is it any wonder that the same person organized protests of lesbian sex groups because they didn’t include pre-op trans women (lsm, powersurge) and said that it was absurd for “cisgender lesbian sex perverts” to draw the line at actual dicks? 

is it any wonder that she was one of the key figures protesting michfest? and in fact, alienated davina anne gabriel, another trans woman who was the originator of the protests to the extent that gabriel put out a public statement saying she was disassociating with trans activism because it had become “hostile” to women, and that she could no longer ignore wilchins being “deeply misogynistic.” 

what does it mean when lesbian activism is mentioned, it is seen as violent and exclusionary? and when lesbians point out the climate of lesbophobia that has been specifically advanced by trans activism and is still being advanced by trans activism, this is dismissed, when this is a tendency within trans activism that has been going on for decades not from a few random members but from leaders within the movement? it is commonplace now to see thoughtpieces casually mentioning how our innate orientation is bigoted in the name of trans activism, at times completely indistinguishable from conservative homophobia (for example, stating that lesbians aren’t interested in penis because they are “misguidedly dealing with trauma from the patriarchy.”)

when we talk about accountability and toxicity within activism, what does it mean that we continually gloss this tendency which continues into the present? why is there such resistance to acknowledging this as homophobia and misogyny as it undeniably is, and moving forward? bullying lesbians about our innate sexuality in the name of trans inclusivity is not something that originated on tumblr among well-meaning but misguided tumblr teens. it is intentional, calculated sexual harassment against a sexual minority that been going on for decades within trans activism and is rooted in virulent misogyny and homophobia. there is no excuse for it and no excuse for turning a blind eye to it. 

RAW describes being surrounded by female nurses (implied in sexual terms (”young, perky”) to be female) and doctors (one of which is explicitly indicated as male, but the rest are all implied to be male as they are not described as “young, perky”). 

The nurses do not do anything whatsoever to RAW. 

The doctor expressing disgust? Explicitly male. The other doctor pointing at his female nurse as an example of a perfect female specimen? Male. That is not the nurse goading RAW- the nurse has done not but exist in the same room as RAW- that is the nurse being sexually harassed by her male boss. It is absolutely inappropriate in a workplace environment for a male boss to talk about how his female employee has a sexy body? Are you stupid? Are you ill?

RAW fixates on the nurses around her and at a female character in a film, and at some random female children she once knew as targets for her sexual jealousy and sexualized revenge fantasies though the people who are taunting her are all male doctors. She does so in explicitly violent and sexual terminology. She dehumanizes all these women and girl children who have done nothing to her. She attributes to them characteristics based on this sexual jealousy (”feminine, self-satisfied dismissive”) in a way that is indistinguishable from incel rhetoric.

The only things cis women are mentioned as doing is telling her that she will not be a real woman in the same sense that they are. This is not something any cis woman is saying to her during the voluntary surgical procedure RAW is undertaking. Instead RAW is reflecting on what has been said or implied in the past and connecting those words to her violent, incel-like sexual jealousy of these random female nurses, who did nothing but exist in the same room as her, and of random female children she once interacted with, who again, did nothing to her other than exist. This is male resentment of female people. This is incel rhetoric.

Sorry you can’t read the plain language because you’re also too caught up on misogyny like RAW.

The collection of data on a person’s sex – that is, whether they are male or female – has become controversial in recent years, and a number of public bodies have moved away from collecting data on sex as a result. For example, Scotland’s chief statistician recently issued guidance stating that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances. This move has been greeted with alarm by quantitative social scientists who believe that data on sex is vitally important and that data on both gender identity and sex is needed.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) was also embroiled in controversy when it proposed to guide respondents to the 2021 England and Wales census that they may answer the sex question in terms of their subjective gender identity, rather than their sex. This was despite the fact that the 2021 census also included a new separate question on gender identity. The ONS was forced to change its proposed guidance on the sex question by a judicial review and went on to advise that people should answer the first question to reflect their legal sex. The Scottish census authorities have been criticised for disregarding the implications of that judgment.

Statistics on employment, health, crime and education have all been affected by this trend.

The Government Equalities Office has issued guidance to employers who are legally bound to report on their gender pay gap to provide data on their employees’ gender identity, not their sex, and to exclude employees who “do not identify as ‘men’ or ‘women’” from the data. This makes it impossible to assess whether natal males who identify as trans or non-binary may have different labour-market experiences from natal females who identify as trans or non-binary. Yet non-binary or transgender identification may not protect females from discrimination, for example, on the basis of pregnancy or maternity or the perceived risk of becoming pregnant.

The NHS decides who to call for routine medical screenings based on the gender marker a person has recorded with their GP rather than their sex as recorded as birth. The NHS’s failure to record biological sex on patient records has led to trans patients not being called in for screening for conditions that may affect them due to their sex, such as ovarian cancer or prostate cancer. If trans patients are not screened for such conditions, the consequences are potentially fatal. The use of gender identity rather than sex has also led to confusion for some trans patients attempting to use sexual health services.

Freedom of information requests have revealed that multiple police forces in England now record crimes by male suspects as committed by women if the perpetrator requests to be recorded as such. Even small numbers of cases misclassified in this way can lead to substantial bias in crime statistics.

Differences between the sexes are an important factor for analysis in most, if not all, of the areas that social and health scientists address. Sex, alongside age, is a fundamental demographic variable, vital for projections regarding fertility and life expectancy. Sex has systematic effects on physical health and is also linked to mental health. And the importance of sex extends to all aspects of social life, including employment, education and crime.

We know that many differences between the sexes have changed dramatically over time – education and labour market participation are two examples. Without consistent data on sex, social scientists would not be able to track this change over time or to understand whether efforts to improve the representation of women and girls in domains where they are underrepresented have been effective.

We have been losing data on sex, as public sector bodies have switched to collecting data on gender identity instead. But the tide may have turned. The UK Statistics Authority has recently published guidance that recommends that “sex, age and ethnic group should be routinely collected and reported in all administrative data and in-service process data, including statistics collected within health and care settings and by police, courts and prisons”. It also says data producers should clearly distinguish between concepts such as sex, gender and gender identity.

Both people’s material circumstances and their identities are important to their lives. We know that sex matters, and we have much to learn about the ways in which gender identity matters, too. Rather than removing data on sex, we should collect data on both sex and gender identity, in order to develop a better understanding of the influence of both of these factors and the intersection between them.

Original article in The Conversation

Professor Alice Sullivan’s academic profile

It's been cool to see everyone's interpretation of her art, but let me clarify that this isn't a transgender poem. It's about womanhood and misogyny. Here's an excerpt of a 2015 Patti Smith interview with Maclean's.

"In the ’50s you had to wear pink ribbons if you were a girl, and you were supposed to become a hairdresser or a secretary. I couldn’t stomach it. Later on, when I fell in love with my husband and had children, that’s when my mother’s earthiness or sense of femaleness kicked in. As an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don’t do that with men—nobody says Picasso, the male artist."

It quickly turned into hysterics but it's not a huge deal, nobody is shutting tumblr down or deleting it, we can blog here all we want, it's just not going to be further developed.

I wasn’t told, or my clinician was unaware, of some of the other effects that were specific problems for bio women taking cross sex hormones, and that they would start in my 20s.

Over the 10+ years I injected testosterone, I developed liver dysfunction, sleep apnea from the growth of my neck and larynx blocking my airways, abnormally high blood pressure, vaginal atrophy, frequent UTIs due to the hormones changing the microbiome of my urinary tract. These are not problems that cis men face.

I’m not anti trans, and I still consider myself transgender (perhaps “person of trans experience” would be a better way to phrase it). Wanting to get this information out isn’t my attempt at gatekeeping people who want to start HRT. I know I ultimately cannot convince someone who cannot be swayed by the reality of a stranger on the internet.