Ruth Hunt became Stonewall CEO in 2014, after promising a key group of lesbian members including Kate Harris that SW would remain LGB. SW then met with 700+ trans people and added the T, reneging on her pledge. Hunt refused to respond to lesbians’ concerns./1 In April 2019 Kate and I met. We shared concerns that SW’s shift from gay rights to gender identity & self-ID, and its dogmatic, aggressive rhetoric, were harming the community it had once served so well. We decided to found a new organisation for LGB people - LGB Alliance./2

The emotive phrase “Protect trans kids” is used, especially in N America - sometimes on a t-shirt featuring a knife - to promote the accessibility of puberty blockers to children. The arguments underlining this campaign are all dangerous lies./1 First, the idea that some kids are “born in the wrong body”. It is spread by trans-identifying men who felt alienated from their bodies as children and wish they could have “transitioned” when young so as to “pass” better. They enjoy seeing boys stuck at the pre-pubertal stage./2

From the WPATH Files report
"In fact, there are members within WPATH who acknowledge that some teenagers are mistaking their emerging homosexuality as a gender identity issue." "During the panel, Massey described young patients who, after exploring their sexuality, 'got to clarify some of their gender identity issues.' This is one of the many risks associated with WPATH’s approach to gender medicine."

Next time you hear @aclu or some other institution or “expert” claiming that puberty blockers are “life-saving” because “the alternative is suicide”, just refer them to studies proving the opposite. Like this one.
Stop the spread of the suicide lie. mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e… Note: "experiencing GD significant enough to seek GR appears to not be associated with increased suicide mortality, but suicides appear to be explained by psychiatric morbidities".

When a state in the US or Canada introduces legislation to restrict or ban child “transition”, TQ+ activists react in fury. They chant “Protect trans kids”, sometimes wearing the infamous knife T shirt. These activists belong to an increasingly dangerous cult./1 They believe:
- Some kids are “born in the wrong body”. That is a lie.
- These kids need drugs & surgery to “be their true selves”. A slogan to promote the billion-dollar youth “transition” industry.
- Without that “care” they will kill themselves. The most pernicious lie of all.

@Verkoulen @GracieLouBLR @MCleaver @mariekehoogwout @AllianceLGB Nu schrijf je een hele draad zonder beledigingen. Als je in onze communicatie terugkijkt, zie je dat ik begon beleefd op bepaalde aspecten te wijzen en jij bijna meteen met beledigingen begon. Ook ging je niet in op mijn vragen. @Verkoulen @GracieLouBLR @MCleaver @mariekehoogwout @AllianceLGB Even over “paternalisme”. Dat is letterlijk “je als een vader gedragen”. Dat is ongepast tegenover volwassenen - als de staat je bepaalde eetpatronen oplegt bijvoorbeeld - maar terecht bij kinderen.

What a momentous day for everyone who cares about the rights & interests of LGB people, women and children in the UK. 4 years ago, most MPs thought self-ID was about being “kind” to a tiny vulnerable minority. They thought banning “conversion therapy” would help “LGBT” people./1 Today, we heard the magnificent @KemiBadenoch articulate all the complexities surrounding sex and gender issues in the UK and how she is addressing them. From those opposing her we heard the usual posturing and attempts at emotional blackmail./2

Finally a long-anticipated study of detransitioners

“53% of participants believed that “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” applied to them.” link.springer.com/article/10.100… “Females (43%) were more likely than males (0%) to be exclusively homosexual.”

A request to all LGBTQIA+ organizations. Could you please leave LGB out? Those LGB people who self-define as “Queer” will happily stay on board. The rest of us, who promote the rights/interests of people with same-sex (or both sexes) sexual orientation need our own organizations. Some of the replies are very interesting. My request is based on the fact that LGBTQIA+ groups stopped advocating for LGB people years ago so it would be honest to make that explicit. They say some lesbians have penises - it’s about “gender identity”. I say that is homophobic.

Proposition: there is a deep strain of homophobia running through supposedly scientific literature on “gender”. Let’s look at two quotes from this article: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… “In considering the reasons for this new pattern [far more natal girls and e.g. autism in kids referred] Aitken et al. suggest that one possibility is that, during this period, societal factors made it easier for gay and lesbian youth and their families to seek clinical care.”

Congratulations Denise Fahmy!

At an internal Teams meeting, hostile comments were made about people who hold gender critical beliefs. …. during a work discussion about the award (and removal) of a grant to LGB Alliance. didlaw.com/denise-fahmy-v… “PRESS RELEASE: Gender critical beliefs are protected by law. Another victory for women and for common sense.”

I believe the world witnessed the first open parliamentary debate on sex and gender in the world yesterday - in the UK. For years, gender identity enthusiasts have used a variety of techniques to suppress this debate. It will not work any more.
/1 Please listen to the speakers & urge the need for a similar debate in your own country. Those trying to suppress debate use a variety of techniques. You’ll see these techniques displayed here by those arguing there’s no need to clarify that “sex” means natal or biological sex./2

For years @victor_madrigal has persuaded himself and tried to convince everyone else that all LGB people love self-ID. Today, at the end of his official visit, he finally met, under pressure, with @AllianceLGB, @LesbianLabour and @MensNetwork1. It was a bumpy ride for Victor./1 It became clear that he is entirely ignorant about detransitioners, about the homophobia often underlying teen transition, about the Tasmania lesbian case, as well as key judgments like Bell and Appleby and the protections laid down in the Equality Act./2

1./ A Very Modern Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there were straight people and gay people. The straights said only their relationships were good and wholesome. They made laws against the gays and said they were evil or sick or sinful and called them “queer” and other nasty names. 2./ In some countries like the UK, the gay people overcame their fear and formed groups to build solidarity. They came out into the streets and showed the straight people who they were. They built bridges and trust and gradually obtained a decent position in society.

@openDemocracy Someone is clearly in charge of writing absurd allegations for Open Democracy. First, in the UK, the vast majority of gender-critical women are progressive and pro choice, so yoking them together with anti-abortionists and other conservatives is simply malicious. @openDemocracy “Gender critical” means rejecting sexist stereotypes and constraints imposed on girls and boys. It means insisting that biological sex - male or female - exists and matters in many areas of life, while “gender identity” is an undefined belief or feeling that some people have.

If you support a measure or legislation that supposedly benefits LGBTQ+ people, please understand it likely benefits some of those concerned (likely TQ+ people) and disadvantages others (likely LGB people, esp. lesbians). There is no monolithic community with identical interests. Take the fraught subject of conversion therapy.

Gay conversion therapy is disgusting, ineffective, & utterly unacceptable. It means trying to change a person’s sexual orientation.

These vile practices were suspended in the UK - in clinical contexts - many decades ago.

Gradually people around the world are starting to realize that what’s presented as “protecting a vulnerable minority” is precisely the opposite.

It’s one of those language tricks.

Minors are vulnerable. That’s why we have child safeguarding laws & rules.
#StopTransingAwayTheGay

https://twitter.com/plunkingotter/status/1440044027731070985

Language tricks:

“Inclusive” means including within the category of women (a sex class) any male who asserts [pronoun] identifies as a woman: everywhere from sport to lesbian dating sites; from rape shelters to women’s prisons. It also means *excluding* all those who disagree.

Someone called Craig McLean has written an article entitled “The Growth of the Anti-Transgender Movement in the United Kingdom: The Silent Radicalization of the British Electorate”. This “radicalization” includes such radical notions as standing up for women’s single-sex spaces. McLean also accuses @GetTheLOutUK and @ALLIANCELGB of refusing to accept that penises can be female organs (how radical!). Amusingly (but predictably) the author assumes the UK is importing culture war tropes from the US. Nope. All home-grown movements for women’s and LGB rights.

Everyone who has understandably been focusing on Covid, the environment, the economy and numerous other issues may have missed the strange debate going on about sex and gender. When we assert the incontrovertible fact that there are two sexes (something of which every lesbian looking for a sperm donor is acutely aware), we face accusations of “transphobia”.

Some of the defamation of @Alliancelgb (the nonsense that it is “hateful”, the lie about rightwing funding etc) is clearly part of an effort to discredit LGBA instead of engaging with its concerns. But today I came across a tweet that initially had me stumped./1of5 What was this person talking about? Most people thought the tweet was anti-lesbian. But the person calls herself a butch lesbian. Suddenly I realized: she thinks LGBA is straight men pretending to care about lesbians in order to express what she misinterprets as transphobia./2of5

I cheered to see the results of the US election. It was an enormous relief (as many Republicans agreed) to see the defeat of Trump. An enormous relief for the environment; /1 An enormous relief for all those desperate for COVID relief and a centralized vaccination and testing program; /2