Starmer’s Wrong: Transpeople Are Not Marginalised and Self-ID Is a Danger to Women

It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Stonewall. Having put their whole weight behind the campaign for trans rights, they now find themselves facing serious opposition and questioning at last. Various universities and organisations have found that the advice Stonewall has given them is misleading and may actually be illegal. The gay rights activist group was informing its clients that certain types of criticism, which are actually legal and protected, constituted hate speech and was illegal. An increasing number of gays and lesbians are also upset with the organisation’s almost exclusive focus on trans issues. Many lesbians resent the intrusion of biological men into their exclusive spaces – there have been complaints that the majority of lesbian pubs and clubs, at least in Canada, have closed down. There is pressure upon lesbians to have sexual relationships with trans identified men, and if the lesbians turn them down, then they are accused of being ‘transphobic’. There is also particular concern that butch lesbians, and feminine gay men, are being wrongly put under pressure to identify as trans and transition, while in reality they are simply butch lesbians and feminine gay men. As a result, a number of gays and lesbians have left Stonewall and similar organisations for organisations like the LGB Alliance, which concentrates solely on gay rights and excludes trans issues.

Earlier this week Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, was interviewed by Radio 4’s Simon Fanshawe about trans rights. He faced polite, but difficult questioning, something Cohen clearly wasn’t used to. All he could do in response was flail about flinging accusations that somehow Fanshawe was homophobic or transphobic or something, and point to his own minority position as a gay, disabled Jew. Which really isn’t relevant to the topic in hand.

The day after, Starmer came out to support trans rights and said he would support self-ID. Trans people were the most discriminated people in the UK, according to him. This is simply wrong. I doubt very much that trans people are any more discriminated against than the rest of the population. A year or so ago the trans lobby was agitating for a ‘trans day of remembrance’ in respect of all the trans people that have been killed. Except no trans people, or nearly no trans people, have been killed in Britain. They stats they use to support the claim of hundreds of trans people being massacred come from Latin America, where most of the victims are sex workers. Furthermore, transpeople, at least in America, aren’t poor and marginalised. Karen Davies, a Black anti-trans activist, posted a video citing a sociological study of the American trans community, which found them to be overwhelmingly White, extremely affluent, and very well educated. 13 per cent of them have Ph.Ds, as compared to one per cent of the general American population.

Where they are arguably discriminated against, there are very good reasons for doing so. Most transwomen – about 70% – 90% – retain their male genitalia, which is clearly an issue when it comes to transwomen being given access to women-only spaces, like toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, women’s shelters and prisons. This issue is exacerbated further by research showing that sexual fetishes, like transvestism, tend to cluster. Transwomen don’t conform to female patterns of criminality, but male, and convicted transwomen may have a number of other paraphilias such as exhibitionism, sado-masochism and paedophilia. There are therefore extremely good scientific, criminological reasons why transwomen should not be housed in women’s prisons. They may constitute a danger to the female inmates. And indeed, despite the lies utter by Stonewall that nothing of the type has happened, women prisoners have been raped by biologically male sex offenders, who have been sent to women’s prisons because they have claimed to identify as women.

Here’s a couple of videos from Karen Davies again as she cites the sociological research into the transwomen and paraphilias/sexual fetishes.

More disturbing is the evidence from psychiatrists and law-enforcers that certain trans identified men have been getting sexual jollies from being in women’s spaces for a very long time. Be warned – this is sexually explicit.

I realise that this will upset some of the readers and commenters on this blog, who will feel that I am spreading hate and prejudice.

This is very definitely not my intention. I am certainly not trying to smear transwomen as a whole as dangerous sexual predators and I condemn utterly any attack or abuse of them simply for being trans. I believe totally that they should have the same respect, employment and educational rights and opportunities as everyone else.

What I don’t believe in is allowing trans ideology to prevail over fact when it comes to the safety of women and girls. And unfortunately this is the case, and will be the case, if self-ID is accepted and predatory and extremely dangerous trans-identified men are allowed into women’s spaces.

Starmer is here, quite simply, wrong. His promotion of self-ID has led many gender-critical women to leave the Labour party and tear up their membership cards. Yes, transpeople should have a place in the Labour party, and their rights should otherwise be guarded and promoted.

But they are not marginalised, they are not poor, and the promotion of the trans ideology is harming women, and vulnerable gays and lesbians.

No, It Is Not Anti-Semitic To Question Whether Jews Are An Ethnic Minority

Ever keen to bash the Beep, the Torygraph printed another story yesterday accusing the Corporation of anti-Semitism. Benjamin Cohen, the CEO of Pink News, had been invited on to Politics Live to debate whether Jews should be included as an ethnic minority in the national census. Coming out of the show, Cohen tweeted how offended he was by the question, and that he was the only Jewish person facing a panel of four gentiles. He was absolutely sure that Jews should be treated as an ethnic minority, and asked rhetorically if the Beeb would have asked that question of a Black or Asian guests.

Actually, it’s a very good question whether Jews are an ethnic minority, and colour is a part of the issue. Before the rise of biological racism, Jews were largely persecuted in Christian Europe because of their religion. The persecution generally ceased if they converted. Before the outbreak of Nazism and the horrors of the Third Reich, the majority of Jews in Europe did not wish to be seen as a separate people from those the countries in which they lived. The British Jewish establishment opposed the Balfour Declaration because they believed that Jews were ‘Englishmen of the Jewish religion’. The British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, they feared, would lead to Jews being viewed as foreigners, whose ultimately loyalty was to the new state, rather than loyal British citizens.

Even now there is a healthy debate within Judaism about whether it is a ethnic group, a religion or a descent group. Not all Jews are happy with being considered an ethnic minority. The comedian, opera director and broadcaster, Dr Jonathan Miller, is one of them. One of the team of satirists in Beyond the Fringe, along with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett, Miller was once introduced as a Jew on a programme covering the jolly funsters. Miller responded by stating that he was a ‘Jewish’. He had not interest in being an ethnic minority.

Jews also differ from the other groups regarded as ethnic minorities in terms of race, and socio-economic status. Traditional, indigenous European Jews are White, as the founder of modern scientific racial classification, Ludwig Blumenbach, maintained. Some of them, like Tracy-Anne Oberman, are more ‘Aryan’ in appearance than the Nazi scumbags, who abuse them. Which shows how wrong scientifically Nazism is, as well as evil. Where there has been anti-Semitic abuse and violence, it has been generally directed against Orthodox Jews, no doubt because of their characteristic dress and appearance.

The British Jewish community is also largely more prosperous than other ethnic groups. The mighty Tony Greenstein has cited sociological studies that have shown that 60 per cent of British Jews are upper middle class. Furthermore, while there is still anti-Semitic persecution and hostility, Jews don’t suffer from the same level of prejudice as Blacks and Asians. Tony again has quoted statistics showing that 77 per cent of Brits have positive views of Jews. Those that don’t generally regard them as no better or worse than anyone else. The number of people with negative views of Jews has risen from 5 to 7 per cent, but they’re far outweighed by the mass of the Brits who don’t share their opinions. This is no doubt one of the reasons the NF decided to stop goose stepping about in Nazi uniforms in the 1970s. When National Action turned up in Liverpool a couple of years ago screaming their hatred, the good peeps of that fair city, including socialists and trade unionists, chased them out of town. Literally. They had to retreat to the train station to await the next train out of there.

While the persecution of the Jews has been particularly vicious, it’s reasonable to compare it to the persecution of dissident Christian groups in Europe. Such as the Manichaean heretics in the Middle Ages, and Protestants in Roman Catholic countries. In Britain before Roman Catholic emancipation and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholicism was banned. It had to go underground in Ireland, and worship was carried out at secret locations in the countryside. British Protestant nonconformists, such as Quakers, Baptists and Methodists, were barred from serving on juries or in local and national government. By law their chapels had to be built five miles away from towns. You can also compare the British Jewish community’s current prosperity with the Quakers. The actual membership of the Society of Friends was small, but they became influential and prosperous businessmen because of their exacting standards of commercial conduct. You could trust them. A book I read a few years ago on the history of the Jewish people, written by an Anglican clergyman, made the same claim about them. The Jewish laws governing food purity meant that, if you bought a wheaten loaf from a Jew, that’s exactly what you got. Instead of being full of cheats determined to defraud gentiles, Jewish businessmen could be trusted. As for the traditional Jewish prohibition against marrying outside the religion, there are also Christian sects, such as the Exclusive Brethren and Particular Baptists, who also reject marriage with those outside the sect.

In short, Jews are integrated and accepted into British society to a far greater extent than Blacks and Asians, who are obviously different because of their colouring, dress and religion. Muslims are particularly subject to suspicion and abuse following 9/11, and are, with Blacks, generally poorer and more marginalised than the rest of British society.

I suspect the issue here isn’t so much about the question of whether Jews constitute an ethnic group in themselves, but over the benefits membership of an ethnic minority confers. Ethnic minorities are specifically protected by law against persecution, and in the case of Blacks and Asians may be assisted by affirmative action programmes. Even though Jews don’t suffer the level of violence and prejudice that Blacks and Asians do, they are still regarded as particularly vulnerable. As a result, they enjoy a degree of protection far greater than other ethnic minorities. For example, there’s the Community Security Trust, a paramilitary vigilante set up to protect Jews, synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish sites and monuments from attack. The group is supposedly trained in self-defence by members of the Israeli security services. This is, as far as I know, unique. I am not aware of any other ethnic group or religion being permitted their own private police force. Far from it. When the Islamofascists in London launched their Muslim Patrols harassing non-Muslims outside their mosques, they were rightly pounced upon by the authorities and arrested. But the CST is allowed to continue, stewarding Zionist and pro-Israel rallies despite reacting violently to counterdemonstrators. At several of these rallies, Muslim and Jews marching together in protest against Israel were forcibly separated and beaten. The victims included elderly Jewish women and rabbis.

The Zionist Jewish establishment were also able to exploit the general high regard and acceptance of Jews in British society by mobilising it to smear Jeremy Corbyn and his followers as anti-Semites. This is part of the general ultra-Zionist campaign to suppress criticism of Israel and its monstrous persecution of the Palestinians. Mass rallies and protests were arranged, and the lies and mendacious denunciations repeated in the national news and press.

Other ethnic groups have not nearly received such sympathy and support. For example, while the Labour party actively complied in the witch-hunt against suspected anti-Semites in the party, it has been extremely reluctant to investigate and punish those responsible for the racist bullying of Black and Asian MPs and activists. Probably because the racist bullies were the Blairite plotters and saboteurs, who collaborated with the anti-Semitism smear campaign as part of their own attempts to oust Corbyn. The affirmative action programme designed to assist Blacks and Asians achieve the same level of prosperity and acceptance as Whites are still extremely controversial. And rather than support allegations of racism by members of those ethnic groups, the reaction of the right-wing press has largely been to denounce them.

It therefore seems to me to be a good question whether Jews should be treated as an ethnic group, rather than simply a religion practised or not by some Brits, not so very different from various traditional Christian sects, which were also persecuted by which are now accepted as integral parts of British culture. I think that the determination by Jews like Cohen to retain their demarcation as an ethnic minority is doubtless partly motivated by a quite understandable fear of the return of the biological racism which led to the monstrous horrors of the Holocaust.

But I also wonder how much also comes from Zionist ideology. The IHRA definition of Zionism claims that it is anti-Semitic to deny Jews their national aspirations. Jews are a nation, and so it is supposedly anti-Semitic to deny them the right to their own state, Israel. But these national aspirations become highly questionable if Jews are not seen as a nation or ethnic group, but as a religion. Zionism becomes spiritual, not political. Jerusalem and Israel become the spiritual centres of the Jewish faith, just as Christians regard them as the spiritual centres of their religion. But this does not necessarily translate to a desire to return to the Promised Land. Some Jewish denominations removed the traditional Passover toast, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. Many other Jews simply repeated it as part of the revered ritual celebrating their deliverance from Pharaoh’s persecution in Egypt without actually meaning it.

All this makes me wonder whether the Torygraph’s article isn’t really about whether British Jews really constitute a separate ethnic group or not, but whether it’s was just a way of exploiting the anti-Semitism witch hunt to attack the Beeb, a favourite Tory target, on the one hand, while subtly trying to reinforce support for Israel on the other.