[mrjonathanr]

Article about Mermaids’ failed litigation against the LGB Alliance
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/09/no-law-says-charity-cant-hold-views-you-disagree-with-transgender-mermaids-lgb-alliance

[slab_happy]

A few relevant points here:

1) Sonia Sodha is an obsessive anti-trans campaigner who's one of the people lobbying for the Equality Act to be rewritten to remove some of trans people's existing legal rights and forcibly exclude them from single-sex spaces.

(Fun game: check her previous columns and see how few of them don't have some kind of anti-trans bit in them, even when the column's about something completely unrelated.)

2) The court ruling was based on the technical point that Mermaids didn't have standing to bring the case, with no finding made on whether or not the LGB Alliance should have been given charitable status.

The court did however note that Mermaids "may well have valid cause for complaint as to what LGBA and its activists have said in the past," and agreed that they had "well-founded" concerns that the LGB Alliance "has gone beyond the bounds of civilized debate."

https://twitter.com/MrJohnNicolson/status/1676895105754488832

3) The LGB Alliance does fuck-all except campaign against trans rights, including inciting harassment of trans-inclusive organizations:

https://transsafety.network/posts/profiled-lgb-alliance/

This includes inciting harassment of rape crisis services.

When asked during the tribunal what they actually did for L, G or B people, they explained they would "get round to it".

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/mermaids-appeals-charity-commission-lgb-alliance-status

(They may have once contributed to an ECHR court case trying to get Russia to recognize same sex marriage, but that's literally the only example I can find of them ever doing anything for L, G or B people's benefit.)

4) Among their many highlights, they've suggested that "adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality -- and more -- to all be part of one big happy 'rainbow family'" (which was removed by Twitter as hate speech), they've opposed the ban on conversion therapy and supported conversion therapy for trans kids, claimed it isn't homophobic to oppose gay marriage, claimed that LGB children don't exist, opposed laws on hate crime, and claimed that if a woman is raped by a cis woman it's not really rape because there isn't a penis involved so it doesn't count.

One of their co-founders has opposed LGBT+ clubs in schools because of the alleged risk of "predatory gay teachers."

They are utterly vile people.

5) Oh, and they're based at 55 Tufton Street, with all the other dark money right wing lobby groups:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/lgb-alliance-55-tufton-street-think-tanks/

[Wellsy]

Yeah Sodha pumps out nonsense like this on the reg

[mrjonathanr]

I thought that might stir it a bit but interested to read Slabs’s rebuttal.

[Gritter]

‘ and claimed that if a woman is raped by a cis woman it's not really rape because there isn't a penis involved so it doesn't count.’

Just trying to get my head around this, do you mean a woman with a penis can be raped by a woman who was born with female body parts still present?

Edit - it does seem that ‘penile penetration’ is a defining characteristic of rape in the U.K. legal system.

https://www.blmsolicitors.co.uk/2021/02/can-a-woman-rape-a-man/

Further edit: do the vile left wing hate lobby groups also have a place where they hang out and devise ways to make people’s lives miserable or is that just reserved for the ‘right’ aka an increasingly large  proportion of the population?

[Oldmanmatt]

‘ and claimed that if a woman is raped by a cis woman it's not really rape because there isn't a penis involved so it doesn't count.’

Just trying to get my head around this, do you mean a woman with a penis can be raped by a woman who was born with female body parts still present?

Edit - it does seem that ‘penile penetration’ is a defining characteristic of rape in the U.K. legal system.

https://www.blmsolicitors.co.uk/2021/02/can-a-woman-rape-a-man/

Further edit: do the vile left wing hate lobby groups also have a place where they hang out and devise ways to make people’s lives miserable or is that just reserved for the ‘right’ aka an increasingly large  proportion of the population?

You didn’t read that very well. There is “ no penis involved”.
Not a huge surprise that you didn’t read it properly.

Why do extreme right wingers always believe they are in a majority?

I have a large friend, family, work and acquaintance group. Mostly they are quite “middle of the road”, there are only a couple of people that express extreme view (on both wings), yet they blurt out their crap as if they think we all agree with them. Even after being called out, it doesn’t sink in that they are not in alignment with the room. Always we’re “just too scared to say it”.

The military is particularly bad for this. For me, being stuck on a ship with “Mr Everybody Knows” was particularly torturous. Almost always “old in rank”, if you can work out the implication in that statement. Once sat through an excruciating rant, by a particularly unaware new joiner, about how “gays were ruining the service” directed at his boss, who was married to another woman.
How he didn’t pick up on the sn**gering and and glances around him, is quite amazing.
Bloke spent most of the deployment moaning that there was no social life in the service anymore etc. He was not invited into the WhatsApp group (which was used to organise our “social life”).

[slab_happy]

Edit - it does seem that ‘penile penetration’ is a defining characteristic of rape in the U.K. legal system.

https://www.blmsolicitors.co.uk/2021/02/can-a-woman-rape-a-man/

Yes, that's true as rape is currently defined in English law. With the consequence that if you forcibly shove an object other than a penis into someone, it doesn’t count as “rape” in legal terms, it’s “sexual assault by penetration” (which has the same sentencing guidelines).

Of course, until 1994, the law specifically required penetration of the vagina, so if you non-consensually stuck a penis into someone’s anus, that didn’t count as “rape” either. Forcing it into their mouth didn’t count until 2003.

(If you find my phrasing here shocking: good.)

And until 1991 (court case that reached the Lords, then consolidated into law in 2003), it wasn’t legally “rape” if the rapist and victim were married. There was a huge amount of feminist campaigning to change that one in particular.

A lot of people will use rape to refer to any non-consensual sex, and consider that it’s utterly grotesque nit-picking to go “yeah well it doesn’t meet the exact current legal definition in this particular country so it doesn’t really count.”

‘ and claimed that if a woman is raped by a cis woman it's not really rape because there isn't a penis involved so it doesn't count.’

Just trying to get my head around this, do you mean a woman with a penis can be raped by a woman who was born with female body parts still present?

As explained in the Trans Safety Network report I linked to: the LGB Alliance were responding to a survey in which a lesbian talked painfully about struggling to get support as someone who had been assaulted by another woman:

"We do not report it as we are so used to homophobic behaviour that we keep our mouths shut. We are afraid of the police laughing at us. We are afraid of the humiliation of having to say we were raped by another woman. We are afraid that no-one will take us seriously"

The LGB Alliance’s response was to cite this as an example of “confusion” because if there wasn’t a penis involved, it didn’t legally count as rape, so either this woman’s attacker had to be a trans woman with a penis, or it didn’t count because it wasn’t really rape.

That’s their response to a survivor of sexual violence who’s struggling to access support, that it doesn’t really count. That’s how much they give a shit about the wellbeing of lesbians (or anyone else). "Well it’s not technically rape —"

(For logical consistency, of course, they’d have to also insist that any woman who was raped by her husband before 1991 wasn’t “really” raped etc. etc..)

Honestly, I find it hard to imagine a more inhuman, ghoulish response.

[slab_happy]

3) The LGB Alliance does fuck-all except campaign against trans rights, including inciting harassment of trans-inclusive organizations:

https://transsafety.network/posts/profiled-lgb-alliance/

This includes inciting harassment of rape crisis services.

When asked during the tribunal what they actually did for L, G or B people, they explained they would "get round to it".

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/mermaids-appeals-charity-commission-lgb-alliance-status

(They may have once contributed to an ECHR court case trying to get Russia to recognize same sex marriage, but that's literally the only example I can find of them ever doing anything for L, G or B people's benefit.)

To expand a bit, because I've realized I'm assuming background knowledge re: the third sector which people may not have if you're not in that field: this is relevant because in order to be registered as a charity, you do have to do something which is in some way providing benefit to others, even if the requirements for that are very loose (see: private schools having charitable status):

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-benefit-rules-for-charities

Charities are allowed to do some political lobbying, when it's considered to support their charitable purpose. So, for example, the National Autistic Society can lobby the government for improved services and changes in laws that affect autistic people.

But if something is solely or primarily a political lobbying group, it shouldn’t be possible to register it as a charity:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/speaking-out-guidance-on-campaigning-and-political-activity-by-charities-cc9/speaking-out-guidance-on-campaigning-and-political-activity-by-charities

"a charity cannot exist for a political purpose, which is any purpose directed at furthering the interests of any political party, or securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions either in this country or abroad."

Anyway, the court didn't rule on the issue of whether the LGB Alliance should ever have been allowed to register as a charity in the first place, but given that their purpose is very clearly and overtly opposing trans rights ("securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions") and they don't actually do anything else, I think the answer is fairly clear.

Contrary to what Sodha's trying to claim, the issue in the court case is not that people running a charity have "gender-critical" views, the issue is that they're an anti-trans lobbying group pretending to be a charity because it gives them false credibility.

[Alex B]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/09/trans-pride-defends-activist-who-told-crowd-to-punch-terfs/

Lovely people.

[Gritter]

This was quite a good one too, men identifying as women assaulting women....

[Fiend]

I think it's pretty obvious there will be rotten eggs on the right side as well as the wrong side?? And they should be condemned for both their actions and for being detrimental to an otherwise good cause??

[Oldmanmatt]

I think it's pretty obvious there will be rotten eggs on the right side as well as the wrong side?? And they should be condemned for both their actions and for being detrimental to an otherwise good cause??

Obviously, all Trans people are violent/predatory and should be outlawed. These are clear examples of how they behave.

Next, of course, are the Football fans, all of them, because they’re an even bigger source of violence and far more frequently so.

What should be the lowest number of individuals involved before we outlaw an entire group/subset of the population?

If we make it one, then we can outlaw all White people, because (take your pick here) Timothy McVeigh/Anders Breivik/Et Al did something unspeakable.

If you think what I just wrote makes sense/is the right thing to do, please go and take yourself for a cold shower and then make an appointment with a good Psychiatrist.

[Gritter]

I think it's pretty obvious there will be rotten eggs on the right side as well as the wrong side?? And they should be condemned for both their actions and for being detrimental to an otherwise good cause??

The right and wrong side of what? Freedom of speech and the right to question something that is so clearly harmful to a significant proportion of young people involved? You could clearly argue the case for or against this ideology (cue Slabs 30+ links to trans rights pages with anecdotes, logical fallacy and rhetoric) but ideology is what it is.

[Oldmanmatt]

I think it's pretty obvious there will be rotten eggs on the right side as well as the wrong side?? And they should be condemned for both their actions and for being detrimental to an otherwise good cause??

The right and wrong side of what? Freedom of speech and the right to question something that is so clearly harmful to a significant proportion of young people involved? You could clearly argue the case for or against this ideology (cue Slabs 30+ links to trans rights pages with anecdotes, logical fallacy and rhetoric) but ideology is what it is.

As opposed to your YouTube links ?

Dude, you are merely pushing propaganda.

Actually, I think you have done more to incline me towards Slabs point of view than anything Slabs has posted. It’s all been so obviously refutable. Lead me to read and search for more reputable and reliable evidence and all I’ve discovered is that your claims are unsubstantiated. Thanks. I guess, as I said to Slabs, I’ve learned a lot these past few weeks and in fairness you deserve some credit for making me ask the questions. Cheers.

[slab_happy]

I see we've now progressed to the "here's a random story about a trans person who did or said a bad thing" stage of the "debate".

When people obsessively collect and post stories about any time a "migrant" is accused of committing a crime or doing something harmful -- or any time a Muslim does, for example -- I think most of us wouldn't have a problem recognizing this as xenophobic bullshit.

Every single demographic of human beings on the planet contains some shitty people.

But it's only with certain minority groups that we think it's reasonable to treat one person's actions as a judgement on the entire group, and demand that either everyone in the group is a pure and perfect paragon of sainthood, or the whole group should be punished and treated as inherently dangerous and suspicious.

[Will Hunt]

I wanted to post that Slab needn't waste her time writing a rebuttal of the lamest arguments ever made, but I see I am too late.

[Gritter]

It seemed those were the rules you were operating by, anyone who questions the trans ideology is a vile right wing bigoted nazi etc etc as opposed to a vile left wing authoritarian.....

At this rate OMM will be transitioning by the end of the thread  'oldthemmatt'

1. The trans movement is ideological, not based on scientific evidence

2. It is not the same as homosexuality and involves the use of drugs and surgery to permanently change a body

3. In a significant minority of people this appears to be doing harm

4. Trans in pubescent teens appears to be associated with complex mental health problems

5. This is a dead end discussion because the trans movement will win in the end, trans children will begin social transition in school and begin physical transition at puberty.

6. Neither you nor I or anyone knows if this is going to be a 'good' thing by any measure.

[slab_happy]

At this rate OMM will be transitioning by the end of the thread  'oldthemmatt'

Yes, jeering at someone you disagree with by making jokes about how they're probably trans definitely makes you look like a rational and civilized person who is not motivated by transphobia in any way.

[Gritter]

Lol sorry I forgot about the psychotic humour vacuum.....

[Alex B]

If it's just "rotten eggs", why do the crowd cheer?
Are there any cases of TERFs applauding someone for saying "If you see a tranny, punch them in the face"?

Why did the Trans Pride organisers condone this incitement to violence, claiming it was a legitimate expression of free speech? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/09/trans-pride-defends-activist-who-told-crowd-to-punch-terfs/

Matt, if you find Slab's arguments persuasive then there was probably never much hope for you tbh
Like half her responses are "you can't trust this source, this organization is transphobic, here's a reliable article from the Gay Times".

P.S. Is there any way to not embed youtube vids

[slab_happy]

Lol sorry I forgot about the psychotic humour vacuum.....

So tragic that I lack the sophistication to appreciate this witty banter.

[slab_happy]

I wanted to post that Slab needn't waste her time writing a rebuttal of the lamest arguments ever made, but I see I am too late.

I am nothing if not predictable.

[Oldmanmatt]

It seemed those were the rules you were operating by, anyone who questions the trans ideology is a vile right wing bigoted nazi etc etc as opposed to a vile left wing authoritarian.....

At this rate OMM will be transitioning by the end of the thread  'oldthemmatt'

1. The trans movement is ideological, not based on scientific evidence

2. It is not the same as homosexuality and involves the use of drugs and surgery to permanently change a body

3. In a significant minority of people this appears to be doing harm

4. Trans in pubescent teens appears to be associated with complex mental health problems

5. This is a dead end discussion because the trans movement will win in the end, trans children will begin social transition in school and begin physical transition at puberty.

6. Neither you nor I or anyone knows if this is going to be a 'good' thing by any measure.

Jesus, I’ve been trying avoid allowing myself to reach this conclusion. Asking for reasoned argument ti substantiate your position etc. However, you appear to be little more than a bigot.

bigot
/ˈbɪɡət/
noun
a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

In the absence of credible evidence to support your position, why should I believe otherwise?
On all 6 points?

[Oldmanmatt]

If it's just "rotten eggs", why do the crowd cheer?
Are there any cases of TERFs applauding someone for saying "If you see a tranny, punch them in the face"?

Why did the Trans Pride organisers condone this incitement to violence, claiming it was a legitimate expression of free speech? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/09/trans-pride-defends-activist-who-told-crowd-to-punch-terfs/

Matt, if you find Slab's arguments persuasive then there was probably never much hope for you tbh
Like half her responses are "you can't trust this source, this organization is transphobic, here's a reliable article from the Gay Times".

P.S. Is there any way to not embed youtube vids

Ah, but you see I did not simply succumb to Slabs arguments. I’ve stated my opinion and the worth of it, clearly, and not moved much from that position. What I’ve been saying and arguing and reiterating is that neither you nor Gritter have made any sort of reasonable case for your positions.
In fact, I looked into it far more than I ever intended and discovered that it was even more complicated and complex than I had actually imagined. The biological aspect, in particular. I hadn’t realised the plethora of chromosomal arrangements possible, for instance. That alone should have been enough to scare even a half witted layman out of taking a stance like “There’s no biological basis for Trans people! It’s purely ideological!”

You don’t know that. If you take such a position, you are making an assumption based solely on preconceived notions.

I dutifully watched your clips and followed your links, then checked their credibility and sources.

Frankly, this kind of shit is what I do, you know, for a living.

I was unable to find any grounds for your assertions.

If you think arguing with me is arguing with Slabs, you are sadly misinformed.

This is starting to feel like some of the debates I’ve had with various Clergy over the years, on the existence of the big man.
“Dude, show me the evidence. Stop pointing at your book, because that is not evidence of god.”

As I have already stated, and much as Gritter has observed (though from an (imo) odd perspective) this is a waste of time. You can only find “more of the same” when challenged to prove or even ground, your arguments.

I’m struck to a mild awe by your fervent beliefs, however you have yet to rise above the level of a Jehovah’s Witness, standing on my doorstep; in terms of convincing argument.

Edit:

What has the Trans pride organisers defence of an incitement to punch TERFs in the face (or whatever) got to do with the existence or otherwise of Trans people or children? Am I supposed to conclude that all Trans people are violent extremists ?

Umm…

Nah.

[Potash]

It seemed those were the rules you were operating by, anyone who questions the trans ideology is a vile right wing bigoted nazi etc etc as opposed to a vile left wing authoritarian.....

At this rate OMM will be transitioning by the end of the thread  'oldthemmatt'

1. The trans movement is ideological, not based on scientific evidence

2. It is not the same as homosexuality and involves the use of drugs and surgery to permanently change a body

3. In a significant minority of people this appears to be doing harm

4. Trans in pubescent teens appears to be associated with complex mental health problems

5. This is a dead end discussion because the trans movement will win in the end, trans children will begin social transition in school and begin physical transition at puberty.

6. Neither you nor I or anyone knows if this is going to be a 'good' thing by any measure.

Again...

Who the fuck are you to tell other people how to live their lives.

It's quite frankly not your business how others choose to live.

1. Religion and ideology are ideological and not science based. Should we ban religious education? Faith schools? Sunday school?

2. So what if people change their bodies? Do you want to ban tattoos? Tit jobs? Hair dye? If I want to cut my dick off that's between me and my dick. Again. Why do you get off on telling me what I can do with my body?

3. So what if people regret their choices? That is life. People make crap choices all the time. I tossed it off at school and rather than working at Goldman Sachs before retiring at 35 I'm still at work. I fucked up climbing as a young person and was in a wheelchair for about six months. Surely I should have been banned from making my unwise choices.

4. People with mental health issues still have agency

5. So?

6. Who cares if it's a "good thing". It's freedom. Put the nanny state ballshit down and leave people alone to fuck up in their own way. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “the Most Terrifying Words are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ stop trying to help people.

The religious right is pulling a nany state act far worse than the pious left ever managed.