The Scary Gender Critical PinkNews Warned You About!

MY JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TERF

I am a TERF. 

Or, a terf - It's not an acronym anymore, it's a cursed denouncement that renders the accused a social leper, and it's all our fault. We deserve no understanding - we oppress people; we cause deaths, we dog-whistle with hateful messages, coded in polite sounding conversations.  We are infectious and insidious. 

I think many of those on the side of the popular trans rights movement are unaware or in denial of the persistent abuse, threats and misogyny feminists face. Most people don't have a clue what's going on.

I cheered along once. I believed trans people were the most vulnerable, and under persistent attack. I hate reactionary discrimination. I hate bullying.

But over time, watching women being dog-piled, abused over entirely rational and compassionate statements.

I saw the sneering contempt of men, staking their political window display on being accepting while lecturing on feminism, insulated from the sharp end.

I discovered it was literally impossible to discuss the impact on women in any detail, the answers sounding painfully scripted and shockingly callous.

I had enough. And when I insisted I would talk about my fears, my experiences, I was met with fury, spite and disingenuous, laughably weak arguments that were apparently  set in stone.

I was ghosted. I was shut down and ostracized, I saw true misogyny, dismissing cases of rape and sexual abuse, which is imperative to support Self ID.

The plain facts are, the rights of women as a distinct class have been under relentless assault; women have been egregiously slurred, harmed and harassed. Our voices have been silenced and parodied. Publications we once trusted depicted us as mad harridans; serious abuses were hushed up, met with laughter and more ostracism. 

They- trans activists - will not talk to us. 'No Debate' has been a long held policy while backstage a political and ideological movement has had incredible implications on government and organisational policies; police; the courts; education and media.

"To anyone who spits the word TERF at a woman, there's no redemption, no hint of nuance or good faith can be applied to her. And if I say something that sounds reasonable, that's a serious, deep red flag - a trick"

I know this is pissing in the wind, for people who spit the word TERF at a woman, there's no redemption, no hint of nuance or good faith can be applied to her.

If I say something that sounds reasonable, that's a serious, deep red flag - a trick - and you should run screaming 'TERF!' into your every online account. 

In my journey from being a supporter of trans activism to where I am now, I've got to know many more trans people than I ever did before. I know at least a dozen transwomen I can have deep, vulnerable conversations with, while activists arrogantly demand I meet a trans person. 

My problem is not trans people. My problem is not people wanting to be treated as the opposite sex. I'll address you as you wish, but I won't tie myself in knots trying to navigate an ever expanding world of neo-pronouns, or prostrate for every slip. That really is too much of a petit bourgeois, hand-wringing, sphinctre-gazing, precious waste of time - especially for identities separated from physical reality which purely reaffirm stereotypes - e.g. 'I'm non-binary as I don't identify with femininity'. I mean, you're serious, aren't you? Fuck off with that astrological-woo shite. I have no ill-will towards you, and I imagine I might have identified that way too as a frightened, body-dysphoric kid who hated having breasts. But this is so regressive, and you are being played. Please stop expecting everyone to validate you - it only ever ends in tears.

Although they seem oblivious to it, there's a new role model for today's liberal feminist's - a pious and all-sacrificing ouch-kisser for the world's scraped knees, albeit stylised as some kind of freedom fighter with a few choice swears and a contrived, edgy profile pic. 

Being 'kind' is what you are meant to be - it isn't activism or good work, it's simply knowing your place

You're required to shout loud and proud, 'Feminism is for everyone! Fuck the fash! Trans women are women!' and dismiss or laugh at the times 'inclusivity' ended in rape. It's not so tempting to me. In fact, for those liberal feminists reading this, I want to tell you now - no amount of martyrdom will gain you respect, you will always be secondary in your movement, stories and life, and it will never be used as mitigation if you put a foot wrong one day. Being 'kind' is what you are meant to be - it isn't activism or good work, it's simply knowing your place.

Try telling your bloke mates something they dont like, tell them they have no right to lecture you on feminism, call out some misogyny, don't apologise for it. See how that goes.

I'll be kind and considerate as much as I can, and if you call me out on something without trying to break and shame me, I will listen. But I cannot promise to agree. And, you should care enough for your own self respect to not want to make me.

I know the trope - TERFs are spiteful, malevolent liars; hateful, frigid and yet weirdly sex obsessed. We're white and highly privileged. We value ourselves as mothers, for our biology which we never even worked for. We code our 'talking points' and detect each other's by a cackle hidden in the words gender critical, biological, natural. 

A bit like witches then. But actually, no... exactly like witches - hideous and old, muttering incantations under our fetid breath, shagging the devil in disgusting ritualistic displays. We selfishly grasp onto too much land, we harbour unexplainable power and wealth, we dont worship the right deity, we're unnatural (or too familiar with the supernatural) and unnerving.

To the fervent activist, isn't it a pity that your venture for whatever it is you want has had to dredge up 17th century misogyny? Do you ever wonder why that is? Why do you have to lie about us? Why do you frame us as the existential threat facing society? 

Why do you constantly, wildly misrepresent our arguments and aims? 

How free and empowered do you think you will become by trashing the category so many of you covet? Why do you want to join a category you think should have so little dignity and privacy and right to self defence? It's not the way transsexuals before you behaved. Why do you demand to be recognised as part of a group you so clearly despise unless they conform to your authoritarian ideology? You, the non-conformity champions? 

The answer is in there, isn't it? The answer is because you don't consider trans women literally women, as you claim to. You say trans women are women when demanding the same sex rights and spaces, and you'll leave out the trans as much as possible - 'all women' etc. But you'll make damn sure that prefix is there in bold if it's in defence. When a trans woman is abused that's a hate crime, but actual women don't have those legal protections and err, well, who cares? The abuse directed at women you laughingly dismiss, you are incensed by if directed at a trans woman. Call a woman an ugly, mannish cunt - she deserved it. Say that to a trans woman and you should never work again, cunt. Women are fine; that's what you mean, you just can't say that without embellishment. But trans women - the murder rate! The oppression! The exclusion!* The struggle, hurdles, the hate! Or - Feminists and the lies they tell.

Phil here with some glorious bullshit. Whether Phil will consort with the lady dick is unknown at date of publication.

To you, women are all too often hysterical about rape and assault, but it's trans women who could never survive being in a confined space with males.

But yeah, you're all feminists now anyway. Except for TERFs. You're just real feminists who don't obsess over the oppression based on our biology. Feminism is intersectional! Isn't it? Isn't that what we say these days?

What does intersectional mean? I guess it involves not being a selfish bitch, not griping over the really statistically insignificant number of rapists in sheep's clothing. But, even if it is statistically significant, even if it's overwhelming, that's not the point. 

I guess that as a school of thought designed to study the oppression of black women who face layers of discrimination, it's a massive win to swing it round to situate males, normally white males, at the epicentre of feminism. Brilliant.

Excellent work by Jameela here, studiously avoiding the point and breezily suggesting it doesn't matter how many women are raped in her brave new world, as long as Karen is included
*This principle does not apply to police*

Let me speak to you giving you the benefit of the doubt, picturing you with entirely good faith. That obviously sounds derisively patronising, but it isn't meant to be. I was there once, too. I assumed that 'TERFs' must present a real threat to trans people. I pictured crazed, section 28-supporting right wingers, and I was too overwhelmed by the rules of engagement to have conversations, or to ponder on why it is women who are presented as the dark force.

That 'deep need for protection' is the only honest thing here. But for the highly educated, middle class, white and well-paid Alison, that in and of itself is a damnable thing

The idea is women hold incredible power over men. False rape allegations is the nasty woman's nuclear weapon. Think of the horrific case of Emmet Till, see how Carolyn Bryant invoked heinous violence, torture, murder, enabled her men to be insane persecutors. That is where you are meant to be; picturing the innocent trans person, ignorant of the regressive norms and etiquette in their new environment, being wickedly lied about, set up, and punished for some fictional crime by the vicious guard dogs those women call sweetie. Women, standing behind men, prodding and whispering in their ears til the brutes lose all control. Women, standing behind those men, weaponising their jealousy, mobilising their brutish bodies against another; inciting, provoking and relishing the depravity with their hands and pinnies left unblemished.

See a story of a trans woman beaten up on the other side of the globe, just for using the toilet, and witness the new theories coming thick and fast. The stupid women who saw her and judged, they got scared, they thought they had a right to question and exclude. Yes, the violence was dealt by a man but why? Because women.

That's the idea. We might not get our hands dirty but my God we make sure someone does. It's the 'TERF rhetoric'. And really, the avid trans activist is just trying to stop this unhinged hatred. That's all. Because trans women are women, distinguished by vulnerability alone.

So it may come to you as a surprise, but you don't get much further from the Carolyn Bryants of the world than radical feminists. Male violence is never invoked as justice or protection by radical feminists, radical feminists normally are gender non-conforming, and a high number are lesbians. Male violence is exactly what they have always countered. You might find it difficult to believe you've been perpetuating these lies, but maybe think on it a while. I reckon you'll realise it's in there.

'emmisions'

It got there, it became, unwittingly, the supporting hypothesis because you're trying to do the right thing, and you're bombarded by the instructions.

Gradually, the propaganda slips in under the cognitive radar, because of the weight of the rest of the batshit, ridiculous ideas shoved down your throat, foie gras style. 

This is conducted in a relatively clever way, by giving you glimmers of reward à la emoji love-bombing and some really tricky homework that boosts the morale but overloads you with fluffy, pseudo-esoteric bullshit. All under the guise of essential human rights.

It's a 'Dear allies, memorise these genders, acronyms and neo-pronouns or you too will be crushed, nazi scum' series of tasks set by infomercials (badly disguised as journalism in Pinknews, Autostraddle, Diva, LGBTQ Nation etc). It's a torrent, and you either learn the lines, or explain you're clueless. If clueless, you'll use copious caveats, display intense sympathy and deference, be armed with apologies and promises to read up, listen harder. If not, you are consigned to the black book of treasonous heathens, subject to a public flogging and rejected by your peers.

I thought I didn't understand what was meant by it all. I held on, I repeated the urban myth-mantras of the vulnerability, death rate and oppression. I was told to educate myself, and I did. And that's, as far as you are concerned, where I went wrong.

So, I began to ask questions and read. What I found was some really murky, nebulous theory dictated as if irrefutable, empirical fact. And not only that - to question in any detail, to note the contradictions or obvious fallacies was a serious offence. WATCH YOUR STEP they glowered, this is human dignity we're speaking of.

Aside from the theoretical certainty and immovable conviction was a brittle and rigid conceit. This edifice of condescension and grandiosity started to look not purposefully angry and focused, but shaky, fragile. It's not that these questions are a distraction - it's that you need a hell of a lot invested to accept the bullshit answers. 

I saw an inability to answer anything from ideology to claims about statistics and events. The paddling, hidden under a facade of stoic evangelism was becoming clearer. 

I slowly started waking up to the insanity. Despite being known by my friends as a bit of a bleeding heart, easily upset for people, I realised I was slowly being more and more limited in discussion, monitored, questioned on 'what exactly do you mean by..?' and given way less benefit of the doubt. Slowly I, as a woman who has experienced sexual abuse in childhood and adulthood, who developed a trauma response addiction and had a trans woman aggressively and intrusively claim their [my] rights, realised I was being censored. The trans woman, pre-treatment, who intimidated and unnerved many of us with no choice but to share our spaces and tiptoe around them, was not acceptable to discuss. I now had less right to dignity than a well loved, living-at-home-in-her-20s, middle class student. Why? Because she identified as queer, and felt she had the moral high ground to put me in my place, again and again. Which she did with zero logic, consistency or care.

As a genderqueer person, she was apparently unable to use the women's toilets, and unsafe to use the men's. So she used the disabled, and was angry at the lack of facilities. If disabled people complained about her using their spaces, she dismissed them (with less hostility than she showed me, though). But as a woman who knows I am a woman, and has suffered multiple traumas at the hands of men, having been triggered daily by a trans woman when I was already traumatised, I was 'inflammatory' 'reactionary' and 'weaponising [my] trauma' by saying some women's spaces should be for women alone. 

Had my former friend ever been in jail? No. A refuge? No. Had she ever been raped? No. But her gender tokens elevated her need for suitable spaces, free of triggers, far above mine and her lexicon of mantras and phrases somehow convinced many she was right. She could be uncomfortable by members of her own sex, while popping in to a public toilet. I could not be uncomfortable with a male living alongside me all day and night.

As she dictated theory as fact, reacted with histrionic rage and scrutinised my every comment for evidence of transphobia, she rallied a gang of others, several being mutual, though not close, friends. What she spoke about, her arguments with other people, her posts on social media all centred on proving me a bigot while never mentioning my name. She got increasingly strident, and some men joined in, invigorated by her enabling and a sense of self righteousness. I was misrepresented, it was made clear my thoughts would be constantly challenged, and I was shut out.

It never did devolve to a row. I wish it had, but I was so carefully choosing my words, so consciously aware of what I perceived to be her hurt, so cautious of seeming abrupt or selfish I allowed her to set sail on her journey of supreme justice, nailing my torn clothes to her mast.

Of course, not everyone agreed with her. People asked me if I was ok a lot. A couple of people directly challenged her and the little gang that had formed around her. That did end in rows, which I normally only heard of much later. Generally though people steered clear. They'd tell me they don't know enough about it to comment, they didn't understand. They told me she didn't actually mean that, and this had never been said. In the time since this, I've had these rows on Facebook, and even though the words are there, as they were typed, the same thing happens - denial, obfuscation, apparently I misrepresent the other person with their own words, while wild distortions of my words 'probably held some truth' as 'but that is what you were getting at, isn't it?'

Always missing context, never listening with my heart, I'm not taking their view onboard. Every time, it isn't that bad, no one is actually arguing that. It's just trans women are women, and I am just being difficult now.

It's strange, I struggle to believe how sucked into her aggression performed as vulnerability I was. I'm a smarter, more articulate and naturally more aggressive (at least in terms of direct aggression, rather than passive) woman, with much more life experience, but I let myself be mistreated, insulted and bullied by a poncey, spoilt ideologue. And to top it off, a spineless one who insinuated her strength was not being female like me, while performing every Carolyn Bryant trick in the helpless maiden handbook. 

My amazing good fortune in being born to a body that I identify with is a privilege. The fact it's taken me years to come to terms with who and what I am is irrelevant. I'm clearly so happy being a woman, I would reject it otherwise. That must be it. All that cisprivilege I owned, using it to harm those like her. People with so few problems in life they can sit in their familial home, call it their home, in adulthood and spent hours every day wondering how they should dress, which of their many clothes they should choose to express their inner being. Not so easy for us without family, those who've been through the care system and were all alone at almost half the age she was now. It's the twilight zone on iron(y) tablets. It's inexplicable. Or it seemed so, until I understood how I'd been gaslit by a persecutor in disguise. It slipped right under my radar. 

I knew I was female from my first memory. I was scolded for acts my brothers were not. My anger was ridiculed. I was dismissed as crying just like the way we are depicted as Carolyn Bryant, a woman who laughed when the court was hearing of Emmet's horrific injuries, in front of his mother. I was loaded with tedious tasks, sexually abused, raped, hounded, and never safe.

The trans activist lives in an artificial landscape. It requires forced perspective, simulated dangers, astro-turfed campaigning and sound effects. It relies on keeping trans people a spectre of imperiled but dignified bravery. It's about supremacy, whether that's the great white defender or the under-dog survivor. What they want is what is yours, and they'll dress it up as an emergency but it was all very well planned.

The implied threat of eternal damnation is definitely real, they will ruthlessly exploit any slip, they'll go after all they can, they'll endlessly play the victim and rescuer. They'll have you fired for fun. But once you're out, if you don't have so much to lose, if you're employer isn't a coward, it might be liberating. The sting loses potency in staggering time. Don't look down and imagine the drop is real, there's too many distortions up where you are now. And it's better to jump prepared, than have your strings cut.

Queering Marxism - The Wokest Pantomime

 Package Deal Ideology! Instant Wraparound Identities - No Questions Asked

So, I think it's safe to say we've all seen the profiles - a BLM frame, a bio which lists antifascism and anarcho communism. A  rainbow flag, with that uncompromising fist in pink, blue and grey. "Anticapitalist!" they squeal. "Eat the rich!" "Punch Nazis!" "Fuck your binary!"

Oh yes indeedy. It's a raw, rare fury fired in the furnaces of authenticity, fuck you very much. No pissing around here - these are the Che Guevaras of the digital age, the rainbow taliban, the cynical, seen-too-much revolutionary guards of 'I got so much political outrage!' Like kittens they slumber on meme groups and Twitter, before rising like lion- well, you get the idea...

These are the defenders of the vulnerable, the oppressed. They got all the compassion in the world. Except, not the uppity, not the entitled. Not those already catered for.

Ok, what I mean is women. Not the fucking women. There's a deep resentment of real-life feminism, that which deals in fact and material analysis, that which centres women. They think they might be Marxist, but believe that someone's self-identified gender outweighs that of material reality, i.e. sex.

A few years ago, when the slapped-arse face of Jordan Peterson hovered on the new horizon, he called these people 'postmodernist Marxists'. He rightly got called out for trying to merge two inherently incompatible philosophies. It is impossible to bat for queer theory (entirely conceived within the realms of post-structuralism and postmodernism) and Marxism simultaneously, at least without considerable and constant contradiction and a fascinating 'logic'. 

Marxism is based on this thing called materialism, looking at the manifestation of exploitation within the economic realm which we are all subject to, sorting us into classes of empowered and exploited. Whereas, postmodernist theory tells us there is no objective truth, no rightful boundaries or categorical fact. Power is everywhere - open your eyes!

Quite seriously, for the queer theorist there are no acts which are objectively right or wrong, the enemy is oppression, and sexual transgression is a liberating response to oppression. 

No, rape is not an act of violence of itself; that comes from the cultural norms which tell us that sex can happen only within certain parameters and between two partners of opposite sex in the marital bed; that children cannot enjoy sexual encounters with adults, an offence against children and those who love them. 

We build it up with our tales and moralising judgements, stripping all agency from the 'victim' who is bound by self-fulfilling profesy of damage and shame, along with the 'perpetrator', who's humanity is revoked.

It is, the queer theorist contends, never considered that the victim has been made ex post fasto. Nor the 'criminal' is in fact the victim of a savage heteronormative punishment that demands its arbitrary rules be adhered to. This damned system...

It troubles me pretty deeply to now understand that Peterson was correct. It's not that it is actually possible to fuse the two, they understand the praxis of neither, but it's a sort of pick 'n mix bag of edgy-sounding slogans, pre-scripted responses and statements. They constantly use queer theory without even knowing it and they make sure to dress that window up with some marxist credentials.

It's a package deal ideology, made from inconsistent, clashing narratives but that's ok, cos conversation doesn't go far enough to discover these. 

Slogans over analysis! 

Chants 👏 are 👏 better 👏 than 👏 individual 👏 thought 👏

Dress up liberalist, corporate supported ideology, but stick an anarchy A and a few references to the bourgeois on it. 

Take antifa, a movement formed of the working class as they directly combatted fascism on Cable Street, the incredibly brave Antifaschistiche Aktion of the Weimar republic and those courageous souls who fought Franco and Mussolini, adopt their language, aesthetic and banners to go and scream abuse at left wing, feminist women who object to having males with exposed cocks in women only spaces. Threaten them into secrecy, fear-paralysis, doublethink. All the while evading real threats, demanding victim status as a shield, using the police to file hate incidents but swearing ACAB, becoming the drones of esoteric academia who would turn on them as soon as their ideas represent the norm.

The contradictions are never unearthed, because they have never needed to go deeper into it. Starting with an education that is geared towards knowing the answer but not truly understanding and a strict, rarely articulated university policy of no-cat-shall-meet-pigeon, it's become very shallow out there. 

Think James Caspian and his censored attempt to study detransition, and the published and applauded grievance studies. These are people who are primed for presentation over content, conformity and peace over confrontation and praxis, and their social media profiles are their own little shop windows, perfectly situated logos and labels for the current zeitgeist. As such, the display is fragile and highly contrived: the billowing scarves stuck as if in motion are actually formed with mangled coat hangers, the central focus can change smoothly and with no interference from external forces. Any external force - questions, a breeze, could flatten it all. Carefully shielded, it is limited by imagination alone. An ever-telling story of political aesthetic.

DO NOT TOUCH THE DISPLAY

So maybe a crap, superficial and swift compare / contrast with Marxist theorem and queer theory is in keeping here: 

Keeping the proletariat on their knees with assumed moral and intellectual superiority, and violent, paternalist control of the means of production and profits the workers create might well be the most successful policy in social control - if you're desperate through hunger, fear, addiction, your ability to plan ahead, withhold gratification, is almost entirely stolen from your muddy prole hands: you are ALWAYS looking for the scraps, the get-me-through-today perks, scanning the floor for dropped change. What you can't really do is look at your oppressors eye to eye and confront the boot on your neck. Not without straying thoughts and shame-filled stomach rumbling. This is a heirachy and people are endowed with power by nepotism. You are at the bottom, as ordained. It will ultimately unravel, but until that time you're where you are due to a system of privilege, ownership, exploitation.

Above: Dead Smarmy Fuck laments the lack of solidarity for certain males to be women. This is unrelated to a passion for misogyny or flaccid oestro-junk.

Styled by; US imperialist luxury values. Gun; Republican-donating multinational. Beard; model's own

From the perspective of queer theory, nothing is manifest or true. Is that boot really on your neck, or is this a performance? Is it really you with the power, holding back the safeword? The narratives we live by can be deconstructed much in the way society has constructed them. Boundaries are illusion that force social norms upon us which tend to be the real axes of power, and the queer, by definition the un-usual, the transgressive and underdog are the truly crushed under foot.

And this makes some sense, it's often the minorities who bear the brunt of outrages against humanity. It's just about where we draw the line between the odd, the unfairly discriminated against, and the downright abusive and obscene.

Here is another incompatible philosophy to subscribe to alongside queer theory; feminism. Well, feminism that centres on females, which is what feminism does. Queer theory serves the powerful in their whims and fetishes. It is not on the side of women who seek boundaries.

Are we to side with the largely unwitting statements in line with queer theory that an internal feeling of gender dysphoria trumps biological sex, that women can in fact have penises and prostates and some people are born into the wrong body? Or perhaps that the violence experienced by women and children is consequential to their being maintained as an other, a different, weaker brand of human requiring segregation which exoticises their bodies from the gaze of those who might 'attack' them; or do we start in material reality with some hard foundations, of categorical class and a materialist analysis? 

Is it not integral to our existence that we examine our roles from our physical, economic and social standing, that the subjective interpretation of others will never be reliable, never be objective or provably true? Can we as observers make the judgement on what is or is not an unequal power dynamic? 

Are our categories meaningful or is it these which oppress us? Do you have any goal in sight or is this a struggle of constantly identifying the un-usual to champion 

via queer theory?

Who knows, the delicious control of submitting (or being seen to submit) could be the ultimate liberation. Maybe it is your exertion of power that keeps you morally upstanding in your own little clique, your opponent indisputably the devil to all. Maybe it's you who maintains this whole charade. 

Freedom from decision and midlife crises, in fact it is the ultimate joy; to be held in the gaze of another; no existential doom headed your way, you can cheer at your survival thus far, possibly even while knowing it's not quite as it seems.

So are women really oppressed, or has it long been a dance, an act of release from the pressures of responsibility? You, in your illogically defined category of sex get the constant flux of privilege and sacrifice among your peers, knowing really you could overturn the powers-that-be if you just restructure your perceptions, language and interplay? Did you ever realise how archaic and regressive those parameters you draw around yourself really are? You have demarcated these borders and huddle together in safety and exclusivity with the consent of society, like first class passengers, as you inadvertently betray the real privilege  - your celebrated victimhood.

Aren't you lucky, with your power to invoke obsession and jealousy, your identifying class and privilege, your ability to manipulate those with money and status? Where you have sorority and the power to destroy a man on words alone, drive him insane and walk away without a mark to your basic, unremarkable name?

And what for the petit bourgeois: the liberal feminist with no real-life experience of manifest oppression, who is feted as smart, pretty and intersectionally woke? Or even the white, middle class, adult male who is actually the most marginalised if we look at internal self perception alone?

Above our petty squabbles of finite resources and rigid thinking, they hope to change the world with language, for the words we use directly affects the world we live in. To deconstruct and reassemble a reality, you begin with discourse. It's a little like unrepentant child sex offender R Kelly, 'if I can see it, then I can be it', or Noel Edmonds and his game-show of Shrodingers' cat; to ask the universe, think positively and believe. So you look at the discourse of these interactions and you examine where the breach has been committed.

But let's get real here. I'm no Marxist, I couldn't claim enough knowledge to take that as a stance. What I am interested in is the constant appropriation of edgy sounding politics that are used so completely dishonestly.

Being anti fascist would require some real awareness of what fascism is, for a start. Note: authoritarian attempts to control speech because some words may be difficult to stomach is not it. To demand your orthodoxy reign supreme when you point blank refuse to engage in any conversation, literally trying to crush any sentiment you disapprove of based on fallacious ideas of your intense vulnerability is not it. Choosing the moment in which you reject other ideas as fascist, dangerous, murderous, that's something which requires consideration. Mindlessly chanting along with slogans you don't understand, demanding others fall into line, is pretty scary stuff. Keep your head. It may be important at some point. 

Fascism begins with women. A protection racket of chivalry. If these women are now with penises, it's an interesting twist but it doesn't change the game. The death marches are still gonna come, and yeah, who cares when it's your enemy? Especially enemies with such tedious, crypto-fash ideas like there are material, profound distinctions between the sexes? Definitely they should get the wall, that's the right thing, yeah?

From what I can deduce, we have a highly sensitive, confused and fearful population which is being very successfully funnelled into online genres, in a way which resembles music affiliations, youth movements before. The need to find an indentifying group is natural: we do it in adolescence and young adulthood as a way to break away from our parents, to shock and repulse them, to assert our individuality without irony of all our proud allegiances.

But let's keep our heads, and prize the ability to think with individuality. Being radical was never an anthem of the drones. Don't be so willing to spout the mantras you're instructed to - it won't keep you safe forever, it really is visibly inauthentic and without a safeword, that boot might be deep-throating you soon. 

May the Farce be with You, You Spoilt, Trembling Cowards.

Links, because obviously, to the paedo-advocacy of Queer Theorists

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307660876_The_Age_of_Consent_and_the_Ending_of_Queer_Theory

https://spectator.us/topic/academics-defending-pedophilia/

https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/10/05/its-time-for-us-all-to-stand-up-against-big-sister/

https://youtu.be/n-NseFg2kno

https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/mother-of-transgender-ideology-judith-butler-and-her-connection-to-pedophilia.3939985/

Vendors of the Faith

Ok, it's got to the stage I think you deserve to know - that shiny, shit and flimsy facade of valid human rights campaigning has cracked. It’s been fucked for ages, and I know you still get the flashy headlines and that, but it’s a consensus made of platitudes, fearful repetition and zombie autopilot. Cling on if you want, but I'd be keeping an eye on the looming shit storm you are inciting. You might lord it over the hallways of power now but we are the ones who collect and file evidence, we expose the lies. Not with the grand libraries and ceremonial flourish you do, and with far fewer assassinations. Still, it will stand alone without lies, forced perspective, compelled speech.

Let's tap into that famous imagination of yours; close your eyes and picture;

Prince Andrew struts around his palace, boasting he set the record straight in that TV interview, and people know just how firmly he stands against sex trafficking, and the awe which they have for the incredible bravery he displayed during his decorated military career. How he proved all allegations fallacious; we believed him entirely. How he regaled us with the story of how his sweat glands took the hit as a tactical decision in battle, leaving him with dry hands and brow to save our boys! "I know one is considered to be a hero viciously slandered by the gutter press, guilty of only association in my attempts to strengthen British enterprise" he says to his staff, chest puffed out and dripping in medals earned via nepotism and heredity. "The British public have never loved nor needed me more, and they see I am the victim of a scurrilous crusade". The servants are a little rigid with awkward disquiet, but they hold it together, only exchanging glances when he has left the room, and only gathering the courage to talk to each other after hearing the Queen, Prince Philip and the rest increasingly bluntly refer to him as arrogant, imbecilic, delusional, a liar, a cretin. A few ex courtiers may speak out in the press, but no one knows their names and the palace dismiss them with stone-faced dignity. But once enough do so they will gain a name all of their own, they will become a force, momentum will gather. The integrity of the royal family is creaking. Bits fall off, cracks appear. What was once a treasonous heresy only uttered in secrecy is now being shouted in the street. The crown has slipped.

That, guys, is you. You've an air of the unassailable about you, but only because the charade, the social status you gained through propaganda, assassinations and insidious force. We have for years been stunned at your power and influence; how on earth you are deemed worthy of such celebration and power; how, why, anyone would take you so seriously as a moral arbiter or guardian of truth? 

But you can only hold court for a limited time when those emporers' clothes are seen day after day, when the sweat begins to trickle off and reek. Even the most obsequious, sycophantic, pageantry obsessed royalist will one day realise they're being treated like clueless, simpleton plebs. Even they will lose the script (and the plot) when their children return with missing parts, broken with shell shock and denounced as traitors. It's an unsustainable path when the grandiosity is so clear, the atmosphere so contemptuous and dishonest and authoritarian. 

The critical mass of those who refuse to play the game becomes overwhelming. All the neutral figures finally sidle up and take a position they've long held in their sights. In all the years of bullshit, aggression, violence and authoritarian decree those knives get sharp, closer at hand and, my goodness, hasn't it got dark?

Under all of those gaudy mottos, your misogyny is flapping in the wind. Opportunist pigeons roost in the formerly impenetrable edifice, and make close inspection a risky affair. No one enjoys being shat on by cooing illiterates who knock all the pieces over and fly back to their flock, boasting of their delusional success. All the hangers-on seeking shelter under your name, the ones you invited, or, with complicit laziness, allowed in, they eventually catch wide attention. You can claim no association if you want, but when they return night after night your word is meaningless. 

Which is why you shout, from loudhailers mounted up high, from radio stations, TV studios and headlines, with a flourish of trumpets.

The words you use mean nothing and you cannot logically defend any of it. It requires faith, and faith requires more comfort than you can provide. No one actually understands the language you use, and the seal of approval and endorsements held back criticism for a while, but eventually people realise meaningless phrases written in the most artful calligraphy are still meaningless. 

So you make those demands louder, hammer that anthem into their heads and don't leave pause for questions. Incorporate military regalia and teach them by rote. 

Better still, all that noise, all the undesirables you foster, keeps everyone but the ordained back, it looks imposing and unimpeachable. 

Like the tower of London, we all know what it looks like but few ever go inside without a guide to steer us or areas roped off. It means the shite facade is never examined, never exposed to the public or the harsh light of normal scepticism. 

Those pigeons are overshadowed by ravens, wings clipped and dependent. Never gaining autonomy or the beauty of a full, adult ability. You can't let the public up too close, not without hazing them first, but the photo opportunities are fantastic. 

You claim the Olympian gold in victimhood, when the dirty secret is you're as safe as it gets, when your witch trials torture women and every mishap is some bitches' fault. 

The brave warrior history is long gone, swapped for seats in the Lords and pomp. You were surrounded in protection every day of your service, by nameless subjects of no importance. Wearing your fatigues and posing for the camera, out of shot were the people who really do the work.

Your only hope to maintain it is with relentless propaganda, more spectacles and fear. Making sure the devil is named, how you are hated for protecting your noble subjects, the enemies plot your demise, laugh at your tragedies and can muster evil of all kinds. 

Scheming and invading the souls of innocents, you can never be safe and if you fall so do we all. They are watched and reported on by neighbours. The paranoid plots run out of control, you hear their whistling everywhere, soon you won't stop washing those hands. The ceremonial executions warn and entertain the public, the charges are fantastical, and you make certain the children know the mantras and pledges in school.

Attack, dehumanise the enemy via any means possible. The logical fallacies of strawmanning, ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority (your authority), false dichotomy, circular arguments - you excell at every one. All because you have no argument that fulfils your desires, because your role as monarch and custodian of the fortress is a sham. 

You curse the media, but your press office has all the right numbers on speed dial. You fill our world with headlines on exclusion and erasure, the hatred and agony, the victimhood and annihilation - you keep us rapt with fear and pity. Even battered women, desperate of one, solitary, same sex space to heal, are monsters, bigots, bitches, dangerous, dried up whores. 

They manipulate the nation with their woes, spinning lies and everything is a coded attack. Meanwhile you, protected by laws against heresy and a corporate endorsed, social media speech-restriction and vilification campaigns sit on your throne of accrued wealth and fire off missives. 

Two women a week in the UK, 137 a day worldwide are murdered by family. Seven to eight thousand women and girls are murdered annually in Indian dowry disputes alone. But you, with a global three hundred and thirty-one martyrs, get thousands of headlines, days and weeks of recognition and have the veto on every public debate. 

You will not dignify the other side with a response, with argument. Let them bleat rape; One owns the spaces. All while spending millions of hours harassing, censoring and defaming the very same people. You incite violence and sit on your pedestal, winking with complicity and duplicitously issuing statements calling for decency and respect.

You claim spectacular moral supremacy, even when you kill more than you are killed, when even you mercilessly punish the faintest wrongthink and scour the land for wrong-thinkers.

You claim every hurt feeling as a treasonable act - an enticement to suicide, genocide, homicide. You misappropriate feminism, centre males in it, then make real feminists an evil, regressive subset of their own movement like the colonial invaders you are. 

You take the folklore of your colonies and have them spun into the best examples to tell the children; celebrate the diversity of more labels and subdivisions, get them all picketed into your hierarchy; they always have such big wide smiles and sing so happily, don't they? You send rape threats, death threats, sexually degrading harassment daily, form armed groups ready to terrorise the crones, and you call us dangerous to society. The snide, corporate-sponsored duplicity as you masturbate to your own image, flying flags and spit at women burning on pyres. You are to the vulnerable what Carter Pewtershmidt is to the working class.

Using taboo like an abusive priest, you try to censor discussion you'll never hear and blame the natives for savagery. How could anyone want to hear such blasphemy? You're frightened of everything you can't control, any conversations that go off-script. You must dominate all acceptable discourse and forbid anything outside of it. Everything must be yours and you, the wife-beater, singing 'I Will Survive' in the spotlight, requiring North Korean-standard applause, goose stepping minions in their own weird uniform. 

It’s the apex of toxic masculinity and your celebrated martrydom tells us something critical about you; you know no victimhood. Victims do not see their vulnerability as a battering ram, it is not the most special, powerful thing they have, it gives them no protection or status. 

As the people, as feminists, built women's spaces, hostels, rape crisis and networks of support, what have you built? Nothing. You build nothing. You take the land and the names and set the rules and you put your fucking flag on top. 

You make children into soldiers to terrorise their own. You greedily appropriate everything you see. Like ancient art in the British museum, you know it best, you are the one to preserve and honour it. You are the guardian. You are the curator and arbiter of culture. You appear to a desperate press under orders, held back by velvet ropes, they're all you special correspondents. 

Shaking some hands and singing your hymns, your charity work is done. You can slink away with the aid of former soldiers and spies, their lifelong service is yours.

Enjoy it while it lasts, I see you've had a ball. It's an untenable luxury, however. While you gorge on the stolen riches, are massaged by pretty young slaves, the clock will keep ticking and the old guard are angry. The peasants are revolting and those natives know the landscape more than you ever could.

Transgressions

TRANSGRESSIONS



Standing in solidarity with monsters



We see the headlines in 'progressive' media. We are implored to sympathise, to withhold judgement like grown ups, as this is human rights stuff - their crimes are unimportant here. The crimes have occurred and cannot be undone, it's their treatment and how we choose to respond that we can change.

And the thing is, that's true, and for this reason, and more, I'm against the death penalty.

However, one thing that stinks of deception, narrative-manipulation and unconscionable idiocy is presenting the most predatory and violent men as vulnerable women. When it is those men who have spent their lives devastating others with those classic male crimes of life-ending violence and sexual assault, with the exclusively-male penis as weapon.

So, I'm having a long hard stare at the way in which men who at times have murdered, tortured, raped and terrorised have been giving free reign to reconstruct themselves in the media. It's sold to us as the worthy cause of trans rights, and, funnily enough, often reported on by women.

I'm fairly sure that these young journalists did not set out on their careers hoping to cover such reprehensible bastards with such nauseating simping. I imagine they are given these stories by their bosses and have the classic, vulnerable 'old school transsexual' in mind, as well as wanting to hitch themselves onto the popular zeitgeist of trans rights™.

I do wonder how they rationalise writing such glowing, ideological bilge when the reality of these crimes becomes known to them; the tropes of "we mustn't treat trans people as a monolith" are super helpful, so remember that 'not all trans people are like that' and make sure you don't allow one prisoner's crimes to spoil the picture. Even if that's their own picture.

The fact is, however, that now trans people are a monolith. One which needs sympathetic coverage or at the very least critical omissions. Any outrages are forgotten, crushed and mentioning them shamed, or justified.

It's justified with more mental images of an innocent, frightened boy gazing at the reflection of himself in a dress, then hurriedly changing before the terrible people come home. It's inspired by tales of poor transwomen like Marie Dean committing suicide in jail - again forgetting the shattered, traumatised lives they leave in their wake.

So, however much they have surely achieved the right balance of righteous indignation and perpetrator-pity, I think that's worth noting they do tend to be young, female and early on in their careers.

It's far from a one off, in fact it's now close to being a cliche.

So, let's have a look at the preconceived ideas that appear to facilitate such fawning depictions of murderers and rapists who claim to be women:

"Synthia-China Blast" / Luis Morales

“I am a political transgender woman ‘slash’ prisoner. I strongly support the rights of LGBT brothers and sisters in the community who are imprisoned also.” 

So far, so very laudable. This is another hustle worth watching out for - the presentation they are and have always been persecuted for, due to their identity as trans people. It's very unusual these men were presenting as female until long into their sentences. Invariably they are also allies, advocates, relentlessly believing in the greater good we non-rapists refuse to see. Everyone is a victim, and it's only through a religious or quasi-religious belief in love and redemption that'll save all these souls, and stop the cycle of abuse.

In Jezebel, Aviva Stahl interviews Synthia-China Blast, who was convicted for the gang related murder of a 13 yr old girl, Ebony Williams. (Something about Morales changing his name to China when he's known to be vehemently anti-black and his victim's name was Ebony seems significant, although I should probably spare you my ruminations here and get on with the hideous shit show).

Prior to this piece by a supposedly feminist publication, Laverne Cox read out Synthia-China Blast's letter to the world. It caused quite a stir. Blast, née Luis Morales, is in near constant lock down in segregation. As a gang member turned trans woman, this doesn't sound that surprising - but to many, it was.

Clearly we were meant to be outraged at Blast's treatment, and it does sound tough. And that's on top of what we already know about the American prison system. Unfortunately, if you give a solitary fuck about accuracy, about victims, about the fact these perpetrators of such unspeakable crimes are accessing large platforms and attracting such an adoring audience of advocates, this tends to come over a little problematic.

This unravelled, however, when the full extent of Synthia-China Blast's crimes became clear. Cox denounced Blast and presumably learnt a little on the importance of looking a little deeper before championing causes. The video is no longer available, and Cathy Brennan is excoriated by Stahl for raising the alarm that a child rapist, torturer, murderer and defiler of the resulting corpse is gleaning public sympathy under a different name and sex to that known by the public;


"A prominent feminist who claims she does not support “irrational discrimination” against trans people but nonetheless has become known for her steadfastly trans-exclusionary views"

This is who Stahl is angry with, and she seems to firmly believe that the real harm perpetuated against trans people, even society, is by TERFs. Obviously, pitting 'trans exclusionary' feminists against those rapists and murderers who've latterly taken on the identity of trans women is exactly how progressive politics needs to go.



Brennan described Blast as a murderer and child rapist, and Stahl responds in the article that "Blast was never convicted of raping Ebony Williams, and she adamantly denies killing her" well, there we have it! Isn't that all the justification we need, huh?

After the distancing of Cox, the uproar and outrage, things got tougher still inside "Blast was threatened and insulted online and received hate mail on the inside calling her a freak and a woman hater, according to her and her family." Shocking. This gang member, who went on remand aged 16 after being prosecuted for 12 counts of second degree murder, reckless endangerment and arson, was on the recieving end of hate mail and called a woman hater! My, the depravity. After spending almost two years inside, Blast says he was in too deep with the gangs - he'd been raped/made the boyfriend of serious men, and apparently there was no way out. Soon after his release (found not guilty on the murder of six people) his boyfriend called him asking him to dispose of a cardboard box. And, dear reader, poor Blast was too groomed to know what the right thing to do was. He disposed of it, and he's never revealed those he believes guilty. He would be home now if he snitched, he says. But this guy, he's got principles.

Stahl challenges none of the lies about how there was no evidence, she asks no tough questions. The facts of the trial, where Blast and co-defendant and fellow gang member Carlos Franco laughed, smirked and joked through the evidence, is gut-wrenching. Both men were known to be hateful towards black people. Both of them bragged widely to others about what they had done to the little girl, and how sexual sadism was their motivation. After Blast stabbed Ebony multiple times, he and Franco realised she was still clinging to life. Franco then broke her neck. The post mortem showed she had almost been decapitated by the repeated stabs and twisting.

Stahl omits all of this, and ponders "How do we make visible the violence experienced by survivors and respect their right to heal without becoming complicit in the myth that perpetrators are monsters who must be hidden away?" While never explaining where is evidence that this is a myth, or, regarding a survivor's right to heal, she neglects to mention again.

One subject which does reappear is that of Brennan "How do you think transphobia shaped the way Cathy Brennan described you—or the danger she claimed that you posed? Would you call her a feminist?"

Brilliant, Aviva. Ask the man who committed such unspeakable horror against a little girl whether a feminist is worthy of being called feminist. We are all holding our breath in anticipation! Blast responds "That woman destroyed my name in a few days what an entire trial and jury could not do". Maybe Blast needs another name change? This is the price of publicity. He continues "She is a monster. Her views are distorted and full of twists and turns. What writers say was fed to them by the police" Clearly, the police are not as thorough and fair as Blast and Stahl. "Cathy Brennan is not a feminist" says Blast "I am a feminist. I am against women being harmed. I am against women being raped. I am against men degrading women or using them as sexual objects. Cathy Brennan gives all real feminists a bad name. I never hated someone as much as I hate her." Reassuring stuff, eh?

This long, tedious interview full of cringe-inducing clichés finishes with metaphors of trash and treasure, and it's at this point not clear if the words are Stahl's or Blast's. The update ends in the ultimate credit to any nonce justice warrior - Blast is now in a new prison, where he can spend most of his time out of his cell, cook for himself, take classes and his family have never seen him so happy.

What is not mentioned is his well documented delight in screwing as many murderers as possible, and how his dream man ultimately showed himself, ending in marriage to another inmate, Heriberto Seda, the copycat Zodiac Killer - “I met my friend, lover and infamous husband…the NYC Zodiac Serial Killer. My sweet serial killer is a lady’s man now. Only if I was [sic] a real woman I could bring about little future serial killers to terrorize NYC like my husband did. How [New Yorkers] would of [sic] loathed the Zodiac Children.“




If there's ever a time lies can be repeated and someone's history should make them disposable, being a TERF is it. Child abduction, torture, presumed rape and then murder followed by desecration of a corpse, not so much.





"Patricia" Patrick Trimble



Centre, Jasmyne René Cooley with Patricia Trimble, right, and, presumably, Patton Oswalt or Ron Pearlman, left.


Patricia features in Vice's how trans prisoners are getting each other access to treatment inside, written by Pierre Bienaimé, who I'm going to use my bigot powers to identify as a man. It begins by describing how Trimble, convicted of murder, only realised he was a woman after a sexual assault in prison in 2015. Trimble is painted again as the advocate, the tireless freedom fighter within a prison system filled with unnecessary cruelties. To be clear, America's prisons are an outrage. I'm horrified by many aspects of it and yet when it comes to people like Trimble, I'm far from convinced the punishment even fits, let alone exceeds the crime.

Trimble has become house expert, by the weight of injustice forced upon him. “You have a bunch of psychologists and therapists talking to us that really have no clue,” Trimble said. “So we kind of have to educate one another.”

This goes unchallenged, of course. The message is clear - this is a prehistoric institution fixed on brutality and neglect, and if it weren't for the selfless service of Trimble there would be no let up in the endless stream of misery. Convicted murderer Jessica Hicklin is Trimble's best buddy in there- "She's a mom and I'm a mom,” Hicklin said. “That's probably the shortest way of putting that. We both try and help each other and everybody else." This is heartening to read, and fits with Bienaimé's presentation of Trimble as committed to the welfare of others.

Nowhere does Bienaimé raise the troubling issue of such serious offenders changing their name and recorded sex, or what the consequences could be.

Nowhere does he explain what Trimble actually did - lure two 9 year old girls into woodland before raping and sodomising them. Once serving on remand he decided that it would be better to serve time under murder charge than as a paedophile. So he turned his attention to Jerry James Everett, 20.

Everett was, according to the judge, 'mentally retarded', and 6'1", 210 lb Trimble began dismantling the younger, smaller, far less depraved man by sexual humiliation, forcing a 5'10", 145 lb Everett to show other inmates what Trimble had forced inside of his rectum, forcing him to walk around the prison in a bra. This escalated into oral and anal rape, and pimping Everett out to other prisoners. After telling other inmates of his plan to murder him, Trimble instructed Everett to write a suicide note before strangling him with a towel. Judge June P Morgan in State v. Trimble, 638 S.W.2d 726

This is all a bit too unpleasant, and probably irrelevant to Bienaimé "After a lifetime spent in the dark about the reality of gender dysphoria, Trimble, now 59, answers more questions than she asks" by which I suppose he means he's not asking anything awkward, just reaping the rewards of this remarkable advocate's wisdom. Again, the words of the offender are taken as gospel, with the pontificating Bienaimé citing activists and prisoner support groups and yet never one for survivors and victims.

Trimble often says he's a mother. On his Medium articles he, without a flicker of shame, refers to himself this way. It's a grotesque appropriation of one of the most important and prized roles on the planet, one that only women can fulfil. It's also laughably deluded, although having credulous journalists repeat this shit makes it seem less so.

On Medium, Trimble has multiple published pieces. All dripping in pathetically hackneyed prose and ridiculous self importance, they reflect the piece in Vice - The morning is spent reflecting, reading through cases to find anything to help his 'children'. By waking at 5am, he has "my only time to cry and to be emotional without showing weakness. I can put my bra on without stringing a curtain across the cell for a small bit of privacy."

"Privacy is something many take for granted, but in a place like this, well, a girl really has none" okay, groomer. "Prisons are full of children and very young adults who lack guidance. There is no mother figure nurturing them or teaching them about respect. Many of them hold extremely misogynistic beliefs" Found your calling now, huh Patrick? "As a woman in a men’s prison, normal activities others wouldn’t think twice about on the outside, suddenly become an exercise in creativity within these walls. It’s a consistent dance between maintaining your dignity and ensuring your safety. I’ve had 40 years behind bars to master it" only the last couple have been as 'Patricia', though. I suppose it could make victimising other, genuinely vulnerable inmates with horrific sexual violence and then murdering them a little more tricky.

"When I shower, I try to keep my back to the entrance to avoid displaying my breasts to watching eyes. (Sometimes)... I force myself the indignity of standing to pee. Otherwise, one of the men will assume my sitting position is an invitation to show me an erection, as if it was catnip that would cause me to suddenly fall to my knees"

Well, that was repulsive. Maybe Trimble would be better off petitioning the prison to transfer in some young meat? I mean, it seems more his style, and if the sight of this ugly, elderly nonce's grey-haired gynecomastia is enough to entice another inmate there must be dearth of options about. I'm also fascinated in the anti-cock precautions Trimble and every other inmate has to take when having a shit? If it's really an issue, possibly it's unwise to brag about "how good my head game feels". I wonder if this is just his limited ability to present himself as the wiley victim he wants to be seen as. It all seems ripped from 80's soaps.

No time for such obvious baiting, however. Apparently in "most searches feel like I’m being groped, violated" which is just too bad, although the new rule-enthusiast Trimble does say that when "done respectfully in line with transgender search policies...I can tolerate them."

'If you want to get to know me' on Medium is Patrick's shameless attempt at appearing like the bad-girl-turned-good via the medium of poetry. It's fist-clenchingly cliched, tacky and banal, listing his supposed attributes of sultry swaying hips, living as a streetwise sex worker and claiming he was gang raped age 8. "And believe me, that dude with his dick in my mouth ain’t hittin’ on me with a better job proposition, all he’s offering me is another fifty dollars to put me in the face down ass up position so his friend can fuck me too, since you want to get to know me" got me thinking that's a pretty high charge for a rent boy prior to 1983. Still, Patrick loves to talk about how being mauled by four guys in the prison court helped him to really feel womanly.
"If you want to get to know me you need to know how I flow,

there’s more to me than looking pretty and the way my hips sway to and fro" - Patrick's soul-recoiling, vomit-inducing, foot-curling dirge

Throughout the Vice article Bienaimé reliably reports the kind of partial, often self-reported and skewed statistics we see everywhere in the coverage of trans people. He lets the advocacy groups and offenders tell it as they see fit, letting huge lies and omission go unchecked. However it still contains far less preaching than the writers of the other two articles I'm looking at here, far fewer references to himself and his thoughts of ethical standards. Consequently he's catching far less heat from me, however much of a trite, lazy, misleading piece of propaganda for a worthless old man this is.


The most irredeemable are, of course, the TERFs.

*Trimble is now giving lectures from his cell, clearly pounding his Trans Vulnerability™ license for all it's worth: "Reliving much of my past took more out of me than I had expected. But without a face to the story, it is just another story.. .. suicidal thoughts and actions, the experience of gang rape, promiscuity, a lifetime of self-hatred and anger being thrown at so many undeserving victims should never be just another story" says Trimble. Talking about himself.

"Sarah Jane" Alan Baker



Sarah Jane Baker, previously known as Alan Baker - is introduced as a lifer for the attempted murder of a sex offender, and I can't help but feel the way this is mentioned is used as a defence. A sort of "It's ok, he (she! Sorry folks!) hurt a terrible person" which categorises Baker on the violent but convict-justice side, living by another set of rules. This works for me, but it doesn't make a violent man a woman, or any male so. It's also in such conflict in this regard to the other stories, somehow it feels expedient.

This attempted murder happened when Baker was already in prison for the kidnap and torture of his step-mother's brother. He also reportedly has convictions for drug dealing and armed robbery. This is another extremely violent person

Amelia Abraham is our reporter here, and it seems incredibly important to her that we side with her on what she sees as an unconscionable breach of human rights. I'm wondering, how does liberal feminism justify its special interest in violent men who claim to be women, when it never serves women like this?

Well, it doesn't get close to even asking this. Here, our brave and strident reporter goes forth. This has a whiff of investigation, it cites 'experts' and she really goes for the descriptions when recounting how she visited a real prison. This is journalism that labours the same point ad nauseam, while brushing over the inconvenient, the difficult questions, with evasion, derision, moral superiority and misrepresentation.




Abraham depicts the incredible infiltration of gender identity ideology in our institutions as one of agonisingly slow progress held up by hysteria and bigotry. "On the one hand, some (especially “gender critical feminists” and the right-wing and tabloid press).." - Scare quotes on gender critical not elaborated on, but the 'right-wing' links to a piece in The Times on women being raped by 'trans' prisoners with penises, as does 'tabloid' for The Sun. The contempt within this flippant dismissal is nothing less than sickening.



Abraham contines "..push the idea that allowing trans prisoners into jails that correspond with their lived gender could mean putting convicted male rapists into women’s prisons. They do this by using one or two extreme cases such as the Karen White case, where the prisoner was immediately remanded to a women’s prison (contravening the Ministry’s own policy at the time) and subsequently sexually assaulted fellow prisoners." One or two cases? Well, Karen White, who sexually assaulted four women is one case. Jessica Winfield, née Mark Ponting, had to be moved after he, as a convicted rapist (who, like White then claimed a trans identity after imprisonment) began assaulting and harassing female prisoners. There is Kayleigh-Louise Woods, who tied up, tortured and murdered her flatmate Bethany Hill (after taking up with her boyfriend, who was co-accused) and had to be moved after sexual activity, and Paris Green, who also tied up, sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered, this time an older man, had to be moved after 'predatory behaviour'.

The rate of sex offenders identifying as trans in UK prisons is disproportionately high. Around 20% of the male prison population are serving sentences for sex offences, but among trans women in prison a staggering 48% are there for sex crimes (prison resources). This is clearly not a concern to Abraham, who lists two suicides of trans people in men's prisons. One of these is Vikki Thompson, who is undoubtedly a sad tale of childhood adversity and struggle. Thing is, had Abraham been bothered to do her job properly, she would know that Thompson had never even asked to move to a woman's prison, and, unbelievably, neither had Latham.

Latham was in prison for first trying to kill a female friend and then committing another two, separate, attempted murders. But anyway, obviously these people would not have committed suicide if they were in the female estate, that's our lesson here. Despite the fact the women's prisons system has nowhere with high enough security to accommodate someone this violent. The suicide rate among trans people is high, before and after surgery, in and out of prison.

What's an absolute fuckin shambles is the arrogant, deliberately blinkered bias of happy-clappy 'feminists' who fawn over the fate of violent, sex offending males without dedicating a moment's thought to the fact women in prison are far more vulnerable than any of these men. Women who commit different crimes to men and for different reasons. Women who's estate has far less funding, a much smaller population with hardly a sex offender among them.

Abraham speaks righteously, saying that denying trans prisoners their corresponding prison is abuse, talking about how every inmate is in a heightened state of awareness about what they're getting comparative to others. She postulates anything might be used for personal advantage, whether it's religion, special interests, sport and being trans is just one more which could potentially be seen as a soft option. Why, Baker asks, would anyone decide that constant misgendering, taunts, sexual harassment and isolation was a soft option?

Well, interesting you should ask, Alan. How about you check out the prison magazine Inside Times? Here "I find it pretty suspicious that the majority of these trans-jesters, as I call them, are sex offenders, and it turns out that transgender people do not have to do the Sex Offenders Treatment Programme ...there are SOME genuine transgender prisoners in the system, but surely not the amount crawling out of the woodwork even in the last 6 months?"

Or how about Littlehey? "It is with utter disgust and concern as a non-sex offender trans’ prisoner that I find anyone can and does say they are trans, just so they can continue their sexual deviant ways or avoiding having to do the SOTP programme...The sickest part of this is the system can do sod-all about these trans’ bandwagon-jumpers, because policy states they must be treated as transgender ‘if they say they are’... You do not have to be transgender here, only to say you are and you do not even have to ‘live in role’. So if you want to avoid addressing your offending behaviour, ‘go trans'"

There's more here; "I have witnessed 17 sex offenders jump on the trans bandwagon..and having had the misfortune to live amongst these characters I can tell you with the exception of about two of them, I would hate to see any of them in a female prison"

Still, no one at Dazed thought to look at the counter arguments those 'gender critical' types use, and certainly don't want to confuse the subject with other prisoner's, even trans one's, concerns. So we are stuck with Abraham as she shudders with the horror of Baker's suffering;

"At times, other prisoners have attempted to end her life. I tentatively ask her the lowest point in terms of transphobic abuse: “Getting raped in the prison showers by five people,” she says, holding my stare brazenly, before quickly moving the conversation onto sunnier subjects" Wow, so multiple murder attempts and a gang rape by five people. Any reports of these? I'm not saying it's a lie, but considering the cynicism towards actual women's concerns, I'm surprised at the lack of detail or scepticism here. I'm also wondering what exactly has happened to Baker's claim from 2014 that following a visit to Charing Cross hospital the prison guards beat and tortured him? It was of course denied by the prison, and it isn't mentioned here.

Throughout this pretty long article, which I found more and more infuriating to read, Abraham continuously quotes a Dr Sarah Lamble of the organisation Bent Bars. Dr Lamble is 'reader of criminology and queer theory at Birkbeck College'. What, if any, experience she has of working with offenders is unstated, which I assume means she has none.

It is with Dr Lamble these difficult subjects are routinely flashed up as important before being shat on and then shoved under the carpet, with an unholy dose of Febreze (in the liberal feminism range). There's no 'gender critical' feminist to give input, it's all sewn up with a neat and colourful running stitch. "It’s also a myth to think that cis women don’t want trans people in prison with them" Abraham continues, without citation. “I would say that, for most women in prison, there are way more pressing issues,” says Dr Lamble, who has also heard from trans prisoners who actually felt welcomed at a women’s prison and have been actively supported by non-trans women prisoners" Well, isn't it nice to know their opinions matter at least sometimes? Great work, ladies. May your social justice, feminist stripes forever precede you. "Yet, instead of hearing from prisoners, too often it is the media that shapes the narrative." I know, right! "This is why we have started to believe that cases like Karen White are the norm, rather than the outlier. In reality, cases like this are in a minority" - I would really like to ask Lamble and Abraham, how many rapes of extremely vulnerable, traumatised women with no escape are acceptable?

"We can tell that a lot of discourse around trans prisoners stems from out and out transphobia simply because we don’t apply the same fears towards other types of prisoners" concludes Abraham. It's a damn fucking shame this bright eyed young ideologue didn't dirty her pristine mind with the thoughts of feminists. We could have told her, these "types of prisoners" are being treated exactly the same as the vast majority of prisoners are. That is, they are male. They are male, they have often committed sex crimes and crimes involving violence against the person which are classic male pattern offending. We exclude males from women's prisons, refuges, bathrooms, changing rooms and recovery wards and clinics not because we have an irrational fear and hatred, but because they commit 98.8% of all recorded sex crimes. In the UK two to three women a week are killed by a present or former partner. This plays out across the world and is historically stable. The only changes have been recent, for instance since the introduction of self id in Ireland, the reported rate of female sex offenders has increased.

It isn't hatred to respond with women-only spaces, and it makes me ineffably angry to see two women so gleefully flinging their poorer sisters to the wolves.

For all the moralising of Abraham, the smug certainty she betrays of what she believes to be well rounded, nuanced and realistic approach to crime, it's in equal measure pitiful and also bitterly hilarious that we began this article with this admission;

"We approach the prison gates I am grateful that I have read Carl’s book, because until I did, all I knew about prison came from TV and films"

Brilliant.

Poppy Cox