Guardian journalists condemn their Editor for publishing 'Trans-Phobic'
article by Suzanne Moore
Newsletter published on March 15, 2020
(1) Trans activists get Feminist events cancelled and de-platformed -
Suzanne Moore
(2) Oxford professor Selina Todd feminist talk cancelled - because she's
a TERF
(3) Guardian journalists condemn their Editor for publishing Suzanne
Moore's article
(4) Suzanne Moore: I was hurt that so many of my 'colleagues' denounced me
(5) Some 'Transwomen' are held in Women's prisons and some in Men's jails
(6) Moore, a Feminist, says Gender is a cultural construct, but opposes
the Trans view that Sex is too
(7) In defence of Suzanne Moore: Trans women are not women
(8) The Left is eating itself in a Trans Culture War - Melanie Phillips
(1) Trans activists get Feminist events cancelled and de-platformed -
Suzanne Moore
Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced
Suzanne Moore
The treatment of Selina Todd this weekend was a warning. We have to
protect women's sex-based rights
In February 1988, a group of lesbians abseiled into the House of Lords
to protest against section 28; a few months later, Booan Temple
disrupted the Six O'Clock News for the same cause. Margaret Thatcher had
claimed the promotion of homosexuality was undermining the family, and
as Sue Lawley read the news, you could hear Temple's muffled shouts as
Nicholas Witchell held her down. Gay men, gay women and their allies
were all on the same side back then, in solidarity against Tory repression.
How we identified sexually was not paramount. We all read a lot of queer
theory, but, more importantly, we knew that bodies existed in history,
in a context, for we were seeing a generation wiped out by Aids. If you
lived through that, solidarity took precedence over sexuality.
Now, I feel a huge sadness when I look at the fragmentation of the
landscape, where endless fighting, cancellations and no-platformings
have obscured our understanding of who the real enemies are.
Last Saturday, Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at the
University of Oxford, was due to give a polite two-minute speech of
thanks at an event at Exeter College commemorating 50 years since Ruskin
College's inaugural National Women's Liberation Conference. The day
before Todd was due to speak, she says she was disinvited on the grounds
that she had addressed a meeting of the group Woman's Place UK, which
was formed in 2017 after proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.
The group campaigns for women to have separate spaces and distinct
services on the basis of our biological sex. Todd, an esteemed professor
of working-class history, has, as a result, been accused on social media
of being transphobic. Woman's Place UK was recently defined as a
"trans-exclusionist hate group" in a pledge put together by the Labour
Campaign for Trans Rights, which the Labour leadership candidates Lisa
Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey signed up to.
Woman's Place UK clearly isn't a hate group, and the Labour pledge led
to many women using the hashtag #ExpelMe on Twitter because they were
uncomfortable with people being able to self-declare as a man or a woman
– whatever their biological sex – for all sorts of reasons.
The radical insight of feminism is that gender is a social construct –
that girls and women are not fated to be feminine, that boys and men
don't have to be masculine. But we have gone through the looking-glass
and are being told that sex is a construct. It is said that sex is
merely assigned at birth, rather than being a material fact – actually,
though, sex is recognisable in the womb (which is what enables foetal
sex selection). Sex is not a feeling. Female is a biological
classification that applies to all living species. If you produce large
immobile gametes, you are female. Even if you are a frog. This is not
complicated, nor is there a spectrum, although there are small numbers
of intersex people who should absolutely be supported.
Female oppression is innately connected to our ability to reproduce.
Women have made progress by talking about biology, menstruation,
childbirth and menopause. We won't now have our bodies or voices written
out of the script. The materiality of having a female body may mean rape
or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In
some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material
and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a
category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights,
protected in law, can be done away with.
I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed
transphobic by an invisible committee on social media. It has meant
death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement. I
also know that the most vicious stuff takes place online and not in real
life. Still, I can't stand by. As Roman Polanski was being rewarded for
his latest film at the César awards, Todd was being silenced.
This latest silencing of women is a warning. You either protect women's
rights as sex-based or you don't protect them at all.
If the idea of women organising autonomously is transphobic you are
walking into a cul-de-sac, which absolutely traps people in boxes that
benefit the patriarchy. Because there is nothing the patriarchy fears
more than women who no longer rely on male authority. We revert to a
society where women have to be chaperoned, not trusted to make decisions
about their own reality. Meanwhile, men-only spaces are how half the
establishment operates and no one considers that to be transphobic. None
of this discussion is about men giving up space for trans men; it is
always about what women must accept.
Most people want the tiny percentage of the population who are trans to
have the best lives they can. Living your best life would be one free of
male violence. It is not feminists who murder trans people, although
this might be the impression you would be left with if you relied solely
on Twitter for your information.
Male violence is an issue for women, which is why we want single-sex
spaces. Vulnerable women in refuges and prisons must be allowed to live
in safe environments – the common enemy here is the patriarchy,
remember? How did we arrive at a situation where there are shocking and
rising numbers of teenage girls presenting at specialist clinics with
gender dysphoria, while some who have transitioned are now regretful and
infertile?
Women have the right to call out the violent men who rape. We have the
right to speak and organise without being told that speech is itself
dangerous. You can tell me to "die in a ditch, terf" all you like, as
many have for years, but I self-identify as a woman who won't go down
quietly.
There are more of us than you think.
o Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist
(2) Oxford professor Selina Todd feminist talk cancelled - because she's
a TERF
March 1, 2020
Oxford professor Selina Todd feminist talk cancelled
By Gergana Krasteva Trainee Reporter
Professor deplatformed from feminist festival following 'anti-trans' links
OUTRAGE has erupted after a history professor was banned from speaking
at an Oxford feminist festival following accusations of links to
transphobic views.
Oxford University Professor of Modern History Selina Todd was due to
give a speech at an event at Exeter College yesterday commemorating the
50th anniversary of Ruskin College's inaugural Women's Liberation
Conference.
However it is understood she was asked by organisers not to speak on
Friday night.
Ms Todd took to social media to announce the cancellation and claimed it
was because of her connection with the group Woman's Place UK, which
some have said promotes transphobic views.
A video posted online shows furious audience members at yesterday's
event demanding to know why Ms Todd was 'silenced' and BBC journalist
Samira Ahmed, who did speak at the festival, reportedly said she was
unhappy about the decision. ...
... In a statement addressing the cancellation Ms Todd said: "I am
shocked to have been no-platformed by this event, organised by Oxford
International Women's Festival and hosted at Exeter College.
"I was asked to participate in October 2019, and I explained to the
organisers that some trans activists may object to my being there.
Oxford Mail:
"I was then told that trans activists had already expressed hostility
towards the event because they claimed second-wave feminism is
inherently trans-exclusionary."
In her statement the academic added that the organisers of yesterday's
event justified the cancellation because of pressure from trans
activists and the collective Feminist Fightback.
Journalist and campaigner Julie Bindel who attended the event where Ms
Todd was due to speak challenged the last minute decision.
She said: "You should hang your heads in shame for giving into this mob."
Woman's Place UK was started in September 2017 aiming to 'ensure women's
voices would be heard in the consultation on proposals to change the
Gender Recognition Act'.
The group says that 'sex is a protected characteristic in the Equality
Act (2010) which we believe must be defended'.
One of its current manifesto policies is 'support for sex-segregated
sports, promoting a level playing field for competitions and encouraging
and recognising the excellence of female competitors'.
Critics say that its campaign could curtail the rights of transgender women.
(3) Guardian journalists condemn their Editor for publishing Suzanne
Moore's article
Hundreds Of Staff At The Guardian Have Signed A Letter To The Editor
Criticising Its "Transphobic Content"
"The pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our
work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans
rights and trans employees."
Posted on March 7, 2020, at 9:54 a.m.
Patrick Strudwick
BuzzFeed UK LGBT Editor
Hundreds of staff and contractors at the Guardian have signed a strongly
worded letter to the editor in protest of the newspaper's "pattern of
publishing transphobic content".
The letter, which was sent to Katharine Viner on Friday night, has 338
signatories from across multiple departments at the title, and in every
region — from senior editorial staff in the UK, the US, and Australia to
employees in the commercial, digital, and technical departments.
It has been passed to BuzzFeed News on the understanding that the
individual names would not be published. Among the signatories are
household names with international reputations and long-standing tenures
at both the Guardian and its sister Sunday title, the Observer.
The letter, which was organised over the last few days in response to a
column by Suzanne Moore that has been widely criticised as anti-trans,
said the staff were "deeply distressed" by the resignation of a
transgender member of staff who said they'd received anti-trans comments
from "influential editorial staff" and who criticised the publication of
the Moore's column at the editorial morning conference.
The column was "the straw that broke the camel's back," the trans
employee said, following a series of pieces that pitted trans people
against women and against women's rights. One leader article — the
publicly stated position of the newspaper — claimed that trans rights
are in "collision" with women's rights.
The letter points out that this was the third trans staff member to
resign over alleged anti-trans bias.
Earlier on Friday, Viner, along with chief executive Annette Thomas,
emailed all staff defending its decision to publish pieces that "never
shy away from difficult or divisive subjects" and pledging to represent
"a wide range of view on many topics".
The editor and CEO then castigated staff for publicly criticising the
work of coworkers: "It is never acceptable to attack colleagues whose
views you do not agree with, whether in meetings, on email, publicly or
on social media."
This is the full letter from staff to the editor:
As employees across the Guardian, we are deeply distressed by the
resignation of another trans colleague in the UK, the third in less than
a year.
We feel it is critical that the Guardian do more to become a safe and
welcoming workplace for trans and non-binary people.
We are also disappointed in the Guardian's repeated decision to publish
anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports
human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media.
But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with
our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans
rights and trans employees.
We strongly support trans equality and want to see the Guardian live up
to its values and do the same.
We look forward to working with Guardian leadership to address these
pressing concerns, and request a response by 11 March.
Below is a list of 338 of Guardian employees globally who signed this
letter at the time of writing.
Patrick Strudwick is a LGBT editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.
Contact Patrick Strudwick at patrick.strudwick@buzzfeed.com.
(4) Suzanne Moore: I was hurt that so many of my 'colleagues' denounced me
14 March 2020, 7:00pm
I have been trying to write about a great unpleasantness for some time:
the trans debate that we don't really have. Men go to Woman's Place
meetings. So do trans women, it's not a separatist organisation. But for
some godforsaken reason the Labour leadership hopefuls thought they
might endear themselves to their lost 'red wall' voters by signing
pledges calling Woman's Place and LGB Alliance 'trans-exclusionist hate
groups'. I was appalled to see that the signatories included Lisa Nandy,
who is bright, and Rebecca Long-Bailey, who isn't. Anyway, having been
asked not to write about this subject for months (I still have the
police reports from the threats I received last time), I insisted. A
glance at Twitter after my Guardian column went online suggested that
either I was the saviour of all 'natal women' or had committed some kind
of transphobic hate crime. My offence was to say that biological sex is
a thing. Scientists tend to think it is. Some banana slugs change sex
and chew off each other's penises after mating. I can't say I think
that's a bad idea.
After all the online abuse, I thought someone might ring me and see if I
was OK, but they didn't. But then I never go to the Guardian office.
There had been melodrama, apparently. A trans woman who had seemingly
resigned some weeks earlier resigned again. My words had made her feel
unsafe, she said. More than 300 employees at the paper signed a letter
condemning the decision to run my article. The fabulous Hadley Freeman
defended me. The emails then came pouring in from people who wished they
could say what I had said. I wished people would stop calling me brave.
Columnists are meant to be made of titanium; I felt more like
papier-mâché. But the orthodoxy which demands that Mary Beard must refer
to an ancient statue with a little penis as 'assigned male at birth' is
powerful. The no-platforming of feminist warriors like Kathleen Stock
and Julie Bindel is abhorrent. I like freaks. I like fluidity. I just
don't like one set of rules being replaced by another. I was hurt that
so many of my 'colleagues' denounced me, but I suppose everyone needs a
hobby.
I recently had a row with my teenager who shouted at me about Bernie
Sanders and revolution. She is the biggest Bernie fan in the world. A
competent woman clearly can't run America. Instead we will have a
gerontocracy. No country for young men. Thank God there was gin in the
house.
I was meant to have had a relaxing week as I was going to Amsterdam to
take psilocybin truffles. I love a drug, and this is legal, OK? The
retreat I stayed in was a gorgeous Dutch modernist house. People had
flown from Toronto and New York for this spiritual journey. We entered
the ceremonial space — 'the sacred circle' — and I raised a concern
about what we would be listening to on our eight-hour trip. 'Suzanne,
you seem anxious,' said the group leader. 'I just don't want that awful
plinky-plonky massage music,' I said. 'I've got taste.' I was told there
would be a curated playlist by Imperial College. We drank the magic tea
and lay on mattresses on the floor with gravity blankets and blindfolds.
Nothing happened to me. After an hour and half I was vaguely tired. My
guide, a lovely young Geordie, sat behind me. While other people were
screaming and sobbing, I was writing him notes: 'This music is fucking
awful.' I was brought earplugs but I could still hear it. At one point,
as a dire track ended, I said: 'Men should not be allowed to make
playlists ever.' At least some people laughed. Then I was asked if I
would like to leave the sacred circle. Yes, I would. I sat by the fire
reading and chatting to a doctor. I wasn't tripping, just hungry.
By the next day I felt as if I was in New Age prison. I booked myself
into an airport hotel as they are my favourites. J.G. Ballard called the
Heathrow Hilton a masterpiece. He was right, and now, thanks to
coronavirus, it's Jim's world, we just live in it. Upon my return, I
argued with the Guardian again about whether in my next column I should
return to the subject which has caused such a fuss. They didn't want me
to, but I did. Will I be thrown out of another sacred circle? Three in
one week is good, even for me. Anyway, I am up for some mescaline in
Crystal Palace and as for human sexuality, what can I say? A charming
ex-war correspondent on the retreat said that if he had stared into my
eyes, he would have turned to stone. So my job prospects are not
entirely over just yet if you would like a statue somewhere.
Suzanne Moore is a columnist for the Guardian.
(5) Some 'Transwomen' are held in Women's prisons and some in Men's jails
The row over Suzanne Moore is a test for the Guardian's liberal credentials
Alex Massie
7 March 2020, 7:50pm
The Guardian is a great newspaper and it remains so even if, puzzlingly,
more than a fifth of its workforce - both editorial and commercial -
appear to think there is something appalling about working for a newspaper.
That is the first and most glaring conclusion to be drawn from the
extraordinary letter signed by 338 Guardian and Observer employees
lamenting the paper's willingness to run a column written by the great
Suzanne Moore earlier this week, in which Moore argued that "we have
gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a
construct" and that "you either protect women's rights as sex-based or
you don't protect them at all".
The signatories to the letter sent to Kath Viner, the paper's editor,
deplore what they deem the Guardian's "pattern of publishing transphobic
content" though, vexingly, the letter itself provides no evidence of
this alleged transphobia and instead merely assumes it. According to
Buzzfeed News which received a copy of the complaint - as, doubtless,
was intended all along - staff at the paper were "deeply distressed" by
the resignation of a transgender employee earlier this week who had,
allegedly, received or overheard what are described as "anti-trans
comments" from "influential editorial staff". No details of what these
remarks may have been has been furnished by Buzzfeed.
Again, according to Buzzfeed's account, this all followed what is
described as "a series of pieces that pitted trans people against women
and against women's rights". One editorial column even had the temerity
to argue that trans rights are sometimes in "collision" with more
orthodox interpretations of women's rights.
It is suggested that this is a "transphobic" position for the paper to
hold though even an elementary appraisal of reality is sufficient to
demonstrate that it is an obviously true interpretation of the matter.
If there were no collision, or at any rate no widely-shared suspicion of
there being a collision, between trans rights and women's rights there
would be no argument on this subject at all. The truth of the Guardian's
editorial position is confirmed by the dispute over it.
And there really are obvious areas where there is such a "collision".
One such is the question of where to incarcerate trans criminals. At
present, some transwomen are held in women's prisons and some in men's
jails. That indicates that these matters are, for now anyway, subject to
testing on an individual basis.
The example of Karen White is a case in point. In 2018, the then 52-year
old woman with a penis - a statement that remains startling to have to
use - was placed in a women's prison despite having previous convictions
for indecent assault, indecent exposure and gross indecency involving
children. She subsequently sexually assaulted a female inmate and then,
later, admitted to having raped two women before she was sent to prison.
Karen White, who identified as a woman, might have a right to be in a
women's prison but, as surely seems obvious, female prisoners also had a
right to be protected from Karen White, no matter her
self-identification. There is a pretty hefty and pretty obvious
"collision" here and it takes a wilful blindness not to see it. An
extreme case? Perhaps. But not one that can be wished away either. What
does "trans equality" actually mean in instances such as this?
The letter sent by the 338 horrified Guardian employees states that "we
are disappointed" by the paper's "repeated decision to publish
anti-trans views" and it is impossible not to conclude from this that
the signatories believe Suzanne Moore's column should not have been
published.
Moreover, it is heavily implied that were Moore - or anyone else - to
write a column making an argument deemed - by a process unknown -
"anti-trans" it should not be published either. Publishing Moore's
column has, after all, "interfered with our work" and "cemented our
reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans
employees". This will be news, I think, to many of the women who have
concerns about the way in which the Guardian has covered the controversy
over proposed reforms to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Those reforms, which would have introduced self-identification of gender
and elided - to put it kindly - the distinction between gender and sex,
have for the time being been jettisoned in England. They remain alive in
Scotland, however, where a Scottish government consultation on the
subject closes later this month.
In January, Nicola Sturgeon, whose ministry supports self-ID, told the
Scottish parliament it was vital to "allow a proper debate" to "convince
those who have concerns about the issue that there is not a tension and
inevitable conflict between women's rights and trans rights". But, as I
wrote in The Times on Tuesday, the first minister's remarks give the
game away. For if trans-rights and women's rights were, as some claim,
indistinguishable there would be no need to refer to them as distinct
entities. Some "collision", as the Guardian might put it, between them
may, from time to time, be impossible to avoid.
This, then, seems a test for Kath Viner and the Guardian. The evident
implication of the letter sent by the disappointed 338 is that the paper
should cease publishing opinions with which some Guardian employees
might disagree. A question arises, then: should the Guardian remain a
newspaper at all? It is difficult to avoid the thought that 338 of its
employees think it should not. As it is, many of them appear shocked by
the discovery they have inadvertently wandered into a workplace in which
they may discover a range of views. Perhaps they should reconsider their
positions.
(6) Moore, a Feminist, says Gender is a cultural construct, but opposes
the Trans view that Sex is too
I wish everyone raw strength, however they identify
Suzanne Moore
The truth that I take to be self-evident because of the experiences I've
had is my story. It won't necessarily be yours
Tue 10 Mar 2020 18.00 AEDT Last modified on Tue 10 Mar 2020 19.45 AEDT
Blood. Unwanted blood. That was the first sign I had that I was a woman.
For me, it was just a period. My mother referred to it as "the curse". I
didn't put the tampon in properly, so it hurt. Tracking periods never
seemed easy: I was too busy; it was always a faff. Thank God that bit of
me has gone now. I became something else a while back. My oestrogen
levels dropped. What so often defines gender no long defines me and now
I wonder if it ever did. My insides don't match my outsides, that's for
sure.
The feminist philosopher Judith Butler writes: "Gender is a kind of
imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of
imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and
consequence of the imitation itself." For her, gender is a simulation of
a simulation. I knew this innately from day one. I liked the drag show
myself: the heels, the lipstick, the clothes. I liked to confuse people.
Femininity is a lot of work and fun; but it is dangerous work.
I got attacked, I got raped and I was considered to be asking for it,
wearing that female drag. That can happen to all women, however they
identify: cis/trans, straight/gay. I got put on a pill that I didn't ask
for. Hormones throughout my childbearing years, and then, at the other
end of the spectrum, there are the joys of HRT, if you so desire.
Without those hormones, where would I have been? Pregnant for decades or
dead in childbirth? Considered a crone who no longer cares about her
dried-up skin and atrophying vagina?
I had an abortion. I woke up to Margaret Thatcher lecturing me on the
telly. I wasn't sad about a baby I didn't want … but Thatcher made me
weep. They gave me some paracetamol for the cramps. I couldn't afford a
taxi and I thought of my mum, who had gone to London for a backstreet
abortion where they clipped the neck of her cervix. She was found
haemorrhaging in the toilets at Liverpool Street station.
I thanked my lucky stars that now everything was lovely.
Except it wasn't. I got pregnant again. My body grew another body inside
it and expelled it – a real-life girl who has just had a child herself.
But I was aware that gender was a trap, a con, an ideology that I had
rejected long ago. I read a lot of theory.
In her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,
Butler writes: "If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps
this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender;
indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that
the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at
all."
No distinction at all. How immensely freeing that it is. As Jeanette
Winterson writes in her book Frankissstein: A Love Story: "I'm a woman.
And I'm a man. That's how it is for me. I am in a body that I prefer.
But the past, my past, is not subject to surgery. I didn't do it to
distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself."
Who doesn't want to be nearer to themselves? I would love to live in a
world made only of discourse. But then a friend died of a cancer
connected to the amount of IVF she had had, while another remained
undiagnosed with severe endometriosis for so long she became very ill. I
had to help section a woman with postpartum psychosis. I remain worried
about the levels of distress reported by young women who hate their bodies.
My body is ageing and gender dissipates slightly at menopause because
you are free. I want it to be true that sex is as fluid a category as
gender, but that hasn't been my experience. I don't want smear tests and
mammograms and anti-ageing creams. I don't want to care any more. My
gender now is irrelevant in ways my body can't be, for it will
deteriorate and cease.
The trans writer Julia Serano says: "In trans women's eyes, I see a
wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be
recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly
asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world."
I wish everyone this raw strength, however they identify. But I ask one
thing that the philosopher Michel Foucault also asks: is sex the
shattering of yourself or the truth of yourself? You know, maybe it is
neither. Maybe it is not either/or. Maybe the truth that I take to be
self-evident because of the experiences I've described here – that the
female body will always cause female trouble – is just my story. It
won't necessarily be yours and you must absolutely make your own story
as you see fit. All I would ask is that you don't tell me that my story
and the stories of other women don't matter.
I think they do. That is why we keep telling them.
o Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist
(7) In defence of Suzanne Moore: Trans women are not women
In defence of Suzanne Moore
Trans women are not women and that's all there is to it.
Brendan O'Neill
10th March 2020
Suzanne Moore once said she wanted to vomit on me. So I'm guessing she's
not a fan. Alas, defending freedom of speech, standing up for the
essential liberty of intellectual and moral dissent, often means
defending people who despise you. Even people who want to puke on you.
And so I must defend Ms Moore from the army of censorious misogynists
keen to shut her down because – let's be frank – she thinks that if you
have a dick you are a man, not a woman.
As all of us are aware, it has become a thoughtcrime to believe in
biological sex and a speechcrime to say that individuals born with a
penis are male. As trans-sceptical feminists like Posie Parker, Venice
Allan, Meghan Murphy, Selina Todd, Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel have
discovered, it is now 'transphobic' to believe that blokes are blokes,
even if they think they are women. It is now bigotry to think born males
should not be allowed to roam around women's loos, insert themselves on
to all-women political shortlists, or beat up women in boxing rings.
Yes, it is now phobic, evil no less, to question the right of men who ID
as women to punch actual women. What times we live in.
Ms Moore, not for the first time, finds herself alongside these other
trans-questioning feminists on the misogynists' hitlist. Her speechcrime
this time was to write a column in the Guardian saying it is bonkers to
see sex as a social construct and insisting that women should have the
right to self-organise. Biological reality? Freedom of association?
Naturally, the illiberal, unreasoned woke mob who will shame anyone who
questions the science of climate change while simultaneously binning the
far more solid science of biology and sex – consistency is not the
censor's strong point – went berserk at Ms Moore's expression of
scientific truth and her defence of women's rights. They branded her
unhinged, hateful, violent, to which the only reasonable response is:
buy a mirror, lads.
Alarmingly – well, for anyone who was still clinging to the idea that
the Guardian is a liberal newspaper – more than a fifth of Moore's own
colleagues wrote a letter condemning their own newspaper for publishing
a column they disagree with. How very Pravda of them. Imagine the
colossal levels of entitlement it must require to believe you have the
right to peruse a newspaper without encountering a view that runs
counter to your own. The 338 intolerant Guardianistas sent their missive
to editor Kath Viner – and to Buzzfeed too, natch, because what's the
point in partaking in an orgy of censorious virtue-signalling if it
doesn't go viral? – and insisted that she stop publishing 'transphobic
content' because it is making them feel 'deeply distressed'.
Oh, grow up. Seriously. One could quote Mill here, or Milton, or
Frederick Douglass, who had been an actual slave and yet wrote
beautifully in defence of full freedom of speech, in contrast with those
338 breastfed, silver-spooned, cushioned middle-class dweebs at the
Guardian who mistake reading a column they disagree with for an
outrageous act of structural oppression. One could quote those guys but
really all that needs to be said is: grow up. If ideas you disagree with
'distress' you, get the hell out of journalism. Out of public life
entirely, in fact. Disagreement, debate and dissent are the lifeblood of
public debate. Put up or ship out.
Moore's column was indeed dissenting. The great self-delusion of the
transgender lobby and its legion cheerleaders is that they are an
oppressed movement struggling to be heard over the din of, er, a Selina
Todd speech or the occasional Guardian column wondering if it is really
right that men in bikinis should be allowed to swim in the ladies' pond
on Hampstead Heath. Because in truth, the vast majority of establishment
institutions love the trans ideology. The education system,
universities, the cops, loads of politicians, even the goddamn church.
Not to mention popular culture, where subscribing to the religious-like
mantra 'trans women are women' is as essential to one's moral survival
as believing Jesus was the son of God would have been 500 years ago. The
trans ideology has fulsome backing from the elites; it is ordinary
people who think it is nuts.
So Moore is dissenting from one of the elite's core new orthodoxies:
genderfluidity, the end of men and women, sex as a mindset rather than a
biological reality. And, like all intemperate defenders of orthodoxy,
her army of haters are out to punish her, to cancel her. There is an
undeniable misogynistic bent to this fury with trans-sceptical
feminists. Some men question trans ideology, too, but they never get as
much hatred and bile as the women who question it. It seems very clear
that the assertion of women's rights is seen as a threat by trans
activists, because it calls into question their biological relativism,
their post-sex eccentricity, and their frankly sexist belief that born
males should have free and easy access to women's spaces. They insult,
and in some cases assault, women who defend women's rights precisely
because the very idea of women is a threat to their desire to co-opt
womanhood as part of a rather strange identitarian roleplay. The reason
'trans women are women' is yelled like an incontestable mantra is
because it is actually designed to erase the specificity – the
biological, social and relational specificity – of womanhood.
In the Moore debacle, what we essentially have is men who think they are
women trying to silence a woman. If we are going to be honest, this is
what transgender agitation represents more broadly right now: men acting
as women attacking actual women. It is, as I have argued before on
spiked, misogyny in drag. You can't even say 'women' anymore – it's now
'womxn'. Posters and flags showing the dictionary definition of the word
woman are torn down at the behest of men. Women's cycling and
weightlifting are invaded by men. Any sportswoman who raises questions
about this, such as the brilliant Sharron Davies, is denounced as a
phobe and a bitch, etc.
This is cancel culture with a sexist twist. It is the silencing of women
by men. It's positively 1950s. It is time more people spoke out. Of
course trans people should enjoy the exact same rights as every other
citizen: the right to vote, the right to organise, the right to speak.
But they are not women and therefore women's rights do not apply to
them. They should not have access to women's spaces or women's
organisations. Trans women are not women. And until that factual truth,
that bizarrely dissenting cry, is more widely stated, the
neo-misogynistic assault on women's rights, and on truth and reason
itself, will not stop. Suzanne Moore should now feel free to vomit on
this article.
(8) The Left is eating itself in a Trans Culture War - Melanie Phillips
The left is eating itself in a trans culture war
A Guardian columnist has been demonised for stating that biological
women should have a voice
Melanie Phillips
Tuesday March 10 2020, 12.01am, The Times
The Guardian has been convulsed after publishing an article by its
longstanding columnist Suzanne Moore. Its appearance triggered a letter
of protest to the editor, signed by 338 Guardian and Observer employees.
Getting on for half the workforce thus believe that their readers should
not have been allowed to see what Moore wrote.
What was so shocking about this incendiary piece? Moore supported the
Oxford professor Selina Todd, who had been accused of "transphobia" and
disinvited from giving a two-minute vote of thanks at a feminist event.
Todd was targeted because she had addressed a meeting of Woman's Place
UK, a group that campaigns for separate services for women. And that, of
course, is viewed as "transphobic" too.
Moore understandably observed that this showed "we have gone through the
looking-glass" to be told by transgender activists that sex is merely
assigned at birth rather than being a material fact. On the contrary,
she wrote, "sex is not a feeling. Female is a biological classification
that applies to all living species."
Cue a blazing row at The Guardian's editorial conference, with one trans
member of staff claiming as a result to be too frightened to go to work.
This employee subsequently resigned after reportedly receiving
anti-trans comments from "influential editorial staff". In these
circumstances, this might have been something as terrifying, aggressive
and life-threatening as being told "I am a woman and you are a man" (or
vice versa). Raw bigotry indeed.
Moore's column, said this member of staff, was "the straw that broke the
camel's back" after a series of pieces pitting trans people against
women. One example was said to be a Guardian editorial claiming that
trans rights were in "collision" with women's rights. Isn't that merely
to state what trans supporters are claiming in this row — that trans
rights are under attack from those like Moore who declare women's rights
are distinct and inviolable?
The signatories claim that "the pattern of publishing transphobic
content has interfered with our work". No details are given to verify
this claim. But aren't these 338 uncollegiate colleagues doing their
utmost to interfere with Moore's work? Worse, since "transphobic" means
not just wrong but cruel, bigoted and beyond the pale, are they not
inciting hostility and worse towards her? As Moore wrote in her column,
the consequences of previously being deemed transphobic on social media
"has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police
involvement".
In response to Moore's argument that women should not be silenced and
need a voice, these signatories effectively declared that she didn't
deserve a voice to say just that.
Moore, who is considering her future with The Guardian, is but the
latest in a line of feminists to have fallen foul of transgender
activists. The irony is that her column was in other respects a hymn to
wokery. She lamented that the "endless fighting, cancellations and
no-platformings have obscured our understanding of who the real enemies
are". By which she meant conservatives. Pitching women against women
benefited the "patriarchy" which feared nothing more than "women who no
longer rely on male authority".
Well, I've been fighting for years against this idea of the patriarchy
on the grounds that it's a ripe example of ill-informed, anti-male
malice. As a result, when years ago I used to write for The Guardian I
found myself denounced on the communal noticeboard as "not a sister".
Indeed, I've been denounced as some kind of "phobe" for an entire
catechism of crimes against the orthodoxies of identity politics and
victim culture.
These are the same forces that have now gone after Trevor Phillips, who
has been suspended by the Labour Party after being accused of
Islamophobia, a term that, ironically, became part of political life
after the 1997 Runnymede Trust report on Islamophobia that he commissioned.
Both these witch-hunts show once again how the revolution eats its own.
In the 18th century, the French Jacobins started by guillotining enemies
of the revolution and then decided that certain revolutionaries were
themselves enemies of the revolution.
Obviously, the attempts to silence Moore and numerous others who offend
against woke dogma are a blow against freedom of expression, the bulwark
of a free society. More sinister and profound, labelling such dissidents
as enemies of humanity is designed to terrorise others into disavowing
both them and their ideas.
This enforcement of dogma, complete with metaphorically burning heretics
at the professional stake or subjecting them to Orwellian smears and
character assassination, smacks of the medieval inquisition, French
Revolution or Soviet communism.
In response to the furore over Suzanne Moore, there have been references
to The Guardian being a "great liberal newspaper". This is about four
decades out of date. It stopped being a liberal paper when liberalism
became corrupted by ideologies which permit no opposition and are
therefore inimical to truth, freedom and reason.
Suzanne Moore wrote: "I self-identify as a woman who won't go down
quietly." We may not agree with everything she says, and she may not
welcome all of us as supporters, but those who stand for freedom against
such sinister attempts at social and cultural control will be cheering
her on.
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