The GutterView Transcripts

MPs are finally engaging with the gender identity debate 18 May 2021, 12:02pm James Kirkup, Spectator I used to write a lot about sex and gender here. I don’t do so quite as much these days for a few reasons, one of which is that the issues involved are now better recognised and better handled by people whose job it is to deal with the complexities of policies and conflicts of rights and arguments. An example of that came at the weekend when Baroness Falkner, the new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the Times that women should not be penalised or abused if they believe that transgender women do not become female by dint of their professed identity. ‘Someone can believe that people who self-identify as a different sex are not the different sex that they self-identify,’ she said. ‘A lot of people would find this an entirely reasonable belief.’ In other words, the UK’s human rights authority says you don’t have to accept that trans women are female. That’s a big dea...

  I can’t sleep, says accountant Marion Millar in trans tweet row Marc Horne Monday May 24 2021, 12.01am BST, The Times Police Marion Millar was told that there were allegations that she posted “homophobic and transphobic” tweets DREW ANGERER/GETTY   Monday May 24th 2021 Original here A feminist campaigner claims she can hardly sleep or eat after a police investigation into comments she made on social media about transgender rights. Marion Millar, an accountant from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, was told to report to a police station over allegations that she had posted “homophobic and transphobic” tweets. Her account of her ordeal has been viewed by millions of people on social media.  Millar, who works for   For Women Scotland   (FWS), a feminist group, wrote: “On April 28 I received a call from a PC Laura Daley from Police Scotland requesting I attend an interview under the malicious communications act. She told me I had to attend East Kilbride police station s...

  Nicola Sturgeon and the rise of the traumocracy May 22nd, 4:40pm (Photo by Andrew Milligan - Pool/Getty Images) SHARE Original article here In March, Nicola Sturgeon was asked about her response to Scotland’s drug deaths crisis. She said failings were ‘not because we didn’t care, or because we weren’t trying to do things, but we have concluded because we couldn’t do anything else, that we didn’t get it right’. This is how she addressed the worst drugs death rate in Europe and the government failings which fuelled it. An admission of regret and some self-justification: a recognition of the harm done but little in the way of a roadmap for future prevention. Drug deaths were a matter of regret rather than a health and social problem that needs solving. It wasn’t about what ministers did but whether they ‘cared’. Let’s spend a while on that word ‘care’: to care about something is to view it emotionally — I can care deeply without responding practically. Indeed, if I focus on my ...

  Investigate false claims, pleads accused student The Times 18.05.21 The original article is  here . A law student at the centre of a freedom of speech controversy has called for her accusers to be investigated after they branded her a “rape apologist”. Lisa Keogh, 29, a mature student. is facing disciplinary action over “offensive” and “discriminatory” comments that she allegedly made during lectures at Abertay University, Dundee. She was reported by younger classmates after she said that women were born with female genitals and that men were physically stronger than women. Keogh was also accused of saying women were the “weaker sex” and calling other students “man-hating feminists” after they suggested that all men were rapists and posed a danger to women. She says she made those comments and stands by them. However, she has also been accused of stating it is the “woman’s own fault if they became rape victims”, a charge she strenuously denies. “What I did say was that ...

  Trans Goldsmiths lecturer Natacha Kennedy behind smear campaign against academics by Lucy Bannerman in the Times 08.09.18 The original article is  here . A transgender lecturer orchestrated a smear campaign against academics across the UK in which universities were described as dangerous and accused of “hate crime” if they refused to accept activists’ views that biological males can be women, it can be revealed. Natacha Kennedy, a researcher at Goldsmiths University of London who is also understood to work there under the name Mark Hellen, faces accusations of a “ludicrous” assault on academic freedom after she invited thousands of members of a closed Facebook group to draw up and circulate a list shaming academics who disagreed with campaigners’ theories on gender. The online forum, seen by The Times, also revealed that members plotted to accuse non-compliant professors of hate crime to try to have them ousted from their jobs. Reading, Sussex, Bristol, Warwick and Oxford un...

Warnings that organisations’ policy could breach laws on trans rights Campaign group accuses Stonewall of ‘unlawfully discriminating against staff, especially women’ and says discrimination suits could soon follow Marion Calder accused Stonewall of “flagrantly redefining protected characteristics” Mark Macaskill Sunday May 23 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times Original article here A row over transgender rights has prompted warnings that private and public organisations in Scotland are at risk of breaching equality laws. Stonewall promotes a “champions” scheme that helps hundreds of fee-paying members “embed” transgender policy in the workplace. The Scottish government, Police Scotland, Scottish Water and the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are among those signed up to the scheme that contributed to income of more than £3 million, according to accounts filed last year. Concerns have been raised, however, that members could be vulnerable to legal action after Stonewall was ...