Note that Exeter is one of the few places in the world where people are working on trans theology in a dedicated way. Depending on where these cuts fall, it could be genuinely disastrous for this tiny field, where individual researchers make a proportionally larger contribution to the field overall

sorry what?

Westminster has published its conversion practices bill: www.gov.uk/government/p... We will be looking more carefully at it in the coming days - initial concerns include the lack of mention of suppression of behaviours and relying on definitions for sexuality now unfit due to SC judgement on "sex"

Conversion practice okay if its done by a healthcare professional and of good quality 😉 the UK’s conversion will be of a high standard for all

Incredible find. No notes.

Indeed. This "reasonable concerns" re refuges crowd refuses to ackowledge that the previous understandings of the EA 2010 already dealt with proportionate exceptions for legitimate reasons, because if they accept that, they have to accept that they've (whoops) supported segregationist nonsense.

I'm not sure whether the worse read here is that they're being deliberately dishonest, or if they genuinely believe that turning the dial that says 'transphobia' will mollify the GC lawfare industry so that, in practice, trans people are left alone.

I think the former is almost preferable. It's scary to be aggressively confronted by someone who thinks you're a degenerate, it's humiliating to be treated as an embarrassing administrative anomaly.

I mean perhaps he should have stood 'with God against our national flag'

So "things can't get better, shut up children" wasn't a winning approach to leadership. Who knew?

Heatwave driving me to experiment with a jalapeño martini. It's good.

Do we think those twee pub toilet signs which refer to like, animals or whatever ('cocks' and 'hens' or similar) can meaningfully be considered single sex spaces? I've never seen poultry using them.

He's a little guy, he's just a little guyy, noo, it's also his birthday, he's a little birthday boyy

"No, it's not canon that Jax is trans, that's just one reading" - Roland Barthes, probably.

The worst thing about this idea (that the party which won a landslide must commit to policies out of step with its own identity) is that the Labour Party also seem to believe it. And that's without mentioning the phrase 'trans-lovers' and its very intentional resonances.

🚨 NEW: Keir Starmer will send naughty children "to bed with no supper" as part of the Government's social media ban

Boots AND cats? In this economy??

Reposting this trans sacred heart for the feast of the Sacred Heart.

This is already happening, will continue to happen, and is the guidance working as intended.

This entire thread is the EHRC chair using standard GC lines throughout 'stonewall misled trans people and orgs re the law' 'if we'd been allowed to talk about this this wouldn't have happened' 'I'm sorry trans people are sad, don't take it out on us, follow the rules you freaks' 'ask the manager'

Clergy Facial hair of Gay Gender transgression among

Why is indexing.

But the carve out on same sex marriage was a conscience clause, which in this case would be 'default trans inclusion, but gender critical service providers are allowed to opt out of inclusion'. The GCs know that most services wouldn't opt out, so the current 'compromise' makes exclusion the default.

This whole thing is awful (especially the lawyered-to-the-hilt PCC statement which apologises to people upset by a sign & doesn't even mention trans people), but this bit is the point: 'we have money and will ruin anyone who wants to be trans-inclusive' www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Worth noting also that 'dignity' and 'respect' as human rights frameworks often draw implicitly or explicitly from the same Catholic anthropology (imago dei) which opposes transition because it (apparently) disrupts this image!

I mean at least make this argument openly: 'actually, you lot aren't worth fighting for because those who oppose you are too powerful and we never cared that much anyway, sorry'. It's humiliating to have this done to us by people who pretend to have our interests at heart.

Worth noting also that 'dignity' and 'respect' as human rights frameworks often draw implicitly or explicitly from the same Catholic anthropology (imago dei) which opposes transition because it (apparently) disrupts this image!

'Masculinities and Trauma in Church and Theology' is the subtitle of this collection edited by @revdwillrm.bsky.social with contributions from @karenod.bsky.social, Andrew Graystone, @alexianafry.bsky.social and @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social 20% off during June: scmpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/978033...

Just a hugely bizarre moment in British politics, as the government casually signs off on the idea that trans people are both dangerous enough that their presence must be constantly policed, but also safe enough for any member of the public to accost.

A LONG day of steaming, photography and cataloguing - but we're halfway there! It's staggering to see this all come together, even before the patches are sewn together into a quilt - the of courage, love, and beauty in these squares is a privilege to experience. Thank you! More tomorrow

We are really concerned by Seema Malhotra's statement to the commons that: "Most people have the common sense to step in when necessary, for example when a person of the opposite biological sex enters a single sex facility in error - and when to alert a member of staff."

Happy Pride Month from the 'centre left'. On the first day we got: 1) new health secretary does obligatory public recanting of previous megre pro trans statements. 2) GC op-ed in The Guardian. 3) Labour minister does patronising dismissal of concerns raised about EHRC guidence in Parliament.

"suck it up" - the Labour and Co-operative Party

They've been told they will get decision letters sent tomorrow, to arrive Wednesday. They have no idea what that letter will contain. It is scheduled to arrive in the middle of a key GCSE/A-levels/mocks week. This investigation has never given a damn about the well-being of these young people.

The polite version of this is incoherent, because its limits on how trans people should be allowed to live preclude any actual trans participation in public. At least Helen Joyce's eliminationist vision is both consistent and honest.

If maybe five newspapers can get significant parts of the Equality Act informally repealed without legislation, by uniting on a relentless, years long campaign of totally open fear and hate to shitehouse politicians, then I imagine they’re now eyeing everything from human rights to the Scotland Act

I’m not being funny about this.If you think trans people deserve dignity but that they shouldn’t have to be accepted as trans in schools or bathrooms or workplaces or interpersonal conversations or on the Holyrood website, even if they have a GRC-what is “being trans” to you? What are you affirming?

How's that's sex/gender distinction serving you?

The official position of, among other things, the Labour Party, is that the "dignity" of trans people can be served by denying the chief assertion of the very concept of being trans.

Awesome. This process absolutely needed more dehumanisation and error. There was a danger of some lingering compassion. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Have a slot to present at the big giant conference in my academic field in July and I have mostly been really hoping, throughout the year, to get enough work to pay for it. This has not happened. If you do have the disposable funds to help I would be very grateful.

"it's just a lurch to the left And then a step to the riiiiiiiight"

Also, when I saw an Ann Summers ad about 'Self Lust SZN' I do think that wanting to present in a way that makes you feel attractive, even sexually attractive, is probably just a people thing. I imagine their marketing data is more robust than Blanchard's study, for example.

Here’s the text of the encyclical: www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

I've not had the chance to read the new Encyclical properly, but a keyword search suggests that 'gender' is only used in the sense of 'gender discrimination' and sex in the sense of 'sexual exploitation'. Pleasantly surprised not to see an aside about 'gender theory' as in previous texts.

I kind of liked the cartoon because it's how I feel, but it also really reminded me of the 'headclutcher' stock images used for stories about mental illness www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-o...

This has been implicit since Gordon Brown refused to stand by his comment that the 'bigoted woman' he was speaking to was, in fact, a bigot. The whole national conversation is downstream of him accepting that calling a bigot a bigot was out of the bounds of acceptable speech.

This is literally a conversion narrative: 'Someone read to me from the Holy Book [Transsexual Empire, in this case] and suddenly everything made sense'

Great, we're now protecting polite homophobia as not homophobic, good job everyone.

A friend did the maths on this and noted that in the last 5 years there has been one hostile news article for every ten trans people in the population total.