Susanna Rustin
@SusannaRustin
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Social affairs leader writer for the Guardian. Mum. Author of Sexed: A History of British Feminism (in bookshops now). Views on here are mine
London
Joined July 2009
I 💛 bookshops and libraries. Amazing feeling to have my own window for a day. Thanks so much @Dauntbooks & everyone who came to celebrate publication with me @LittleHardman @politybooks
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If you think the paedophile who abducted & repeatedly sexually assaulted a primary school girl - who trusted him because she thought he was a woman - ought to be allowed to choose what pronouns he is called by, in court or wherever, trans activism has broken your moral compass.
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I think courts & media letting a rapist claim he is now someone else - that the man who raped no longer exists - should be understood as a violation of restorative justice principles. A system inflicting further injury on the victim by enabling denial.
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Hamilton was dropped because of her gender-critical view that women's sport should not be open to males. These things are really happening & the more people nod along, the worse it gets for girls & women.
Rip Curl - a famous surfing brand - have dropped Bethany Hamilton (who lost her arm in a shark attack) from their ad campaigns. They have instead used Sasha Lowerson to advertise women’s surfing. Their total contempt could not be more clear.
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"I look forward to a time where awards shows can be reflective of society we live in" -Sam Smith at the Brits , 2021 .Wish granted? this year our sexist society is reflected so brilliantly that no women are nominated for best artist .Bravo genderists 👏👏.
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People full of contempt for safeguarding-fixated mums could do with reading up on how hard Victorian feminists fought, despite not being able to vote - and against determined and vicious opposition from the men in charge - to get the age of consent raised from 12 to 16.
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If you follow me on here you'll know I'm a gender critical feminist. I wrote for @guardianopinion about why:
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You can't show solidarity with JK Rowling while denying her right to define the sexism/ misogyny against her as being rooted in sex (not gender). I'm sorry but you just can't. That's how she understands it. That's how millions of other women understand it.
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I had no idea til @BBCWomansHour interview today that Jo Phoenix was raped as a teenager & went through a trial. So like Allison Bailey, a lesbian with very serious sexual violence in her past. It is unbelievably grim that these women were vilified for thinking sex is important.
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I was going to say this ad (the sports one is nearly as bad) is mindblowingly stupid but actually it's malign. A govt that instructs women to suppress any discomfort they might feel in enclosed space with a male - no matter what clothes, identity - shd be kicked out of office.
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There are posters all over the tube telling people off for STARING (as sexual harassment). & yet it's apparently not that big a deal for someone with a criminal record for serious violence to call at a rally in Trafalgar Square for feminists to be PUNCHED IN THE FACE.
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.@MForstater, who is very brave, fought a 4-YEAR LEGAL BATTLE (2019-23) to establish that women could not be discriminated against by employers for holding & voicing gender-critical belief that sex is real, binary,immutable and important in life ( eg in sports). 1/6.
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@Oxfam I can't continue supporting a charity that vilifies women in this horrible way. Especially for #Pride2023: you must know lesbians get called "terf" too. I've donated to you monthly for 20+ years, will switch to another anti-poverty charity in the morning.
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I'm in Edinburgh, was going to see this film tonight. I know many people would rather pretend this isn't happening but universities across the UK are failing to uphold women's rights to freedom of assembly and speech.
They've done it again. Our film screening is cancelled. They have occupied the venue. Freedom of assembly for women is dead at Edinburgh University. Anyone who is appalled by this please come down to protest. @ScotNational @BBCScotlandNews @TheScotsman @Channel4News @thetimes.
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If @jk_rowling had put this in a novel she'd have been denounced for evil bigoted scare-mongering. I imagine books would've been burned. Emma Watson would've been very very angry. But it's the news. And @nytimes, @bbc call the suspect "she" 1/2.
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I wrote a comment piece (so my view not the Guardian's). About the escalating attacks on women whose ideas don't conform to the current gender orthodoxy 1/2
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Here is a piece I wrote about @JoPhoenix1, Rachel Meade, @MForstater & some of the other .women discriminated against by employers for their gender-critical beliefs
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1/Reading about Great Ormond Street Hospital cancellation of child psychiatry training event including gender-critical speakers (@HJoyceGender & @cwknews) it seems clearer & clearer that staff/student networks set up under auspices of Diversity & Inclusion are. .
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It's obviously false to claim puberty blockers are "reversible" - as Mermaids has done yet again today - because you can't turn back time. If the changes that would have occurred in a child's body at a particular time/age are blocked by drugs, you don't reverse the blockage 1/2.
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Solidarity with @RosieDuffield1. This continual bullying of women who want to talk about their bodies in the language they know is unbearable and deeply sexist.
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I wrote about the idea of "abolishing legal sex" (yes this is a real thing! gender-critical feminists aren't making it up)
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I'm proud to be @suzanne_moore's colleague & think the #notadebate tactic of trans/self-ID activism has been an absolute disaster, not tactically (tho that may be true) but politically, for the left.
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On a dreadful day for women in London I've watched Scottish feminists make a brave stand against shameful SNP decision to leave sex/ misogyny out of hate speech bill #iamthestorm.
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Fantastic column by @soniasodha. I am lucky to have her as a colleague. & I am still sorry we weren't better able to defend @suzanne_moore .
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It appears a Labour MP thinks it's possible there's "no such thing as biological sex" (when i woke up i had to check again this really happened). This is science denial. Sex evolved over billions of years & you don't have to claim otherwise to recognise people's trans identities.
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I can't believe @BBCNews ran this piece in which a contributor (not a medic) asserts that drug-induced lactation from male nipples is as good *or better* for babies than breast milk from mums. I know we liberals prefer not to criticise the BBC but this is offensive, irresponsible.
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Agree with this & wish this awful trend would stop. I support single-sex toilets alongside gender-neutral for all but it's bordering on abusive to make girls share intimate spaces when they are getting used to menstruation (which means upper primary as well as secondary).
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Really shocked by this. Scottish Labour backed an amendment to stop sex offenders self-id'ing as women - but SNP and Greens blocked it. Incredible disregard for women's safety. Self-id trumps everything. And a woman wearing suffragette colours ordered to leave. What a disgrace.
SNP and Green MSPs voted against Russell Findlay’s amendments to restrict access to GRC process by sex offenders.
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I've written an article about Labour's treatment of feminists who advocate for women's sex-based rights
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This young woman had double masectomy at 15 & calls social transition a gateway. This is the affirmative treatment model for gender-distressed youth that feminists including @jk_rowling oppose. The trans/self-id social movement is tied to a body modification industry.
My testimony against SB107 in front of Wiener and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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So after 5+ years of feminists being smeared and insulted for saying self-ID is a bad policy, Labour says it too
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No disrespect to anyone, I'm a pluralist & feminism is a big tent. But all this talk of heels & makeup being liberating (or is it empowering?) makes me want to burn a bra or something. Also: #IStandWithSashaWhite because sex matters & women shouldn't be punished for saying so.
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I am at number 2 behind Harry and Meghan. Thank you readers
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This is what a feminist looks like.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.
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The word "breasts" is not mentioned here. Nor "masectomy". Major surgery is being promoted to young women all over the world as a route to liberation ("a freeing freeing experience") while medical, anatomical reality vanishes into euphemism.
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The glaring dissonance of Allegra Stratton joining in PM's defence of Priti Patel 6 days after telling @tobyhelm that 'the country does not want to be run by people in No 10 who treat people discourteously and unpleasantly' 👀.
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I'm going to say something else about @suzanne_moore. It's that after 300+ of our colleagues signed a letter attacking her in March (it didn't name her but the story about it given to Buzzfeed did) lots of us offered support, on here or by telling the editor what we thought.
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6/ That Susie Green CEO of Mermaids thinks NHS Camhs staff should read only what she approves should ring every alarm bell there is. Story is in the Telegraph by @ewansomerville.
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Hi @jessphillips I was pleased you shared my piece in a tweet yesterday. And I'm sorry you deleted it. Can i please ask why you did that?.
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I wrote last year about my gender critical feminist views. I explained them as clearly as I could & also tried to explain how my ideas - rooted in socialist materialist feminist tradition - differ from gender identity ideas & activism 1/3
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I can't imagine how i would feel if i were one of the victims/ survivors involved in the child sexual abuse inquiry. Tory chaos completely taking over the news, again, on a day that ought to have been one of national reckoning with decades of child protection failure. 1/2.
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👏👏👏Estelle Morris. A Labour woman in the Lords making the case for data that separates sex from gender identity. This is a prerequisite for feminist/ anti-sexist public policymaking and women in 2021 shouldn't be having to fight for it.
@Tanni_GT Estelle Morris "Simply what the amendment asks is we collect two pieces of data, one is sex at birth and two is acquired gender. Without that I don't know how we go on to develop public policy" /2
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.@stonewalluk is an anti-feminist organisation. It really is as simple as that. Encouraging & incentivising employers to be "gender neutral" is encouraging & incentivising them to ignore the sex-specific protected characteristic (Equality Act 2010) of pregnancy/maternity.
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Beg to differ. Mexico is a femicide capital of the world (10 women & girls murdered every day). Feminists in UK should not be 'ashamed' to dissent from 'international human rights norms' of its mostly male supreme court. We shd keep fighting for sex-based rights of women & girls.
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with gender politics) worse. But I now wish we had done it differently, that our support had been more visible. I don't find it easy to imagine how I'd have felt if I'd been attacked as Suzanne was. But i now think that's what I'd have hoped for in her position. So I'm sorry.
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this is chilling: come to a demo calling for Kathleen Stock to be fired, wear a mask or disguise. .
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Disagree with their stance on women's/ trans rights, fine, but for @AngelaRayner to condemn @Womans_Place_UK as a 'trans-exclusionary hate group' is appalling. Those I've met are lifelong feminists/ campaigners & they have every right to campaign for single-sex sports/ spaces etc.
Please read and sign to show your support to our trans and non-binary community🌈 Our solidarity is long overdue - The Labour Party should always be an open and safe space for all #TransRightsAreHumanRights.
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One of reasons @BluskyeAllison's essay (on her crowdfunder) about her life & opinions - following @jk_rowling's - is so welcome is it demolishes the idea that gender critical feminists are all or mainly conservative stooges/bigots in disguise (*I'm not saying none are).
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2/. running a campaign against knowledge/ideas that don't fit with gender-activist, affirmation-only model of treatment for gender dysphoria. Based in part on spurious comparison to homophobia -since being gay/ lesbian does not require medical treatment or surgery - . .
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How anyone who isn't a raging misogynist authoritarian can think this is ok is completely beyond me. It's disturbingly illiberal that well-known feminists with long track records as campaigners/ writers/ service-providers are being denied such a basic service.
We are astonished that @Eventbrite has cancelled our book launch for @K_IngalaSmith's Defending Women's Spaces due to take place on 24 Nov with @bindelj, unbelievably citing violation of their policy on Hateful, Dangerous, or Violent Content! #DefendingWomensSpaces
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This is tragic, appalling. She was 15, no adult knew about her pregnancy, minimum 12 year-sentence is too long.
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This is all utterly mad. Sex differences in sport are blindingly obvious to anyone who watches Olympics for 10 mins. The women are fit & fantastic but men throw further, jump higher, swim & run faster, etc. The idea we're supposed to deny or ignore this really is Orwellian.
The IOC told journalists not to use phrases such as "born male" or "biologically male" calling it "problematic language" /3.
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My piece on @JoPhoenix1 & other women discriminated against for their beliefs is in today's @guardianopinion section for print early birds & will be online later this morning. Thanks so much for interest. & @BBCr4today for the mention 🙏.
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Anyone who thinks they are on the side of the marginalised, who also thinks a lesbian philosopher such as @Docstockk shouldn't *write about the redefinition of the word lesbian to includes males* has made a category error about themselves. They are on the side of patriarchy (1/2).
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i've done the All About Trans training with Juno Dawson & spent hours with Ruth Hunt. I'm all for people expressing themselves however they like, and being protected from discrimination. But i agree with Allison Bailey: the erosion of sex as a category harms women.the end.
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3/. they block discussion & accuse anyone with different perspective of being a bigot. It's unconscionable. These are children's bodies & no one knows longterm outcomes for current, unprecedented cohort of adolescent/ young adult females with dysphoria.
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I think ubiquity of online violent pornography and lack of safeguards over recent years has been a kind of institutional-societal and tech-capital-led child abuse. Wilful disregard of growing minds, amounting to cruelty /neglect
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"I've had female weightlifters come up to me and say, 'what do we do? This isn’t fair, what do we do?'. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do because every time we voice it we get told to be quiet.".
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So much wrong with this law but leaving sex out while including age, disability, race, sexual orientation, trans identity is just disgraceful. Especially when women's trust in policing is so broken, & evidence galore about online misogyny. It's chilling.
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The idea of becoming a new person - making it taboo to mention the old one as gender ideology demands, a "dead name" - has obvious appeal to men who have done awful things. Especially when their awfulness is sexual. I always thought this was a risk with the whole set-up.
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What is coming out in this Edinburgh Rape Crisis court case is truly shocking. The idea that a service for raped women ought to 'wash' or 'clean' off its feminist/ women's movement past is seriously misogynist.
Full transcript of the shocking comments from Mridul Wadhwa yesterday. Including repeating the notion that a movement built by volunteer women needs to "wash and clean" itself of the past female activism./.
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4/ Female reproductive systems are *internal*. We won't know for decades what happens over a lifetime when these systems are shut down in adolescence. And it's devastating (as someone supportive of equalities initiatives in principle) to observe that. .
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@arusbridger @ayeshahazarika Hello Alan. Yes it's difficult for everyone but last year Fawcett's chief exec (who has since left) wrote "I identify with gender-critical feminism" yet org didn't make any statement supportive of Maya Forstater's right to hold the same belief and not be sacked. How is that ok?.
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5/. "diversity, inclusion" setups appear bound up in an ideological project committed to restricting thought, discussion, evidence. When you consider everything we know as a society about vulnerability of young people at the moment, esp teenage girls, it's shameful.
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I support trans people's right to live free from discrimination & prejudice. As do all the gender critical feminists I know & respect. At its most basic, our belief is that sex & sexism are politically important. It's appalling that Stonewall regards this as a form of hatred.3/3.
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For anyone who doesn't get it I think this is a good example of what legal protection of gender-critical belief in UK means: that we are allowed to believe that in some situations a person's sex is relevant, can be pointed out; we aren't always obliged to ignore it.
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It's not 'equal opportunities' to allow trans women to play women's rugby if evidence shows it is dangerous. It is saying trans players' interests & feelings shd trump female players'. These govt & lottery-funded charities are saying,out loud: we don't care about women's safety.
Standing with all trans people who are feeling let down by this decision. We believe everyone, including trans people, should have equal opportunities in sport. This was a missed opportunity to uphold their own values that rugby is a “sport for all”. #TransRightsAreHumanRights.
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The details of new Afghan laws are horrifying. Fawzia Koofi (formerly of Afghan parliament) says international attitude that "this is normal", & general lack of reaction, has emboldened Taliban. So depressing that internationalist feminism is so weak.
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I wonder how the victims' families feel about this? .What if it matters to them to identify and describe these crimes as what we are (just about, and thanks to @MForstater's fight for gender-critical belief) still allowed to call them in the UK: male violence against women? 2/2.
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I've never spoken to Allison btw, or @ALLIANCELGB or @jk_rowling. But I am utterly sick of women - including colleagues @HadleyFreeman & @suzanne_moore & groups such as @Womans_Place_UK - being smeared & denounced for standing up for women's rights.
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I don't think rightwingers started sex/gender culture war in UK - though they are coopting resistance to sex denial into "anti-wokism". i think trans rights activists started it: trying to replace sex with gender id - & condemning objections as transphobic - *is* culture war.
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Standing up for women's and girls' rights and resources, including rights to single-sex spaces and sports - as allowed for in the Equality Act 2010 - is not "culture wars" or "war on woke". It is feminism. 1/2.
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in other gender-critical employment case news, a judge has rejected Hachette's request for 2 authors who asked to be moved away from @suladoyle's imprint, on grounds of her views, to be granted anonymity in her tribunal.
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The misogynist hyperbole on this topic is so out of hand that it's hard to know if/when/why to react (or ignore) but in case it means anything to @jk_rowling or anyone else that journalists like me speak up: I think Strangio's is an absolutely appalling, libellous remark.
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Struggling for right words to congratulate @JoPhoenix1. Fantastic she has won her case but so dismaying that a lesbian, feminist criminology professor was put through this hell *by the Open University* because she doesn't believe and won't pretend biological sex doesn't matter.
have received the Tribunal’s judgment in my case against the OU today: I won! The Tribunal found that I was discriminated against and harassed because of my gender critical beliefs, and that I was constructively dismissed.
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Until the judge at appeal ruled in her favour, women across UK faced possibility of losing jobs or other opportunities if they dared to agree with her. This was SCARY. Women including me, but most of whom are not journalists, were scared. 2/6.
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I'm extremely pleased @AdrianRamsay has been elected as Green MP in Suffolk. He's only one of party's new MPs to have offered clear, unequivocal backing for Cass Review.
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@arusbridger @ayeshahazarika Wouldn't you be angry in Maya F's position? .Meanwhile people who didn't stand up for her and feel bad about it project all sorts of feelings on to her - so she's the bully. But Maya is the person who lost her job & an employment tribunal - for the sake of feminist ideas. Hero.
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This is biology denial. I think is related to climate change denial. Both ideologies are very strong in US & other rich countries with huge CO2 emissions (Australia, Canada). Both are powered by fantasies of human omnipotence, determination to deny boundaries imposed by nature.
The American Civil Liberties Union, arguing before a U.S. federal district court in California that there is no such thing as the material reality of biological sex. Additional information here:
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So pleased Rosie Duffield has got the apology she deserves. Absolutely grim the way she was vilified.
Thank you @wesstreeting 💜. Wes Streeting apologises to Labour MP who felt ostracised due to gender views
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Tavistock trust whistleblower David Bell: ‘I believed I was doing the right thing’
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Brilliant to see @ShabanaMahmood, shadow justice sec, crediting @jk_rowling for "leading the fight in this area" [sex-based rights & free speech for women] - because it's true. Along with @MForstater & others that's exactly what she has done
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It's crazy but this is really happening, just as the article says. Makes me furious but also really sad. Love being a mum, daughter, sister, hope to be a grandma one day. I do not believe that the denial of sex has anything to do with justice or progress
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This is awful. Shame on @lisanandy @RLong_Bailey @AngelaRayner @DawnButlerBrent et al for giving credence to idea that @Womans_Place_UK is a beyond-the-pale hate group.
Just been no-platformed from this event commemorating 50 yrs since Ruskin WLM conference because of my connection w @Womans_Place_UK. My mum and dad met at Ruskin. My mum is a proud feminist. So am I. My first academic article was about the WLM.
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I am horrified to see Nancy Kelley of @stonewalluk likening these views to anti-semitism - widely understood as an explicitly murderous prejudice. My father & one side of my family is Jewish. I'm a committed lifelong anti-racist. 2/3.
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The thing is that while some people honestly think women sticking up for our rights are "useful idiots" other people - me included - think gender identity activism in its current form & political demands that go with it (eg inclusion must trump single-sex privacy & fairness) are.
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So pleased to see this from my colleagues on the Observer.
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Eg Roz Adams at Edinburgh rape crisis, who only got court-ordered apology today. So & as others have pointed out, it is grim & also dishonest for liberals/ progressives, especially journalists, to pretend concerns around free speech & illiberal policing are confected. 4/6.
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It's blindingly obvious to anyone with cursory knowledge of sex offending (& the centuries-long male entitlement to female bodies, now fashionably dubbed "the right to sex") that self-ID rules will be exploited. The vilification of feminists who oppose it is viscerally misogynist.
The thing that never happens, and women are bigots/idiots/hysterical for raising concerns about, has just happened again. Male sex offender identifies as a woman to gain access to vulnerable female victims, this time in a women’s shelter.
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So yes there is a free speech problem! 6/6 .(* there's also a tech/social media/ accountability problem imo but that's another story).
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I could not personally agree more with this editorial from my Observer colleagues. "Sturgeon's reforms would allow any man who signs a declaration to have enhanced legal rights to access spaces where women undress and are vulnerable." .
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Yes it really matters that neither Biden or Harris dares point out that it's WOMEN & GIRLS who have lost the right to abortion in Texas. Gender ideology has done this, by insisting trans inclusion takes priority over female people's right to name ourselves. It is a disaster.
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90% of nurses are women. yet their Royal College is revealed by inquiry to be “a misogynistic environment in which loud and abrasive male voices dominate"
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But this glossy Hollywood promotion of a "having your breasts removed could save your life" narrative (with children's lives referenced explicitly) is disturbing. What I see (among other things) is capital looking for places to flow and finding human bodies =natural resources.
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Even since gender-critical belief was protected, a series of court cases & other incidents has shown how women are *punished anyway* for asserting sex-based rights - which can conflict with claims based on gender identity (eg in sports, & policies governing women's services) 3/6.
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Harris has she/ her in her twitter. Announcing her belief in gender identity as one of most salient facts about her. Imagine if Starmer had put he/ him in his twitter. Harris was running in a way more conservative country. Of course Republicans targeted her weakness!.
The thing is, she really wasn’t. She barely talked about them. But there’s no doubt the Republican messaging that that is what she thought was highly effective.
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I am really sad that the brilliant Suzanne is leaving us & I'm proud to have been her colleague and one of her editors. I will miss her voice and arguments and wonderful way of putting things alot.
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and while i'm on the subject it was a woman in a long skirt who got sale of alcohol to children banned as well - Nancy Astor, a Tory. First private member's bill by a woman to become law (1923).
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And why was that?.Because historically, the *humanity* of bodies with vaginas was neglected. And by refusing to call us women you are guilty of that same neglect.
Our new issue is here! On the cover—'Periods on display' and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and #PeriodPoverty. Plus, @WHO air quality guidelines, low #BackPain management, community-acquired bacterial #meningitis, and more. Read:
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