Chris(tyn) Parkes

Lol. That was fast.

Agreed. @impossiblephd.bsky.social has shut off replies for all, and I think that's speaks to the myopia they are approaching this with.

This study is cooked, just like Cass was, and carrying water for it on technical grounds is to be complicit with iatrogenic transphobia. Shameful.

It's that Trump doesn't need to care if the label sticks. He knows that even if it does, him and the rest of his criminal confederates won't ever face justice the way the last generation of fascist leaders did.

It's uncomfortable because it's a sign he's going to get away with it.

Their shit approach to endocrine care might well show worse outcomes for those on blockers than those not on blockers, especially if those on blockers are too late to get many of the benefits whilst put into menopause by terrible endocrine care.

Keep your loved ones away from this nightmare study

This is not how you design a research study to see whether puberty blockers are beneficial.

This is how you design a research study to show they have little benefit.

Those of you who know my work know that misgendering on death certificates has been a preoccupation of mine for several years now. I have been really concerned to hear that even though we now have specific guidance on the issue, there are some Coroners who have not been following it.

Imagine, if you can, a parent whose love was not up to the task of saving their child from the environment Wes Streeting has created for young trans people. Imagine the effect on that bereaved parent of a coroner who saw that tragedy as a stage on which to perform their own prejudice.

Those coroners stand with Hilary Cass who described parents who fear their children will die without puberty blockers as "shroud wavers"; Wes Streeting who chose to deny children life saving drugs; and Louis Appleby who wrote an intellectually dishonest whitewash into the effects of the denial.

Dream blunt rotation

Trans people could be barred from services based on appearance The new code of practice on access to single-sex services cannot gain legal force until it gets sign-off from ministers.

"Trans people could be asked about whether they should be accessing single-sex services based on their physical appearance."

No. not "trans people". ANYONE. This moral panic leads inexorably to the policing of women based on their appearance deemed to be "unfeminine".

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

More than that, Sex Matters - and the pseudoscientific legalistic sophistry they peddle along with every other GC transphobe - is wrong.

Sex 'matters' insofar as gender also matters. Both possess material reality. Both are materially mutable. They are inextricable and one does not trump the other.

Dangerous indeed. You're a formidable ally and I'm glad you're on our side, Ms Whittome, but don't forget that a good deal of the problem is emanating from your own party. Fight hard and good luck.

Empty performative schlock. Starmer's Labour is the most anti-LGBT government since Thatcher. You are part of the problem, not the solution. Shame on you.

Are UK Courts Getting Gender Critical Cases Wrong? Oscar Davies critiques recent rulings on gender critical beliefs, warning they risk undermining trans rights.

“…belief and its manifestation should not be treated separately. Tribunals must assess whether the belief, and how it’s expressed, infringes others’ rights. Otherwise, beliefs that effectively strip trans people of dignity are too easily granted legal protection”

chroniclelaw.co.uk/blogs/2025/0...

The majority of the UK media, encouraged by the UK's equality body, is waging a campaign to encourage the public, employers and health providers to harass anyone who doesn't fit their definition of what a woman should look like.

This is what JK Rowling is funding.

A clear weakness of the framing rhetoric of 'evidence based policymaking' in politics. It allows for bad actors to set ridiculously high or low evidence thresholds and then invoke the authority of science or rationality for their evil ends. Not new, but ever clearer.

For more on this, see the Cass Review as another classic example of absolute nonsense being sold to politicians as 'evidence based'.

I wrote something reflecting on today.

Watch them torture the language more with 'self-clarifying' soon enough.

Something I remind myself of about the trans rights fight is the asymmetry of what's required to change someone's mind:

Transphobes: A decade-long, billion dollar, globally coordinated campaign of disinformation, lawfare, and media capture.

Trans people: Meeting a trans person.

We'll win, folx 🏳️‍⚧️✊

The core aim of the Terf movement - a tiny number of newspaper columnists who melted the brains of middle aged reactionaries - was always to encourage maximum public hostility against transgender people, and give them the impunity to act upon it.

This is the “gender-critical” transphobes giving up on their bio-determinism & saying it is gender (ie. The socially & culturally determined performative) that defines a woman.

By producing this “guidance”, organised transphobia has effectively conceded defeat in its “sex vs gender” war.

1/2

Congratulations*

Re those leaks to The Times: the High Court will rule soon enough on whether the EHRC has (1) adhered to its statutory duties and (2) understood the law correctly. Until then both (1) and (2) are up for grabs and the statutory guidance is only marginally more useful than yesterday's chip paper.

Those bits of the EHRC's draft statutory guidance that weren't in its now withdrawn interim guidance we haven't challenged yet. But we will. And if the High Court finds the EHRC breached its statutory duties only a bigot or fool would rely on them.

Join the Greens now. Trust me. It stings a little at first, but once you're in it feels *amazing*

Kudos, congratulatoins, and well done to @averygreatorex.bsky.social

I had the honour of speaking with her over the summer. She's a dedicated and passionate politico with a bright future ahead of her. It is to Labour's immense shame that it compelled her to leave.

Welcome to the Greens!

That's a pathology of centrism and the right as well as the left. I peg it on neoliberal era non-intersectional "anti-racist" politics, not leftist myopia on antisemitism

Forgive me, but I can't help but provide a contradictory account. In both parties, accusations of racism made by black, south asian, Muslim, and Roma/Sinti members have, quite notoriously, been ignored, dismissed, denigrated, and weaponized. Antisemitism is not unremarkable in that respect.

Then you know glossing over accusations of bigotry for political convenience - and, alternately, amplifying those against opponents - is unfortunately ubiquitous. What happened to Labour under Corbyn showed how easy it is to let that bad habit run amok.