On compromise, and on being compromised.

When I was in 6th form, a girl in the year below me was in a secret relationship with the deputy head of 6th form. He was 26, my maths teacher, friendly, likeable. It became one of those open secrets that we all knew. And as teenagers, we 'knew' we were old enough, cool enough, mature enough and adult enough to handle such relationships if we chose them for ourselves, right?

I mean, you're practically an adult at 16, and this teacher was young and nice. Parents can be so square.

Right?

Let me 'unrohypnol' this for a second. I'm almost completely sure this thread won't be seen by him, and can't possibly hurt his feelings, so I'm going to use the name Gavin to see if it clarifies anything.

Are people being 'needlessly cruel' to Gavin? Has he been gracious?

https://twitter.com/tealou/status/1423157237300621314

I think not on both counts.
Gavin's a grown man. He's not a child, and he's not even a young adult. He's in his forties. A middle aged man. Old enough to have a strong concept of fairness.

About NHS single sex wards.
Let me explain something.

The 2010 policy which is called "Eliminating Mixed Sex Accommodation" (MSA) is based upon Gender, NOT sex.
It's CALLED sex.
That's the PR.
But it is based on gender.

And it involves financial fines for breaches. What this means is that a true single sex ward IS AT RISK OF BEING FINED if a patient declares a 'gender' that differs from sex.

We have the astonishing situation that the hospital are financially penalised for preserving a single sex wards.

Because 'gender', not sex.

A short while ago I visited Primark with my teen, and she tried on some clothes. It became apparent that their changing rooms were also mixed. However, when you entered the changing area, there was one room with cubicles to the left, and another room to the right.

https://twitter.com/SarahISuppose/status/1421788193419112448

And the assistant was carefully and without commenting why, directing one sex left, and the other sex right, whilst loudly warning us NOT to come out of our cubicles undressed or to show outfits whilst in the changing rooms.

@TomasBogardus If you're looking for real life objections to using pronouns that accurately reflect the subject's sex, the true essence of what I really encounter distills to this:

You verbally acknowledging the reality of my sex breaks the social contract I expect you to obey. @TomasBogardus My expectation is that you will elevate my fantasy over reality. The impact of that on others is that they will follow suit, reassured that the assertion of reality is permissable, and thus my fantasy is diminished. This act of defiance by you breaks the illusory power I hold.

I respect Lachlan. A great deal. His support has been and still is much appreciated. He is a good man, of integrity.

So I have read his thoughts on this carefully and will continue to do so.

But we are diametrically opposed on this and always will be.

https://twitter.com/Lachlan_Edi/status/1412182643739967490

We do not have an Act to recognise racism - for it would indeed be racism - to 'identify' as a race we are not, based upon racist stereotypes we treasure of race 'psyche' or race aesthetics.

When I see a little boy like this, gaslighted so young, I'm scared for his future, and not solely because of the risk he may face from medical 'transition'.

It's that we only live childhood once. It forms who we are. He may even desist, unscathed by hormones or surgery.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1411462041387339777

But even if he does, he will have to come to terms with the truth that his childhood has been a complete lie, his beliefs about himself utterly contorted throughout all his formative years.
Sex is such a huge part of who we are.

Shadowbanning/reply deboosting.

As far as I can tell, once your account is marked, you're stuck with the restrictions for good.
They're activated/deactivated based upon how you tweet.

Here's what I think you can do freely:
Quote tweet
Reply to followers
Create your own tweets Here's what re-activates the ban:
*Replying to people who don't follow you
(Particularly Blue ticks)
*Certain keywords (sex etc)

Here's how to temporarily release a restriction:
Post an innocuous reply on a sponsored tweet and then check status
This often resets you.

There are people who are so devoid of any principled stance of their own, that they will justify any atrocity. They live by one rule; these people must win, those must lose.

When faced with a principle of fairness that should apply to all, they freeze.

They worship an idol. If you test them with a question:

"A person is distressed at being forced to share intimate space with people they believe to be the opposite sex or gender. Is this acceptable?"

Their answer will be "Who, though?"

An unjust authority removes property from its rightful owner, and gifts it to an undeserving thief who covets it.

Then a law is passed, declaring the stolen property now belongs to both the interloper AND the rightful owner.

The rightful owner objects. People then suggest that the rightful owner must be punished for failing to recognise the interloper & thief as a rightful owner of their stolen property.

There is no recourse for the rightful owner to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, or deny the validity of the thief's claim.

I talk about all this stuff in real life.
I'm not just anonymous online.

But I avoided one particular conversation with one particular person, for fear it might affect a huge and important source of my happiness.
The cost/benefit analysis definitely didn't stack up. I firmly support everyone's right to safeguard their own wellbeing in certain circumstances, so that they can retain the resilience to fight the things that need to be fought.

If avoiding peaking your next door neighbour allows you the space to do your stuff elsewhere, so be it.

Are you more influential than you think?
A little test.

(I'm about to make you feel really good)

This exercise may help you understand how powerful Gender Critical twitter accounts are, and why we keep being censored.

Have you ever checked your "engagement rate"? No? It's a metric used to see how much people engage & interact with you.
In other words, how INFLUENTIAL you are.

A simple way to calculate it is to look at the analytics data on any tweet.

And then calculate this:
Total Engagements
÷
Total Impressions
x 100

Those who are tasked in their formal roles with defending the rights of women and girls, but 'dare not' wade into the 'debate' on whether sexed bodies are intended to MATCH 'sexed minds'?

Understand this.

You stood in the way. You stood in the way of those of us desperately trying to prevent girls coming to harm.

We could have spared more children physical harm, without your choices preventing us.

Some children have now come to harm, that we might have prevented, had you not demonised us.

When my ovaries failed early, and I needed to find out which hormones would best eliminate symptoms, reduce my cancer risk, mitigate dementia risk, preserve my bone density

I know *I* definitely needed the advice of men lingering in menopause forums on HOW TO ACCESSORISE And when the menopause clinic cut my tummy yesterday to insert another oestradiol pellet, I COMPLETELY FORGOT to ask the female nurses to decorate my wound with a flower tattoo AND they never so much as SUGGESTED a different colour of stitch.

They need men in that clinic STAT

@andrewdoyle_com

For your free speech podcast, some information on how twitter applies censorship 'shadowbans' or 'reply deboosted' statuses. I tested a theory.

1. Checked my shadowban status. 9.36 am.
(It was fine. Yesterday's deboosted' status had expired) 2. Invited my followers to suggest a blue tick account I wasn't following so that we could conduct a live test.
One suggested @GBNEWS

RANT

I'm feeling so angry.

Composing a complaint for another 'males can have instant access to females if they want it cause the law says so' policy.

And I'm furious that the legal architects left any ambiguity in the law. If the law ALREADY RECOGNISED FEMALES PROPERLY all of these other laws would collapse.

A sex class. The female sex class. A biological group, a bodily anatomy, a reproductive class, a tangible, material reality.

That's what we are.

The True Story of My Encounter With Thieves: The One Who Didn’t Get Away.

A thread.

When I was in my early twenties I took a year out to go and do some volunteer work in Africa. I lived in a small house in a forest and I shared it with my housemate; a warm, friendly Yorkshire lass who worked as a volunteer midwife in the local hospital. Let’s call her ‘Anne’.

I want to tell you a story about #BeingKind.

When I was a teenager, I went to church. And I fully adopted the 'love everyone, forgive everything, don't judge' ethos. I started going to a happy, clappy church. And I discovered a member of the congregation, 'Bob' a middle aged gregarious man.

I recognised Bob from a few years back, I'd been in a panto aged 10, Bob had been a lead singer. He'd been friendly and fun to the children. I liked him.

I'm appreciative of Ross's analytical work here. It's really important.

BUT. I have always to add my own caveat. And it's huge.

Performance shouldn't matter. It isnt actually the crux of the argument.

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1333017543745953792

Because, for example.
If we took any group, say, "able-bodied diabetic men aged 75+" and after analysis, discovered their performance was comparable to an entirely different group, say, "under 14 female amputees". Should we merge the groups? Does that make sense?

I've given birth twice.

The first time, a 48 hour labour, unrelenting contractions over two solid days with scant few minutes reprieve in between.

The second, a fast and dramatic 5 hours, with so little time to catch my breath that I couldn't move an inch from beginning to end. If you've been through this, you'll maybe recognise that feeling of utter desperation that hits between the waves, a particular point when you can't go on any longer and it's never, ever going to end.

And then another immense wave of pain body blows you full force again.

Happy Easter!
I have an adorable picture thread for you.
On surrogacy, and motherhood.

Read on.

1. Looky here, cuteness overload, a heart-melting pic of Kia, a beautiful golden retriever, who became a surrogate mother to some teeny baby bunnies...aaaawwww ❤️ 2. Baby badgers!
Here is Murray - he also stepped up to the plate, becoming a surrogate parent for 3 of the sweetest little Murray mints ever.
(See what I did there?)