Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Imbued with gender affirmatory ideology

    This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. From the Times:

    A clinical trial giving puberty blockers to children will ask participants from the age of 12 if they identify as “two spirit”.

    “Two-spirit”, for those at the back, is a label coined in 1990 at a Native American gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg, Canada, for indigenous North Americans who identify as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, fulfilling a third gender role in their communities. And, because it lends a kind of lovely indigenous native vibe to gender talk, it’s been generally adopted as part of the cult-speak. Does it have any significance for 12-year-old UK children? Of course it doesn’t. They won’t have a clue. But it does show how this whole farce is drenched in gender ideology.

    The children will be asked “what best describes” their gender identity and given a series of options to tick including “definitely” a boy or girl, “mainly” a boy or girl, “neither a boy or girl”, “not sure” and “none of the above”.

    In addition, those over 12 years old will be asked about “gender identity labels” and again given a range of descriptions to tick.

    These include “cisgender”, “transgender”, “non-binary”, “agender”, “genderfluid”, “genderqueer”, “two spirit” and “other”.

    In a serious study, ticking any of those would be seen as a clear demonstration that the poor children had been coached into this by parents/teachers/social media. But this isn’t a serious study.

    Dr Louise Irvine, a GP and co-chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, a group of clinicians concerned about the rise of gender ideology in healthcare, said that the “labels” being presented to children were ideological in themselves.

    She said: “It’s absolutely ridiculous. It shows that the whole trial is imbued with gender affirmatory ideology. What this question will do is reinforce the ideology in the eyes of the children.

    “They shouldn’t make any suggestions — the question should just be open. The questionnaire should be as neutral as possible because a scientific trial should be neutral, not ideological.”

  • De-binarising bathrooms

    I’ve no idea why Brazil – and Latin America generally – should be so in thrall to gender ideology, but here we are. From Reduxx:

    A female university student in Brazil was arrested after telling a male who identifies as “non-binary” to leave the women’s restroom. According to a press release from the Military Police, the incident occurred at Darcy Ribeiro Campus of the University of Brasília (UnB) on November 11….

    The female student was ultimately charged with “racial injury,” an offense created by Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2019 when it found that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was covered under pre-existing anti-discrimination laws relating to race or national origin. She was held overnight without bail….

    Since the news of the arrest, non-binary and transgender students at the University of Brasília have launched protests demanding that all bathrooms on campus be made gender neutral.

    One campus activist group, calling itself Movimento Correnteza, boasted of “reclaiming” two restrooms in the Sociology Department by vandalizing them.

    “Yesterday at UnB, we marked trans territory. At the ICC Center — above the Academic Center of Sociology, we de-binarized a bathroom by decorating the space, affirming our presence in a place from which they always tried to expel us,” the group wrote.

    “Debinarizing is turning a bathroom divided between ‘male’ and ‘feminine’ into a bathroom for all students, breaking the binary logic that produces exclusion, violence and embarrassment. It’s affirming that our bodies have a right to exist and circulate fully in the university.”

    Well, that’s one way of putting it. Breaking the binary logic by violently taking over women-only spaces – using the modish language of cultural studies to justify misogyny. Isn’t that always what this is about?.

    And here is the de-binarised bathroom. Or, males marking their territory:

  • At Villa Park

  • Cleanliness and civility

    Another offering from Cafe Royal Books, this time with photographer Granville Horner and Cafes & Snack Bars South West London 1975–1976:

    [Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Granville Horner]

    London cafes previously here, here, and here.

  • A catastrophic mistake

    Stella O’Malley at Spiked

    At the start of this year, it did seem as if sanity had returned to the discussion of children’s mental health after years dominated by trans ideology. The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) had been closed down. The NHS had banned puberty blockers. And the claim that trans-identifying people face a dramatically heightened suicide risk without ‘gender-affirming’ treatment had been exposed as a dangerous lie. It certainly looked as though Britain had finally shaken itself awake from the feverish promises of medical transition.

    But in February this year, in an astonishing example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the NHS announced that it was to spend £10million on a puberty-blockers trial. It was as if a bridge had collapsed, and had then been cordoned off to prevent further harm, only for engineers to decide to reopen it and send children across it again – as though the precise nature of the disaster could only be clarified by reenacting it.

    Last week, it was announced that this puberty-blocker trial – the Pathways Trial – had been granted ‘ethical’ approval. Involving over 220 young participants, aged between 10 and 16, recruited over the next three years. And so it seems that we are back in the same moral swamp that birthed the crisis, medicating vulnerable, troubled children, only this time we cannot pretend we do not know better.

    Not only did we think the NHS had taken the Cass Review on board, we also believed that Health Secretary Wes Streeting was a man of principle after he stood up to the trans activists and banned puberty blockers. Turns out we were wrong on both counts.

  • The two sides

    Life in North Korea. From the Daily NK:

    The number of child beggars in the North Korean border city of Hoeryong is surging, with homeless youngsters increasingly visible near train stations and marketplaces.

    “Kotjebi typically loiter around the marketplaces in the daytime and around the train stations at night. Most are teenagers, but some are even younger. The vast majority of the beggars are boys, at a ratio of eight boys to two girls,” a source in the province told Daily NK recently, using a term referring to homeless children.

    “Young beggars have increased in number since last year, with citizens complaining that they’ve become a disturbingly common sight,” the source added.

    According to the source, the inadequate supply of food is the biggest cause of the increasing number of young beggars. Many families have collapsed with parents unable to support their children, who are now apparently roaming the streets in a desperate attempt to survive.

    On the other hand:

    North Korea’s elite women are flaunting luxury fur coats worth millions of won—enough to buy a provincial home or feed a family for years—while ordinary workers struggle to afford rice, exposing the country’s widening class divide.

    A source in North Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that women in powerful families that occupy the pinnacle of high society in Sinuiju often order mink coats launched by exclusive women’s fashion brands in China or expensive coats sold at emporiums specializing in fur products.

    It’s socialism in action.

  • The self-indicting Jew

    Jewish journalist and academic Peter Beinart has spent his professional life siding with the Israel-haters, most notably with his recent much-lauded book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. It is, of course, all about that nasty old Jewish supremacy, which we’ve seen so much evidence of in recent history. If only Jews could be nicer!

    Well, he recently went to speak at Tel Aviv University, to tell those Jews “why I believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and why I believe Jewish supremacy is fundamentally wrong”. But, alas, his Palestinian friends were displeased. Consorting with the Zionist enemy! So Beinart wrote an excruciating mea culpa.

    …I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians, who in the face of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide have asked the world boycott Israeli institutions that are complicit in their oppression. As Noura Erakat and others have pointed out, there are ways for me to talk to Israelis without violating BDS guidelines and undermining a collective effort against oppression. I could have had the exchange I desired while respecting a non-violent movement based on human rights and international law. Had I listened more to Palestinians, I would have realized that earlier.

    It’s embarrassing to admit such a serious mistake. I dearly wish I had not made this one, which has caused particular harm because international pressure is crucial to ensuring Palestinian freedom. This was a failure of judgment. I am sorry.

    Oh dear.

    Dave Rich: “The shame, humiliation and self-abasement of this statement, and all because Peter forgot one golden rule: in his world, Jews do not get to decide which other Jews they speak to, or what they say.”

    Other comments:

    “This is not the product of an independent mind. This reads like a show-trial. A coerced confession. A public recantation of sins and misdeeds — in the vain hope that all will be forgiven and he will be taken back into the fold. Peter Beinart fed the crocodile, hoping that it would eat him last. Well it looks like he just got eaten.”

    “You go to an Israeli university to accuse Israelis of being Jewish supremacists who commit genocide– and what horrible mistake are you sorry for? Offending your Palestinian buddies! You had the nerve to visit an Israeli university they’re boycotting. Wow, Peter.”

    “In over 30 years as a trauma psychologist, I’ve seen this exact posture in abused women and in people caught inside cultic systems. When they speak, they frame not checking in with the group’s gatekeepers as a kind of sin, as if having an independent thought requires repentance. They start treating ordinary acts of agency – talking to someone outside the circle or forming a judgment on their own – as betrayals that must be confessed. This isn’t moral clarity; it’s fear wearing the mask of conscience. What you hear isn’t a free person speaking. It’s someone who obeys because losing the group frightens them more than losing themselves.”

    “Peter Beinart’s latest apology reads less like a reflection from a public intellectual and more like the confession of someone trapped in a sadistic relationship. He’s not apologizing for the things any reasonable person might question: his reckless, evidence-free accusations of genocide; his flattening of seven million Israelis into a single malignant category; his immunity to Israeli suffering. No, he’s sorry for speaking at Tel Aviv University without first securing permission from the ideological authority to which he’s now thoroughly captured. The language: “solidarity,” “collective struggle,” “international pressure,” is the vocabulary of a person who has outsourced his moral compass. Morality, in this context, is not something discerned but something contingent on obedience. And then there’s the career he has built atop this posture. Beinart has become a kind of idealized mascot for a certain segment of the anti-Israel world: Here’s a guy who wears a kippah and denounces Israel. Perfect. Book him on the podcast. Give him the op-ed slot. Invite him to panels, conferences, salons. Celebrate him precisely because he confirms their fantasies of the self-indicting Jew. The reward structure is obvious: condemn your own people loudly enough, and the invitations and checks will follow. When you feed a wolf, he soon learns exactly where to find his next meal. Pete’s got the meat.”

  • Not a trial of puberty blockers

    It is simply a comparison of the short-term effect on the mood of kids who want puberty blockers between… Kids who get what they want straight away and Kids who are told they will have to wait a year for what they want. That’s all. 2/3

    This is insane. I can tell them right now that the kids who get what they want now rather than having to wait a year will be much happier in the immediate term. OBVIOUSLY. Even if what they want causes them lifelong problems that they are too immature and fixated to predict 3/3

    If they want a real test on puberty blockers, they could look at the thousands who wree given them at the Tavistock Clinic. After a good number of years – ten? fifteen? – the long-term effects will be apparent, and the recipients will be mature enough to understand what’s been done to them.

    As for this Pathways trial – yes, it’s a farce. And a disgrace.

  • Trees on the Heath

    Last of autumn up on a sunny Hampstead Heath this morning:

  • Men are perfect

    Islam a misogynist religion? An Islamophobic slur, surely.

    At MEMRI TV:

    In a November 7, 2025 lecture at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, its principal imam and director, Jamal Said, stated that men are perfect, while women are governed by emotions and hormones. He said that it is wrong for a man to treat his wife as an equal and that women who demand equality with men are mistaken. Imam Said further explained that women cannot make their own decisions regarding marriage and must have a male guardian who can marry them off to a suitor. He advised Muslim women not to question Allah’s decree by asking why their 18-year-old brother can be their guardian while they are 30 years old and hold a PhD.

    “The prophet Muhammad said – scientists today say – that women’s brains are smaller than those of men. Therefore, her obligations are not the same as those of men. One needs to take into account women’s emotions, unlike with men. They were created from a rib, and the most crooked part of a rib is its uttermost. If you attempt to straighten it you will break it….”