Mick Hartley

No such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body'

Here's a reply by Amnesty International on Twitter to a complaint about their recent activity, including calling women 'womxn' and saying political representation should be removed from women if they don't believe in gender ideology:

Allowing self-determination of our bodies is a basic principle of feminism and human rights. There is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’ - a person’s genitalia doesn’t determine their gender. 

Oh dear.

We've been here before. This is basically the same formulation that ActionAid UK came up with in July. They're singing from the same hymn sheet.

In response to a request that the word "gender" be replaced by "sex", ActionAid offered this reply:

Thank you for your email. We agree that words are important. As ActionAid UK is an organisation focused on supporting the most marginalised women and girls in the world, it is important to us that we are clear that when we are talking about women and girls, we are including transgender women and girls in our definition of women and girls.

ActionAid UK defines women and girls as anyone who self-identifies as a woman or a girl. Allowing self-determination of our bodies is a basic feminist principle. ActionAid UK understands there is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’, and that a person’s genitalia doesn’t determine their gender. As such, we’ve used the word gender not sex, and include trans women and girls in our definition of women and girls. ActionAid UK also recognises that many non-binary people and trans men face gender discrimination.

As Sarah Phillimore responded at the time:

ActionAidUK declares itself to be a charity ‘that works with women and girls living in poverty’. It apparently recognises the harm done to women and girls by violence. Women and girls do not ‘chose’ to become victims of violence, rape, sex trafficking, FGM or abortion from their mother’s wombs. They haven’t ‘self identified’ into this condition. It is immediately obvious to those who hurt and kill them, who deny them an education, who force them into marriage aged 12, what sex they are. For about 99% of living humans, it is immediately obvious what sex they are.

Women are not oppressed, raped and killed for their GENDER.

They are oppressed, raped and killed for their SEX .

That Amnesty International can claim, astonishingly, that there's no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’ indicates just how far and how deep the mind-rot has spread.

Light stones

Photographer Reuben Wu uses drones to add artificial light to natural landscapes. In his series Light Storm, he's capturing the dramatic eroded stone shapes and canyons of Utah and New Mexico, lending them an extraordinary other-wordly look. 

[Images: Reuben Wu]

On Instagram.

A very troubling development

As Tina Traster has noted, the trans activist line is that young troubled teenagers who've been seduced on social media into buying the whole gender dysphoria packet - and we're talking mostly about girls here - are subject to nothing less than parental abuse if their demands for irreversible medical intervention are not fully and enthusiastically embraced. The corollary is that parents who are not happy with this - and frankly, what responsible parents would be? - may see their children taken into care, just as if they were actually guilty of physical or sexual abuse of the child.

Which is what's happened in Australia (via):

A teenager has been taken into care in Australia’s first known case of parents being judged abusive and potentially harmful for failing to consent to their child’s self-declared transgender identity and wish for irreversible cross-sex hormone treatment.

A state children’s court magistrate cited the risk of self-harm when making the protection order in October — almost a year after the teenager, who was born female and cannot be named for legal reasons — was removed from the family by police at 15 after discussing suicide online.

The parents said they knew their daughter had been depressed and in need of help, but they wanted an independent psychologist to consider all possible underlying causes, not just gender issues, and to look into non-invasive treatment options.

Queensland University’s dean of law Patrick Parkinson, speaking in a personal capacity as a family law expert and critic of “gender affirming” medical treatment for young people diagnosed with distressing “gender dysphoria”, said he believed the child removal was the first of its kind and “a very troubling development”.

He's not kidding.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

So farewell then, "Iran's Robert Oppenheimer":

Iran's most senior nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated near the capital Tehran, the country's defence ministry has confirmed.

Fakhrizadeh died in hospital after an attack in Absard, in Damavand county.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, has condemned the killing "as an act of state terror".

Western intelligence agencies view Fakhrizadeh as being behind a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

"If Iran ever chose to weaponise (enrichment), Fakhrizadeh would be known as the father of the Iranian bomb," one Western diplomat told Reuters news agency in 2014.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated and Iran has accused Israel of complicity in the killings.

Fakhrizadeh's name was specifically mentioned in Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's presentation about Iran's nuclear programme in May 2018....

The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said that Iran will avenge the killing of the scientist.

Just like they avenged the killing of Soleimani in January....which is to say, not at all. Lots of noise, not much in the way of action.

Jake Wallis Simons in the Spectator is quick off the mark with his reaction: this is all about Trump:

Whoever carried out the hit, it is all but certain that Trump gave it the nod. Once again, he is trying to put a stamp on the Middle East that Biden will find difficult to scrub out. His actions would hardly be without precedent; Obama, Clinton and Reagan all made last-gasp moves in the region to shape it in their image. But none of these Presidents were anywhere near as belligerent or pro-Israel.

First there was intense speculation that Trump was building up to a last-minute attack on Iran. It lasted for a news cycle, but never transpired. It may be that he opted to give the nod to an assassination instead. Then the US Special Representative on Iran, Elliott Abrahams, met the Israeli prime minister earlier this month to discuss a laundry list of new sanctions to be slapped on Iran. And during Mike Pompeo’s whistle-stop tour of the Middle East, he became the first secretary of state to visit a West Bank settlement – and convened a secret summit in Saudi Arabia with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump has always made as many enemies as friends. Some would say more so. But when it comes to the Middle East, even people who naturally dislike him confess a sense of dread at the impending Biden years.

I count myself among them....

The reason, of course, is that Biden has pledged to revive Obama's disastrous JCPOA, so long as Iran ‘returns to strict compliance’.

But Obama’s deal was deeply flawed. It may have made the Iranians pause their nuclear weapon programme, but did not require them to abandon the ability to fire it up again.

Iranian claims that their intentions were peaceful went unchallenged, despite evidence to the contrary (why would a civilian project need to enrich uranium? Why the illicit facilities at Natanz and Arak?).

Given the number of times Iran has been caught lying since it started pursuing the bomb in the nineties, and given its long history of profound duplicity, manipulation and belligerence, the JCPOA seemed dangerously naïve.

Perhaps more egregiously, the deal was so focused on the nuclear threat that it failed to adequately address Iran’s mischief-making across the region – and ended up fuelling it.

The theocracy had only come to the negotiating table in the first place because of sustained economic punishment. But under the JCPOA, sanctions on petrochemicals, gold and other precious metals were lifted, and £3 billion in frozen oil revenue was released....

There are fears that if Biden makes good on his promise to reopen Obama's deal, the flood of fresh cash could give Iranian adventurism another unwelcome boost.

The president-elect has only vaguely addressed this point. ‘We will continue to push back against Iran's destabilising activities, which threaten our friends and partners in the region,’ he wrote in September.

‘We will continue to use targeted sanctions against Iran's human rights abuses, its support for terrorism and ballistic missile programme.’

In other words, he proposes closing the chequebook with one hand while handing over billions of nuclear dollars with the other.

The sense of softness is heightened by the fact that Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, argued against designating the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organisation in 2017.

Iran has suffered since Trump came to power. Sanctions, and the coronavirus, have hit it badly. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, have been having a hard time since that Beirut port explosion. The anti-Iranian grouping of Israel with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States is much stronger now, especially with the Abraham Accords normalising relations between Israel and Bahrain and the UAE.

A final Trump card from the outgoing president, then?

Hills colour

Splashes of late autumn colour at The Hill and Golders Hill Park:

Socialist Fairyland Villages.

South Hamyong province in North Korea was badly hit by flooding this year, after a particularly strong typhoon season. Fortunately for the locals the Supreme Fairy was on hand with his big magic wand and, miraculously, all was well.

Details of this heart-warming tale from the official Rodong Sinmun:

Socialist fairyland villages have appeared in Komdok area of South Hamgyong Province, promising the bright future of the mining city.

Komdok area was under muddy water and stones due to the natural disaster, and the aftermath of the disaster was so severe that houses there couldn't be recognized even by their owners.

Now, modern houses are everywhere to present spectacular scenery.

Single-, low- and multi-storeyed dwelling houses for 2 300 households, public buildings and parks have been successfully built to turn misfortune into blessings in the area.

The big change in the area is the bright fruition brought about by the passionate loving care and dedication made by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un for our workers, the eldest son of the country, and valuable achievements produced by the fighting spirit and stamina of the People's Army clearing the worries of our Party and pain of our people with loyal and patriotic devotion.

Well, you can't argue with that.

The working people who became the owners of the new fairyland village thanked Kim Jong Un in tears for his love deeper than the ocean.

They vowed to glorify the 80-day campaign with increased extraction of minerals and greet the Eighth Congress of the WPK with pride, cherishing in their minds the benevolence of the mother Party that provided them with places for happy living.

It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)

The Ed Sullivan Show, March 1965, with Duke Ellington - and Ella scatting like there's no tomorrow:

With the Duke throwing in a touch of Satin Doll round the 1.11 mark...

Dark shapes

At Walthamstow Wetlands:

Out to the ball game

June 30, 1950. "Cleveland Municipal Stadium during Cleveland-Detroit night baseball game."

[Photo: Shorpy/Carl McDow. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection]

Last of the roses

Looking a bit frayed round the edges. Yesterday morning in Queen Mary's Rose Garden, Regent's Park:

 

Moral equivalence

The acclaimed French TV series Un Village Français - available to watch on Amazon Prime as A French Village, with English subtitles - was ground-breaking in its portrayal of French collaboration with the German occupation in WW2. In particular it made no excuses for the behaviour of the French characters in relation to the local Jews. Their antisemitism wasn't imposed on them by the Germans: rather, the occupation allowed their latent antisemitism to emerge and flourish.

For Michael Oren in Tablet, though, this brave reckoning with the sordid truth of the Vichy regime was fatally marred by spurious claims of moral equivalence when the story moved to Israel. It's a tale with relevance to yesterday's post about left-wing antisemitism. It's easy enough to spot the familiar right-wing antisemitism of the period (well, maybe not for the French in the years after WW2), but left-wing antisemitism, often as not disguised as anti-Zionism, is a harder one to tackle.

For decades after the war, French governments from both the left and the right insisted that the true France had resided with de Gaulle in London and not with Pétain in Vichy, and that all anti-Jewish measures were imposed on them by the Germans. But beginning in 1969 with Marcel Ophuls’ documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, followed by Columbia professor Robert Paxton’s 1972 classic, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, and then Louis Malle’s Oscar-nominated 1973 film Lacombe Lucien, the myth steadily collapsed. These works portrayed a France that willingly collaborated with the occupation, disdained the Resistance, and sometimes surpassed the Germans in its persecution of the Jews. [...]

Un Village Français continues this process of self-reckoning yet takes it a giant step further. The Holocaust is no longer peripheral to the occupation, but its essence. The Germans did not bring anti-Semitism to France; they gave the French license for its pursuit. Jews, according to many of the series’ characters, are dishonest, conniving, treacherous, and cheap. One of them observes, “Of course, one cannot be Jewish and French.”

This bold and still-controversial statement was the work of the series’ creator, Frédéric Krivine. He is the son of radical left-wing parents and the nephew of Alain Krivine, who was jailed by de Gaulle for leading the 1968 protests. As chief consultant for his production, the writer chose Jean-Pierre Azéma, a noted leftist historian. This no doubt explains the sentimental portrayal of the communists and the brutal depiction of every American GI. But Krivine is also Jewish and has described Un Village Français as “a good Jewish story.” But good in what way?

Clearly it cannot be in France, where the survivors see no future. For two of them, the answer is Palestine. “A land without a people for a people without a land,” one of them says, unknowingly quoting a 19th-century Christian Zionist. “I just want to live in a place without fighting.” All of this is meant ironically, though, as we see in the final season in which the now-married pair—the woman is played by Krivine’s wife, Axelle Maricq—is driving a Haganah ambulance. Ambushed by Arabs shouting “Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin!” the husband explains that this was a Palestinian village in which “our people killed two hundred innocent men, women, and children”—curiously echoing the Palestinian narrative of that event, which is strongly disputed by most Israeli historians. His wife cries, “We’re no better than those who oppressed us in France!”

Voilà. So, this, after 72 episodes, is what Un Village Français is ultimately about. Yes, we were horrible to the Jews, but look—they’re no better toward the Arabs than we were toward them. French guilt for the Holocaust can be conveniently cleansed by the invocation of supposedly equivalent Israeli wrongdoing—which must be monstrously magnified and exaggerated in order to make the equation work. Interviewed by The Nation, Frédéric Krivine compared French indifference to the plight of Jews during WWII to the Israeli public’s lack of response to the IDF’s killing of Gazans. Far from indicting France for its Holocaust crimes, Krivine has in fact forgiven it. That message was conveyed to the 3.4 million French viewers who, on average, watched every hour of Un Village Français and to the many millions more in the 40 countries that rebroadcast it. They received first-class drama and acting, a courageous reexamination of French history—and a not-too-subliminal message about Israel being the ultimate guilty party, whose Nazi-like actions perversely cleanse the French of their own crimes in a bath of invented equivalence....

The IHRA definition of antisemitism, of course, includes "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis".

Do I look like a doormat with Welcome written on it?

As we heard, journalist Suzanne Moore resigned from the Guardian last week. At UnHerd today she explains why:

It is March 2020. For several months now I have been trying to write something — anything — about the so-called “trans debate” in my Guardian column. But if I ever slip a line in about female experience belonging to people with female bodies, and the significance of this, it is always subbed out. It is disappeared. Somehow, this very idea is being blocked, not explicitly, but it certainly isn’t being published. My editors say things like: “It didn’t really add to the argument”, or it is a “distraction” from the argument....

Even though I’d been writing for them for decades, editors consistently try to steer me towards “lifestyle” subjects for my column. One even suggests that I shouldn’t touch politics at all. And yet I won the Orwell Prize for political journalism the year before. This was for articles on Brexit and war remembrance, among other things.

Maybe they were steering me away from certain subjects because they thought they were dealing with some mad old bint, or maybe they were scared and had been indoctrinated into the cult of righteousness that the Guardian embodies. At its best, the paper deserves to see itself as a beacon of the Left, but lately it has been hard to define what the Left consists of beyond smug affirmation. During the Corbyn years the paper had a difficult job to do: support Labour but to be honest about Corbyn and his cronies’ monstrous failings....

So, I finally get to write a piece on trans issues. And 338 “colleagues” write a letter of complaint to the editor, alluding to that column. 

Now, six months on, I have resigned. And I am still trying to work out why I have been treated so appallingly...

But read it all. She's angry - and she's right to be angry.

Yet the abuse I got over the trans issue was different, and worse than anything that had come before. Social media was beginning to flex its muscles. It was a mindfuck. Twitter was full of people telling me how they were going to rape me, decapitate me, ejaculate inside my head, burn me.... The police came round but they didn’t really get Twitter. They said things like: “Don’t email them back, love”. The worst threats were from people who knew where I lived and said that they would give my then 11-year-old a good fisting.

The sewer was opening, a torrent of women-hatred was pouring out, no one seemed to be able to control it. (Was this helping trans people? Was it coming from them? Mostly I think not.) I made the mistake of losing my temper and insulted my antagonists back. I would not be lectured on feminism or womanhood.

There was a new word. TERF. It posed as an acronym — trans exclusionary radical feminist — but it was used as a slur. On this row went. The label “transphobe” may as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My own history and activism was irrelevant: my years with Act Up, campaigning around Section 28, my lifelong commitment to campaigning for abortion. Nada!

I watched woman after woman denounced as a TERF. Attempted suicides of young trans people were the fault of women like me. The murder of trans people by men was somehow refracted onto feminists. Masculinity is never the problem, you see. Masculinity sets the rules. Women are always the other, the outsiders....

Dark Japan

Tokyo by night seems to be quite the draw for photographers. I've already had posts on Neon Tokyo with Davide Sasso, Tokyo Nights with Liam Wong, Tokyo by night with Masashi Wakui, and Tokyo at night with Robert Götzfried. [No, coming up with exciting new post titles isn't one of my strong points.]

Now Australian photographer Tom Blachford, from his series Nihon Noir, captures modernist architecture and street scenes in Tokyo and Kyoto with a definite Blade Runner feel, taking all his photos at night, between 10 pm and 4 am: "Nihon Noir arose from my fascination with Tokyo and my desire to translate the feeling that struck me on my first visit, that somehow you have been transported to a parallel future where everything is more alien than familiar. My intention is for the viewer to ask not 'where' they were taken but 'when'."

Aoyama Gundam © Tom Blachford

Doric Dichotomy © Tom Blachford

Ariake Sports © Tom Blachford

Fish Market © Tom Blachford

Bruce and Milla © Tom Blachford

Telecom Centre © Tom Blachford

Deckard's Grill © Tom Blachford

Shakaden Calling © Tom Blachford

Akira's Alley © Tom Blachford

Tyrell Corp Side © Tom Blachford

St Mary © Tom Blachford

Edo Bulldog © Tom Blachford

Capsule Dreams II © Tom Blachford

I have no idea what that seemingly floating cab - 5th down - is all about, or why it's called Bruce and Milla, unless it's a reference to Luc Bresson's futuristic The Fifth Element, starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich.

Making trans doubt illegal

In Scotland, meanwhile, the prospects for freedom of speech are not encouraging:

Activists who promote the view that a trans woman is not a woman will be breaking the law if a court rules their campaign was intended to stir up hatred, the justice secretary has confirmed.

Humza Yousaf said it would not be a crime to express the opinion that sex is immutable unless it was accompanied by behaviour that was intended to stir up hatred, which could include aggressive campaigning.

The hate crime bill will criminalise threatening and abusive comments intended to stir up hatred against minorities. It has provoked a backlash from actors including Rowan Atkinson and Elaine C Smith, the authors Chris Brookmyre and Val McDermid and the Scottish Newspaper Society, who fear it will have a “chilling effect” on public debate about divisive social issues.

Lucy Hunter Blackburn, founder of the women’s rights activists Murray Blackburn Mckenzie, raised concerns last week that anyone who describes a woman as an “adult human female” would face a police investigation.....

Mr Yousaf confirmed that a campaign promoting the view that sex was immutable would be prosecuted if it was deemed deliberately provocative.

And who gets to decide what's "deliberately provocative"?

Biology teachers will be treading on thin ice, then. Will they be prosecuted for saying that sex is immutable and that men can't just become women, in accordance with, um, biological facts?

Interesting times north of the border...

The line between ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect’

Should we respect the opinions of others? Surely respect is not the word we need here: it suggests a deference which is altogether a step too far in a liberal society. Their opinions may be odious and worthy of nothing but ridicule. We may respect their right to have an opinion, which is another matter. But the opinion itself? Of course not. 

Nick Cohen in the Spectator:

A  struggle begins in Cambridge on Friday, which will determine the freedom to argue in the university. As the students of today are the elites of tomorrow, and as the same fight between liberalism and, for want of a better word, wokeism is being fought everywhere, it is an early skirmish in the fight over everyone’s freedom.

At its heart is a distinction with a difference worth fighting over: the line between ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect’. Tolerance is an old liberal virtue that is tougher than it looks. After the devastation brought by the wars of religion, the early Enlightenment decided, in the words of John Locke, that ‘the civil magistrate has no jurisdiction over souls’.

To tolerate one’s opponents meant that you did not ban them or punish them for their religious or political beliefs. But that was all. You remained free to offend and challenge them. You most certainly had no obligation to ‘respect’ ideas you regarded as ignorant or dangerous or both.

The demand for respect is the demand to bite your tongue and not to argue against what you believe to be wrong. To respect people, groups, ideologies or institutions is to bow down before them, accept them on their own terms, and refrain from criticism. No wonder gangsters demand it....

Stephen Toope, the vice chancellor of Cambridge, and the other members of the university’s council either do not or do not want to see the obvious. In March, they put out a woozy and potentially authoritarian ‘update’ to the university’s policy on freedom of speech. ‘The University expects its staff, students and visitors to be respectful of the differing opinions of others’ it says, ‘to be respectful of the diverse identities of others,’ and to be free to express themselves ‘without fear of disrespect or discrimination’. [My italics]

What did it mean? The university goes on to say that it favours ‘robust and challenging’ debate and defends ‘free speech within the law’, so the proposed changes might have been innocuous. Cambridge academics weren’t so sure. As a test, they asked the University Council to replace ‘respect’ with ‘tolerance.’ It would expect ‘its staff, students and visitors to be tolerant of the differing opinions of others, and ‘tolerant of the diverse identities of others,’ and so on. The university refused, and suspicion hardened into resistance.

These rebels, unhappy with what they view as a threat to free speech, have now come up with three proposed amendments (one, two, three) to be put in a ballot to all Cambridge academics, which, basically, seek to replace the idea of respect with that of tolerance. The voting starts on Friday.

A push-back, perhaps, against the spread of woke authoritarianism.