Category: LGBTQ+

  • Useful idiots are still idiots

    I’ve written many times about useful idiots, members of minority groups who join anti-minority parties. One of the best-known examples is Winston McKenzie, the former Commonwealth spokesman for UKIP, whose presence in the party was used to prove it wasn’t racist. He ended up quitting the party because it was racist. Trans and gay people…

  • Not so reasonable now

    Jezebel has posted a very comprehensive analysis of one of the LGBT+ human rights cases in front of the US Supreme Court. Tellingly, a who’s who of anti-trans bigots have signed on in support of Rost, from the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson to the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, all of whom are attempting…

  • You’re probably a target too

    Arwa Mahdawi writes in The Guardian about the US court cases on LGBT+ discrimination. These cases are, to put it mildly, a huge deal – and not just for LGBT people. The ruling will have serious implications for straight people who don’t comply with gender norms. It could allow employers to fire women who don’t…

  • A scary day for LGBT+ people in America

    Today, the US Supreme Court will hear three cases with massive potential consequences for LGBT+ people. The court will be asked to declare whether it’s legal to fire people on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity. If the court rules that it is, it’ll be a very bleak day for human rights.…

  • All the world’s The Stage

    There’s been a thoroughly predictable outcry against The Old Vic theatre’s move to gender-neutral toilets, and trade magazine The Stage invited two cisgender women to write about it. A Twitter storm ensued and the articles were both taken down again, but it’s been reported on social media and on the BBC as the silencing of…

  • You can’t say “it happened to me!” if it didn’t happen to you

    Sky News, prop. R Murdoch, has given strange prominence to the launch of a new charity. Let’s start with a question. Detransitioning from what? What do you think transitioning means? To most, it’ll mean hormones and surgery. And as the article makes clear, to Sky it definitely means hormones and surgery. But that’s not what…

  • Might as well jump

    There’s been an interesting discussion on Twitter among some trans folks on the subject of transition and bravery. Did we have to transition? Are we brave to have done so? Here’s Emmy Zje: “Do you really HAVE to transition tho?” Yes. The horrific certainties of not transitioning eventually eclipsed the certainties transphobia was sure to…

  • How a lie can travel halfway around the world

    I mentioned recently that there was yet another junk science story doing the rounds about trans people: it claimed that thousands of deaths were linked to puberty blockers, when the actual number of deaths from puberty blocking were zero. The figures were based on the fact that the same drug is prescribed to help terminally…

  • Bad faith at work

    Here’s a simple question. What’s the purpose of anti-discrimination legislation? Is it (a) to protect vulnerable people from discrimination, for example in employment, education or health care? Or is it (b) to enable people to be howling arseholes to vulnerable people? If you answered (b), you may be a religious extremist. I’ll preface this with my usual…

  • The Sunday Times plays dirty

    It’s Sunday, so of course The Sunday Times is running more hit pieces on trans women. What’s wrong with this picture? The clue’s in the caption. Verity Smith isn’t a trans woman. He’s a trans man, assigned female at birth and now transitioning to male. The juxtaposition of headline and photo are clearly deliberate and…