Let’s start today’s post in Chicago, which you may already know is not in Britain, but it’ll all make sense if you stay with me a while.
In May, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a summer reading list, as newspapers do when summer threatens and they need some fluff to fill their column inches. I don’t know if they have any book reviewers left on staff, or if they ever had them, but they farmed the work out to a freelancer, who farmed it out to AI, because why would a responsible newspaper hire someone who actually reads books to write about books?
It might be relevant that the paper cut its staff by 20% recently. Or to put that less delicately, fired 20% of its staff.
The article that the freelancer turned in and the paper printed recommended six imaginary books, although to be fair they were credited to real writers. It even had synopses for them, and reasons people might like them.
Irrelevant photo: poppies
The article included a few real books, also by real writers, but nobody’s perfect.
The Sun-Times said, “We’re looking into how this made it into print as we speak. It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom.”
Which makes it sound a bit like some AI-generated copy stormed the newsroom and locked the reporters in closets so it could put itself into print.
It might be worth adding, in this context, that a summer supplement quoted a food anthropologist who also doesn’t seem to exist.
And the connection to Britain? We’ve been told that artificial intelligence is going to play a greater role in British military procurement.
What could possibly go wrong?
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I was going to leave it there, but I can’t resist an AI-gone-wrong story. Britain’s high court is less than happy about dozens of false citations and quotes from case law being relied on in court–presumably generated by AI. An £89 million damages case had 18 of phantom citations and I have no idea how many phantom quotes, so it seems fair to guess that these aren’t all being generated by your street-corner mom-and-pop law firm.
How to tell if you’re in Britain
I mentioned that Chicago isn’t in Britain, and I stand by that statement, but if you ever find yourself in a strange city–or town, for that matter–and need to know if it’s in Britain, the simplest way is to head for someplace that serves food and ask for tea, or better yet, builder’s tea. If you get a funny look, you’re not in Britain. If no one thinks that’s odd, you are. If they tell you they don’t serve tea but get all apologetic about it–yeah, that’s Britain.
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You could also look for the nearest mass-participation race. If some of the runners are dressed up as anything other than runners, that’s another sign you’re in Britain, although admittedly not as useful a test since races aren’t happening all the time on every corner. Still, an article about April’s London Marathon mentioned runners dressed as Sherlock Holmes, a chicken, Spiderman, the Elizabeth Tower (that’s the tower that houses Big Ben, which is a clock), and a rhino.
The rhino gets special mention, because the runner inside the costume broke a Guinness world record for the most marathons completed in a 3D costume: this was his 113th dressed as a pachyderm.
Listen, fame is fleeting. You have to grab any chance you get.
How clear is biological sex?
Back in May (remember May?), Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the words sex, woman, and man in the 2010 Equality Act refer to biological sex. You know: XX or XY. Vagina or penis. Pink baby clothes or blue. 100% pay or 87% pay. Any idiot can tell the difference and as of now everybody has to go to the corner–not to mention the toilet–assigned to them at birth.
It all sounds simple until you talk to someone who actually knows about this stuff. I’m not going to do even a shallow dive into it here but a Scientific American article does a great job of exploring the complicated reality behind what’s supposed to be simple.
Among other things, it says, “Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. . . .
“When genetics is taken into consideration, the boundary between the sexes becomes even blurrier. Scientists have . . . uncovered variations in . . . genes that have subtle effects on a person’s anatomical or physiological sex. . . .
“These discoveries do not sit well in a world in which sex is still defined in binary terms.”
And that’s just the part I happened to grab on my way out the door. It really is worth a read.
If determining a person’s sex was as simple as the Supreme Court seems to think–
Listen, I don’t know how to put this delicately, but people studying the Bayeux Tapestry–that massive history-of-the-Norman-Conquest in pictures–are debating whether it includes 93 penises or 94.
If that strikes you as an awful lot of genitalia stitched into a single tapestry, even a massive one, I should mention that 88 of them are on horses. That may or may not normalize the situation.
Why are the experts unsure? Surely, even with the boundaries between the sexes blurring, a penis is still a penis.
Well, in real life, to the best of my knowledge–and I’ll admit to not being an expert on the subject–it probably still is, but this is art, not life, and art is notoriously messy. Some experts say the object in question could be the scabbard for a sword or dagger.
As Fats Waller said, “One never knows, do one?” Although I’m pretty sure he was talking about almost anything else.
The Supreme Court has not seen fit to rule on this. Yet. But the debate has led to wonderful quotes, including one to rival Fats Waller’s: “I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry.”
Okay, that was weird; let’s talk about politics
Two members of the Middleton St. George parish council got in a fight that ended up with scratches, blood, bruised fingers, and a broken pair of glasses, all of which filled a fair number of column inches and could have saved that Chicago newspaper from having to review nonexistent books.
The men involved in the fight are both in their 70s, and if both are telling the truth they each hit the other one first. Sadly, no one was wearing a body camera, so we may never be sure, but an audio recording does include one of them saying, “David, no, please, there are women in here.”
Women? Horrors! What are they doing in a meeting? Never mind, they won’t stay long. Both of you sit back down and pretend to be grownups until the ladies go back to the kitchen to make the tea.
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If anyone’s gotten into a physical fight in Parliament lately, I missed the story, so we’ll have to make do with fires in Westminster Palace, where Parliament meets: there’ve been 44 in the past ten years. The building’s also full of toxic material, and no, I’m not casting aspersions on any political parties, although it wouldn’t take much to tempt me. I’m talking about asbestos, which has been found in over a thousand items.
Items? Beats me. It’s an odd word for the context.
The building was built between 1840 and 1860, which makes it newer than a lot of British buildings, but it’s held together by chewing gum and political bile. Specifically, disagreements over whether to spend money on either replacing the building with something new and functional or on the serious repair work that would make it safe.
The problem is that either approach would cost billions and take ten years at an optimistic estimate. Less optimistically, it could take seventy years. Putting it off would cost more in the long run and risk the whole place going up in highly embarrassing flames. But spending billions on a refurb of Parliament’s meeting place isn’t a good look at a time when we’re being told there isn’t enough money to put the National Health Service back on its feet, when money’s being pared away from the disabled, and when–oh, hell, I could extend the list for many dismal paragraphs but won’t.
Prediction? The story will drag on for years, unresolved. Unless it goes up in flames.
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Boris Johnson–former Conservative prime minister and continuing national embarrassment–was selling a photograph (that’s of him, with you, in case I haven’t been not clear) for £121 before an event called “An Evening with Boris Johnson.” Tickets were extra, but for your £121 you did at least get a free handshake.
If you only bought a ticket, all you got for your money was a seat.
Unnamed allies of Johnson’s say he’s scoping out the possibility of a political comeback: he’s bored out of Westminster and thinks there’s unfinished business. Which, no doubt, only he can wrap up.
To be fair to him, he’s not our only continuing national embarrassment. If we could make money exporting embarrassing politicians, we’d even out the balance of trade–which was, as I’m sure you know–£3.70 billion in March 2025.
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Meanwhile, back at Westminster, a Conservative MP claimed more than £1,100 in expenses for copies of Whos’ Who, which are available for free in the House of Commons’ library.
Why did he need his own? I’m speculating here, but probably because he’s listed in it. And, you know, some days you just need to open the book and reassure yourself that you exist. And existed in three previous years, because he bought copies for each of four years.
I’m sympathetic. Sometimes I have to look at my blog to remind myself that I exist. I mean, who doesn’t? Why else do we publish these things?
Notes from the U.K. 
I’m a bit surprised that the women in the council meeting couldn’t manage to separate 2 septuagenarians before any damage was done. Perhaps it had been a very boring meeting.
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It might well have been the most interesting thing that had happened since the chairperson called them all to order.
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There is that.
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This is, quite, alarming, if feeding the elements into an A.I. bot, and it comes up with, things that are “brand new” based off of the criteria you input into it, then, does that not mean, that we humans one day will be, obsolete? After all, if work can be done by the machines, why would the companies need, humans? i mean, humans can sue their companies for injuries, worker’s comp, etc., etc., etc., while the machines, they only need to get sent in for their, regular maintenance and tune up. it’s a lot more cost-efficient to use the A,I. bots than humans, especially the computing abilities of A.I. bots is advancing faste, faster, faster, than we humans’ rates of, processing, data…
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It’s a danger–I don’t want to downplay it–but given the tendency of the current large language models of AI to make stuff up, I don’t think the bots will be taking all the jobs too soon. They’re just not accurate enough to be turned loose without adult supervision. Yet. I don’t know much about the AI system coming out of China, but my impression is that it’s more accurate and uses less energy. (The large language model is horrendously energy hungry.) In the long term, though, if the bots do replace us all, the companies and their owners might want to ask themselves who they think is going to buy the stuff they’re producing.
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My feeling is that the people ‘responsible’ (I use the word in its loosest sense) for AI development have already lost control. Being old and cynical, I think that they simply never thought or believed that their brilliant ideas might come back to bite them. It’s like people who go swimming in the sea, only to find the current has them and they’re too far out to get back. Once the critical point is reached, these geniuses and the company heads themselves will be as redundant as the rest of us. My understanding is that some of the bots are already self-maintaining and beyond our control. That could just be online scaremongering, who knows what to believe any more?
My brother is of the opinion that the only thing that will stop this takeover is the power supply. Without physical bodies, how are they going to have an energy source once we’re incapacitated? I think I’ll stop there, it’s all too much for me…
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Self-maintaining and out of control? Hang on, wasn’t there a movie about that–spaceship, computer that didn’t want to be turned off?
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Pingback: AI and the weirder aspects of the Bayeux Tapestry: it’s the news from Britain
Thanks, Ellen. I remember reading that story about the book recommendations. AI hallucinations like that would be hilarious if they weren’t potentially so serious – but then I thought, what if the story I’d read about the hallucination was another AI written story which was also an hallucination, in which case all is well – or something like that.
I think someone would have to pay me to be photographed with BJ – but oh, the embarrassment.
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They’d need to be paying outrageous amounts of money for that photograph, and even then–I don’t know. How soon afterward could I take a shower?
Your question about whether AI hallucinated the story about AI hallucinations turns into one of those hall-of-mirrors things very quickly. I’m dizzy.
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So what we need now is an AI app to determine one’s sex.
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What could possibly go wrong?
Which reminds me: the flower identification app on my phone just told me a peony was a carnation.
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Someone had to tell the computer to make up a list of books for real authors to write.
Once in junior high school, although I had read books in the school library and could have reported on one of those like a reasonable child, I chose to make up a book and report on it. Not sure why. It wasn’t even on a bet; just an outburst of brattiness. The teacher didn’t say “You made that up” but said the summary of the plot was “very poor.” Giggles!
About the 1% of humankind whose biological sex is unclear, my question is: After centuries of agreement that the kind way to deal with this phenomenon was to accept these individuals as whatever they chose to present themselves as, and ignore their differentness unless they chose to present themselves as sideshows…WHO decided that, instead, the thing to do was to redefine language and society around them?
Transhumanists who want to tinker with human bodies and genes, wasn’t it?
Results have been unfortunate. Only a few superstitious people had anything against the non-binary individuals themselves. A lot of people really, really don’t like the transhumanists. I see far too much of the hostility that ought to be aimed at the transhumanists being aimed at the non-binary. It’s been like “Let’s put the poor mixed-up Mulvaney kid Out There as a human shield for a few rich old White men who want to play God.”
Pris cilla King
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I love the idea of inventing a book and then reviewing it. Kids. There’s no predicting them. I can’t help thinking any imaginative teacher would’ve loved having you as a student.
The connection between transhumanism and being nonbinary escapes me and we can disagree about numbers and the history of people who don’t fit the binary norms, but I do think we can agree on the craziness of trying to make them into a threat to all that’s good and decent.
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In my (limited) experience, part of the more recent problem with the non-binary community is that activists have taken over, as seems to happen with a lot of so-called minority issues. Just pre-covid, some of us went to a local live music venue, it was mid week and quiet, the band wasn’t well known. About 10.30, four people came in together, heavily made up and wearing dresses and high heels, which made them stand out as it wasn’t a dressy sort of place, everyone else was in jeans. They were loud but not drunk and, to our eyes at least, males in women’s clothes. When two of us went to the loo, they were in the one designated for women, ostentatiously doing their hair and makeup. We just smiled at them, did what we came for and left. After that, they seemed to ramp up their ‘performance’, by several degrees, loud, high pitched conversation and laughter etc. Not really threatening but obviously courting attention which they didn’t get. When we left, they were still trying to make people notice them.
Maybe I’m just old and jaded but it seems to me that it’s that kind of behaviour that can cause problems. None of us in the place seemed about to give them grief (unless things went wrong later) but they were set on making a point, a ‘look at us, aren’t we different/brave/clever’ or something. It wasn’t a young people’s place so all of us were of an age where we’re supposed to be less tolerant of differences but no one was bothered by their presence or behaviour, in spite of their efforts. And it’s that word ‘efforts’ that makes me wary. Women have fought long and hard for equality and any gains are being eroded from all sides at the moment. Part of the problem, for me, is how to discuss the issues without falling foul of the language police and giving offence without meaning to, or being wilfully misinterpreted. It’s a result of being old and straight and in a long traditional marriage, I suppose. We all have rights but what happens when one group fails to acknowledge that another has rights which may somehow conflict with theirs? It should lead to compromise but so often doesn’t.
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Every group has its pain-in-the-ass people, its crazy people, its rigid people, and so on down the line. It’s easy for an outsider to conflate the group with some visible members. My experience of the trans community (different than non-binary, I think, but let’s leave that alone) is that some court attention and some don’t–and many of the ones who do are charming and funny enough that you’d be glad to lend them some. I’m pretty sure I’m at least as old as you and it’s been a lot for me to get my head around but having trans and non-binary people in my life means I’m motivated. Their experience is fairly foreign to me and on some basic level I don’t understand it, but I lived through a time when my attraction to other women was just as foreign to a lot of people. So even when I don’t deeply understand, I do accept that this is real and important for them. They’re walking a difficult path and I don’t believe they’d choose it their choice weren’t coming from some deep place. Or in some cases, if they felt they had a choice.
The world changes, and not always easily.
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You’re right that no group is homogenous.
My problem is that I was brought up to treat everyone just as a person and didn’t see difference as a bar in my relationships. Naïve and short sighted of me, as it largely prevented me from seeing that the people I took for just friends, wherever they were on the human scale, might have difficulties as a result of who and what they were, so I’m not claiming this makes me some sort of shining example to society, rather the contrary. My previous lack of awareness is hard to justify.
It means, among other things, that I don’t really understand exhibitionists who see their difference from the perceived ‘normal’ as a badge of honour and seemingly want to disadvantage women in the process. I hope I’m not too old to learn…
Jeanny
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That not-seeing-difference approach was of its time, and I remember it well. It was well meant, it was better than a lot of what was going on, and it had its limits, which it ran into head first, taking a lot of people into a hard head-bump with it. Don’t be hard on yourself over it, just see it for what it was.
One thing that happens when some aspect of who people are is publicly forbidden is that when it does break loose, wheee does it ever break loose. I could be wrong, but I expect that’s what fuels a lot of what you see as exhibitionism. I see a it as joy myself, although again, I’m sure some folks out there aren’t so much joyful as angry. It happens.
I remember the early gay pride marches (I told you I was old) when some people wanted them to stay respectable–no queens wearing butterfly wings or men nurses’ uniforms or tiny little swim trunks; no dykes in leather jackets; fill out the list any way you want. The thing is, they couldn’t contain it. People came dressed the way they wanted to dress, and they were fabulous. Or most of them were, and if a few of us rolled our eyes at one or two who we thought were just plain strange (yes, I’m thinking of one woman in particular)–well, that’ll happen when you turn people loose and I don’t think they did anyone any damage.
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I’d read of a “Ploughman’s Lunch” but now need to investigate “Builder’s Tea.”
The crediting of unreal books to real writers …doe that pose challenge to those writers ?
Our whole government seems to be AI generated. … a room full of monkeys at typewriters used to be the standard for such things
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I think I’d choose the monkeys and the typewriters.
Builder’s tea is good ol’ English breakfast tea–the stuff builders (translation: construction workers) have in their thermoses. Statistics say consumption’s down but the country still runs on the stuff.
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Strictly speaking Big Ben is a bell, not the clock. Though the two are often conflated :)5
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And there I was congratulating myself on not calling the tower Big Ben.
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That is an excellent idea to export our embarrassing politician. However, I’m not sure anyone would really want them. Regarding Westminster Palace – don’t royals have to be involved for it to be a palace?
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Lord Google tells me it can be the residence of a ruler, a pope, and et cetera. Why Westminster Palace is a palace I have no idea–it was never anybody’s residence as far as I know.
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It does make it sound important
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The center of the universe.
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AI is a scourge. For my publishing company, I’ve had to put a clause in the contract that the author guarantees that no AI was used to write their book!
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I just read that Trainline turned it loose and it’s giving customers the wrong answers. Wheee. I hadn’t thought about it hitching a ride into a publisher’s lists in an alleged writer’s submission. What do you publish? Fiction? Nonfiction?
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Not sure if the fiction/non-fiction definition has ever been all that reliable, given the propensity of people to spin a story and with the internet and AI being let loose on us that’s ever more true… I also read an article recently that suggests students are turning, pretty well undetectably, to using AI.
Jeanny
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I’ve read the same thing about students and I’m grateful not to be in a position where I have to wrestle with how to grade them. The fiction/nonfiction issue–yeah, I see your point, and I’ve read fiction that’s basically nonfiction with a few ruffles and rick-rack sewn on. Not to mention the nonfiction which is some percent bullshit. But the difference between truth and unthruth becomes more important by the day–especially with a government (sorry, multiple governments) that are doing their best to erase it.
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On the subject of the Bayeux Tapestry (which, apparently, is not a tapestry but an embroidery, so misnaming isn’t a new phenomenon), what kind of preoccupation do you have, first to put the penises in and second to notice and start counting them? I’ve seen it reproduced and talked about many times and I can’t say that I ever noticed them until you drew my attention, Ellen. Seems slightly strange to me.
Jeanny
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I misread “slightly strange” as “slightly deranged” and enjoyed that thought, but “strange” will do well enough. I’m inclined to feel the same way–that’s why the story struck me as funny enough to pass on–but our reaction, really, is a comment on how strange our society is. The people of the time were pretty up front (sorry–poor choice of words there) about sex and body parts. We learn from an early age not to see penises except in, um, certain situations. They, I’m sure, would’ve found it wildly funny–or sad, or something–that we think it’s strange to put them into a picture when they’d be there in real life. A male horse without a visible penis? What are we thinking?
And having said all of that, I hadn’t noticed them either. But then, I’ve learned not to look.
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Sorry to disagree with you again, Ellen, but I’ve been following the gender culture wars for years (and paid attention at university when I studied biology), and it’s well known that Nature (among very many publications) went *woke*, meaning it parroted the politically correct novel ideologies of the hard left, and ‘Sex Redefined’ has been widely debunked. For instance, https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/read/a-response-to-natures-sex-redefined
The gender ideologues have fooled many of us, including most western institutions, while they sterilised thousands of confused kids, most of whom should have grown up to be happy gay adults.
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How strange, then, that many ancient cultures made room for people who chose to live as other than the sex they’d been born into. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=afbf6cd5309ef765&rlz=1CAILOF_enGB1100GB1100&q=Trans+people+in+ancient+history&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWqt3pp_qNAxUZYEEAHbl-GJAQ1QJ6BAhBEAE&biw=1920&bih=945&dpr=1
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Yes, but (a) you neatly moved the goal posts, and (b) Google and its AI just parrot the politically correct as well. “Third genders” in other cultures were most commonly a way to accommodate male homosexuality in men of social standing whilst avoiding homophobic taboos, by using a class of effeminate men (usually of very low standing) as a kind of pseudo-woman. Alpha male keeps his respect, as long as everyone pretends. But nobody in that is not either male or female.
If you study the statistics of modern “transition”, it’ll be clear that it is often doing a similar thing, “transing the gay away”, converting gay youth (for various reasons) into facsimiles of straight people, something I expect a lesbian feminist to be concerned about, indeed appalled by. If you haven’t dug deep into this, or accidentally fallen down the rabbit hole, you won’t realize any of this and think people like me are just bigots.
Other striking features of those presenting to gender clinics include a history of trauma, sexual abuse, family homophobia, autism, and a raft of mental health conditions, all at much higher rates than their peers. The internet tells them if they feel ill at ease, troubled, not like everyone else, they’re probably “trans” and they will find happiness – “gender euphoria” through transition.
Girls in particular are susceptible to social contagion, such as we’ve seen with anorexia, cutting, tics and, back in the day, demon possession following the screening of The Exorcist. There was a craze in the 19th? Century for cutting women’s emotional disturbances (uppity) by surgically removing their ovaries. The striking thing is that while this was some male doctor’s fantastical idea, soon women were turning up at their doctors’ surgeries in droves to have their offending organs removed.
As trans was pushed into our societies under the guise of social justice, the number of girls skyrocketed. They fantasize about being boys, bind their developing breasts, acquire testosterone (a powerful anabolic steroid that makes them feel pumped, amazing, full of energy, while it works wreaks havoc on their bodies). Western countries have been – still are – perpetrating the worst medical scandal the world has ever seen.
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First, the goal posts keep moving but I’m not the one doing it. I just read When Brooklyn Was Queer, which spends some time with the varying definitions of what we’d call gay. They keep changing. At one point, butch men who had sex with what (if memory serves) were called pansies were considered what we’d call straight. The goal posts never have stayed in place and aren’t likely to. My point is that in every culture there have been people who prefer to live outside the norms of their gender/sex/whatever the hell you want to call it. How they express that will vary according to time and place. How well or badly their culture accepts them is a different argument. What I’m saying is that some thread in humanity pushes some (I suspect unknown) number of people in that direction, but it’s only relatively recently that surgical change was a possibility, and we’re still adapting to that.
Are people being pushed into it? The ones I know, no, they’re choosing it. Am I comfortable with that? Not entirely, but then it’s not my choice to make. I’m not them and I don’t know what goes into their choice. Some have traumatic backgrounds and some don’t, which pretty much mirrors the non-trans people I know. Is the possibility of being trans siphoning off young lesbians into being trans men? Some small percentage, possibly, but (based on a small and unscientific personal survey) not in any appreciable numbers. One trans man I know prefers relationships with men, which doesn’t make him a facsimile of a straight man at all. The picture’s complicated, but I think you’re seeing it–sorry–as a bit of a conspiracy. I don’t.
As for AI and google, to the best of my ability I avoid AI and use google to find what I’m looking for. If I want contrasting opinions, I can shift my search question. Please, though, spare me the phrase politically correct. It’s nothing but a cheesy way to dismiss opinions you don’t agree with.
Having said all that, I’m sure there are and will continue to be some people who transition, regret it, and as far as the technology allows, de-transition. In the same way, I’ve known people who were lesbians, then weren’t lesbians. And people who were straight and came out. And people who were wildly left wing and are not wildly right wing. What does it all mean? People change. The medical technology that (to whatever extent) allows people to change their sex/gender/whatever opens up possibilities that have thrown us, as a culture, for a loop.
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The goal posts I meant were just that you posted an opinion piece saying sex wasn’t binary, I gave a clear refutation, and you turned to another subject, the historical presence of people who fulfilled unusual gender ROLES.
But no matter. I’ll move them now. If you support people accessing so-called gender medicine, how come several countries have reversed their affirmative protocols in recent years following rigorous reviews of the evidence, including the UK? Those states still going at it are looking increasingly isolated. This dropped in my inbox today, for example. https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/judgement-day?publication_id=67309&post_id=166133356
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Especially when comments are long, I often address some part and not all. I only have so much time and energy. And I’m fully capable of misunderstanding the topic, as I may have with yours. My point, which I may not have made well but which I thought addressed yours, was that throughout history and across cultures some number of humans have felt a need to cross what we’ve been taught was an uncrossable line and become members of the opposite sex, and when you get a repeating pattern like that, it speaks to something innate in our species–a bit like being attracted to members of your own sex: deny it or try to suppress it as we will, it resurfaces.
My sense is that countries are turning against offering gender transition treatment for multiple reasons but the most powerful is that it’s become a political battleground and the right wing is in the ascendant at the moment. (It seems to be a long moment; stay tuned.) It’s a nifty issue for them. It’s new and it freaks out a lot of people. Very handy. And I’m sure all sorts of people–medical and lay people–have made mistakes along the way, which make good headlines and discredit the whole thing. There’s no idea so good that it can’t be fucked up in practice. Large parts of the conversation are being conducted at a scream, which isn’t helpful.
This isn’t an in-depth reply. The issue is an important one and I respect your interest in pursuing it, but–yeah, sorry. Time, energy, all that.
Best.
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By the way, full disclosure, this is John Freestone / lettersquash. I’m on my phone at the moment, can’t figure out how to log in, hence it’s put me as anonymous… Oh I’ve just bloody found it now!
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That whole signing in thing is a pain in the neck–one I have no control over.
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Call me an idiot from stoneage (I sometimes call it meself), but if a prick dangles between yer legs you go to the men’s room, if not, you enter the ladies’ room.
And if another bearded bloke yells, because he is not allowed into the ladies’ room despite the fact that he “identifies” as woman, and the ladies rip his gonads off and wear them for a garter, that’s how we roll at the St.Thomas Bursa & Spelunca, read the room baby.
This Chicago-paper-story is very sad. It’s a long way from Borges’ inventions to this, absolutely no more homo ludens, just cheating for money.
The false citations & quotes (!) etc. are very disturbing. As I understand material “created” by AI is used again by AI – so chances are that a whole new set of “laws”, exegeses etc will be created. Someone should be left over to actually read the sources, the real ones. Terrible to imagine what this can do to the Historical Sciences.
Women in meetings ? It all went downhill when they were allowed to leave the kitchen, I say.
I think it’s okay to bomb St.James’ Palace to smithereens, and built anew. Source it out to Vlad the Impaler, win-win for all. We live in the age of fake, so what ?
BTW the cost for a decent xerox seems to be sky high these days.
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To date, I have not met a single bearded man in the ladies room. The trans women I do know are beardless and tend to dress like the kind of woman I never was–or to put that another way, like ladies. I don’t know what public toilet they use and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to share one with me.
I’ve also read that AI is feeding on its own creations and becoming the snake that swallowed its tail. Close the windows, my friend, because it’s getting crazy out there.
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I should add that I don’t give a rip what genitalia they’re sporting. It’s no business of mine.
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“I should add that I don’t give a rip what genitalia they’re sporting. It’s no business of mine.”
Well it’s a good job you’re not in a rape crisis centre and the male therapist identifies as female, isn’t it? It’s a good job you’re not in a women’s changing room with your five-year old daughter while a man sports a semi-erect penis.
Of course, these things haven’t happened to you, so they don’t matter. Nor, presumably, has your child suddenly decided they’re not the “gender” you’ve known them to be all their lives, tell you one day, along with the fact that you’re bound to disown them (because they’ve been told that online), and they don’t care, they’re getting puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones ASAP so they don’t unexist themselves (as they’ve also been told they’re likely to do if they don’t get “affirmed”).
Read something useful. Learn what’s going on. It’s much more interesting than history, because it’s actually happening NOW!
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Can we take the emotional tone down a bit? One kid in my family has transitioned. I don’t find it simple (I’m old and old assumptions die hard), but I accept it and I accept him–as do his mother and grandmother. More than one adult I know has transtioned as well. And believe me, it does matter to me, which is why I’m arguing it here.
Before I address your questions, though, I’ll ask one of my own: where do you want trans people to pee when they’re out in public? Are the people you consider men supposed to use the men’s room wearing dresses? Or people you consider women but who may look like men suppose to use the women’s? Or are they supposed to just stay home from now on? Or is the point to force them back into their “proper” sex roles and clothes? Proposing single-sex toilets is fine, but how many exist and where’s the money going to come from to build them? This isn’t some hypothetical question but a very real, everyday one for trans people.
So, the issues you raised, which I think are less everyday. A rape crisis counselor? My partner worked as a therapist for decades and was often in a position where she was hiring people. One question that came up regularly was about an applicant’s ability to work with the agency’s clients. If the match wasn’t a good one, for any reason, they didn’t hire that person. But since my lived experience has been dragged into this, yes, I have been raped. As far as I know, there were no rape crisis centers at the time. If I were back in that time, though, I can think of many reasons I wouldn’t be comfortable with a counselor–I’m not a good match with everyone–but a trans woman wouldn’t inherently be a problem for me. I don’t assume that being trans is the same as being predatory.
Finally, changing rooms. Again, since my lived experience is being hauled into the discussion, I’ve been a five-year-old girl, although admittedly it’s been a long time. If the surrounding adults weren’t uncomfortable, I expect I’d have been more interested in glimpsing a man’s penis–erect, non-erect, semi-erect, or anything I haven’t thought of–than traumatized by it. Again, we’re not talking about predators, just bodies. And again, I’m assuming here the adults around me didn’t signaled that I should be traumatized. I admit that’s not the common belief of the culture and I’m don’t expect to convince anyone on the subject. Given that, solo changing rooms are probably the solution. They cost less to build than toilets and not as many would be needed.
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Yeah, sorry, I was done here a month ago, then wondered what might have happened since, had a read and found what seemed to be a blasé attitude to men encroaching on women’s privacy.
I have no beef with anyone who identifies out of their sex. I want what’s best for everyone. Sometimes that’s not what they think they need (and often they don’t choose it, they’re told it’s what they need, sometimes by authority figures like so-called ‘therapists’). I know that gender dysphoria is real, in the sense of being a real experience, and I understand that it can be very painful. It just doesn’t mean anyone is the wrong sex, or born in the wrong body, or that messing with their sexed body in any way is likely to be a solution, and the scientific evidence bears that out.
I was angry, because you’re a woman, and “trans rights”, at least in as far as they indicate self-ID, are incompatible with women’s rights. Trans rights aren’t human rights – human rights are human rights; trans rights are the right to undermine already existing human rights of everyone else.
I struggle to see how you can’t see that. If “woman” is a class of people that literally ANYONE can identify into, women (the biological entities) are no longer protected by those women’s rights that have provided them with safety and privacy from men. Indeed, “women” essentially ceases to exist as a reliable category.
The problem is not that ‘transwomen’ are predators, or that all men are, but that something like 99% of sexual offences are committed by men, and women are something like 70-80% (I forget exactly) of the victims. Women can’t know which male might be a threat, so if men are allowed to enter women’s spaces simply by declaring that they’re women, all women are potentially threatened by that. Obviously not all men are predatory, just some, but virtually no women are. And, as you know, fear of men is very common among women for exactly that reason – so many have been victims of sexual violence, abuse, and intimidation. The culture can’t just forget that and assume everyone is nice and safe. It’s built into our biology. Millions of years of evolution have made men aggressive, insensitive pricks, and women the sex that risks pregnancy.
Maybe a side issue, but it’s worth clarifying that the heinous act of transphobia perpetrated by the Supreme Court did not change the law, it simply clarified what the law already said in regard to the Equalities Act. Activist groups like Stonewall have been gaslighting everyone with the lie that gender identity was the qualifier. The law says that no-one must suffer prejudice on the grounds of gender reassignment, meaning they should not be refused service or sacked out of actual transphobic hate, but it didn’t give them the right to transgress on sex-based rights.
I am very aware of the mess trans ideology has created in regard to toilets, and I’m aware that it is a difficult ethical problem. If children at school had not been indoctrinated with the unscientific nonsense about a sex spectrum and turn up to gender clinics in their thousands, it would hardly register on anyone’s radar. Having got where we are, it’s going to be a difficult road back socially (and, for many, personally).
On the whole, however, anyone who has some modicum of respect for others will work out which toilet they’re welcome in. People who pass as the opposite sex won’t be clocked as trans in the opposite-sex toilets, and they’re not legally obliged to refrain from going there. The law doesn’t say everyone must stay in their lane, it clarifies that claims pertinent to the Equalities Act are sex-based, so if a woman feels threatened by a ‘transman’ in her toilet, she can’t be guilty of prejudice in complaining, as is the case now (sometimes with a ‘non-crime hate incident’ recorded by the police). It clarifies that a medical agency can advertise for a female gynocologist and legally turn away one who is male without fear of an expensive lawsuit. A woman can refuse an intimate examination by a ‘transman’ doctor without being hauled over the coals for transphobia. A woman can refuse to be strip-searched by a male officer, even if he identifies as a woman.
Reasonable provision must be made for privacy and security of the sexes in business, particularly women as the (generally) physically weaker and less aggressive sex. Even this only applies to large organisations. Cafés and suchlike can simply have a unisex toilet, as most do now. Many large organisations have single-sex toilets already, plus – in law already – a unisex toilet for disabled people, which, while not an ideal solution, might be a solution for ‘non-binary’ people, or ‘trans’ folk who feel uncomfortable in either the men’s or women’s.
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As a woman, I’m not about to let men define my rights or “defend” them in ways that I don’t see as defence. Women can and do disagree on this, and from the look of things will continue to for a good long while. I’m well aware of the threat men can present, although I’m less sure than you that it’s biological. Unlike you, I’m not convinced that the existence of trans men increases that threat in any way. The fears, I think, along with claims that young people are being stampeded into changing sex on the basis of social media, is being weaponized by our friendly local culture warriors. Sex change, or gender reassignment, or whatever the hell we’re calling it, is–and I think we can agree on this much–an immensely complicated subject, which as a culture we’re handling badly, as if it was a simple one.
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You’re an idiot from stoneage.
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:)
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