Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Standing up for the Darlington nurses

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    After Health Secretary Wes Streeting met the Darlington nurses, Unison president Steve North said it was “deeply concerning that Wes Streeting appears to be once again pandering to anti-trans bigotry”.

  • A course correction on the transgender issue

    Yesterday we heard something of the Democrat response to their disastrous embrace of gender ideology. Faced with the timidity of it all –  "I do know that women’s rights are important and transwomen’s rights are important, so we have to find a balance that makes sense" – Meghan Murphy was suitably scathing. JK Rowling was outraged at the rewriting of history that seems to be going on.

    Here's another of these milksop efforts: Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic suggesting that Moderation Is Not the Same Thing as Surrender. "Democrats do not, in fact, face a choice between championing trans rights and completely abandoning them."

    The problem, as Arty Morty points out, is that Chait refuses to let go of the notion that trans rights is the next liberation step after gay rights: that this is the latest group of oppressed people waiting to be liberated.

    But transgender makes much more sense when it’s understood not as an identity-politics or social-justice issue, but as a loose term to describe what began as a small group of adults with a rare psychiatric condition, which subsequently exploded into a fad and a subculture via social media….

    Chait says: “The major questions about trans rights are: Do some people have the chance to live a happier and more fulfilling life in a different gender identity than the one to which they were born?…”

    But Chait, what is a “gender identity”? If people are already more-or-less free to dress and act as femininely or masculinely as they please regardless of their sex, why do we need to build a whole new cultural concept to suppress all mention of some people’s sex? It seems rather obvious that “gender identity” is a fundamentally regressive way of conceptualizing the relationship between someone’s biological sex and his or her femininity or masculinity….

    The American liberal media class needs to learn that trans rights as in workplace and housing protections for people who identify as transgender is one thing. But “trans rights” as in forcing all of society to pretend that the facts of biology are inapplicable to those who state that they don’t believe in them is another thing entirely: as I said in my essay, that’s akin to religious nationalism.

    And there’s nothing progressive about that.

    Worth a read in full.

  • Swarming with infectious diseases

    The balloon exchanges over the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas continue. South Korea sends over propaganda leaflets – well, truth leaflets – with details about, for instance, the luxury lifestyles of the priviliged elite round Kim Jong-un, together with in-demand South Korean videos for their culturally-starved North Korean brethren, and other goodies like choco pies. The North, in turn, sends over, well…shit. Literally. Bags filled with rubbish, including human faeces. Symbolic, perhaps, of what the country has to offer. 

    For the South, this is all quite annoying. For the North, though, any direct communication from the outside is a disaster. From the Daily NK:

    North Korean authorities are conducting lectures warning citizens to avoid items from South Korean balloons, claiming they are contaminated with viruses. 

    According to a source in South Pyongan province recently, party organizations distributed training materials about these “enemy items” to various groups in Kaechon city on Nov. 10, using them as the basis for ideological education sessions.

    “Our enemies, who feel endangered by our constantly increasing political and military power, are frantically sending over vulgar and incendiary political garbage in the hope of undermining the authority of our supreme leadership. They’re floating over items smeared with life-threatening viruses,” a lecturer told those assembled at one lecture, according to the source.

    The regime also addressed South Korean balloons in training materials distributed last month. “We all need to band together as we work to crush the enemy’s schemes to disseminate these things,” the training documents claimed.

    Last month, North Korea spread rumors that the items in balloons might be contaminated with viruses, but this time, the regime explicitly claimed that viruses were present in an attempt to inspire vigilance in the public.

    “Items in balloons are swarming with infectious diseases. Our enemies are losing their minds as they try to bring down our socialist system by spreading germs through the country,” the same lecturer said.

    The training documents described enemy items as including portable memory devices (including USB flash drives and SD cards), without mentioning any other items. The regime apparently thinks acknowledging that the balloons often carry U.S. dollars, rice and “choco pie” snacks might motivate people to seek them out.

    Though they may be wasting their time:

    However, the regime’s claim that South Korean balloons are laden with viruses came across as ludicrous to many North Koreans.

    “Nobody here actually believes those items have viruses on them. They just consider themselves lucky to stumble upon them first, when nobody is watching,” the source said.

    North Koreans already know the balloons contain foreign currency, snacks and other useful items and see it as a windfall to find a balloon before anybody else does.

    “Sometimes, North Koreans burn the unnecessary items found in the balloons and take the rest. Those who have tasted South Korean rice and snacks recall their delicious flavors. The anticipation of what might be inside builds whenever there is news of a balloon launch,” said the source.

  • Top women

    The latest BBC’s 100 Women list, and….well, of course you knew there'd be a man:

    The BBC has included a transgender Colombian scientist in its annual list of 100 inspiring women, just days after sparking controversy over its choice for women’s footballer of the year.

    Every year, the broadcaster compiles a list of women who have achieved great things in public life.

    Its nominees include transgender biologist Brigitte Baptiste, described in the citation as a “trans woman” who “explores the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity”.

    The BBC says the scientist uses a “queer lens to analyse landscapes and species in a bid to expand the notion of ‘nature’ to better protect ecosystems”.

    In a 2018 TED talk, Baptiste claimed scientists had discovered “transsexual” palm trees and stated that the “change of sex and gender has been reported regularly in science”. On this basis, she argued that it was wise to do away with ideas of “naturalness” in nature, stating: “There is nothing more queer than nature.”

    Right. Naturalists are reporting how they can't tell which animals are male and which are female any more, the amount of transitioning that goes on.

    This is BBC 100 Women’s 11th year, and in only two of those years has the list comprised 100 women.

  • The fall of the Oxford Union

    More on last week's disgraceful Oxford Union debate (previously) from Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator:

    The motion for debate was itself a grotesque provocation: “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” Apartheid and genocide are not just loaded terms; they are distortions when applied to Israel, as I planned to explain in my speech. That the Union had decided to frame this debate around them was bad enough. It had caused some to decline their invitation to speak at all. But the problems were much deeper rooted even than students seeking attention through sensationalist wording.

    This wasn’t an evening for intellectual rigour or balanced argument. From the very beginning, it was clear the organisation of this event was deeply and worryingly dishonest, aggressive and one-sided. Speakers infamous for their unhinged views were invited to confront us; we were left in the dark about who had been invited on our side. Deception and dishonesty characterised the entire run-up to the debate…..

    The tone was set long before the debate began. The president of the Union, Ebrahim Osman Mowafy, an Egyptian Arab, seemed to me to be openly biased from the outset. His behaviour throughout the evening was not that of a neutral chair but of an orchestrator, stacking the odds against the opposition and fostering an environment of unchecked hostility. In the end, perhaps his most disgraceful speaker against Israel withdrew, seemingly intimidated by the strength of the team we had managed to assemble despite the Union’s best attempts to stop us. Having been told a student would take his place, we found out only on the night that Osman Mowafy himself would forgo the traditional impartiality of the chair’s role and speak against us himself….

    From the moment the debate began, the crowd displayed its unbridled hatred towards us. Aware that tickets had been tightly controlled ‘for security reasons,’ we soon felt it has been to decrease our security. As I rose to speak, the mob of a crowd pointedly giggled and coughed to show their animosity. Their interruptions grew louder and more vicious as I progressed, culminating in a young woman standing and screaming obscenities in my face like a banshee: “Liar! F*** you, the genocidal motherf***er!” It took an intervention from me to finally prompt the president to have her removed. Even then, it seemed that he did so begrudgingly, as if I had overstepped the mark by expecting basic order.

    This was not an audience interested in debate or even in hearing arguments. It was a baying mob, openly hostile and emboldened by the president’s refusal to enforce the most basic rules of decorum. They interrupted every pro-Israel speaker with jeers, coughs, and outright abuse. Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a senior Hamas founder and leader who defected to Israel’s side and saved countless lives, was met with jeering derision and cried of “traitor” and “prostitute” (in Arabic), as he recounted his extraordinary story of moral courage and bravery. In a genius move, after explaining his choice to report information of forthcoming suicide bombing attacks over ten years to the Israelis he asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands how many of them would have reported prior knowledge of the October 7th massacres. The vast majority of the room remained still. Here was an Oxford Union audience which would have buried its head in the sand over the barbaric Palestinian terrorism of that dark day, without trying to prevent it at all.

    Yoseph Haddad, an Israeli Arab who has dedicated his life to dismantling the apartheid lie, faced similar treatment. The international law commentator Natasha Hausdorf was hectored to finish her speech far quicker than her proposition counterpart.

    Meanwhile, the proposition speakers trafficked in unforgivable and dangerous rhetoric. Miko Peled, a relentless anti-Israel activist, described the atrocities of 7 October as acts of “heroism.” I presume that includes the slaughter and kidnap of babies.

    Novelist Susan Abulhawa demonised Jews as foreign colonisers, claiming their true homeland lay in Europe. Her later post on X branded me and Natasha “white colonisers”….

    By the time the motion passed – 278 in favour to 59 against – it was clear that the entire event had been a sham. This was not a debate; it was a show trial, it seems to me, orchestrated by a deeply biased president and cheered on by a mob that had no interest in facts or truth.

    This felt like a marker, the moment when the Oxford Union truly fell. Not just as a debating society, but as a symbol of intellectual freedom. The room that night was not filled with future leaders engaging in the battle of ideas; it was a mob baying for blood, intolerant of nuance, and utterly resistant to the values the Union claims to uphold….

    As our driver sped us out of Oxford, my colleagues and I compared notes about what we had just experienced: it was no less than the fall of the Oxford Union.

    The Union president Ebrahim Osman Mowafy was disqualified in June, but reinstated after claims that this had been motivated by "racism, islamophobia, and persistent bias". Hmm.

    Sacerdoti's claim that this event marks the fall of the Oxford Union surely isn't overstated. It was a disgrace: a black mark against the university. The Union isn't the university, of course, and no doubt the vast majority of students have no idea and little interest in what's going on there. Still….a desperately grim sign of the times, as what used to be a place for aspiring politicians to practice their debating skills is taken over by zealots with an interest, not in debate, but in spreading their poisonous antisemitic ideology.

  • At UCLA

    The mission of the UCLA Cultural Affairs Commission is "to put on quality programming with cultural, political, or social relevance that are accessible to all students". Except Jews.

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  • The rewriting of history

    In the previous post Meghan Murphy cited this NYT article with some derision. Now here's JKR.

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    Full text:

    Opponents of gender ideology haven't merely 'endured unsparing criticism'. I haven't simply been told I 'betrayed real feminism' or received a few book-burning videos.

    I've been sent thousands of threats of murder, rape and violence. A trans woman posted my family's home address with a bomb-making guide. My eldest child was targeted by a prominent trans activist who attempted to doxx her and ended up doxxing the wrong young woman. I could write a twenty thousand word essay on what the consequences have been to me and my family, and what we've endured is NOTHING compared to the harm done to others.

    By standing up to a movement that relies on threats of violence, ostracisation and guilt-by-association, all of us have been smeared and defamed, but many have lost their livelihoods. Some have been physically assaulted by trans activists. Female politicians have been forced to hire personal security on the advice of police. The news that one of the UK's leading endocrinologists, Dr Hillary Cass, was advised not to travel by public transport for her own safety should shame everyone who let this insanity run amok.

    Lest we forget, gender apostates have been targeted for crimes such as doubting the evidential basis for transitioning children, for arguing for fair sport for women and girls, for wanting to retain single sex spaces and services, especially for the most vulnerable, and for thinking it barbaric to lock in female prisoners with convicted male sex offenders.

    Now the political landscape has shifted, and some who've been riding high on their own supply are waking up with a hell of a hangover. They've started wondering whether calling left-wing feminists who wanted all-female rape centres 'Nazis' was such a smart strategy. Maybe parents arguing that boys ought not to be robbing their daughters of sporting opportunities might, sort of, have a point? Possibly letting any man who says 'I'm a woman' into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all?

    Mealy-mouthed retconning of what has actually happened over the past ten years is predictable but will not stand. I don't doubt those who've turned a blind eye to the purges of non-believers, or even applauded and encouraged them, would rather minimise what the true cost of speaking out was, but 'yes, maybe trans activists went a little over the top at times' takes are frankly insulting. A full reckoning on the effects of gender ideology on individuals, society and politics is still a long way off, but I know this: the receipts will make very ugly reading when that time comes, and there are far too many of them to sweep politely under the carpet.

  • The trans reign of terror is over in America

    After the election a few Democrats, aware of the part that a disastrous support for gender ideology played in their defeat, have indicated a willingness to do some rethinking. Congressman Seth Moulton, for instance, has proposed that a more nuanced approach was required: "I do know that women’s rights are important and transwomen’s rights are important, so we have to find a balance that makes sense". Meghan Murphy begs to differ – "the entire concept of gender identity must be scrapped":

    There is no surgery that can turn a male female. There is no child that must be mutilated and sterilised in order to ‘really be themselves’. There is no circumstance where it is reasonable to allow a male to compete as a female in sport. So long as gender identity exists as a concept under law – that is to say, the idea that one can ‘identify’ as the opposite sex – men will be able to claim they are female and access women’s spaces….

    We are already seeing the rewriting of history – or at least the whitewashing of history. The same progressives and Democrats who called those of us who spoke out against trans activism loathsome bigots now play at reasonable discourse, pretending things were never really as bad as they were.

    An article in the New York Times this week described the threats, censorship and persecution experienced by dissidents as ‘unsparing criticism’. I guess if that’s what you want to call my having to hire private bodyguards in order to speak about women’s rights in public, or having to outrun a masked gang of trans activists desiring to ‘kill all TERFs’, or having been banned from social media for four years for calling a man ‘he’, that’s your prerogative. But it’s a lie.

    The response to those of us who spoke out against gender-identity ideology was not simply criticism. It was years of violent threats, blacklisting, loss of income and jobs, stalking, censorship, No Platforming, harassment, ostracisation, loss of friends and endless public libel….

    Now, the very same activists who pushed all this on us are apparently ‘rethink[ing] and recalibrat[ing] their confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more all-or-nothing voices in their coalition’. I call bullshit.

    The trans reign of terror is over in America. We won. Any related ‘soul-searching’ happening is in response to that reality. It is an attempt to convince us to roll back this massive triumph. But we mustn’t allow a softer approach to cloud our commitment to women, kids and reality.

  • Toomaj Salehi revisited

    Sentenced to death in April – and now freed:

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    "After being handed the death sentence in April 2024, Iranians pushed a campaign for international attention on the dissident rapper's case, knowing the regime tends to backtrack when the world's eyes are on it.

    "His death sentence was overturned shortly after, and today, on December 1, 2024, Toomaj was finally released. Thank you to everyone who said his name."

  • Hypocrite

    This has not gone well for gender fan Harriet:

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    "I'm a little confused why it's our duty to challenge predatory, lewd men in the workplace, but it's also our duty NOT to challenge predatory lewd men in the workplace women's lavatories. Perhaps you could advise?"

    "What like speaking out about males stealing prizes & places in sports meant for women & girls?"

    "Where the fuck were you when Pakistani gangs were raping their way across the north of England? And how’s PIE going these days?"

    "Now … Imagine what it’s like to face a creepy predatory man in a women’s toilet."

    "You’re such a hypocrite. You don’t want *any* women to challenge predatory fetishistic men in their own spaces."

    "You literally went to bat for kiddie fiddlers you horrible woman."

    "Care to tell us what a woman actually is then?"….