Tory men are failing women

Some of my good Tory friends are fed up with terfs. I can see it in their sharp eyes, in the way they don’t quite look at me when drastic topics creep into the conversation, but stare glumly at the baseboard. Terf stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and terf are women who insist that you can’t change your biological sex and that the whole idea that some people are born in the wrong body is not only stupid, but disastrous for our culture and our society. kids.

Trying to dissuade a gay boy from being castrated could soon be considered a crime

It’s been half a decade since terf wars became a daily occurrence in the media, and if I understand their micro-expressions correctly, their eye-rolling and fidgeting, these are exactly the type of people we’ll need most in the next few years, who are fed up with it all. They are fed up with JK Rowling and her relentless presence on social media, perhaps especially with the way their increasingly radicalized wives and girlfriends now follow JK, throwing themselves into her Twitter path like teenagers in the grip of Beatlemania.

But Labor is coming. On Monday it was announced that they planned to make it easier for anyone who wanted to get a gender recognition certificate, and Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, basically confirmed that she would scrap guidance banning children from learning that they can change their gender . Tuesday brought the exciting news that Labor will be introducing a total ban on what they call “conversion therapy”, which sounds reasonable but is madness. A ban would mean that teachers, doctors, therapists and even parents would be at risk of legal action if they dared to suggest to a confused child that he or she was not transgender. Trying to dissuade a gay boy from being castrated could soon be considered a crime.

So are conservatives preparing for a fight? In most cases, they only seem to be preparing to withdraw. Where, for example, is the moral crusader Michael Gove on this matter? If senior Tories are captured by the progressive policies of their junior staff and special advisers, what hope is there for Labor?

Part of the problem is that conservatives are not inherently ideological. They find the ideological bias hard to stomach unless they get dragged into it by a hot chick with a fire brand. I’m considering (quite seriously) designing Terf’s secret weapon: an online version of the young Margaret Thatcher’s AI bot, now decidedly gender-critical and with even nicer dice. He will use some familiar phrases, but in a new case:

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, then you are not.

– This lady is not to be bothered with.

If this doesn’t stiffen Tory sinews, nothing will.

In the past, I have been confused and surprised that men who consider themselves chivalrous do not seem more moved by the astonishing violence that trans women (men) can display against real women. Sarah Jane Barker, a man serving time for torture, kidnapping and attempted murder, encouraged the crowd to punch terrorists in the face. Barker was at it again last weekend in Brighton, threatening a group called Let Women Speak. Academic Kathleen Stock was hit in the head by trans-identified men. Why do so few conservatives defend Kathleen? Do they think that what goes around comes around?

Some of the loudest and fiercest feminists have spent the last decades attacking men, and I suspect that now that another oppressed minority has risen up and started attacking feminists themselves, some men are thinking: you reap what you sow, girls. I have some sympathy. The phrase “toxic masculinity” often seems to refer not just to a subset of boys’ behaviors, but to the entire male mess. Don’t touch, don’t flirt, don’t stare, don’t woo. What’s a guy supposed to do? Crying is what it is, preferably on Instagram.

But it’s not really a feminist issue. Yes, at first the gender ideology unleashed will destroy women’s sports and turn prisons and women’s shelters into a rape hell, but this is not a war on women; it’s a war against reality. And if the Tories abandon Terf to defend themselves – if they prefer to talk about more manly issues like war and space – then their own children and grandchildren will suffer.

Recently I’ve heard people trying to tell themselves that if there was ever a real threat from gender ideology, that time is over; that we have reached and passed the peak awake. But ask any public employee, any doctor or teacher and they will tell you everything. They would be ostracized if they tried to suggest that children who think they are trans do not know their own minds. If you work at a university, retweeting JK Rowling is still equivalent to quitting. Behind closed doors, your academic friends may pat you on the back, but in public they will stab you. Ask a young relative if he or she would feel comfortable wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m with JK Rowling.”

And despite the Cass Review, the danger to children still exists. Yes, the Tavistock clinic may have closed, but last week it was reported that one of its former staff, Dr Heather Wood, had retired and opened her own new children’s gender clinic, Dignity Gender Assessment Services, although this is not yet the case euthanasia. Dr Wood was reported to have received a large sum of taxpayers’ money following the closure of Tavistock, but each visit to the new clinic will still cost £1,500. Now that Labor has promised to continue to deliver more babies, I expect more clinics will follow suit.

So it’s up to you, brave Tories, whether you are in power or in opposition. Desperate, while you shouldn’t be considered toxic or transphobic, at least you won’t lose your job or all your friends if you take a stand. If you don’t speak up, who will?