Trans rights for the confused and bewildered
This is the title of a piece posted on Medium.com last week. From the title you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is an explanation of trans rights for people who are confused and bewildered.
You’d be wrong.
Anyone who is genuinely confused and bewildered about this topic is unlikely to make it past the excruciating introduction, in which the transgender author is at pains to sacrifice clarity, basic grammar and – as always – truthfulness in favour of trying to entertain other trans activists who are every bit as dim as he is.
In the entirety of the piece, trans rights as such are barely touched on. Instead, we are treated to a hotchpotch of trans-related questions followed by what are presumably the author’s idea of slam dunk replies.
It would take too long to dismantle all of them and some aren’t worth the candle anyway. The most important questions, which are about children and the increase in the number of young women claiming to be transgender, are written about at length by people far more able than the author of this piece, in many articles linked to from this page, so I’ll leave them alone.
The same applies to the legislation around single-sex spaces, over which the author makes this irredeemably daft comment about those of us who campaign against allowing men in women’s spaces:
Of course, knowing the truth isn’t an obstacle to understanding anything. It just make the legal and biological fictions created by the Gender Recognition Act 2004 even funnier – especially when represented by the likes of India Willoughby who, in a radio interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer last week said this:
And let’s remind ourselves of India Willoughby’s very womanly reaction after being heinously (and accidentally) “misgendered” by 83-year-old Amanda Barrie.
A better example of an obstacle would be a sense of male entitlement – just like the one so ably demonstrated by India Willoughby – that is so strong it proves to be an insurmountable obstacle to empathising with women and understanding why we don’t want men (with or without scare quotes) in our spaces.
Anyway, Joss Prior’s explanation of the legislation would have been fantastic, were it not for the fact that it is hopelessly misleading twaddle. Never mind. There is already a wealth of accurate information online that is not only written by people who know what they are talking about but is in comprehensible English and helpfully refers to specific sections of the Act.
So in spite of the piece’s title, it doesn’t take long for Joss Prior to abandon all pretence of explaining trans rights and move on to highlighting various random observations that tend to incur the wrath of trans activists in general and, presumably, Joss Prior in particular.
“Being trans is a fetish”
One of those observations would seem to be the outrageous suggestion that transgenderism is some kind of fetish and – to be fair – there’s nothing remotely fetishistic about men who like to post countless pics of themselves displaying their erect penises under the ‘girls like us’ hashtag. Of course there isn’t.
More seriously, I’m not aware of anyone who claims this is true of every single trans-identifying individual, so Joss Prior’s attempt to debunk it with a fallacious appeal to incredulity – basically a Scouse version of ‘as if anyone would go through all that for sexual gratification’ – is wasted. Nobody I know of who has done any research whatsoever thinks of trans people as a homogenous group.
Ray Blanchard is an academic who came up with the hypothesis that heterosexual male transsexuals are motivated by an erotic desire to be women, which he called autogynephilia. When I first became concerned about transgenderism, Blanchard had been declared persona non grata by vociferous trans activists. But over the past couple of years I’ve noticed that more and more transsexuals are happy to proclaim themselves autogynephiles, so I’m planning to add a page to this site on the subject in due course rather than dealing with it here.
Instead, I’ll turn to the question that those of us who are actually women consider to be fundamental but which, for obvious reasons, is placed last in the Medium.com article. The obvious reason being that Joss Prior can’t answer it.
Here it is:
“Define a woman”
“Which one?” comes the thick-witted reply, instantly reminding me of one of my favourite pages on this site – the one where I examine the idiotic pronouncements of cerebrally-challenged trans activists. Sure enough, Joss Prior comes up with several of the canards featured on that page.
So in that quote alone, we have the usual hogwash of pretending not to understand that being asked to define ‘woman’ is a request for the defining characteristics of a woman, i.e. what it is that distinguishes women from other things, such as men. That women have different experiences or whatever, has no bearing on what the word ‘woman’ means. The meaning is the same, whether the woman is a Saudi princess or a Sonagachi prostitute. Fortunately, we have these things called ‘dictionaries’ that can help us with the definition but, for some unfathomable reason, trans activists spurn these, preferring to pretend the word is indefinable.
Then there’s the baloney about how pointing out the reality that women are female i.e. of the sex that produces ova is, according to these very same trans activists, “reducing women to their genitals”, which is both manifestly stupid and patently dishonest. The other canard – and this provoked the only laugh-out-loud moment in the whole article – is the one about what it feels like to be a woman.
How hilarious is that vision – plucked from Joss Prior’s febrile imagination and generously shared with the rest of us – of women responding to that question by “pointing to their genitals”? As if.
And there’s this:
Tragic accident? Yet more amusing mental imagery conjured up courtesy of Joss Prior, who continues to push that straw man (or, rather, straw ‘man’) about genitalia but who, like every other trans activist that ever lived, proves quite unable to provide a definition of the word ‘woman’ that is rational, non-circular, objective, useful and complete. Yet in spite of being unable to define ‘woman’, Joss Prior claims to be one because of an “inward persona”, a “sense of self”.
In other words, because of feelings.
Thank you, Joss Prior. Always good to see people who have the arrogance to claim to be what they can’t even define, shoot themselves in the foot. At least it’s not in the genitals. How tragic would that be?
Now for something completely different:
“Trans women have an unfair advantage in sports.”
According to Joss Prior,
Good grief!
Clearly it was too much effort for Joss Prior to do a modicum of research before coming out with that preposterous statement and this one:
There doesn’t appear to be a consistently agreed definition of the term ‘elite athlete’ and we can only guess at why Joss Prior’s doesn’t think Rachel McKinnon who, a few months ago, boasted of being the “first transgender woman world champion…ever” and Laurel Hubbard, who cheated a woman out of a place in New Zealand’s team for the Commonwealth Games, fit the bill. What about Savannah Burton, selected to play for Canada’s national women’s dodgeball team and Hannah Mouncey of Australia’s national women’s handball team? What about the EIGHT selected for Iran’s women’s football team?
I mean…just how ‘elite’ do they have to be to qualify as what Joss Prior thinks is elite??
In any event, to focus on ‘elite athletes’ is disingenuous when girls in US high schools are being deprived at the chances of sports scholarships because of a policy that allows young men like Andraya Yarwood and Terry Miller to compete against young women, simply because they claim to be transgender. Transgender athlete and medical physicist, Joanna Harper, commented:
Hormones? What hormones? Obviously not testosterone because that is something young men have in abundance and a developmental biologist and research fellow, who posts under the pseudonym of Dr Fond of Beetles, has helpfully written a blog explaining its effect on the male physique and performance across many difference sports and concluding that,
Even transgender Joanna Harper, concedes that,
Ya think?
So what is the case for allowing trans-identifying males to compete in women’s events? What is Joss Prior’s argument?
As we’ve already seen, the assertion that there are “no elite trans women in women’s sports” is nonsense and a diversion. And we can only marvel that someone who uses a phrase like “allowed to compete at a competitive level” disparages anyone else’s IQ.
Even better is the convoluted way of pointing out that females are weaker than males, who have heavier bones. At least, I presume that is what that guff about throwing skeletons around is supposed to mean. If anyone would prefer a grown-up explanation using data from reputable sources, I recommend this page. The same site points out that, contrary to what Joss Prior seems to be trying to say, there is currently no evidence that lowering testosterone to normal female levels can fully remove male-competitive advantage.
Or just look at this response from a Japanese professor to another article on Medium.com that tries to make the same argument.
If a person that is fully grown and takes a hormone cure, it will not change everything, it will not change the bone structure anymore. That is just a fact, for me and my colleagues, we are wondering more and more why so many people have a problem with facts.
If a child takes a hormone cure *before* puberty that can and will have more effect on the body structure, but even then it will not change the body completely, the one thing we can never change with any means are the DNA, that is the blueprint of your body. You can also not change your chromosomes.
What we also find interesting that even when people see that whenever a male person that transitions to a woman with a hormone treatment that they still keep on dominating in the sport, biological women are crushed. And that is again a fact.
Please do not get this the wrong way, Human biology is my life, I have been studying it for over 30 years in my professional life, do you really want me to ignore this?
The notion of being born in the wrong body is also quite wrong. There is a huge study going on what we hope to unveil later that actually shows this. It will be peer-reviewed of course. I do hope you will be able to accept those results because what we noticed that these days it is, feelings are more important than facts.
But I do have to stress this, yes, transwomen have an advantage over biological women in sport. Especially if they transitioned AFTER their puberty.
I also do hope you realize that a hormone treatment as very young ages is actually quite dangerous.
Only 1 out of 10 for effort, Joss Prior. Must try harder.
Moving on…
“Trans women shouldn’t be allowed in sex-segregated spaces because 70,80,90% retain a penis and may rape.”
Swiftly followed by
This serves as a perfect illustration of the first rule of trans activism, which is to misrepresent and trivialise the argument you are challenging, then respond to the misrepresentation even though nobody is making that argument in the first place. Joss Prior’s response focuses entirely on the number of transgender people there are in the UK and how many may or may not have genital surgery. It’s hard to imagine anyone missing the point more spectacularly.
Yes, the fact that the majority of male transgender people are bepenised and – more importantly in my opinion – heterosexual, is mentioned frequently by feminists challenging gender ideology. The point is to correct a widely-held public misconception that men who “identify” as women are so “feminine” that they are virtually women anyway, so who cares if they share women’s spaces, or displace us on all-women shortlists, in sports events, etc? It’s as if Caitlyn Jenner’s current incarnation doesn’t exist, when in fact Jenner who, like Joss Prior and India Willoughby, isn’t remotely feminine and didn’t start his pretence of womanhood until after siring children, appears to be far more typical of the trans-identifying males abusing women on social media, than the likes of Blaire White, who is undeniably cute, camp and gay.
Of course, we can’t know whether or not someone who is perceptibly male but tries to present as female has had genital surgery or not and actually it doesn’t make an iota of difference to how we feel sharing spaces we expect to be sex-segregated with people who, in spite of their best efforts, are obviously not female.
Contrary to what Joss Prior seems to think, this is not just about penises and fear of forced penetration by one. A woman can be murdered, violently or sexually assaulted without feeling the penis of her assailant. She can be seriously psychologically distressed without even being physically touched.
As I wrote elsewhere,
On another post, I quote from a prison officer on the effect of trans identified males – a high proportion of whom are sex offenders and paedophiles – in women prisons. I’ll repeat just this bit:
Identifying as (their idea of) women doesn’t stop many men promoting violence and sexual assault against us online, much less violently or sexually assaulting women in real life. Joss Prior – whose empathy for women hovers below the zero mark – calls pointing this out “deliberately inflaming framing” and using “jarring, scary and emotive language” but makes no attempt either to deny or address the problem. No surprise there.
Speaking of which:
“Trans people are so aggressive and demanding.”
Did you expect us to be quietly grateful at the attempts to dismiss, demonise, and legislate against us? Did you expect us to fade away and give up? Should we drop to our knees and beg kindly for our rights and freedoms?
Aggression is the name our oppressors gave to our pain.
Hmm….let’s see.
Did the suffragettes say ‘stuff like this’ to their enemies?
Would you kindly suck my womanly dick.
Terf=trans exclusionary radical feminist…burn them all.
Trans women are women. Everyone denying that is invited to die in a fire.
Terf voice: I am a piece of trash who does not value trans people and I should be set on fire.
I haven’t pissed in the face of a terf in ages.
You know I can’t even be bothered setting the terfs on fire myself go and fucking self immolate you cunts.
Round up every terf and all their friends just for good measure and slit their throats one by one.
Time to eat a gryo and masturbate furiously to the sound of terfs crying.
Suck my girlcock cunts. Preferably choke on it.
No, I don’t think they did, did they?
Not a woman
Don’t flatter yourself, Joss Prior. You are a member of the sex class that has, throughout history and across cultures, oppressed the other sex-class. You don’t get to play the victim of oppression just because not all of us who are victims of that oppression are prepared to allow you to determine you are one of us simply on the basis of how you feel.
Womanhood is not a feeling, it’s not a subjective experience and it’s not the name of your mental illness!
It is a biological reality and the basis on which we are controlled, degraded and bullied by men like you.
As we both know, you’ve put considerable effort into trying to bully me personally by spreading a demonstrably false narrative about me the day after I was physically assaulted by other men like you, thereby making sure it remained a huge talking point and provoking endless abuse of me by yet more vicious, nasty, misogynistic and utterly delusional men like you.
And, of course, any attempt by me to fight back against that false narrative was mocked and disdained by you as “dining out”. Yet a whole 18 months after the assault you circulate the false narrative again.
Why?
Because you were triggered by the sight of me not only participating in an action against your pseudo cult but looking more fabulous than you could ever dream of, for all your poncing and pouting. How it must suck that your attempt to shut me up has had precisely the opposite effect as well as bringing countless more women and men to peak trans.
Oh and by the way… it is something of a surprise to me that in the 15 months I’ve been running this site, I’ve only had one abusive email. It came a month ago from an email account called ‘Big Frank’ – a name that obviously belongs to a big grizzly bear of a man. At least a beefy nightclub bouncer with shady connections, if not an actual gangster, surely?
But what kind of man would be so offended by a 62-year-old woman’s appearance that he calls her ‘ugly’ twice in the same short email, while claiming someone who just happens to be called “Joss” is more of a woman than she’ll ever be?
It’s a mystery.
the “ugly little scruff”
Updated 06.06.19 to add:
Just when I think Joss Prior can’t get any more repugnant, he steps up to the plate to prove me wrong. He is currently participating in a vicious campaign of harassment and libel of catholic journalist, Caroline Farrow. This is an example of what he’s capable of:
Published 23.03.19
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2 Responses to Trans rights for the confused and bewildered
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“If I ask a cisgender woman how it feels to be a woman, they usually struggle to pin down exactly how that feels.”
I think that the quote above undermines her argument. If a cisgender woman struggles to describe what it feels like to be a woman, then how can a transwoman be sure that her feeling of being a woman is actually what it feels like to be a woman and not some other feeling she’s misinterpreted as feeling like a woman. What is the transwoman using as a comparison?
All the comments that were on this page before today’s date have been removed but screencaps of them can be seen on this blog: https://www.peaktrans.org/rattling-the-honey-badgers-cage/