The Trans Agenda #21
[4 April 2024]
Welcome to The Trans Agenda, a newsletter that will arrive in your inbox Monday and Thursday if you are subscribed. You can also read it on Substack and on Trans Writes.
Publications known for taking an anti-trans stance are and will be referenced and linked. Often, these are the most comprehensive sources for these stories because of their obsession with trans people. I give a summary for those stories so you can make the choice if you want to click the link or seek out more information elsewhere.
UPDATE: After some thought and feedback, I’ve made the decision to cut the Trans Agenda back to two days a week. There are a few reasons for this, but mostly it was taking over my life. As you saw, each issue was comprehensive and, due to my main job involving working most weekends, I was looking at less than one day off a month if I kept it five days a week. In addition, some people mentioned that it was a lot to digest on a daily basis. So, with that in mind, I’m hoping two issues per week will also allow me space to expand on some of the stories included in the Trans Agenda, allowing me to bring you a deeper look at the news behind the headlines.
As always, if you have any suggestions, I’m open to feedback and you can contact me using the links on this page near the bottom.
The Trans Agenda
NEWS & POLITICS
Easter arrives and everybody loses their shit
- Through a quirk of the calendar, Easter Sunday this year fell on Trans Day of Visibility, something that is not due to happen again until 2086. So, at least you know you will likely only have to live through this batshittery once. Sorry, young ‘uns.
As you will no doubt have heard or experienced for yourself, right-wingers were enraged by the latest thing they made up, blaming Joe Biden for declaring March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility, when he did no such thing. TDoV has been on this date since 2009. They claimed it was a disrespectful affront to their faith and an attempt to ‘turn the day Christ conquered sin into a day to celebrate sin.’ For a good overview, this short video by Caelan Conrad explains all you need to know. It’s also hilarious:
The outrage didn’t last as long in the UK as it did in the US, but that’s probably got a lot to do with the media and the next story that took prominence…
JK Rowling tries to get arrested by doing legal things, fails
- Nothing screams bravery more than calling for the police to arrest you for doing something that isn’t illegal, all while making sure you are out of the country that has jurisdiction just in case.
Yes indeed, JK Rowling made her ‘stand’. The great feminist leader showed the way. In order to protect women and girls you must – MUST – misgender trans women and imply that all trans people are rapists or sexual abusers. Now women and girls will be safe everywhere!
Of course, nothing Rowling said was actually illegal. Abusive, mean and nasty, yes, but not illegal. I’m also fairly certain she would have taken legal advice before tweeting because, no matter what she says, there is not one inch of her that wants or is prepared to spend a single second in prison.
Trans people said loudly that she wouldn’t be arrested but, as usual, nobody listened. Meanwhile, Sarah Vine declared her a hero from the front pages of the Daily Mail. What had this ‘hero’ done? She’d deliberately conflated a handful of the worst trans women with any others she could think of, tarring them all with her bigot brush.
Those who have backed Rowling include the aforementioned Vine, Rishi Sunak and Nigel Farage.
Nearly 4,000 complaints made in first 24 hours of Scotland’s new hate crime law
- With Scotland’s new hate crime law coming into force on April 1, The Telegraph reported that there were around 3,800 complaints in the first 24 hours. Of course, they imply they were all submitted by trans people, completely ignoring the racists and their campaign to report Humza Yousaf.
Reform suspend candidate for transphobia [The Ferret]
- Reform have suspended two candidates for the General Election in Scotland after one shared anti-trans content and the other shared posts from far-right figures. Making decisive moves like this is both strange for a party like Reform, given their members, and also something both the Conservatives and Labour have a problem with doing.
Stephen McNamara said that trans people have ‘severe mental illness’, while David McNabb “shared a video from far right commentator Katie Hopkins, and another post which said first minister Humza Yousaf should not be able to hold a rugby trophy because he is “more Pakistani than Scottish.””
Winsford councillor made to leave event at Storyhouse Chester [Norwich & Winsford Guardian]
- Cllr Mandy Clare has given an interview in which she claims she was asked to leave this event because she asked a ‘gender critical question’. You will, of course, be surprised to learn that it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Attending a talk by feminist and staunch trans ally, Patsy Stevenson, Clare told GB News, “I’m kind of known locally as a councillor who raises concerns and issues around women’s rights, women’s dignity, our language, child safeguarding concerns etc, in relation to the debate around sex and gender.
“I just asked her some reasonable questions. I asked her because she had earlier commented she was in favour of freedom of speech and the right to protest regardless of whether people agreed with her views or she agreed with theirs. In principal she was in support of that but then she denigrated these women [GCs who were protesting outside the event] and lied about them.
“So I asked her, given that basis, ‘why did you do that? Are you aware they’re just outside leafletting because: they don’t want women to have to refer to their rapist as ‘she’ in court; they don’t want disabled women to be forced to have intimate care from men if that’s not what they want; and they don’t want women to be intimately strip-searched by male police officers who are claiming that they’re women.”
That’s what Clare describes as ‘reasonable’ questions.
Ulster University: LGBT Pride ‘problematic’ for Qatar campus [BBC NI]
- Ulster University is facing criticism due to its Qatar campus location. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, and some staff members believe information about LGBTQ+ Pride events should not be sent there as it might be ‘offensive’. Others argue that the university should consistently advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Patrick Corrigan from Amnesty International said the university appeared to be “unwilling to even mention Pride in its communications with students and staff at the Doha campus. This looks very much like double standards – with a commitment to human rights and equality at home which then apparently gets jettisoned as soon as these come into contact with the harsh reality of discriminatory laws in Qatar.”
Keep an eye out for
- What JK Rowling’s next move will be as this war against trans people escalates in the dying days of the Tory government.
MEDIA & PAPERS
Petrol bombs thrown at media in Derry [Belfast Telegraph]
- Violence erupted after a Republican Easter commemoration event in Derry, Northern Ireland. Youths threw petrol bombs at journalists after pursuing them. It should be remembered that it was dissident Republicans who shot and killed my friend, Lyra McKee, as she observed a riot in 2019, also in Derry.
Fox News Trans Easter
- Fox News dedicated over two hours, featuring 37 segments, on the confected outrage over TDoV and Easter.
Emmerdale deal with ‘the trans issue’ [Clip on Twitter]
- And they manage to deal with it well.
The Sun’s Hillsborough stories used to teach MPs how to recognise fake news [Guardian]
- Parliament now offers a course to teach MPs how to spot fake news. Examples include fabricated stories by The Sun about Hillsborough and a Russian bot campaign using a photo from the Westminster Bridge attack to spread Islamophobia. The course also covers historical examples and techniques to identify misinformation. It’s not clear if The Telegraph features, nor the MPs who willing feed misinformation to the media.
THIS WEEK’S PAPERS
The Times
There was nothing about trans people in the Sunday Times, nor Monday’s edition.
- Tuesday 2 April 2024
- Wednesday 3 April 2024
Here, we have Maya Forstater, who famously doesn’t understand her own legal case, telling a judge that she doesn’t understand the law. Forstater demonstrates that by being wrong about her own case. Again.
- Thursday 4 April 2024

Daily Mail
- There were no articles about trans people in the Mail on Sunday.
- Monday 1 April 2024

![£190,000 handout for trans group who made ‘KKK’ jibe Daily Mail1 Apr 2024By Martin Beckford Policy Editor A SUPPORT group for transgender civil servants that has likened women’s rights campaigners to the Ku Klux Klan has been handed tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. The staff network, known as a:gender, received £110,000 from the Home Office last year and another £80,000 from the Cabinet Office. It is also thought to have received funding from the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs. A:gender says its role is to help transgender and intersex civil servants flourish by offering advice and support. But critics say it also carries out ‘inaccurate and divisive’ training to Whitehall departments. There are now calls for all staff equalities networks to be stripped of their public funding. Last night Tory backbencher Nick Fletcher, who obtained the figures, said: ‘Concerningly, we hear reports that these networks sometimes strive to influence policy advice given to ministers.’ Complaints about a:gender’s training were made to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case late last year by the civil service’s sex equality and equity network [SEEN]. In an apparent allusion to the KKK, a: gender states: ‘Racism won’t come into your workplace as hoods and burning crosses but as “nationalism” or “patriotism”. Transphobia is the same: “I’m just protecting women and girls”.’ Article Name:£190,000 handout for trans group who made ‘KKK’ jibe Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Martin Beckford Policy Editor Start Page:11 End Page:11 £190,000 handout for trans group who made ‘KKK’ jibe Daily Mail1 Apr 2024By Martin Beckford Policy Editor A SUPPORT group for transgender civil servants that has likened women’s rights campaigners to the Ku Klux Klan has been handed tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. The staff network, known as a:gender, received £110,000 from the Home Office last year and another £80,000 from the Cabinet Office. It is also thought to have received funding from the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs. A:gender says its role is to help transgender and intersex civil servants flourish by offering advice and support. But critics say it also carries out ‘inaccurate and divisive’ training to Whitehall departments. There are now calls for all staff equalities networks to be stripped of their public funding. Last night Tory backbencher Nick Fletcher, who obtained the figures, said: ‘Concerningly, we hear reports that these networks sometimes strive to influence policy advice given to ministers.’ Complaints about a:gender’s training were made to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case late last year by the civil service’s sex equality and equity network [SEEN]. In an apparent allusion to the KKK, a: gender states: ‘Racism won’t come into your workplace as hoods and burning crosses but as “nationalism” or “patriotism”. Transphobia is the same: “I’m just protecting women and girls”.’ Article Name:£190,000 handout for trans group who made ‘KKK’ jibe Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Martin Beckford Policy Editor Start Page:11 End Page:11](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a7cc7eb-dd39-406a-ae61-42d680dda039_557x407.png)


This was on the following page, after the anti-trans bullshit in the first two images.
- Tuesday 2 April 2024





- Wednesday 3 April 2024




- Thursday 4 April 2024
- There are no articles about trans people in Thursday’s Daily Mail.
The Telegraph
- Sunday 31 March 2024

![Biden attacked for marking trans day on Easter Sunday The Sunday Telegraph31 Mar 2024By Susie Coen US CORRESPONDENT THE Trump campaign has accused Joe Biden of wielding an “assault on the Christian faith” for marking an annual transgender event, which this year falls on Easter Sunday. The US president on Friday put out a statement proclaiming today as International Transgender Day of Visibility (ITDV) – an annual event that has been celebrated on March 31 since 2009. Marking the celebration, Mr Biden, a devout Catholic, told transgender Americans: “My entire administration and I have your back.” He also attacked the “extremists proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families”. However, Mr Biden, who has put out a similar statement on March 30 in every year of his administration, has been attacked by Republicans who accused him of “betraying” the Christian holiday through his remarks. Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said: “It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility’. “Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden administration’s yearslong assault on the Christian faith. We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and the White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only – the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, also commented, saying: “I wonder how [Biden] came up with that date.” Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, accused Mr Biden of having “betrayed the central tenet of Easter”. “Banning sacred truth and tradition – while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’ – is outrageous and abhorrent,” he wrote, adding: “The people are taking note.” Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox, between March 22 and April 25. ITDV will not fall on Easter Sunday again for at least another 20 years. The Telegraph has approached the Biden administration for comment. Article Name:Biden attacked for marking trans day on Easter Sunday Publication:The Sunday Telegraph Author:By Susie Coen US CORRESPONDENT Start Page:16 End Page:16 Biden attacked for marking trans day on Easter Sunday The Sunday Telegraph31 Mar 2024By Susie Coen US CORRESPONDENT THE Trump campaign has accused Joe Biden of wielding an “assault on the Christian faith” for marking an annual transgender event, which this year falls on Easter Sunday. The US president on Friday put out a statement proclaiming today as International Transgender Day of Visibility (ITDV) – an annual event that has been celebrated on March 31 since 2009. Marking the celebration, Mr Biden, a devout Catholic, told transgender Americans: “My entire administration and I have your back.” He also attacked the “extremists proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families”. However, Mr Biden, who has put out a similar statement on March 30 in every year of his administration, has been attacked by Republicans who accused him of “betraying” the Christian holiday through his remarks. Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said: “It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility’. “Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden administration’s yearslong assault on the Christian faith. We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and the White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only – the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, also commented, saying: “I wonder how [Biden] came up with that date.” Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, accused Mr Biden of having “betrayed the central tenet of Easter”. “Banning sacred truth and tradition – while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’ – is outrageous and abhorrent,” he wrote, adding: “The people are taking note.” Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox, between March 22 and April 25. ITDV will not fall on Easter Sunday again for at least another 20 years. The Telegraph has approached the Biden administration for comment. Article Name:Biden attacked for marking trans day on Easter Sunday Publication:The Sunday Telegraph Author:By Susie Coen US CORRESPONDENT Start Page:16 End Page:16](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5aab1546-6dd9-473c-9680-86fa27f817e1_508x579.png)
- Monday 1 April 2024
![£200k for group that likened gender critical feminists to the KKK The Daily Telegraph1 Apr 2024By Daniel Martin Deputy political editor TAXPAYERS have spent at least £200,000 on a Civil Service staff network that gave training in which gender-critical activists were compared to the Ku Klux Klan. The Cabinet Office gave the Whitehall staff network for transgender civil servants, a:gender, £82,000 last year. The Home Office gave the same group more than £110,000, with other departments spending unknown amounts. The gender-critical group Sex Equality and Equity Network (Seen) said the training provided by a:gender was creating a “culture of fear” across government which has led to the bullying of staff who do not subscribe to the entirety of the trans rights agenda. It comes a week after Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, wrote in The Telegraph that the UK’S diversity drive was “counterproductive” and criticised much equality, diversity and inclusion [EDI] training as “snake oil”. The group wrote to Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, in October 2023 to complain about a:gender training courses and a presentation which compared gender-critical activists to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The presentation said: “Racism won’t come into your workplace as hoods and burning crosses but as ‘nationalism’ or ‘patriotism’.” It adds: “Transphobia is the same: ‘I’m just protecting women and girls’, ‘this undermines women’s hard-fought-for sex-based rights’, “What rights do women have that men don’t? None, because we have the Equality Act. There is no such thing as women’s sex-based rights and, even if there was, how would a man transitioning and getting that right stop women from having that right?” The letter said: “Together these statements repeatedly degenerate and ridicule gender-critical views by presenting them as ignorant or the direct result of anti-semitism ... they operate as an attempt to bully gender-critical people into silence by taking away the words we use to describe our protected belief. “It also creates a hostile working environment by painting our position as the moral equivalent of racism, even (perhaps especially) when presented as part of a civilised discourse. We consider that this constitutes a clear example of bullying and harassment.” Nick Fletcher, a Tory MP, asked the Cabinet Office how much it spent on the a:gender network, to which John Glen, the Paymaster General, replied that the figure in 2022-23 was £82,000. Mr Glen added: “A decision was made since then that no further funding will be provided.” A Freedom of Information request revealed the Home Office spent £111,846 in the same year. Maya Forstater, from the women’s rights group Sex Matters, said: “Unfortunately the Civil Service is using our taxes to pay its own staff to deliver unlawful and inaccurate training under the guise of ‘inclusion workshops’ but what these workshops really do is encourage civil servants to bully and silence anyone who understands that sex is real and sometimes it matters.” She said they promote such ideas as “sex is a spectrum consisting of 62 categories” and “transphobia comes cloaked in concern for women’s rights’”. Last night, a government source said: “The current funding arrangements for a:gender will cease with effect from April 1 2024.” Article Name:£200k for group that likened gender critical feminists to the KKK Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Daniel Martin Deputy political editor Start Page:8 End Page:8 £200k for group that likened gender critical feminists to the KKK The Daily Telegraph1 Apr 2024By Daniel Martin Deputy political editor TAXPAYERS have spent at least £200,000 on a Civil Service staff network that gave training in which gender-critical activists were compared to the Ku Klux Klan. The Cabinet Office gave the Whitehall staff network for transgender civil servants, a:gender, £82,000 last year. The Home Office gave the same group more than £110,000, with other departments spending unknown amounts. The gender-critical group Sex Equality and Equity Network (Seen) said the training provided by a:gender was creating a “culture of fear” across government which has led to the bullying of staff who do not subscribe to the entirety of the trans rights agenda. It comes a week after Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, wrote in The Telegraph that the UK’S diversity drive was “counterproductive” and criticised much equality, diversity and inclusion [EDI] training as “snake oil”. The group wrote to Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, in October 2023 to complain about a:gender training courses and a presentation which compared gender-critical activists to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The presentation said: “Racism won’t come into your workplace as hoods and burning crosses but as ‘nationalism’ or ‘patriotism’.” It adds: “Transphobia is the same: ‘I’m just protecting women and girls’, ‘this undermines women’s hard-fought-for sex-based rights’, “What rights do women have that men don’t? None, because we have the Equality Act. There is no such thing as women’s sex-based rights and, even if there was, how would a man transitioning and getting that right stop women from having that right?” The letter said: “Together these statements repeatedly degenerate and ridicule gender-critical views by presenting them as ignorant or the direct result of anti-semitism ... they operate as an attempt to bully gender-critical people into silence by taking away the words we use to describe our protected belief. “It also creates a hostile working environment by painting our position as the moral equivalent of racism, even (perhaps especially) when presented as part of a civilised discourse. We consider that this constitutes a clear example of bullying and harassment.” Nick Fletcher, a Tory MP, asked the Cabinet Office how much it spent on the a:gender network, to which John Glen, the Paymaster General, replied that the figure in 2022-23 was £82,000. Mr Glen added: “A decision was made since then that no further funding will be provided.” A Freedom of Information request revealed the Home Office spent £111,846 in the same year. Maya Forstater, from the women’s rights group Sex Matters, said: “Unfortunately the Civil Service is using our taxes to pay its own staff to deliver unlawful and inaccurate training under the guise of ‘inclusion workshops’ but what these workshops really do is encourage civil servants to bully and silence anyone who understands that sex is real and sometimes it matters.” She said they promote such ideas as “sex is a spectrum consisting of 62 categories” and “transphobia comes cloaked in concern for women’s rights’”. Last night, a government source said: “The current funding arrangements for a:gender will cease with effect from April 1 2024.” Article Name:£200k for group that likened gender critical feminists to the KKK Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Daniel Martin Deputy political editor Start Page:8 End Page:8](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F462c4148-18fe-475b-bcc1-58c1080d6123_1513x333.png)

- Tuesday 2 April 2024
![Daily Telegraph front page - No 10 backs Rowling as she dares police to arrest her over trans tweets SNP fails to provide force with enough funding and 6,000 officers are still to complete two-hour course The Daily Telegraph2 Apr 2024By Simon Johnson and Daniel Martin RISHI SUNAK has backed JK Rowling after she challenged Scottish police to use the SNP’S new hate crime laws to arrest her over her views on transgender issues. The Harry Potter author had said she was looking forward to being arrested after describing a series of transgender women as men on the day the new law came into force. An SNP minister had earlier admitted that Rowling could be investigated under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act – which creates a new offence of “stirring up of hatred” for “misgendering” trans people. However, the Prime Minister gave his support to Rowling, saying that the Conservatives would always protect free speech. He said: “People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.” Yesterday, Rowling posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people and pointedly described them all as women. They included the “double rapist” Isla Bryson, whom she mockingly referred to as a “lovely Scottish lass”, and the TV personality India Willoughby. At the end of the list, Rowling tweeted: “April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.” She said: “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new Act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.” Rowling used the hashtag #Arrestme. Rowling also said that the MSPS who voted for the new hate crime laws had “placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls”. She added: “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.” Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, oversaw the passage of the legislation at Holyrood in 2021, when he was justice secretary in Nicola Sturgeon’s government. The Act was supported by almost all SNP and Labour MSPS. When the Act came into force yesterday, Police Scotland said that a third of officers had still not completed their training regarding the new law. The force did not reveal how many reports of crime it had received on the first day of the Act. The legislation creates a criminal offence of “stirring up of hatred”, expanding on a similar offence based on racist abuse that has been on the statute book for decades. The legislation extends this to other grounds on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. Someone convicted of stirring up hate could face a fine and a prison term of up to seven years. An amendment to add sex to the list of protected characteristics was voted down, despite cross-party MSPS raising concerns about why women were excluded. Concerns have also been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, potentially leading to a “chilling” effect on freedom of speech and a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police. In particular, Rowling’s allies have suggested that trans activists have her “in their sights”. Rowling said Scottish women had been pressured by the SNP Government and the police to “deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable”. The policy of MORE than a third of Scotland’s police officers have not received training on Humza Yousaf ’s “confusing” new hate crime law, it has emerged amid warnings of a deluge of cases. The Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said they had been allocated only a “cheap” two-hour training course that was not sufficient. David Kennedy, its general secretary, said 6,000 of Police Scotland’s 16,000 officers had not even completed that yet and admitted he had not either. Mr Kennedy warned the legislation will mean a huge increase in workload for the force, with families, neighbours and work colleagues being “drawn into a criminal law environment”. He argued the Snp-green government at Holyrood had failed to provide the force with the funding it required to train officers properly if it wanted to pass such legislation. A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics. But concerns have been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, leading to a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police. Asked whether officers were ready for the Act being enforced, Mr Kennedy told BBC Radio Scotland: “Some officers might feel prepared but we’ve raised concerns because it’s only been a twohour online package that officers have been given. “There’s been various other webinars that Police Scotland have put on but they are not mandatory and we now know I think approximately 6,000 officers are still to go through the online training. “And we’ve been complaining for several years now about the online training and the lack of face-to-face training that’s required.” He said officers received two days of face-to-face training after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry but “they haven’t had anything like this for this new law”. Attacking SNP ministers, he said: “Government have to, if they are going to pass these new laws, they have to provide the finances for the police officers to be trained properly so they can enact these new laws and they haven’t done that.” Officers in Scotland have also warned the new law could risk reducing the number of bobbies on the beat. Mr Kennedy said there would be “hours of work” for every complaint, leaving less time for officers to be visible in their communities. Asked if the additional hate crime workload would cut bobbies on the beat, he said: “It could do as officers will be attending other calls to do with hate crime – they won’t be out and about. There’s very few out and about anyway becuase numbers are so stretched. “The Chief Constable said the North East pilot (of not investigating ‘minor’ crimes) would increase patrols but I don’t see how that would work with the Hate Crime Act. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Mr Kennedy said the Scottish Government had provided no extra money or officers for the police to enforce the Act, accusing them of having “not done any of the things that we actually require to make it a success”. “It’s going to bring difficult situations where members of the same family, neighbours, work colleagues, politicians, journalists, anyone you can think of is going to be drawn into a criminal law environment,” he said. “And that would never have confronted us before. The role of the police is we have to apply the law, and it’s going to be an extremely difficult time. I think it’s going to be confusing and fraught with difficulty.” Asked if the legislation could be “weaponised” by activists, he said: “Absolutely, you only need to go on X [formerly Twitter] to see. I think there’ll be groups lined up waiting to make complaints about certain individuals.” Pressed over whether the new law risked angering both sides in controversial debates, he told the programme: “That will cause havoc with trust in police in Scotland, it certainly will reduce that.” He contrasted Police Scotland’s pledge to investigate every hate crime complaint with a recent announcement that some “minor” offences will no longer be fully investigated. Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservatives’ justice spokesman, said: “Front-line officers and Police Scotland will pay the price for Humza Yousaf ’s hate crime law while he arrogantly thinks he knows best. “They will be forced to consider every complaint, no matter how petty or groundless, while telling people they don’t have the resources to investigate real crimes. “The SNP, with Labour backing, passed this law three years ago, so it’s staggering that thousands of officers have still not been trained.” Today Article Name:No 10 backs Rowling as she dares police to arrest her over trans tweets Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Simon Johnson and Daniel Martin Start Page:1 End Page:1 Daily Telegraph front page - No 10 backs Rowling as she dares police to arrest her over trans tweets SNP fails to provide force with enough funding and 6,000 officers are still to complete two-hour course The Daily Telegraph2 Apr 2024By Simon Johnson and Daniel Martin RISHI SUNAK has backed JK Rowling after she challenged Scottish police to use the SNP’S new hate crime laws to arrest her over her views on transgender issues. The Harry Potter author had said she was looking forward to being arrested after describing a series of transgender women as men on the day the new law came into force. An SNP minister had earlier admitted that Rowling could be investigated under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act – which creates a new offence of “stirring up of hatred” for “misgendering” trans people. However, the Prime Minister gave his support to Rowling, saying that the Conservatives would always protect free speech. He said: “People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.” Yesterday, Rowling posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people and pointedly described them all as women. They included the “double rapist” Isla Bryson, whom she mockingly referred to as a “lovely Scottish lass”, and the TV personality India Willoughby. At the end of the list, Rowling tweeted: “April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.” She said: “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new Act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.” Rowling used the hashtag #Arrestme. Rowling also said that the MSPS who voted for the new hate crime laws had “placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls”. She added: “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.” Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, oversaw the passage of the legislation at Holyrood in 2021, when he was justice secretary in Nicola Sturgeon’s government. The Act was supported by almost all SNP and Labour MSPS. When the Act came into force yesterday, Police Scotland said that a third of officers had still not completed their training regarding the new law. The force did not reveal how many reports of crime it had received on the first day of the Act. The legislation creates a criminal offence of “stirring up of hatred”, expanding on a similar offence based on racist abuse that has been on the statute book for decades. The legislation extends this to other grounds on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. Someone convicted of stirring up hate could face a fine and a prison term of up to seven years. An amendment to add sex to the list of protected characteristics was voted down, despite cross-party MSPS raising concerns about why women were excluded. Concerns have also been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, potentially leading to a “chilling” effect on freedom of speech and a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police. In particular, Rowling’s allies have suggested that trans activists have her “in their sights”. Rowling said Scottish women had been pressured by the SNP Government and the police to “deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable”. The policy of MORE than a third of Scotland’s police officers have not received training on Humza Yousaf ’s “confusing” new hate crime law, it has emerged amid warnings of a deluge of cases. The Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said they had been allocated only a “cheap” two-hour training course that was not sufficient. David Kennedy, its general secretary, said 6,000 of Police Scotland’s 16,000 officers had not even completed that yet and admitted he had not either. Mr Kennedy warned the legislation will mean a huge increase in workload for the force, with families, neighbours and work colleagues being “drawn into a criminal law environment”. He argued the Snp-green government at Holyrood had failed to provide the force with the funding it required to train officers properly if it wanted to pass such legislation. A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics. But concerns have been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, leading to a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police. Asked whether officers were ready for the Act being enforced, Mr Kennedy told BBC Radio Scotland: “Some officers might feel prepared but we’ve raised concerns because it’s only been a twohour online package that officers have been given. “There’s been various other webinars that Police Scotland have put on but they are not mandatory and we now know I think approximately 6,000 officers are still to go through the online training. “And we’ve been complaining for several years now about the online training and the lack of face-to-face training that’s required.” He said officers received two days of face-to-face training after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry but “they haven’t had anything like this for this new law”. Attacking SNP ministers, he said: “Government have to, if they are going to pass these new laws, they have to provide the finances for the police officers to be trained properly so they can enact these new laws and they haven’t done that.” Officers in Scotland have also warned the new law could risk reducing the number of bobbies on the beat. Mr Kennedy said there would be “hours of work” for every complaint, leaving less time for officers to be visible in their communities. Asked if the additional hate crime workload would cut bobbies on the beat, he said: “It could do as officers will be attending other calls to do with hate crime – they won’t be out and about. There’s very few out and about anyway becuase numbers are so stretched. “The Chief Constable said the North East pilot (of not investigating ‘minor’ crimes) would increase patrols but I don’t see how that would work with the Hate Crime Act. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Mr Kennedy said the Scottish Government had provided no extra money or officers for the police to enforce the Act, accusing them of having “not done any of the things that we actually require to make it a success”. “It’s going to bring difficult situations where members of the same family, neighbours, work colleagues, politicians, journalists, anyone you can think of is going to be drawn into a criminal law environment,” he said. “And that would never have confronted us before. The role of the police is we have to apply the law, and it’s going to be an extremely difficult time. I think it’s going to be confusing and fraught with difficulty.” Asked if the legislation could be “weaponised” by activists, he said: “Absolutely, you only need to go on X [formerly Twitter] to see. I think there’ll be groups lined up waiting to make complaints about certain individuals.” Pressed over whether the new law risked angering both sides in controversial debates, he told the programme: “That will cause havoc with trust in police in Scotland, it certainly will reduce that.” He contrasted Police Scotland’s pledge to investigate every hate crime complaint with a recent announcement that some “minor” offences will no longer be fully investigated. Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservatives’ justice spokesman, said: “Front-line officers and Police Scotland will pay the price for Humza Yousaf ’s hate crime law while he arrogantly thinks he knows best. “They will be forced to consider every complaint, no matter how petty or groundless, while telling people they don’t have the resources to investigate real crimes. “The SNP, with Labour backing, passed this law three years ago, so it’s staggering that thousands of officers have still not been trained.” Today Article Name:No 10 backs Rowling as she dares police to arrest her over trans tweets Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Simon Johnson and Daniel Martin Start Page:1 End Page:1](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2b19376e-3bfa-4891-a149-267bbffe198c_474x760.png)

- Wednesday 3 April 2024




- Thursday 4 April 2024




![‘Transgenderism is a social mania’ Controversial novelist Lionel Shriver talks candidly to Chris Harvey The Daily Telegraph4 Apr 2024 “You cannot survive as a civilisation in a state of cringing shame,” says Lionel Shriver, as she launches into a broadside at the self-loathing that people are supposed to feel about the colonial sins of the West. “I am very suspicious of this whole pose of guilt,” she says, explaining that it’s usually used by white people to “assert superiority over other white people”. I’m with the writer of We Need to Talk About Kevin at her house outside Lisbon; she moved there in October after living in the UK for 25 years. She’s not holding back. “Real guilt is a terrible sensation. It is not something that you parade, shame. That is not what these people are experiencing. It’s proud guilt. It’s used to shut people up.” She adds: “It’s all to do with heritable guilt. And I reject that out of hand.” We’ve been chatting about her latest novel, Mania, which digs into the way that social manias have come to dominate our world. They’re insidious, she believes, from the clamour for Covid lockdowns (“the biggest publichealth mistake in history. And the biggest economic mistake in history”) to the response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis (“they were marching down the street in Korea. They don’t have any black people. This was just social contagion”). Even the worldwide cult of Taylor Swift is not down to her “formulaic” music, in Shriver’s view. The 66-year-old lives with her husband, the jazz drummer Jeff Williams, who is off playing in Slovenia. She misses her friends in London, but spends so much of her time reading and writing that she doesn’t feel lonely – “not consciously… I am very comfortable spending long periods of time alone.” There’s a pool and a lemon tree in the garden. Inside, her home is unfussy, as is she, in a cardigan and boot slippers. She has an infectious laugh. “My sensibility has an element of wickedness,” she says. It surfaces in her books and columns, with their provocative edge. “It’s kinda the point,” she says. “Otherwise, someone else might as well write them.” The worldwide success of We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize in 2005, made her famous. She has written other talked-about novels since, though none has captured the popular imagination in quite the same way. “I don’t know whether I will ever pull it off again,” she says. In her 2016 novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, she imagined a near-future America, with its first Latino president, experiencing complete economic collapse. In Mania, she goes back in time to depict an alternative history that begins in 2011, “because I think that’s when things started really going to s---”. It’s a dystopian satire, dark and funny in uncomfortable ways, about how society is radically transformed by the Mental Parity movement – “the last great civil rights fight” – which maintains that “stupidity is a fiction” and that it’s “discriminatory” to suggest that anyone is more intelligent than anyone else. Uttering any words that suggest otherwise leads to public rebuke – calling something “dumb” can mean losing your job or having your children taken away. Of course, this mirrors the sort of changes made to existing works of fiction, removing references to anyone being “fat”, “nuts”, or even “rather pretty” in Roald Dahl, for instance. Has anyone ever suggested Shriver’s work be combed by a sensitivity reader? “No one,” she says. “I mean, I’ve been with HarperCollins for a long time, so nobody in that company is that stupid.” Beyond the comic set pieces, there’s a serious intent in how Shriver depicts society being hollowed out from within, and it’s clear that it is no imaginary world in her sights. “Things start falling apart because functionality no longer matters; all that matters is ideology. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. You’re watching grand storied universities destroy themselves because they no longer believe in themselves, they don’t believe in the canon they’re supposed to be transferring to the next generation.” The students now have the power, she says. “The administration and faculty are now terrified of their own student bodies.” Cancel culture, Shriver believes, “is getting worse... there’s nothing moderate about it. It’s aggressive, hostile, angry… perhaps vengeful above all... it’s about hunting people’s careers for sport.” The goal, she says, “is to utterly destroy you. And that is the appeal of this stuff – that satisfaction of destroying other people’s lives. And also, in doing so, you don’t have to take any responsibility for being a destructive force. You are the force of righteousness.” We talk about JK Rowling, whom The Telegraph has described as “the woman who can’t be cancelled”. “Of course, they would have taken her down if they could,” Shriver says. “That’s why she’s been so important. Because she hasn’t apologised, which has been the format, traditionally. She’s stuck by her guns and has helped make it more possible for people who are in less powerful positions to also be forthright about their reservations about this consuming social mania for transgenderism.” What has particularly disturbed Shriver is “the personal disloyalty between individuals who maybe go back decades,” she says. In the case of the Harry Potter cast, “it’s been really hideous to watch. It’s almost always someone to the Left disavowing someone who’s a little bit to the Right,” she adds. It happened to Shriver after an appearance on Question Time in 2019: “There was one person in particular who ended our friendship… for purely political reasons. We’d been friends for 13 years, and then suddenly she couldn’t. I always thought there was an undercurrent of she couldn’t afford to be associated with me.” Mania openly risks offending more people. Its narrator, university lecturer Pearson Converse, revels in taboo language, such as “thickos”, “dummies” and “retards”. Shriver makes a defence of the latter – “it was used very casually [in the US] and it wasn’t a big deal... it was a schoolyard thing, but even when I was a kid, you wouldn’t have called someone whom the state had classified as retarded that.” She once “slipped up” and used it about herself at a literary festival, she says, “and boy, did I get it in the neck from a couple of audience members who were just outraged… but I was talking about myself – whom had I hurt?” The novel is about the phenomenon of cultural revolution rather than an attack on the less intelligent. “If there’s any single social mania that this book is based on, it’s really transgenderism,” Shriver says. “I don’t think it’s that much of an overstatement to say it feels like it comes right out of a Nazi concentration camp. Cutting off people’s healthy body parts. I have grown only more horrified.” I wonder if her decision to rechristen herself with a boy’s name at 17 was in any way influenced by a gender dysphoria of her own. “No, not really. I mean, I was a tomboy. I was sometimes envious of my brothers, because their lives were less restricted than mine. And my father himself admitted in his eighties that they probably underestimated me. I have never relished physically being female,” she says. “I don’t like being physically weaker. My mental image of myself is taller. I hated getting periods. I didn’t end up taking advantage of the biggest plus side of being female because I didn’t have any children.” She chooses her words carefully, seriously, apart from “taller”, which she delivers with a laugh. “There are problems with being male too,” she adds. “Right now, being male, I would say, is, on a career level, a disadvantage… because of the DEI business (diversity, equality and inclusion), which has been going on for a long time. I am very hostile to all this equality legislation,” she continues. “I believe in equality under the law, which is a primitive principle of liberal democratic government. And the UK has abandoned it… This hate-speech legislation is evil. It’s about controlling what you can and can’t say. I’m willing to make the sacrifice of living in a world where people are not always nice, because that’s the real world. “You know, racism shouldn’t be against the law, as an internal state. We all have our conceptions and sometimes misconceptions of groups of people. And we have a right to that. We are now well on our way to criminalising internal states. The Left thinks you should be able to say things that are insulting as much as you want, as long as it’s the ‘wrong person’, someone from the Right. I’m close to a free-speech absolutist, and that absolutism is partly reactive. But I would scrap all hate-speech legislation.” She is talking theoretically, not advocating racism as a lifestyle choice. In Mania, Obama fails to win a second term because he’s “too erudite”; Pearson’s most talented student is black. There’s a distinction to be made between the stridency of her opinions and the subtlety of her novels. She wanted Mania “to be fun and playful, and also to have a serious personal element… it’s not meant to be hectoring”. She’s still engaged with British politics, though she remains an American citizen. She’s imported her London routine, too. She still cycles but can’t run as she used to because “my knees are shot”. She continues: “I’ll do 500 burpees,” adding, “I have a whole set of callisthenics, sit-ups and pressups. It’s dreary as f---. I’m very, very dependent on the television.” She also sticks to her habit of eating one meal a day, at midnight. She doesn’t have an eating disorder, she says. “The meal that I eat is generous and well-balanced and healthy. I’m just a small person. I don’t require that much food, and if I did eat three meals a day, they would have to be ridiculously tiny. And I’d rather eat a substantial meal once, with wine. “If I ate as much as I wanted to, I would be very fat. With my genetic background on my mother’s side, I would easily become a butterball.” Her mother, she says, was “a noticeably less happy woman from her forties onward, because she always weighed more than she wanted.” Her elder brother, Greg, was 28 stone when he died from obesityrelated complications. She wrote a novel based on him, Big Brother, in 2013, which sidelined bodypositivity to deal with being “fat” as a health problem. In her essay collection Abominations (2022), Shriver wrote that “there have been three concerted attempts at my effective ‘cancellation’”. First, after she donned a sombrero at the end of a speech defending cultural appropriation in 2016. Next, in 2018, when she took issue with publisher Penguin Random House’s drive to diversify its staff. Third, when she questioned mass immigration to the UK in 2021. I mention the former deputy Labour leader Alan Johnson’s comment to me on how stopping migration across the Channel via France, Holland and Belgium got worse because of the loss of co-operation when we left the EU. “I don’t think Brexit has been very determinative of immigration,” she says. “The real problem in the UK is legal immigration, and the Tories, rather than tightening immigration policy, loosened it further.” She doesn’t want to get too deeply into that issue, she says, because “that’s the book I’m writing now.” A pause. “That’s the one that’s going to end my career.” A laugh. “Promises, promises.” ‘Universities no longer believe in themselves – they’re terrified of their own students’ ‘Mania’ is published by Borough Press on April 9 Article Name:‘Transgenderism is a social mania’ Publication:The Daily Telegraph Start Page:2 End Page:2 ‘Transgenderism is a social mania’ Controversial novelist Lionel Shriver talks candidly to Chris Harvey The Daily Telegraph4 Apr 2024 “You cannot survive as a civilisation in a state of cringing shame,” says Lionel Shriver, as she launches into a broadside at the self-loathing that people are supposed to feel about the colonial sins of the West. “I am very suspicious of this whole pose of guilt,” she says, explaining that it’s usually used by white people to “assert superiority over other white people”. I’m with the writer of We Need to Talk About Kevin at her house outside Lisbon; she moved there in October after living in the UK for 25 years. She’s not holding back. “Real guilt is a terrible sensation. It is not something that you parade, shame. That is not what these people are experiencing. It’s proud guilt. It’s used to shut people up.” She adds: “It’s all to do with heritable guilt. And I reject that out of hand.” We’ve been chatting about her latest novel, Mania, which digs into the way that social manias have come to dominate our world. They’re insidious, she believes, from the clamour for Covid lockdowns (“the biggest publichealth mistake in history. And the biggest economic mistake in history”) to the response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis (“they were marching down the street in Korea. They don’t have any black people. This was just social contagion”). Even the worldwide cult of Taylor Swift is not down to her “formulaic” music, in Shriver’s view. The 66-year-old lives with her husband, the jazz drummer Jeff Williams, who is off playing in Slovenia. She misses her friends in London, but spends so much of her time reading and writing that she doesn’t feel lonely – “not consciously… I am very comfortable spending long periods of time alone.” There’s a pool and a lemon tree in the garden. Inside, her home is unfussy, as is she, in a cardigan and boot slippers. She has an infectious laugh. “My sensibility has an element of wickedness,” she says. It surfaces in her books and columns, with their provocative edge. “It’s kinda the point,” she says. “Otherwise, someone else might as well write them.” The worldwide success of We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize in 2005, made her famous. She has written other talked-about novels since, though none has captured the popular imagination in quite the same way. “I don’t know whether I will ever pull it off again,” she says. In her 2016 novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, she imagined a near-future America, with its first Latino president, experiencing complete economic collapse. In Mania, she goes back in time to depict an alternative history that begins in 2011, “because I think that’s when things started really going to s---”. It’s a dystopian satire, dark and funny in uncomfortable ways, about how society is radically transformed by the Mental Parity movement – “the last great civil rights fight” – which maintains that “stupidity is a fiction” and that it’s “discriminatory” to suggest that anyone is more intelligent than anyone else. Uttering any words that suggest otherwise leads to public rebuke – calling something “dumb” can mean losing your job or having your children taken away. Of course, this mirrors the sort of changes made to existing works of fiction, removing references to anyone being “fat”, “nuts”, or even “rather pretty” in Roald Dahl, for instance. Has anyone ever suggested Shriver’s work be combed by a sensitivity reader? “No one,” she says. “I mean, I’ve been with HarperCollins for a long time, so nobody in that company is that stupid.” Beyond the comic set pieces, there’s a serious intent in how Shriver depicts society being hollowed out from within, and it’s clear that it is no imaginary world in her sights. “Things start falling apart because functionality no longer matters; all that matters is ideology. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. You’re watching grand storied universities destroy themselves because they no longer believe in themselves, they don’t believe in the canon they’re supposed to be transferring to the next generation.” The students now have the power, she says. “The administration and faculty are now terrified of their own student bodies.” Cancel culture, Shriver believes, “is getting worse... there’s nothing moderate about it. It’s aggressive, hostile, angry… perhaps vengeful above all... it’s about hunting people’s careers for sport.” The goal, she says, “is to utterly destroy you. And that is the appeal of this stuff – that satisfaction of destroying other people’s lives. And also, in doing so, you don’t have to take any responsibility for being a destructive force. You are the force of righteousness.” We talk about JK Rowling, whom The Telegraph has described as “the woman who can’t be cancelled”. “Of course, they would have taken her down if they could,” Shriver says. “That’s why she’s been so important. Because she hasn’t apologised, which has been the format, traditionally. She’s stuck by her guns and has helped make it more possible for people who are in less powerful positions to also be forthright about their reservations about this consuming social mania for transgenderism.” What has particularly disturbed Shriver is “the personal disloyalty between individuals who maybe go back decades,” she says. In the case of the Harry Potter cast, “it’s been really hideous to watch. It’s almost always someone to the Left disavowing someone who’s a little bit to the Right,” she adds. It happened to Shriver after an appearance on Question Time in 2019: “There was one person in particular who ended our friendship… for purely political reasons. We’d been friends for 13 years, and then suddenly she couldn’t. I always thought there was an undercurrent of she couldn’t afford to be associated with me.” Mania openly risks offending more people. Its narrator, university lecturer Pearson Converse, revels in taboo language, such as “thickos”, “dummies” and “retards”. Shriver makes a defence of the latter – “it was used very casually [in the US] and it wasn’t a big deal... it was a schoolyard thing, but even when I was a kid, you wouldn’t have called someone whom the state had classified as retarded that.” She once “slipped up” and used it about herself at a literary festival, she says, “and boy, did I get it in the neck from a couple of audience members who were just outraged… but I was talking about myself – whom had I hurt?” The novel is about the phenomenon of cultural revolution rather than an attack on the less intelligent. “If there’s any single social mania that this book is based on, it’s really transgenderism,” Shriver says. “I don’t think it’s that much of an overstatement to say it feels like it comes right out of a Nazi concentration camp. Cutting off people’s healthy body parts. I have grown only more horrified.” I wonder if her decision to rechristen herself with a boy’s name at 17 was in any way influenced by a gender dysphoria of her own. “No, not really. I mean, I was a tomboy. I was sometimes envious of my brothers, because their lives were less restricted than mine. And my father himself admitted in his eighties that they probably underestimated me. I have never relished physically being female,” she says. “I don’t like being physically weaker. My mental image of myself is taller. I hated getting periods. I didn’t end up taking advantage of the biggest plus side of being female because I didn’t have any children.” She chooses her words carefully, seriously, apart from “taller”, which she delivers with a laugh. “There are problems with being male too,” she adds. “Right now, being male, I would say, is, on a career level, a disadvantage… because of the DEI business (diversity, equality and inclusion), which has been going on for a long time. I am very hostile to all this equality legislation,” she continues. “I believe in equality under the law, which is a primitive principle of liberal democratic government. And the UK has abandoned it… This hate-speech legislation is evil. It’s about controlling what you can and can’t say. I’m willing to make the sacrifice of living in a world where people are not always nice, because that’s the real world. “You know, racism shouldn’t be against the law, as an internal state. We all have our conceptions and sometimes misconceptions of groups of people. And we have a right to that. We are now well on our way to criminalising internal states. The Left thinks you should be able to say things that are insulting as much as you want, as long as it’s the ‘wrong person’, someone from the Right. I’m close to a free-speech absolutist, and that absolutism is partly reactive. But I would scrap all hate-speech legislation.” She is talking theoretically, not advocating racism as a lifestyle choice. In Mania, Obama fails to win a second term because he’s “too erudite”; Pearson’s most talented student is black. There’s a distinction to be made between the stridency of her opinions and the subtlety of her novels. She wanted Mania “to be fun and playful, and also to have a serious personal element… it’s not meant to be hectoring”. She’s still engaged with British politics, though she remains an American citizen. She’s imported her London routine, too. She still cycles but can’t run as she used to because “my knees are shot”. She continues: “I’ll do 500 burpees,” adding, “I have a whole set of callisthenics, sit-ups and pressups. It’s dreary as f---. I’m very, very dependent on the television.” She also sticks to her habit of eating one meal a day, at midnight. She doesn’t have an eating disorder, she says. “The meal that I eat is generous and well-balanced and healthy. I’m just a small person. I don’t require that much food, and if I did eat three meals a day, they would have to be ridiculously tiny. And I’d rather eat a substantial meal once, with wine. “If I ate as much as I wanted to, I would be very fat. With my genetic background on my mother’s side, I would easily become a butterball.” Her mother, she says, was “a noticeably less happy woman from her forties onward, because she always weighed more than she wanted.” Her elder brother, Greg, was 28 stone when he died from obesityrelated complications. She wrote a novel based on him, Big Brother, in 2013, which sidelined bodypositivity to deal with being “fat” as a health problem. In her essay collection Abominations (2022), Shriver wrote that “there have been three concerted attempts at my effective ‘cancellation’”. First, after she donned a sombrero at the end of a speech defending cultural appropriation in 2016. Next, in 2018, when she took issue with publisher Penguin Random House’s drive to diversify its staff. Third, when she questioned mass immigration to the UK in 2021. I mention the former deputy Labour leader Alan Johnson’s comment to me on how stopping migration across the Channel via France, Holland and Belgium got worse because of the loss of co-operation when we left the EU. “I don’t think Brexit has been very determinative of immigration,” she says. “The real problem in the UK is legal immigration, and the Tories, rather than tightening immigration policy, loosened it further.” She doesn’t want to get too deeply into that issue, she says, because “that’s the book I’m writing now.” A pause. “That’s the one that’s going to end my career.” A laugh. “Promises, promises.” ‘Universities no longer believe in themselves – they’re terrified of their own students’ ‘Mania’ is published by Borough Press on April 9 Article Name:‘Transgenderism is a social mania’ Publication:The Daily Telegraph Start Page:2 End Page:2](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1534750-4565-4a79-b704-943b4c1668f8_1210x719.png)
THIS WEEK IN PARLIAMENT
- Parliament is in recess until April 15.
AROUND THE WORLD
Bangladesh opens mosque for transgender hijra community [The Post]
- Bangladesh has opened a mosque specifically designed for the hijra community, a transgender group that has historically faced discrimination in the country. The move is seen as a sign of growing acceptance for transgender people in Bangladesh.
Two transgender rights bills advance in Colorado House [Out Front]
- Two bills aimed at protecting transgender rights in Colorado have advanced through the state’s House of Representatives. These bills address issues such as healthcare access and identification documents for trans people.
Chicago health department hosts transgender rights summit [Chicago Sun Times]
- The Chicago Health Department held a summit to discuss issues and advancements in transgender healthcare and rights.
Federal court questions Florida’s pronoun restrictions [Tampa Bay Times]
- A federal court has challenged Florida’s recent legislation restricting teachers’ ability to use students’ preferred pronouns.
Johnson County board approves task force for transgender community [Daily Iowan]
- The Johnson County Board of Supervisors has approved the creation of a task force dedicated to supporting the transgender community.
Kansas legislature sends transgender healthcare ban to governor [The Kansan]
- The Kansas legislature has passed a bill that would ban transgender healthcare for people under 18 and sent it to the Democratic governor’s desk.
ACLU sues Ohio over transgender healthcare ban [City Beat]
- The ACLU of Ohio has filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s recent ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Trans swimmer Schuyler Bailar makes history at Harvard [USA Today]
- Schuyler Bailar, a trans athlete, has become the first transgender man to compete on Harvard’s women’s swimming team.
Mayo Clinic sees increased wait times for transgender care [Post Bulletin]
- The Mayo Clinic‘s transgender care clinic is experiencing longer wait times due to a rise in demand for gender-affirming healthcare.
Mississippi bill targets transgender recognition [Mississippi Business Journal]
- Mississippi lawmakers are considering legislation that would define sex as strictly male or female.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
The DWP are recruiting 25 covert surveillance officers as part of their “effort to tackle fraud in the welfare system” [Big Issue]
- As we know, benefit fraud is but a teaspoon in the ocean of tax avoidance and tax fraud. There are no plans for covert surveillance on rich people.
NIO’s hidden secrets uncovered by the Belfast Telegraph: Ulster Resistance, IRA intelligence and more [Belfast Telegraph]
- The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) has been hiding files that by law should be released. These files contain sensitive information about the IRA, Ulster Resistance, and other paramilitary groups. The NIO says they are working on releasing the files but there is a backlog.
RECOMMENDED READING
- For her many critics, arresting JK Rowling wouldn’t have made her anti-trans comments any less harmful [Independent]
- JK Rowling is daring police to arrest her. I’m daring JK Rowling to get a life [Metro]
- Out today! Doc Phoenix’s book, “I Heart Politics: How People Power Took Over the World,” is released today. Get it from all good bookshops, and Amazon.
TRANSWRITES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
- NHS & puberty blockers: Former GIDS patients reflect on long wait times, invasive assessments, by Sasha Baker.
- Serious police violence towards trans rights protesters outside “Gender Critical” conference, by Jess O’Thomson.
- Fanfiction was my gay-girl-to-gay-guy pipeline, and I’m proud of it, by Jesse Smith.
- What does Liz Truss’s anti-trans bill actually say? By Lee Hurley.
- Andrew Joseph White’s writing is exactly what autistic transgender people like me needed when we were younger, by Ayman Eckford.
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CALL FOR STORIES
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