January 2020: "Compared to.. extensive protocols for working with children, adolescents and adults who wish to transition, nothing exists for those working with..detransitioners." New research from Catherine Butler (Bath) and Anna Hutchison (formerly GIDS) -free access.
• 16 January 2020: "Feminism has a term for fashioning groups of people out of your own projections and flattening them into an undifferentiated dark morass that lacks individuated or interior life. We call it othering." 👍
• 15 January 2020: Recommended.. and I also recommend @ThisJungianLife which am now addicted to, featuring Lisa and two other brilliant therapists who are friends, discussing all sorts of interesting stuff about the mind together.
• 14 January 2020: It's complicated. Allies may "centre" themselves when attacking gender-critical people, but not when challenged to defend their claims. Talking about being upset about abuse is "weaponising white tears" when done by gender-critical academics, but not when done by allies.
• 14 January 2020: God forbid
• 14 January 2020: In meantime, given she says she is unprepared to debate with me, I'd be really grateful if @Alisonphipps could stop trying to wreck my good relationships with trans and other students at Sussex University by constantly publicly insinuating that my views are harmful to them.
• 14 January 2020: Though blocked, I hear @Alisonphipps declined this offer, on grounds that "reasonable debate cannot counter unreasonable ideas" & that it would give "credibility where there is none". Do you know, I thought this might happen? It's ever so convenient. However the offer is there.
• 14 January 2020: I would say the latter. As far as I can see, it is ill-defined, and used strategically, mostly by white women to get other white women to shut up. I could be wrong though. That's precisely the sort of thing I'd love to discuss properly with Alison in public.
• 14 January 2020: "WPUK contends that .. relevant government bodies, such as the Government Equalities Office, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, have failed to take action to defend women’s civil and political rights." Information from university testimonies about suppression included too.
• 14 January 2020: /stakes seem high in either case - not just the average low-stakes academic spat. So let's put it to test, and discuss our ideas in public? We're academics and deal with ideas. This invitation is open & indefinite. Any time, any place (within reason!), just let me know. End/
• 14 January 2020: /same institution and both now writing books on feminism. If you're right, my views express "political whiteness" & are dangerous for trans people. If I'm right, the policies you advocate, when adopted by public bodies, are dangerous for women & girls, of all ethnicities. The 3/
• 14 January 2020: I think some trans students I teach in Philosophy would like it - they like examining ideas from different perspectives, and making up own minds. Generally, I think there'd be great interest. Happy to arrange it, or to participate if others wish to arrange. We're both at the 2/
• 14 January 2020: .@alisonphipps Each time a news article about gender-critical academics comes out, you tweet that Sussex Uni trans students & staff are made unsafe by us (recent selection below). Instead, why not engage with me in public debate at Sussex or elsewhere? 1/
• 14 January 2020: Many thanks to @GuardianEdu for giving a good sense of what the environment is like in UK Unis for those who want to insist on the relevance of facts about biology. Great to see this issue covered in the Graun
• 10 January 2020: Details of case here:
• 10 January 2020: Worth noting about Gemma Watts case in news today - if the underage element wasn't present, and the defendant had said they identified as a boy, Stonewall would very possibly have treated it as miscarriage of justice. From "A Vision for Change" document:
• 10 January 2020: Congratulations - and well done for pursuing this, I'm sure it was horribly stressful.
• 10 January 2020: Interesting. I write diary these days to try and remember important stuff, but this suggests I might be leaving out the most important stuff after all..
• 9 January 2020: @Jsoosty Congratulations! That's fantastic.
• 9 January 2020: Sorry to hear that Cátia (I know that's not why you mentioned it but still).
• 9 January 2020: This exchange in particular illustrates slippery move also beloved of @UCU when defending self-ID policy. If pressed, say it's standard self-report/ self-completion, not self-ID. But then it's hard to understand why it's so vitally important to trans interests to have it..
• 9 January 2020: Simultaneously a brilliant example of a) ideological policy capture at @NatRecordsScot b) intense scrutiny on behalf of public by highly informed, tenacious individuals such as @JoanMcAlpine
• 8 January 2020: @Carolyn_nth @Filippovna2020 Actual story on my timeline...
• 8 January 2020: Nice one @Louise_m_perry!
• 8 January 2020: Thanks Ann!
• 8 January 2020: Yeah, well, that was inevitable.
• 7 January 2020: That's so very you. Congratulations!
• 7 January 2020: Lol.
• 7 January 2020: Just rewatched. Horrible stuff, but God bless @BIndelJ for the line, under severe pressure that would crack many a weaker trans activist, if reversed: "what do you think you are, the militia wing of the nutcase orange fringe?" Woman's a genius. Thank God she's around.
• 7 January 2020:
• 7 January 2020: LOL!
• 7 January 2020:
• 7 January 2020: @JacquiDillon @Challenged_Uni Thanks Jacqui x
• 7 January 2020: And if anyone disagrees - well, I'm sure you won't mind if I buy Women's Place UK stickers for the whole building! Please do put them on your doors as a personal favour to me, to make gender-critical women on campus "feel safe". What? No?? Yep, thought so.
• 7 January 2020: Honestly - I'm fine with trans flags if they're there because they're genuine expressions of solidarity. They're great. I have one. But if they are used as moves in some chess game, which involves constantly portraying your argumentative opponent as morally bankrupt, not so much.
• 7 January 2020: Sigh. Just gave this quote to Pink News about Flag-gate. They approached me, saying they will be running article based on the email tweeted out by Alison Phipps today. I trust (cough) they will print it in full, but just in case 😉
• 7 January 2020: The 1st (or 2nd or 3rd) time this happened I felt upset and misunderstood. Now I'm just completely & utterly bored. All the "arguments" are always the same & they're totally facile. But mostly it's just "you're nasty!", written to grandstand in front of equally fatuous colleagues
• 7 January 2020: Thanks Richard. Much appreciated - same to you.
• 7 January 2020: I dunno - cos details are unimportant when you are morally grandstanding like a lunatic?
• 7 January 2020: ALRIGHT MUM 😡😅😉
• 7 January 2020: Apparently Evan (who?) has "finally" blocked me and thinks I'll be disappointed I'm not in his book. Er.. no Evan. That last bit is not strictly true.
• 7 January 2020: And yes, I sound narked. Because academics can literally be triggered by an after hours email, and then brush off the really crap, personal stuff that comes my way fairly regularly as just par for course. I hate to break the news, but that's the "she was asking for it" narrative.
• 7 January 2020: Just to save time today: putting this here for whackademics with endless capacity to believe myths about near-constant persecution of trans people in Unis, but total imagination fail at targeted acts of passive-aggression towards individuals from prominent Gender Studies Profs.
• 7 January 2020: Yes yes am going.
• 7 January 2020: My Times Higher interview brings all the rhetoricians to the yard.
• 7 January 2020: Always wonderful to have my Union leader subtweet me. Have you actually read anything I've written? if you think any of this warrants the snidey passive-agression I receive on the reg (including from you, Jo), you are kidding yourself.
• 7 January 2020: No, when described abstractly, of course - that's its slippery point. But when timed to coincide with protests, & sent out with email saying it would be personal favour to sender to exhibit etc.... Anyway - if you don't like that, try petitions, defamation, rabble-rousing, etc.
• 7 January 2020: Greatly looking forward to Evan's book on "the history of the no-platform". I'm sure it's going to be ab-so-lute-ly FASCinating. (Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to be here. Must get on with my terrible terrible book).
• 7 January 2020: Crowdfunder here:
• 7 January 2020: ..more importantly, the crowdjustice funder for @rachelara and @Challenged_Uni is no longer suspended - one of the big donations couldn't be verified so the total is less than I thought at the time of interview, and in any case, we are about to update with news of our next moves.
• 7 January 2020: Me in Times Higher Ed. A couple of small things: trans flags were ordered well before I started teaching in that building! But were ordered by single faculty member for all colleagues, in response to "hostile environment" I was creating by my writing (or some such rubbish). Also:
• 6 January 2020: Thanks Francis - hope I can live up to this.
• 6 January 2020: RT @MakeMoreNoise2: It will investigate hate crime laws and their impact on women and freedom of speech. Why are women not protected under…
• 6 January 2020: Thank you
• 6 January 2020: Thanks Kristina - HNY. Hope to see you soon.
• 6 January 2020: Fantastic! Let’s have a competition- who can stay off Twitter longest. (Tho I guess you kind of have to hang around mumsnet, it’s your job now).
• 6 January 2020: I’ve also got some talks coming up, which I’ll RT as soon as they’re announced. In meantime, here’s wishing a very Happy New Year to you all.
• 6 January 2020: It’s day 1 of research leave, & I’m off to write a mainstream book on importance of material reality to feminism. Very excited. So if you see me much on here, tell me to get back to it, Stock. Still tweeting at @Challenged_Uni so please give that a follow: updates coming soon.
• 3 January 2020: Stella Duffy’s suggestion to improve the NT is the most metropolitan, liberal elitist thing in there. Thank God she’s not in charge!
• 31 December 2019: No I didn’t say that. That’s a big reach from what I said.
• 31 December 2019: Noone was saying otherwise. This has gone way these args usually do: someone says “x and y!”. Someone else (me) says “x isn’t true”. Then someone says “are you denying y? How can you deny y?”. And someone says “what about z, you didn’t mention z”. Point was to deny x. That’s it.
• 31 December 2019: I know they're not unique. I don't know why you're telling me what I clearly already know, as demonstrated in much of what I write. Point remains: don't shoot mouth off about how hard it is for academics to lose jobs when readers might assume you know what you are talking about.
• 31 December 2019: Er.. you publicised it yourself
• 31 December 2019: And that's not elitism. It's just common sense. I wouldn't opine about social work & how hard it was for Andrew to lose his job, because I've no idea. And given that stakes are high in this domain, and it's important to get it right for people concerned, I'd be even more cautious
• 31 December 2019: Personally I don't think it's helpful for people who aren't in University system and don't necessarily understand how it works to speculate about how easy it is for staff to speak their mind. If it was that easy, we wouldn't see most academics on this commenting under pseudonyms.
• 31 December 2019: I am not denying that point (would be weird to deny it, since I've made it myself). I think the threat is unequally distributed. And that is an injustice, obviously. I was quite clearly disagreeing with a separate point which was about permanent staff. Two different points.
• 31 December 2019: “I'd be extremely surprised if someone in a permanent post encountered a real threat to their job“
• 31 December 2019: Have you read this?
• 31 December 2019: Its not the same. Tenure means something different. And with Stonewall university policies as they are, that’s a rash statement. Really surprised to see you glibly dismissing this possibility given that you’re about to front campaign about checks notes higher education.
• 31 December 2019: Yeah tho it should also be remembered that a LOT of intellectuals were advocating similarly back then - was fashionable in some circles - including radical feminists arguing we should “liberate children” sexually. Eg Shulamith Firestone.
• 31 December 2019: Don’t think it helps case to mock appearance. At all. It would be much more powerful if you’d delete that bit. But yes it’s patronising, mean, intellectually flimsy response, designed to humiliate me. I wasn’t prof back then either. I wrote response.
• 31 December 2019: Ah yes, the old “don’t be a fool, my penis can’t hold a tennis racket!” move. Devastating.
• 29 December 2019: Rooting for you Ms C. HNY to you and the mister and the dug when it comes. Lots of love xxx
• 29 December 2019: Call me a purist but anyone who starts tweet with “Hello, Twitter!” has immediately lost me.
• 28 December 2019: Yeah, that's.. pretty amazing.
• 28 December 2019: More on the “policy laundering” going on here (@scottishtrans are part of @LGBTIScotland)
• 28 December 2019: Political cronyism stinks - whether it’s Johnson giving the useless Duncan-Smith a knighthood, or SNP MPs giving money to their mates in @LGBTIScotland to produce female-blind policies for strategic purposes. Great thread by @TwisterFilm
• 27 December 2019: And before anyone says it: self-report is NOT self-ID. Self-report is a norm that people report what they believe is true, and no-one double checks. That's fine. It's compatible with expecting people to report actual sex. Self-ID builds into rules: "identify how you feel".
• 27 December 2019: The only way this system remotely holds up as decent information source is if most people continue to report, not what they feel their gender identity is, but what their sex actually is. Yet were they to do otherwise, they wouldn't be breaking rules. That's not a good system.
• 27 December 2019: I know it's dull to go on about good data @NatRecordsScot but it's kind of what you're there for. How are you going to get data useful for mapping differences between sexes if M can explicitly classify as F & vice versa? More institutional capture:
• 27 December 2019: I'd assume current market was same one women's magazines have always had: girls & women trained to put men's pleasure before their own, and to hide the fact to themselves by selling it to them as a cool-girl lifestyle, rewarding them for their docility by pretending it's sass?
• 27 December 2019: Obvs it was completely hell to finally meet you, dear JB xxx
• 27 December 2019: This is what the same Stonewall 2017-18 accounts say, though I'm sure you've seen it (screenshot attached) - more than £2 million from Diversity Champion Scheme members including public sector orgs, schools and local authorities.
• 27 December 2019: Also on "policy laundering" (see embedded tweet): From Stonewall's 2018 accounts £233,633 from Department of Education £125,885 from Foreign and Commonwealth Office £158, 533 from Welsh Government £92,500 from Scottish Government. @moveincircles
• 27 December 2019: "Thus, a nested series of public sector grants has enabled government to conjure into existence a body that shapes public sector policy. Meanwhile, the pronouncements and statistics produced by this arms-length government body are treated by ..BBC as though.. independent" NODS.
• 27 December 2019: "Let us consider an example: the Scottish Trans Alliance... The project delivers research, advisory, & training, including to government-funded bodies, who in turn repeat the ideas received via reports, training & consultancy back toward policymakers." Brilliant @moveincircles
• 27 December 2019: Barbara Pym usually does it for me
• 27 December 2019: Good grief
• 26 December 2019: Ah well, I’m sure you know him best, whoever you are.
• 26 December 2019: Er.. just for the record and because it's my story to tell - nope! Love of the Pope in my dad's case does not mean hatred of protestants; he married one.
• 26 December 2019: Fabulous
• 26 December 2019: Pope Yes!
• 26 December 2019: It's bringing back memories of when we visited New Orleans as a family and my dad saw Popeyes Fried Chicken and thought it was an endorsement for Catholicism.
• 26 December 2019: My son has a new set of pjs saying EAT GAME SLEEP REPEAT on the front. My dad thinks it means we should all eat more pheasant, and now also wants one.
• 26 December 2019: In my house, prize still goes to Aberdeen Press and Journal: on sinking of Titanic, headline allegedly was “North East Man Drowns At Sea” On outbreak of WW2: “Giant Neep Found in Turriff” (ps I don’t want to know if these aren’t true, twitter)
• 26 December 2019: Boxing Day Hunt?
• 26 December 2019: Love Deborah. Happy Christmas to you and yours; thanks for being a proper 🌟
• 26 December 2019: Home for Christmas to Angus, and relieved to see this breaking news. Thought I’d share in case anyone else was worried.
• 26 December 2019: Thank you for the interest. I’ve no plans to bring it back but if you email my work address I can try to send you any particular piece you’re after.
• 21 December 2019: MY university! MY city! MY country! Evil laugh, evil laugh, evil laugh.
• 21 December 2019: In a moment of weakness I RTed the first hashtag earlier and then undid, because I'm trying to be the change I wish to see in the world (Although maybe the change I wish to see in the world is silencing of OJ.. sobs this stuff is so hard.)
• 21 December 2019: 👍
• 21 December 2019: don't like thought-termination in trans activism, you shouldn't do it too! (And yes, I've heard of standpoint epistemology, I teach it: I like some things about it but not the idea there are socially situated forms of knowledge unavailable to others in principle).
• 21 December 2019: others, delete tweet etc. is reminiscent of trans activist rhetoric about how cis people need to "listen to trans people" - as if trans people all thought the same - equally insulting. (Exact same goes for "listen to women" btw, if it just means "shut up & capitulate".) If you/
• 21 December 2019: about whether you agree" is a good idea, given limited experience. Intellectual arrogance is always bad. Still: watching people I follow currently patronising woman who has expressed an opinion they don't like by effectively telling her to outsource her brain to/
• 21 December 2019: to group X, as assumes they all think same (obviously they don't; they're individuals) & given this, impracticable to carry out - if two members of group X disagree, whose view should carry? The benign version i.e. "listen to what some members of group X think about Y, & reflect/
• 21 December 2019: I know the following puts me at odds with others I respect on here, but for record: I'm not down with tendency to use trope "listen to social group X on matter Y" when it effectively means "accept what these particular members of group X say without question". It's patronising/
• 21 December 2019: Thanks - doh.
• 21 December 2019: I'd say "not even nodding acquaintances with journalism", on that showing.
• 21 December 2019: I've made this joke before, but .. still can't understand why they don't say "Ok womber". They really are missing a trick. (Disclaimer for literal-minded stalkers: yes, I do know not all women have wombs, etc, etc).
• 21 December 2019: "Nobody's arguing there aren't biological differences between cis & trans women" says feminist philosopher (handily forgetting transmen, also ignoring half of internet). Great - so what's a familiar concept that picks out those differences, in one handy word? We'll wait, Kate.
• 21 December 2019: Absolutely. She's brilliant
• 21 December 2019: Here is where Crenshaw rejects the move:
• 21 December 2019: .. this has morphed, with help of some remarkably stupid arguments by feminist philosophers, into the thought that we can never in any circs talk about "female" as causal factor. Crenshaw explicitly rejected this, pointed out people don't make same move with respect to "black".
• 21 December 2019: There's nothing wrong with intersectional feminism as Crenshaw conceived of it. I absolutely agree that we need fine-grained concepts to pick out different causal factors in discrimination and oppression, and neither "female" and "black" do all the work on their own. But..
• 21 December 2019: That's not to say word needs to be wheeled out at drop of hat, but neither Maya nor JK Rowling was saying it does. In that argument, Manne has effectively removed her own ability to discuss important aspects of female life, which is fairly stupid for a self-professed feminist.
• 21 December 2019: There's nothing wrong with the word we already have for those biological differences. If we found another word, eventually that too would be judged offensive. We need a concept which differentiates two different categories, for certain important discussions. "Male" will do.
• 21 December 2019: Why don't you look at their page?
• 21 December 2019: Is this one of those poems that you read forwards then backwards? End the bigots. Are TERFs.
• 21 December 2019: Did they really say @Womans_Place_UK was run by “Boomer-feminists” or did I read that wrong? Is this the new pejorative for the Second Wave?
• 21 December 2019: From Testosterone Rex: "But ..3G sex [gonads, genes, genitals] is not like this [fluid, overlapping, internally inconsistent]. The genetic and hormonal processes of sex, despite being complex and multifaceted, usually create distinct, consistent, and stable 3G sex categories.”
• 21 December 2019: Good news: Cordelia Fine, multi-award winning author of Delusions of Gender & Testosterone Rex, stands with @MForstater and @jk_rowling (see second link on page)
• 20 December 2019: Go home Twitter you're drunk
• 20 December 2019: Yes
• 20 December 2019: Do it RR
• 20 December 2019: Thank you!
• 20 December 2019: Fantastic!
• 20 December 2019: It's Ok, I've bought ear defenders
• 20 December 2019: Hooray
• 20 December 2019: It's That London.
• 20 December 2019: I'll be there too, on a panel on freedom of speech in Universities - with two kick-ass fellow speakers. Very excited. @Womans_Place_UK events are exciting, galvanising, compassionate, strong, principled, boundaried .. just how I like my feminism. Get your tickets now!
• 20 December 2019: "Their special preserve is nonsense". Beams with pride 😃
• 20 December 2019: Thanks Tomas
• 20 December 2019: Kids are strident because they're kids. Desires are intense and understanding of consequences limited. And we're potentially talking about hysterectomies, mastectomies, infertility via blockers and hormones, before the pre-frontal cortex has even fully grown in.
• 20 December 2019: Update from @rachelara legal campaign against Oxford Brookes. More news in the New Year..
• 20 December 2019: Infantile, mind-crushing case in point earlier today:
• 20 December 2019: I don't think there's parental blame, but (righteous) blame of authorities - medical, psychological, educational - who should have questioned this. Ultimately the blame lies with lobbying organisations who have shut down discussion and continue to do so. Parents are victims too.
• 20 December 2019: Yeah, I didn't mean to imply you were ignoring them either - that's the trouble with generalisations, it can look like you're overlooking people who actually count so much more. I guess bile and rage will do that to you😉 (or more precisely, to me)
• 20 December 2019: Thank you, that's lovely
• 20 December 2019: Thanks. Two exceptions I know of: @JoPhoenix1 @RichardJGarside (though I'm sure you already know this).
• 20 December 2019: Congrats
• 20 December 2019: "When she was 15, Livia was diagnosed with severe anorexia. “It’s so scary to realise that my anorexic thoughts were about [hating] my female body,” she tells a stunned room. “I really wish someone had been there to tell me not to get that body castrated at 21.”
• 20 December 2019: yes, just followed her.
• 20 December 2019: That's fantastic. If you like arguments, it's a brilliant thing to do.
• 20 December 2019: Also: @byrne_a @TomasBogardus @ElectricAgora @SpencerJayCase @aaron_smuts @ArsPoeticaSA @DoctorSpurt (and undoubtedly others, apologies to any omissions - I'm crap at this). These are all definitely worth a follow, anyway.
• 20 December 2019: @smithbarryc @PhilosophyExp @BrianLeiter @DavidEdmonds100 @philosophybites @microphilosophy The signatories here took some flak and I am incredibly grateful to them: Not forgetting bravest: @boodleoops @janeclarejones Holly Lawford-Smith (banned).
• 20 December 2019: W/t pretending to be exhaustive, the following are amongst the honourable philosophers who've publicly supported me (& without nec implying agreement - we're still philosophers!) @PiersBenn @mary_leng, @sophie_r_allen, @timcrane102, @runthinkwrite @teresafmarques @johnschwenkler/
• 20 December 2019:
• 20 December 2019: Thanks Ann!
• 20 December 2019: thousands of non-academics see the hypocrisy and cowardice/ End.
• 20 December 2019: hold my breath. But if you won't do this, will you at least stop posturing on twitter that you're the good guys (or even, god forbid, feminists)? I know that a lot of you really only care about talking to each other - but still, you're doing it on a public forum, and/
• 20 December 2019: And then carefully read everything I have written, in that light? And will you think about the continued causal role played by your acquiescent silence, or worst, your obfuscation and smearing of people who are trying to talk about this, in letting this happen? Obviously I won't/
• 20 December 2019: mentality I would not have thought you capable of, had I not seen it: will you at least admit, in light of Rowling reaction, that there's widespread public misconception that biological sex is altered through transition? And then will you think about consequences of this?/
• 20 December 2019: looking other way as my reputation crashes through defamation & uncharitable smearing by prominent feminist (cough) philosophers; failing to stand up for me even when some of you know me & have known me for years; silently watching harassment of me; & generally acting with herd/
• 20 December 2019: Are those of you who've spent 1.5 years intermittently discussing my perceived faults; saying with accompanying eye-rolling that "no-one seriously believes sex can change, Kathleen" as if I was idiot; agreeing I just must be a bigot because why else would I go on so much;/
• 20 December 2019: Dear #philosophytwitter: you & I have complicated relationship these days. Most of you ignore me; some pre-emptively block me; others slander. To my knowledge about 6 of you took up call of this piece (plus @jk_rowling, so there is that 😃). Was just wondering.. (cont. below):
• 20 December 2019: Thread for #philosophytwitter follows imminently - others can safely ignore.
• 20 December 2019: Worst romcom ever
• 20 December 2019: Sure
• 20 December 2019: I don't mind, I just want @smithbarryc to know this was a non-consensual co-platforming.
• 20 December 2019: Excellent
• 20 December 2019: Ha, no chance, I’m hanging out for an exclusive. Muggins in middle has morphed into suave debonaire Swedish-speaking music critic, with whom I suspect you’ve shared many cocktails.
• 20 December 2019: Then lesser DC was indeed Oxford. In the hope or annoying @slashelf further, as well as providing the ultimate guilt-by-association move for my detractors here’s the evidence in my matriculation photo 😄
• 20 December 2019: It wasn’t her views on transgender people, it was her views on people. Transgender people are people. No person can literally change biological sex. That’s what @MForstater believed, was sacked for it, and lost her case. You should not set this up in such an antagonistic way.
• 20 December 2019: Thanks!
• 20 December 2019: “There are moments when the book appears to have been written by a “Keep Calm and Carry On” tea towel.“ Great line. Also good on perpetual stupid appeal of feckless Oxbridge chancers as rulers. (I speak as a feckless Oxbridge chancer myself).
• 20 December 2019: Yes, that’s a misunderstanding of biological determinism. BD says females must be kind, maternal, bad at spatial reasoning (or some other trait) because of their sex. Womanhood is not a “trait” you could conceivably get from biological sex, or fail to get. Is a category.
• 20 December 2019: As in “rights are not a pie, more for you doesn’t mean less for me”.
• 20 December 2019: @MarkHelme Working on it..
• 20 December 2019: Using hard-won donations to insinuate someone who believes in basic science is hateful. They’ve lost the plot.
• 19 December 2019: Just give me five mins, is all I ask (also, look away from your notifications) 👍
• 19 December 2019: Oh how I wish I could retweet you. Never wanted it more
• 19 December 2019: Ha!
• 19 December 2019: #sendintheclownfish No, there's some analogies we felt were too daft to spend time on
• 19 December 2019: Via @jk_rowling's brilliant intervention, my feed is once again full of familiar challenges involving predatory lesbians, post-menopausal women, intersex "spectrums", gay marriage analogies, pies, biological essentialism, nazis, etc. etc. This may help:
• 19 December 2019: Thank you so much
• 19 December 2019: Like the woman says.. #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill 💪💪💪💪💪💪
• 19 December 2019: So very 2019
• 19 December 2019: Yes please. Maybe send them some inspirational quote about pebbles versus rocks?
• 19 December 2019: The implication that it's fine for employers to terminate employment if you won't use "they" pronouns, seems pretty obviously to compel speech imo. In what sense are you using "compelled"? Am I right to infer you think there is no problem here? How does this fit with declaration?
• 19 December 2019: I am so very sorry.
• 19 December 2019: Ha! Vindication is mine!
• 19 December 2019: It is mind control, in sense. It’s from organisations like Stonewall, targeting for (re)education Universities, judiciary, police, CPS, business, national orgs, etc, with propaganda & training about what a woman is & how to be “nice” (to new ones; old ones better fall into line).
• 19 December 2019: My story features among others in this alarming article by the indefatigable @bindelj, on how parts of media suppress stories about negative effects of trans activism. I’m happy to declare my interests as such - unlike, it seems, @IpsoNews and @guardian. Chilling stuff.
• 19 December 2019: Don’t know. Hope so
• 19 December 2019: “Plausible” is usually repressed philosopher-speak for “I believe it”
• 19 December 2019: Disturbing anyway, but particularly disturbing when you realise who “non-binary” Gregor Murray is
• 19 December 2019: Thanks Piers. As usual, you are willing to say what others think but won’t say.
• 19 December 2019: I’m told by @MForstater that the CEO of Wagner’s org @EachOtherUk (formerly Rights Info) Dr Sarah Wishart, has blocked her. Both Wagner and Rights Info have long history of not getting women’s reasonable concerns in this area. Not inspiring choice #r4today
• 19 December 2019:
• 19 December 2019: Who’s natural person to have on #r4today talking about the Forstater tribunal verdict? An activist lawyer whose organisation Rights Info (now @EachOtherUk) refuses to report on manifesto pledges re single sex exemptions? And who has had multiple run ins with claimant?
• 19 December 2019: No
• 19 December 2019: @Bleedinheart2MD @DamenGerry @MForstater Are you mixing him up with the Harry Miller case judge? The latter definitely said that
• 19 December 2019: That's completely false. Of course she thinks they exist. A transwoman was a witness on her behalf at the tribunal! Spreading lazy meaningless half-arsed lies like this is not helping.
• 19 December 2019: Hahaha! "Even Haslanger"...that made me laugh. I completely disagree with Haslanger. That's the joy of philosophy, you get to make your own mind up. Anyway I don't mean to point out something distressing to you, but you seem to be attempting some philosophy too.
• 19 December 2019:
• 19 December 2019: "All purposes" doesn't include: a) primogeniture b) joining the Masons. Natch.
• 19 December 2019: (Despite this answer, I do get how, from your tone, you aren't actually interested in discussing this and just want to bash philosophers. That's fine, please do continue).
• 19 December 2019: If you think there's sharp split between science and philosophy on this issue then I give you Anne Fausto-Sterling. She is the origin of much of misleading stuff on intersex - misleading because it's deeply philosophical. She has a philosophical theory of sex kinds. It's wrong.
• 19 December 2019: Just to clarify in case of future legal issues - Rab C. Nesbitt is definitely not non-binary as far as I know. I meant Gregor Murray in both cases.
• 19 December 2019: Whoops - sorry - too early - I mean Gregor Murray in both cases. Gregor Fisher is the actor that plays Rab. C Nesbitt and last time I looked he was definitely not non-binary - though I suppose you never know.
• 19 December 2019: The idea -also floated by judge- that the existence of people with rare intersex conditions could show anything whatsoever about beliefs about chromosomally & phenotypically male people like Murray - who, to boot, has had no surgery, hormones or legal transition - is mad.
• 19 December 2019: The idea -also floated by judge- that existence of people with rare intersex conditions could establish anything whatsoever about chromosomally & phenotypically male people like Fisher - who, to boot, have had no surgery, nor hormones, nor Gender Recognition Certificate - is mad.
• 19 December 2019: Rereading judgement in @MForstater case. Judge says the belief that Dundee councillor Gregor Murray is actually/literally man/male "violates dignity" and is "not worthy of respect in a democratic society". (Gregor Fisher is non-binary, so identifies neither as male nor female. )
• 18 December 2019: In other news, there’s a furious row kicking off in my notifications about .. Galileo 😄
• 18 December 2019: Hey. @mocha_soul and I have followed each other for ages and I’ve learnt tonnes from her as it happens. You should follow her :)
• 18 December 2019: You are a total inspiration, and this won't stand.
• 18 December 2019: .@mary_leng is brave enough. Are other academic philosophers going to follow suit?
• 18 December 2019: And if anyone can't be arsed reading the above, here are my reasons for believing people can't change sex more directly
• 18 December 2019: Today a UK judge ruled that the belief that biological sex is immutable is incompatible with fundamental human rights and not worthy of legal protection. In other words, you can be sacked for stating it. I'm a professor of philosophy. I believe it. I stand with @MForstater
• 18 December 2019: I just published This Is Not A Drill.
• 18 December 2019: Sorry - went off half-cocked and misread judgement (which is still an outrage but not in the way I said). Will redo piece in a bit. Motto: don't write when angry!
• 18 December 2019: That is a quote
• 18 December 2019: History will judge academics who now look the other way. You can no longer say that civil liberties are not being infringed. You can no longer take refuge in saying that we must be mad, that we exaggerate, that we are obsessed or hateful. Read the judge's words for yourself.
• 18 December 2019: In this short piece, I call upon @BritishPhiloso1, learned Philosophical societies, & British academic philosophers working in UK departments, to publicly repudiate this insane judgement. This is your moment. If not now, when? What exactly are you a philosopher for? Please RT.
• 18 December 2019: Today a UK judge ruled that the belief that biological sex is immutable is not just false, but so lacking in cogency and seriousness that it is not worthy of legal protection as a philosophical belief. I am a philosopher. I share the belief that biological sex is immutable.
• 18 December 2019: I just published This is a not a drill
• 18 December 2019: I don't think women do get fired "for being women". Not if women=adult human female, and they were knowingly employed as such (e.g. its not some odd deception case). If you're saying trans women face some kinds of discrimination women don't, I agree. And vice versa of course.
• 18 December 2019: Yes, definitely not saying that - that's a rhetorical move designed to distract from point.
• 18 December 2019: I know you probably believe this, but with respect, if the idea of the naming really was just cis= not trans, then it would be a totally empty exercise, because we already had two concepts that did exactly that work: woman and transwoman. Which is point of my tweet.
• 18 December 2019: This is ideological move to shift concept of woman, under guise of stylistics. "Cis women" only makes sense if you think umbrella term is "woman" and the subsets "cis" & "trans". And who then is cis? Someone who doesn't reject genderered norms? Yet many women do. Makes no sense.
• 18 December 2019: As is pointed out by many in thread: if you wanted "stylistic update for clarity when.. writing about two specific populations" you could have had "women" and "transwomen". And yes - they are, precisely, two specific populations. New @Guardian policy of "cis women" obscures this.
• 18 December 2019: Obviously I and lots of others are now joining in hope of contributing to changing all that. The Tories have their extremists and racists too, along with decent moderates. No party has the monopoly on good or evil.
• 18 December 2019: Congratulations Dr Saxby! Chip off the old block.
• 18 December 2019: Im reading Protest and Power at the moment and from what I can see that would take a miracle!
• 17 December 2019: Yes, you’re just showing off now.
• 17 December 2019: Happy days
• 17 December 2019: RT @polblonde: My piece for the Telegraph about the criminal justice system failing women. And yes, I am angry: Rape victims can't get jus…
• 17 December 2019: Interesting.. they got an application from me today. So let’s see.
• 17 December 2019: Danny Boy Performance, you mean.
• 17 December 2019: Well, all I can say is (having just worked out who you are) keep going..
• 17 December 2019: I didn't, no. I guess we will find out
• 17 December 2019: That's disappointing to hear
• 17 December 2019: I'm certainly not saying 'get stuffed' to any trans people. Simply describing reality as I see it, with (as far as I can see) good reasons and evidence to back me up. Not a value judgement. Activists have convinced everyone this is mean but it isn't. It's accurate.
• 17 December 2019: That remains to be seen
• 17 December 2019: OMG I'm actually blocked by @autostraddle Happy days.
• 17 December 2019: Don't think it helps to call them 'new w/c' when they differ in many respects from traditional base. Other names available. Important need is for concept that picks them out & can be used to represent their particular interests. Similarities with other groups can be noted.
• 17 December 2019: Next battleground.
• 17 December 2019: Incidentally I think the nadir of this for me was Laura Murray, aristocrat, writing "no bourgeois" on her Facebook page. Absolutely unbearable to think she wielded power in the party. Not because she is an aristocrat - I don't mind aristocrats. Because she is hypocrite and fool.
• 17 December 2019: But if it's going to go, it will be via economics, not Utopian thinking.
• 17 December 2019: I dunno..
• 17 December 2019: Love to!
• 17 December 2019: At that point no wonder genuinely w/c people feel like they have no particular stake in Labour. (Ditto ordinary gay people have no stake in Stonewall after alliance with "queer").
• 17 December 2019: Imo is big part of the problem for Labour. If you constantly attack Tories for being u/c and m/c you create generations who can't be bear to be seen as latter, thereby taking mic from w/c who need it. Same dyamic as those self-Iding as "queer" because narrative says straight= bad
• 17 December 2019: I went to Oxford from Scottish comp & felt very alienated, but knew better than to say I was w/c given parents & where I'd ended up. Not so for many around me, desperate to distance from Tories. Over years, many u/c & m/c left have insultingly continued to self-identify into w/c
• 17 December 2019: Thank you
• 17 December 2019: Political principles are good, as long as they're understood as ultimately aimed towards people's well-being, and not to be robotically pursued no matter what. When people act e.g. as if liberalism (or conservatism, or socialism) is end in itself, as panacea to all ills, I'm out.
• 17 December 2019: Lol
• 17 December 2019: Corbyn didn’t help. I don’t like ideologues as politicians. I want something in between Corbyn’s stubborn fanaticism and Johnson’s apparent total lack of any consistent set of values. Wisdom, I guess. Right now I want a strong, credible opposition that doesn’t fuck around.
• 17 December 2019: Toxicity. Smugness. Extremism. Puritanism.The substantial part of party activists who apparently think womanhood is a feeling. Etc.
• 17 December 2019: My thoughts, pretty much. When I’ve been in despair at the state of the left with respect to women’s rights and interests - not to mention material reality - the women of @Womans_Place_UK have inspired me - brave, proportionate, compassionate, strategic. They are best of Labour.
• 17 December 2019: Yeah I have wondered about this! We will see, won’t we
• 17 December 2019: Sorry - was making stupid joke based on fact my wiki page says I’m 69
• 17 December 2019: Hey, I'm not actually 69 you know..
• 17 December 2019: Yeah, that's not why I joined, personally speaking.
• 17 December 2019: Start with cis, end up sitting in department meetings talking about "vaginal privilege".
• 17 December 2019: It is with a heavy heart, and great sense of trepidation, that I have just joined @UKLabour
• 17 December 2019: Also follow @kathmurray1 @LucyHunterB @lnmackenzie1
• 15 December 2019: Congratulations to you @Tanni_GT, that's fantastic.
• 15 December 2019: So do you, babe
• 15 December 2019: NOW SORTED, or should be soon - thank you to all.
• 15 December 2019: Thank you
• 15 December 2019: Thanks. If only I knew the IP addresses of the Gender Studies Dept.. (JOKE).
• 15 December 2019: Haha.
• 15 December 2019: THANK YOU. Turning down the L'Oreal offers will of course be a wrench but I feel it is for the best.
• 15 December 2019: It's not mine it's the cat's
• 15 December 2019: Ha ha see, I knew this would happen.. go on, enjoy yourselves.. :D
• 15 December 2019: Fuck off
• 15 December 2019: At risk of inciting malicious edits from my.. er.. more technophile fans, can anyone tell me how I get Wikipedia to stop saying I was born in 1950? I've just added my birth year to the actual page, but I can't work out how to change the year in the system (see below)
• 15 December 2019: Genuinely fascinated by contrasting views on adaptive preferences post-election, sometimes from mouth of same person. Working class adaptive prefs: boo! You’re bigots! Sex worker adaptive prefs-hooray! By all means organise! Yet both prefs formed in non-ideal contexts of hardship
• 15 December 2019: RT @fredwebcom: L'actrice Anna Karina est morte d'un cancer à 79 ans https://t.co/6frLCRCNhO https://t.co/aqtxazUMjt
• 15 December 2019: Article says that several signatories were unwilling to be identified, after “other academics were labelled “transphobic”. This is the reality of University policies influenced by @stonewalluk. Academic freedom is being compromised.
• 15 December 2019: Fantastic letter from @ProfAliceS and 80 other academics, objecting to fact census explicitly allows “sex” category to be potentially different from what’s on birth certificate. Good research needs good data. Here’s accompanying article in @thesundaytimes
• 14 December 2019: Says the man who - literally an hour before this tweet - fired up the barbecue to throw @helenlewis’ reputation on it, apparently confident that followers would gather round to warm their hands. I could be wrong but I don’t think Louis does self-awareness.
• 14 December 2019: I don’t think he was taking personal credit for them
• 14 December 2019: I hate to be dampener on a thousand understandably cathartic snark tweets but: Corbyn didn’t write headline, & he actually said something much more specific and arguably true, in that the narrative did get shifted in the ways he names.
• 14 December 2019: Pretty sure they don’t. Solidarity, and sorry you have to put up with this crap. You’re an inspiration x
• 14 December 2019: Have a good break. Take care.
• 14 December 2019: English speakers from Uk have multiple dialects located in place, inflected with other influences like ethnic background & age. Sometimes, for some accents plus dialects, we barely understand each. Internet levels out differences.
• 14 December 2019: Thanks. I’m not averse to doing things I like because I like them, & in the context of people whose time is dominated by others it’s a useful concept to have, tho I doubt we needed Foucault or Lorde to tell us about it (cf “look after yourself”).
• 14 December 2019: Thanks!
• 14 December 2019: Behold New Left’s weirdly polarised approach to choices. Sex work is work if you choose it! Blame working-class for voting Tory! In neither case, attempt to understand roots of choices; how are made in non-ideal conditions; nor that criticism of structure is not of individuals.
• 14 December 2019: Good times. There’s some absolutely insufferable stuff in there from many, as I recall. Bullies who think they’re heroines.
• 14 December 2019: Ha, yes, that
• 14 December 2019: It absolutely isn’t that claim. I love American culture. Plus there were two tweets in the thread, you and anyone else feeling wounded should read second. (And there are many many irritating things about British culture)
• 13 December 2019: Lol. Good luck with that
• 13 December 2019: Is that a new one or an old one? Sounds about as off the planet hyperbolic as the last one.
• 13 December 2019: Not sure it’s what you were talking about exactly - it’s related specifically to some debates I’m heavily engaged with - but it’s here
• 13 December 2019: Nice one Skylar x
• 13 December 2019: Funnily I just gave a talk on a related theme
• 13 December 2019: Lol! 😂👍
• 13 December 2019: Yes agreed.
• 13 December 2019: It’s a classic combination
• 13 December 2019: In my case it’s a euphemism for drinking gin and eating crisps
• 13 December 2019: Oh god! Yes, that’ll do
• 13 December 2019: Shudder
• 13 December 2019: Well this is what immediately prompted the thought.
• 13 December 2019: “Self-care”
• 13 December 2019: (And by that I don’t mean all Americans are sentimental, I mean that there is a particular strain of American sentimentality that is anathema to uk cultural sensibilities)
• 13 December 2019: Further item for election autopsy: the psychological merging of woke UK Guardian commentariat with US counterparts: sharing rhetorical tropes, hanging out in big virtual smug self-love-in/ reinforced circle jerk Because to most ordinary UK onlookers, US sentimentality is cringe.
• 13 December 2019: This election has definitively proved that straight people with pronouns in their bios are not in any shape or form an asset to their parties, and may well be a liability.
• 13 December 2019: @perchancetosulk @maitlis Pretty much!
• 13 December 2019: Yes, I had noticed. So short-sighted. Feels like watching a car crash in slow motion.
• 13 December 2019: Also: We stop implying with every tweet that we're the good ones. We stop purity politics & guilt by association. We get out of our bubbles. We use arguments, not smearing of character. We try to understand why people voted Tory & Leave. We think about strategy not just morality.
• 13 December 2019: Good god. Well, not any longer...
• 13 December 2019: I didn’t say it had no influence. Obviously it does. But labour supporters telling working class leavers they have “swallowed media lies” as if they don’t have brains of own, whilst ignoring bias of their own preferred broadsheet is offputting.
• 13 December 2019: This sort of stuff is why Remain lost. You’re not more “positive and decent” than Leavers. And good for you that you get to visit Europe, because thousands of Leave voters can’t. Self-congratulation is terrible electoral strategy (cf also: Momentum). Don’t believe your own hype
• 13 December 2019: I’ll be there. Can’t wait.
• 13 December 2019: Congrats to you @libdemdaisy - it had completely passed me by that you were standing but I’m glad your years of work for Lib Dem’s has paid off.
• 13 December 2019: @tara_smiles The denial is off the scale.
• 13 December 2019: About this “it was Brexit” narrative, from Momentum, Jones, Sarkar etc. Ok - but what’s “Brexit”? Brexit is a sensibility. It absolutely involves feeling abandoned & alienated by Momentum version of Labour Party. So yes, it was Brexit - which means, I’m afraid, it was you.
• 13 December 2019: Am watching full thing, as I recorded it last night. “Jeremy has always been a reluctant leader”. From Lansman!
• 13 December 2019: Worth a watch
• 13 December 2019: Congratulations to you
• 13 December 2019: Taking opportunity to use today to reassess my twitter feed. If you’re implying that working-class voters are thick, heartless, or fascist, or blindly believe what media tells them, then I’m unfollowing on grounds of general bad judgement (and feel free to reciprocate)
• 12 December 2019: Congratulations! Can't wait to read it
• 12 December 2019: Woman’s got taste
• 12 December 2019: I'm so sorry the family has yet to get the justice they deserve, Susan. Thinking of you.
• 12 December 2019: Thank you! I'm sort of inured to it all now. I've given up any hope of a fair hearing from some quarters of academia, and I can live with it.
• 12 December 2019: And that's not to "police" their preferences, it's simply to describe them, with great empathy and total respect for women whose circumstances force them into such choices.
• 12 December 2019: Personally I wouldn't deny that conditional. But what I find odd is you being sure that the "if" of your conditional is in fact true. You have no way of knowing that, & it's in fact clearly false for most women in sex trade as their preferences are shaped by poverty & addiction.
• 12 December 2019: You look great
• 12 December 2019: @DebbieHayton you were GREAT xx
• 12 December 2019: "That vocal about it". My God, you mean she said it out loud?
• 12 December 2019: There's long history of people about whom slurs are used, ironising or "owning" the slur to attempt to defuse it or mock it. I'm not saying all are doing that but I bet some are.
• 12 December 2019: Green Party Women's group recognise that "TERF" is a slur
• 12 December 2019: Nuts to that
• 12 December 2019: Be kind. Except when dealing with activist entryists who leverage your sympathy in order to further their political interests at the expense of your rights. Then: be firm.
• 12 December 2019: “The NHS is "over-diagnosing" children having medical treatment for gender dysphoria, with psychologists unable to properly assess patients over fears they will be branded "transphobic", former staff have warned.“
• 12 December 2019: I guess applying a general point about norms to a particular case in the interests of women was too much for him.
• 12 December 2019: Yes it’s absolutely horrible.
• 12 December 2019: The @unimelb student newspaper @FarragoMagazine has published disgusting hit piece on Melbourne Philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith. A fellow faculty member - staff - says she should not be able to describe facts, and calls for her disciplining by Uni.
• 12 December 2019: Jesus Christ
• 12 December 2019: RT @ElleSmithereen: ...academic who wants to say something bigoted". McNamara expresses hope that Lawford-Smith will be disciplined for he…
• 11 December 2019: “Explanatory tools include a “genderbread person” graphic that explores the interplay between gender identity, sexuality, gender expression and biological sex.” 🧐
• 11 December 2019: FFS this is starting to feel like Schroedingers Equality Act.
• 11 December 2019: Remember when she was speaker at @askhertostand event and she said a parliament composed of 50% trans women and 50% men would be totally fine for gender balance? Good times..
• 11 December 2019: Here's another I just spotted, singing from same demented hymnsheet. "Women who can't reproduce" is presumably people with testicles. (Though why he thinks people with testicles can't reproduce is beyond me. Bit rude).
• 11 December 2019: 😅
• 11 December 2019: True
• 11 December 2019: @bindelj
• 11 December 2019: It's amazing how information can suddenly sink in when you suddenly see the possibilities of using it to prop up your husband's party.
• 11 December 2019: I find the timing of this.. um.. quite strategic. When I was on #politicslive with Sarah Vine last year, she sat with a rather amused, detached look on her face, enjoying the show as while I was subjected to usual "you're confused/you're a bigot" treatment from the woke on panel.
• 11 December 2019: Jane, the man’s read Ulysses 6 times. Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?
• 11 December 2019: I know Helen. I find it almost too crazy to be believed - but (as you know) it’s true!
• 11 December 2019: Loved meeting @charlie_sci a month or so ago (who is being waay too kind here). She’s a pretty inspiring person. Follow @DetransAdNet to see what she and many other brilliant detransitioners & desisters have to say.
• 11 December 2019: Thank you very much!
• 11 December 2019: This thread tries to summarise one of the most -to me - shocking things, both about #Stonewall today, and about its encroachment into University policies. If you’re gay, or you care about someone who is, you should care about this.
• 11 December 2019: Thanks Michele
• 11 December 2019: I was 18 months and my sister had just been born. My dad washed my hair over the bath before we went to see her in hospital.
• 11 December 2019: Kate loves an “ilk”. It’s her version of withering contempt.
• 11 December 2019: Just one more q. You know the Head of Philosophy at MIT? You know he’s published conclusions similar to mine? I wondered what effort you were putting into getting him cancelled too. Do you feel on safer ground publicly defaming me and HLS than him? What explains that difference?
• 11 December 2019: @JeanHatchet @kate_manne @peter_ohlin @RebeccaBuxton Manne blocked me over a year ago for no good reason whatsoever (at the time she was fond of talking