Mick Hartley

A significant portion of the male biological advantages are retained

The Times have actually bothered to get a "leading sports scientist", Ross Tucker, to tell us what we already knew about allowing trans women to compete in women's sport: that it's a nonsense.  Still, he sets the arguments out clearly enough:

To understand the physiological nuances of transgender women in sport, we must first understand the purpose of competitive sport. It exists to reward performance excellence, which is the result of physiological attributes that are optimised by preparation and environment. We recognise Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt as outstanding proponents of their crafts because they possess the optimal physiological hardware and software, harnessed through preparation, to win Olympic gold medals.

Katie Ledecky and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce are worthy of the same recognition for their medals as Phelps and Bolt were for theirs. Yet Ledecky in swimming and Fraser-Pryce on the track are about 11 per cent slower than Phelps and Bolt. In other sports the male-female difference is even larger. Power is about 30 per cent greater in men than women, male upper-body strength advantages range between 30 and 60 per cent, and punching power is 260 per cent higher in men.

These performance differences exist because, unlike their male counterparts, female athletes never have access to high levels of so-called androgen hormones (literally “male-making” hormones, the most well-known of which is testosterone), that drive development of what are called secondary sex characteristics at puberty and into adulthood. These include longer and stronger bones, a narrower pelvis, a larger heart and lungs, lower body fat mass, increased muscle mass and vastly increased muscle strength.

These biological differences create a sports performance chasm that necessitates a separate women’s category to ensure fairness and opportunity. The only reason we can celebrate the accomplishments of exceptional female athletes as equal to those of males is because a separate women’s category exists.

Without this protected category, the biological reality is that at every single matched level — high school, club, county, Olympic Games — the best men outperform the best women by margins large enough that in a single sex category, women would disappear from that sport. For example, the 2016 Olympic 100m champion, Elaine Thompson, was outperformed by 1,826 boys and men that year, including by 14-year-olds, over-50s and Paralympic sprinters.

A pervasive and uninformed counter-argument is that the male sex advantage is similar to having long arms for swimming, fast-twitch muscle fibres for sprinting or being tall for basketball. This argument equates male biology to other advantages that are “natural” and should thus not be regulated. Those arguing this fail to realise that if this were accepted as true, there would be no reason to create any categories for any sport — all biological advantages could be considered “natural”.

Gone would be age categories, weight categories and there would be no reason at all to keep men and women separate under any circumstances. The result would be a giant genetic lottery in which being biologically male was a prerequisite for sporting success, since about 2,000 boys and men, the “lucky ones” by this logic, can outperform the very best women, who are simply “unlucky” not to have that advantage, in every event.

These natural traits form part of the package of attributes that the sport rewards in both men and women, creating meaning for that sport. The best male and female athletes in each sport are similar, possessing “the right stuff” in the right combinations to succeed. Yet the female champion with the “right stuff” is still significantly outperformed by the best males. The difference is androgen-induced, and by scale and concept, long arms or any other variable cannot make up for it.

All of this brings us to the thorny issue of transgender inclusion and whether it can be achieved fairly. The IOC requires a trans woman to reduce testosterone levels to below 10 nmol/L for 12 months to be eligible for women’s competition. The premise here is that since testosterone is the primary source of the male advantages, its removal should “fix” the problem and ensure fairness.

But is there any evidence that the required testosterone reduction removes the biological differences that create male performance advantages? The short answer is no. In 13 longitudinal studies tracking trans women who undergo testosterone suppression for more than a year, measures such as total mass, bone density, muscle mass and muscle strength are either unchanged, or removed by only a fraction of the initial male vs female advantage. For instance, where an initial difference in muscle strength was 50 per cent, testosterone suppression reduced strength by between 0 and 10 per cent.

This is crucially important — it means that a significant portion of the male biological advantages are retained. The “fix” does not work. Critics will argue that these studies are imperfect, not done on athletes, and this is certainly a limitation. However, there is no basis to believe that athletically trained trans women would lose more of their advantages than untrained trans women, and in fact, there is abundant evidence that training may protect against the losses documented in these studies.

The upshot of the scientific picture is that the three key imperatives for any sport — fairness, safety and inclusion — cannot be balanced or achieved simultaneously. Based on the available scientific evidence, inclusion will occur at the expense of fairness and possibly safety. Put differently, fairness cannot be guaranteed to biological females by the current inclusion policies.

Of course, as I say, we know all this. It's like a lecture on how we know that the earth revolves around the sun. But we keep having to point out the obvious in the face of all this sudden trans ideology.

Nor should transgender inclusion be "a thorny issue". It's really not an issue at all: it's obviously absurd. Why should all this effort and fuss be expended on the supposed sporting requirements of the tiny number of men who've decided to live as women? Who cares? What with the "inclusivity"? They can play all the sport they want, after all, but if it's competitive sport they want, then they compete in the right category - as men.

And of course it's not a transgender issue as such: it's a transwoman issue. We hear not a peep from transmen about inclusivity and their need for validation on the sports field, for obvious reasons: they'd lose. They'd be pummelled, battered, bruised, and humiliated. Transwomen, on the other hand, start with a huge built-in advantage. That's why they want to do it so badly. It is, basically, a scam.

Plus, you can't help thinking, there's the TWAW - trans women are women - mantra. If we don't allow trans women to compete as women in sport, then we're pointing out that, no, trans women aren't really women at all. And that would never do.

Mymesis, beings and places

A spectacular mural opposite Burgos cathedral in northern Spain:

A guardian angel in the form of a grey heron watches over an allegorical mural at Burgos Cathedral in Spain. Painted by Louis Boidron and Edouard Egea, who work as MonkeyBird, “Mymesis, beings and places” is an homage to the artworks and design of the church, which UNESCO designated a World Heritage site back in 1984 in part because it captures the evolution of gothic architecture: construction on the building began in 1221 and wasn’t complete until 1567, meaning it showcases the entire history of the style.

Translating many of the religious symbols and motifs found inside, the duo combines the cathedral’s profound history with its signature stenciled aesthetic and recurring monkey and bird creatures. The resulting mural is a dense display of ornate structural elements, airborne birds called papamoscas cerrojillo that typically nest in the building, and a gilded clock from the 18th Century. “Our intention was to offer an effect of complex depth and monumentalism, combining some of the most spectacular references of the temple, such as the main altarpiece, with its many details, the Golden Staircase, or the circular oculus in the center of Santa María façade,” MonkeyBird says.

[Images © MonkeyBird]

On Instagram

A president who has committed crimes against humanity

Will the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi as president of Iran make any difference to Biden's plans to salvage the nuclear deal that was so rudely canceled by Trump? Probably not. It should, though. As Mariam Memarsadeghi points out, the man has blood on his hands.

Raisi became an Islamist ideologue as a teen studying in the seminary in Qom. After the revolution, when he was only 19 years old and lacking any university education, he was appointed as a prosecutor, rising over the following four decades to fill the positions of attorney general, deputy chief justice and, most recently, chief justice of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship.

Most notably, though, Raisi was one of four members of a death committee responsible for the 1988 execution of thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience in the space of a few months. The ideologically motivated mass executions constituted both a crime against humanity and genocide—a cleansing of religious infidels—according to international human rights expert Geoffrey Robertson. It was a massacre, he says, comparable to those at Srebrenica and the Katyn Forest.

Raisi would typically spend only a few minutes with each prisoner—some young children—asking them questions to test their allegiance to radical Islam. The prisoners, mostly leftist revolutionaries who had helped bring the regime to power, typically refused to feign loyalty, even after prolonged and brutal torture, which in some cases was personally directed and overseen by Raisi. It is estimated that a minimum of a few thousand and as many as 30,000 were killed by hanging or firing squad. The massacre is still shrouded in secrecy, with the regime continuing to deny information to the families of those killed, including about the location of their loved ones’ remains.

What is known is the speed and efficiency of killing, with hangings using forklifts every half hour, and the dumping of dead bodies in piles on trucks, a method and pace that traumatized the executioners themselves. Virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven. The executed were ordered to write their own names on their hands before they went to their death. The massacre is a trauma etched into the collective consciousness of all of the Iranian people, throughout the country and throughout the diaspora.

At the time, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had been designated to succeed the revolutionary leader Khomeini, condemned the mass executions in an act of dissent. In response, Khomeini rescinded Montazeri’s clerical rank, canceled his selection as the next supreme leader, and condemned him to house arrest. In Montazeri’s place, Raisi rose up.

To this day, Raisi is proud of his role as a dutiful mass killer. In 2017, he posted to his Telegram channel a video in which he justified the massacre, and in 2018 called it “divine punishment” and a “proud achievement” for the revolutionary regime. During his tenure as attorney general (2014-2016), executions spiked significantly compared to previous years, and during his time as judiciary chief (2019-2021), the regime shot to death at least 1,500 peaceful protestors on the streets in more than 200 cities and imprisoned, tortured, and executed countless more, in the biggest act of state violence since the 1988 prison massacre.

An ardent ideologue, Raisi believes that state violence is not only justifiable—as autocrats typically do in their commitment to regime survival or “national security”—but that it is godly. He has not only justified but exalted the Islamist theocracy’s violence by elevating it above all other violence on earth...

The regime uses its nuclear program as a means to extort the United States so it can survive. But as much as the Obama/Biden playbook may want to keep the regime in power as a “counterbalance” in the region—a nonsensical phrase, since the “other side” being “balanced” in this formulation would be the United States and its regional allies—the regime itself knows it is in an irreparable legitimacy crisis, no matter how much the United States accommodates it. The regime knows it is structurally incapable of being accountable to the Iranian people. It knows that with its monstrous network of patronage and corruption, it is incapable of addressing the compounding existential crises that have galvanized the mostazefeen, the downtrodden in whose name the revolution was originally waged. It knows that any measure of freedom and openness it may grant to the Iranian people will only be used to press for wholesale regime change.

Khamenei is a student of the Soviet Union and the KGB. He knows how glasnost and perestroika backfired. His regime’s decay is undeniable, and the Iranian people’s determination to fight him will only grow. But he has decided the only recourse is further brutality, to which he hopes to make the United States a de facto partner.

Khamenei wants to put the United States in the debased position of not only lifting sanctions but lifting them on a president who has committed crimes against humanity. He wants to terrorize the people of Iran further and show them that they have nowhere to appeal to—and that the standard-bearers of freedom and human rights prefer to send pallets of cash to mass murderers than to support the legitimate and peaceful aspirations of ordinary Iranians. By doing so, he intends to fortify the culture of impunity he has created for his yes-men and himself. He wants to make the Iranian people lose their deep and abiding faith in the United States and give up on their dream of becoming a democracy. President Biden would be profoundly wrong to give Khamenei what he wants.

Quite why Biden and his team would want to deal with such a regime remains a mystery - beyond some kind of loyalty to Obama's legacy, and the partisan desire to believe that everything Trump did had to be wrong. But Obama's attempts to rebuild America's Middle East policy around some kind of rapprochement with Tehran were profoundly misconceived, and Trump's moves to abandon the flawed nuclear deal and impose sanctions turned out to be just what was needed to break the deadlock. Witness, for example, the Abraham Accords.

Surely the election of the appalling Ebrahim Raisi will give the Biden team the kick in the pants they need to reassess where they're going with Iran. We'll see.

Rejecting Israel's vaccines

Israel just offered the Palestinian Authority over one million Pfizer vaccines. After initially accepting, the PA declined the offer a few hours later. Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator:

When it was announced on Friday that Israel would indeed send up to 1.4 million vaccines to the Palestinians, many complained that this rare example of mutual cooperation had gone mostly unnoticed by previously vocal critics. Israel is now vaccinating 12-15 year olds, having fully vaccinated around 57 per cent of its 9.3 million population. Thus the country felt confident it could now assist the Palestinians, only around 11 per cent of whom have received at least one dose.

The deal specified that Israel’s stock of Pfizer vaccines, currently nearing their expiry date, would be sent to the Palestinians. In return, the PA would give Israel its batch of vaccines when they are delivered in the Autumn.

Wasting no time, Israel dispatched the first 90,000 doses to the Palestinian Authority just hours after the deal was agreed. But those vaccines never made into Palestinians’ arms. Once they arrived, the PA rejected them, arguing that the vaccines don’t meet their standards. Some were due to expire in just 13 days, but were, of course, still viable if administered in that timeframe.

These are the very same vaccines Israelis have used to break free from the pandemic. An incredulous statement from the Israeli Health Ministry said the vaccines delivered to the Palestinians are ‘Identical in every way to the vaccines currently being administered to Israel’s citizens.’

As ever, it is hard to know the real reasons behind the Palestinian Authority’s U-turn, but the health of its people cannot have been at the top of its agenda.

It never is.

Millions in the UK have benefitted from Pfizer’s gold-standard vaccine, even when the doses were close to expiry. My own first dose was administered some months ago in London, as the empty vaccination centre was closing up for the day. The doctor who swept me into her cubicle told me that three minutes later my jab would need to be tossed in the bin.

Israel says the short shelf life of the vaccines it was sending had been known to the PA when the deal was struck. The initial batch of 90,000 was the closest to expiry, with subsequent batches due to expire some weeks later. Perhaps the idea that this deal represented ‘normalisation’ with Israel was too much for some on the Palestinian side, whose reaction gave their leaders cold feet.

Aside from passing up the opportunity to vaccinate 90,000 people in the next two weeks –and over a million before the end of the summer – the PA may also struggle to allay fears of corruption in how it distributes its vaccines. Convincing people to be vaccinated will also not be easy. According to last week’s poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, only 40 per cent of Palestinians are willing to accept a vaccine when one is available, and 35 per cent are unwilling to get vaccinated at all.

This is exactly the sort of deal that richer countries around the world are being encouraged to make. Redistributing surplus vaccines is essential if we are to help poorer societies out of the pandemic sooner. But that can only work if they accept the help when it is offered.

To accept the Israeli vaccines would entail some level of acknowledgement; some level of gratitude. They just can't do it - and to hell with the health of the people. 

Online attacks against women are more personal

The recent Israeli-Gaza violence provoked an outpouring of antisemitic abuse on social media. For women known for their pro-Israel views, though, the rhetoric was, as Emily Schrader reports, particularly personal and nasty:

That is not to say that male activists did not receive threats or harassment, but the viciousness of attacks against women on social media were of a different nature entirely. For one, I was targeted by Malaysians who tweeted over 100,000 times with personal insults about my appearance and dozens of poor-quality memes ranging from laughably absurd to deeply violent. Of course, I received dozens of Hitler pictures and calls to “kill the Jews,” but I also had multiple fake accounts made in my name, which were tweeting and tagging people who follow my verified account, saying, “I’m the real Emily Schrader. I’m a slut.”

In addition, my email was leaked, and I received multiple detailed death threats with sexually explicit descriptions of how they would attack me. There was a public call to hack my social media accounts and website. My Instagram DMs and Twitter DMs exploded with hundreds of messages calling me names, threatening rape, and making otherwise sexist and outrageous comments such as, “Go suck Netanyahu’s ball [sic] ... Hey slut I will bomb your house.” Another stated, “Your vagina is so dirty and disgusting, I can assure that it was a rape of an Israeli dog [sic].” I share these vile comments not to give them attention, as some have counseled me not to do, but to draw attention to the larger problem: These comments are not out of the ordinary for a Jewish woman to receive on social media. Today there is no greater social media “crime” than being a Jewish or pro-Israel woman.

In the pro-Israel world, there are few vocal female voices. This, again, is not a coincidence. Personally attacking and threatening women is a method of silencing their voices, online and in real life, and deterring new ones from speaking up. “With women there are no boundaries ... The most common comment I get is sharmuta (“whore” in Arabic),” said TikTok influencer Shai Emanuel Yamin. “I saw men also suffering from hate comments, but it’s never about how they look or what they wear.” Liora Rez, the founder and executive director of Stop Antisemitism, agreed that the online attacks against women are more personal: “From the most deranged rape threats to the doxxing of my parents’ information, antisemites have no boundaries when it comes to harassing female Jewish activists online.”

To be clear, it’s not just Jewish women being targeted. Yasmine Mohammed, an ex-Muslim and women’s rights activist with over 100,000 Twitter followers, has been the target of gender-based hate comments for years after speaking against antisemitism. In response to the Israeli-Gaza conflict, she tweeted, “I’m normally inundated with death threats, but these past couple of weeks, it’s been more vicious than ever.” In conversation, she told me, “The explosion in the intensity of hate that I receive when I speak up in support of Israel or against antisemitism … no one can ever get used to that. And some threats are even more vile than just death.”

Vicious sexist abuse goes hand in hand with antisemitism. Well who'd have thought?

Could pursue legal action

The latest on the Royal Academy trans debacle:

An artist whose work was withdrawn from a gift shop at London’s Royal Academy of Arts after she was accused of transphobia has said she could pursue legal action if she is not given an apology.

Jess de Wahls said she noticed “a mob” being “mounted against” her on social media after comments she made about sex and gender in a blog in 2019.

In a post on her website, she wrote: “I have no issue with somebody who feels more comfortable expressing themselves as if they are the other sex (or in whatever way they please for that matter).

“However, I cannot accept people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to when they were born and deserve to be extended the same rights as if they were born as such.”...

Asked if she would pursue a recourse in law if she did not get an apology, she said: “I might do. But, to be honest with you, right now, I have the feeling that there is a hope within that institution, which is mind-boggling to me, that this just will go away . . . my inbox and the feedback I’ve been getting from the general public is quite the opposite.

“This isn’t going away. This is a conversation that needs to happen, it needs to happen in public. They will have to talk eventually.”

It may be, as de Wahls suggests, that the Royal Academy are just keeping their heads down and hoping the whole business will quickly blow over. But it would have been so easy for them to offer a swift apology and admit they reacted in haste and made a poor judgement. The fact that they haven't done so suggests to me that there are elements within the RA who are holding out, and actually believe - still believe, after all the negative reaction - that they did the right thing. It'd be fascinating to listen in to their internal debate.

Let's hope Jess de Wahls stays firm. I'm sure she will.

Update: Radio 4 interview.

Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Marion Post Wolcott - September 1941. "Transport truck in service station. Scottsbluff, Nebraska."

[Photo: Shorpy/Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration]

"Serving America's Valley of the Nile"? A reference apparently to the schemes of one George H Payne:

When Omaha businessman George H. Payne (1864-1937) formed the Payne Investment Company in the early 1910s, he launched what would become one of the largest colonization efforts in the West. The company’s promotional periodical The Land Owner, “A Journal of Opportunity,” on April 15, 1911, advertised the company’s aim  “To Put the Landless Man on the Manless Land.” According to this special Scotts Bluff edition,  “Unlimited Water Supply, Fertile Soil and Plenty of Sunshine Makes Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska ‘The American Valley of the Nile.’” 

 

Like a bad joke

Well isn't that wonderful? Laurel Hubbard: First transgender athlete to compete at Olympics:

New Zealand's Laurel Hubbard has become the first ever transgender athlete picked to compete at an Olympics, in a controversial decision.

Officials have selected her for the women's weightlifting team for Tokyo 2020, after qualifying requirements were recently modified.

She had competed in men's events before coming out as transgender in 2013.

Critics say Hubbard has an unfair advantage, but others have argued for more inclusion at the Games.

"I am grateful and humbled by the kindness and support that has been given to me by so many New Zealanders," Hubbard said in a statement issued by the New Zealand Olympic Committee on Monday.

She will compete in the women's 87-kg weightlifting category.

The 43-year-old became eligible to compete at the Olympics when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2015 changed its rules allowing transgender athletes to compete as a woman if their testosterone levels are below a certain threshold.

Which we all know is a nonsense. The advantage in power, bulk, and overall strength that comes from going through male puberty is barely affected by current testosterone levels.

While the athlete's testosterone levels are below that threshold, critics say her participation in the Olympics is still unfair for female-born athletes.

They have pointed to the biological advantages of those who have gone through puberty as males, such as increased bone and muscle density.

Last month, Belgian weightlifter Anna Vanbellinghen, who is competing in the same category, said that if Hubbard were to compete in Tokyo it would be unfair for women and "like a bad joke".

She said that while she fully supported the transgender community, the principle of inclusion should not be "at the expense of others".

"Anyone that has trained weightlifting at a high level knows this to be true in their bones: this particular situation is unfair to the sport and to the athletes," she said in May. "Life-changing opportunities are missed for some athletes - medals and Olympic qualifications - and we are powerless."...

Laurel Hubbard is among the top ranked athletes in the world in her category.

She has a good chance at winning a medal, as several others won't compete due to rules by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) that that there should be only one lifter per category from each country.

Hubbard's participation in previous competitions had sparked controversy in the past.

In 2019 she won a gold medal at the Pacific Games in Samoa, beating an athlete from the host nation, which triggered outrage.

And here is Hubbard on the podium at the time, collecting his gold:

The women at silver and bronze, as you can see, don't look too pleased. Understandably. They've been robbed of their rightful winning places - after all their training and their hard work and their dreams - by a man.

Ideally the other competitors would withdraw in protest against an unfair competition - "we don't compete against men" - but that's expecting too much of a sacrifice from the women athletes. It's not their fault they find themselves in this ridiculous situation, which anyone with any awareness at all can see is a nonsense.

Conversion therapy for gay kids

The case of Sonia Appleby, the Tavistock Clinic whistleblower who claims she was ostracised after raising concerns about the use of puberty blockers, is throwing up some interesting little tidbits as more and more professionals start to come out about their unfortunate experiences with the clinic:

A gay psychologist who worked at the NHS’s only gender transition clinic for children spoke of his fears that the clinic was running “conversion therapy for gay kids”.

Dr Matt Bristow said he feared the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust was ignoring the possibility that boys and girls who said they wanted to change sex might simply be gay.

Bristow’s claim has emerged in witness statements for Sonia Appleby, a psychotherapist responsible for safeguarding children at the gender identity clinic, who is suing the trust.

She told an employment tribunal last week she was “vilified” for raising concerns about the safety of children undergoing treatment, which included the clinic referring children as young as 12 for puberty blocking drugs.

The Tavistock has been at the centre of controversy over its treatment of young people for gender dysphoria.

There has been an explosion in the number of children wanting to change sex in recent years. In 2009 40 girls under 18 were referred to doctors for gender treatment in England. By 2017 the number had soared to 1,806.

The use of puberty blockers was banned in the UK last year by the High Court which ruled, in a ground-breaking judgment, that children under 16 could not give informed consent to such treatment. The judges said clinics must obtain the court’s permission because such treatment was experimental....

Bristow said he was one of several gay members of staff at the clinic who felt concerned that patients’ homosexuality — and the possibility that gay children were saying they wanted to change sex because they were being bullied — was ignored. He told staff at the Tavistock clinic that they were doing “conversion therapy for gay kids”.

In an exit interview when he left the trust, which forms part of Appleby’s legal case, Bristow said that he was particularly concerned about gay children who were referred to the service having been bullied. This may have motivated some to say they wanted to change sex and that he “tried hard not to let [them] get drawn into the service”.

Bristow told the clinic that gay staff felt they “had to keep sexuality on the agenda, as otherwise it was completely ignored as a topic”. He said there was a group of gay clinicians with these worries and that four had left at the time of his exit interview.

Despite the loudly proclaimed concerns by groups like Stonewall that conversion therapy is a threat to lesbian, gay, bi and trans people alike, this is the real scandal: convincing troubled young people, who'd very likely develop as perfectly healthy lesbians or gays if left alone, that they're somehow born into the wrong body and require puberty blockers and all kinds of serious medical interventions as the only route to happiness. This is conversion therapy - in the name of gender ideology.

Stasi bullshit

Janice Turner actually knows the artist Jess De Wahls - the one who's work was hastily removed from the Royal Academy shop after accusations of transphobia from a twitter mob - so her article this morning in the Times has all the more force for the personal detail.

Anatomy of a cancellation by the culture Stasi:

In January, the artist Jess De Wahls got in touch to say she’d made an embroidery of my mother’s hands. A photo I’d posted on Twitter of my first care home visit in many months had moved her to sew. She didn’t want payment, just for me to have it. Now this touching work sits by my desk.

De Wahls is no cosy cross-stitcher: she deploys her needle for political, especially feminist purpose. She embroiders fallopian tubes giving the finger, had a show called Big Swinging Ovaries, ran a vagina sewing workshop at Tate Modern. She’s funny, outspoken, has bright red hair and lavish tattoos. As all artists should be, she’s freethinking and bold.

She also has a sideline in embroidered flower patches, dahlias and pansies you iron onto T-shirts or jeans. Liberty stocks them, and the Royal Academy shop had just reordered when this week its head of commercial emailed to say she’d received eight complaints that De Wahls was transphobic. She wrote back. Silence. The RA Instagram account, with 500,000 followers, then posted: “Thank you to all those for bringing an item in the RA shop by an artist expressing transphobic views to our attention.” They would no longer sell De Wahls’s flowers.

How does it feel to be “cancelled”? In a searing essay, the acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes of the vicious social media response to a 2017 interview in which she stated “trans women are trans women”, ie biological sex is immutable. A student Adichie mentored in her writing workshop tweeted that she should be attacked with machetes. Members of a new “puritan class”, Adichie writes, answer questions with mantras, “flatten all nuance, wish away complexity” to enforce the latest ideological orthodoxy. Incapable of real loyalty or compassion, they “pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness” while they “demand you denounce your friends”.

Adichie could be writing about De Wahls. Growing up in communist East Berlin (she was six when the wall fell) she trained as a hairdresser, but arriving in London aged 21 began sculpting and painting while working in a tiny salon at the Soho Theatre. No one could be more sexually liberal: she spent her twenties in fetish clubs and, although straight herself, her friends were mainly gay men and lesbians....

So, a few years ago, when gender theory took off among Soho Theatre colleagues, “and they’d disinvite a friend from a party because she believed that only women have vaginas”, De Wahls was bemused. “I said, ‘Are you serious?’” They were. When she asked questions, they insisted trans women were biological women, just like her. This denial of science, of tangible reality, this insistence that 2+2=5, troubled her.

After immense thought, sleepless nights and with much trepidation, in 2019 she posted a 5,000-word blog. “I have no issue with somebody who feels more comfortable expressing themselves as if they are the other sex,” she wrote. “However, I cannot accept people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to which they were born and deserve to be extended the same rights as if they were born as such.”

The response was immediate and merciless. She was driven from her Soho Theatre salon. A gay friend whose hair she’d cut for ten years tweeted: “Never trust a bitch who does vagina art.” A colleague trawled her Facebook page, ordering lifelong friends to disavow her. All her offers to meet and talk were blanked.

Meanwhile the Instagram “embroidery community” set about destroying her livelihood. Petitions were launched, an exhibition in Australia was cancelled and every collaboration with a charity or company sabotaged. When she donated a work for raffle to raise money for period products in India, a male embroiderer hoped he’d win so he could burn it. One prominent stitcher of cheery flowers and “be kind” homilies has ranted non-stop about the injustice of it being De Wahls’s work that the snobbish RA chose when it finally allowed embroidery into “its hallowed halls”. Rather than her own, maybe?

Adichie’s essay wonders whether such vitriol is really to win compassion for trans people. Or has their cause become a legitimised outlet for baser feelings: professional jealousy, misogyny, amorphous rage? Now that shifty serotonin buzz from hurting someone you dislike comes with social cachet. What fun! You’re a good guy, for being vile.

As people sweat in silence, fearful that one misspeak will mean they’re next to be cancelled, De Wahls thinks of her childhood. “It’s Stasi bullshit. Like when my parents ordered me not to tell anyone we watched West German TV. But I refuse to back down. If I don’t, maybe young women will feel more bold.”

How bizarre that the art world, the crucible for shocking and subversive ideas, balks at the mere fact of biological sex. As I write, the RA’s tremulous head of commercial just told De Wahls “everyone is still thinking”. I’d hope such cogitation includes the Maya Forstater ruling which recently defined gender-critical feminism as a legitimate belief. De Wahls’s embroidered flowers would make a fascinating test case.

You can read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's essay here.

Those of us, meanwhile, who have some familiarity with the art world will not find it in the slightest degree bizarre that this "crucible for shocking and subversive ideas" should be at the forefront of this kind of censorship and group-think. Subversive ideas maybe - but only the right kind of subversive ideas.

More inclusive

St Paul's Girls' school is following the trend:

The alma mater of a long list of distinguished women, from Rosalind Franklin and Dame Kate Bingham to Emily Mortimer and Rachel Weisz, is to rename the role of head girl because it is too “binary”.

The head girl of St Paul’s Girls’ School, one of the country’s leading private schools, will be known as head of school after calls from pupils to make the role more inclusive.

More inclusive? But...it's a girls' school ffs. It's in the school name. Or will that soon be changed?

The school confirmed that the change would take effect from the next academic year, prompting outrage from some staff who claimed that it sent a “damaging message that girls now have to be ashamed to be seen as girls”.

“Why do the girls have to change their name?” a source said. “They should be teaching young women to be proud of their sex, not ashamed of it. It’s very contradictory. How can you be a single-sex school that exists to empower girls to do well and at the same time support girls to identify out of being a girl?

“The school is trying to do the right thing but the problem is they are being badly advised. Why would parents want to send their daughters to a school where girls are not happy to be girls?”

Why indeed. But what fun they've been having:

Further details have also emerged of a training session in which staff at the school, where fees are £26,000 a year, were told there were at least “150 gender identities”.

The webinar — Beyond the Binary: Understanding How to Be Inclusive for All Gender Identities — was hosted in April by Helen Semple, the deputy head, in her capacity as founder of the Schools Inclusion Alliance, a group that aims to “put inclusion at the heart of every school”. It featured as guest speaker Emma Cusdin, founder of Global Butterflies, who spoke about her own transition from male to female. “The LGBTQI world is an amazing rainbow of positivity and labels. We love labels. We love terminology, we love flags, we love parties,” Cusdin told staff.

“Young people are finding amazing ways to self-identify. At the last count, we stopped counting at 150 gender identities that people are self-identifying. We did a little quiz in terms of what are the 150. I know about 30, in terms of what the definitions are. Don’t be afraid to ask, ‘That’s a new term to me. What does it mean to you?’ ”

Asked how teachers should deal with “non- accepting parents”, Semple said: “I think a lot of the time when we’re working with parents they haven’t had access to the same material and training and education that we as teachers have had. So I think there’s an element of supporting parents with education.”

How very patronising. Those stupid parents - not up to speed with the latest gender ideology.

A source said: “I think it’s outrageous they gave us this training and that we should be OK with it. Staff are scared to speak out because the conversation is so toxic, and parents don’t want to criticise the school because they want to protect its reputation and their investment.”

Stonewall aren't mentioned in the article, but this move has the Stonewall stamp all over it. Especially given this latest revelation, from the Telegraph yesterday:

Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools.

The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport.

A series of guidance documents state that uniform policies should "give the option to wear a skirt as well as the option to wear trousers". One of Stonewall’s guides said that its work in primary schools was funded by the Government Equalities Office.

Stonewall advises school staff that they should: “Avoid dividing learners by gender, whether in the classroom (you could divide them by their favourite colour, month of birth or something else) or through uniform, sports activities or other aspects of school life.”

Trans pupils can use the lavatories, changing rooms and dorms on school trips that they feel most comfortable in, another booklet states.

To be a member of the Stonewall School & College Champion schools, establishments have to pay a yearly fee, starting at £150 plus VAT for those with less than 100 pupils, and rising to £800 plus VAT for those with more than 2,000 learners.

St Paul’s, the prestigious private school in London, is reportedly among the hundreds of primary and secondary schools that are members. 

The need to get prepared for both dialogue and confrontation

From the Telegraph:

Kim Jong-un has declared that North Korea should be ready for negotiations with the United States, striking an unusually conciliatory note amid a growing economic crisis that has led to dire shortages of fuel and food.

The dictator's comments come just days after the United States and others urged the totalitarian regime to abandon its nuclear program and return to talks.

Speaking at a meeting on the ruling Workers’ Party on Friday, the North Korean leader “stressed the need to get prepared for both dialogue and confrontation,” according to the state-run KCNA news agency....

Kim’s latest comments have been interpreted as a sign that he is planning to change tack from his usually bellicose approach to the US.

As recently as 2019, state media proclaimed that President Joe Biden should be “beaten to death with a stick”, and more recently accused him of a “big blunder” for saying he would use “diplomacy as well as stern deterrence” to deal with the North’s nuclear programme.

Mr Kim’s comments “certainly appear more conciliatory”, said Rah Jong-yil, a former diplomat and head of the South Korean intelligence department charged with monitoring North Korea.

“The North has exhausted its means of pressuring the US and South Korea because they can keep developing nuclear weapons, but to what end?” he told The Telegraph.

“They can keep spending money that they don’t really have on more warheads and stockpiling them, but they are facing a different crisis now, of shortages of food and fuel - and the people cannot eat nuclear weapons.”

International aid agencies have cautioned of a possible famine as North Korea faces a shortfall of more than 1.2 million tonnes of grains to feed a population that is already suffering from malnutrition.

There have also been anecdotal reports of families in poorer, rural regions starving to death.

"People's basic household assets are being sold off to procure food. This is not sustainable and action needs to be taken immediately,” warned the South Korea state-run Korea Development Institute think tank earlier this month.

Even among the elite residents of Pyongyang, upon whom Kim relies heavily for support, there have been stories of rations not being delivered and ballooning prices of the few luxuries that are available.

A small packet of black tea is now £50, a bottle of foreign-brand shampoo is £150 and a pack of coffee is more than £70.

The North Korean leader appears to have finally recognised that the US will remain “adamant” on the sanctions and other pressures that are in place against his regime, Mr Rah said.

“Kim will not want to lose face, of course, but it will not harm him to be more conciliatory and see what that brings him.”

Well, I'd hold back on the optimism about some kind of change of heart by the now slightly-less-fat Supreme Commander. He won't be giving up his nuclear weapons anytime soon, but yes, he'd like some food imports thank you very much, with no strings attached. Perhaps Biden and South Korea's ever-appeasement-minded president Moon can help him out. He says"dialogue and confrontation", not just "dialogue".

Here's the speech, as reported by the official Rodong Sinmun:

The third-day sitting of the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) continued on June 17 to confirm the fighting policies which would play the guiding role in further accelerating the historic advance of our Party and people for this year and practical tasks.

As the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un appeared at the meeting hall to mount the platform, all the participants raised thunderous cheers of "Hurrah!" for the General Secretary of the ever-victorious Party who has wisely led the plenary meeting to creditably perform its crucial discussion and to fulfill its historic guiding mission and role with all his thinking and efforts directed to the well-being and happiness of the state and the people.

At panel study and consultative meetings that continued in the wake of the second-day sitting, substantial and dynamic tasks to be carried out in the second half of the year and practical ways were fully discussed.

The plenary meeting examined constructive opinions that were put together and adopted with unanimous approval a resolution reflecting additional measures for thoroughly carrying out major state policy tasks for this year and a resolution on unconditionally fulfilling the grain production plan by concentrating efforts of the entire Party, the whole army and all the people on the farming for this year.

The plenary meeting discussed as the fourth agenda item the analysis of the present international situation and our Party's corresponding direction.

The respected General Secretary reviewed and assessed major changes taking place on the international political arena in recent days and the external environment of our revolution.

Especially he made detailed analysis of the policy tendency of the newly emerged U.S. administration toward our Republic and clarified appropriate strategic and tactical counteraction and the direction of activities to be maintained in the relations with the U.S. in the days ahead.

The General Secretary stressed the need to get prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially to get fully prepared for confrontation in order to protect the dignity of our state and its interests for independent development and to reliably guarantee the peaceful environment and the security of our state.

"...especially to get fully prepared for confrontation..."

Tavern under the bridge

Carl Mydans - April 1936. "Housing conditions in crowded parts of Milwaukee. Housing under Wisconsin Avenue viaduct."

[Photo: Shorpy/Carl Mydans for the Resettlement Administration]

In conflict with the values of the institution

Now it's the turn of the Royal Academy to bow to the mob:

The Royal Academy of Arts has pulled an artist’s work from its gift shop following claims she expressed “transphobic” views.

Jess de Wahls was found to be in “conflict” with the values of the institution over opinions expressed in a 2019 blog criticising “gender identity ideology” and the LGBT charity Stonewall.

On Thursday, the RA issued an online statement saying that it had received complaints for selling works “by an artist expressing transphobic views”.

It added that her work “will not be stocked in future”, and thanked those who had complained about it.

The statement on Instagram added: “The RA is committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and does not knowingly support artists who act in conflict with these values

“We would like to reiterate that we stand with the LGBTQ+ community”

Ms de Wahls told The Telegraph that her work had been pulled from the gift shop after a “concerted effort” from online activists over her alleged transphobia.

These horrendous "transphobic views"? 

The artist wrote a blog in 2019 which said that a woman is “an adult human female” and “not an identity or feeling”, adding: “I can not accept people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to when they were born.”

Maya Forstater, who won an appeal after losing her job following tweets stating trans women were “not women”, has raised concerns over the action taken against Ms de Wahls.

She told The Telegraph: “Organisations have got used to overreacting to complaints of transphobia. They need to take a deep breath, look at the Equality Act and consider that everybody has rights.

“These coordinated complaints ruin people's lives and their reputations and make organisations fearful. It is McCarthyism and many people are afraid.”

The campaign groups Sex Matters has written to the director of the RA in a letter stating: “The Royal Academy is carrying out an egregious and blatant belief discrimination against textile artist Jess de Wahls.”

The letter claims the decision to pull the artist's work came after a “handful of coordinated complaints”, adding that the decision goes against “your values as a forum for artistic expression”.

The group has urged the RA to reinstate Ms de Wahls' works and apologise to the artist.

Yes, it's pathetic.

Dragon Blood Trees

Russian photographer Daniel Kordan, on the island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea south of Yemen - "the most alien-looking place on Earth". The dragon blood tree, unique to Socotra, is so-called because of its red sap.

The photos were taken around dawn:

[Photos © Daniel Kordan]