Mick Hartley

An information-suppressing movement

More on that business, which I touched on the other day, of bookshops hiding away their copies of Helen Joyce's "Trans" book while giving prominence to Shon Faye's "The Transgender Issue". From Graham Linehan at The Critic - Trans ideologues hide books to hide reality:

Try and find Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality in the next bookshop you walk into. It’s often quite an adventure, leading you to sections of the shop you never knew existed. 

Unusually for a best seller, many are reporting that it is always a bit of a struggle locating a copy, something which couldn’t be said for Shon Fae’s The Transgender Issue. 

Joyce’s book is a deeply researched, compassionate and insightful look at the transgender issue. Fae’s book, in contrast, calls for the police to be disbanded on page one. 

Kellie Jay Keen’s experience of locating a copy in Foyles played out like a scene from The Third Man, with whispers and much mysterious to-ing and fro-ing before a copy magically appeared. A subscriber to my Substack informs me that Dubray Books in Dun Laoghaire are engaged in the same kind of soft-censorship. Dubray would normally feature a local author (as Joyce is) with pride, but in her case they hide her book away like it was a copy of the Necromonicon....

...the faithful of the gender cult are always working to ensure that the scientific and ethical underpinnings of trans rights activism are kept vague and unknowable.

Joyce’s book is not being hidden because her research is faulty — it’s impeccable. So when trans activists couldn’t find anything wrong in the book, they tried to dishonestly smear her as an antisemite....Trans rights activists don’t want you to know about autogynephilia. They also don’t want you to know detransition statistics, they don’t want you to know what “self ID” really means, or the real effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. 

This is an information-suppressing movement. It can only survive in the dark...

Unlikely to guarantee fairness

The latest Sports Council guidance has reached the obvious conclusion: that trans women playing women's sport isn't fair. But there's so much hand-wringing...

A wide-ranging review of transgender inclusion in non-elite sport in the UK has concluded the current policies are not fit for purpose and require a reset.

The Sports Councils Equality Group (SCEG) said "for many sports, the inclusion of transgender people, fairness and safety cannot co-exist in a single competitive model".

The guidance covers community sport up to national level - not international, professional or elite sport.

It says the governing bodies for each sport should work out their priorities, and choose whether they will focus on inclusion or "competitive fairness" - and safety if relevant - within the current format of their sport.

So for example, contact, collision and combat sports which choose to prioritise safety - or sports based on strength, stamina or physique which choose to prioritise "competitive fairness" - could create extra "universal admission" categories for transgender athletes.

The new guidance has been developed by Sport England, Sport Scotland, Sport Northern Ireland, Sport Wales and UK Sport after an 18-month consultation and review of the existing research.

It concludes "testosterone suppression is unlikely to guarantee fairness between transgender women and natal females in gender-affected sports" and there are "retained differences in strength, stamina and physique between the average woman compared with the average transgender woman or non-binary person registered male at birth".

"In order to survive and thrive in the future, sport must adapt to reflect modern society, and that often, it is too slow to do so," the guidance says.

It states that if sports choose to continue categorising participants within male and female, they are encouraged to consider creating additional versions of their sports, including "universal admission" or open categories.

Governing bodies are encouraged to "think in innovative and creative ways to ensure nobody is left out".

Why this obsession with inclusion, and making sure nobody's left out? What about trans men, for instance? There's no clamour from them to play in men's teams, for the obvious reason that they wouldn't do well and would likely be humiliated. So they're left out - and they grin and bear it somehow. All the noise comes from trans women, because they have a fine old time: winning trophies, breaking women's records (and heads), and marching to the tops of the podium at every opportunity. Can't we perhaps see that this isn't so much about fairness and inclusivity as about a small bunch of chancers who know when they're on to a good thing? Anybody can play sport - in their correct sex grouping. That's it. The world doesn't have to re-arrange itself for a tiny bunch of trans ideologues moaning about inclusivity for their own benefit - at the expense of women.

LA liquor stores

Blue Californian skies, vivid colours....and a liqour store on every corner. Welcome to LA.

From British photographer Ben Hassett's series 'Beer, Soda, Lotto'.

[Photos © Ben Hassett]

There's an exhibition from 30th September at David Hill Gallery in Notting Hill.

Standing with Stonewall

A fitting coda to the Labour Party Conference: Rosie Duffield, who's on record as believing the biologically clear yet apparently controversial fact that only women have a cervix, speaks at a fringe event under heavy security, while the Labour big-wigs queue up to vilify her:

An MP has accused Sir Keir Starmer and members of the shadow cabinet of “chucking me on the railway tracks” as the row over trans rights in Labour overshadowed the eve of the party’s final day of conference.

Rosie Duffield, 50, spoke at an unofficial event last night in Brighton with a heavy security presence after organisers were blocked from hosting a round table at official conference venues. Protesters gathered outside to denounce the meeting.

Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, who is a survivor of domestic abuse, is not attending the official conference because of fears for her safety.

Yesterday, Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, became the latest frontbencher to distance herself from Duffield’s remarks about trans people. This week, Starmer said that it was “not right” that Duffield had said only women have a cervix and David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, described the backbench MP as a “dinosaur”.

At an unofficial debate organised by Labour Women’s Declaration last night, Duffield said: “It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women.”

Not a popular view in today's Labour Party.

Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for Gower, attended the debate on the participation of trans people in women’s sport. She said that there were at least 20 female MPs in the party who sympathised with Duffield’s stance. She said: “We have not got a space in the Labour Party that is safe to speak to each other without fear or favour.”

Earlier in the day, Rayner addressed an official LGBT+ Labour event where trans activists said that Duffield’s comments were “deeply cringeworthy” and told her to “get a grip” or leave the party. In an apparent reference to Duffield’s remark that “only women have a cervix”, Rayner said that politicians had a duty to speak carefully about trans issues.

“Women’s rights are not in conflict with trans rights, our fight is your fight,” Rayner said. “All of us in politics, in public life, and in the media have an absolute duty of care to how we talk about these issues."

“Think about if somebody is struggling with their gender identity, and might already be struggling with bullying or feeling isolated. My instinct is to put my arm around that person, to stand by that person, and that has always been the attitude of our movement and our party.”

But not to stand by women. 

For more on what that actually means...

...there were no signs of disagreements at today's LGBT+ Labour panel where frontbenchers Angela Rayner and Anneliese Dodds threw their weight behind trans activists. In a warmly-received speech Rayner told attendees 'I have always been your ally, I will always be your ally' declaring 'I stand with Stonewall' and concluding that 'women’s rights are not in conflict with trans rights – our struggle is your struggle.' 

Dodds backed up her deputy leader, attacking the government for 'accusations that ministers were creating a hostile environment for LGBT+ people' while senior backbencher Angela Eagle told attendees that 'Stonewall need to be defended – they're under massive attack' adding 'we're not going back in the kitchen, we're not going back in the closet.' 

And....

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner confirmed to a conference fringe event that Labour “will update the Gender Recognition Act to create a process of self-ID” for trans individuals.

So there you have it. Labour is lost to the Stonewall/gender identity crew.

Roadside Missouri

John Vachon - February 1942. "Shannon County, Missouri. Gas station and tourist cabins."

[Photo: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Office of War Information]

The true history of quantum mechanics

You'll perhaps be surprised to learn that quantum mechanics wasn't developed first in the West some hundred years ago. As Admiral Ali Fadavi, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Core  Deputy Commander-in-Chief, informs us here, Muslim scientists invented it 1,000 years ago - and Iranians are still the leaders and pioneers in these fields.

Watch and learn.

Back to the Nakba

Of course gender identity isn't the only problem at the Labour Conference. The anti-Israel zealots, inevitably, were determined to parade their obsession with the world's only Jewish state and its evil machinations:

Delegates in the British Labour Party on Monday passed a resolution condemning Israel for allegedly perpetrating an “ongoing Nakba in Palestine,” drawing outcry from some party officials.

“Conference condemns the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Israel’s militarised violence attacking the Al Aqsa mosque, the forced displacements from Sheikh Jarrah and the deadly assault on Gaza,” the motion passed at the main opposition party’s annual conference read.

“Nakba,” which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, is used by Palestinians to denote Israel’s establishment in 1948.

The motion brought by Young Labour passed at Monday’s conference with about twice as many votes for as against...

It added that “together with the de facto annexation of Palestinian land by accelerated settlement building and statements of Israel’s intention to proceed with annexation, it is ever clearer that Israel is intent on eliminating any prospects of Palestinian self-determination.”

Stephen Daisley sums it up - Labour is still overrun with anti-Israel cranks:

As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take comfort in how close the card vote was: a mere 70.35 per cent of delegates voted for the motion.

For a classic Labour conference motion, though, the prize has to go to the composite on… the NHS? Covid? Fuel shortages? No, silly: Palestine. A motion was passed which ‘condemns the ongoing Nakba in Palestine’, using the Arabic term for ‘catastrophe’, which is how the establishment of the state of Israel is generally referred to in the West Bank, Gaza and constituency Labour party meetings. The motion calls the policing of a Palestinian riot on the holy Temple Mount in Jerusalem ‘Israel’s militarised violence attacking the Al Aqsa mosque’. The text says it is ‘ever clearer that Israel is intent on eliminating any prospects of Palestinian self-determination’. (Israel has repeatedly offered peace and statehood and been rebuffed by the Palestinian side.) It also ‘notes’ claims by NGOs’ ‘that conclude unequivocally that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid’, calls for sanctions, and backs a Palestinian ‘right of return’ to Israel.

The motion, which passed by a show of hands, is no less embarrassing for Sir Keir, who did not want Labour to be foaming at the mouth about the Jewish state on the same day that former MP Louise Ellman, who quit the party in 2019 over anti-Semitism, announced that she was rejoining the party. Ellman says the motion is ‘disgraceful’, singles out ‘the world's only Jewish state for pernicious and morally perverse boycotts’ and ‘shows there are still too many in the party who are more obsessed with demonising Israel than reaching a solution to this tragic conflict’. She adds that ‘Labour will not win back the trust of the Jewish community whilst the Jewish state is continually demonised and smeared’.

Starmer clearly has a lot of work to do. Who'd want to lead this rabble?

Getting back to gynaecology

It should be the easiest job in the world leading a Labour opposition against a Boris Johnson government, but the wretched Starmer can't do it. There could hardly be a better vote-losing policy than following the trans crowd down the rabbit hole of gender identity, but he just doesn't have the bottle to put his foot down and call a halt.

Sarah Ditum in the Times:

One word has dominated Labour’s 2021 conference. In a different world, where Labour was capable of landing a blow on the government, that word might have been “shortages”: there are gaps on supermarket shelves, roads are clogged with panicked drivers queueing for fuel, and energy companies crumble as gas prices soar. Or it could have been “cuts”, given that the Tories are about to remove the £20 boost to universal credit amid warnings that thousands face poverty.

But neither of those will be the defining word of this week for Labour. Instead, all anybody wants to talk about is “cervix”. In every interview of a Labour politician, there’s a question about the C-word: is it transphobic to say, as the Labour MP Rosie Duffield once tweeted, that only women have a cervix? Canvassers report that out on the doorstep, voters are now demanding answers on the party’s cervix policy. Labour may want to talk political philosophy and even psephology, but all it’s getting back is gynaecology.

...has any party ever walked itself into such a staggeringly unnecessary humiliation? On Sunday, when Andrew Marr first put the cervix question to Sir Keir Starmer, it should not have been a surprise. The harassment of Duffield for her tweet, and her subsequent decision that she felt too unsafe to attend conference, had been front page news the previous weekend. This was not a cervical ambush.

The Sunday before, Marr had pinned down the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey on whether “Woman: adult human female” is an offensive phrase. (A Lib Dem activist has been banned from holding office for ten years after wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan). Davey was slippery and evasive. He refused to say what was wrong with the statement, and instead talked about the dangers faced by trans people. He did not mention that women also face violence and discrimination, even though it was only days after the south London teacher Sabina Nessa had been killed.

Surely, with this fair warning, Starmer could do better. Instead, he rushed directly into the trap. “Is it transphobic to say ‘only women have a cervix?’” asked Marr. “It is something that shouldn’t be said,” replied Starmer. Asked to explain why it shouldn’t be said, however, Starmer declined to elaborate. Perhaps, like many who have taken on the pieties of modern gender identity, he does not even really understand why “only women have a cervix” became taboo — only that it is unsayable.

...most people beyond the activist core use and understand “woman” and “man” to mean “female” and “male”. That doesn’t mean they’re engaged in hatred of trans people. It means that they’re regular citizens using language in the regular way. To the average voter, “only women have a cervix” is a banal anatomical truth. Telling them it’s now offensive is alienating; refusing even to say why it’s offensive is downright insulting.

And still, Labour MPs failed to figure out their line. When the radio host Nick Ferrari asked it of the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves on Monday morning, she stuttered and prevaricated and eventually said: “I don’t even know how to answer that question.” Well, obviously. Ian Murray, shadow secretary of state for Scotland, complained that he was being asked for a “medical science thesis” when the topic came up on Woman’s Hour, then hedged his way around the issue....

Sajid Javid was among the many Conservatives to jump on the cervix bandwagon, accusing Starmer of a “total denial of scientific fact”. But it’s not just a useful stick to beat Labour with. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a line of defence in those “blue wall” constituencies Davey has his eye on, the once-safe Tory seats growing disillusioned and flirting with the Lib Dems. However clapped out the Tories look, they’re going to be difficult to dislodge as long as they’re the only party speaking a language voters understand.

Perhaps Starmer feels that there's only so much he can do against the active Labour core - the sort of people who turn up to party conferences. He's already in a battle to remove the last vestiges of Corbynism: he may feel that he doesn't want another battle now by taking on the gender ideologues.

That could be a huge mistake.

Roadside Illinois

John Vachon - February 1942. "Union County, Illinois. Gas station and roadhouse."

[Photo: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Office of War Information]

This quasi-religious belief system

That Lancet front cover - "bodies with vaginas": of course we shouldn't forget that the journal's editor, with a history of poor judgements, is Richard Horton. Debbie Hayton suggests that this is all part of his personal political mission:

The Lancet — one of the world’s oldest and best-known medical journals — is on a mission. The publication might claim that “improving lives is the only end goal,” but editor Richard Horton has grand plans. His vision, which he laid out in 2016 is political revolution.

“The idea of the Lancet was born at an extraordinary moment in the history of the world in the early 19th century which was a moment of political revolution and social revolt. We have to capture that idea every single day in what we do… What I think we’re trying to achieve now is to capture that original idea – the essence of who we are, our identity, in these campaigns that we are developing.”

This journal is of course no stranger to controversy. In 1998, it published Andrew Wakefield’s now notorious article that linked the MMR vaccine with chronic enterocolitis and autism. By the time that paper was retracted — 12 years later — children had been harmed. According to Public Health England, “It had an important impact on MMR coverage which dropped to about 80% nationally in the late nineties and early 2000s and took many years to recover. … Measles cases continued to rise and in 2006 endemic transmission became re-established in the UK.”

Horton has strayed over the line from medicine into politics repeatedly, covering for example the invasion of Iraq and the conflict in Gaza. While he has been quick to challenge the UK government over the response to Covid-19, he has been rather more forgiving of the Chinese authorities.

And of course there was that notorious letter from Peter Daszak and colleagues in February last year, which called out any mention of a lab-leak as conspiracy theory, without bothering to note Daszak's clear conflict of interest.

...as in the MMR debacle over 20 years ago it is children who are being put at risk of harm. They have no special knowledge about their gender identity — nobody does — but promises are being made to them that can never be delivered: that they can somehow choose to be a boy or a girl. The flip side of course is the implied threat that if they choose incorrectly, they may go through the “wrong” puberty and never find satisfaction in life.

Now this quasi-religious belief system is being given legitimacy on the front cover of The Lancet. It took the journal 12 years to retract the misinformation over the MMR vaccine. For the sake of the current generation of young people, Horton needs to rectify this current outrage somewhat more quickly.

I posted about Horton and his "litany of poor judgement" back in July. But he's still editor- in-chief.

Update: here's a statement from Richard Horton.

I would like to thank all those who have responded to the words on this week’s Lancet cover and understand the strength of feeling it has provoked. The Lancet strives for maximum inclusivity of all people in its vision for advancing health. In this instance, we have conveyed the impression that we have dehumanised and marginalised women. Those who read The Lancet regularly will understand that this would never have been our intention. I apologise to our readers who were offended by the cover quote and the use of those same words in the review. At the same time, I want to emphasise that transgender health is an important dimension of modern health care, but one that remains neglected. Trans people regularly face stigma, discrimination, exclusion, and poor health, often experiencing difficulties accessing appropriate health care. The exhibition review from which The Lancet cover quote was taken is a compelling call to empower women, together with non-binary, trans, and intersex people who have experienced menstruation, and to address the myths and taboos that surround menstruation. The review, like the exhibition, puts these myths and taboos into historical context. The review calls for greater efforts to overcome the lack of knowledge and stigma too often associated with menstruation. These are serious issues that demand serious actions. We encourage people to read the full review and support a growing movement against menstrual shame and period poverty.

Yep, as we guessed, it's all about the trans people.