🟢 Dave Hewitt
@void_if_removed
Followers
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England
Joined August 2009
If 5 years ago you wouldn't have supported women being removed from government buildings for wearing a suffragette scarf, and now you do, perhaps you're the one who's been radicalised online.
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@billybragg @twtomwilson They are not "anti-trans" they are pro-LGB, and they object to the redefinition of human sexuality in terms of gender, rather than sex, because it is erasure of same-sex orientation. That's what this is about. For that they have been subject to a smear campaign for years.
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So two weeks after a violent male criminal told a cheering audience to punch women rights activists in the face, a woman at a women's rights event was punched in the face by a man. Best get a few more those "maaate" billboards up, that'll help.
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Imagine yourself age 13. A teacher says something utterly absurd. You say you disagree. For days, you're in the national press, and self important men are praised for calling you unruly and hateful and disrespectful. WTF does that do to you.
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The ACLU getting roasted this morning, and rightly so. Lots of people asking why they'd go to bat for such an extreme case. It's because self id is an absolutist policy. It must be true in all situations, or it never is.
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@billybragg @ThePosieParker You don't get how this works do you? . A baying mob whipped into self righteous fury terrifyingly assaulted a woman you've been publicly demonising and you're cheering them on. That's what many people will remember you for after today.
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A selection of 200 or so avatars of the accounts currently joining in this pile-on, presented without comment.
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@billybragg @Jane66588568 @twtomwilson So we're clear, you're comparing a regime that murdered homosexuals and Jews to a charity set up to defend homosexuality founded by two lesbians, one of whom is Jewish.
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This thread is full of men who live in a country with no statutory maternity leave and abortion rights on a knife edge stroking their chins about why the UK doesn't share their enlightened views on how to woman properly.
I am continually perplexed by the Anglophone divergence on transphobia. Why is there so much more TERF representation in the UK elite than in their US and Canadian peers?.
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An LGB charity founded by lesbians has just won a 2 year and £250k battle to keep it's charitable status, instigated by essentially the entire LGBT charity sector. BBC: But what does Tatchell think?.
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This @guardian headline change is nuts. Someone must have complained, and as a result the headline has gone from wrong to utterly wrong. I dread to think how many people are just nodding along with this process.
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@PennyRed We've been trying to warn you for years that abusing, bullying, silencing and knee-jerk calling people with entirely reasonable, left-wing positions hateful bigots was a gift to anyone willing to cynically exploit it. And here we are. "No debate" did this.
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I don't see how it is possible to have meaningful conversation without some honest commitment to accuracy. Here's one single solitary fact check, that will change absolutely nobody's mind, because social media is destroying our relationship to reality.
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@billybragg You have to understand that when you are arguing for self-id and removal of single-sex exemptions, you are not just arguing on behalf of some nebulous disadvantaged "other", you are arguing for rights and privileges for yourself.
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If you're calling people TERF in the workplace, expect to lose employment tribunals.
THE JUDGEMENT IS IN AND ITS CONCLUSIVE.
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@jasonintrator In 2014, Children's BBC started repeatedly airing a documentary for pre-teens all about a pre-teen girl who wanted to be a boy, going to the Tavistock to talk to nice Dr Polly, who was going to press a pause button. Tavistock referrals in girls shot up every subsequent year.
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You think things are shifting and then Jon Stewart trots out oh so tired discourse from 2016 for 200k likes and its just depressing.
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@billybragg @BBC Go and listen to Jo Phoenix talk about her history, her career, and the devastating effect on her of being harassed and bullied out of her job by her employer and then ask yourself when you stopped giving a shit about worker's rights and started harassing lesbians instead.
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Now that @MForstater has been comprehensively vindicated, you'd hope there would be some serious reflection on the way partisan reporting, tech platform bias and social media fosters self-sustaining false realities and encourages a vicious spiral of intolerant punishment. 1/.
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@mattwallaert That's funny, because I struggle to imagine a more morally bankrupt position than "I am so intolerant of male gender nonconformity that I will destroy girls sport rather than accept it".
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If you'd told me in 2015 that this would be one of the most significant political headlines of 2023 no way in hell I would have believed you.
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@jk_rowling The case will now be dragged out to November, intentionally I'm sure. This whole vindictive, abusive challenge is a scandal.
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@AbbeyRogue01 @BetteMidler Which non-binary folks though?. The female ones. So your *only* options are:. - Say woman, because it just means female. - Say female. - Start talking about dehumanising body parts.
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Compare and contrast. Throwing someone under a bus vs actual solidarity.
Music industry figures are checking their bank balances rather than express any support for Roisin Murphy. A brilliant artist and a fabulous woman @roisinmurphy
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Look at this. Just look at this. Twitter's trending editorialising a BBC article to play up criticism. Propagating a specific narrative at the *platform* level. Spinning the news before you even see it. US corporate technocracy in action.
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41% did not respond and 8% of the rest had a high regret score but were excluded because it seemingly conflicted with high satisfaction answers, but rather than question methodology or robustness they went ahead and published that they'd found 0% regret. Headline based medicine.
Transgender and nonbinary patients have no regrets about top surgery, small study finds
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@billybragg How many men do you walk past on the street every single day that you would not trust to uphold such a lax standard? Why must women's rights be entirely subordinate to the good faith actions of men? Why are women not allowed to say no?.
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Absolutely dying at some of the reactions from @HJoyceGender and @MForstater sat behind Lord Falconer in this WESC hearing:.
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I ask the eternal question - what is it about this particular issue that so comprehensively eats brains?. I still don't understand it. People don't just accept it - they evangelise it, lose all ability to parse logic and reason, and aggressively demonise anyone who disagrees.
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@billybragg Just because you may choose not to exercise them, doesn't mean you don't have them. You are arguing that no women's service, or statistics, or meeting, or campaigning, should ever be able to exclude you.
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@PennyRed Polarised seemingly beyond repair, with reactionary authoritarian overreach gaining popularity because of a false binary framing that it is the only alternative to pretending you don't know what men and women are, and lots of people find that unappealing.
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@billybragg That as a man you have absolute authority to insert yourself into any of these things simply on your own claim that you deserve to be there. That your claim, should you choose to make it, is backed up with the full force of the state and cannot be challenged.
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There's tough competition for "most depressing thing" at the moment, but high up is the cavalcade of once-interesting people revealing themselves to be smug, self-congratulatory know-nothings in their gleeful scramble to disband female sports. Blows my mind.
I have a podcast. Here’s a clip from this week about Caitlyn Jenner
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@billybragg @helenstaniland @OwenJones84 This is not "one person", this is Die Linke, the German left democratic socialist party. A party legitimising this is appalling and should be condemned by anyone on the left.
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Yesterday in NZ a sign saying women are female was branded hate speech and removed in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile in the UK supreme court judges heard sex doesn't exist & refused to hear from anyone saying otherwise. Just in case you still thought this was all "online drama".
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People still seem to think there will be a "thing" that is so egregious the world will collectively realise the long-standing injustice towards women in the whole sex/gender insanity. There won't be a "thing". Every blatantly awful "thing" that could possibly happen already has.
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@jasonintrator This documentary was complete with appalling sexist stereotypes and graphics showing literal blue brains in pink bodies. Dr Carmichael has since testified that, far from being a simple pause button, infertility can be a consequence of puberty blockers.
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@PennyRed When people spend years lying that their political opponents are far right bigots, it isn't terribly surprising that it strengthens the actual far right bigots who benefit by appearing far more acceptable and numerous than they are.
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@jasonintrator Are we medicalising and sterilising LGB youth - and overwhelmingly lesbians - yet again, just like lobotomy, just like hysterectomy, just like ECT. Except this time it is all wrapped up in US-centric ideas of self-actualisation and individualism, masquerading as progressive.
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One of the most baffling exchanges I've seen in a good long while. No clue what the point being made is at all.
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A piece about the process of taking over existing language, kicking out the previous occupants and demonising anyone who doesn't get on board with the shiny new meanings, which I'm calling "semantic gentrification".
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@HJoyceGender I think your book needs to come with a warning. People read it, and want to talk about it, but they are completely unprepared for what happens when they do. It needs a chapter on dealing with being ghosted, blocked and unfriended by people you've known for years.
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A post about a recent Guardian opinion piece that drew overly dismissive conclusions based on narrow, weak and incomplete data on safety in women's prisons. The Guardian is years behind the curve on this, talking about the wrong things, too late.
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@BritishGQ "Rather than a single incident, it is the persistency and aggression". So - she hasn't actually said anything wrong, but you don't like her tone and she won't shut up?.
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Imagine if, because of this slipup, two youtubers made a video about the barrister falsely saying they had "refused to use the correct pronouns for a colleague" and a million people watched it and Margaret Atwood retweeted it and it was still up 2 years later with no apologies.
OD: Claire works in tax policy doesn't she?.MF: They.
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@Femi_Sorry That is what it is about. You're missing the whole Butlerian theory that underpins this that sex *is* gender. They assert they are one and the same. Bodies irrelevant, constructed social identity is all. Self id is about self declaration of *sex*.
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@RogerPielkeJr No, it is used to remove all ambiguity from what is under discussion, when faced with complete destruction of the meaning of the words man, woman, male and female. If I say men should not be in women's sports it is obvious.
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Well this is interesting. Last year it was all "JK Rowling is bad" for noticing this.
Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore? via @torontostar.
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As a result of John Nicolson's recent attack on the LGB Alliance, I've made an attempt to reconstruct a timeline of the Twitter drama last Spring that casts doubt on his framing of events.
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Owen Jones, joining in the public bullying and hatred of a gay man with a different opinion, and throwing jet fuel on an already incendiary and divisive situation. This is utterly appalling.
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Watching the author of How Fascism Works have a snarky tweet backfire and descend into conspiracism and calling everyone he doesn't like a fascist in the space of a couple of hours is quite something.
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Stonewall ignored private pleas to talk, an open letter in 2018, one in the Times in 2019, targeted the employers of lesbians, was initially part of the action against LGB Alliance's charity status, and true to form is going to DARVO it's way forward.
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Worth highlighting that this article does not mention that @jk_rowling was cancelled in 2019 for supporting @MForstater . Now that she's been vindicated, what was once a foundational accusation - that every hit piece framed as unforgivable bigotry - is quietly forgotten.
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@JRTomlinAuthor @grace_hawthorn @NeilMackay "quoting someone word for word is misrepresenting someone". - J.R. Tomlin.
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@charlie_sci And the thing that people often don't get about Fahrenheit 451, is that it wasn't about governmental censorship. It was about the general public wilfully embracing the destruction of challenging ideas in pursuit of bland, superficial affirmation. It was *chillingly* prescient.
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@billybragg That women cannot exclude you unless you acquiesce. That the only thing standing between you, and full participation in all of these things, is your own sense of decency and honour, your own assurance that you are a good and kind person who would not abuse given the opportunity.
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I have often wondered what it would take to make some people see how unfair the erosion of women's sport is. The answer is: nothing. They won't see it. Even if you put the most over the top ridiculously unfair scenario in front of them, they simply don't care.
I would feel perfectly comfortable saying that it's a shame that Nini Manmua missed out on competing at the Olympics this time, but that a trans woman hasn't 'taken' anything from her - Laurel qualified fair and square. Hopefully 2024 will be Nini's year.
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@jackmirkinson Every single woman who's sick of this shit can reel off half a dozen examples without blinking. You think overlap is a *coincidence*?. Maybe they're just all pissed about the same thing.
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A piece about how the demand that women be inclusive is giving a free pass to men's intolerance and exclusion, and reinforcing male gender norms.
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Every single time someone new thinks they're approaching the sex/gender issue with nuance and compassion that must have been missing before they came on the scene, and to their surprise they get called the bad names anyway.
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@MargaretAtwood @TorontoStar Do you get it now?.
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? . Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate
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An absolutely shameful response here to a grotesque and serious threat of violence that was cheered by the gleeful audience and shared widely on social media by the organisers, to great approval. Open your damn eyes.
@hogotheforsaken @shularises @AyoCaesar @novaramedia Advocating violence against others is wrong & this is no exception. But as you’ll be aware violent language and actions are not unique to one side on this issue. That doesn’t justify the above in anyway, but it does require we acknowledge the general toxicity & step back from it.
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Right now the electoral choice in England feels like it's between an incompetent, corrupt and actively destructive government, and three parties overrun with the equivalent of scientologists. So bizarre and disappointing.
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@jk_rowling @lumos @ilporticolondon Strike and Robin are investigating a murder on a train, sparked by an argument over a packet of crisps. Eventually the trail leads to the restaurant headquarters of an international network of powerful lesbians. Along the way, Robin and Strike almost, but don't quite.
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@BenInLDN Ben - you linked to an article saying LGB Alliance has links to the US Christian Right. Care to back that up?.
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@ben_rosen IDIOTS: we demand you use really stupid, regressive language that entrenches harmful stereotypes and hides sex inequality. NON IDIOTS: no. IDIOTS: we are going to burn your career and reputation to the ground.
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@billybragg @NehandaMusic @NestFolk @DebbieHayton The whole reason that self-id is being opposed is because it undermines things like this. How can you even begin to tackle things like equal pay if any man can trivially be regarded as a woman for comparative purposes?.
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@MargaretAtwood Do you get it now?.
‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.
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@mrmarksteel You might think you're making a clever snide point about current events, but actually this is just deeply ignorant and racist.
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The ability to write a thread of 33 tweets without any self awareness.
What is the most amazing biological process in the human body?.
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@billybragg @suzanne_moore You have been banging on about your support for trans people for years and nothing remotely like this has ever happened to you. Roisin Murphy says *one* completely understandable thing in passing, tries to bow out, and still gets gigs and album promo cancelled immediately.
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@jasonintrator Have we, in all of human history, been suppressing a subsection of the population who have been growing up same-sex attracted, but who now, with the advent of paediatric transition, can instead grow up to be infertile, anorgasmic adults, because that is their authentic self?.
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@PrueBray You're examining the wrong end of that relationship. A man exclusively attracted to women cannot become a lesbian through change of appearance or by signing a statutory declaration. That's the zero sum game. If men can be lesbians, lesbians don't exist.
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What's happening to this film is insane. Sometimes I think more effort is put into silencing the most reasonable voices, because such obvious reasonableness is incredibly persuasive.
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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Reminder that you're not allowed a sexual orientation anymore.
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Starmer's dreadful answer to the "cervix" question on Marr last year was an eye-opening moment to a few of people in my political circle. That he's had 6 months to come up with a better answer to a question he *knows* is going to be asked, and *hasn't*, speaks volumes.
'So a woman can have a penis?'. Nick Ferrari puts Sir Keir Starmer on the spot amid a row over trans athletes. #CallKeir | @Keir_Starmer | @NickFerrariLBC
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@GaryLineker @MForstater It took 3 years of legal battles in the face of worldwide vilification to establish you shouldn't lose your job for saying it is sexist to give an award for "women in business" to a man who wears a dress 3 days a week. But you go off on "let people live their lives".
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@billybragg @wossy @nixsight @CarbyBoii @Mike_P_Williams @Glinner Speaking of empathy, try and imagine we were not talking about sex or gender, but class and poverty. That a bunch of middle and upper-class people were casually discussing the nebulous term “working class”.
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There are pages and pages of tweets supporting @jk_rowling on this trend. Twitter's attempts at narrative shaping around this whole issue are dismally predictable.
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In a staggering coincidence, a shameless attention-seeker with a book out is trying to start social media drama with someone whose name has been trending on Twitter for weeks. Don't feed the trolls.
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@MForstater @MargaretAtwood It is a travesty that video is still up frankly. Outright lies. Zero accountability.
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It had to be shown over and over that Maya was so "bad" that Rowling was "bad" for even sticking up for her, and by extension defences of Rowling became a heinous, bigoted crime. All because she rightly defended a victim of workplace discrimination. 3/.
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@jasonintrator In other words, are a sizeable chunk of currently healthy, happy gay adults a mistake, who should have been "corrected" much younger, if only medical science were more advanced and society more accepting?. OR:.
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@FeministRoar @AllianceLGB "They filmed some of the earlier speeches using hidden cameras". They. they do know all the speeches are filmed and will end up on YouTube, right?.
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So, for example, the Scottish government's attempts to claim a penalty for a "false declaration" were always incoherent and handwavy, because even conceding the possibility of a "false declaration" undermines the whole concept of self-id. It was an almost literal figleaf.
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Started reading the Cormoran Strike books before Christmas, and just finished the fifth one. Found them unputdownable, and having read it finally the furore around Troubled Blood in 2020 is just completely unfounded and bizarre.
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@BretWeinstein @Paintpot17 @ggreenwald Amazing how all the people appalled by Rush Limbaugh slurring women with "feminazi" simultaneously pat themselves on the back and use "TERF" in exactly the same way. The more viciously they denounce, the kinder they believe themselves to be, because they have moral certitude.
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Regular reminder that when this is all over, the people responsible for making everything a toxic mess will cynically rebrand as conciliatory figures, and those who forced the debate - at great personal cost - will always be treated as if they were unreasonable or mean.
“Do you really think the way to win an argument for trans equality is to try and shut [J.K. Rowling] down?”. Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting says “there’s got to be a lot more empathy and understanding” on both sides of the trans debate.
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A piece about The Guardian sacrificing clarity and truth on the altar of dogma.
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@englishchick @jk_rowling They're understandably surprised. Aside from the numerous front page headlines promising a coordinated campaign during the local elections, the leafleting, the doorstep questioning of candidates and the extensive social media activity, this has flown completely under the radar.
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@jasonintrator Indeed, WPATH now admits this. Meanwhile vast majority of GIDS referrals are same-sex attracted. So lets consider:
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A piece about how subtle, independent changes across multiple articles on Wikipedia over a decade ago conceptually erased same-sex attraction without anybody realising.
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@Scienceofsport @runthinkwrite @realscientists It's bizarre. By the logic of this thread, the finest female athletes, in their physical prime, who have devoted their lives to their sport, are beaten by 14 year old boys because they're not trying hard enough.
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