It's a bit bloody silly to refer to a Scouser as Supermanc.
And he supports Everton. A skillful politician indeed.
And. Despite growing up in Warrington, school in St Helens and living in Wigan (although the distances between the places and boundaries are incredibly narrow), he somehow supports Leigh RL. Who are too small to be properly hated by anyone.
The chorus of 'You must only be three then arf arf' in response to me stating the really quite obvious fact that Starmer is the worst PM in living memory is deeply embarrassing. It seems that our centrist Dad brigade is already healing from the trauma of the era by resorting to complete denial.
You can talk about Truss all you want - there's no economic measure by which Starmer hasn't underperformed Truss's era. Truss's only real economic legacy is cancelling Sunak's National Insurance hike. That plan to put NI up by 1.25 would have completely fucked the economy - if you want to dispute that, look at what happened when Starmer and Reeves implemented a more modest increase on Employers only. It was a shrewd move that her Government gets no credit for.
There's no Truss polling low Starmer hasn't fallen beneath either. And she as far as I know had no plans to introduce banter bans, digital ID, bans on North Sea oil exploration, limits to trial by jury, or any of the rest of the daily grind of national emiseration that Starmer's Government has inflicted from his gaslighting bully pulpit.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
The chorus of 'You must only be three then arf arf' in response to me stating the really quite obvious fact that Starmer is the worst PM in living memory is deeply embarrassing. It seems that our centrist Dad brigade is already healing from the trauma of the era by resorting to complete denial.
You can talk about Truss all you want - there's no economic measure by which Starmer hasn't underperformed Truss's era. Truss's only real economic legacy is cancelling Sunak's National Insurance hike. That plan to put NI up by 1.25 would have completely fucked the economy - if you want to dispute that, look at what happened when Starmer and Reeves implemented a more modest increase on Employers only. It was a shrewd move that her Government gets no credit for.
There's no Truss polling low Starmer hasn't fallen beneath either. And she as far as I know had no plans to introduce banter bans, digital ID, bans on North Sea oil exploration, limits to trial by jury, or any of the rest of the daily grind of national emiseration that Starmer's Government has inflicted from his gaslighting bully pulpit.
Just to pluck one out, how about mortgage interest rates?
Also can eras last 5 seconds, as with the "Truss era" ? I mean the economic damage within a blink of an eye was impressive.
The chorus of 'You must only be three then arf arf' in response to me stating the really quite obvious fact that Starmer is the worst PM in living memory is deeply embarrassing. It seems that our centrist Dad brigade is already healing from the trauma of the era by resorting to complete denial.
You can talk about Truss all you want - there's no economic measure by which Starmer hasn't underperformed the Truss error. Truss's only real economic legacy is cancelling Sunak's National Insurance hike. That plan to put NI up by 1.25 would have completely fucked the economy - if you want to dispute that, look at what happened when Starmer and Reeves implemented a more modest increase on Employers only. It was a shrewd move that her Government gets no credit for.
There's no Truss polling low Starmer hasn't fallen beneath either. And she as far as I know had no plans to introduce banter bans, digital ID, bans on North Sea oil exploration, limits to trial by jury, or any of the rest of the daily grind of national emiseration that Starmer's Government has inflicted from his gaslighting bully pulpit.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet,.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out that the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
It's not instructive. I don't accept the scenario. You believe you can dress up as something you are not enough to convince someone and that changes the act. It's nonsense. It's two people who are attracted to each other. That's it.
You are trying to trap with clever words and scenarios. I reject the situation. It's irrelevant. By your argument if someone had enough modifications that they resembled a sheep, would it be beastiality?
The chorus of 'You must only be three then arf arf' in response to me stating the really quite obvious fact that Starmer is the worst PM in living memory is deeply embarrassing. It seems that our centrist Dad brigade is already healing from the trauma of the era by resorting to complete denial.
You can talk about Truss all you want - there's no economic measure by which Starmer hasn't underperformed Truss's era. Truss's only real economic legacy is cancelling Sunak's National Insurance hike. That plan to put NI up by 1.25 would have completely fucked the economy - if you want to dispute that, look at what happened when Starmer and Reeves implemented a more modest increase on Employers only. It was a shrewd move that her Government gets no credit for.
There's no Truss polling low Starmer hasn't fallen beneath either. And she as far as I know had no plans to introduce banter bans, digital ID, bans on North Sea oil exploration, limits to trial by jury, or any of the rest of the daily grind of national emiseration that Starmer's Government has inflicted from his gaslighting bully pulpit.
I'll allow you that Truss isn't the worst PM in living memory, that's Cameron.
Cameron, Thatcher, Major, Johnson, Truss, Brown, May, Sunak, Blair based on long term damage to the UK
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
And two last points. The issues in recent years have been at the clash of trans rights and women's rights. That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets. Our uni has taken this approach.
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
It is. I've no animus towards Burnham, but it does look like a load of neophyte backbench MPs elected on slim majorities have crapped their pants and decide that Starmer will not do, and have selected a man with much charisma, but little else to commend him. He'll certainly go down well with the PLP and wider party, just as Boris did with the Tories. But as with Johnson replacing May, I'm not convinced that Burnham will be a better PM than Starmer.
Boris ran on levelling up and Covid-19 blew that plan apart shortly after he took office, I expect Burnham's plans will be aflame in the not to distant future, as I doubt that the next 3 years are going to be any easier going. Just for one on the horizon issue that Burnham may have to deal with shortly, Russia could do something deeply stupid like attack a NATO member, all sorts of people and organisations are warning about it now, so I hope Burnham is listening. We saw how well Boris dealt with a crisis, God help us if Burnham performs similarly.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet,.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out that the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
It's not instructive. I don't accept the scenario. You believe you can dress up as something you are not enough to convince someone and that changes the act. It's nonsense. It's two people who are attracted to each other. That's it.
You are trying to trap with clever words and scenarios. I reject the situation. It's irrelevant. By your argument if someone had enough modifications that they resembled a sheep, would it be beastiality?
I'm sorry my words are too "clever" for you. They are intended as practical ways to force a distinction between ontological argument and practical application for policymaking, which I think is more relevant tbh.
As for what you do with sheep in your own time, that's on you.
It's a bit bloody silly to refer to a Scouser as Supermanc.
And he supports Everton. A skillful politician indeed.
And. Despite growing up in Warrington, school in St Helens and living in Wigan (although the distances between the places and boundaries are incredibly narrow), he somehow supports Leigh RL. Who are too small to be properly hated by anyone.
True story - during my postgrad at Imperial (some 25 years ago!), I worked with a student from Boothstown. I asked her where exactly that was. She said "Oh, it's 20 minutes from Liverpool."
I then said, "You're 20 minutes away from being a Scouser!"
The chorus of 'You must only be three then arf arf' in response to me stating the really quite obvious fact that Starmer is the worst PM in living memory is deeply embarrassing. It seems that our centrist Dad brigade is already healing from the trauma of the era by resorting to complete denial.
You can talk about Truss all you want - there's no economic measure by which Starmer hasn't underperformed Truss's era. Truss's only real economic legacy is cancelling Sunak's National Insurance hike. That plan to put NI up by 1.25 would have completely fucked the economy - if you want to dispute that, look at what happened when Starmer and Reeves implemented a more modest increase on Employers only. It was a shrewd move that her Government gets no credit for.
There's no Truss polling low Starmer hasn't fallen beneath either. And she as far as I know had no plans to introduce banter bans, digital ID, bans on North Sea oil exploration, limits to trial by jury, or any of the rest of the daily grind of national emiseration that Starmer's Government has inflicted from his gaslighting bully pulpit.
she lost to a salad mate
Not much I can say to you if you still find that shit funny in 2026.
It is. I've no animus towards Burnham, but it does look like a load of neophyte backbench MPs elected on slim majorities have crapped their pants and decide that Starmer will not do, and have selected a man with much charisma, but little else to commend him. He'll certainly go down well with the PLP and wider party, just as Boris did with the Tories. But as with Johnson replacing May, I'm not convinced that Burnham will be a better PM than Starmer.
Boris ran on levelling up and Covid-19 blew that plan apart shortly after he took office, I expect Burnham's plans will be aflame in the not to distant future, as I doubt that the next 3 years are going to be any easier going. Just for one on the horizon issue that Burnham may have to deal with shortly, Russia could do something deeply stupid like attack a NATO member, all sorts of people and organisations are warning about it now, so I hope Burnham is listening. We saw how well Boris dealt with a crisis, God help us if Burnham performs similarly.
However. Some differences with Boris. Burnham won't be personally corrupt. He doesn't have expensive tastes, so doesn't need to be always on the lookout for the next earner. He is also able to keep it in his pants. Unlike Boris he seems to have a genuine interest in levelling up. Crucially though. He has a habit of playing nicely with others. He won't cross the road for an argument. That will buy him goodwill and hence time with his MP's.
“We are aware of the political message display from Argentina. We understand it’s against the rules but we also know it’s a matter of their nationality and we respect it.
Very off topic, but this may amuse some of you: They are starting to make the Trump dollar coin. Recently I suggested that we continue making it, but make it, or at least the outside of the coin, out of iron pyrite, which, in the US, is commonly known as . . .
He has been chosen for persona/electoral not policy reasons. People with their own agendas will say he has to go this way or that way but he doesn't. He simply (although it's no simple matter) has to generate/sustain a clear poll lead for Labour. If he does this he will have delivered his side of the bargain.
But I hope he is more than this. Specifically that in addition to waxing lyrical about improving the morale/prospects of struggling working class communities (ten a penny talk from all sides of politics) he actually does (big) things in that vein. Levelling up in other words. For real not as a platitude (tory) or tied up with white identity politics (reform).
A more accurate description for levelling up, if it's going to be for real, is a significant reduction in inequalities of wealth, income and opportunity. Savvy pols on the left (which AB is) avoid that phrasing because it acknowledges there are losers and thus invites a load of superficially appealing 'rising tide lifts all boats' waffle in response.
I'm not blindly optimistic (money is tight and powerful forces will oppose him if he's serious) but I do feel energised and positive. Let's see how it pans out.
This is pretty much where I am.
Also 'Supermanc' is tremendous.
Yes, it’s top drawer stuff. 👍
Supermanc? Not a patch in WOTN.
My take from listening to him is how actually dangerous Burnham as PM is going to be. It’s a sort of sinister moment - something feels very wrong, if this was the opening of a play you’d sense something very bad to come from a party and a country sleepwalking into this with such hubris and pseudo politics. They were actually crowing at today’s announcement how unanimous the election was. Actually crowing at the sort of anti debate anti democracy election outcome Stalin would have been proud of. Actually crowing whilst they copied the same idiotic mistake the US Democrats made, to gift the world Trump 2.0.
Considering how incredibly weird and scary Burnamism is, what’s baffling is how there wasn’t a contest. Why didn’t the more intelligent wing of Labour put up a candidate against this? Even if Darren Jones lost - by no means certain on today’s performance from Burnham - the simple headed Union backed faction might at least had to share power with the more intelligent faction, by making Jones Chancellor?
Very off topic, but this may amuse some of you: They are starting to make the Trump dollar coin. Recently I suggested that we continue making it, but make it, or at least the outside of the coin, out of iron pyrite, which, in the US, is commonly known as . . .
Does the fool's gold coin have Epstein on the reverse ?
The returning officer is a fast worker to Col turn all this lot already.
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage 🗑️ Count Binface 🟤 Laurence Fox 🔵 Kai Stephens 🟠 Adham Alkhatip ⚪ Joseph 77 ⚪ Tony Cane ⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee ⚪ William Stuart James Clouston ⚪ Rees Cowne ⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings ⚪ Martin Davies ⚪ Andy Erlam ⚪ Attieh Fard ⚪ Tony Francis ⚪ Robin Green ⚪ Abi Hookway ⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick ⚪️ Howling Laud Hope ⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap ⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram ⚪ Amy Morris ⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris ⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe ⚪ Martyn O’Brien ⚪ Nick Pelas ⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya ⚪ Daniel Pocock ⚪ James Ransley ⚪ Gerry Smith ⚪ John Stevens ⚪ Pamela Walford ⚪ Marcus White ⚪ Marc Wilkinson https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
And two last points. The issues in recent years have been at the clash of trans rights and women's rights. That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets. Our uni has taken this approach.
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
"That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets."
You might want to read the decision in Goodwin v UK (2002), i.e. "the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”. That is the entire reason the GRA exists, and why the supreme court's ruling is incompatible with it, and will be deemed so when it finally reaches the ECHR.
"And frankly no trans woman 'passes'"
I could, but won't, introduce you to at least a dozen who do, daily, in their regular, ordinary lives. You obviously live in some weird, hyper-online bubble and I can't talk you out of it, but I guarantee you I know a lot more trans people than you do IRL and what you see online has no bearing on actual reality.
It's fairly obvious why I'm animated by trans issues but I really do wonder why trans people seem to live rent free in your head. Is it because you want to **** one or because you want to be one? I can't help you with the former (no trans woman I know would touch you!) but I really could put you in touch with a few charities and support groups if it's the latter. No judgement.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
And two last points. The issues in recent years have been at the clash of trans rights and women's rights. That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets. Our uni has taken this approach.
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
"That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets."
You might want to read the decision in Goodwin v UK (2004), i.e. "the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”. That is the entire reason the GRA exists, and why the supreme court's ruling is incompatible with it, and will be deemed so when it finally reaches the ECHR.
"And frankly no trans woman 'passes'"
I could, but won't, introduce you to at least a dozen who do, daily, in their regular, ordinary lives. You obviously live in some weird, hyper-online bubble and I can't talk you out of it, but I guarantee you I know a lot more trans people than you do IRL and what you see online has no bearing on actual reality.
It's fairly obvious why I'm animated by trans issues but I really do wonder why trans people seem to live rent free in your head. Is it because you want to **** one or because you want to be one? I can't help you with the former (no trans woman I know would touch you!) but I really could put you in touch with a few charities and support groups if it's the latter. No judgement.
You are really rather weird, aren't you. I disagree with you, but you cannot seem to accept that. Peace. Live your life. Enjoy it with whoever you like. I treat everyone I meat the same whatever they believe about themselves. I do have issues about the erosion of women's rights to satisfy the demands of a small subset of men who, I believe, have a delusional or mental illness. Anorexics believe they are fat when the reality is that they are not. Believing oneself to be something one is not does not give you the right to impose that belief on others.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
And two last points. The issues in recent years have been at the clash of trans rights and women's rights. That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets. Our uni has taken this approach.
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
"That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets."
You might want to read the decision in Goodwin v UK (2004), i.e. "the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”. That is the entire reason the GRA exists, and why the supreme court's ruling is incompatible with it, and will be deemed so when it finally reaches the ECHR.
"And frankly no trans woman 'passes'"
I could, but won't, introduce you to at least a dozen who do, daily, in their regular, ordinary lives. You obviously live in some weird, hyper-online bubble and I can't talk you out of it, but I guarantee you I know a lot more trans people than you do IRL and what you see online has no bearing on actual reality.
It's fairly obvious why I'm animated by trans issues but I really do wonder why trans people seem to live rent free in your head. Is it because you want to **** one or because you want to be one? I can't help you with the former (no trans woman I know would touch you!) but I really could put you in touch with a few charities and support groups if it's the latter. No judgement.
You are really rather weird, aren't you. I disagree with you, but you cannot seem to accept that. Peace. Live your life. Enjoy it with whoever you like. I treat everyone I meat the same whatever they believe about themselves. I do have issues about the erosion of women's rights to satisfy the demands of a small subset of men who, I believe, have a delusional or mental illness. Anorexics believe they are fat when the reality is that they are not. Believing oneself to be something one is not does not give you the right to impose that belief on others.
I'm sorry I have outclassed you at every point in this evening's debate, to the point where you have to describe me as "weird". I mean, yes, my IQ is statistically an outlier but I don't like to make a big deal of it. Thank you, however, for noticing.
I'm genuinely worried for you my dude - my interest in trans issues stems from my dead partner, which is understandable. Your interest in trans women *is* weird. Unhealthy. Possibly paraphilic, though I am not a clinician and can't diagnose you. But if you are struggling with gender issues yourself, I would be more than happy to put you in touch with someone who can help you.
The returning officer is a fast worker to Col turn all this lot already.
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage 🗑️ Count Binface 🟤 Laurence Fox 🔵 Kai Stephens 🟠 Adham Alkhatip ⚪ Joseph 77 ⚪ Tony Cane ⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee ⚪ William Stuart James Clouston ⚪ Rees Cowne ⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings ⚪ Martin Davies ⚪ Andy Erlam ⚪ Attieh Fard ⚪ Tony Francis ⚪ Robin Green ⚪ Abi Hookway ⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick ⚪️ Howling Laud Hope ⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap ⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram ⚪ Amy Morris ⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris ⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe ⚪ Martyn O’Brien ⚪ Nick Pelas ⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya ⚪ Daniel Pocock ⚪ James Ransley ⚪ Gerry Smith ⚪ John Stevens ⚪ Pamela Walford ⚪ Marcus White ⚪ Marc Wilkinson https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
Nick The Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope, Baron Von Thunderclap...looks like Farage, Lawrence Fox and Count Binface have some serious opponents
The returning officer is a fast worker to Col turn all this lot already.
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage 🗑️ Count Binface 🟤 Laurence Fox 🔵 Kai Stephens 🟠 Adham Alkhatip ⚪ Joseph 77 ⚪ Tony Cane ⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee ⚪ William Stuart James Clouston ⚪ Rees Cowne ⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings ⚪ Martin Davies ⚪ Andy Erlam ⚪ Attieh Fard ⚪ Tony Francis ⚪ Robin Green ⚪ Abi Hookway ⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick ⚪️ Howling Laud Hope ⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap ⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram ⚪ Amy Morris ⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris ⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe ⚪ Martyn O’Brien ⚪ Nick Pelas ⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya ⚪ Daniel Pocock ⚪ James Ransley ⚪ Gerry Smith ⚪ John Stevens ⚪ Pamela Walford ⚪ Marcus White ⚪ Marc Wilkinson https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
Nick The Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope, Baron Von Thunderclap...looks like Farage, Lawrence Fox and Count Binface have some serious opponents
Party designations:
19 Independents 1 (No Description) 3 Monster Raving Loonies Binface, British Democratic, Consensus, Everyone Is God, Forward, Freedom Alliance, Reclaim, Reform, Rejoin EU, SDP, UK Voice
The returning officer is a fast worker to Col turn all this lot already.
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage 🗑️ Count Binface 🟤 Laurence Fox 🔵 Kai Stephens 🟠 Adham Alkhatip ⚪ Joseph 77 ⚪ Tony Cane ⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee ⚪ William Stuart James Clouston ⚪ Rees Cowne ⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings ⚪ Martin Davies ⚪ Andy Erlam ⚪ Attieh Fard ⚪ Tony Francis ⚪ Robin Green ⚪ Abi Hookway ⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick ⚪️ Howling Laud Hope ⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap ⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram ⚪ Amy Morris ⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris ⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe ⚪ Martyn O’Brien ⚪ Nick Pelas ⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya ⚪ Daniel Pocock ⚪ James Ransley ⚪ Gerry Smith ⚪ John Stevens ⚪ Pamela Walford ⚪ Marcus White ⚪ Marc Wilkinson https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
Nick The Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope, Baron Von Thunderclap...looks like Farage, Lawrence Fox and Count Binface have some serious opponents
Surely some of those won't have got the full quota of signatures?
You are really rather weird, aren't you. I disagree with you, but you cannot seem to accept that. Peace. Live your life. Enjoy it with whoever you like. I treat everyone I meat the same whatever they believe about themselves. I do have issues about the erosion of women's rights to satisfy the demands of a small subset of men who, I believe, have a delusional or mental illness. Anorexics believe they are fat when the reality is that they are not. Believing oneself to be something one is not does not give you the right to impose that belief on others.
I find it disappointing that PB has gradually turned into a bad facsimile of a TERF subreddit.
PBers should check for a Ladbrokes "buys you a pint" offer "2 free £10 bets when you bet £10" email for those with a Ladbrokes account, which has allowed me to bet on all 3 results for the WC final. Placing my £10 stake on the shortest odds has guaranteed me a £10 profit
More attention to economic growth and an end to reliance solely on interest rates to combat inflation due to supply-side shocks rather than excess demand.
More attention to economic growth and an end to reliance solely on interest rates to combat inflation due to supply-side shocks rather than excess demand.
Looks like an opinion piece from the journalist rather than a report of what Burnham’s team are actually thinking.
The returning officer is a fast worker to Col turn all this lot already.
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage 🗑️ Count Binface 🟤 Laurence Fox 🔵 Kai Stephens 🟠 Adham Alkhatip ⚪ Joseph 77 ⚪ Tony Cane ⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee ⚪ William Stuart James Clouston ⚪ Rees Cowne ⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings ⚪ Martin Davies ⚪ Andy Erlam ⚪ Attieh Fard ⚪ Tony Francis ⚪ Robin Green ⚪ Abi Hookway ⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick ⚪️ Howling Laud Hope ⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap ⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram ⚪ Amy Morris ⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris ⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe ⚪ Martyn O’Brien ⚪ Nick Pelas ⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya ⚪ Daniel Pocock ⚪ James Ransley ⚪ Gerry Smith ⚪ John Stevens ⚪ Pamela Walford ⚪ Marcus White ⚪ Marc Wilkinson https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
Nick The Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope, Baron Von Thunderclap...looks like Farage, Lawrence Fox and Count Binface have some serious opponents
Every day we wake up to more garbage from Trump. Day by day, the guy is drunk-driving the US and the West into ever greater disasters. The fire smog in New York is just another example of the performance stupidity of the worst.president.ever.. We can only hope that Burnham plays a Carney and slowly backs away from the unfolding disaster in Washington.
The corrupt oligarchy of the tech bros needs to be tackled, if not head on, at least with determination.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but credit to the Free Speech Union for standing by their principles
'The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.
Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.
The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.
While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.
Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.'
Indeed. Preston Byrne (pro bono counsel to the FSU) is particularlly good on this point.
Linehan shouldn't have been arrested for his "kick 'em in the balls" tweet (unless someone did, in fact, commit an s20 assault, in which case he is fair game as an accessory should there be a proven causal link between his tweet and the attacker).
Speaking ill of the dead shouldn't be an offence either. It should also be remembered that Anne Widdecombe believed that trans women (at least those who have had "the op") are women, which is more than can be said for many regulars here.
Since we're on #pbfreespeech, how do we feel about JK Rowling suing amnesty international for calling the 51 gender critical organisations listed in their recent report "anti rights" (Including an org that PB's resident terf is a member of)?
I happen to disagree with the amnesty report and think it's massive overreach, but the correct response is rebuttal rather than trying to silence one's critics with lawfare.
IMHO the UK needs to introduce US-style anti SLAPP legislation to prevent the super-rich from silencing their critics.
You are allowed to believe that men can be women, but I can also believe that they cannot. I think science is on my side of the argument but I also think we will never agree.
Men and women are not scientific terms. Male and female are. Many species can switch gender. Many are hemaphrodites, and others asexual. Science does not back you up.
And there it is - the use of edge cases to try to suggest men can become women. Humans do not switch from male to female.
So let me ask you the question again. If you were (totally hypothetically) caught in flagrante, sucking the cock of a hairy, muscly, bearded trans man, would it be a) gay or b) a totally straight, hetero, cis thing to do, because the cock you happen to be sucking on belongs to a woman as people, in your opinion, cannot change sex?
It's a stupid question. I have no issue with what consenting adults do with each other be they herosexual or gay. I simply believe that men cannot become women and vise versa.
We don't agree, and I respect that. Playing silly what if games doesn't make the point you think you are making.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's what we call "revealed preference" designed to separate ideological dogma from real, visceral experience.
Now if - again, hypothetically speaking - you were sucking that cock, I mean really going for it, my bet is that you would feel really, *really* gay, and not like you were having sex with a woman at all. QED, your revealed preference would demonstrate that you do in fact believe that there is a practical threshold where people do for all intents and purposes change sex, despite the ideological dogma that is holding you back from saying so.
That is why I asked the question I did, as bluntly as I did.
And it is also why you refuse to answer it. Because you see the obvious trap, i.e. if you say "it's not gay to suck the cock" you sound ridiculous, but if you say it is gay you have to agree with me that there is a threshold beyond which you consider a person transitioned.
Do enough work and a human can look like a cat. They have not become a cat. And as I have said before the woman with the 'cick' is still a woman, just one who now has a beard through taking testosterone combined with a weird squeaky frog voice and a piece of arm or thigh tissue shaped into a tube that can either be used to urinate or be made 'erect' but not bothered. It is by no means a penis.
Can you not just accept we disagree? Sophistry does not win the argument.
What I'm trying to do, and I apologise if using "you" as an example is a bit too visceral, but it's much harder to ignore *how you would feel in this scenario*, is to point out that irrespective of ontological descriptors i.e. "a man is a man and therefore cannot be a woman QED" which is a valid *philosophical* point to make, it lacks practical application. i.e. in the real world for all intents and purposes, once you have a penis and live as a man, most people will treat you as such.
My point is not to get at you personally - but to drive a wedge between ideological argument and lived reality, namely that many people successfully transition to the point where they a) have the functional genitals of the opposite sex in practice, b) have the appearance of the opposite sex in practice and c) their presence would be genuinely disruptive if they were treated as their birth gender - e.g. forcing the hairy, muscly, bearded guy to use the ladies (which is the law now, thanks JK!).
My argument is an attempt to short circuit the ontological definition of what is a man / woman and instead introduce consideration that we need to base policy on lived reality and everyday experience. Uncomfortably for any trans rights absolutists in this thread (of which I am not one), this also means my position is that you should probably use the gents if people perceive you as a man and the ladies if people perceive you as a lady. Where it gets hard is the edge cases, such as those with functional transitioned genitalia who still don't pass in their acquired sex. This is why it is not an easy debate, but it is still one that does need to be rooted in lived experience rather than ideological dogma.
But no woman has a penis. They have some flesh modelled into something that to some resembles a penis. AIUI this price of flesh can either be made to become erect OR be used to pass urine standing up, as if that's a good thing, but not bothered. It is not a penis. Your view seems to be that enough disguise makes the trick work. My counter is that it is still a trick. The woman still has her chromosomes, her DNA, etc. Yes we can flood her body with male hormones and this can effect physiological changes but the woman still remains a woman.
Which is why I asked you the question as viscerally as I did, because it short circuits all the hypotheticals and instead forces us to consider lived experience and practical perceptions in policymaking:
Let's say said woman has been on testosterone for ten years. She is taller than you, more muscly than you, has a beard, a deep voice, and as you put it has "some flesh modelled into something that resembles a penis". You are sucking on that penis. Is this gay or not?
If it's gay, then you admit there is a threshold where you regard that person as male - in practice if not in ideology. If it's not gay, then you've just told me it's not gay to suck dick. Which is... interesting. But hey, you do you.
Sexual attraction is weird. I am 100 percent heterosexual. I have never once looked at a man and been attracted to them. Not even Ryan Reynolds. Yet some people are either wholly same sex attracted or bi. It has no bearing on the basic biology. Your woman taking testosterone for ten years does not suddenly grow taller. Their voice does not become deep, they end up with voices that have been crudely described as frog like. So I don't care what you describe the sexual encounter you seem obsessed with. It has no bearing on trans.
Again, your repeated refusal to engage with the actual "revealed preference" question is instructive. As I say, everyday categories are the ones that matter. If you respond to someone as male in every practical sense, insisting they are "female really" becomes an abstract distinction with little actual real world value. Which is what I'm trying to get at in terms of public policy - i.e we treat people as the gender they present as. We don't generally perform genital inspections in this country on a routine basis. Yet.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
And two last points. The issues in recent years have been at the clash of trans rights and women's rights. That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets. Our uni has taken this approach.
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
"That's being resolved, I think, by organisations embracing gender neutral spaces and toilets."
You might want to read the decision in Goodwin v UK (2004), i.e. "the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”. That is the entire reason the GRA exists, and why the supreme court's ruling is incompatible with it, and will be deemed so when it finally reaches the ECHR.
"And frankly no trans woman 'passes'"
I could, but won't, introduce you to at least a dozen who do, daily, in their regular, ordinary lives. You obviously live in some weird, hyper-online bubble and I can't talk you out of it, but I guarantee you I know a lot more trans people than you do IRL and what you see online has no bearing on actual reality.
It's fairly obvious why I'm animated by trans issues but I really do wonder why trans people seem to live rent free in your head. Is it because you want to **** one or because you want to be one? I can't help you with the former (no trans woman I know would touch you!) but I really could put you in touch with a few charities and support groups if it's the latter. No judgement.
You are really rather weird, aren't you. I disagree with you, but you cannot seem to accept that. Peace. Live your life. Enjoy it with whoever you like. I treat everyone I meat the same whatever they believe about themselves. I do have issues about the erosion of women's rights to satisfy the demands of a small subset of men who, I believe, have a delusional or mental illness. Anorexics believe they are fat when the reality is that they are not. Believing oneself to be something one is not does not give you the right to impose that belief on others.
I'm sorry I have outclassed you at every point in this evening's debate, to the point where you have to describe me as "weird". I mean, yes, my IQ is statistically an outlier but I don't like to make a big deal of it. Thank you, however, for noticing.
I'm genuinely worried for you my dude - my interest in trans issues stems from my dead partner, which is understandable. Your interest in trans women *is* weird. Unhealthy. Possibly paraphilic, though I am not a clinician and can't diagnose you. But if you are struggling with gender issues yourself, I would be more than happy to put you in touch with someone who can help you.
You think you have somehow won an argument? Right.
Comments
https://x.com/SDPhq/status/2078102425106583729
(Which TBF has been used before on actual binliners.)
*** Innocently notes in passing that Ben Pointer is an anagram of One Pert Bin, so this couild be personal. ***
We've recorded no rain at all in July so far. Not much forecast for the rest of the month either.
I'm not trying to prove that trans men are "biologically male" etc, I'm trying to point out the lived reality that our own cognitive processes don't align neatly with your moral absolutism. Most of the time we treat people as the gender they present as. The hard problems are how we treat the edge cases.
You are trying to trap with clever words and scenarios. I reject the situation. It's irrelevant. By your argument if someone had enough modifications that they resembled a sheep, would it be beastiality?
Cameron, Thatcher, Major, Johnson, Truss, Brown, May, Sunak, Blair based on long term damage to the UK
This sounds hopeful for those of whose of us who want action on this.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/17/trump-administration-to-grant-12m-to-groups-founded-by-uk-conservatives-jacob-rees-mogg-and-toby-young
And frankly no trans woman 'passes', not does a trans man. On Pottery Throwdown this year the winner was obviously trans from the first moment on screen. Didn't matter a bit - they were a superb potter and made some great pieces. But noone was going to end up in bed with them believing they were anything other than a woman taking testosterone and saving up for bottom surgery.
The scandals emerge!
Boris ran on levelling up and Covid-19 blew that plan apart shortly after he took office, I expect Burnham's plans will be aflame in the not to distant future, as I doubt that the next 3 years are going to be any easier going. Just for one on the horizon issue that Burnham may have to deal with shortly, Russia could do something deeply stupid like attack a NATO member, all sorts of people and organisations are warning about it now, so I hope Burnham is listening. We saw how well Boris dealt with a crisis, God help us if Burnham performs similarly.
As for what you do with sheep in your own time, that's on you.
I then said, "You're 20 minutes away from being a Scouser!"
And she pissed herself laughing
N Kinnock tells Newsnight.
N Kinnock tells Newsnight.
Burnham won't be personally corrupt. He doesn't have expensive tastes, so doesn't need to be always on the lookout for the next earner.
He is also able to keep it in his pants.
Unlike Boris he seems to have a genuine interest in levelling up.
Crucially though. He has a habit of playing nicely with others. He won't cross the road for an argument. That will buy him goodwill and hence time with his MP's.
[1] Friday night, people!
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/17/brenda-fricker-oscar-winner-for-my-left-foot-dies
This is King Canute stuff (except without the subtext of self awareness)
BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd9w8xk75ndt
Trump says US being 'invaded by filthy air' as he threatens Canada with tariffs over wildfires - BBC News
And breathe (😷), and move quickly on.....
(Or maybe Carney's political abilities are so beyond Trump's comprehension, it's like v when the cat begs you to stop the rain).
IN FULL: The 34 Clacton by-election candidates - the highest number ever recorded in a UK Parliamentary election
➡️ Nigel Farage
🗑️ Count Binface
🟤 Laurence Fox
🔵 Kai Stephens
🟠 Adham Alkhatip
⚪ Joseph 77
⚪ Tony Cane
⚪ Woke Trump Carrzee
⚪ William Stuart James Clouston
⚪ Rees Cowne
⚪ Glenn Charles Cummings
⚪ Martin Davies
⚪ Andy Erlam
⚪ Attieh Fard
⚪ Tony Francis
⚪ Robin Green
⚪ Abi Hookway
⚪️ Nick The Incredible Flying Brick
⚪️ Howling Laud Hope
⚪️ Baron Von Thunderclap
⚪ Stephen Richard Ingram
⚪ Amy Morris
⚪ Derrick Norbert Morris
⚪ Michael Noel O’Keeffe
⚪ Martyn O’Brien
⚪ Nick Pelas
⚪ Ketankumar Pipaliya
⚪ Daniel Pocock
⚪ James Ransley
⚪ Gerry Smith
⚪ John Stevens
⚪ Pamela Walford
⚪ Marcus White
⚪ Marc Wilkinson
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078221199604093146
You might want to read the decision in Goodwin v UK (2002), i.e. "the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”. That is the entire reason the GRA exists, and why the supreme court's ruling is incompatible with it, and will be deemed so when it finally reaches the ECHR.
"And frankly no trans woman 'passes'"
I could, but won't, introduce you to at least a dozen who do, daily, in their regular, ordinary lives. You obviously live in some weird, hyper-online bubble and I can't talk you out of it, but I guarantee you I know a lot more trans people than you do IRL and what you see online has no bearing on actual reality.
It's fairly obvious why I'm animated by trans issues but I really do wonder why trans people seem to live rent free in your head. Is it because you want to **** one or because you want to be one? I can't help you with the former (no trans woman I know would touch you!) but I really could put you in touch with a few charities and support groups if it's the latter. No judgement.
I'm genuinely worried for you my dude - my interest in trans issues stems from my dead partner, which is understandable. Your interest in trans women *is* weird. Unhealthy. Possibly paraphilic, though I am not a clinician and can't diagnose you. But if you are struggling with gender issues yourself, I would be more than happy to put you in touch with someone who can help you.
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2078244872025203182?s=20
19 Independents
1 (No Description)
3 Monster Raving Loonies
Binface, British Democratic, Consensus, Everyone Is God, Forward, Freedom Alliance, Reclaim, Reform, Rejoin EU, SDP, UK Voice
https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/2077855887431995670?s=20
"2 free £10 bets when you bet £10" email for those with a Ladbrokes account, which has allowed me to bet on all 3 results for the WC final.
Placing my £10 stake on the shortest odds has guaranteed me a £10 profit
Families ‘dread’ using facial recognition software which often mistakes one twin for the other"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/17/identical-twins-double-trouble-eu-new-border-system/
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2026-07-14/canadian-man-identified-as-helicopter-pilot-killed-while-fighting-gold-mountain-fire
New York issues air quality alert days before World Cup final
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c9w0jen8x90o
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/17/andy-burnham-team-reshape-bank-of-england
More attention to economic growth and an end to reliance solely on interest rates to combat inflation due to supply-side shocks rather than excess demand.
And Count Binface.
The corrupt oligarchy of the tech bros needs to be tackled, if not head on, at least with determination.
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