Mick Hartley

Six years ago Conrad Roeber was asked by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the press watchdog, to report on the trans issue, then just raising its head, and see if the issue was being treated fairly by the press. So, not knowing much about the subject, he started to do some research:

Part of my reason for wanting to find out the facts was that I was aware there was much I didn’t know about the core issues in the trans debate. If that were true of me, a gay man, it was likely to be true of many on the Ipso board.

I wasn’t even sure why the label LGBTQ+ had been adopted. When the T was added to the LGB by Stonewall back in 2015, I was puzzled by the combination. While being gay is about accepting your sex and your sexuality, being transsexual is about rejecting at least one of those. My thoughts went no further though, and this project for Ipso just four years later was the true beginning of my journey of discovery.

What I found baffling was, as I produced draft after draft of the report, using analysis based on quantitative and qualitative research, Ipso kept coming back with feedback effectively saying that ‘this is a highly contentious area and the report needs to balance the two sides of the argument’. It reflected the view that there are somehow two equally valid opinions in any argument about trans issues. I disagreed. It became clear to me that on one side was an unscientific and quasi-spiritual trans ideology (which should be treated by the media in the same way they treat religious beliefs), and on the other side, science and common sense….

For those who promote this ideology, a useful aspect of ‘gender identity’ is its name; it sounds technical, scientific almost. But the ‘gender identity’ of trans ideology is actually a quasi-spiritual, ghost-like entity, residing within each of us, and which has more importance than our observable sex. The ghost can be ‘male’, ‘female’ or something else, independent of the sex of the body it haunts. Because no male can know, apart from by observation and guesswork, what it is to be female (and vice versa), gender identity is the necessary foundational myth for trans ideology underpinning the axioms of the debate: that you can be ‘born in the wrong body’; that it is OK to ‘correct’ your body; that even a child can be trans and should have its gender reassigned; that males should have access to female spaces and sports; and, cannily, that your pronouns should refer to your gender identity, rather than your sex. The seemingly neutral act of calling a male ‘she’ – something actively encouraged by Ipso’s guidance – indicates acceptance of this ideology.

An excellent point: "gender identity is the necessary foundational myth for trans ideology".

Ipso’s adherence to this position became more apparent in the edits I was instructed to make to my report. One case that stood out was that of Karen White, a male rapist who started ‘identifying’ as female after being remanded into custody. White was housed in a women’s prison, where he went on to assault inmates. The case raised an important point: when does the media have a responsibility to tell the truth about the sex of a person involved in a crime? Even though most editors I spoke to found it absurd to refer to White as ‘she’, some news reports included the surreal and scientifically inaccurate phrase ‘her penis’. How does that align with the accuracy Ipso claimed to prioritise? But when I tried to address this in my report, Ipso insisted I refer to White as ‘she’. I had no choice but to comply.

It became clear that Ipso wasn’t making these decisions in a vacuum and had been influenced by trans lobby groups, which were pushing to have ‘gender identity’ normalised in the media. At the time, groups such as Stonewall, Mermaids and On Road Media (now known as Heard) were lobbying hard to promote their narrative. Like many other institutions, Ipso seemed afraid of ‘getting it wrong’.

I saw how close Ipso’s relationship with these advocacy groups had become, and in particular, the tight relationship Ipso had with Mermaids. My client contact at Ipso and Mermaids’ CEO, Susie Green, had a warm, almost cosy tone to their exchanges. It felt less like neutral arbitration and more like an ideological alignment.

Yes, they bought into the whole trans ideology – as did the overwhelming majority of organisations across the UK.

And behold, two months ago Ipso upheld a complaint against The Spectator for referring to Juno Dawson, a transgender author, as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’.

In further exciting news, Dawson has just joined the Dr Who writing team at the BBC.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in the Spectator on the killing of Salwan Momika, the Iraqi/Swede who protested against Islam by burning the Koran. There was a tragic inevitability to this, and Sweden has little to be proud of in its handling of the furore surrounding Momika.

Salwan Momika, the Iraqi man who spearheaded the Quran burning protest in Sweden, was shot dead today. Five men have been arrested for the murder, which was committed in front of an online audience, with the victim livestreaming on TikTok at the time of his killing. While police in Stockholm haven’t formally announced the motive for the crime, Momika isn’t the first critic of Islam to have been brutally murdered in Europe – and I expect he won’t be the last.

Momika had repeatedly received threats, from radical Muslims and Islamic countries alike, following the 2023 Quran burning demonstration, during which he had been attacked. He was initially provided with protection, but local authorities revoked it after a Swedish court charged him with ‘inciting hatred against an ethnic group’. Unfortunately, the court did not cite the one particular ethnicity or nationality that the Quran might belong to. After enacting de facto Islamic blasphemy laws, the Swedish authorities even ordered Momika to leave Sweden, allegedly over errors in his documentation. But he couldn’t be sent back to Iraq given that it is one of over 30 Muslim-majority states that uphold violent penalties for blasphemy against Islam, with the death penalty enforced in a dozen of them.

Killing over blasphemy against Islam isn’t a fringe Muslim belief; that should be evident from the number of states that endorse it, ranging from the newly self-identifying ‘moderate’ Arab states to the likes of Afghanistan and Syria now under jihadist control. Over the past fortnight alone, Iran and Pakistan have sentenced individuals to death over words, with growing persecution over blasphemy being witnessed worldwide, from the incarcerated in Indonesia to the lynched in Nigeria….

Sweden, which is now offering generous amounts of money for immigrants to leave the country, decided to find a loophole in its own legal commitment to free speech, including against all faiths, by issuing Momika a hate crime charge, which he was to formally receive at a district court today. With legal excuses already in place to co-opt Islamic law in Sweden, Momika has now been given the sharia penalty for blasphemy in Stockholm, even if extra-judicially.

Like Salwan Momika, his co-protester Salwan Najem has little faith in Swedish authorities protecting him from radical Muslims. ‘I am next’, he posted on X today. One hopes for Najem’s sake that he isn’t, but whoever inevitably is will be killed by the idea that Islam deserves special protection from freedom of speech.

Appeasing the Islamists, apart from the cowardly abandonment of free speech in the face of threats, and the effective introduction of blasphemy laws by the back door, doesn't even work. They'll still come for you.

Added;

Salwan Momika burned the Quran, arguing that Islam is a violent religion. In a grim twist of irony, he was murdered by those who sought to prove him wrong.

Salwan escaped Iraq in search of safety, hoping to find refuge in Europe. But even there, his voice was silenced by… pic.twitter.com/kL0XZbFTVW

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 30, 2025

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"Salwan escaped Iraq in search of safety, hoping to find refuge in Europe. But even there, his voice was silenced by violence.

"And this happened today, in the 21st century; a time when freedom of expression should be protected, yet people are still killed for their beliefs."

After yesterday's refections on the steady removal of any mention of Jews from Holocaust Memorial Day comes this, from the Times:

A Holocaust memorial exhibition has been banned from parliament for being too political even though the authorities have allowed pro-Palestinian activists to campaign in the same space….

A committee that advises the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said that the Vicious Circle exhibition would not fall within the criteria of being politically neutral. That ruling was questioned after it emerged that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was allowed a stall in Westminster Hall in July last year. Supportive MPs were seen by witnesses speaking to members of the public who approached the stall….

The Vicious Circle installation was created by Marc Cave from the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. It tells the story of anti-Jewish pogroms from Kristallnacht in 1938 to Baghdad in 1941 and then October 7 2023.

Cave has already secured spots for the exhibition at the European parliament in Brussels and the Germany parliament in Berlin. But when he applied to bring it to Westminster Hall, for a week that would have included Holocaust Memorial Day, on January 27, his application was rejected.

“It’s one of the great tragedies, I think, of the social media era, and my fear is that by parliament being perhaps more ready to house one side of the argument but not the other — that’s kind of dangerous,” Cave told Times Radio.

"Kind of dangerous" is putting it mildly.

Meanwhile, in France. From Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:

A French gynecologist has been sanctioned by medical authorities after a trans activist group reported him to the Minister of Equality for comments which they deemed to be “transphobic.” Dr. Victor Acharian, who operates in the Pau region, has been prohibited from practicing medicine for five months, with an additional one-month probationary period.

In August 2023, a trans-identified male and his partner visited Dr. Acharian’s office in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. After a few minutes of waiting, the secretary told the man that the doctor had refused to see him.

“I told her that I’m not competent, but I can guide you. I can refer you to services that can take better care of you. But after I said that, things went south,” gynaecologist Victor Acharian told Euronews, while referring to the trans-identified male with feminine pronouns.

As a gynecologist, he would have been surprised to be consulted by a man. He presumably assumed that his job was to treat women, not indulge the fantasies of men. He soon learned, though.

The trans-identified male allegedly shouted, “You’re transphobic!” while leaving the clinic. According to Dr. Acharian, the patient then began reacting violently to the refusal and insulted the staff.

The trans-identified male’s partner left a negative Google review for the gynecologist’s clinic, complaining that Acharian refused to provide services to him. “It was my trans partner’s first appointment. He refused to see her, his secretary threw us away coldly. I advise against [visiting]. Never again,” the review stated.

In response, the doctor remarked that his practice was only open to patients who were “real women.”

“SIR, I am a gynecologist, and I take care of real women. I have no skills to take care of MEN, even if they have shaved their beards and come to tell my secretary that they [have] become women. My GYNECOLOGICAL examination table is not suitable for examining men. You have specialized and very competent services to take care of men like you,” Acharian wrote, emphasizing his text with capitalized letters. “Thank you for informing TRANS people to never come for consultation with me.”

The trans-identified male who had attempted to set up an appointment with the gynecologist then contacted the Conseil National de l’Ordre des Médecins to complain about the incident. Soon after, trans activist organization SOS Homophobie made a public statement condemning the doctor as “transphobic.”…

On December 16, 2024, the Conseil National de l’Ordre des Médecins sentenced Acharian to a five-month suspension, followed by a one-month probationary period. During that time, if the gynecologist is found to have engaged in transphobia or denied another trans-identified male patient, he would be sanctioned again.

“We are pleased to have confirmation that what happened that day was totally abnormal,” the trans-identified male’s lawyer said.

Trans activist organization SOS Homophobie posted a statement to their website suggesting that the doctor’s actions were potentially “also punishable by criminal sanctions.”

Women’s rights advocate Margeurite Stern, who has also been harshly criticized by SOS Homophobie, commented on the situation on X. “Gynecologists are trained to treat WOMEN’s genitals. Not inverted penises or cavities created using pieces of colon or peritoneum,” Stern said. “We live in a world of lunatics.”

Yes, that would seem to be the case.

An interesting article at Quillette from Matt Johnson – The Open Society and Its New Enemies – on the legacy of Karl Popper, in defence of Francis Fukuyama, the dangers of Trump and his threats to democracy, and other related stuff. Also, some optimism amid the gloom.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the opinion polls in mature democracies like the United States, but peace and prosperity are exactly what democracy has delivered over the past eighty years. Great power conflict in Western Europe ended with World War II. It is now taken for granted that a war between, say, Germany and France is inconceivable, but this is among the greatest political achievements in the history of the continent. Despite the horrors of the Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed without a fight. Former Soviet states lined up to join the West, while Russia has only managed to maintain its sphere of influence with force and coercion.

Although the war in Ukraine is the largest conflict on European soil since World War II, Western powers have helped Kyiv defend itself from Russian aggression without deploying any NATO forces on the battlefield. China is a rapidly rising power, but the militaries of the United States and its European and East Asian allies are far more powerful. There is anxious talk of a “new authoritarian axis” comprising China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But NATO defence spending is three times higher than this axis, and it has surged since the invasion of Ukraine. NATO has also continued to expand with the recent accession of Finland and Sweden.

Democracies have created historically unprecedented economic prosperity. Marxists assumed that conditions for a growing majority of workers would inevitably get worse while a shrinking capitalist class would get richer and richer—a status quo that would eventually spark revolution. Instead, there has been vast wealth creation at all levels of society in democratic countries.

It may seem like the main threats to the open society today are authoritarian foes like Russia and China, but a much greater threat is the crisis of confidence in democratic institutions. The leaders in Moscow and Beijing may purport to offer an alternative to liberal democracy, but we aren’t in the middle of an ideological Cold War. Vladimir Putin has imperial ambitions, but he’s well aware that his decaying petro-autocracy isn’t some bold new political idea that could take root elsewhere. Xi Jinping is a nationalist who believes China deserves to be a great power, but China’s unique blend of totalitarianism and economic growth can’t be replicated. Third-rate dictatorships like Venezuela or North Korea don’t even pretend to care about anything beyond personal power and corruption, while the ideology of antique theocracies like Iran will never win a mass following around the world. […]

Although The Open Society and Its Enemies is a powerful indictment of historicism, we no longer live in an era dominated by historicist fantasies like Marxism. We live in an era of political nihilism—an era in which the gravest threat to democracy isn’t a rival ideology like communism; it’s the collapsing faith in democracy among citizens of open societies. As Fukuyama explained, the success of liberal democracy isn’t just material—it’s in the “realm of consciousness or ideas.” This is the battlefield for the open society today, and it’s why Popper’s most important contribution goes beyond his attack on historicism.

I seem to recall that Popper used to be regarded as on the Right: as someone not fully in step with the great progressive improvement projects of recent times. I suppose that was back in the day when being on the Left meant having at least some warm feelings towards Marxism, or at least Trotskyism as a kind of fantasy Marxism without all the nasty Soviet/gulag/Maoist/Pol Pot bits. How it could have been if it wasn't for that nasty Stalin. But surely we're past that now.

Anyway, yes – worth a read.

The impartial BBC here referring to castrating autistic boys as gender care. I suppose that euphemism suits their politics better than such or phrases like “medically unnecessary double mastectomies on girls with serious comorbid conditions” https://t.co/WEqqZaZnRB

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) January 29, 2025

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Ah, gender care. Or "gender affirming care", as they like to call it in the States:

Gender-affirming care is a multidisciplinary approach that includes medically necessary and scientific evidence-based practices to help a person safely transition from their assigned gender – the one a clinician assigned them at birth, based mostly on anatomic characteristics – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which the person wants to be known.

Although the term gender-affirming care came into the public’s lexicon fairly recently, Dr. Madeline Deutsch, director of the UCSF Gender Affirming Health Program in San Francisco, said the practice has been around for some time and is based on decades of scientific research.

Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have affirmed the practice of gender-affirming care and agree that it’s the gold standard of clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults.

“While we are always assessing the strength of the evidence for this kind of care, every major US medical association has found that the medical evidence is strong and in support of centers that provides this kind of care and have been doing so for decades,” said Dr. Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, a health care organization that works on LGBTQ+ issues.

That was written (or rather, last amended) just over a month ago. This what the US medical establishment believes, now – though, yes, before Trump. It's Orwellian stuff: the medical mutilation of troubled teens as "gender affirming care". As a medical scandal this surely dwarfs anything before. How on earth did it get to this?

As for the Cass Review:

This year, an extensive but controversial research review in the UK called the use of puberty-delaying medications into question, saying that the rationale for early puberty suppression was “unclear” and that any benefit for mental health was supported by “weak evidence.” The review — known as the Cass Review for Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician who conducted it — has prompted providers in the UK to scale back their use of the treatment. However, its methodology have come under sharp criticism from some scholars and practitioners.

Hmm.

Holocaust Memorial Day without the Jews? Jake Wallis Simons at the JC – This was the year the Jews were told ‘the Holocaust is not about you’:

But the Good Morning Britain presenter talking of the deaths of six million “people”, not the Jews? The deputy prime minister Angela Rayner lighting a candle for “all those who were murdered”, not the Jews? This was another order of insult. We saw it all over, from Sarah Champion MP to Justin Trudeau, from the councils of Bury and Cambridge City to Humanists UK, who tweeted their sorrow for “all the victims of genocide”. At the Lowestoft Council wreath-laying, Jews were not invited to lay a wreath. These people might as well have just spelled it out. Listen up, Jews. Stop whingeing. The Holocaust is not about you.

Only it is. That’s the whole point. The fetish for deracinating the Shoah from its victims is nothing less than a fresh attempt to erase us. This year, we were told, Holocaust Memorial Day commemorated not just the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but also the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. To which I say: Why can’t the Bosnians – and the Rwandans, Cambodians and Darfurians, for that matter – have their own ceremony?

If people want to observe a “Genocide Memorial Day”, that’s fine. But this year proved that relativisation has always been the prelude to erasure. The smarmy ecumenicals have been picking Jewish pockets of our anguish, then telling us that we never owned it in the first place. […]

In 2025, mourning the Holocaust has become a vehicle for undoing the Jews. When the Irish president took to the stage in Dublin and proceeded to defile our pain by dragging it through the rubble of Gaza, he was echoing an ancient precedent. Norwich, 1144: The Jews killed little William. Berlin, 1934: Die Juden sind unser Unglück. Dublin, 2025: It’s sad about the Holocaust and everything but what really matters is Gaza. Especially the children.

Several Jews turned their backs on Higgins and were manhandled and ejected. We were left with certain questions. As the security guards dragged a Jewish woman – a historian of the Shoah at that – from a ceremony to mourn her dead, did they not sense a certain irony? What to make of the fact that two Holocaust survivors, Tomi Reichental and Suzi Diamond, had begged Higgins not to bring Gaza into his speech and were ignored? And where is all this leading?

I’m dreading next year. Like I said: is there a point to Holocaust Memorial Day any longer? The King’s visit to Auschwitz was immensely meaningful, of course, as were the many local ceremonies. But perhaps we should focus our energies instead on Yom Hashoah, the Israeli springtime commemoration, which remains – shock horror – solely about the Jewish genocide. Perhaps it is time to defend our right to mourn.

It's Holocaust Memorial Day. Not Genocide Memorial Day. The clue's in the name.

Before October 7, 2023, travel from Gaza was just that. Not exile. Not mass displacement. Just an everyday reality. Each month, about 25,000 people crossed borders. Ten thousand through Rafah into Egypt, 15,000 through Erez into Israel, for medical treatment, education, work, or…

— Amjad Taha أمجد طه (@amjadt25) January 30, 2025

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Full text:

Before October 7, 2023, travel from Gaza was just that. Not exile. Not mass displacement. Just an everyday reality. Each month, about 25,000 people crossed borders. Ten thousand through Rafah into Egypt, 15,000 through Erez into Israel, for medical treatment, education, work, or simply a change of scenery.

Now, in 2025, if Trump suggests traveling to a safer place and returning when home is rebuilt, it is suddenly a crime against humanity. Forced displacement.

If the Palestinian leadership had even a shred of wisdom, which, let’s be honest, they don’t, they would be thanking those offering aid, funding, and a chance at stability. Instead, they keep generations trapped in a cycle of war, raising children in rubble under leaders who see them as nothing more than propaganda tools. No child should grow up inhaling the dust of their collapsed home or be taught to hate before they even learn to read.

And here is a wild idea. Instead of chanting slogans and waving watermelon flags, maybe countries like Canada and Ireland’s current governments could actually step up. Fund travel with open return tickets. Build safe housing. Create an education system that teaches peace instead of death, racism, and antisemitism. Right now, schools in Gaza and the West Bank do not just fail their students. They brainwash them into believing war is their destiny. If the world truly wants change, it starts there, by raising a generation that dreams of life, not death, and by moving them away from the current war zone.

This is not about forced displacement. It is about forced reality checks. The choice is not between exile and home. It is between war and a future where peace is actually built.

Oh, and by the way, while Hamas turned Gaza into a death trap, using babies, women, and even foreign workers as human shields, did anyone notice that Israel fought to free Thai farmworkers who were kidnapped?

The schools in Gaza which brainwash children into believing war is their destiny, and martyrdom while killing Jews their sole aim in life, are run by UNRWA – an organisation dedicated to the belief that Palestinians will always be refugees until Israel is destroyed. And we fund it.

Just shocking.

Why on earth is the UK Government giving more money to @UNRWA?

You can't talk about tackling extremism in the UK and then literally send cash to groups that helped carry out the Oct 7 atrocities with Hamas.

Are you completely mad? pic.twitter.com/H7o9LyVt4j

— David Collier (@mishtal) January 29, 2025

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As has been said here often enough, UNRWA are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph:

Change happens, according to the famous Hemingway quote about his bankruptcy, “gradually, then suddenly”. The same could now be said of the dismantling of gender ideology. Its moral bankruptcy, a decade of sterilising and mutilating children’s bodies, looks to be over.

In the flurry of executive orders that Donald Trump has signed since re-entering the White House, here is the big one: prohibiting gender transitions for people under the age of 19.

“It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” reads the executive order, entitled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.

This means no more puberty blockers, no more operations, double mastectomies, castration, “facial feminisations” and all the rest of it. No more irreversible “gender affirming care”.

The Democrats, still apparently stunned into stupor, appear to have no understanding of how this issue affected their loss in November’s election, and continue to defend the indefensible. All of this will now be fought out in court cases and arguments over Medicaid and insurance.

How did we get to this? How did anyone think that telling children that they were born in the wrong body, and that those bodies could be surgically and chemically rearranged was sensible? But this is hardly the first time medics have caused harm.

There's a grim history of medical fads, like lobotomies, that now seem barbaric. Others, for instance the refrigerator mother theory of autism, fitted in with psychological theories of the time but have long since been discarded. Somehow gender theory combined the two: barbaric in its treatment of supposed "trans kids", and faddish in its embrace of postmodern queer theory and the like. But gender theory has had a far wider effect than any of its predecessors. It's been embraced from the top, by governments on down. And the damage it's done has been, commensurately, much deeper.

For in the end, gender ideology is a belief system, a cult, a religion. It is entirely faith-based. Science and reality do not figure. Yet as this belief system starts to crumble, how do those who believed in it walk it back?

They believed above all that they were the good people, that sex was a spectrum, not a binary. They believed that legitimising the fetishistic behaviour of middle-aged men was the new civil rights movement. That this group had little in common with ever-increasing numbers of deeply unhappy teenage girls who did not want to grow into adult women was obvious. Except to the cultist.

Trans became an umbrella with its own language, and the righteous and the modern took it to be the one true faith. Stonewall spread this ideology. So did the BBC, The Guardian, most liberal media, the Labour Party, the Fawcett Society, the NHS, the “humanists”, the entire art world, and academia – in other words, the cultural elite….

Few will admit they were wrong or misled. They will simply rewrite history. Just like those who sought to relieve the agonies of deeply depressed patients through an ice pick in their brains, they will say their experimental treatments did help some, that they were at the forefront of a new kind of medicine.

Those who cheered this on will keep quiet while they scrabble in the dirt for the next civil rights battle. They picked the wrong one. It would take actual bravery to say this in public. Their silence is deafening.