Mick Hartley

The gender identity inclusion drive

Ah, isn't that nice? Gender identity badges handed out at sex offender prison HMP Isle of Wight:

A prison that holds criminals convicted of sexual offences is handing out preferred pronoun badges as part of a gender identity inclusion drive.

HMP Isle of Wight, whose former inmates include the paedophile Gary Glitter, announced the measure as it began its Inclusion Week, which starts today.

The prison, which combines the category B facilities HMP Albany and HMP Parkhurst, unveiled purple badges which display pronouns such as “he/they”, “her/they” and “they/them”.

Another badge simply reads “ask me”.

In an official tweet, HMP Isle of Wight said: “In preparation for National Inclusion Week our equalities team have started distributing pronoun badges. What’s your #pronoun?”...

Government guidance on the prison says: “Isle of Wight is committed to providing a safe, secure and decent rehabilitative environment where men can learn new skills to help them in custody and on release.”

New skills - like how to persuade people you're a woman, so you can gain access to women-only spaces. Especially handy for the convicted sex offender.

In March the Parole Board published a document called “Guidance on Prisoners who are Transgender”.

The document advised parole panel members to check prisoners’ preferred “form of name and term of address.”

It said: “This may require confirming at the appropriate point during introductions how the prisoner wishes to be addressed in the hearing, then using the chosen name and gender-appropriate form of address.”

The document said that should a panel member refer to somebody by the wrong pronoun “an immediate, simple apology is appropriate”.

Dealing with Israelis and Zionists

Featured on MEMRI TV: Iraqi official Dr. Sahar Al-Ta’i, speaking at a Peace Conference in Erbil, says "We want peace with Israel", and that Iraq must recognize Israel as a friendly country, and join the Abraham Accords.

It hasn't gone down well in Baghdad. From the Times of Israel:

Iraqi authorities announced on Sunday that they had issued warrants for the arrest of two Iraqis who addressed a conference calling for their country to make peace with Israel. The authorities said they would arrest all 300-plus participants once they have established who they are.

The over 300 Iraqis gathered on Friday in Erbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, to issue statements backing normalization with Israel. The conference was organized by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based group that advocates closer ties between Israel and the Arab world.

“Israel today, as you know, is a strong country and an inseparable part of the world and the United Nations. Iraq cannot neglect this fact and live in isolation from the world,” Sahar al-Ta’i, a senior official in Iraq’s Culture Ministry, told the attendees.

“This is the manner in which the United Arab Emirates looked toward future generations and the greater good, and entered into the Abraham Accords,” al-Ta’i said, referring to the recent normalization deals between Israel and four Arab states, including the Emirates.

On Sunday, a Baghdad court issued a warrant for al-Ta’i’s arrest, as well as for the detention of tribal leader Wisam al-Hardan. The latter, who also participated in the peace conference, called for reconciliation with Israel in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Friday.

A third warrant was issued for the arrest for Iraqi parliamentarian Mithal al-Alousi, who has long advocated normalization with Israel but did not attend Friday’s conference.

Iraqi judicial authorities said that the remaining 300-odd participants would be arrested “as soon as their identities were determined.”...

Iraqi law continues to issue strict penalties to citizens and residents who maintain contact with Israelis. For decades, association with “Zionist organizations” or promoting “Zionist values” was punishable by death. A 2010 amendment to the Iraqi criminal code limited the sentence to life in prison.

In his remarks on Friday, al-Hardan harshly criticized the laws against dealing with Israelis and Zionists, saying they violated the fundamental human rights of Iraqis.

“The so-called ‘anti-normalization laws’ in Iraq are morally repugnant, and have been repeatedly exposed by the international community as an assault on human rights and freedoms of expression and association,” said al-Hardan.

Friday’s conference ignited a media firestorm in Iraq. Iraqi President Barham Salih denounced the conference as “illegal” and accused the attendees of seeking to stir up unrest.

“The recent meeting held to promote [normalization] does not represent the people and residents of Iraq. It represents only those who participated in it,” Salih said.

“Erbil must prevent these Zionist terrorist meetings. If not, the government must arrest all the participants,” said prominent Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Zionist terrorist meetings??

So effectively sidelined and ignored

Milli Hill,  author and the founder of the Positive Birth Movement, was abused and ostracised back in July for objecting to the term “birthing people” in the context of violence against women in childbirth. Here she is on the latest Lancet "bodies with vaginas" disgrace:

Yes, this is the Lancet, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals in the world, apparently unable to see the disconnect between on the one hand publicly admitting that science has for hundreds of years largely been disinterested in the workings of the female body, whilst on the other hand appearing to think it’s ‘progressive’ and ‘inclusive’ not to even name those people they’ve so effectively sidelined and ignored.

To make matters worse, the cover quote is pulled from an article inside reviewing an exhibition by London’s Vagina Museum on the history of periods with a particular emphasis on the stigma and shame surrounding menstruation. Again, the fact that much of this shame and stigma has consistently manifested through the censorship of words, and our collective historic inability to talk about or name women’s experiences or body parts, is an irony that escapes both author and editors.

It’s also an irony that escapes the Vagina Museum itself. Like many feminists interested in breaking down the barriers to discussing women’s lives and experiences, I was thrilled to see the launch of the Vagina Museum in 2019. I even thought about having the launch of my second book Give Birth like a Feminist, there, and although in the end we had it elsewhere, the Vagina Museum stocked my book in their shop and I had some good chats with their founder about all things vulvic over twitter.

But not any more. My book is no longer on their website, and I’m now blocked by the museum and its founder. My crime? Daring to politely question a series of tweets in which they instructed people to stop using the word ‘woman’ and other sexed words in relation to periods, because, ‘anyone can menstruate regardless of their gender’.

You'd think the Vagina Museum would know a thing or two about biology and sex. Apparently not.

This is not about birth, or trans people even, it’s about linguistics, and about how changing the long established meanings of words can and will have an impact on our rights. If woman is not the word for an adult female person any more, if it becomes a ‘gender’ not a ‘sex’, then this has ramifications for women’s rights. These ramifications are already being felt - as women only spaces, shortlists, panels, sports, refuges, prison and more are no longer only for biological women. Research and data collection will also be transformed if gender identity is given precedence over sex...

To give you a concrete example from my own life, I was recently asked to fill in a survey from a leading publisher which had the specific aim of gathering data on their authors and assessing how inclusive they were being as a publisher. I was asked to give information about everything from my heritage to what my parents did for a living. Apart from one thing. I was not asked my sex. Instead I was asked, ‘How would you describe your gender?’. How will this publisher measure their inclusivity of women writers, or any bias towards male authors, if they don’t ask for this information on a survey set up to assess their own representation and diversity? And who might suffer from this lack of data, do you suppose?

The publishing world, and bookshops in general, seem particularly keen to adopt the trans agenda. Graham Linehan has been noting how Helen Joyce's "Trans" book always seems to be hidden away - if they've got in stock at all. I was in Waterstones in Islington yesterday, and trans woman Shon Faye's "The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice" - given a warmly positive review in the Observer last week - was prominently displayed in a couple of places. No sign of Helen Joyce, of course. Makes you feel better about using Amazon.

Seoul high-rises

A view of residential buildings, seen from the 123-story Lotte World Tower skyscraper in Seoul:

[Photo: Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty]

No women-only meetings

Meanwhile, in Bristol:

A feminist student group at Bristol University is set to launch a legal challenge claiming discrimination after the student union sanctioned them for running women-only meetings.

The group, Women Talk Back, has launched a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to sue the union after the group denied a transgender woman entry to a women-only event.

Union officials have demanded that the group’s chairwoman, Raquel Rosario Sánchez, resign and have barred her from joining the committee of any other affiliated group at the university for two years.

They have banned the group from conducting women-only events and have insisted that all members of Women Talk Back undergo “diversity and inclusivity training” that will focus on the importance of allowing men into previously women-only events.

Thought-reform, you might call it. As long as women persist in denying that men can be women any time they choose, this form of ideological training will be required.

Sánchez, a PhD student originally from the Dominican Republic, claimed last year that officials at the university had failed to protect her from bullying and harassment by other students over her feminist views.

The group said: “Our case could be the among the first brought by women who were directly prevented from or sanctioned for using the single-sex exemptions under the Equality Act 2010.” It argued that “the rights everyone has to single-sex spaces mean nothing if public bodies and institutions, such as the Bristol student union, can override and dictate which rights women should or should not have”.

The group’s broad aim is to provide “a space for women to engage in lively discussion and debate. We are in pursuit of global liberation from all forms of patriarchy.”

A spokeswoman for the university’s student union said it investigated the conduct of Women Talk Back and found that its actions had breached its code of conduct. She added: “The students involved in this case acted outside of those rules in their behaviour towards two other students. We will continue to work with the student group who, like all affiliated groups, have access to a range of support from Bristol student union.”

Except if they're women who won't allow men into their single-sex spaces. No support for them.

Standing alone

Abandoned houses across North America from Portland-based photographer Brendon Burton, in his series Thin Places:

Derived from Celtic culture, Thin Places refers to locales “where heaven and earth grow thin,” Burton says. “Traditionally, the term was meant as a place one would feel closer to God, or something otherworldly. In a more modern sense, it’s a form of liminality, areas that feel transitory.” Each property is shot with a drone, offering a detached view of the once-occupied spaces and a brief encounter with their former use. “What makes people leave, and what keeps things standing? How much of a life gets left along with it?” he asks.

[Images © Brendon Burton]

Bodies with vaginas

The new issue of Lancet hits the streets:

Our new issue is here! On the cover—'Periods on display' and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and #PeriodPoverty.

Plus, @WHO air quality guidelines, low #BackPain management, community-acquired bacterial #meningitis, and more. Read: https://t.co/eP1Lx7D116 pic.twitter.com/DchfiHnYEs

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 24, 2021

Bodies with vaginas? I'm sure - to paraphrase JK Rowling - there used to be a word for those people.

Elephant slides

They used to be popular in Taiwan's playgrounds, but changing tastes and a failure to meet new safety regulations means that many of these elephant slides are now abandoned and unloved.

From photographer Pi Cheng Hsiu:

[Photo © Pi Cheng Hsiuos]

Plenty more on Instagram.

Reducing the study time of the North Korean language

Kindergarten education in North Korea used to consist of a five-hour day, studying the childhoods of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean language, counting, abacus calculations, and singing and dance. Now, however, the five-hour day has been reduced to three. The one subject that's been cut to allow for this dramatic change? Obviously not the childhoods of Kim Il Song or Kim Jong Il....

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently issued an order to reduce the study time of the North Korean language in kindergartens throughout the country. The move has caused controversy among some parents of the children.

A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Sept. 13 that “recently, study time devoted to our language at kindergartens throughout the country decreased from three hours to one hour.” The source added that “this is the result of a policy issued in mid-August by our Supreme Leader [Kim] that ‘spending many hours studying our language can have a negative effect on the growth and development of children.’” 

According to the source, the new policy calls for kindergarten curriculums to conduct education sufficient for students to be able to “write only their own names and numbers one to 30.”

Why would they want any more than that? There aren't any books to read anyway, beyond the lives and teachings of the Kim family.

This change throws the “child-friendly” policies of the Kim Jong Un regime into even sharper relief by demonstrating a special interest in fostering and inducing loyalty in young generations toward the party and the state. In fact, the move can be interpreted as an attempt to strengthen regime solidarity through so-called “love-for-the-people politics.”

However, contrary to this aim, dissatisfaction has surfaced among parents who are upset that language was singled out in the cutback and who feel that authorities are preventing children from learning “necessary life skills.”

The source said that “these days people aren’t having many children, so if they have just one child they really want to raise them properly. Because of this, they’re asking ‘isn’t this too much of a cutback on time spent studying our language,’ which is a really basic, fundamental subject.”

Nevertheless, the authorities have instituted supervision and oversight mechanisms to closely monitor adherence to the policy. For example, they have ordered that children do not have to study the North Korean language after school or at home, and they have instructed homeroom teachers to store related exercise books at school. 

The source explained that “inspection teams made up of provincial and city education officials are even going through the bags of children on their way home from school to confirm whether kindergartens are conforming to party policies.”

The source added that “a threatening directive has been circulated among teachers that if inspectors find language exercise books in kindergarteners’ bags on their way home from school, their teachers will be punished with a month or more at a forced labor camp.”

A culture of hive-minded conformity

I posted the other day on China's new cultural revolution, and the similarities with North Korea. We can, though, look closer to home for that Orwellian touch. Sasha White in Tablet - How Politics Makes Bad Books:

[W]hen a regime seeks to crush all spontaneous and free human creativity and ardor, it often produces a secretive, rebellious underground movement. Even in the world of 1984, Winston and Julia seek their rebellion through a passionate and corporeal love affair, subverting the party’s control simply through their love. In the Soviet Union, state-sanctioned literature was vastly overshadowed in terms of artistic importance by its illicit counterparts: samizdat and tamizdat, underground books published abroad and in Russia by dissident authors. With the threat of imprisonment and persecution looming, Russian writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Boris Pasternak wrote masterpieces that are still read throughout the world, while the names of the officially-sanctioned writers who hewed more faithfully to the party line and received fat book contracts and state honors during the Soviet period have disappeared from history.

In the English-speaking literary world today, a narrow set of acceptable ideological views, a culture of hive-minded conformity, and a commercially driven industry have created an environment in which mainstream publishers don’t print certain views, and censor and revise the ones they do put out. Authors who don’t bow to the woke paradigm lose work, are pressured into self-censoring, or don’t ever get their foot in the door, while publishing professionals are fired left and right for ideological nonconformity, not to mention the rise of the sensitivity reader, whose role is to enforce the party line. When I was fired from my former literary agency, my boss kept repeating, “the industry is very liberal” meaning that my criticism of gender ideology is not welcome anywhere in the industry.....

Our era will go down as a dry and unimportant milieu in the history of the written word. Instead of publishing controversial and provocative books that would challenge and engage critically with mainstream beliefs, the publishing industry has become the backdrop for a continuous stream of instructive “scandals” wherein an author, agent, or editor is maligned or even dropped after being accused of heretical thought. In January, literary agent Colleen Oefelein was fired from the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency merely for the sin of having accounts on “right-wing” social media platforms Gab and Parler. Last year, Hachette canceled Woody Allen’s memoir after “listening to staff and others” object to the publication on the grounds of the allegations of sexual abuse against Allen. Prior to the cancellation, members of Hachette’s New York staff staged a walkout to protest the Allen memoir, which was then canceled (it seems safe to say that whatever one thinks of the accusations of sexual abuse against Allen, the decision to cancel his memoir only stems the likelihood of a Hachette book actually being of interest to posterity). Just last month, another scandal rocked the literary world when author Kate Clanchy was accused of racism and ableism for rather innocuous language used in her memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Statements of contrition were released from the publisher, Picador, as well as the Orwell Foundation, which had awarded the book a prize for political writing in 2020. Clanchy herself tweeted that she welcomed the opportunity to revise her book and added “you are right to blame me.” [...]

The fearful crowd who don’t think the public should be subjected to vulgarity or differences in opinion are destroying an outlet that for centuries has allowed people to peer into the less savory parts of our common humanity. Books are more like dreams than perfected utopian ideologies: they are not all kind. Some are nightmares. Sometimes they show us things we’d rather not look at or remind us of painful memories. But dreams, like books, help our brains process these things, and teach us more about ourselves. The use of books to make believe about some pretend perfect standard of humanity is a crime against human intelligence. It is a body blow to the millennia of development that brought us works of literature that shaped and changed the world. Perhaps this blow to the authenticity and audacity of literature signals our decline as a civilization. After all, what good is a culture that refuses to examine itself?

Of course the situation here or in the US bears little comparison with China or North Korea. Challenging books do get through - Helen Joyce's "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality", for instance. Though, tellingly, no American publisher was brave enough to pick that particular book up: the UK edition is being distributed in the US.