Category: Bullshit

  • Just an ordinary day

    How’s your day going? Just after midnight, I saw The Economist tweet this. It turns out that the article was about Japan, and it has since been corrected with a less inflammatory headline. But as the writer Diana Tourjeé pointed out, “should trans people be sterilised?” is part of the regular media discourse on trans people…

  • Criticism of sex education, and why it’s wrong

    There’s yet another worrying development in the parents vs education story: Conservative politician Andrea Leadsom says that parents should get to decide when their children “become exposed to that information”. Writing in the TES a few weeks ago, Natasha Devon explains why the “kids are too young” argument and two others are wrong. When it…

  • “The lucrative gas-lighting industry”

    Writing in New Socialist, Pete Mitchell does a thoroughly entertaining demolition of two books making the culture war argument that “the left” is somehow silencing free speech. The whole thing’s worth a read but I particularly liked these bits: In Lukianoff and Haidt’s account, college students aren’t distressed because they’re facing unprecedented debt and insecurity,…

  • Stop us if you’ve heard this before

    On Twitter, users mimmymum and the implausible girl have shared a few newspaper clippings about the dangerous people tricking their way into bathrooms and locker rooms, demanding inclusion in education and other terrifying things. No, not trans people. Gay and lesbian people. Irony fans will appreciate this first one, about Martina Navratilova, because her recent…

  • “Respect for all”, apart from the gays and the transes

    There’s a predictable media storm in England (Scotland has a different, more enlightened education system) about plans to revise sex education, something that’s been overdue for decades now, to include “respect for all”. It’s predictable because various right-wing rabble-rousers have been banging on about the spectre of “gay and trans lessons” – a phrase you…

  • Sound and fury, signifying nothing

    This week, Lily Madigan was asked to appear on a BBC radio programme to talk about trans women in sport. There’s just one problem with that. While Madigan is trans, she is not an endocrinologist or a sports scientist – so she can’t talk knowledgeably about the crux of the issue, which is whether raised…

  • “The Scottish media are now at the forefront of undermining trans rights”

    The ever-entertaining A Thousand Flowers blog has resurrected its Weekly Wanker slot for the Herald newspaper columnist Iain McWhirter, who has appointed himself as defender of women against the sinister trans agenda. It’s an amusing read, but it’s also fuelled by righteous anger. If you aren’t familiar with ATF, it’s a Scottish blog that often…

  • A Mermaids tale

    Last year, there was a concerted smear campaign by anti-trans activists against the Mermaids charity. It began with misleading articles in major newspapers such as The Sunday Times (articles that have since been corrected after IPSO found them to be based on false allegations) and culminated in an organised campaign to get the Lottery fund…

  • In whose face? Down whose throat? For God’s sake, let it go

    When was the last time you had objectionable content rammed down your throat? Because according to the internet, it’s happening constantly. All over the world, people are getting things rammed right down their throats. Except, of course, they aren’t. Here’s an example. Today, one of my friends was reading a Facebook thread about a children’s…

  • A sinister agenda

    One of the most widely circulated anti-trans stories is that Soham child murder Ian Huntley is trans. The Star reported it 10 months ago, and it’s regularly trotted out by anti-trans groups and repeated in newspapers. Look what Jeremy Vine posted today. It’s from yesterday’s Star. Like the vast majority of such stories, it was…