I hate to be so difficult, but I'm afraid the truth is that I am.
Aug 16, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The earliest citation for an abortion-specific sense of the term ‘pro life’ is a 1971 reference in the LA Times. The ‘second wave’ of feminism is commonly said to have begun at the 1968 Miss America protest. As such, no feminist before the second wave could have been ‘pro life’.
Louise Perry’s claim that “most” feminists before the 2nd wave were pro life is not only artfully vague, then (how many is most? How were they surveyed?), but as wilfully ahistoric as the claim that Joan of Arc was a trans man. Very much avant la lettre.
Apr 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is so sad & dangerous. It also, by the bye, refutes entirely the male trans fantasy that teen girls are happy in their luscious sexy bodies & don't experience intense cravings to be in other people's bodies, not just very thin ones, but in this case an unattainably male one.
It's all very well for Dylan Mulvaney to "normalise the bulge" & claim that people with his type of body should be allowed in the "girl" category. But what does he have to offer to teens who already are in the "girl" category, but don't have & can't achieve his type of body?
Apr 14, 2023 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Indulge me in a little Fisking of this article that starts well then pivots to the most annoying & clichéd bait & switch of the sociobiology/evopsych crowd: from talking about the difference between sex & gender to asserting differences between the sexes. skeptic.com/reading_room/f…
Lynch hits every note in the symphony of deflection & bad faith that has alienated the social sciences from biological insights, starting with the most venerable & consistent one: blaming the disconnect between the fields exclusively on SocSci.
Apr 2, 2023 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
This is going to go the same way as GRA reform. The Law Commission is presenting this as a simple tidying up of an unnecessarily bureaucratic process, but it's actually an issue of Escher-like ethical complexity that goes right to the core of what life, parenthood & family mean.
I'm a bit more, let's say, hard-ass than Sonia on this. Babies & their welfare are all very well, but is it possible to have surrogacy that stands up to any moral standard? In principle, what happens when we decouple the relation of gestation from the relation of motherhood?
Mar 22, 2023 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
I'm thinking about the "spousal veto" today. It's is a right people have in the UK to dissolve their marriage before a GRC is issued to their spouse. It's one of the most deeply resented parts of the trans debate, & something even some feminists agree should be 'reformed'.
It's called a "veto" because the claim is that people can literally use this right to prevent their spouse from transitioning. This is nonsense: nobody has any legal right to stop someone transitioning socially or even medically. It's only about getting the GRC.
Mar 21, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
OMG can nobody speak in human language anymore? Why do we have to use Twitter jargon like "monstering" to describe the fact that some people did not like the cut of Posie's jib from the start (the start: 2018. She was a real founding member of feminism, that one), & said so?
I'm happy to go on the record & say I just didn't like her. She turned up in a bunch of Facebook groups & straight away was obnoxious to anyone who so much as asked her a question. Aggressive, dismissive, & with an entourage already on hand to turn every disagreement into a row.
Mar 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Sport, as a concept, is a collection of activities (mostly) assembled based on a single criterion: that based on the evaluation set for them by the discipline rules, men outperform women at them. That's it. Sport *exists* to give men something to be better at.
One of the reasons chess can give stoned students such a hard time untangling whether it's a sport or a game is because it breaks this rule. Not that men haven't *tried* to insist that they're better at chess than women are, refusing to let women compete etc, but it doesn't wash.
Mar 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think you'll find that the "Old" Testament is not, in fact, a prequel, and does not need to be understood through the filter of jack shit
If you want to treat your own religion as a pick 'n mix where you can buy the pink love hears & leave out the salty liquorice, that's on you to justify.
Mar 17, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It's about the replenishment of the economic underclass. There are three levers:
1) Abroad: entrenching poverty in the global south 2) At the border: refusing to regularise economic migration from LATAM 3) At home: denying poor women reproductive autonomy & motherhood benefits
Reproductive exploitation is primarily economic in nature. It is both expressed in, & reifies, ideological & spiritual commitments to women's inferiority & subservience, yes. But at the macro level it's about controlling human resources.
Mar 12, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I'm not especially exercised about Lineker's tweet, but it's worth remembering that in the UK antisemitism preceded & was the cause of anti-migration laws. So it's not that we might "turn into" Nazis b/c of Braverman's hideous law - the law could only germinate in racist soil.
The first law limiting immigration to the UK was enacted in 1906, specifically to curb migration of Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Mar 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I'm not pleased at all. Israelis don't read the Guardian, so this is in effect signalling, not activism. Basically it's British Jews being intimidated into what the antisemitic left has always demanded of them: accepting moral responsibility for the Israeli government.
Is what's going on in Israel bad? Yes. Is it unique to Israel? No. Can 300,000 people living abroad influence it? No. 16 million British people couldn't even influence what their own government did to their constitunal arrangements.
Mar 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's precisely because larger size & more force are the only consistent differences between men & women that they are valorised. "Bigger" & "stronger" are not by definition advantages - but our society is structured so as to *make* them advantageous.
Work & conflict have changed in the modern era, in ways that actually *dis*advantage size & force: fine motor skills, communication ability, all sorts of areas in which women may have a small advantage over men, are actually more desirable in our economy.
Mar 4, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Something @glosswitch and @soniasodha talked about last night made me reflect about how the dominant idiom of contemporary progressive culture is an attenuated version of the idiom of male gay subculture, & about the degree to which this is a kind of loss & a kind of theft.
It's notable to me that a significant culture wars flash point right now is drag queens story hour (in practice often acrobatic displays ormusical performances, rather than necessarily no-reading). It's not "butch lesbian power tool use hour". Or "ironing with granny" hour.
Mar 3, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The answer is right there in the 'if', isn't it. We _don't_ all have the same goals. There are those who object to trans ideology because it reifies gender & inscribes it in the body; & there are those who object to it because it exposes the performative nature of gender roles.
I use the word 'performative' advisedly: not everyone who has a problem with Judith Butler's work has the same problem with it. (There are - surprise! - a lot of problems with it) Performativity is probably the most useful & the most misunderstood concept she foregrounded.
Different fandoms, similar dynamics: I met A LOT of people in reenactment & at cons to whom the phrase "couldn't stand to be who they were" applied 100%. I call them clammies, which is uncharitable of me, but then I've had a fair few of their clammy hands on me over the years.
Regardless of the context - gaming cons, Pratchett fandom meets, medieval encampments - the dynamics were the same. A lot of boundary violations. A lot of people with limited social skills. A lot of making the-whatever-it-is your whole personality.
Feb 13, 2023 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
I don't usually get into Twitter spats but can't let this stand. To people who think EP is "simple common sense", this tweet might look fairly anodyne. To me, an implication that I am an anti-evolutionist who denies biological difference is extremely serious. Please retract.
There's a reason why it's called 'evolutionary psychology' & not 'psychological evolution': EP is a branch of the social sciences, not the biological sciences. It baffles me why anyone would want to die on that discredited hill in the name of Science™️
Feb 13, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Unprecedented, by Israeli standards, congestion on a train platform, but especially a train *from* Tel Aviv *to* Jerusalem, after rush hour on a weekday. These people have left work & closed businesses to protest against anti-democratic laws being rammed through by Bibi's thugs.
One does wish that the people who've spent the last two decades insisting Israel is a fascist apartheid state would care even a tiny little bit that so many Jewish Israelis actually care about it not turning into one.
Feb 11, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Thank you for the important reminder that we actually do have a far right in this country, & when they play nice during peaceful meetings in a park they are still far right.
Wait, you meant we should write them a blank cheque when they happen to not be setting shit on fire? Oh.
We should pretend we don't know that the next thing after nativism is pronatalism & the control of women's bodies, then the control of women's liberty. We should pretend we don't know what normalisation looks like. We should pretend we don't know what the Overton window is.
