Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
They also polled on independence, using a Remain/Leave premise rather than a Yes/No one. I'm always amazed by the way in which you can ask the same question - one which has been argued over ad nauseam for what feels like forever, and of which it is therefore logical to assume that even the most disengaged and ignorant respondents have some awareness and view - using two slightly different forms of words, and get 5% or more of the population to change sides entirely on that basis.
That's quite a good poll for the Pro-Union side.
In an actual referendum, however, I don't think they wording of the question makes much difference, given that people will know what they are voting on.
If the wording makes no difference then why does changing the wording change the response?
The electorate is full of people who are, variously, vacillating, very dense, have the attention span of a flea or possess some combination of all of these characteristics. Clearly some of them can be swayed easily by the simplest of methods. It's like the Jedi mind trick: "that's not the answer you're looking for..."
I'm talking of the wording in a referendum. I accept, the wording of a poll question can generate very different results.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I'm trying to think of a word that captures this mood. Ah yes:
BRACE
A bit like the kind of thinking among the US Republicans' evangelical voter base, waiting for the Rapture. Or even perhaps some of the doom and gloom thinking among eco warriors (although at least their apocalyptic thinking has some basis in science). It's all rather self indulgent. Our best days are still ahead of us, if we can get our shit together.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
I couldn't really give a monkeys about planning law. But I wouldn't delude myself that bashing around ideas, at great length, on a political betting website will somehow solve the problem in the real world.
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
Well you have been wrong in just about every point you have made so far so it is no surprise that you are continuing your abysmal record. If your only answer when you are pulled up for making fuckwitted comments is to claim you 'don't give a monkeys' then it is clear your argument aren't worth the time you spend writing them. Try colouring books instead. Probably more your level.
Cool. I'll leave two further points then. You seem to get very angry when challenged and you take yourself and your opinions way too seriously.
Not angry. Just intolerant of fuckwits. I consider it to be an asset rather than a flaw. And I only discuss things I know about. There are plenty of times on here where I say, 'I don't know' and ask for opinions from those better informed than I am. Unlike you I also modify my opinion based on the answers. You should try it sometime instead of throwing around baseless allegations derived from your own bias and ignorance.
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
I don't think @Cyclefree, for example, is indifferent to violence against women, or violence, generally.
It's just that in large part, these issues are settled. No one seriously disputes that violence against women (or men) is a bad thing. Gender self I/D and the impact this might have upon access to womens' only spaces and activities, is a live issue.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
Yes I think most people get that you hysterically post on here (a) to control your existential crisis and dread when you wake up in the morning; (b) to try and create that same feeling in others.
But are more sensible enough not to get wound up about stuff they can't control, i.e. the bad shit in the world but also you telling them there is lots of bad shit in the world (we know).
No, I was trying to write comments simultaneously so inane and ridiculous it would be impossible to reply to them, and any attempted reply would itself be idiotic
Yet, that one still got two replies
From this I draw two enlightening conclusions: you and @turbotubbs are stupid, and I am bored
The contrast with your usual style was all so obvious it could not fail to draw attention.
Any updates from the Ukrainian 'professor' and his research that got you so excited just a few short weeks ago?
Comprehensively debunked, and disowned by his own university
Birmingham: Lab hold Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab Eastbourne: LDm hold Mendip: Con hold Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85 LDm +84 Grn -3 Lab -17 Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4 LDm +1.4 Grn -0.1 Lab -0.3 Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
How seriously should we pay attention to council by elections. On the one hand is it too easy to say these are real votes not polls, but on the other, I might be wrong just a gut feel, but whoever seems to be holding a seat normally seems to be the one with swing against them and an almost random or undeserved rise in a challengers vote - we may be measuring voter behaviour very very localised and trying to extrapolate that to the national picture?
The connection between holding a seat and the direction of swing isn't anywhere near that predictable. Although there are inevitably local factors which affect individual wards, when you take the aggregate picture you start to see that actually national feeling has a significant role in how voters decide in local elections. Last year, the Cons were doing reasonably well at defending by-elections until the mid to late part of the year, when their results fell off a cliff, and haven't recovered since. IIRC - and I don't have my full spreadsheet in front of me to check - the start f that movement preceded both the opinion poll changes and the parliamentary by-elections.
Council by-elections aren't a perfect tool, but they are a useful part of the toolkit. As I said a couple of weeks ago, one key factor I am seeing is that the Cons are being beaten by Lab, LDems and Greens - whichever is seen as the best anti-Con option in each area. The sentiment is not so much pro-Labour (or any other) as anti-Con. It'll be interesting to see if Labour's rise in the polls will start to see them replicate that locally, or whether (and this is my view) the high Labour figure is just the national way of voters saying they are anti-Con, and an actual election will see them target their vote more specifically.
Individually, the by-elections are pretty meaningless, since there are always special and local factors to explain any result. In aggregate and over a little bit of time, they are more meaningful, because there are clear trends that can be discerned. In particular, voters’ reluctance to actually vote Labour when it came to a real election, under Corbyn and early Starmer, was a useful challenge to the party’s national poll rating. Now that the Tories are quite so very unpopular, I’d expect to see that change.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
Isn't the point that no one thinks there is a danger from genuine trans people? There is a concern about men taking advantage of trans rights to commit crimes. And I don't think it is mythical, it's very real.
But isn't the stuff about Rowling at the moment to do with what's being done to children? It's a very tricky area, but I think these things should get scrutiny and up to now I think some organisations have been doing what they wanted.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
The PM job combines judgement, leadership and communication skills. Most of the rest of the Cabinet have some level of each, but PM is maxxed on all of them.
Truss both failed to plan properly and then failed to execute well. She failed to prepare the ground and sell her policy changes.
That’s what has created the issue, not necessarily the actual policy itself (although it offends the sense of fairness).
And the answer to the earlier question is that, in politics particularly, firstly the pool of potential contenders is usually fairly narrow - and some of those eligible to step up may have been given their current positions for bad rather than good reasons - and, secondly, people often get the top job because of what they are not, rather than from their own suitability or capability. How we got Mrs May and how the Americans got Biden (both as nominee and as president) are obvious examples. Indeed we got landed with Johnson largely because he wasn’t Corbyn, rather than because he is an election-winning genius.
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
The collapse in the Tory vote has been very, very rapid: 18 months from a stonking lead to an abyssal bottom? When time has passed and events have unfurled, it'll be interesting to consider the reasons why they have collapsed so massively (we're probably a little too close to unfolding events atm).
In March 2020, the Conservatives were on 54% and Labour on 28% (Opinium). That decreased to some ties through 2020, and the Conservatives pulled well ahead through the first half of 2021 up to 10-13% ahead.
Then the collapse occurred. One pollster gave the Conservatives a 13% lead in September; three months later one gave Labour an 8% lead.
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
Didn't the Conservatives get above 50% in 1931?
Yes, but they were in coalition with three other parties at the time.
As it happens if they hadn't been their vote would probably have been higher.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
You were remarkably chilled and calm only a couple of hours ago...
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
The collapse in the Tory vote has been very, very rapid: 18 months from a stonking lead to an abyssal bottom? When time has passed and events have unfurled, it'll be interesting to consider the reasons why they have collapsed so massively (we're probably a little too close to unfolding events atm).
In March 2020, the Conservatives were on 54% and Labour on 28% (Opinium). That decreased to some ties through 2020, and the Conservatives pulled well ahead through the first half of 2021 up to 10-13% ahead.
Then the collapse occurred. One pollster gave the Conservatives a 13% lead in September; three months later one gave Labour an 8% lead.
And all for Owen Paterson, of all people.
But for that, Partygate and Pincher would never have got the traction they did.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
To summarise that, you are virtue signalling. Fuck off with the "perhaps even mythical," this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/ to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
I don't think @Cyclefree, for example, is indifferent to violence against women, or violence, generally.
It's just that in large part, these issues are settled. No one seriously disputes that violence against women (or men) is a bad thing. Gender self I/D and the impact this might have upon access to womens' only spaces and activities, is a live issue.
Did I say she was? And I disagree that the 'issues are settled'. They are not. They are routinely not talked about. They are ignored. Except, oddly, for when trans people are involved.
Also: remember this has an effect on trans people themselves.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
The collapse in the Tory vote has been very, very rapid: 18 months from a stonking lead to an abyssal bottom? When time has passed and events have unfurled, it'll be interesting to consider the reasons why they have collapsed so massively (we're probably a little too close to unfolding events atm).
In March 2020, the Conservatives were on 54% and Labour on 28% (Opinium). That decreased to some ties through 2020, and the Conservatives pulled well ahead through the first half of 2021 up to 10-13% ahead.
Then the collapse occurred. One pollster gave the Conservatives a 13% lead in September; three months later one gave Labour an 8% lead.
And all for Owen Paterson, of all people.
But for that, Partygate and Pincher would never have got the traction they did.
I still scratch my head about Owen Paterson. How did they *possibly* mess it up so badly.
The thing is that so much of what has gone wrong for the government has been entirely self-inflicted mistakes that a child would avoid.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
I couldn't really give a monkeys about planning law. But I wouldn't delude myself that bashing around ideas, at great length, on a political betting website will somehow solve the problem in the real world.
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
Well you have been wrong in just about every point you have made so far so it is no surprise that you are continuing your abysmal record. If your only answer when you are pulled up for making fuckwitted comments is to claim you 'don't give a monkeys' then it is clear your argument aren't worth the time you spend writing them. Try colouring books instead. Probably more your level.
Cool. I'll leave two further points then. You seem to get very angry when challenged and you take yourself and your opinions way too seriously.
Not angry. Just intolerant of fuckwits. I consider it to be an asset rather than a flaw. And I only discuss things I know about. There are plenty of times on here where I say, 'I don't know' and ask for opinions from those better informed than I am. Unlike you I also modify my opinion based on the answers. You should try it sometime instead of throwing around baseless allegations derived from your own bias and ignorance.
Ha. So you are still ranting. What are the baseless allegations you are referring to?
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
You were remarkably chilled and calm only a couple of hours ago...
I'm still fairly calm, but I confess I am less chilled
I found that Loshak essay yesterday, but only today have I really pondered its implications. They are unsettling
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
Didn't the Conservatives get above 50% in 1931?
Yes, but they were in coalition with three other parties at the time.
As it happens if they hadn't been their vote would probably have been higher.
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war.
Hi, sorry to bother y'all but this is one of my occasional postings. Some of you may recall the first in my Ukraine War series (see [1]). The sequel - yes, "Ukraine War II" - depicted the Russian invasion as if it was in the UK instead of Ukraine, depicting events in recognisable British locations transposed from their UKR equivalents. I can't speak for the quality of the writing but (except for one flourish referring to an incident in "Red Storm Rising") it was my best efforts at getting the areas and events right
It was written up and sent to OGH and his sons in August and was accepted. Unfortunately the election of Truss and the death of the Monarch put it on the backburner and the recent Ukraine advances make it out of date.
To prevent it being lost, I am making it available to you via this posting. If you want a copy of the Word document, and its accompanying concordance explaining the references, let me know and I'll PM you a copy.
I will post this reminder once a day until next Monday, and I will host a Q&A on Tuesday in the unlikely event anybody wants to discuss it.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
You’re a drama addict and Poundshop Dan Brown who enjoys winding people up.
Mark Galeotti is director of Mayak Intelligence. He is a Professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He writes books about Putin. Just because he’s not Russian doesn’t mean he doesn’t know significantly more than a Russian film director. That makes him more worth listening to than a Muscovite film maker. I would, for example, trust the views a senior CIA psych analyst from Washington 3400 miles away regarding Liz Truss’ mental state more than yours from Camden Town, or mine from Canterbury.
The fact he mentioned Dugin’s daughter means shit in that context. “Gives me pause” - oh do fuck off. He’s riling up the crown against the west, not sending coded messages. Save that for the next book.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
Whether to admit trans women is not remotely orthoganal to the problem of excluding predatory men.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
In 2005 65% didn't vote labour either. Didn't stop them winning 5 more years in power. We have rarely (and not for a long time) had a system where the ruling party achieved over 50% of the vote.
Last time a single party won with 50% of the vote was the Conservative landslide in 1900.
Incorrect, they were in coalition with the Liberal Unionists at the time.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
Didn't the Conservatives get above 50% in 1931?
Yes, but they were in coalition with three other parties at the time.
As it happens if they hadn't been their vote would probably have been higher.
Well, by all means put that one in. I took it as 'the last time a single party standing without an electoral arrangement polled over 50%' which brings us back to 1880.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
The collapse in the Tory vote has been very, very rapid: 18 months from a stonking lead to an abyssal bottom? When time has passed and events have unfurled, it'll be interesting to consider the reasons why they have collapsed so massively (we're probably a little too close to unfolding events atm).
In March 2020, the Conservatives were on 54% and Labour on 28% (Opinium). That decreased to some ties through 2020, and the Conservatives pulled well ahead through the first half of 2021 up to 10-13% ahead.
Then the collapse occurred. One pollster gave the Conservatives a 13% lead in September; three months later one gave Labour an 8% lead.
The Tories enjoyed a couple of good springs - 2020 was an international rally to the flag bounce, the 2021 was the Vaccine Bounce - but they suffered some bad Decembers, although lockdowns apparently voter friendly the Tory vote did slump - maybe it was voters cross how slow Boris locked down? So covid one way or other may have had heavy hand in polling for two years disguising any “normal” changes going on.
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
If you key in to Electoral Caculus the kind of poll numbers we are now getting on a regular basis the Conservative Party is virtually eliminated. When I last tried it gave them just two seats, curiously both in Scotland. The more optimistic forecasts suggest no more tha 150 seats top end but then they take no account of tactical voting, which is likely to apply widely at the next GE. We truly have an Extinction Event in the offing.
Yet we seem to be becalmed in some sort of lull. The government is still in place. There seem to be no realistic plans for changing it or its key personnel. It intends to continue undeterred on the same course as before, despite a lack of support from either the public or Parliament, and despite any kind of meaningful mandate.
I don't see what brings the current sorry state of affairs to an end. There's no off-ramp. As Sartre or perhaps Macron might have it, 'nous continuons'. We continue, locked hopelessly together like the characters in the play Huis Clos [In Camera].
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I really hope that's right, because Alexander Dugin is full fat nutso. And Dugin really wants the Endtimes. And the violent death of his daughter was ALREADY, for him, psychologically part of this ritual of the apocalypse, the chain of events that ushers in the Empire of the End. Nuclear war
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
You’re a drama addict and Poundshop Dan Brown who enjoys winding people up.
Mark Galeotti is director of Mayak Intelligence. He is a Professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He writes books about Putin. Just because he’s not Russian doesn’t mean he doesn’t know significantly more than a Russian film director. That makes him more worth listening to than a Muscovite film maker. I would, for example, trust the views a senior CIA psych analyst from Washington 3400 miles away regarding Liz Truss’ mental state more than yours from Camden Town, or mine from Canterbury.
The fact he mentioned Dugin’s daughter means shit in that context. “Gives me pause” - oh do fuck off. He’s riling up the crown against the west, not sending coded messages. Save that for the next book.
As we all get burned to cinders, and our eyes melt down our faces, I will take solace in the fact I regularly and palpably freaked the shit out of you
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
To summarise that, you are virtue signalling. Fuck off with the "perhaps even mythical," this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/ to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
ha ha ha ha.
You are funny. I suggest you read some of my posts in the past to see how my views on this have been formed. (Hint: it is not as you suggest.)
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Yes transmen are less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse, because men are more likely to be perpetrators of abuse, and transmen aren't really men.
Meanwhile unfortunately trans women are more likely to be the perpetrators of abuse than real women, for the same reason in reverse. But more importantly allowing trans women into a women's only space means that women's only spaces cease to exist.
All because you're desperate to claim trans women really are women, and trans men really are men. No, they're trans, and they're not real men or women and real women still need their safe spaces. Men are fine, that's not an issue, men's only spaces don't really exist, but women's only spaces is a real problem that should not be brushed under the carpet in the name of ideology.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I'm trying to think of a word that captures this mood. Ah yes:
BRACE
And we are worrying cuz Loopy Liz is in Downing Street?
Russia has a different weapons-grade loon altogether.
It is fantastically ominous. They really believe this Satanic shit. They WANT the world to end
Which is worrying as a significant proportion of America's politicians want the same thing.
In America a big chunk of Right Wing America's support for Israel isn't based on the fact that Israel needs to exist for the biblical prophecies about Armageddon to come true.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
Whether to admit trans women is not remotely orthoganal to the problem of excluding predatory men.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
How do womens only refuges know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? They ask them to self ID. Do you want everyone to have to go through an examination to check they are what you consider a "real" woman? How else would you police a womens only shelter for what you consider "real" women? If a butch woman turned up and refused to have an examination because someone thought she was a man, should a shelter refuse her service? Should shelters turn away women because they think they're too manish?
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
To summarise that, you are virtue signalling. Fuck off with the "perhaps even mythical," this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/ to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
ha ha ha ha.
You are funny. I suggest you read some of my posts in the past to see how my views on this have been formed. (Hint: it is not as you suggest.)
Yawn, I am sure you really used to Live On The Edge, good for you. Also, I don't want to know abouti t.
you have also denied that women have raped, when they actually have been. because it suits your argument better. Difficult to imagine anything more disgustingly contemptible.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
I am starting to wonder if the damage has been done and whether a unity candidate will even have much meaningful impact. The problem is that the unity candidates all have their own problems. Gove is broadly disliked. May is considered weak and wobbly. Wallace is anonymous to the general public. Rishi isn’t particularly popular (though may get some kudos simply for not being involved in this mess). I dunno. I just wonder if the shark has been jumped now.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
Whether to admit trans women is not remotely orthoganal to the problem of excluding predatory men.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
How do womens only refuges know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? They ask them to self ID. Do you want everyone to have to go through an examination to check they are what you consider a "real" woman? How else would you police a womens only shelter for what you consider "real" women? If a butch woman turned up and refused to have an examination because someone thought she was a man, should a shelter refuse her service? Should shelters turn away women because they think they're too manish?
For me it is up to shelters to have whatever safeguards they feel is appropriate. They could choose to be a shelter open to men and women, so trans isn't an issue, or choose to be a women's-only shelter, or choose to be a women's shelter that allows trans women as well as women.
In issues like sport, where women need their own space because of biology, then biology should mean trans women are not permitted to play those sports competitively.
Trans people should be treated with love, dignity and respect as much as possible, why is that not enough? Why must all women's only spaces be thrown out on top of that?
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Trans men and men would work.
If we were talking about homosexuality would you object to "hetrosexual people" being used in the conversation and if not then why object to "cismen"?
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
I'm trying to think of a word that captures this mood. Ah yes:
BRACE
A
And we are worrying cuz Loopy Liz is in Downing Street?
Russia has a different weapons-grade loon altogether.
It is fantastically ominous. They really believe this Satanic shit. They WANT the world to end
Which is worrying as a significant proportion of America's politicians want the same thing.
In America a big chunk of Right Wing America's support for Israel isn't based on the fact that Israel needs to exist for the biblical prophecies about Armageddon to come true.
The difference is the mad Americans would not start a nuclear war deliberately, just to bring on Armageddon. They believe that is God's job, and He will decide the timing. A bit like the religious rules on suicide
The Dugnists are happy to lob the nukes as that speeds the emergence of the diamond in the black furnace, the New Russia: AKA The Empire of the End
(which is a great title for a book)
How much influence does Dugin have on Putin? Opinions differ wildly
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Trans men and men would work.
If we were talking about homosexuality would you object to "hetrosexual people" being used in the conversation and if not then why object to "cismen"?
Well the term people has nothing to do with sexuality, but on a sex discussion the terms men and women do have something to do with sex.
Gay people are people, heterosexual people are people.
Trans men are not men, trans women are not women. They are trans men or trans women.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
I am starting to wonder if the damage has been done and whether a unity candidate will even have much meaningful impact. The problem is that the unity candidates all have their own problems. Gove is broadly disliked. May is considered weak and wobbly. Wallace is anonymous to the general public. Rishi isn’t particularly popular (though may get some kudos simply for not being involved in this mess). I dunno. I just wonder if the shark has been jumped now.
Probably a good idea to just have a General Election and get the pain over with now! The government have got no idea or sensible direction, time for a period in opposition and to redefine and move back to more credible CON values.
Keir doesn't scare people, some of the people in his team are less palatable and this will reduce the LAB vote but overall LAB doesn't look so scary now.
I'm still not voting LAB though, I'm not voting CON anymore but don't know who to vote for.
And a GE is always entertaining and interesting on here!
I am starting to wonder if the damage has been done and whether a unity candidate will even have much meaningful impact. The problem is that the unity candidates all have their own problems. Gove is broadly disliked. May is considered weak and wobbly. Wallace is anonymous to the general public. Rishi isn’t particularly popular (though may get some kudos simply for not being involved in this mess). I dunno. I just wonder if the shark has been jumped now.
The shark has deffo been jumped
The Tories are going to lose in 24. You can't come back from 30 point poll deficits
They should be focused on two things
1. Doing the difficult unpopular things, as that is best for the country, and they are going to lose anyway
2. Minimising their own defeat in 24 so they have a chance in 28-29
Trouble is those two things are probably in conflict
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
Whether to admit trans women is not remotely orthoganal to the problem of excluding predatory men.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
How do womens only refuges know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? They ask them to self ID. Do you want everyone to have to go through an examination to check they are what you consider a "real" woman? How else would you police a womens only shelter for what you consider "real" women? If a butch woman turned up and refused to have an examination because someone thought she was a man, should a shelter refuse her service? Should shelters turn away women because they think they're too manish?
For me it is up to shelters to have whatever safeguards they feel is appropriate. They could choose to be a shelter open to men and women, so trans isn't an issue, or choose to be a women's-only shelter, or choose to be a women's shelter that allows trans women as well as women.
In issues like sport, where women need their own space because of biology, then biology should mean trans women are not permitted to play those sports competitively.
Trans people should be treated with love, dignity and respect as much as possible, why is that not enough? Why must all women's only spaces be thrown out on top of that?
Why is it when I give an answer you don't like, I'm saying womens only shelters don't exist, but you're allowed to fall back to "it's up to shelters to have whatever safeguarding they want"? Because the position of shelters is that of self ID, because it won't likely impact women in shelters, and anything else is intrusive:
Why won't you say what you think shelters should do if they don't know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? Why do I have to deal with your hypothetical "man faking being a woman" to be abusive, but you don't have to consider my scenario of "women being harassed to make sure they aren't trans"?
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
I’m not dismissing your theory - we at least agree with each other that understanding this dramatic polling change is at hypothesis phase - but I think the crucial cross tab would be previous voting. Off top my head the graph is like a dramatic cross these days in contrast with older elections, younger voters don’t go near Tories, older voters not near Labour, the cross meets in middle age range - your theory would still hold as a player, but be diminished if those groups hurt/worried by tge mini budget actually voted Labour last time so not in position to switch.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
But Labour's numbers are beyond anything they've achieved before, so they can't just be winning back "natural" Labour voters (the Red wall, or white working class voters), but must mean some switchers from Tory to Lab. Considering polls are showing a huge lead (between 15 - 30 points, depending on the poll) it would require a significant number of typically Tory voters being polled changing to Labour. Yes we need to know previous voting, but I do think age and class will also show the kicker. One of the dramatic ones, like the 33 point lead poll, had Labour winning in every class category and winning all age groups except 65+, where the gap was only a few percentage points, which would clearly show a rout from the Tory base.
Which is a good point, but my argument rests on the switcheroo of voters switching to Labour for first time ever or since Blair, already happened, already built in the polls before last weeks Starmergasm, in fact to some extent even in votes at previous elections, remain minded Tories switching to Labour some time ago - but obscured by long time labour votes going the other way to Boris in 2019 - those deserting Labour for Boris 2019 suddenly deserting Truss for Labour en mess thanks to the mini budget and how run on pound was reported in the media (I’m suggesting the media went a little over the top).
You are looking for long time Tory’s switching to labour, I already have them in the tent, the Starmergasm is built upon Labour for Boris coming home.
@Parody_PM · 22h A woman called Truss was quite blunt She could often be heard to confront Those who were needy But would help the greedy In short she’s a bit of a c... #NationalPoetryDay
I was about to say you'd missed off the last line, but I see it's a formatting error!
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
I think people are too credulous about these stories of covid paranoia. If Putin was receiving medical treatment for something else then covid provided a convenient excuse for not being seen.
🚨 Huge @MrHarryCole exclusive: Tory MP Conor Burns has had the whip suspended following complaints about his behaviour at this week’s party conference.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
I think people are too credulous about these stories of covid paranoia. If Putin was receiving medical treatment for something else then covid provided a convenient excuse for not being seen.
Well, we all know what happens to people who have learned the advantage of Not Being Seen:
🚨 Huge @MrHarryCole exclusive: Tory MP Conor Burns has had the whip suspended following complaints about his behaviour at this week’s party conference.
🚨 Huge @MrHarryCole exclusive: Tory MP Conor Burns has had the whip suspended following complaints about his behaviour at this week’s party conference.
🚨 Huge @MrHarryCole exclusive: Tory MP Conor Burns has had the whip suspended following complaints about his behaviour at this week’s party conference.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
So you're saying there should be no women's-only spaces allowed, even in shelters?
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
No, I did not say that. You asked me how would shelters stop abusive men self IDing as women and entering shelters, and I said they would use the same protocols they would for stopping abusive women from entering shelters.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But what you're saying is then you will have no women's-only spaces and any abusive man can just go into a women's-only space and you will have no safeguards against that at all, only once their behaviour showed they were abusive would it be dealt with, which is quite frankly too late and why women's-only safe spaces exist in the first place.
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
Again, no, that is not what I said. If a woman comes to a shelter and claims their female partner is abusing them, do you think that shelter would let in the partner accused of abuse? No - they have safeguarding protocols and policies against that. So transwomen and ciswomen would go through the same safeguarding protocols and policies necessary to aim to prevent abusive women into shelters. And cismen would not be allowed in, because it's a womens only shelter.
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
The state of the term 'cis' men. Its just men, ffs.
Some men are transmen, and transmen are statistically less likely to be the perpetrators of abuse compared to cismen, so it is cismen specifically.
Trans men and men would work.
If we were talking about homosexuality would you object to "hetrosexual people" being used in the conversation and if not then why object to "cismen"?
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
He would probably survive nuclear war. He'll have a good bunker somewhere
It's the rest of us that need to worry
If the argument that runs like this
* Russian forces have been having logistical difficulties in the past few months, especially in the Kharkov area, * therefore their much more powerful strategic nukes probably don't work, and if they did work they probably wouldn't be able to get it together to launch them, * so bring escalation on
is sensible and sane,
then surely the analogous argument that runs like this
* Russian commanders have been going home in bodybags because their security is subpar, * therefore in strategic nuclear war the much more powerful guy called Putin would get blown to bits whenever the enemy decided
is also sensible?
There is a heck of a lot of insanity about, @Leon. I came across one British Tory saying it all came down to Putin climbing over the fence and stealing his neighbour's property, rather as though he's a familiar hate target such as for example a gypsy in a fascist village in the Home Counties somewhere.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
I think people are too credulous about these stories of covid paranoia. If Putin was receiving medical treatment for something else then covid provided a convenient excuse for not being seen.
Or perhaps: he knows when he meets the people, he doesn't get the adulation he deserves without big set-piece efforts. Dictators really don't like meeting the hoi polloi, and they'll vote the right way anyway. So why go to the bother of meeting them? It's not as if they'll chuck him out...
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
He would probably survive nuclear war. He'll have a good bunker somewhere
It's the rest of us that need to worry
If the argument that runs like this
* Russian forces have been having logistical difficulties in the past few months, especially in the Kharkov area, * therefore their much more powerful strategic nukes probably don't work, and if they did work they probably wouldn't be able to get it together to launch them, * so bring escalation on
is sensible and sane,
then surely the analogous argument that runs like this
* Russian commanders have been going home in bodybags because their security is subpar, * therefore in strategic nuclear war the much more powerful guy called Putin would get blown to bits whenever the enemy decided
is also sensible?
There is a heck of a lot of insanity about, @Leon. I came across one British Tory saying it all came down to Putin climbing over the fence and stealing his neighbour's property, rather as though he's a familiar hate target such as for example a gypsy in a fascist village in the Home Counties somewhere.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
What a silly little man you are. The answer is that we don't much like rigged referendums from either a political or a betting POV. No one is going to hit you with a big stick but your own employers are quite likely to enlist you to die of cold this winter in one of the areas you mention, if you don't raise your game.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
To summarise that, you are virtue signalling. Fuck off with the "perhaps even mythical," this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/ to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
ha ha ha ha.
You are funny. I suggest you read some of my posts in the past to see how my views on this have been formed. (Hint: it is not as you suggest.)
Yawn, I am sure you really used to Live On The Edge, good for you. Also, I don't want to know abouti t.
you have also denied that women have raped, when they actually have been. because it suits your argument better. Difficult to imagine anything more disgustingly contemptible.
Yawn. I have not. If you actually questioned me properly on it, rather than go off on one of your boringly insult-laden rants (the same sort of thing that caused at least two other posters to leave PB), then I would tell you what I meant.
A little hint: if you want to insult someone, at least make it funny or amusing. And preferably have a kernel of accuracy. Your 'insults' are inaccurate, poorly aimed and diarrheal.
I am starting to wonder if the damage has been done and whether a unity candidate will even have much meaningful impact. The problem is that the unity candidates all have their own problems. Gove is broadly disliked. May is considered weak and wobbly. Wallace is anonymous to the general public. Rishi isn’t particularly popular (though may get some kudos simply for not being involved in this mess). I dunno. I just wonder if the shark has been jumped now.
The shark has deffo been jumped
The Tories are going to lose in 24. You can't come back from 30 point poll deficits
They should be focused on two things
1. Doing the difficult unpopular things, as that is best for the country, and they are going to lose anyway
2. Minimising their own defeat in 24 so they have a chance in 28-29
Trouble is those two things are probably in conflict
What about doing easy things that are wrong for the country (such as tax cuts for the rich funded by increased borrowing) that are deeply unpopular and electorally a disaster?
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
I'm not trying to virtue signal (in fact, some might not see my position as particularly virtuous): I'm pointing out that by concentrating on this tiny (perhaps even mythical) danger from trans people, the major issues and threats get ignored.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
To summarise that, you are virtue signalling. Fuck off with the "perhaps even mythical," this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/ to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
ha ha ha ha.
You are funny. I suggest you read some of my posts in the past to see how my views on this have been formed. (Hint: it is not as you suggest.)
Yawn, I am sure you really used to Live On The Edge, good for you. Also, I don't want to know abouti t.
you have also denied that women have raped, when they actually have been. because it suits your argument better. Difficult to imagine anything more disgustingly contemptible.
Yawn. I have not. If you actually questioned me properly on it, rather than go off on one of your boringly insult-laden rants (the same sort of thing that caused at least two other posters to leave PB), then I would tell you what I meant.
A little hint: if you want to insult someone, at least make it funny or amusing. And preferably have a kernel of accuracy. Your 'insults' are inaccurate, poorly aimed and diarrheal.
Nope. Fail. You have denied that a woman was raped, when actually she was, because it suits your sense of your own importance. All else is peripheral.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
If you accept Putin's premise that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, then why shouldn't they want to be part of a state centred on Kyiv?
Putin is a man who lived in a bubble and bought huge IKEA tables to avoid covid. He doesn’t look like a man with a death wish.
He would probably survive nuclear war. He'll have a good bunker somewhere
It's the rest of us that need to worry
If the argument that runs like this
* Russian forces have been having logistical difficulties in the past few months, especially in the Kharkov area, * therefore their much more powerful strategic nukes probably don't work, and if they did work they probably wouldn't be able to get it together to launch them, * so bring escalation on
is sensible and sane,
then surely the analogous argument that runs like this
* Russian commanders have been going home in bodybags because their security is subpar, * therefore in strategic nuclear war the much more powerful guy called Putin would get blown to bits whenever the enemy decided
is also sensible?
There is a heck of a lot of insanity about, @Leon. I came across one British Tory saying it all came down to Putin climbing over the fence and stealing his neighbour's property, rather as though he's a familiar hate target such as for example a gypsy in a fascist village in the Home Counties somewhere.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
Can you name any of these "fascist villages in the Home Counties"? Even one of them? I know it might be hard to find them from Yekaterinburg.
Hmm. Re Biden's striking remarks about "Armageddon" last night:
"Perhaps the most troubling interpretation is that Biden’s most recent briefing from the intelligence community included something particularly ominous, and it was on Biden's mind last night."
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
She posts the same "I'm actually Lib Dem promise" post every day. She's not, she is a liar.
It isn't a very convincing story. For a Lib Dem she does seem rather pro-Truss, but there are people on here who like to pretend, so why not another? It's all part of life's rich tapestry.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
If you accept Putin's premise that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, then why shouldn't they want to be part of a state centred on Kyiv?
Or you could just look at the 2019 Presidential Election results, where they all went overwhelmingly for Zelensky.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
The same way you would stop an abusive woman from entering a shelter - by noting if they have been accused of or acting out abusive behaviour. Same-sex abuse happens as well, so there are already procedures in place for dealing with an abusive woman; an abusive transwoman or an abusive man who tried to identify as a transwoman to enter such a space would go through the same.
It ought to be entirely unsurprising that women’s refuges are very, very used to having to vet carefully anyone trying to gain access to them, because they are a target for abusers wanting either to re-establish contact with their victims or to gain access to vulnerable women.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
Whether to admit trans women is not remotely orthoganal to the problem of excluding predatory men.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
How do womens only refuges know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? They ask them to self ID. Do you want everyone to have to go through an examination to check they are what you consider a "real" woman? How else would you police a womens only shelter for what you consider "real" women? If a butch woman turned up and refused to have an examination because someone thought she was a man, should a shelter refuse her service? Should shelters turn away women because they think they're too manish?
For me it is up to shelters to have whatever safeguards they feel is appropriate. They could choose to be a shelter open to men and women, so trans isn't an issue, or choose to be a women's-only shelter, or choose to be a women's shelter that allows trans women as well as women.
In issues like sport, where women need their own space because of biology, then biology should mean trans women are not permitted to play those sports competitively.
Trans people should be treated with love, dignity and respect as much as possible, why is that not enough? Why must all women's only spaces be thrown out on top of that?
Why is it when I give an answer you don't like, I'm saying womens only shelters don't exist, but you're allowed to fall back to "it's up to shelters to have whatever safeguarding they want"? Because the position of shelters is that of self ID, because it won't likely impact women in shelters, and anything else is intrusive:
Why won't you say what you think shelters should do if they don't know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? Why do I have to deal with your hypothetical "man faking being a woman" to be abusive, but you don't have to consider my scenario of "women being harassed to make sure they aren't trans"?
It's completely disingenuous.
Because I don't understand what you're talking about.
Not all women's only shelters have self-ID, that's not correct, and if they were why would the law be getting changed? You keep talking about gender, but gender isn't the only thing that exists, sex exists too, and single-sex spaces and single-sex competitions have long been real and I'm afraid trans women are not the same sex as women are.
Where sex doesn't matter, then its fine to go off gender instead, as much as you want, but when it comes to single-sex issues then it is a question of sex, not a question of gender.
If a shelter wants to be mixed-sex then that is their choice. If a shelter does not want to be mixed-sex, then that should be its choice too.
As for if they don't know, well that's up to them to handle, using whatever procedures they deem to be appropriate, which might include actual ID as oppose to self-ID.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
If you accept Putin's premise that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, then why shouldn't they want to be part of a state centred on Kyiv?
The Principality of Kyiv was actually the heartland of East Slavic civilized culture, before the Mongols destroyed them. Muscovy were a bunch of collaborator traitors to their Slavic brothers, who oppressed them and took their money to give to their Mongolian overlords. They abandoned Kievan constitutional governance to adopt Mongol-style absolutist rule.
Comments
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/alexander-dugin-darya-putin-russia-ukraine-assassination
You see no reason for the existence of, or to allow women's-only spaces anymore?
INLA and Sendero Luminoso were other examples.
She may be wrong, but she’s interesting
We are in a position where every single Tory MP will be worried about losing their seat. There's no chance all will, but non-uniform swing means no one can be certain they are safe.
In that context, Truss is going to struggle to get anything controversial through the Commons.
She is a lame duck PM for the next 2 years unless ousted before.
And I'm suspicious of people opining about the grave threats to women from trans people, who *never* mention other violence against women, or even violence in general.
The previous occasion was in fact the Liberals in 1880.
It's just that in large part, these issues are settled. No one seriously disputes that violence against women (or men) is a bad thing. Gender self I/D and the impact this might have upon access to womens' only spaces and activities, is a live issue.
You and I seem to disagree that transwomen are women and therefore their presence in a women's only space would be reasonable.
But isn't the stuff about Rowling at the moment to do with what's being done to children? It's a very tricky area, but I think these things should get scrutiny and up to now I think some organisations have been doing what they wanted.
And now his daughter has violently died, for real
What gives me very serious pause is Putin's phrase in the annexation speech: "the west is killing our philosophers". What is that if not a reference to Darya Dugin?
And the guy you are quoting is a non-Russian looking in. And the guy I am quoting is a Muscovite writer and film maker, who knows Russian society from within, and intimately
I don't think abolishing women's only safe spaces is an appropriate solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_United_Kingdom_general_election
In March 2020, the Conservatives were on 54% and Labour on 28% (Opinium). That decreased to some ties through 2020, and the Conservatives pulled well ahead through the first half of 2021 up to 10-13% ahead.
Then the collapse occurred. One pollster gave the Conservatives a 13% lead in September; three months later one gave Labour an 8% lead.
As it happens if they hadn't been their vote would probably have been higher.
The question of whether they admit trans women or not is entirely orthogonal to the the problem of excluding predatory men (and the occasional woman) from these spaces. Arguing about it is a great way to implicitly associate transness with sexual deviance & predatory behaviour though, which I personally suspect is the main goal. Look at the way the right has jumped on the idea of painting LGBT organsations and individuals as “groomers” all of a sudden - it’s all part of the same pattern.
But for that, Partygate and Pincher would never have got the traction they did.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/
to take one example is as well evidenced as anything could be, so you see what you did there? You denied that a female rape victim was a rape victim because the truth of your virtue was more important than the truth of what was done to her. Well done, you must be very proud. Also, fuck off with your bossy equal airtime rules, are we not allowed to discuss any form of evil because it is less evil than all the other evil things? Can @kinabalu not address the Waitrose crisp pricing issue without a prefatory paragraph condemning the treatment of the uighurs, the Pol Pot regime and J Savile?
You were sort of vaguely pro gay lib in your twenties and that went down well, you think trans is just a reprise of an old favourite. Bit more complicated.
Also: remember this has an effect on trans people themselves.
The thing is that so much of what has gone wrong for the government has been entirely self-inflicted mistakes that a child would avoid.
I found that Loshak essay yesterday, but only today have I really pondered its implications. They are unsettling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_United_Kingdom_general_election
Pause. Anyhoo, back to the advert...
Hi, sorry to bother y'all but this is one of my occasional postings. Some of you may recall the first in my Ukraine War series (see [1]). The sequel - yes, "Ukraine War II" - depicted the Russian invasion as if it was in the UK instead of Ukraine, depicting events in recognisable British locations transposed from their UKR equivalents. I can't speak for the quality of the writing but (except for one flourish referring to an incident in "Red Storm Rising") it was my best efforts at getting the areas and events right
It was written up and sent to OGH and his sons in August and was accepted. Unfortunately the election of Truss and the death of the Monarch put it on the backburner and the recent Ukraine advances make it out of date.
To prevent it being lost, I am making it available to you via this posting. If you want a copy of the Word document, and its accompanying concordance explaining the references, let me know and I'll PM you a copy.
I will post this reminder once a day until next Monday, and I will host a Q&A on Tuesday in the unlikely event anybody wants to discuss it.
Notes
[1] https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/05/02/why-ukraine-was-particularly-vulnerable/
Is the thought process here that cismen would be lining up outside shelters to claim they're trans in order to abuse women? Because, again, the same argument could be made about the (relatively) small number of abusive women who would have access to these spaces. Should only straight women be allowed in women only shelters to protect them from the possibility of abuse women? This is an abstraction from reality to make problems where there aren't any.
Dan Brown who enjoys winding people up.
Mark Galeotti is director of Mayak Intelligence. He is a Professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He writes books about Putin. Just because he’s not Russian doesn’t mean he doesn’t know significantly more than a Russian film director. That makes him more worth listening to than a Muscovite film maker. I would, for example, trust the views a senior CIA psych analyst from Washington 3400 miles away regarding Liz Truss’ mental state more than yours from Camden Town, or mine from Canterbury.
The fact he mentioned Dugin’s daughter means
shit in that context. “Gives me pause” - oh do fuck off. He’s riling up the crown against the west, not sending coded messages. Save that for the next book.
Women's-only refuges only allowing women means predatory men can not get in. If they start allowing men who claim to self-ID as trans, whether they be genuinely trans, or merely predators, then they cease to be a women's-only refuge.
Now you may say there's no valid reason for a women's-only refuge to exist. Plenty of women would disagree with you and think they exist for very good reasons.
Yet we seem to be becalmed in some sort of lull. The government is still in place. There seem to be no realistic plans for changing it or its key personnel. It intends to continue undeterred on the same course as before, despite a lack of support from either the public or Parliament, and despite any kind of meaningful mandate.
I don't see what brings the current sorry state of affairs to an end. There's no off-ramp. As Sartre or perhaps Macron might have it, 'nous continuons'. We continue, locked hopelessly together like the characters in the play Huis Clos [In Camera].
Sorry to be so grim.
'Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.'
You are funny. I suggest you read some of my posts in the past to see how my views on this have been formed. (Hint: it is not as you suggest.)
This is the worst position for a government in more than a decade
👉 Behind on voting intention
👉 Behind on leadership likeability
👉 Behind on the economy
This is no typical mid term parliament upset, writes @BNHWalker
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/10/labour-lead-polls-tories-finished https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1578384546621448197/photo/1
Meanwhile unfortunately trans women are more likely to be the perpetrators of abuse than real women, for the same reason in reverse. But more importantly allowing trans women into a women's only space means that women's only spaces cease to exist.
All because you're desperate to claim trans women really are women, and trans men really are men. No, they're trans, and they're not real men or women and real women still need their safe spaces. Men are fine, that's not an issue, men's only spaces don't really exist, but women's only spaces is a real problem that should not be brushed under the carpet in the name of ideology.
In America a big chunk of Right Wing America's support for Israel isn't based on the fact that Israel needs to exist for the biblical prophecies about Armageddon to come true.
https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/womens-refuge-chief-attacks-shelters-refusal-of-butch-lesbian-ng-ya-393097
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/florida-high-school-athletes-report-period-b2196351.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/disabled-ms-shopper-tears-staff-27003304
you have also denied that women have raped, when they actually have been. because it suits your argument better. Difficult to imagine anything more disgustingly contemptible.
In issues like sport, where women need their own space because of biology, then biology should mean trans women are not permitted to play those sports competitively.
Trans people should be treated with love, dignity and respect as much as possible, why is that not enough? Why must all women's only spaces be thrown out on top of that?
The Dugnists are happy to lob the nukes as that speeds the emergence of the diamond in the black furnace, the New Russia: AKA The Empire of the End
(which is a great title for a book)
How much influence does Dugin have on Putin? Opinions differ wildly
Very little:
https://unherd.com/thepost/alexander-dugin-was-never-putins-brain/
Some:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/alexander-dugin-who-putin-ally-apparent-car-bombing-target
A lot:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/12/dugin-russia-ukraine-putin/
Gay people are people, heterosexual people are people.
Trans men are not men, trans women are not women. They are trans men or trans women.
CON values.
Keir doesn't scare people, some of the people in his team are less palatable and this will reduce the LAB
vote but overall LAB doesn't look so scary now.
I'm still not voting LAB though, I'm not voting CON anymore but don't know who to vote for.
And a GE is always entertaining and interesting on here!
The Tories are going to lose in 24. You can't come back from 30 point poll deficits
They should be focused on two things
1. Doing the difficult unpopular things, as that is best for the country, and they are going to lose anyway
2. Minimising their own defeat in 24 so they have a chance in 28-29
Trouble is those two things are probably in conflict
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/supporting-trans-women-domestic-and-sexual-violence-services
Why won't you say what you think shelters should do if they don't know if a woman is what you consider a "real" woman? Why do I have to deal with your hypothetical "man faking being a woman" to be abusive, but you don't have to consider my scenario of "women being harassed to make sure they aren't trans"?
It's completely disingenuous.
You are looking for long time Tory’s switching to labour, I already have them in the tent, the Starmergasm is built upon Labour for Boris coming home.
It's the rest of us that need to worry
@Parody_PM
·
22h
A woman called Truss was quite blunt
She could often be heard to confront
Those who were needy
But would help the greedy
#NationalPoetryDay
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/20039075/tory-mp-conor-burns-has-whip-suspended-following-complaints-about-his-behaviour-at-party-conference/
She posts the same "I'm actually Lib Dem promise" post every day. She's not, she is a liar.
https://youtu.be/C-M2hs3sXGo
* Russian forces have been having logistical difficulties in the past few months, especially in the Kharkov area,
* therefore their much more powerful strategic nukes probably don't work, and if they did work they probably wouldn't be able to get it together to launch them,
* so bring escalation on
is sensible and sane,
then surely the analogous argument that runs like this
* Russian commanders have been going home in bodybags because their security is subpar,
* therefore in strategic nuclear war the much more powerful guy called Putin would get blown to bits whenever the enemy decided
is also sensible?
There is a heck of a lot of insanity about, @Leon. I came across one British Tory saying it all came down to Putin climbing over the fence and stealing his neighbour's property, rather as though he's a familiar hate target such as for example a gypsy in a fascist village in the Home Counties somewhere.
One just has to ask "What is your reason for believing that large majorities of people from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson wish their areas to be in Ukraine?" to trigger a wave of "See this big stick, that's why, you scum!"-style hatred.
Westminster Voting Intention (5 Oct.):
Labour 52% (–)
Conservative 24% (–)
Liberal Democrat 10% (–)
Green 5% (–)
SNP 4% (-1)
Reform UK 3% (–)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 2 Oct.
redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/magnified-emai…
https://twitter.com/home?lang=en-gb
A little hint: if you want to insult someone, at least make it funny or amusing. And preferably have a kernel of accuracy. Your 'insults' are inaccurate, poorly aimed and diarrheal.
Which is the current plan.
"Perhaps the most troubling interpretation is that Biden’s most recent briefing from the intelligence community included something particularly ominous, and it was on Biden's mind last night."
https://twitter.com/jimgeraghty/status/1578396998981619715?s=20&t=Rd3GTn2mKUTO239way9CCw
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election
Not all women's only shelters have self-ID, that's not correct, and if they were why would the law be getting changed? You keep talking about gender, but gender isn't the only thing that exists, sex exists too, and single-sex spaces and single-sex competitions have long been real and I'm afraid trans women are not the same sex as women are.
Where sex doesn't matter, then its fine to go off gender instead, as much as you want, but when it comes to single-sex issues then it is a question of sex, not a question of gender.
If a shelter wants to be mixed-sex then that is their choice. If a shelter does not want to be mixed-sex, then that should be its choice too.
As for if they don't know, well that's up to them to handle, using whatever procedures they deem to be appropriate, which might include actual ID as oppose to self-ID.